The Aeneid of Virgil
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With these words the goddess' bosom is soothed to joy.Then their lord yokes his wild horses with gold and fastens the foaming bits, and letting all the reins run slack in his hand, flies lightly in his sea-coloured chariot over the ocean surface.The waves sink to rest, and the swoln water-ways smooth out under the thundering axle; the storm-clouds scatter from the vast sky.Diverse shapes attend him, monstrous whales, and Glaucus' aged choir, and Palaemon, son of Ino, the swift Tritons, and Phorcus with all his army.Thetis and Melite keep the left, and maiden Panopea, Nesaea and Spio, Thalia and Cymodoce.
[827-860]At this lord Aeneas' soul is thrilled with soft counterchange of delight. He bids all the masts be upreared with speed, and the sails stretched on the yards. Together all set their sheets, and all at once slacken their canvas to left and again to right; together they brace and unbrace the yard-arms aloft; prosperous gales waft the fleet along. First, in front of all, Palinurus steered the close column; the rest under orders ply their course by his. And now dewy Night had just reached heaven's mid-cone; the sailors, stretched on their hard benches under the oars, relaxed their limbs in quiet rest: when Sleep, sliding lightly down from the starry sky, parted the shadowy air and cleft the dark, seeking thee, O Palinurus, carrying dreams of bale to thee who dreamt not of harm, and lit on the high stern, a god in Phorbas' likeness, dropping this speech from his lips: 'Palinurus son of Iasus, the very seas bear our fleet along; the breezes breathe steadily; for an hour rest is given. Lay down thine head, and steal thy worn eyes from their toil. I myself for a little will take thy duty in thy stead.' To whom Palinurus, scarcely lifting his eyes, returns: 'Wouldst thou have me ignorant what the calm face of the brine means, and the waves at rest? Shall I have faith in this perilous thing? How shall I trust Aeneas to deceitful breezes, and the placid treachery of sky that hath so often deceived me?' Such words he uttered, and, clinging fast to the tiller, slackened hold no whit, and looked up steadily on the stars. Lo! the god shakes over either temple a bough dripping with Lethean dew and made slumberous with the might of Styx, and makes his swimming eyes relax their struggles. Scarcely had sleep begun to slacken his limbs unaware, when bending down, he flung him sheer into the clear water, tearing rudder and half the stern away with him, and many a time crying vainly on his comrades: himself [861-871]he rose on flying wings into the thin air.None the less does the fleet run safe on its sea path, and glides on unalarmed in lord Neptune's assurance.Yes, and now they were sailing in to the cliffs of the Sirens, dangerous once of old and white with the bones of many a man; and the hoarse rocks echoed afar in the ceaseless surf; when her lord felt the ship rocking astray for loss of her helmsman, and himself steered her on over the darkling water, sighing often the while, and heavy at heart for his friend's mischance.'Ah too trustful in sky's and sea's serenity, thou shalt lie, O Palinurus, naked on an alien sand!'
BOOK SIXTH
THE VISION OF THE UNDER WORLD
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.The warrior band leaps forth eagerly on the Hesperian shore; some seek the seeds of flame hidden in veins of flint, some scour the woods, the thick coverts of wild beasts, and find and shew the streams. But good Aeneas seeks the fortress where Apollo sits high enthroned, and the lone mystery of the awful Sibyl's cavern depth, over whose mind and soul the prophetic Delian breathes high inspiration and reveals futurity.
Now they draw nigh the groves of Trivia and the roof of gold. Daedalus, as the story runs, when in flight from Minos' realm he dared to spread his fleet wings to the sky, glided on his unwonted way towards the icy northern star, and at length lit gently on the Chalcidian fastness. Here, on the first land he retrod, he dedicated his winged oarage to thee, O Phoebus, in the vast temple he built. On the doors is Androgeus' death; thereby the children of Cecrops, bidden, ah me! to pay for yearly ransom seven souls of their sons; the urn stands there, and the lots are drawn. Right [23-55]opposite the land of Gnosus rises from the sea; on it is the cruel love of the bull, the disguised stealth of Pasiphaë, and the mingled breed and double issue of the Minotaur, record of a shameful passion; on it the famous dwelling's laborious inextricable maze; but Daedalus, pitying the great love of the princess, himself unlocked the tangled treachery of the palace, guiding with the clue her lover's blind footsteps.Thou too hadst no slight part in the work he wrought, O Icarus, did grief allow.Twice had he essayed to portray thy fate in gold; twice the father's hands dropped down.Nay, their eyes would scan all the story in order, were not Achates already returned from his errand, and with him the priestess of Phoebus and Trivia, Deïphobe daughter of Glaucus, who thus accosts the king: 'Other than this are the sights the time demands: now were it well to sacrifice seven unbroken bullocks of the herd, as many fitly chosen sheep of two years old.'Thus speaks she to Aeneas; nor do they delay to do her sacred bidding; and the priestess calls the Teucrians into the lofty shrine.
