Sunday, September 23, 2007

Aeneid lines 1.223-53 (class translation)

And now it was the end, when Jupiter, looking down from the highest heaven on the sail-winged sea and the outspread lands and the shores and the scattered peoples, so stood on the summit of the sky and fixed his eyes on the kingdoms of Libya. Venus, sadder and filled with shining tears in her eyes, said to him mulling such cares in his heart: O you who rule the affairs of both men and gods with eternal commands and frighten with lightning, what so great a thing were my Aeneas and the Trojans able to commit against you, for whom, having endured such losses, the whole expanse of the lands is closed to them because of Italy? Certainly you have promised that from them one day would be the Romans with the rolling of the years, from them would be the leaders, from the restored line of Teucer, who would hold the sea, who would hold all the lands in their jurisdiction. What thought changes you, father? Indeed I consoled myself concerning the fall of Troy and its sad ruins with this, balancing one fate against another. Now the same fortune follows men driven by so many calamities. What end to their labors do you give, great king? Antenor, having slipped from the midst of the Argives, was able to penetrate Illyrian gulfs and the inmost kingdoms of the Liburnians safely and (was able) to pass along the fountain of Timavus, whence the furious sea goes through nine mouths of the mountain with a vast noise and overwhelm the fields with the roaring sea. Yet here that man paced the city of Patavus and the abodes of the Teucri, and he gave his name to the race, and he fixed the Trojan arms; now settled in placid peace he rests: we, your offspring, for whom you have bared the citadel of the sky, our ships lost (unspeakable!), because of the anger of one are betrayed and separated far from the shores of Italy. Is this the reward of piety? Do you thus place us in power?

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