Kitap 3
across the sea; the heavenly King supreme
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thy destiny ordains; 't is he unfolds
the grand vicissitude, which now pursues
a course immutable. I will declare
of thy large fate a certain bounded part;
that fearless thou may'st view the friendly sea,
and in Ausonia's haven at the last
find thee a fixed abode. Than this no more
the Sister Fates to Helenus unveil,
and Juno, Saturn's daughter, grants no more.
First, that Italia (which nigh at hand
thou deemest, and wouldst fondly enter in
by yonder neighboring bays) lies distant far
o'er trackless course and long, with interval
of far-extended lands. Thine oars must ply
the waves of Sicily; thy fleet must cleave
the large expanse of that Ausonian brine;
the waters of Avernus thou shalt see,
and that enchanted island where abides
Aeaean Circe, ere on tranquil shore
thou mayest plant thy nation. Lo! a sign
I tell thee; hide this wonder in thy heart:
Beside a certain stream's sequestered wave,
thy troubled eyes, in shadowy flex grove
that fringes on the river, shall descry
a milk-white, monstrous sow, with teeming brood
of thirty young, new littered, white like her,
all clustering at her teats, as prone she lies.
There is thy city's safe, predestined ground,
and there thy labors' end. Vex not thy heart
about those ‘tables bitten’, for kind fate
thy path will show, and Phoebus bless thy prayer.
But from these lands and yon Italian shore,
where from this sea of ours the tide sweeps in,
escape and flee, for all its cities hold
pernicious Greeks, thy foes: the Locri there
have builded walls; the wide Sallentine fields
are filled with soldiers of Idomeneus;
there Meliboean Philoctetes' town,
petilia, towers above its little wall.