A vast cavern is scooped in the side of the Euboïc cliff, whither lead an hundred wide passages by an hundred gates, whence peal forth as manifold the responses of the Sibyl. They had reached the threshold, when the maiden cries: It is time to enquire thy fate: the god, lo!the god! And even as she spoke thus in the gateway, suddenly countenance nor colour nor ranged tresses stayed the same; her wild heart heaves madly in her panting bosom; and she expands to sight, and her voice is more than mortal, now the god breathes on her in nearer deity. 'Lingerest thou to vow and pray,' she cries, 'Aeneas of Troy? lingerest thou? for not till then will the vast portals of the spellbound house swing open.' So spoke she, and sank to silence. A cold shiver ran through the Teucrians' iron frames, and the king pours heart-deep supplication:
[56-89]'Phoebus, who hast ever pitied the sore travail of Troy, who didst guide the Dardanian shaft from Paris' hand full on the son of Aeacus, in thy leading have I pierced all these seas that skirt mighty lands, the Massylian nations far withdrawn, and the fields the Syrtes fringe; thus far let the fortune of Troy follow us.You too may now unforbidden spare the nation of Pergama, gods and goddesses to whomsoever Ilium and the great glory of Dardania did wrong.And thou, O prophetess most holy, foreknower of the future, grant (for no unearned realm does my destiny claim) a resting-place in Latium to the Teucrians, to their wandering gods and the storm-tossed deities of Troy.Then will I ordain to Phoebus and Trivia a temple of solid marble, and festal days in Phoebus' name.Thee likewise a mighty sanctuary awaits in our realm.For here will I place thine oracles and the secrets of destiny uttered to my people, and consecrate chosen men, O gracious one.Only commit not thou thy verses to leaves, lest they fly disordered, the sport of rushing winds; thyself utter them, I beseech thee.'His lips made an end of utterance.
But the prophetess, not yet tame to Phoebus' hand, rages fiercely in the cavern, so she may shake the mighty godhead from her breast; so much the more does he tire her maddened mouth and subdue her wild breast and shape her to his pressure.And now the hundred mighty portals of the house open of their own accord, and bring through the air the answer of the soothsayer:
'O past at length with the great perils of the sea! though heavier yet by land await thee, the Dardanians shall come to the realm of Lavinium; relieve thy heart of this care; but not so shall they have joy of their coming. Wars, grim wars I discern, and Tiber afoam with streams of blood. A Simoïs shall not fail thee, a Xanthus, a Dorian camp; another Achilles is already found for Latium, he too [90-123]goddess-born; nor shall Juno's presence ever leave the Teucrians; while thou in thy need, to what nations or what towns of Italy shalt thou not sue!Again is an alien bride the source of all that Teucrian woe, again a foreign marriage-chamber.Yield not thou to distresses, but all the bolder go forth to meet them, as thy fortune shall allow thee way.The path of rescue, little as thou deemest it, shall first open from a Grecian town.'
In such words the Sibyl of Cumae chants from the shrine her perplexing terrors, echoing through the cavern truth wrapped in obscurity: so does Apollo clash the reins and ply the goad in her maddened breast.So soon as the spasm ceased and the raving lips sank to silence, Aeneas the hero begins: 'No shape of toil, O maiden, rises strange or sudden on my sight; all this ere now have I guessed and inly rehearsed in spirit.One thing I pray; since here is the gate named of the infernal king, and the darkling marsh of Acheron's overflow, be it given me to go to my beloved father, to see him face to face; teach thou the way, and open the consecrated portals.Him on these shoulders I rescued from encircling flames and a thousand pursuing weapons, and brought him safe from amid the enemy; he accompanied my way over all the seas, and bore with me all the threats of ocean and sky, in weakness, beyond his age's strength and due.Nay, he it was who besought and enjoined me to seek thy grace and draw nigh thy courts.Have pity, I beseech thee, on son and father, O gracious one!for thou art all-powerful, nor in vain hath Hecate given thee rule in the groves of Avernus.If Orpheus could call up his wife's ghost in the strength of his Thracian lyre and the music of the strings,—if Pollux redeemed his brother by exchange of death, and passes and repasses so often,—why make mention of great Theseus, why of Alcides?I too am of Jove's sovereign race.'
