And when, by force of oars, the Trojan ships
had safely passed both Scylla and Charybdis’
voracious vortex and had almost reached
the shoreline of Ausonia, the wind
drove them far back—onto the Libyan coast.
And there the woman who had come from Sidon
welcomed Aeneas, offering the Trojan
her heart and home; but then she could not bear
Aeneas’ leaving her, and on a pyre
that she’d prepared by using as pretext
a sacred rite, she fell upon her sword;
herself deceived, she then deceived them all.
When he had left behind those new-built walls
of Carthage, founded on a sandy shore,
Aeneas visited again the land
of Eryx and hospitable Acestes,
and offered there a sacrifice to honor
his father’s tomb. And then the Trojans boarded
the boats that Iris, Juno’s messenger,
had almost burned; they passed the island realm
of Aeolus, and lands that smoked with fumes
of sulfur, blazing hot, and passed the rocks
held by the Sirens, Achelous’ daughters.
Then, having lost his pilot, Palinurus,
Aeneas sailed along Inarime
and Prochyte, and rocky Pythecusae,
the barren island that derives its name
from its inhabitants, a pack of knaves:
Latin [72–90]
the vile Cercopes. For in fact, one day,
the father of the gods, out of his hate
for people so dishonest, fruitless, base,
transformed them into animals but shaped
their features so that they—at once—seemed both
like men and unlike men; for the Cercopes
were changed to pithekoi, the Greek for “monkeys.”
Jove gave them shorter limbs; and as old age
will furrow faces, so he furrowed theirs;
and having clothed their forms with yellow hair,
he sent them off to dwell on that bare isle.
But first he stripped them of the power of words,
for perjury was all their tongues had served;
the only thing he left them free to utter
were harsh and hoarse complaints—their scrannel chatter.