Book 15
in six days to the shores of Italy.
680
There he was borne past the Lacinian Cape,
ennobled by the goddess Juno's shrine,
and Scylacean coasts. He left behind
Iapygia; then he shunned Amphrysian rocks
upon the left and on the other side
escaped Cocinthian crags. He passed, near by,
Romechium and Caulon and Naricia;
crossed the Sicilian sea; went through the strait;
sailed by Pelorus and the island home
of Aeolus and by the copper mines
of Temesa. He turned then toward Leucosia
and toward mild Paestum, famous for the rose.
He coasted by Capreae and around
Minerva's promontory and the hills
ennobled with Surrentine vines, from there
to Herculaneum and Stabiae
and then Parthenope built for soft ease.
He sailed near the Cumaean Sibyl's temple.
He passed the Warm Springs and Linternum, where
the mastick trees grow, and the river called
Volturnus, where thick sand whirls in the stream,
over to Sinuessa's snow-white doves;
and then to Antium and its rocky coast.
When with all sails full spread the ship came in
the harbor there (for now the seas grew rough),
the god uncoiled his folds, and, gliding out
with sinuous curves and all his mighty length,
entered the temple of his parent, where
it skirts that yellow shore. But, when the sea
was calm again, the Epidaurian god
departing from his father's shrine, where he
a while had shared the sacred residence
reared to a kindred deity, furrowed
the sandy shore with weight of crackling scales,
again he climbed into the lofty stern
and near the rudder laid his head at rest.
There he remained until the vessel passed
by Castrum and Lavinium's sacred homes
to where the Tiber flows into the sea