[124-157]In such words he pleaded and clasped the altars; when the soothsayer thus began to speak:
'O sprung of gods' blood, child of Anchises of Troy, easy is the descent into hell; all night and day the gate of dark Dis stands open; but to recall thy steps and issue to upper air, this is the task and burden.Some few of gods' lineage have availed, such as Jupiter's gracious favour or virtue's ardour hath upborne to heaven.Midway all is muffled in forest, and the black coils of Cocytus circle it round.Yet if thy soul is so passionate and so desirous twice to float across the Stygian lake, twice to see dark Tartarus, and thy pleasure is to plunge into the mad task, learn what must first be accomplished.Hidden in a shady tree is a bough with leafage and pliant shoot all of gold, consecrate to nether Juno, wrapped in the depth of woodland and shut in by dim dusky vales.But to him only who first hath plucked the golden-tressed fruitage from the tree is it given to enter the hidden places of the earth.This hath beautiful Proserpine ordained to be borne to her for her proper gift.The first torn away, a second fills the place in gold, and the spray burgeons with even such ore again.So let thine eyes trace it home, and thine hand pluck it duly when found; for lightly and unreluctant will it follow if thine is fate's summons; else will no strength of thine avail to conquer it nor hard steel to cut it away.Yet again, a friend of thine lies a lifeless corpse, alas!thou knowest it not, and defiles all the fleet with death, while thou seekest our counsel and lingerest in our courts.First lay him in his resting-place and hide him in the tomb; lead thither black cattle; be this first thine expiation; so at last shalt thou behold the Stygian groves and the realm untrodden of the living.'She spoke, and her lips shut to silence.
Aeneas goes forth, and leaves the cavern with fixed eyes and sad countenance, his soul revolving inly the unseen [158-194]issues. By his side goes faithful Achates, and plants his footsteps in equal perplexity. Long they ran on in mutual change of talk; of what lifeless comrade spoke the soothsayer, of what body for burial? And even as they came, they see on the dry beach Misenus cut off by untimely death, Misenus the Aeolid, excelled of none other in stirring men with brazen breath and kindling battle with his trumpet-note. He had been attendant on mighty Hector; in Hector's train he waged battle, renowned alike for bugle and spear: after victorious Achilles robbed him of life the valiant hero had joined Dardanian Aeneas' company, and followed no meaner leader. But now, while he makes his hollow shell echo over the seas, ah fool! and calls the gods to rival his blast, jealous Triton, if belief is due, had caught him among the rocks and sunk him in the foaming waves. So all surrounded him with loud murmur and cries, good Aeneas the foremost. Then weeping they quickly hasten on the Sibyl's orders, and work hard to pile trees for the altar of burial, and heap it up into the sky. They move into the ancient forest, the deep coverts of game; pitch-pines fall flat, ilex rings to the stroke of axes, and ashen beams and oak are split in clefts with wedges; they roll in huge mountain-ashes from the hills. Aeneas likewise is first in the work, and cheers on his crew and arms himself with their weapons. And alone with his sad heart he ponders it all, gazing on the endless forest, and utters this prayer: 'If but now that bough of gold would shew itself to us on the tree in this depth of woodland! since all the soothsayer's tale of thee, Misenus, was, alas! too truly spoken.' Scarcely had he said thus, when twin doves haply came flying down the sky, and lit on the green sod right under his eyes. Then the kingly hero knows them for his mother's birds, and joyfully prays: 'Ah, be my guides, if way there be, and direct your aëry passage into the groves [195-230]where the rich bough overshadows the fertile ground!and thou, O goddess mother, fail not our wavering fortune.'So spoke he and stayed his steps, marking what they signify, whither they urge their way.Feeding and flying they advance at such distance as following eyes could keep them in view; then, when they came to Avernus' pestilent gorge, they tower swiftly, and sliding down through the liquid air, choose their seat and light side by side on a tree, through whose boughs shone out the contrasting flicker of gold.As in chill mid-winter the woodland is wont to blossom with the strange leafage of the mistletoe, sown on an alien tree and wreathing the smooth stems with burgeoning saffron; so on the shadowy ilex seemed that leafy gold, so the foil tinkled in the light breeze.Immediately Aeneas seizes it and eagerly breaks off its resistance, and carries it beneath the Sibyl's roof.
