The Æneid of Virgil translated into English proseVirgil
General
The Æneid of Virgil translated into English prose
Virgil
Aeneas (Legendary character); Epic poetry, Latin -- Translations into English; Legends -- Rome
“Scarce had he ended, when on the mountain-top we
see the giant himself, moving along with his enormous 10
bulk among his cattle, and making for the well-known
shore—a monster dreadful, hideous, huge, with his eye
extinguished. A pine, lopped by his own hand, guides
him and steadies his footsteps. His woolly sheep accompany
him—there is his sole pleasure, the solace of his 15
suffering. After he had touched the waves of the deep
and come to the sea, he washes with its water the gore
that trickles from his scooped-out eye, gnashing his teeth
with a groan; and he steps through the sea, now at main
height, while the wave has not yet wetted his tall sides. 20
We, in alarm, hasten our flight from the place, taking on
board the suppliant, who had thus made good his claim,
and silently cut the cable; then throw ourselves forward,
and with emulous oars sweep along the sea. He perceived
it, and turned his steps towards the noise he heard. 25
But when he finds he has no means of grasping at us with
his hand, no power of keeping pace with the Ionian waves
in pursuit, he raises a gigantic roar, at which the sea and
all its waters trembled inwardly, and the land of Italy
shuddered to its core, and Ætna bellowed through her 30
winding caverns. But the tribe of the Cyclops, startled
from wood and lofty mountain, rush to the haven and
fill the shore. There we see them standing, each with
the empty menace of his grim eye, the brethren of Ætna,
lifting their tall heads to heaven, a dire assemblage—like 35
as on some tall peak, skyey oaks or cone-bearing cypresses
stand together, a lofty forest of Jupiter, or a grove of
Diana. Headlong our crews are driven by keen terror to
fling out the ropes anywhither, and stretch their sails to
the winds that would catch them. On the other hand,
Helenus’ warning bids them not to hold on their way
between Scylla and Charybdis, a passage on either side
removed but a hair’s breadth from death; so our purpose 5
stands to spread our sails backward. When lo! the north
wind is upon us, sped from Pelorus’ narrow strait. On I
fly past Pantagia’s mouth of living rock, and the bay of
Megara, and low-lying Thapsus. Such were the coasts
named to us by Achemenides, as he retraced his former 10
wanderings—Achemenides, comrade of the ill-starred
Ulysses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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