680All who are present venerate the deity they have seen, and all repeat the priest's words twice over, and the descendants of Aeneas offer devout goodwill with mind and voice. 683The god nodded to them and, moving his crest, gave sure pledges, and with flickering tongue gave repeated hisses. 685Then he glides down the gleaming steps, and turns his head back, and as he is about to leave looks back at his ancient altars and greets his accustomed home and the temple he had dwelt in. 688From there, huge, he crawls over the ground covered with strewn flowers, bends his coils, and through the middle of the city makes for the harbour protected by a curving mole.
691He halted here and, seeming with calm face to dismiss his procession and the attendance of the following crowd, he laid his body on the Ausonian ship: it felt the weight of the deity, and the keel was pressed down by the god's heaviness; 695the descendants of Aeneas rejoice, and, slaying a bull on the shore, they loose the twisted cables of the garlanded ship. 697A light breeze had driven the ship on: the god rises high, and, pressing his neck on the curved stern, looks down on the dark-blue waters, and with gentle west winds across the Ionian sea, at the sixth rising of Pallas' daughter, he reached Italy, and is carried past Lacinium, made famous by the goddess's temple, and the shores of Scylaceum; 703he leaves Iapygia, and with oars on the left flees the Amphrisian rocks, and on the right side the steep Celennia, and skirts Romethium and Caulon and Narycia, and wins through the strait and the narrows of Sicilian Pelorus, and the home of King Hippotades and the mines of Temesa, and makes for Leucosia and the rose-gardens of warm Paestum.
709From there he skirts Capreae and the promontory of Minerva and the hills rich in Surrentine vines, and the city of Hercules and Stabiae and Parthenope, born for leisure, and after her the temple of the Cumaean Sibyl. 713From here the hot springs are reached, and Liternum, bearing mastic trees, and the Volturnus, dragging much sand beneath its eddies, and Sinuessa, thronged with snow-white doves, and unhealthy Minturnae, and the place which her foster-son entombed, and the home of Antiphates, and Trachas beset by marsh, and the land of Circe, and Antium with its hard-packed shore. 719When the sailors turned the sail-bearing ship here (for the sea was now rough), the god unfolds his coils and, gliding in many folds and great windings, enters the temple of his father that touches the yellow shore.
723When the sea was calm, the Epidaurian leaves his father's altars, and having enjoyed the hospitality of the deity related to him, furrows the sand of the shore with the trail of his rattling scales, and, leaning on the ship's rudder, laid his head on the high stern, until he came to Castrum and the sacred abode of Lavinium and the mouth of the Tiber. 729Here the whole crowd of the people, mothers and fathers, rushes from all sides to meet him, and those who keep your fires, Trojan Vesta, and they greet the god with joyful shouting. 732And where the swift ship is drawn upstream against the waters, on both sides incense crackles on altars built in a row along the banks and scents the air with smoke, and the stricken victim warms the knives plunged into it.
736And now he had entered the head of the world, the city of Rome: the serpent rears up, moves his neck, leaning on the top of the mast, and looks around for a fitting abode. 739The river flowing around divides into two parts (the place is called the Island), and from its two sides stretches out equal arms, with land between. 742Here the serpent son of Phoebus betook himself from the Latin pine ship, and, having resumed his heavenly form, put an end to the sorrows and came to the city as a bringer of health.