374'Goddess-born — for there is clear proof that you sail the deep under greater auspices: so the king of the gods allots the fates and turns the cycle of events; 376this is the order that revolves — a few things out of many, so that you may travel more safely over welcoming seas and settle in an Ausonian harbour, I will set out for you in words; 379for the Fates forbid Helenus to know the rest, and Saturn's daughter Juno forbids him to speak. 381First, Italy, which you, unaware, already think near, and whose neighbouring harbours you are preparing to enter, a long and pathless way divides from you by long tracts of land.
384Before that, your oar must bend in the Trinacrian wave, and your ships must travel the surface of the Ausonian sea, and you must pass the lakes of the underworld and the island of Aeaean Circe, before you can build your city in a safe land: I will tell you signs; keep them stored in your mind: when, in your anxiety, by the waters of a secluded river, a huge sow is found lying under the oaks on the shore, having given birth to a litter of thirty young. 392white, reclining on the ground, her white young around her teats — that will be the place for your city, that the sure rest from your toils.
394And do not dread the gnawing of tables to come: the fates will find a way, and Apollo will be at hand when called. 396But these lands, and this coast of the Italian shore nearest us, washed by the tide of our own sea, flee; 398all the towns are inhabited by evil Greeks. 399Here the Narycian Locrians have set their walls, and Lyctian Idomeneus has occupied the Sallentine plains with soldiers; 401here is that little Petelia of the Meliboean leader Philoctetes, relying on its wall. 403Moreover, when your fleets have crossed the sea and stand on the far side, and you set up altars and now pay your vows on the shore, veil your hair, covered with a purple cloak, so that no hostile face may appear among the sacred fires in honour of the gods and disturb the omens.
408Let your comrades keep this custom of sacrifice, and keep it yourself: in this observance let your descendants remain pure. 410But when, after you have set out, the wind brings you to the Sicilian coast, and the barriers of narrow Pelorus open out, make for the land on the left and the seas on the left in a long circuit: flee the shore and the waves on the right. 414These places, they say, once torn apart by force and vast upheaval — so much can the long passage of time change — leapt asunder, when the two lands were one unbroken whole; 417the sea came with force between, and with its waves cut off the Hesperian side from the Sicilian, and with a narrow tide flows between fields and cities parted by the shore.
420Scylla besets the right side, implacable Charybdis the left, and three times with the lowest whirlpool of her abyss she sucks the vast waves down sheer, and again hurls them up in turn to the air and lashes the stars with water. 424But Scylla a cave confines in hidden lairs, as she thrusts out her mouths and drags ships onto the rocks. 426Above, she has a human face, and is a maiden with lovely breast down to the groin; below, a sea-monster of enormous body, with dolphins' tails joined to a belly of wolves. 429It is better to round the turning-post of Trinacrian Pachynus at leisure and take a long, winding course, than once to have seen misshapen Scylla in her vast cave, and the rocks resounding with her sea-dark hounds.
433Furthermore, if Helenus has any foresight, if the seer is to be trusted at all, if Apollo fills his mind with truth, this one thing, goddess-born, one thing in place of all, I will foretell you and, repeating it, warn you again and again: first worship with prayer the power of great Juno; 438sing vows gladly to Juno, and win over the mighty mistress with suppliant gifts: so at last, victorious, you will be sent, leaving Trinacria behind, to the borders of Italy.