1 Yours is this omen, and in your deity Troy stands.
2 Then indeed the Rutulians clamorously greet the omen, and their hands flash out.
3 The son of Anchises of Troy is himself deep in bewilderment; yet the omen cheers his courage.
4 Emulously they renew the feast, and, glad at the high omen, array the flagons and engarland the wine.
5 At once Aeneas charges and confounds the rustic squadrons of the Latins, and slays Theron for omen of battle.
6 You see a pictured Xanthus, and a Troy your own hands have built; with better omens, I pray, and to be less open to the Greeks.
7 But since bitter doom is upon her, up, glide from heaven, O Nymph, and seek the Latin borders, where under evil omen they join in baleful battle.
8 At once that accent heard set their toils a limit; and at once as he spoke his father caught it from his lips and hushed him, in amazement at the omen.
9 At this a sudden sign meets their eyes, mighty in augural presage, as the high event taught thereafter, and in late days boding seers prophesied of the omen.
10 With many searchings of heart I prayed the woodland nymphs, and lord Gradivus, who rules in the Getic fields, to make the sight propitious as was meet and lighten the omen.
11 But the King, troubled by the omen, visits the oracle of his father Faunus the soothsayer, and the groves deep under Albunea, where, queen of the woods, she echoes from her holy well, and breathes forth a dim and deadly vapour.
12 After heaven's lords pleased to overthrow the state of Asia and Priam's guiltless people, and proud Ilium fell, and Neptunian Troy smokes all along the ground, we are driven by divine omens to seek distant places of exile in waste lands.
13 So speaks he weeping, and retraces his steps to the door, where aged Acoetes watched Pallas' lifeless body laid out for burial; once armour-bearer to Evander in Parrhasia, but now gone forth with darker omens, appointed attendant to his darling foster-child.
14 Nay, when thy fleets have crossed overseas and lie at anchor, when now thou rearest altars and payest vows on the beach, veil thine hair with a purple garment for covering, that no hostile face at thy divine worship may meet thee amid the holy fires and make void the omens.
15 Trinacrians and Trojans hung in astonishment, praying to the heavenly powers; neither did great Aeneas reject the omen, but embraces glad Acestes and loads him with lavish gifts, speaking thus: 'Take, my lord: for the high King of heaven by these signs hath willed thee to draw the lot of peculiar honour.'