Inter, utrimque viam leti discrimine parvo, 685 Praecipitis metus acer agit quocumque rudentisĮxcutere et ventis intendere vela secundis.Ĭontra iussa monent Heleni, Scyllamque Charybdinque
And so the story Came at last to a close, and he was quiet. This was the final trial, since I began, And now the god has driven me to this place.’” * * * Thus father Aeneas, alone before them all, Who were intently listening, told the story Of his long wanderings, what it was The Fates had ordained for him. Helenus the seer, who foretold, In prophecy, so many horrors to be, Did not foretell this sorrow, and dire Celaeno Told nothing of this grief that was to come. ‘O best of fathers, you have left me here, Abandoned, weary, rescued from so many Perils undergone, now all for nothing. And then I reach Drepanum’s mournful shore, And here it was that I, whom so many storms Have beaten upon, alas, I lost my father, The solace of all my troubles and my cares. As we were told to do, we venerate The deities of the place, and then sail on, Past Helorus with its rich marsh soil, and past Pachynus’s rocks and cliffs, and Camerina, Whom the Fates ordained should never be disturbed And, stretching far, the Geloa plains, and Gela, Named for its tumultuous river then The great high walls of Acragas, where once They bred those famous marvelous horses and, With favored winds the gods had granted me, I leave Selinus’s palms behind, and pass Lybeis’s shoals and treacherous hidden rocks. They say that Alpheus the river god, In love, had made his secret fluent way Beneath the ground and under the sea from where He was in Peloponnesian Ilia To where your fountain, Arethusa, is, And mingled there himself with Sicilian waters. There is, against the wave-washed headland of Plemyrium, in Sicily, an island Called from ages long ago Ortygia. These Were the shores that luckless Ulysses’ soldier, Achaemenides, had come along before.
And so We go back, avoiding the way where the North Wind blows Through that narrow Pelorian channel, and sailing past The living rocks at the mouth of the river Pantagias, The bay of Megaera and low-lying Thapsus. I remember Helenus’ warning to keep away From the narrow passage between Charybdis and Scylla, On either side of which there’s death. “Fear made us open our sails as fast as we could, Striving to catch whatever wind we could, And in whatever direction there was that we could.
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