- tune, and utters from her heart plaints like these: "The
fell wrath of Juno's bottomless heart constrains me, Neptune, to stoop to all the abasement of prayer—wrath that no length of time softens, no piety of man, unconquered and unsilenced by Jove's behest, by destiny itself. It is not enough 5 that her monstrous malice has torn the heart from the breast of Phrygia,[o] and dragged a city through an infinity of vengeance—the remnants of Troy, the very ashes and bones of the slain—these she pursues; rage so fiendish let her trace to its source. Thou thyself canst bear me witness 10 but now in the Libyan waters, what mountains she raised all in a moment—all ocean she confounded with heaven, blindly relying on Æolus' storms to convulse a realm where thou art master. See now—goading the matrons of Troy to crime, she has basely burnt their ships, and driven 15 them in the ruins of their fleet to leave their mates to a home on an unknown shore. These poor relics, then, let them, I beg, spread the sail in safety along thy waters; let them touch the mouth of Laurentian Tiber, if my prayer is lawful, if that city is granted them of Fate." 20
Then thus spake Saturn's son, lord of the ocean deep: "All right hast thou, queen of Cythera, to place thy trust in these realms of mine, whence thou drawest thy birth. And I have earned it too—often have I checked the madness, the mighty raving of sky and sea; nor less on earth 25 (bear witness Xanthus and Simois!) has thy Æneas known my care. When Achilles was chasing Troy's gasping bands, forcing them against their own ramparts, and offering whole hecatombs to Death, till the choked rivers groaned again, and Xanthus could not thread his way, 30 or roll himself into the sea—in that day, as Æneas confronted Peleus' mighty son with weaker arm and weaker aid from heaven, I snatched him away in a circling cloud even while my whole heart was bent on overthrowing from their base the buildings of my own hand, the walls of perjured 35 Troy. As my mind was then, it abides now. Banish thy fears; safely, according to thy prayer, he shall reach Avernus haven. One there shall be, and one only, whom
