Aeneas lands in Thrace by Wenceslaus Hollar (Plate 305

May 09, 2021

Aeneas lands in Thrace by Wenceslaus Hollar (Plate 305 - Scenes from Virgil) 1607-1677

"Against our coast appears a spacious land,
Which once the fierce Lycurgus did command,
Thracia the name; the people bold in war;
Vast are their fields, and tillage is their care,
A hospitable realm while Fate was kind,
With Troy in friendship and religion join’d.
I land; with luckless omens, then adore
Their Gods, and draw a line along the shore;
I lay the deep foundations of a wall,
And Aenos, nam’d from me, the city call.
To Dionaean Venus vows are paid,
And all the pow’rs that rising labours aid;
A bull on Jove’s imperial altar laid.
Not far, a rising hillock stood in view;
Sharp myrtles on the sides, and cornels grew.
There, while I went to crop the sylvan scenes,
And shade our altar with their leafy greens,
I pull’d a plant; with horror I relate
A prodigy so strange and full of fate.
The rooted fibers rose, and from the wound
Black bloody drops distill’d upon the ground."

-Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 3