"But Cacus, caught unwares by day whereof he had no doubt,
Imprisoned in the hollow rock, in strange voice bellowing out,
Alcides fell on from above, calling all arms to aid,
And plenteous cast of boughs and stones upon the monster laid;250
While he, since now no flight availed to 'scape that peril's hold,
Pours from his mouth a mighty smoke, O wondrous to be told!
Enwrapping all the house about with blinding misty shroud,
Snatching the sight from eyes of men, and rolling on the cloud,
A reeking night with heart of fire and utter blackness blent.
Alcides' spirit bore it nought; his body swift he sent
With headlong leap amid the fire where thickest rolled the wave
Of smoke, and with its pitchy mist was flooding all the cave;
Cacus he catcheth in the dark spueing out fire in vain,
And knitteth him in knot about, and, strangling him, doth strain260
The starting eyes from out of him, and throat that blood doth lack:
Then the mirk house is opened wide; the doors are torn aback;
The stolen kine, that prey his oath foreswore to heaven are shown,
And by the feet is dragged today the body hideous grown;
Nor may men satiate their hearts by gazing on the thing;
His fearful eyes, the face of him, the man-beast's fashioning
Of bristled breast; those jaws of his, whence faded is the flame.
"Hence is this honour celebrate, and they that after came
Still kept the day all joyfully; Potitius wrought it first,
This feast of mighty Hercules; the house Pinarian nursed,270
The altar of the grove he reared, which Mightiest yet we call,
And ever more, in very sooth, shall mightiest be of all.
So come, O youths, these glorious deeds I bid you glorify:
Wreathe round your hair, put forth your hands and raise the cup on high!
Call on the God whom all we love, and give the wine full fain!"
He spake: the leaf of Hercules, the poplar coloured twain,
Shaded his hair; the leaves entwined hung down aback his head;
The holy beaker filled his hand: then merry all men sped,
And on the table poured their gift, and called the Gods to hear.
Meanwhile unto the slopes of heaven the Western Star drew near,280
And then the priests, and chief thereof, Potitius, thither came,
All clad in skins, as due it was, and bearing forth the flame.
New feast they dight, and gifts beloved of second service bring,
And on the altar pile again the plates of offering.
The Salii then to singing-tide heart-kindled go around
The altars; every brow of them with poplar leafage bound:
And here the youths, the elders there, set up the song of praise,
And sing the deeds of Hercules: How, on his first of days,
The monsters twain his stepdame sent, the snakes, he crushed in hand;
And how in war he overthrew great cities of the land,290
Troy and Œchalia: how he won through thousand toils o'ergreat,
That King Eurystheus laid on him by bitter Juno's fate.
"O thou Unconquered, thou whose hand beat down the cloud-born two,
Pholeus, Hylæus, twin-wrought things, and Cretan monsters slew:
O thou who slew'st the lion huge 'neath that Nemean steep,
The Stygian mere hath quaked at thee, the ward of Orcus deep
Quaked in his den above his bed of half-gnawed bones and blood.
At nothing fashioned wert thou feared; not when Typhœus stood
Aloft in arms: nor from thine heart fell any rede away
When round thee headed-manifold the Worm of Lerna lay.300
O very child of Jupiter, O Heaven's new glory, hail!
Fail not thy feast with friendly foot, nor us, thy lovers, fail!"
With such-like song they sing the praise, and add to all the worth
The cave of Cacus, and the beast that breathed the wildfire forth.
The woods sing with them as they sing; the hills are light with song.
So, all the holy things fulfilled, they wend their ways along
Unto the city: the old king afoot was with them there,
And bade Æneas and his son close to his side to fare,
And as he went made light the way with talk of many a thing.
Æneas wonders, and his eyes go lightly wandering310
O'er all; but here and there they stay, as, joyful of his ways,
He asks and hears of tokens left by men of earlier days.
Then spake the King Evander, he who built up Rome of old:
"These woods the earth-born Fauns and Nymphs in time agone did hold,
And men from out the tree-trunk born and very heart of oak;
No fashion of the tilth they knew, nor how the bulls to yoke,
Nor how to win them store of wealth, or spare what they had got;
The tree-boughs only cherished them and rugged chase and hot.
Then from Olympus of the heavens first Saturn came adown,
Fleeing the war of Jupiter and kingdom overthrown:320
He laid in peace the rugged folk amid the mountains steep
Scattered about, and gave them laws, and willed them well to keep
The name of Latium, since he lay safe hidden on that shore.
They call the days the Golden Days that 'neath that king outwore,
Amid such happiness of peace o'er men-folk did he reign.
But worsened time as on it wore, and gathered many a stain;
And then the battle-rage was born, and lust of gain outbroke:
Then came the host Ausonian; then came Sicanian folk;
And oft and o'er again the land of Saturn cast its name.329
Then kings there were, and Thybris fierce, of monstrous body came,
From whom the Tiber flood is named by us of Italy,
Its old true name of Albula being perished and gone by.
Me, driven from my land, and strayed about the ocean's ends,
Almighty Fortune and the Fate no struggling ever bends
Set in these steads; my mother's word well worshipped hither drave,
The nymph Carmentis; and a god, Apollo, wayfare gave."
Now, as he spake, hard thereunto the altar-stead doth show,
And gate that by Carmentis' name the Roman people know;
An honour of the olden time to nymph Carmentis, she,
The faithful seer, who first foretold what mighty men should be340
Æneas' sons; how great a name from Pallanteum should come.
Then the great grove that Romulus hallowed the fleer's home
He showeth, and Lupercal set beneath the cliff acold,
Called of Lycæan Pan in wise Parrhasia used of old.
Thereafter Argiletum's grove he shows and bids it tell,
A very witness, where and how the guesting Argus fell.
Next, then, to the Tarpeian stead and Capitol they went,
All golden now, but wild of yore with thickets' tanglement:
E'en then at its dread holiness the folk afield would quake
And tremble sore to look upon its cliff-besetting brake.350
"This grove," saith he, "this hill thou seest with thicket-covered brow,
Some godhead haunts, we know not who: indeed Arcadians trow
That very Jove they there have seen, when he his blackening shield
Hath shaken whiles and stirred the storm amidst the heavenly field.
Look therewithal on those two burgs with broken walls foredone!
There thou beholdest tokens left by folk of long agone:
For one did Father Janus old, and one did Saturn raise,
Janiculum, Saturnia, they hight in ancient days."
Amid such talk they reach the roofs whereunder did abide
Unrich Evander; and they see the herd-beasts feeding wide360
And lowing through the Roman Courts amid Carinæ's shine.