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The poems of Virgil, tr. into Engl. prose by J. Conington
The poems of Virgil tr into Engl prose by J Conington Author:Publius Vergilius Maro Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK I. Arms and the man I sing, who at the first from Troy's shores the exile of destiny, won his way to Italy and her Latian coast—a man much buffeted ... more »on land and on the deep by violence from above, to sate the unforgetting wrath of Juno the cruel—much scourged too in war, as he struggled to build him a city, and find his gods a home in Latium—himself the father of the Latian people, and the chiefs of Alba's houses, and the walls of high towering Eome. Bring to my mind, O Muse, the causes—for what treason against her godhead, or what pain received, the queen of heaven drove a man of piety so signal to turn the wheel of so many calamities, to bear the brunt of so many hardships ! Can heavenly natures hate so fiercely and so long ? Of old there was a city, its people emigrants from Tyre, Carthage, over against Italy and Tiber's mouths, yet far removed—rich and mighty, and formed to all roughness by war's iron trade—a spot where Juno, it was said, loved, to dwell more than in all the world beside, Samos holding but the second place. Here was her armour, here her chariot —here to fix by her royal act the empire of the nations, could Fate be brought - to assent, was even then her aim, hercherished scheme. But she had heard that the blood of Troy was sowing the seed of a race to overturn one day those Tyrian towers—from that seed a nation, monarch of broad realms and glorious in war, was to bring ruin on Libya—such the turning of Fate's wheel. With these fears Saturn's daughter, and with a lively memory of that old war which at first she had waged at Troy for her loved Argos' sake— nor indeed had the causes of that feud and the bitter pangs they roused yet vanished from her mind—no, stored up in her soul's depths remains the judgment of Paris, and the wrong done to her s...« less