Therewith he bids bring forth once more the wine-cups and the meat, And he himself sets down the men upon a grassy seat; But chiefly to the bed bedight with shaggy lion's skin He draws Æneas, bidding him the throne of maple win. Then vie the chosen youth-at-arms, the altar-priest brings aid; They bear in roasted flesh of bulls, and high the baskets lade 180 With gifts of Ceres fashioned well, and serve the Bacchus' joy; So therewithal Æneas eats and men-at-arms of Troy Of undivided oxen chines and inwards of the feast. But when the lust of meat was dulled and hunger's gnawing ceased, Saith King Evander: "This high-tide that we are holding thus, This ordered feast, this altar raised to God all-glorious, No idle task of witch-work is, that knoweth not the Gods Of ancient days: O Trojan chief, we, saved from fearful odds, Here worship, and give glory new to deeds done gloriously. Note first the crag, whose world of stones o'ertoppleth there anigh; 190 What stone-heaps have been cast afar, how waste and wild is grown The mountain-house, what mighty wrack the rocks have dragged adown. Therein a cave was erst, that back a long way burrowing ran, Held by the dreadful thing, the shape of Cacus, monster-man. A place the sun might never see, for ever warm and wet With reek of murder newly wrought; o'er whose proud doorways set The heads of men were hanging still wan mid the woeful gore. Vulcan was father of this fiend; his black flame did he pour Forth from his mouth, as monster-great he wended on his ways. But to our aid, as whiles it will, brought round the lapse of days 200 The help and coming of a God: for that most mighty one, All glorious with the death and spoils of threefold Geryon, Alcides, our avenger came, driving the victor's meed, His mighty bulls, who down the dale and river-bank did feed. But Cacus, mad with furious heart, that nought undared might be Of evil deeds, or nought untried of guile and treachery, Drave from the fold four head of bulls of bodies excellent, And e'en so many lovely kine, whose fashion all outwent; Which same, that of their rightful road the footprints clean might lack, Tail-foremost dragged he to his den, turning their way-marks back; 210 And so he hid them all away amid that stonydark, Nor toward the cave might he that sought find any four-foot mark.