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Notes Display Latin text | translated by Theodore C. Williams Book I Chapter 16: Venus asks Jupiter his plans | Next chapter Return to index Previous chapter |
After these things were past, exalted Jove, from his ethereal sky surveying clear the seas all winged with sails, lands widely spread, and nations populous from shore to shore, paused on the peak of heaven, and fixed his gaze on Libya. But while he anxious mused, near him, her radiant eyes all dim with tears, nor smiling any more, Venus approached, and thus complained: O thou who dost control things human and divine by changeless laws, enthroned in awful thunder! What huge wrong could my Aeneas and his Trojans few achieve against thy power? For they have borne unnumbered deaths, and, failing Italy, the gates of all the world against them close. Hast thou not given us thy covenant that hence the Romans when the rolling years have come full cycle, shall arise to power from Troy's regenerate seed, and rule supreme the unresisted lords of land and sea? O Sire, what swerves thy will? How oft have I in Troy's most lamentable wreck and woe consoled my heart with this, and balanced oft our destined good against our destined ill! But the same stormful fortune still pursues my band of heroes on their perilous way. When shall these labors cease, O glorious King? Antenor, though th' Achaeans pressed him sore, found his way forth, and entered unassailed Illyria's haven, and the guarded land of the Liburni. Straight up stream he sailed where like a swollen sea Timavus pours a nine-fold flood from roaring mountain gorge, and whelms with voiceful wave the fields below. He built Patavium there, and fixed abodes for Troy's far-exiled sons; he gave a name to a new land and race; the Trojan arms were hung on temple walls; and, to this day, lying in perfect peace, the hero sleeps. But we of thine own seed, to whom thou dost a station in the arch of heaven assign, behold our navy vilely wrecked, because a single god is angry; we endure this treachery and violence, whereby wide seas divide us from th' Hesperian shore. Is this what piety receives? Or thus doth Heaven's decree restore our fallen thrones? Events: The Gods interfere in the Aeneid, Antenor and the Veneti |
223-253 Et iam finis erat, cum Iuppiter aethere summo despiciens mare velivolum terrasque iacentis litoraque et latos populos, sic vertice caeli constitit, et Libyae defixit lumina regnis. Atque illum talis iactantem pectore curas tristior et lacrimis oculos suffusa nitentis adloquitur Venus: 'O qui res hominumque deumque aeternis regis imperiis, et fulmine terres, quid meus Aeneas in te committere tantum, quid Troes potuere, quibus, tot funera passis, cunctus ob Italiam terrarum clauditur orbis? Certe hinc Romanos olim, volventibus annis, hinc fore ductores, revocato a sanguine Teucri, qui mare, qui terras omni dicione tenerent, pollicitus, quae te, genitor, sententia vertit? Hoc equidem occasum Troiae tristisque ruinas solabar, fatis contraria fata rependens; nunc eadem fortuna viros tot casibus actos insequitur. Quem das finem, rex magne, laborum? Antenor potuit, mediis elapsus Achivis, Illyricos penetrare sinus, atque intima tutus regna Liburnorum, et fontem superare Timavi, unde per ora novem vasto cum murmure montis it mare proruptum et pelago premit arva sonanti. Hic tamen ille urbem Patavi sedesque locavit Teucrorum, et genti nomen dedit, armaque fixit Troia; nunc placida compostus pace quiescit: nos, tua progenies, caeli quibus adnuis arcem, navibus (infandum!) amissis, unius ob iram prodimur atque Italis longe disiungimur oris. Hic pietatis honos? Sic nos in sceptra reponis?' |