ight in chariot and armour, their care
in pasturing their sleek horses, follows them in like wise low under
earth. Others, lo! he beholds feasting on the sward to right and left,
and singing in chorus the glad Paean-cry, within a scented laurel-grove
whence Eridanus river surges upward full-volumed through the wood. Here
is the band of them who bore wounds in fighting for their country, and
they who were pure in priesthood while life endured, and the good poets
whose speech abased not Apollo; and they who made life beautiful by the
arts of their invention, and who won by service a memory among men, the
brows of all girt with the snow-white fillet. To their encircling throng
the Sibyl spoke thus, and to Musaeus before them all; for he is midmost
of all the multitude, and stands out head and shoulders among their
upward gaze:

'Tell, O blissful souls, and thou, poet most gracious, what region, what
place hath Anchises for his own? For his sake are we come, and have
sailed across the wide rivers of Erebus.'

And to her the hero thus made brief reply: 'None hath a fixed dwelling;
we live in the shady woodlands; soft-swelling banks and meadows fresh
with streams are our habitation. But you, if this be your heart's
desire, scale this ridge, and I will even now set you on an easy
[677-708]pathway.' He spoke, and paced on before them, and from above
shews the shining plains; thereafter they leave the mountain heights.

But lord Anchises, deep in the green valley, was musing in earnest
survey over the imprisoned souls destined to the daylight above, and
haply reviewing his beloved children and all the tale of his people,
them and their fates and fortunes, their works and ways. And he, when he
saw Aeneas advancing to meet him over the greensward, stretched forth
both hands eagerly, while tears rolled over his cheeks, and his lips
parted in a cry: 'Art thou come at last, and hath thy love, O child of
my desire, conquered the difficult road? Is it granted, O my son, to
gaze on thy face and hear and answer in familiar tones? Thus indeed I
forecast in spirit, counting the days between; nor hath my care misled
me. What lands, what space of seas hast thou traversed to reach me,
through what surge of perils, O my son! How I dreaded the realm of Libya
might work thee harm!'

And he: 'Thy melancholy phantom, thine, O my father, came before me
often and often, and drove me to steer to these portals. My fleet is
anchored on the Tyrrheni