tanding impotent with scowling eye, their stately heads up to heaven, a
dreadful consistory; even as on a mountain summit stand oaks high in air
or coned cypresses, a high forest of Jove or covert of Diana. Sharp fear
urges us to shake out the sheets in reckless haste, and spread our sails
to the favouring wind. Yet Helenus' commands counsel that our course
keep not the way between Scylla and Charybdis, the very edge of death on
either hand. We are resolved to turn our canvas back. And lo! from the
narrow fastness of Pelorus the North wind comes down and reaches us. I
sail past Pantagias' mouth with its living stone, the Megarian bay, and
low-lying Thapsus. Such names did Achemenides, of luckless Ulysses'
company, point out as he retraced his wanderings along the returning
shores.

'Stretched in front of a bay of Sicily lies an islet over against
wavebeat Plemyrium; they of old called it Ortygia. Hither Alpheus the
river of Elis, so rumour runs, hath cloven a secret passage beneath the
sea, and now through thy well-head, Arethusa, mingles with the Sicilian
waves. We adore as bidden the great deities of the ground; and thence I
cross the fertile soil of Helorus in the marsh. Next we graze the high
reefs and jutting rocks of Pachynus; and far off appears Camarina,
forbidden for ever by oracles to move, and the Geloan plains, and vast
Gela named after its river. Then Acragas on the steep, once the breeder
of noble horses, displays its massive walls in the distance; and with
granted breeze I leave thee behind, palm-girt Selinus, and thread the
difficult shoals and blind reefs of Lilybaeum. Thereon Drepanum receives
me in its haven and joyless border. Here, so many tempestuous seas
outgone, alas! my father, the solace of every care and chance, Anchises
is [710-718]lost to me. Here thou, dear lord, abandonest me in
weariness, alas! rescued in vain from peril and doom. Not Helenus the
prophet, though he counselled of many a terror, not boding Celaeno
foretold me of this grief. This was the last agony, this the goal of the
long ways; thence it was I had departed when God landed me on your
coasts.'

Thus lord Aeneas with all attent retold alone the divine doom and the
history of his goings. At last he was hushed, and here in silence made
an end.

BOOK FOURTH

THE LOVE OF DIDO, AND HER END

But the Queen, long ere now pierced with sore distress, feeds the wound
with her life-blood, and catches the fire unseen. Again