'O Goddess-born, full certainly across the sea ye wend By mightiest bidding, such the lot the King of Gods hath found All fateful; so he rolls the world, so turns its order round. Few things from many will I tell that thou the outland sea May'st sail the safer, and at last make land in Italy; The other things the Parcæ still ban Helenus to wot, Saturnian Juno's will it is that more he utter not. 380 First, from that Italy, which thou unwitting deem'st anigh, Thinking to make in little space the haven close hereby, Long is the wayless way that shears, and long the length of land; And first in the Trinacrian wave must bend the rower's wand. On plain of that Ausonian salt your ships must stray awhile, And thou must see the nether meres, Ææan Circe's isle, Ere thou on earth assured and safe thy city may'st set down. I show thee tokens; in thy soul store thou the tokens shown. When thou with careful heart shalt stray the secret stream anigh, And 'neath the holm-oaks of the shore shalt see a great sow lie, 390 That e'en now farrowed thirty head of young, long on the ground She lieth white, with piglings white their mother's dugs around,-- That earth shall be thy city's place, there rest from toil is stored. Nor shudder at the coming curse, the gnawing of the board, The Fates shall find a way thereto; Apollo called shall come. But flee these lands of Italy, this shore so near our home, That washing of the strand thereof our very sea-tide seeks; For in all cities thereabout abide the evil Greeks. There now have come the Locrian folk Narycian walls to build; And Lyctian Idomeneus Sallentine meads hath filled 400 With war-folk; Philoctetes there holdeth Petelia small, Now by that Meliboean duke fenced round with mighty wall. Moreover, when your ships have crossed the sea, and there do stay, And on the altars raised thereto your vows ashore ye pay, Be veiled of head, and wrap thyself in cloth of purple dye, Lest 'twixt you and the holy fires ye light to God on high Some face of foeman should thrust in the holy signs to spill. Now let thy folk, yea and thyself, this worship thus fulfil, And let thy righteous sons of sons such fashion ever mind. But when, gone forth, to Sicily thou comest on the wind, 410 And when Pelorus' narrow sea is widening all away, Your course for leftward lying land and leftward waters lay, How long soe'er ye reach about: flee right-hand shore and wave. In time agone some mighty thing this place to wrack down drave, So much for changing of the world doth lapse of time avail.