r children; on from them mighty Rome received
it and kept the ancestral observance; and now it is called Troy, and the
boys the Trojan troop.

Thus far sped the sacred contests to their holy lord. Just at this
Fortune broke faith and grew estranged. While they pay the due rites to
the tomb with diverse games, Juno, daughter of Saturn, sends Iris down
the sky to the Ilian fleet, and breathes a gale to speed her on,
revolving many a thought, and not yet satiate of the ancient pain. She,
speeding her way along the thousand-coloured bow, runs swiftly, seen of
none, down her maiden path. She discerns the vast concourse, and
traverses the shore, and sees the haven abandoned and the fleet left
alone. But far withdrawn by the solitary verge of the sea the Trojan
women wept their lost Anchises, and as they wept gazed all together on
the fathomless flood. 'Alas! after all those weary waterways, that so
wide a sea is yet to come!' such is the single cry of all. They pray for
a city, sick of the burden of their sea-sorrow. So she darts among them,
not witless to harm, and lays by face and raiment of a goddess: she
becomes Beroe, the aged wife of Tmarian Doryclus, who had once had birth
and name and children, and in this guise goes among the Dardanian
matrons. 'Ah, wretched we,' she cries, 'whom hostile Achaean hands did
not drag to death beneath our native city! ah hapless race, for what
destruction does Fortune hold thee back? The [626-660]seventh summer
now declines since Troy's overthrow, while we pass measuring out by so
many stars the harbourless rocks over every water and land, pursuing all
the while over the vast sea an Italy that flies us, and tossing on the
waves. Here are our brother Eryx' borders, and Acestes' welcome: who
denies us to cast up walls and give our citizens a city? O country, O
household gods vainly rescued from the foe! shall there never be a
Trojan town to tell of? shall I nowhere see a Xanthus and a Simois, the
rivers of Hector? Nay, up and join me in burning with fire these
ill-ominous ships. For in sleep the phantom of Cassandra the soothsayer
seemed to give me blazing brands: _Here seek your Troy_, she said; _here
is your home_. Now is the time to do it; nor do these high portents
allow delay. Behold four altars to Neptune; the god himself lends the
firebrand and the nerve.' Speaking thus, at once she strongly seizes the
fiery weapon, and with straining hand whirls it far upreared, and
flings: the sou