and touched the hand whereunder the land
of Ilium fell. He was founding a town, named Argyripa after his
ancestral people, on the conquered fields of Iapygian Garganus. After we
entered in, and licence of open speech was given, we lay forth our
gifts, we instruct him of our name and country, who are its invaders,
and why we are drawn to Arpi. He heard us, and replied thus with face
unstirred:

'"O fortunate races, realm of Saturn, Ausonians of old, how doth fortune
vex your quiet and woo you to tempt wars you know not? We that have
drawn sword on the fields of Ilium--I forbear to tell the drains of war
beneath her high walls, the men sunken in yonder Simois--have all over
the world paid to the full our punishment and the reward of guilt, a
crew Priam's self might pity; as Minerva's baleful star knows, and the
Euboic reefs and Caphereus' revenge. From that warfaring driven to alien
shores, Menelaus son of Atreus is in exile far as Proteus' Pillars,
Ulysses hath seen the Cyclopes of Aetna. Shall I make mention of the
realm of Neoptolemus, and Idomeneus' household gods overthrown? or of
the Locrians who dwell on the Libyan beach? Even the lord of Mycenae,
the mighty Achaeans' general, sank on his own threshold edge under his
accursed wife's hand, where the adulterer crouched over conquered Asia.
Aye, or that the gods grudged it me to return to [270-301]my ancestral
altars, to see the bride of my desire, and lovely Calydon! Now likewise
sights of appalling presage pursue me; my comrades, lost to me, have
soared winging into the sky, and flit birds about the rivers--ah me,
dread punishment of my people!--and fill the cliffs with their
melancholy cries. This it was I had to look for even from the time when
I madly assailed celestial limbs with steel, and sullied the hand of
Venus with a wound. Do not, ah, do not urge me to such battles. Neither
have I any war with Troy since her towers are overthrown, nor do I
remember with delight the woes of old. Turn to Aeneas with the gifts you
bear to me from your ancestral borders. We have stood to face his grim
weapons, and met him hand to hand; believe one who hath proved it, how
mightily he rises over his shield, in what a whirlwind he hurls his
spear. Had the land of Ida borne two more like him, Dardanus had marched
to attack the towns of Inachus, and Greece were mourning fate's reverse.
In all our delay before that obstinate Trojan city, it was Hector and
Aeneas whose hand stayed t