Prevod

When the Trojan ships had rowed their way past this strait and ravenous Charybdis, and were already nearing the Ausonian shore, the wind swept them back to Libya’s coast. There the Sidonian queen welcomed Aeneas into her heart and home, though she was ill-fated to endure her Phrygian husband’s departure; and on a pyre built under the pretense of sacred rites, she fell upon his sword, deceiving all as she herself had been deceived.

Fleeing once more from the sandy land’s newly founded walls, he returned to the realm of Eryx and faithful Acestes, where he offered sacrifice and honored his father’s tomb. Then he launched the ships that Iris, Juno’s messenger, had all but burned, and left behind the kingdom of Aeolus, the lands that smoked with burning sulfur, and the rocks of the Sirens, daughters of Achelous. His ship, bereft of its helmsman, skirted Inarime and Prochyte, and Pithecusae, set on a barren hill and named for its inhabitants.

For once the father of the gods, hating the fraud and perjury of the Cercopes and the crimes of that deceitful race, changed the men into hideous beasts, so that they might seem both unlike human beings and yet like them. He shrank their limbs, flattened their noses back against their brows, and plowed their faces with the wrinkles of old age; then, covering their bodies entirely with yellowish hair, he sent them to these islands, but first deprived them of speech and of tongues born for dreadful perjury, leaving them only the power to complain in harsh screeches.

When he had passed these islands and left Parthenope’s walls on his right, and on his left the tomb of Aeolus’s tuneful son, he reached the shores of Cumae, a land rich in marshy waters, and entered the long-lived Sibyl’s cave, begging to pass through Avernus to his father’s shade. She kept her eyes fixed on the ground for a long while, then at last raised her face and, frenzied with the god within her, said, “Great things you ask, man greatest in deeds, whose valor has been proved by the sword, whose devotion by fire.

Yet put aside your fear, Trojan: you shall have what you seek, and with me as your guide you shall know the homes of Elysium, the world’s remotest kingdom, and your beloved father’s shade. No path is barred to courage!” So she spoke, and showed him a bough gleaming with gold in the grove of Juno of Avernus, and commanded him to tear it from its trunk. Aeneas obeyed, and saw the riches of dread Orcus, his own forefathers, and the aged shade of noble Anchises. He also learned the laws of that realm and what dangers he must face in wars to come.

Then, retracing the path with weary steps, he eased the toil by talking with his Cumaean guide. As he made that dreadful journey through the shadowy twilight, he said, “Whether you are a goddess here before me or one most dear to the gods, you shall always be a divine power to me, and I shall acknowledge that I owe my life to your gift, for you have let me enter the realm of death and leave it again, having looked upon it.

In return for such kindness, when I rise to the air above, I shall build you a temple and honor you with incense.” The prophetess looked back at him and, drawing a deep sigh, said, “I am no goddess. Do not deem a mortal woman worthy of sacred incense; and lest you err through ignorance, I was offered everlasting life, life without end, if I would yield my virginity to Phoebus’s love.

While he still hoped for this, while he sought to win me with gifts, he said, ‘Choose, maiden of Cumae, what you wish: your wish shall be granted.’ I scooped up a heap of dust and showed it to him, foolishly asking for as many birthdays as there were grains in that dust; I forgot to ask that those years should all be years of youth. Yet he offered me these too, and youth everlasting, if I would yield to his desire. Rejecting Phoebus’s gift, I have remained unmarried; but now my happier years have turned their backs, and sickly old age has come with trembling steps, which I must long endure—for already, as you see, I have lived seven centuries. To match the number of those grains,

I have yet to see three hundred harvests, three hundred vintages. The time will come when the long years will shrink this body of mine to a tiny thing, and my limbs, wasted by age, will dwindle to the slightest weight. No one will believe I was loved or that I pleased a god; perhaps even Phoebus himself will fail to know me, or deny that he ever loved me. So changed shall I become; and though no one will see me, still I shall be known by my voice: my voice the Fates will leave me.”