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Ere, free from danger, you may found
Your city on the destined ground.
Now hear the tokens I impart,
And store them up within your heart.
When, as you roam in anxious mood
Beside a still sequestered flood,
'Neath fringing holms before your eye
A thirty-farrowed sow shall lie,
Her white length stretching o'er the ground,
Her young, as white, her teats around:
That spot shall see the promised town,
Shall see Troy's heavy load laid down.
Nor shudder at the doom of dread
That tells of eating boards for bread:
Fate in her time shall find a way,
And Phœbus waits on souls that pray.
But, for Italia's neighbour shore,
On whose near beach our billows roar,
Avoid it: there in every place
Has settled Argos' hated race.
Here Locrian tribes, from Naryx come,
Have found them an Italian home:
Here o'er Salentum's conquered plains
Idomeneus the Cretan reigns:
While here Petilia's tiny tower
Is manned by Philoctetes' power.
Nay, when upon Italian land,
Transported o'er the main, you stand
And pay your offerings on the strand,
Ere yet you light your altars, spread
A purple covering o'er your head,
Lest sudden bursting on your sight
Some hostile presence mar the rite.
Thus worship you, and thus your train,
And sons unborn the rite retain.