Kitap 5
Should give safe passage to his routed foe:
1
And thus he stirred his troops, in seas unskilled,
With words of courage: 'When the winter wind
'Has seized on sky and ocean, firm its hold;
But the inconstancy of cloudy spring
'Permits no certain breezes to prevail
'Upon the billows. Straight shall be our course.
'No winding nooks of coast, but open seas
Struck by the northern wind alone we plough,
'And may he bend the spars, and bear us swift
'To Grecian cities; else Pompeius' ships
'From coasts Phaeacian, Dyrrhachium was founded by the Corcyreans, with whom the Homeric Phaeacians have been identified. with their swifter oars
May catch our flagging sails. Cast loose the ropes
'From our victorious prows. Too long we waste
'Tempests that blow to bear us to our goal.'
Now sank the sun to rest; the evening star
Shone on the darkening heaven, and the moon
Reigned with her paler light, when all the fleet
Freed from retaining cables seized the main.
With slackened sheet the canvas wooed the breeze,
Which rose and fell and fitful died away,
Till motionless the sails, and all the waves
Were still as deepest pool, where never wind
Ripples the surface. Thus in Scythian climes
Cimmerian Bosphorus restrains the deep
Bound fast in frosty fetters; Ister's streams Apparently making the Danube discharge into the Sea of Azov. See Mr. Heitland's Introduction, p. 53.
No more impel the main, and ships constrained
Stand fast in ice; and while in depths below
The waves still murmur, loud the charger's hoof
Sounds on the surface, and the travelling wheel
Furrows a track upon the frozen marsh.
Cruel as tempest was the calm that lay
In stagnant pools upon the mournful deep:
Against the course of nature lay outstretched
A rigid ocean: 'twas as if the sea
Forgat its ancient ways and knew no more
The ceaseless tides, nor any breeze of heaven,
Nor quivered at the image of the sun,
Mirrored upon its wave. For while the fleet
Hung in mid passage motionless, the foe
