Then virtue was no more; her guard away,

She fell, to lust a voluntary prey.

Even to the temple stalk’d the adulterous spouse,

With impious thanks, and mockery of the vows,

With images, with garments, and with gold;

And odorous fumes from loaded altars roll’d.


“Meantime from flaming Troy we cut the way

With Menelaus, through the curling sea.

But when to Sunium’s sacred point we came,

Crown’d with the temple of the Athenian dame;

Atride’s pilot, Phrontes, there expired

(Phrontes, of all the songs of men admired

To steer the bounding bark with steady toil,

When the storm thickens, and the billows boil);

While yet he exercised the steerman’s art,

Apollo touch’d him with his gentle dart;

Even with the rudder in his hand, he fell.

To pay whole honours to the shades of hell,

We check’d our haste, by pious office bound,

And laid our old companion in the ground.

And now the rites discharged, our course we keep

Far on the gloomy bosom of the deep:

Soon as Malae’s misty tops arise,

Sudden the Thunderer blackens all the skies,

And the winds whistle, and the surges roll

Mountains on mountains, and obscure the pole.

The tempest scatters, and divides our fleet;

Part, the storm urges on the coast of Crete,

Where winding round the rich Cydonian plain,

The streams of Jardan issue to the main.

There stands a rock, high, eminent and steep,

Whose shaggy brow o’erhangs the shady deep,

And views Gortyna on the western side;

On this rough Auster drove the impetuous tide:

With broken force the billows roll’d away,

And heaved the fleet into the neighb’ring bay.

Thus saved from death, they gain’d the Phaæstan shores,

With shatter’d vessels and disabled oars;

But five tall barks the winds and water toss’d,

Far from their fellows, on the Ægyptian coast.

There wander’d Menelaus through foreign shores

Amassing gold, and gathering naval stores;

While cursed Ægysthus the detested deed