And therewithal the Teucrians on the beach wept Misenus, and bore the last rites to the thankless ashes. First they build up a vast pyre of resinous billets and sawn oak, whose sides they entwine with dark leaves and plant funereal cypresses in front, and adorn it above with his shining armour. Some prepare warm water in cauldrons bubbling over the flames, and wash and anoint the chill body, and make their moan; then, their weeping done, lay his limbs on the pillow, and spread over it crimson raiment, the accustomed pall. Some uplift the heavy bier, a melancholy service, and with averted faces in their ancestral fashion hold and thrust in the torch. Gifts of frankincense, food, and bowls of olive oil, are poured and piled upon the fire. After the embers sank in and the flame died away, they soaked with wine the remnant of thirsty ashes, and Corynaeus gathered the bones and shut them in an urn of brass; and he too thrice encircled his comrades with fresh water, and cleansed them with light spray sprinkled from a [231-267]bough of fruitful olive, and spoke the last words of all.But good Aeneas heaps a mighty mounded tomb over him, with his own armour and his oar and trumpet, beneath a skyey mountain that now is called Misenus after him, and keeps his name immortal from age to age.
This done, he hastens to fulfil the Sibyl's ordinance.A deep cave yawned dreary and vast, shingle-strewn, sheltered by the black lake and the gloom of the forests; over it no flying things could wing their way unharmed, such a vapour streamed from the dark gorge and rose into the overarching sky.Here the priestess first arrays four black-bodied bullocks and pours wine upon their forehead; and plucking the topmost hairs from between the horns, lays them on the sacred fire for first-offering, calling aloud on Hecate, mistress of heaven and hell.Others lay knives beneath, and catch the warm blood in cups.Aeneas himself smites with the sword a black-fleeced she-lamb to the mother of the Eumenides and her mighty sister, and a barren heifer, Proserpine, to thee.Then he uprears darkling altars to the Stygian king, and lays whole carcases of bulls upon the flames, pouring fat oil over the blazing entrails.And lo!about the first rays of sunrise the ground moaned underfoot, and the woodland ridges began to stir, and dogs seemed to howl through the dusk as the goddess came.'Apart, ah keep apart, O ye unsanctified!'cries the soothsayer; 'retire from all the grove; and thou, stride on and unsheath thy steel; now is need of courage, O Aeneas, now of strong resolve.'So much she spoke, and plunged madly into the cavern's opening; he with unflinching steps keeps pace with his advancing guide.
Gods who are sovereign over souls!silent ghosts, and Chaos and Phlegethon, the wide dumb realm of night!as I have heard, so let me tell, and according to your will unfold things sunken deep under earth in gloom.
[268-303]They went darkling through the dusk beneath the solitary night, through the empty dwellings and bodiless realm of Dis; even as one walks in the forest beneath the jealous light of a doubtful moon, when Jupiter shrouds the sky in shadow and black night blots out the world.Right in front of the doorway and in the entry of the jaws of hell Grief and avenging Cares have made their bed; there dwell wan Sicknesses and gloomy Eld, and Fear, and ill-counselling Hunger, and loathly Want, shapes terrible to see; and Death and Travail, and thereby Sleep, Death's kinsman, and the Soul's guilty Joys, and death-dealing War full in the gateway, and the Furies in their iron cells, and mad Discord with bloodstained fillets enwreathing her serpent locks.
Midway an elm, shadowy and high, spreads her boughs and secular arms, where, one saith, idle Dreams dwell clustering, and cling under every leaf.And monstrous creatures besides, many and diverse, keep covert at the gates, Centaurs and twy-shaped Scyllas, and the hundredfold Briareus, and the beast of Lerna hissing horribly, and the Chimaera armed with flame, Gorgons and Harpies, and the body of the triform shade.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.
