Book 7
shore-haunting birds of varied voice and plume
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flattered the sky with song, and, circling far
o'er river-bed and grove, took joyful wing.
Thither to landward now his ships he steered,
and sailed, high-hearted, up the shadowy stream.
Hail, Erato! while olden kings and thrones
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and all their sequent story I unfold!
How Latium's honor stood, when alien ships
brought war to Italy, and from what cause
the primal conflict sprang, O goddess, breathe
upon thy bard in song. Dread wars I tell,
array of battle, and high-hearted kings
thrust forth to perish, when Etruria's host
and all Hesperia gathered to the fray.
Events of grander march impel my song,
and loftier task I try. Latinus, then
an aged king, held long-accepted sway
o'er tranquil vales and towns. He was the son
of Faunus, so the legend tells, who wed
the nymph Marica of Laurentian stem.
Picus was Faunus' father, whence the line
to Saturn's Ioins ascends. O heavenly sire,
from thee the stem began! But Fate had given
to King Latinus' body no heirs male:
for taken in the dawning of his day
his only son had been; and now his home
and spacious palace one sole daughter kept,
who was grown ripe to wed and of full age
to take a husband. Many suitors tried
from all Ausonia and Latium's bounds;
but comeliest in all their princely throng
came Turnus, of a line of mighty sires.
Him the queen mother chiefly loved, and yearned
to call him soon her son. But omens dire
and menaces from Heaven withstood her will.
A laurel-tree grew in the royal close,
of sacred leaf and venerated age,
which, when he builded there his wall and tower,
Father Latinus found, and hallowed it
to Phoebus' grace and power, wherefrom the name
