Book 3
the Hyades, rain-bringers, the twin Bears,
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and vast Orion girt in golden arms.
He blew a trumpet from his ship; our camp
stirred to the signal for embarking; soon
we rode the seas once more with swelling sail.
Scarce had Aurora's purple from the sky
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warned off the stars, when Iying very low
along th' horizon, the dimmed hills we saw
of Italy; Achates first gave cry
“Italia!” with answering shouts of joy,
my comrades' voices cried, “Italia, hail!”
Anchises, then, wreathed a great bowl with flowers
and filled with wine, invoking Heaven to bless,
and thus he prayed from our ship's lofty stern:
“O Iords of land and sea and every storm!
Breathe favoring breezes for our onward way!”
Fresh blew the prayed-for winds. A haven fair
soon widened near us; and its heights were crowned
by a Greek fane to Pallas. Yet my men
furled sail and shoreward veered the pointing prow.
the port receding from the orient wave
is curved into a bow; on either side
the jutting headlands toss the salt sea-foam
and hide the bay itself. Like double wall
the towered crags send down protecting arms,
while distant from the shore the temple stands.
Here on a green sward, the first omen given,
I saw four horses grazing through the field,
each white as snow. Father Anchises cried:
“Is war thy gift, O new and alien land?
Horses make war; of war these creatures bode.
Yet oft before the chariot of peace
their swift hoofs go, and on their necks they bear
th' obedient yoke and rein. Therefore a hope
of peace is also ours.” Then we implored
Minerva's mercy, at her sacred shrine,
the mail-clad goddess who gave welcome there;
and at an altar, mantling well our brows
the Phrygian way, as Helenus ordained,
we paid the honors his chief counsel urged,
