"'O happy folk of Saturn's land, time-old Ausonian men, What evil hap hath turmoiled you amid your peaceful life, Beguiling you to stir abroad the doubtfulness of strife? All we who on the Ilian fields with sword-edge compassed guilt, --Let be the war-ills we abode before the wall high built; Let be the men whom Simoïs hides--we o'er the wide world driven, Have wrought out pain and punishment for ill deed unforgiven, Till Priam's self might pity us. Witness the star of bane Minerva sent; Euboea's cliffs, Caphereus' vengeful gain! 260 'Scaped from that war, and driven away to countries sundered wide, By Proteus' Pillars exiled now, must Menelaüs bide; And those Ætnæan Cyclop-folk Ulysses look upon: Of Pyrrhus's land why tell, or of Idomeneus, that won To ruined house; of Locrian men cast on the Libyan shore? Mycenæ's lord, the duke and king of all the Argive war, There, on the threshold of his house, his wicked wife doth slay. --Asia o'ercome--and in its stead Adultery thwart the way!-- Ah, the Gods' hate, that so begrudged my yearning eyes to meet My father's hearth, my longed-for wife, and Calydon the sweet! 270 Yea, and e'en now there followeth me dread sight of woeful things: My lost companions wend the air with feathery beat of wings, Or wander, fowl on river-floods: O woe's me for their woe! The voices of their weeping wail about the sea-cliffs go. But all these things might I have seen full surely for me stored Since then, when on the flesh of God I fell with maddened sword, And on the very Venus' hand a wicked wound I won. Nay, nay, to no such battles more I pray you drive me on! No war for me with Teucrian men since Pergamus lies low; Nor do I think or joy at all in ills of long ago. 280 The gifts, that from your fatherland unto my throne ye bear, Turn toward Æneas. We have stood, time was, spear meeting spear, Hand against hand: trust me, who tried, how starkly to the shield He riseth up, how blows the wind when he his spear doth wield. If two such other men had sprung from that Idæan home, Then Dardanus with none to drive to Inachus had come, And seen our walls, and Greece had mourned reversal of her day. About the walls of stubborn Troy, whatso we found of stay, By Hector's and Æneas' hands the Greekish victory Was tarried, and its feet held back through ten years wearing by. 290 Both these in heart and weapon-skill were full of fame's increase, But this one godlier: let your hands meet in the plighted peace E'en as ye may: but look to it if sword to sword ye bring.' "Thus have ye heard, most gracious one, the answer of the King, And therewithal what thought he had about this heavy war."