this long time that such is the winds' will, and all your counter-efforts vain. Turn sail and ship. Could any land indeed be welcomer, any that I would sooner choose to harbour my weary ships, than the land which keeps for me above ground the Darden Acestes, and laps in its breast 5 the bones of my sire Anchises?" This said, they make for the haven; favouring zephyrs swell their sail, the fleet rides swiftly over the flood, and at last they touch with joy the strand they know so well.
From a hill's tall top Acestes had marked with wonder 10 afar off the new arrival, and the friendly vessels; up he runs, all in the savage trim of hunting-spear and Libyan bearskin—Acestes, son of a Trojan mother by the river Crimisus. The ancestral blood quickens in his veins as he gives them joy of their safe arrival, welcomes them 15 with the plenty of rustic royalty, and soothes their weariness with every kind appliance.
On the morrow, when the first dawn of the bright dayspring had put the stars to flight, Æneas calls his comrades to a gathering from all the shore, and standing on a heaped 20 mound bespeaks them thus:—"Mighty sons of Dardanus, race of Heaven's high parentage, the months are all past and the year has fulfilled its cycle, since we gave to the earth the earthly relics, the ashes of my deified sire, and consecrated the altars of mourning. And now, if I 25 err not, the very day is here—that day which for me shall ever be a day of weeping, ever a day of honour, since you, ye gods, have willed it so. Though this day were to find me among the Gætulian Syrtes a homeless wanderer—were it to surprise me in the Argive main or in the streets 30 of Mycenæ—still would I pay my yearly vows and the pomp of solemn observance, and would pile the altars with their proper gifts. And now, behold, by an unsought chance we are standing—not in truth I deem without the providence, the beckoning hand of Heaven—at the very 35 grave, the buried ashes of my sire, driven as we are into this friendly haven. Come, then, solemnize we all the glad celebration; pray we for winds, and may He be
