Book 13
from its destruction through ten years of war.
623
“Strong chains were brought to hold my daughters' arms.
Both lifted suppliant hands, which still were free,
to heaven and cried, ‘0, Father Bacchus! give
us needed aid!’ And he who had before
given them the power of touch, did give them aid—
if giving freedom without human shape
can be called giving aid.—I never knew
by what means they lost shape, and cannot tell;
but their calamity is surely known:
my daughters were transformed to snow-white doves,
white birds of Venus, guardian of your days.”
With this and other talk they shared the feast,
then left the table and retired to sleep.
They rose up with the day, and went at once
to hear the oracle of Phoebus speak.
He counselled them to leave that land and find
their ancient mother and their kindred shores.
The king attended them, and gave them gifts
when ready to depart; a sceptre to
Anchises, and a robe and quiver to
his grandson, and he gave a goblet to
Aeneas, that which formerly was sent
to him by Therses, once his Theban guest.
Therses had sent it from Aonian shores;
but Alcon the Hylean should be named,
for he had made the goblet and inscribed
a pictured story on the polished side.
There was a city shown with seven gates,
from which the name could be derived by all.
Outside the walls was a sad funeral,
and tombs and fires and funeral pyres were shown,
and many matrons with dishevelled hair
and naked breasts, expressive of their grief,
and many nymphs too, weeping mournfully
because their streams were dry. Without a leaf
the bare trees stood straight up and the she goats
were nibbling in dry, stony fields. And there he carved
Orion's daughters in the Theban square,
one giving her bare throat a cruel cut,
