sage, and the terms expound,
Then, silence made, thus Venulus began:
"Friends, we have seen great Diomede, and found
The Argive camp, and, safe from peril, crowned
Our journey's end, and pressed the mighty hand
That razed old Troy. On Iapygian ground
By Garganus the conqueror hath planned
Argyripa's new town, named from his native land.

XXXII. "There, audience gained and liberty to speak,
The gifts we tender, and our names declare
And country, who our foemen, what we seek,
And why to Arpi and his court we fare.
He hears, and gently thus bespeaks us fair:
'O happy nations, once by Saturn blest,
Time-old Ausonians, what sad misfare,
What evil fortune mars your ancient rest
And tempts to wage strange wars, and dare the doubtful test?

XXXIII. "'All we, whoever with the steel profaned
Troy's fields (I leave the wasting siege alone,
The dead, who lie in Simois), all have drained
Evils past utterance, o'er the wide world blown,
And, suffering, learned our trespass to atone,
A hapless band! E'en Priam's self might weep
For woes like ours, as Pallas well hath known,
Whose baleful star once wrecked us on the deep,
And grim Euboea's rocks, Caphareus' vengeful steep.

XXXIV. "'Freed from that war, to distant shores we stray.
To Proteus' Pillars, far remote from men
An exile, Menelaus wends his way;
Ulysses shudders at the Cyclops' den;
Why speak of Pyrrhus, by Orestes slain?
Or poor Idomeneus, expelled his state?
Of Locrians, cast upon the Libyan plain?
Of Agamemnon, greatest of the great,
Mycenae's valiant lord, slain by his faithless mate,

XXXV. "'E'en on his threshold, when the adulterer lay
In wait for Asia's conqueror? Me, too,
Hath envious Heaven in exile doomed to stay,
Nor home, nor wife, nor Calydon to view.
Nay, ghastly prodigies my flight pursue.
Transformed to birds, my comrades wing the skies,--
Ah! cruel punishment for friends so true!--
Or skim the streams; from all the shores arise
Their piteous shrieks, the cliffs re-echo with their cries.

XXXVI. "'Such woes had I to look for, from the day
I dared a goddess, and my javelin tore
The hand of Venus. To such fights, I pray,
Persuade me not. Troy fall'n, I fight no more
With Trojans, nor those evil days of yore
Now care to dwell on. To AEneas go,
And take these gifts. Once, hand to hand, we