Book 5
which baffled every clue, and led astray
575
in unreturning mazes dark and blind:
so did the sons of Troy their courses weave
in mimic flights and battles fought for play,
like dolphins tumbling in the liquid waves,
along the Afric or Carpathian seas.
This game and mode of march Ascanius,
when Alba Longa's bastions proudly rose,
taught to the Latin people of the prime;
and as the princely Trojan and his train
were wont to do, so Alba to her sons
the custom gave; so glorious Rome at last
the heritage accepted and revered;
and still we know them for the “Trojan Band,”
and call the lads a “Troy.” Such was the end
of game and contest at Anchises' grave.
Then fortune veered and different aspect wore.
604
For 'ere the sacred funeral games are done,
Saturnian Juno from high heaven sent down
the light-winged Iris to the ships of Troy,
giving her flight good wind—still full of schemes
and hungering to avenge her ancient wrong.
Unseen of mortal eye, the virgin took
her pathway on the thousand-colored bow,
and o'er its gliding passage earthward flew.
She scanned the vast assemblage; then her gaze
turned shoreward, where along the idle bay
the Trojan galleys quite unpeopled rode.
But far removed, upon a lonely shore,
a throng of Trojan dames bewailed aloud
their lost Anchises, and with tears surveyed
the mighty deep. “O weary waste of seas!
What vast, untravelled floods beyond us roll!”
So cried they with one voice, and prayed the gods
for an abiding city; every heart
loathed utterly the long, laborious sea.
Then in their midst alighted, not unskilled
in working woe, the goddess; though she wore
nor garb nor form divine, but made herself
one Beroe, Doryclus' aged wife,
