Aeneid Bibliomancy Reading

This oracle points to a randomly selected line from The Aeneid. The surrounding passages are provided for context.

 

Your passage is from BOOK III: MONSTERS, OMENS AND SIGNS.

 

For Context:

BOOK III: MONSTERS, OMENS AND SIGNS

Veer starboard sea and land. Th’ Italian shore
And fair Sicilia’s coast were one, before

An earthquake caus’d the flaw: the roaring tides
The passage broke that land from land divides;
And where the lands retir’d, the rushing ocean rides.

Distinguish’d by the straits, on either hand,
Now rising cities in long order stand,

And fruitful fields: so much can time invade
The mould’ring work that beauteous Nature made.

Far on the right, her dogs foul Scylla hides:
Charybdis roaring on the left presides,
And in her greedy whirlpool sucks the tides;

Then spouts them from below: with fury driv’n,
The waves mount up and wash the face of heav’n.

But Scylla from her den, with open jaws,
The sinking vessel in her eddy draws,

Then dashes on the rocks. A human face,
And virgin bosom, hides her tail’s disgrace:

Her parts obscene below the waves descend,
With dogs inclos’d, and in a dolphin end.

’Tis safer, then, to bear aloof to sea,
And coast Pachynus, tho’ with more delay,

Than once to view misshapen Scylla near,
And the loud yell of wat’ry wolves to hear.