and crowned, as you see, these heights with a new Pergamus, the citadel of Ilion. But you—what wind, 20 what destiny has shaped your voyage? What god has driven you on a coast which you know not to be ours? What of the boy Ascanius? is he alive and breathing upper air? he, whom you on that night at Troy—say, can his boyish mind feel yet for the mother he has lost? 25 Is he enkindled at all to the valour of old days, the prowess of a grown man, by a father like Æneas, an uncle like Hector?’ “Such were the sorrows she kept pouring out, weeping long and fruitlessly, when Priam’s noble son, Helenus, 30 presents himself from the city, with a train of followers, and knows his friends again, and joyfully leads them to his home, many a tear interrupting his utterance. As I go on, I recognize a miniature Troy, a Pergamus copied from the great one, a dry rivulet the namesake of Zanthus, 35 and throw my arms round a Scæan[161] gate. My Trojan comrades, too, are made free of the friendly town. The king made entertainment for them in spacious cloisters. There, in the midst of the hall, they were pouring libations from cups of wine, their meat served on gold, and goblets in their hands. “And now suppose a day past, and yet another day: the breeze is inviting the sail, the swelling south inflating 5 the canvas, when I accost the prophet with these words, and put to him the question I tell you:—‘True Trojan born, heaven’s interpreter,[B] whose senses inform you of the stars, and of the tongue of birds, and of the omens of the flying wing, tell me now—for revelation has spoken 10 in auspicious words of the whole of my voyage, and all the gods have urged me with one voice of power to make for Italy, and explore that hidden clime. One alone, the Harpy Celæno, forebodes a strange portent, too horrible to tell, denouncing fierce vengeance and unnatural hunger. 15 Tell me then, what perils do I shun first, or what must I observe to surmount the tremendous hardships before me?’ Then Helenus first implores the favour of Heaven by a solemn sacrifice of bullocks, and unbinds the fillet from his consecrated brow, and with his own hand leads 20 me to thy temple, Phœbus, my mind lifted from its place by the effluence of divine power; which done, that priestly mouth chants these words from its prophetic lips:—