Were none of all my father's sisters left :
Nay, were I of my mother's kin bereft:
None by an uncle's or a grandame's side,
Yet I could some adopted heir provide.
I need but take my journey half a day
From haughty Rome, and at Aricia stay,
Where fortune throws poor Manius in my way.
Him will I choose:" " What! him of humble birth,
Obscure, a foundling, and a son of earth?"
"Obscure? Why pr'ythee what am I? I know
My father, grandsire, and great grandsire too.
If farther I derive my pedigree,

I can but guess beyond the fourth degree.
The rest of my forgotten ancestors

Were sons of earth, like him, or sons of whores.

"Yet, why would'st thou, old covetous wretch,

aspire

To be my heir, who might'st have been my sire?
In Nature's race, should'st thou demand of me
My torch, when I in course run after thee?
Think I approach thee, like the god of gain,
With wings on head and heels, as poets feign :
Thy moderate fortune from my gift receive;
Now fairly take it, or as fairly leave.

But take it as it is, and ask no more.
"What, when thou hast embezzled all thy store?
Where's all thy father left?" "'Tis true, I grant,
Some I have mortgag'd, to supply my want:
The legacies of Tadius too are flown;
All spent, and on the self-same errand gone.
"How little then to my poor share will fall!"
Little indeed; but yet that little's all.

527

"Nor tell me, in a dying father's tone,
'Be careful still of the main chance, my son;
Put out thy principal in trusty hands:
Live on the use; and never dip thy lands:"
"But yet what's left for me?" " What's left, my
Ask that again, and all the rest I spend. [friend!
Pour oil, and pour it with a plenteous hand,
Is not my fortunes at my own command?
Upon my sallads, boy: shall I be fed
With sodden nettles, and a sing'd sow's head?
""Tis holiday; provide me better cheer;
'Tis holiday, and shall be round the year.
Shall I my household gods and genius cheat,
To make him rich, who grudges me my meat?
When I am laid, may feed on giblet-pie?
That he may loll at ease; and, pamper'd high,
Have wherewithal his whores to entertain?
And, when his throbbing lust extends the vein,
Shall I in homespun cloth be clad, that he
His paunch in triumph may before him see?
Go, miser, go; for lucre sell thy soul;
Truck wares for wares, and trudge from pole to

pole:

That men may say, when thou art dead and gone,
How large a family of brawny knaves,
See what a vast estate he left his son !
Well fed, and fat as Cappadocian slaves!
Increase thy wealth, and double all thy store;
'Tis done; now double that, and swell the score;
To every thousand add ten thousand more.
Then say, Chrysippus, thou who would'st confine
Thy heap, where I shall put an end to mine."

:

1

VIRGIL'S ÆNEID.

TRANSLATED BY PITT.

VOL XIX

Mm

VIRGIL'S ÆNEID,

BOOK 1.

THE ARGUMENT.

THE Trojans, after a seven years' voyage, set sail for Italy, but are overtaken by a dreadful storm, which Æolus raises at Juno's request. The tempest sinks one ship, and scatters the rest: Neptune drives off the winds, and calms the seas. Æneas, with his own, and six more ships, arrives safe at an African port. Venus complains to Jupiter of her son's misfortunes. Jupiter comforts her, and sends Mercury to procure him a kind reception among the Carthaginians. Æneas, going out to discover the country, meets his mother in the shape of a huntress, who conveys him in a cloud to Carthage; where he sees his friends whom he thought lost, and receives a kind entertainment from the queen. Dido, by a device of Venus, begins to have a passion for him, and, after some discourse with him desires the history of

But of a race she heard, that should destroy
The Tyrian tow'rs, a race deriv'd from Troy,
Who, proud in arins, triumphant by their swords,
Should rise in time, the world's victorious lords;
By fate design'd her Carthage to subdue,
And on her ruin'd empire raise a new.

This fear'd the goddess; and in mind she bore
The late long war her fury rais'd before
For Greece with Troy; nor was her wrath resign'd,
But every cause hung heavy on her mind;
Her form disdain'd, and Paris' judgment, roll
Deep in her breast, and kindle all her soul;
Th' immortal honours of the ravish'd boy,
And last, the whole detested race of Troy.
With all these motives fir'd, from Latium far
She drove the relics of the Grecian war:
Fate urg'd their course and long they wander'd
The spacious ocean tost from shore to shore.
So vast the work to build the mighty frame,
And raise the glories of the Roman name!

[o'er

Scarce from Sicilian shores the shouting train
Spread their broad sails, and plough'd the foamy
When haughty Juno thus her rage express'd; [main;
Th' eternal wound still rankling in her breast.

"Then must I stop? are all my labours vain?
And must this Trojan prince in Latium reign?

of his adventures since the siege of Troy; which Belike, the fates may baffle Juno's aims; is the subject of the two following books.

Arms and the man I sing, the first who bore
His course to Latium from the Trojan shore;
By fate expell'd, on land and ocean tost,
Before he reach'd the fair Lavinian coast:
Doom'd by the gods a length of wars to wage,
And urg'd by Juno's unrelenting rage;
Ere the brave hero rais'd, in these abodes,
His destin'd walls, and fix'd his wandering gods.
Hence the fam'd Latian line, and senates come,
And the proud triumphs, and the towers of Rome,
Say, Muse, what causes could so far incense
Celestial pow'rs, and what the dire offence
That mov'd Heav'n's awful empress to impose
On such a pious prince a weight of woes,
Expos'd to danger, and with toils opprest?
Can rage so fierce inflame an heavenly breast?
Against th' Italian coast, of ancient fame
A city rose, and Carthage was the name ;
A Tyrian colony; from Tiber far;
Rich, rough, and brave, and exercis'd in war.
Which Juno far above all realms, above
Her own dear Samos, honoured with her love.
Here stood her chariot, here her armour lay,
Here she design'd, would destiny give way,
Ev'n then the seat of universal sway.

And why could Pallas, with avenging flames,
Burn a whole navy of the Grecian ships,
And whelm the scatter'd Argives in the deeps ?
She, for the crime of Ajax, from above
Lauch'd through the clouds the fiery bolts of Jove;
Dash'd wide his fleet, and, as her tempest flew,
Expos'd the ocean's inmost depths to view.
Then, while transfix'd the blasted wretch expires,
Flames from his breast, and fires succeeding fires,
Snatch'd in a whirlwind, with a sudden shock,
She hurl'd him headlong on a pointed rock.
But I, who move supreme in Heaven's abodes,
Jove's sister-wife, and empress of the gods,
With this one nation inust a war maintain
For years on years; and wage that war in vain
And now what suppliants will invoke my name,
Adore my pow'r, or bid my altars flame?"

Thus fir'd with rage and vengeance, now she flies
To dark Æolia, from the distant skies,
Impregnated with storms; whose tyrant binds
The blust'ring tempests, and reluctant winds.
Their rage imperial Æolus restrains
With rocky dungeons, and enormous chains.
The bellowing brethren, in the mountain pent,
Roar round the cave, and struggle for a vent.
From his high throne, their fury to assuage,
He shakes his sceptre, and controls their rage;
Or down the void their rapid whirls are driv'n
Earth, air, and ocean, and the tow'rs of Heaven.

!

4