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'What, war to pay for slaughtered neat, war for our heifers slain? O children of Laomedon, the war then will ye gain? The sackless Harpies will ye drive from their own land away? Then let this sink into your souls, heed well the words I say; 250 The Father unto Phoebus told a tale that Phoebus told To me, and I the first-born fiend that same to you unfold: Ye sail for Italy, and ye, the winds appeased by prayer, Shall come to Italy, and gain the grace of haven there: Yet shall ye gird no wall about the city granted you, Till famine, and this murder's wrong that ye were fain to do, Drive you your tables gnawed with teeth to eat up utterly.' She spake, and through the woody deeps borne off on wings did fly. But sudden fear fell on our folk, and chilled their frozen blood; 259 Their hearts fell down; with weapon-stroke no more they deem it good To seek for peace: but rather now sore prayers and vows they will, Whether these things be goddesses or filthy fowls of ill. Father Anchises on the strand stretched both his hands abroad, And, bidding all their worship due, the Mighty Ones adored: 'Gods, bring their threats to nought! O Gods, turn ye the curse, we pray! Be kind, and keep the pious folk!' Then bade he pluck away The hawser from the shore and slack the warping cable's strain: The south wind fills the sails, we fare o'er foaming waves again, E'en as the helmsman and the winds have will that we should fare. And now amidmost of the flood Zacynthus' woods appear, 270 Dulichium, Samos, Neritos, with sides of stony steep: Wide course from cliffs of Ithaca, Laertes' land, we keep, Cursing the soil that bore and nursed Ulysses' cruelty. Now open up Leucata's peaks, that fare so cloudy high Over Apollo, mighty dread to all seafarers grown; But weary thither do we steer and make the little town, We cast the anchors from the bows and swing the sterns a-strand. And therewithal since we at last have gained the longed-for land, We purge us before Jupiter and by the altars pray, Then on the shores of Actium's head the Ilian plays we play. 280 Anointed with the sleeking oil there strive our fellows stripped In wrestling game of fatherland: it joys us to have slipped By such a host of Argive towns amidmost of the foe.
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