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the walls of our infant Troy, with a second army; once
more Tydeus' son from his Ætolian Arpi is rising against
the Teucrians. Ay, my wounds, I ween, are yet in the
future, and I, thine own offspring, am delaying the destined
course of a mortal spear. If it is without your leave and 5
despite your will that the Trojans have won their way to
Italy, let them expiate the crime and withdraw from them
thine aid: but if they have but followed those many oracles
given by powers above and powers underground, how
can any now be able to reverse thine ordinance and write 10
anew the page of fate? Why should I remind thee of our
fleet consumed on Eryx' shore? why of the monarch of the
storms and his raving winds stirred up from Æolia, or of
Iris sent down from the clouds? Now she is even rousing
the ghosts below—that portion of the world till then was 15
untried—and on a sudden Allecto is launched on upper
air, and rages through the Italian cities. It is not for
empire that I am disquieted; for that we hoped in the past,
while our star yet shone: let them conquer whom thou
wouldst have conquer. If there is no country on earth 20
which thy relentless spouse will allow the Teucrians, I adjure
thee, father, by the smoking ruins of Troy overthrown,
let me send away Ascanius safe from the war—let my
grandson survive in life. Æneas, indeed, may be tossed
on unknown waters, and follow such course as chance may 25
give him: him let me have the power to screen and withdraw
from the horrors of battle. Amathus is mine, and
lofty Paphos, and high Cythera, and the mansion of Idalia:
there let him pass his days unwarlike and inglorious. Let
it be thy will that Carthage shall bow Ausonia beneath 30
her tyrannous sway; the Tyrian cities need fear no resistance
from him. What has it advantaged him to have
escaped the plague of war and fled through the hottest of
the Argive fires, to have drained to the dregs all those
dangers by sea and on broad earth, while the Teucrians 35
are in quest of Latium and a restored Pergamus? Give
back, great sire, to our wretched nation their Xanthus and
their Simois, and let the Teucrians enact once more the old