Aeneid III: A Translation in Alliterative Verse

Aeneid III: 278-355

Therefore our unhoped-for homeland at last located,

We atone to the Almighty, and on altars burn benefactions,

And carouse on the Actian coast with Trojan tournaments

My bare buddies battle in the fights of their forefathers,

Gliding with grease, glad to have dodged so many Danaon dominions,

And forged on with flight through the host of hostiles.

Meanwhile the sun spun through a total twelvemonth

And Jack Frost jolts the waves with wintry winds.

A billowing brass bulwark, borne by almighty Abas,

I pin to the pillars, and sign with this song:

"These arms Aeneas took from dominating Danaans."

Then bid them depart the port and ready the rowlocks.

Striving, the sailors strike the seas and whisk the waves

Soon the soaring Scherian citadels sink from sight.

We skirt the Epiran shores, come to the quay of Chaon

And reach the rising borough of Butrint.

Here tidings of terrific things enter our ears.

Priam's progeny presides over Danaan domains

Having won the wife and power of Pyrrhus,

And Andromache attached again to a homeland husband

Bowled over, my breast burns with amazing ardour

To hail the hero and hear such stories.

I proceed from port, leaving the ships on the shore

When by chance a custom collation and grieving gifts

Before the city in copse, to the swell of a second Simois

Andromache offered to the ashes, and summoned the shades

of Hector to the hollow hillock, green with grass

And the twin tabernacles she had set up as a sanctuary for sorrow

As she discerned me drawing near, and the Aenean armed men around,

Shocked and shaken by the mighty marvel

She stiffened amid the sight, the blood fled her bones,

She faints for ages, and finally scarcely speaks:

"Are you truly a Trojan? An actual ambassador to me,

Born of Beauty? Be you alive? Or if the life-light has left you,

Where is my husband Hector?" She speaks, and sorrows spring,

And she fills all the forest with her fretting. Hardly in her hysteria

I form a few words, and shaken, in stumbling speech I stutter:

"Indeed I live, and lead my life through every extreme

Doubt not, for you definitely discern me.

Alas! What fortune befalls you, after surrendering such a spouse?

What fitting fate is rightly returned

To Hector's helpmate? Are you still the partner of Pyrrhus?"

She lowered her lashes, and spoke with subdued speech:

"O blessed before all, Priam's Polyxena,

Under the towering turrets of Troy, on the Greek's grave,

Doomed to die, who never languished in the lottery,

Nor came as a captive to her conqueror's chamber.

We, our birthplace burnt, borne over several seas,

The Greek's gloating and proud progeny,

And childbirth as a concubine I suffered. He subsquently sought

Helen's Hermione and a Lacadaemon link

He handed me to Helenus, a slave-spouse for his servant,

But aroused with abundant ardour for his lost love,

Orestes, outraged by the Furies of his own felonies,

Catches him careless, and kills him on his ancestral altar.

By Pyrrhus's passing, part of his realm returned

To Helenus, who hailed the countryside Chaonian,

And the kingdom Chaonia, after the homeland hero,

And placed this Pergamen and this Trojan tower.

But for you what winds gave the way? What Fates flung you?

What deity drives you, senseless to our shores?

What of Creusa's child? Does he bloom and breathe the breezes?

Whom to you now Troy...

Does the lad still love his missing mother?

Is he stirred to strong spirits and venerable virtue

By his fearless father and heroic Uncle Hector?"

Such she spoke sobbing, and a long lament

Voiced in vain, when the hero Helenus

Came from the castle with a flock of followers.

He claims us as kin, and cheerful, leads us to the lintel

And mixes much weeping with his words.

I proceed, and a parallel of Pergamus and a tiny Troy

I behold, and a barren brook, styled after Scamander,

And I clasp the columns of the Scaean stairway

No less my Trojan troops savour the sociable city.

The ruler receives them in a colossal colonnade

In the middle of the majlis they pour the bowls of Bacchus

And with the celebration-supper set on gold, they grasp the goblets.