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 V: FUNERAL GAMES AND BURNING SHIPS.

 

For Context:

BOOK V: FUNERAL GAMES AND BURNING SHIPS

The foremost three have olive wreaths decreed:
The first of these obtains a stately steed,

Adorn’d with trappings; and the next in fame,
The quiver of an Amazonian dame,

With feather’d Thracian arrows well supplied:
A golden belt shall gird his manly side,
Which with a sparkling diamond shall be tied.

The third this Grecian helmet shall content.”
He said. To their appointed base they went;

With beating hearts th’ expected sign receive,
And, starting all at once, the barrier leave.

Spread out, as on the winged winds, they flew,
And seiz’d the distant goal with greedy view.

Shot from the crowd, swift Nisus all o’erpass’d;
Nor storms, nor thunder, equal half his haste.

The next, but tho’ the next, yet far disjoin’d,
Came Salius, and Euryalus behind;

Then Helymus, whom young Diores plied,
Step after step, and almost side by side,

His shoulders pressing; and, in longer space,
Had won, or left at least a dubious race.

Now, spent, the goal they almost reach at last,
When eager Nisus, hapless in his haste,