1 Here the fluttering phantom of flying Aeneas darts and hides itself.
2 Then indeed Aeneas, startled by the sudden phantom, leaps out of slumber and bestirs his crew.
3 I have lived and fulfilled Fortune's allotted course; and now shall I go a queenly phantom under the earth.
4 But in front of the battle-ranks the phantom dances rejoicingly, and with arms and mocking accents provokes the foe.
5 And he: 'Thy melancholy phantom, thine, O my father, came before me often and often, and drove me to steer to these portals.'
6 For in sleep the phantom of Cassandra the soothsayer seemed to give me blazing brands: Here seek your Troy, she said; here is your home.
7 Next they start on other charges and other retreats in corresponsive spaces, and interlink circle with circle, and wage the armed phantom of battle.
8 Thrice there did he essay to fling his arms about his neck; thrice the phantom vainly grasped fled out of his hands even as light wind, and most like to fluttering sleep.
9 Then the light phantom seeks not yet any further hiding-place, but, flitting aloft, melts in a dark cloud; and a blast comes down meanwhile and sweeps Turnus through the seas.
10 In my sleep, often as the dank shades of night veil the earth, often as the stars lift their fires, the troubled phantom of my father Anchises comes in warning and dread; my boy Ascanius, how I wrong one so dear in cheating him of an Hesperian kingdom and destined fields.
11 Here Aeneas snatches at his sword in a sudden flutter of terror, and turns the naked edge on them as they come; and did not his wise fellow-passenger remind him that these lives flit thin and unessential in the hollow mask of body, he would rush on and vainly lash through phantoms with his steel.
12 Here Tydeus meets him; here Parthenopaeus, glorious in arms, and the pallid phantom of Adrastus; here the Dardanians long wept on earth and fallen in the war; sighing he discerns all their long array, Glaucus and Medon and Thersilochus, the three children of Antenor, and Polyphoetes, Ceres' priest, and Idaeus yet charioted, yet grasping his arms.
13 Hence do the tribes of Italy and all the Oenotrian land seek answers in perplexity; hither the priest bears his gifts, and when he hath lain down and sought slumber under the silent night on the spread fleeces of slaughtered sheep, sees many flitting phantoms of wonderful wise, hears manifold voices, and attains converse of the gods, and hath speech with Acheron and the deep tract of hell.