1Unaware that Aesacus lived on, having taken wings, father Priam mourned him; to a tomb, too, which bore his name but was empty, Hector with his brothers had paid funeral offerings. 4Missing from that sad duty was the presence of Paris, who soon afterwards, with the wife he had carried off, brought a long war upon his country; 6and a thousand ships, sworn together, follow, and with them the united force of the Pelasgian race. 8Nor would vengeance have been delayed, had not savage winds made the seas impassable, and the Boeotian land held at fish-rich Aulis the ships that were ready to sail. 11Here, when they had prepared sacrifices to Jupiter after their fathers' custom, as the ancient altar glowed with kindled fires, the Danaans saw a dark-blue serpent creep up into a plane tree which stood nearest to the rites they had begun.
15At the top of the tree was a nest of twice four birds: these, and with them the mother as she flew about her loss, the serpent seized and buried in its greedy mouth. 18All stood amazed. 18But Thestor's son, the augur, foreseeing the truth, says: 'We shall conquer; rejoice, Pelasgians! 20Troy will fall, but the delay of our labour will be long,' and he interprets the nine birds as years of war. 22The serpent, just as it was, coiled round the green branches in the tree, becomes stone, and the rock keeps the serpent's likeness. 24Nereus remains violent in the Aonian waters and does not carry the war across; 25and there are some who believe that Neptune was sparing Troy, because he had built the walls for the city.
27But not Thestor's son: for he neither fails to know nor keeps silent that the anger of the virgin goddess must be appeased with a virgin's blood. 29After the public cause had overcome affection, and the king had overcome the father, and Iphigenia, about to give her pure blood, stood before the altar among weeping attendants, the goddess was overcome, and cast a cloud before their eyes, and amid the ceremony and the crowd at the rite and the voices of those praying, she is said to have exchanged the Mycenaean girl for a hind put in her place. 35So when Diana had been soothed by a slaughter, as was fitting, and the wrath of Phoebe and the wrath of the sea subsided together, the thousand keels take the winds astern, and after enduring much they gain the Phrygian sands.
39There is a place in the middle of the world, between the lands and the sea and the regions of the sky, the meeting point of the threefold universe, from which whatever is anywhere, however distant its region, is seen, and every voice makes its way to its hollow ears. 43Rumour holds it, and has chosen herself a house on the topmost height, and has given its roof countless entrances and a thousand openings, and has closed its thresholds with no doors: it stands open night and day. 46It is made all of sounding bronze; all of it murmurs, and gives back voices and repeats what it hears. 48There is no rest within and no silence in any part, and yet there is no shouting, but murmurs of low voices, such as are wont to come from the waves of the sea if one hears them from far off, or such a sound as the last rumbles of thunder give back when Jupiter has clashed the black clouds together.
53Crowds fill the halls: they come and go, a fickle throng, and thousands of rumours, fictions mixed with truths, wander everywhere and roll confused words about. 56Of these, some fill idle ears with talk, others carry elsewhere what they have been told; 57and the measure of the fiction grows, and each new teller adds something to what he has heard. 59There is Credulity, there reckless Error and empty Joy and panic-stricken Fears and sudden Sedition and Whispers of doubtful origin. 62She herself sees what is done in heaven and on sea and land, and searches out the whole world.