Book 10
displayed the form of Phoebus, all of gold:
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to him had Populonia consigned
(His mother-city, she) six hundred youth
well-proven in war; three hundred Elba gave,
an island rich in unexhausted ores
of iron, like the Chalybes. Next came
Asilas, who betwixt the gods and men
interprets messages and reads clear signs
in victims' entrails, or the stars of heaven,
or bird-talk, or the monitory flames
of lightning: he commands a thousand men
close lined, with bristling spears, of Pisa all,
that Tuscan city of Alpheus sprung.
Then Astur followed, a bold horseman he,
Astur in gorgeous arms, himself most fair:
three hundred are his men, one martial mind
uniting all: in Caere they were bred
and Minio's plain, and by the ancient towers
of Pyrgo or Gravisca's storm-swept hill.
Nor thy renown may I forget, brave chief
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of the Ligurians, Cinyrus; nor thine,
Cupavo, with few followers, thy crest
the tall swan-wings, of love unblest the sign
and of a father fair: for legends tell
that Cycnus, for his Phaethon so dear
lamenting loud beneath the poplar shade
of the changed sisters, made a mournful song
to soothe his grief and passion: but erewhile,
in his old age, there clothed him as he sang
soft snow-white plumes, and spurning earth he soared
on high, and sped in music through the stars.
His son with bands of youthful peers urged on
a galley with a Centaur for its prow,
which loomed high o'er the waves, and seemed to hurl
a huge stone at the water, as the keel
ploughed through the deep. Next Ocnus summoned forth
a war-host from his native shores, the son
of Tiber, Tuscan river, and the nymph
Manto, a prophetess: he gave good walls,
O Mantua, and his mother's name, to thee,—
