Again on board, they sail for many stormy days until they reach the islands of the Strophades. Here dwell the Harpies, loathsome human birds, whose touch is defilement and whose speech is bitter with railing. Yet even here Æneas finds a prophecy of his destiny. Offended by the onslaught of the Trojans, Celæno, one of the Harpy band, thus reviles and prophesies: What, is it war for the oxen you have slain and the bullocks you have felled, true sons of Laomedon? Is it war that _you_ are going to make on _us_, to expel us, blameless Harpies, from our ancestral realm? Take, then, into your minds these my words, and print them there. The prophecy which the Almighty Sire imparted to Phoebus, Phoebus Apollo to me, I, the chief of the Furies, make known to you. For Italy, I know, you are crowding all sail: well, the winds shall be at your call as you go to Italy, and you shall be free to enter its harbors; but you shall not build walls around your fated city, before fell hunger and your murderous wrong against us drive you to gnaw and eat up your very tables. Conington. Hastily Æneas leaves this place with an earnest prayer that this dire threat may be averted. Past green Zacynthos, Dulichium, and craggy Neritos they go, past Ithaca, cursing it for crafty Ulysses' sake, and reach the rocky shores of Actium; then on past the Phæacian land to Buthrotum in Epirus, on the western shore of Greece. He is astounded and delighted to find that the strange fortunes of war have set Helenus, son of Priam, here as king, with Andromache, wife of the lamented Hector, as his queen. We may be sure that the meeting was sweet and bitter too for all the exiles. They pass many days in hospitable intercourse, recalling the vanished life of their old Phrygian home, and recounting the checkered experiences of their recent years. And now, one bright morning, the breezes call loudly to the sails, and Æneas would pursue his way. He knows by now that Italy is the object of his quest, but how he may reach the destined spot in that vast stretch of coast, and what wanderings still await him, he does not know. But Helenus, his host, is famed as a diviner of hidden things, and to him Æneas appeals.