I’ve been told of a priestess, of Massylian race, there, a keeper of the temple of the Hesperides, who gave the dragon its food, and guarded the holy branches of the tree,
scattering the honeydew and sleep-inducing poppies.

The inward fire eats the soft marrow away, and the internal wound bleeds on in silence.

And more than anyone, the Phoenician queen, luckless, already given over to ruin, marveled and could not have enough; she burned with pleasure in the boy and in the gifts…and she will all her eyes and heart embraced him, fondling him at times upon her breast, oblivious of how great a god sat there to her undoing.

Give up what I began? Am I defeated? Am I impotent to keep the king of Teucrians from Italy? The Fates forbid me, am I to suppose?