The Aeneid by Virgil (best novel books to read TXT) 📕

for ornament they spread.
The loaves were serv’d in canisters; the wine
In bowls; the priest renew’d the rites divine:
Broil’d entrails are their food, and beef’s continued chine.

But when the rage of hunger was repress’d,
Thus spoke Evander to his royal guest:
“These rites, these altars, and this feast, O king,
From no vain fears or superstition spring,
Or blind devotion, or from blinder chance,
Or heady zeal, or brutal ignorance;
But, sav’d from danger, with a grateful sense,
The labours of a god we recompense.
See, from afar, yon rock that mates the sky,
About whose feet such heaps of rubbish lie;
Such indigested ruin; bleak and bare,
How desert now it stands, expos’d in air!
’Twas once a robber’s den, inclos’d around
With living stone, and deep beneath the ground.
The monster Cacus, more than half a beast,
This hold, impervious to the sun, possess’d.
The pavement ever foul with human gore;
Heads, and their mangled members, hung the door.
Vulcan this plague begot; and, like his sire,
Black clouds he belch’d, and flakes of livid fire.
Time, long expected, eas’d us of our load,
And brought the needful presence of a god.
Th’ avenging force of Hercules, from Spain,
Arriv’d in triumph, from Geryon slain:
Thrice liv’d the giant, and thrice liv’d in vain.
His prize, the lowing herds, Alcides drove
Near Tiber’s bank, to graze the shady grove.
Allur’d with hope of plunder, and intent
By force to rob, by fraud to circumvent,
The brutal Cacus, as by chance they stray’d,
Four oxen thence, and four fair kine convey’d;
And, lest the printed footsteps might be seen,
He dragg’d ’em backwards to his rocky den.
The tracks averse a lying notice gave,
And led the searcher backward from the cave.

“Meantime the herdsman hero shifts his place,
To find fresh pasture and untrodden grass.
The beasts, who miss’d their mates, fill’d all around
With bellowings, and the rocks restor’d the sound.
One heifer, who had heard her love complain,
Roar’d from the cave, and made the project vain.
Alcides found the fraud; with rage he shook,
And toss’d about his head his knotted oak.
Swift as the winds, or Scythian arrows’ flight,
He clomb, with eager haste, th’ aerial height.
Then first we saw the monster mend his pace;
Fear in his eyes, and paleness in his face,
Confess’d the god’s approach. Trembling he springs,
As terror had increas’d his feet with wings;
Nor stay’d for stairs; but down the depth he threw
His body, on his back the door he drew
(The door, a rib of living rock; with pains
His father hew’d it out, and bound with iron chains):
He broke the heavy links, the mountain clos’d,
And bars and levers to his foe oppos’d.
The wretch had hardly made his dungeon fast;
The fierce avenger came with bounding haste;
Survey’d the mouth of the forbidden hold,
And here and there his raging eyes he roll’d.
He gnash’d his teeth; and thrice he compass’d round
With winged speed the circuit of the ground.
Thrice at the cavern’s mouth he pull’d in vain,
And, panting, thrice desisted from his pain.
A pointed flinty rock, all bare and black,
Grew gibbous from behind the mountain’s back;
Owls, ravens, all ill omens of the night,
Here built their nests, and hither wing’d their flight.
The leaning head hung threat’ning o’er the flood,
And nodded to the left. The hero stood
Adverse, with planted feet, and, from the right,
Tugg’d at the solid stone with all his might.
Thus heav’d, the fix’d foundations of the rock
Gave way; heav’n echo’d at the rattling shock.
Tumbling, it chok’d the flood: on either side
The banks leap backward, and the streams divide;
The sky shrunk upward with unusual dread,
And trembling Tiber div’d beneath his bed.
The court of Cacus stands reveal’d to sight;
The cavern glares with new-admitted light.
So the pent vapours, with a rumbling sound,
Heave from below, and rend the hollow ground;
A sounding flaw succeeds; and, from on high,
The gods with hate beheld the nether sky:
The ghosts repine at violated night,
And curse th’ invading sun, and sicken at the sight.
The graceless monster, caught in open day,
Inclos’d, and in despair to fly away,
Howls horrible from underneath, and fills
His hollow palace with unmanly yells.
The hero stands above, and from afar
Plies him with darts, and stones, and distant war.
He, from his nostrils huge mouth, expires
Black clouds of smoke, amidst his father’s fires,
Gath’ring, with each repeated blast, the night,
To make uncertain aim, and erring sight.
The wrathful god then plunges from above,
And, where in thickest waves the sparkles drove,
There lights; and wades thro’ fumes, and gropes his way,
Half sing’d, half stifled, till he grasps his prey.
The monster, spewing fruitless flames, he found;
He squeez’d his throat; he writh’d his neck around,
And in a knot his crippled members bound;
Then from their sockets tore his burning eyes:
Roll’d on a heap, the breathless robber lies.
The doors, unbarr’d, receive the rushing day,
And thoro’ lights disclose the ravish’d prey.
The bulls, redeem’d, breathe open air again.
Next, by the feet, they drag him from his den.
The wond’ring neighbourhood, with glad surprise,
Behold his shagged breast, his giant size,
His mouth that flames no more, and his extinguish’d eyes.
From that auspicious day, with rites divine,
We worship at the hero’s holy shrine.
Potitius first ordain’d these annual vows:
As priests, were added the Pinarian house,
Who rais’d this altar in the sacred shade,
Where honours, ever due, for ever shall be paid.
For these deserts, and this high virtue shown,
Ye warlike youths, your heads with garlands crown:
Fill high the goblets with a sparkling flood,
And with deep draughts invoke our common god.”

This said, a double wreath Evander twin’d,
And poplars black and white his temples bind.
Then brims his ample bowl. With like design
The rest invoke the gods, with sprinkled wine.
Meantime the sun descended from the skies,
And the bright evening star began to rise.
And now the priests, Potitius at their head,
In skins of beasts involv’d, the long procession led;
Held high the flaming tapers in their hands,
As custom had prescrib’d their holy bands;
Then with a second course the tables load,
And with full chargers offer to the god.
The Salii sing, and cense his altars round
With Saban smoke, their heads with poplar bound⁠—
One choir of old, another of the young,
To dance, and bear the burthen of the song.
The lay records the labours, and the praise,
And all th’ immortal acts of Hercules:
First, how the mighty babe, when swath’d in bands,
The serpents strangled with his infant hands;
Then, as in years and matchless force he grew,
Th’ Oechalian walls, and