of territory. First must the oar be suppled in Trinacrian waters, and your ships must traverse the expanse of the Ausonian brine, and the spectral lake, and the isle of Ææan Circe,[o] ere you can find a safe spot to build a peaceful city. I will tell you the tokens, be it yours to 5 keep them lodged in your mind. When on an anxious day, by the side of a sequestered river, you shall find an enormous swine lying under the oaks on the bank with a litter of thirty head just born, white herself through all her lazy length, her children round her breasts as white 10 as she—that shall be the site of your city—that your assured rest from toil and trouble. Nor need you shudder beforehand at the prospect of gnawing your tables—the fates will find you a path, and a prayer will bring you Apollo. But as for these lands, and this line of the 15 Italian coast, which lies close at hand, and is washed by the spray of our waters, this you must fly: the cities, one and all, are peopled by enemies from Greece. Here the Narycian Locrians have built them cities, and the Sallentine fields have been occupied with an army by Lyctian 20 Idomeneus: here is the Melibœan chief Philoctetes' tiny town Patelia, with a strong wall to prop it. Further, when your fleet stands moored on the other side the water, and you build altars and pay vows on the coast, shroud your head with the covering of a purple robe, lest, 25 while the hallowed fires are blazing, and the worship of the gods is yet unfinished, some enemy's eye should meet yours, and make the omens void. Be this ritual custom maintained by your comrades as by yourself: let the piety of generations to come abide in this observance. But 30 when leaving Italy you are carried by the wind near the Sicilian coast, and Pelorus' narrow bars dimly open, make for the left shore, for the left water, long as the circuit round may be; avoid the right, its land and its seas. This whole region by the forceful throes of a mighty convulsion—such 35 power of change is there in long centuries of olden time—was rent in twain, so runs the story, the two countries before having been one and unbroken; at
