Now Glaucus, with a lover’s haste, bounds o’er The swelling waves, and seeks the Latian shore: Messena, Rhegium, and the barren coast Of flaming Aetna, to his sight are lost: At length he gains the Tyrrhene seas, and views The hills where baneful filters Circe brews; Monsters in various forms around her press; And thus the god salutes the sorceress:

“Sooner,” said Glaucus, “shall the ash remove From mountains, and the swelling surges love, Or humble seaweed to the hills repair, Ere I think any but my Scylla fair.”

Here bulged the pride of famed Ulysses’ fleet, But good Aeneas ’scaped the fate he met. As to the Latian shore the Trojan stood, And cut with well-timed oars the foaming flood, He weather’d fell Charybdis; but ere long The skies were darken’d, and the tempest strong; Then to the Libyan coast he stretches o’er, And makes at length the Carthaginian shore. Here Dido, with a hospitable care, Into her heart receives the wanderer. From her kind arms the ungrateful hero flies, The injured queen looks on with dying eyes, Then to her folly falls a sacrifice.

Aeneas now sets sail, and plying gains Fair Eryx, where his friend Acestes reigns: First to his sire does funeral rites decree, Then gives the signal next, and stands to sea, Outruns the islands where volcanoes roar, Gets clear of sirens and their faithless shore; But loses Palinurus in the way; Then makes Inarime and Prochyta.

The inhabitants of the island Pithecusa are changed into monkeys as a punishment of their dishonesty.

The galleys now by Pithecusa pass; The name is from the natives of the place. The father of the gods detesting lies, Oft with abhorrence heard their perjuries. The abandon’d race, transform’d to beasts, began To mimic the impertinence of man: Flatnosed and furrow’d, with grimace they grin, And look to what they were too near akin; Merry in make, and busy to no end, This moment they divert, the next offend: So much this species of their past retains, Though lost the language, yet the noise remains.