d high the baskets lade 180
With gifts of Ceres fashioned well, and serve the Bacchus' joy;
So therewithal AEneas eats and men-at-arms of Troy
Of undivided oxen chines and inwards of the feast.
But when the lust of meat was dulled and hunger's gnawing ceased,
Saith King Evander:
"This high-tide that we are holding thus,
This ordered feast, this altar raised to God all-glorious,
No idle task of witch-work is, that knoweth not the Gods
Of ancient days: O Trojan chief, we, saved from fearful odds,
Here worship, and give glory new to deeds done gloriously.
Note first the crag, whose world of stones o'ertoppleth there anigh; 190
What stone-heaps have been cast afar, how waste and wild is grown
The mountain-house, what mighty wrack the rocks have dragged adown.
Therein a cave was erst, that back a long way burrowing ran,
Held by the dreadful thing, the shape of Cacus, monster-man.
A place the sun might never see, for ever warm and wet
With reek of murder newly wrought; o'er whose proud doorways set
The heads of men were hanging still wan mid the woeful gore.
Vulcan was father of this fiend; his black flame did he pour
Forth from his mouth, as monster-great he wended on his ways.
But to our aid, as whiles it will, brought round the lapse of days 200
The help and coming of a God: for that most mighty one,
All glorious with the death and spoils of threefold Geryon,
Alcides, our avenger came, driving the victor's meed,
His mighty bulls, who down the dale and river-bank did feed.
But Cacus, mad with furious heart, that nought undared might be
Of evil deeds, or nought untried of guile and treachery,
Drave from the fold four head of bulls of bodies excellent,
And e'en so many lovely kine, whose fashion all outwent;
Which same, that of their rightful road the footprints clean might lack,
Tail-foremost dragged he to his den, turning their way-marks back; 210
And so he hid them all away amid that stonydark,
Nor toward the cave might he that sought find any four-foot mark.

"Meanwhile, his beasts all satiate, from fold Amphitryon's son
Now gets them ready for the road, and busks him to be gone;
When lo, the herd falls bellowing, and with its sorrow fills
The woodland as it goes away, and lowing leaves the hills.
Therewith a cow gave back the sound, and in