Oh Atreus' son, by what confed'rate God
Instructed liest thou in wait for me,
To seize and hold me? what is thy desire?
So He; to whom thus answer I return'd. 565
Old Seer! thou know'st; why, fraudful, should'st thou ask?
It is because I have been prison'd long
Within this isle, whence I have sought in vain
Deliv'rance, till my wonted courage fails.
Yet say (for the Immortals all things know) 570
What God detains me, and my course forbids
Hence to my country o'er the fishy Deep?
So I; when thus the old one of the waves.
[1]But thy plain duty was to have adored
Jove, first, in sacrifice, and all the Gods, 575
That then embarking, by propitious gales
Impell'd, thou might'st have reach'd thy country soon.
For thou art doom'd ne'er to behold again
Thy friends, thy palace, or thy native shores,
Till thou have seen once more the hallow'd flood 580
Of Ægypt, and with hecatombs adored
Devout, the deathless tenants of the skies.
Then will they speed thee whither thou desir'st.
He ended, and my heart broke at his words,
Which bade me pass again the gloomy gulph 585
- ↑ From the abruptness of this beginning, Virgil, probably, who has copied the story, took the hint of his admired exordium.
Nam quis te, juvenum confidentissime, nostras.
Egit adire domos.
To
