Aeneid

Virgil

Vergil. The Aeneid of Virgil. Williams, Theodore, C, translator. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910.

  1. Far, far within the dragon Hydra broods
  2. With half a hundred mouths, gaping and black;
  3. And Tartarus slopes downward to the dark
  4. Twice the whole space that in the realms of light
  5. Th' Olympian heaven above our earth aspires. —
  6. Here Earth's first offspring, the Titanic brood,
  7. Roll lightning-blasted in the gulf profound;
  8. The twin , colossal shades,
  9. Came on my view; their hands made stroke at Heaven
  10. And strove to thrust Jove from his seat on high.
  11. I saw Salmoneus his dread stripes endure,
  12. Who dared to counterfeit Olympian thunder
  13. And Jove's own fire. In chariot of four steeds,
  14. Brandishing torches, he triumphant rode
  15. Through throngs of Greeks, o'er Elis' sacred way,
  16. Demanding worship as a god. 0 fool!
  17. To mock the storm's inimitable flash—
  18. With crash of hoofs and roll of brazen wheel!
  19. But mightiest Jove from rampart of thick cloud
  20. Hurled his own shaft, no flickering, mortal flame,
  21. And in vast whirl of tempest laid him low.
  22. Next unto these, on Tityos I looked,
  23. Child of old Earth, whose womb all creatures bears:
  24. Stretched o'er nine roods he lies; a vulture huge
  25. Tears with hooked beak at his immortal side,
  26. Or deep in entrails ever rife with pain
  27. Gropes for a feast, making his haunt and home
  28. In the great Titan bosom; nor will give
  29. To ever new-born flesh surcease of woe.
  30. Why name Ixion and Pirithous,
  31. The Lapithae, above whose impious brows
  32. A crag of flint hangs quaking to its fall,
  33. As if just toppling down, while couches proud,
  34. Propped upon golden pillars, bid them feast
  35. In royal glory: but beside them lies
  36. The eldest of the Furies, whose dread hands
  37. Thrust from the feast away, and wave aloft
  38. A flashing firebrand, with shrieks of woe.
  39. Here in a prison-house awaiting doom
  40. Are men who hated, long as life endured,
  41. Their brothers, or maltreated their gray sires,
  42. Or tricked a humble friend; the men who grasped
  43. At hoarded riches, with their kith and kin
  44. Not sharing ever—an unnumbered throng;
  45. Here slain adulterers be; and men who dared
  46. To fight in unjust cause, and break all faith
  47. With their own lawful lords. Seek not to know
  48. What forms of woe they feel, what fateful shape
  49. Of retribution hath o'erwhelmed them there.
  50. Some roll huge boulders up; some hang on wheels,
  51. Lashed to the whirling spokes; in his sad seat
  52. Theseus is sitting, nevermore to rise;
  53. Unhappy Phlegyas uplifts his voice
  54. In warning through the darkness, calling loud,
  55. ‘0, ere too late, learn justice and fear God!’
  56. Yon traitor sold his country, and for gold
  57. Enchained her to a tyrant, trafficking
  58. In laws, for bribes enacted or made void;
  59. Another did incestuously take
  60. His daughter for a wife in lawless bonds.
  61. All ventured some unclean, prodigious crime;
  62. And what they dared, achieved. I could not tell,
  63. Not with a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues,
  64. Or iron voice, their divers shapes of sin,
  65. Nor call by name the myriad pangs they bear.”