Aeneid III: A Translation in Alliterative Verse

Aeneid III: 209-277

Freed from the foam, first the Strophades shores secure me,

The Strophades stand designated by Danaon name

In the immense Ionian ocean, which dreadful Dark

And other Harpies inhabit; after poor Phineas

Closed his castle, in fear they fled their former feasts

No beast more baneful, no plague more pitiless,

No such celestial choler ever sprung from the Stygian seas

Fowl with female faces, their viscera venting vileness

With crooked claws, and faces ever faint

Hued with hunger

When hither into harbour we are borne, behold!

Contented cows here and there on pastures we perceive

And groups of goats of the grassland without watchman

We rush in with rapiers, and holler to the Holy ones

The Skyfather to share our spoils, then on the curving coast

We build benches and feast on the fine food.

But suddenly with shocking swoop from the hills the Harpies are here

And flap their feathers with colossal clanging,

Shred our spread, and taint all with their tarnished talons

Then a shrill shrieking among the stinking stench.

Again in a sheltered spot under a concave cliff

Close-circled by copses and their shaking shadows

We set out the spread and the altars aflame again

Again all around the air from hidden holes

The deafening drove circles the catch with curved claws

And with beaks befouls the banquet. Then I asked my allies to take arms

And wage war on the foul flock.

They behave as bidden, and screened in the shrubbery

They set out swords, and secrete shields from sight.

Thus when the swoopings ones shriek through the curved coast

Misenus makes the motion from high up on his hollow horn

My comrades charge, and start a strange skirmish

To strike with steel those ghastly gulls

But neither their plumage was pierced, nor their bodies bruised

Fast they flew, swooping the stars

They leave the half-gorged game and vestiges of their vileness.

One Celaeno on a crag lofty alights

A doomful diviner, this berating bursts from her breast:

"Do you bring battle for butchered bulls and slaughtered stock,

Trojans, do you try to wage war,

And hound the harmless Harpies from their rightful realm?

Thus hear and heed in your hearts my warning words:

What the Skyfather said to the Sun-god, Phoebus predicted to me

I the foremost Fury pass on to you people

You chase the course of Italy, and with winds whistled

You will reach Rome, the harbour will grant you haven

But you shall not circle your city with battle-bulwarks before

Fierce famine and our meritless murder

Force you to feast by biting your banquet-tables."

She spoke, and sped off on wing to the wood.

But in sudden shock my fellows' life fluid froze,

Their spirits sank, no longer with ample arms,

But with prayers and pledges they plead to petition for peace

Whether they are deities or dread and vile vultures,

And ancient Anchises, with palms in prayer

Call the great god and declares the due duties:

"O Powers, prevent this peril; Divines, deflect such doom,

And peacefully protect the pious!" Then on the beach he bid

The cord be cast down, and the ropes relaxed,

South winds stretch the sails, we flee over foaming fathoms,

Where wind and wheelman called our course.

Now amid the main emerges well-wooded Zakynthos

Doliche and sacred Same, and Neritos of steep stone.

We circumvent craggy Ithaca, land of Laertes,

And curse the coast that cultivated the gruesome Greek.

At length looms Leucata's cloudy crest,

And Apollo's altar appears, scary to seafarers.

Here tired we travel, and steer to the small city.

The ballast is cast from the bowsprit, the sterns stand on the shore.