1 Aeneas and the men of Troy with him feed on the long chines of oxen and the entrails of the sacrifice.
2 The oxen low as they depart; all the woodland is filled with their complaint as they clamorously quit the hills.
3 Around are slain in sacrifice oxen many in number, and bristly swine and cattle gathered out of all the country are slaughtered over the flames.
4 Every age wears iron, and we goad the flanks of our oxen with reversed spear; nor does creeping old age weaken our strength of spirit or abate our force.
5 For princely Alcides the avenger came glorious in the spoils of triple Geryon slain; this way the Conqueror drove the huge bulls, and his oxen filled the river valley.
6 Two head of oxen Acestes, the seed of Troy, gives to each of your ships by tale: invite to the feast your own ancestral gods of the household, and those whom our host Acestes worships.
7 Straightway the doors are torn open and the dark house laid plain; the stolen oxen and forsworn plunder are shewn forth to heaven, and the misshapen carcase dragged forward by the feet.
8 Him, in the wood of the hill Aventine, Rhea the priestess bore by stealth into the borders of light, a woman mingled with a god, after the Tirynthian Conqueror had slain Geryon and set foot on the fields of Laurentum, and bathed his Iberian oxen in the Tuscan river.
9 I shake myself from sleep and mount over the sloping roof, and stand there with ears attent: even as when flame catches a corn-field while south winds are furious, or the racing torrent of a mountain stream sweeps the fields, sweeps the smiling crops and labours of the oxen, and hurls the forest with it headlong; the shepherd in witless amaze hears the roar from the cliff-top.