The Aeneid

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SECOND BOOK OF THE The Argument.?neas relates how the city of Troy was taken, after a ten years' siege, by the treachery of Sinon, and the stratagem of a wooden horse. He declares the fix'd resolution he had taken not to survive the ruins of his country, and the various adventures he met with in the defense of it. At last, having been before advis'd by Hector's ghost, and now by the appearance of his mother Venus, he is prevail'd upon to leave the town, and settle his household gods in another country. In order to this, he carries off his father on his shoulders, and leads his little son by the hand, his wife following him behind. When he comes to the place appointed for the general rendezvouze, he finds a great confluence of people, but misses his wife whose ghost afterwards appears to him, and tells him the land which was design'd for him. AL were attentive to the godlike man, When from his lofty couch he thus began: Great queen, what you command me to relate Renews the sad remembrance of our fate: An empire from its old foundations rent, And ev'ry woe the Trojans underwent; A peopled city made a desart place; All that I saw, and part of which I was: Not ev'n the hardest of our foes could hear, Nor stern Ulysses tell without a tear. And now the latter watch of wasting night, And setting stars, to kindly rest invite; But, since you take such int'rest in our woe, And Troy's disastrous end desire to know, I will restrain my tears, and briefly tell What in our last and fatal night befell. By destiny compell'd, and in despair, The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war, And by Minerva's aid a fabric rear'd, Which like a steed of monstrous height appear'd: The sides were plank'd with pine; they feign'd it made For their return, and this the vow they paid. Th...