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Updated: May 14, 2025
A cunning little wretch, they say, and of deft tongue; but surely among the unwisest of all the Sons of Adam in that day, and such a Palinurus as seldom steered before. Charles Amadeus had signed the Pragmatic Sanction; but eats his Covenant, like the others, on example of France; having, as he now bethinks himself, claims on the Milanese.
But a storm drove them out of their course, and the darkness was so thick that they could not tell night from day, and the helmsman, Palinurus, knew not whither he was steering. Thus they were tossed about aimlessly for three days and nights, till at last they saw land ahead and, lowering their sails, rowed safely into a quiet harbor.
Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere cœlo, Nec meminisse viæ mediâ Palinurus in undâ. At that time I was connected with men of high place in the community. They loved liberty as much as the Duke of Bedford can do; and they understood it at least as well. Perhaps their politics, as usual, took a tincture from their character, and they cultivated what they loved.
The victim was Palinurus, the pilot. As he sat watching the stars, with his hand on the helm, Somnus sent by Neptune approached in the guise of Phorbas and said: "Palinurus, the breeze is fair, the water smooth, and the ship sails steadily on her course. Lie down awhile and take needful rest. I will stand at the helm in your place."
'Ah too trustful in sky's and sea's serenity, thou shalt lie, O Palinurus, naked on an alien sand! So speaks he weeping, and gives his fleet the rein, and at last glides in to Euboïc Cumae's coast. They turn the prows seaward; the ships grounded fast on their anchors' teeth, and the curving ships line the beach.
Leaving Palinurus consoled by these words, they approached the boat. Charon, fixing his eyes sternly upon the advancing warrior, demanded by what right he, living and armed, approached that shore.
The weatherbeaten Palinurus, as he loved to call himself, had conducted his own argosy so warily that he had saved his whole cargo; and perished in port at last, while others, not sailing by his compass, were still tossed by the tempest.
There is a beautiful allusion to the story of Palinurus in Scott's "Marmion," Introduction to Canto I., where the poet, speaking of the recent death of William Pitt, says: "O, think how, to his latest day, When death just hovering claimed his prey, With Palinure's unaltered mood, Firm at his dangerous post he stood; Each call for needful rest repelled, With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall, with fateful sway, The steerage of the realm gave way."
"Take that fish off the hook, Palinurus," he proudly said. "It is not as large as I thought, but it looks like the oldest one that has been caught to-day." Such, in effect, is the tale narrated by the veracious Plutarch.
This latter proposal the Sibyl forbade as impious, saying that the decrees of the gods could not be thus altered. But she consoled Palinurus by predicting that the people of Velia should be punished by plagues from heaven until they erected a tomb to his memory, and that the place should forever bear his name. The modern name of the place is Capo di Palinuro Cape of Palinurus.
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