De Junonis festo.
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hen fruit-filled Tuscia should a wife give me,We touched the walls, Camillus, won by thee.The priests to Juno did prepare chaste feasts,With famous pageants, and their home-bred beasts.To know their rites well recompensed my stay,Though thither leads a rough steep hilly way.There stands an old wood with thick trees dark clouded:Who sees it grants some deity there is shrouded.An altar takes men's incense and oblation,An altar made after the ancient fashion. 10Here, when the pipe with solemn tunes doth sound,The annual pomp goes on the covered[430] ground.White heifers by glad people forth are led,Which with the grass of Tuscan fields are fed,And calves from whose feared front no threatening flies,And little pigs, base hogsties' sacrifice,And rams with horns their hard heads wreathËd back;Only the goddess-hated goat did lack,By whom disclosed, she in the high woods took,Is said to have attempted flight forsook. 20Now[431] is the goat brought through the boys with darts,And give[n] to him that the first wound imparts.Where Juno comes, each youth and pretty maid,Show[432] large ways, with their garments there displayed.Jewels and gold their virgin tresses crown,And stately robes to their gilt feet hang down.As is the use, the nuns in white veils clad,Upon their heads the holy mysteries had.When the chief pomp comes, loud[433] the people hollow;And she her vestal virgin priests doth follow. 30Such was the Greek pomp, Agamemnon dead;Which fact[434] and country wealth, Halesus fled.And having wandered now through sea and land,Built walls high towered with a prosperous hand.He to th' Hetrurians Juno's feast commended:Let me and them by it be aye befriended. FOOTNOTES: [429] Not in Isham copy or ed. A. [430] "It per velatas annua pompa vias." [431] "Nunc quoque per pueros jaculis incessitur indexEt pretium auctori vulneris ipsa datur." [432] "Praeverrunt latas veste jacente vias."--Dyce remarks that Marloweread "Praebuerant." [433] "Ore favent populi." (In Henry's monumental edition of Virgil's∆neid, vol. iii. pp. 25-27, there is a very interesting note on themeaning of the formula "ore favete." He denies the correctness of theordinary interpretation "be silent.") [434] "Et _scelus_ et patrias fugit HalÊsus opes."
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