Hence a road leads to Tartarus and Acheron's wave. Here the dreary pool swirls thick in muddy eddies and disgorges into Cocytus with its load of sand. Charon, the dread ferryman, guards these flowing streams, ragged and awful, his chin covered with untrimmed masses of hoary hair, and his glassy eyes aflame; his soiled raiment hangs knotted from his shoulders. Himself he plies the pole and trims the sails of his vessel, the steel-blue galley with freight [304-336]of dead; stricken now in years, but a god's old age is lusty and green.Hither all crowded, and rushed streaming to the bank, matrons and men and high-hearted heroes dead and done with life, boys and unwedded girls, and children laid young on the bier before their parents' eyes, multitudinous as leaves fall dropping in the forests at autumn's earliest frost, or birds swarm landward from the deep gulf, when the chill of the year routs them overseas and drives them to sunny lands.They stood pleading for the first passage across, and stretched forth passionate hands to the farther shore.But the grim sailor admits now one and now another, while some he pushes back far apart on the strand.Moved with marvel at the confused throng: 'Say, O maiden,' cries Aeneas, 'what means this flocking to the river?of what are the souls so fain?or what difference makes these retire from the banks, those go with sweeping oars over the leaden waterways?'
To him the long-lived priestess thus briefly returned: 'Seed of Anchises, most sure progeny of gods, thou seest the deep pools of Cocytus and the Stygian marsh, by whose divinity the gods fear to swear falsely.All this crowd thou discernest is helpless and unsepultured; Charon is the ferryman; they who ride on the wave found a tomb.Nor is it given to cross the awful banks and hoarse streams ere the dust hath found a resting-place.An hundred years they wander here flitting about the shore; then at last they gain entrance, and revisit the pools so sorely desired.'
Anchises' son stood still, and ponderingly stayed his footsteps, pitying at heart their cruel lot.There he discerns, mournful and unhonoured dead, Leucaspis and Orontes, captains of the Lycian squadron, whom, as they sailed together from Troy over gusty seas, the south wind overwhelmed and wrapped the waters round ship and men.
[337-369]Lo, there went by Palinurus the steersman, who of late, while he watched the stars on their Libyan passage, had slipped from the stern and fallen amid the waves.To him, when he first knew the melancholy form in that depth of shade, he thus opens speech: 'What god, O Palinurus, reft thee from us and sank thee amid the seas?forth and tell.For in this single answer Apollo deceived me, never found false before, when he prophesied thee safety on ocean and arrival on the Ausonian coasts.See, is this his promise-keeping?'
And he: 'Neither did Phoebus on his oracular seat delude thee, O prince, Anchises' son, nor did any god drown me in the sea. For while I clung to my appointed charge and governed our course, I pulled the tiller with me in my fall, and the shock as I slipped wrenched it away. By the rough seas I swear, fear for myself never wrung me so sore as for thy ship, lest, the rudder lost and the pilot struck away, those gathering waves might master it. Three wintry nights in the water the blustering south drove me over the endless sea; scarcely on the fourth dawn I descried Italy as I rose on the climbing wave. Little by little I swam shoreward; already I clung safe; but while, encumbered with my dripping raiment, I caught with crooked fingers at the jagged needles of mountain rock, the barbarous people attacked me in arms and ignorantly deemed me a prize. Now the wave holds me, and the winds toss me on the shore. By heaven's pleasant light and breezes I beseech thee, by thy father, by Iülus thy rising hope, rescue me from these distresses, O unconquered one! Either do thou, for thou canst, cast earth over me and again seek the haven of Velia; or do thou, if in any wise that may be, if in any wise the goddess who bore thee shews a way,—for not without divine will do I deem thou wilt float across these vast rivers and the Stygian pool,—lend me a pitying [370-403]hand, and bear me over the waves in thy company, that at least in death I may find a quiet resting-place.'
Thus he ended, and the soothsayer thus began: 'Whence, O Palinurus, this fierce longing of thine?Shalt thou without burial behold the Stygian waters and the awful river of the Furies?Cease to hope prayers may bend the decrees of heaven.But take my words to thy memory, for comfort in thy woeful case: far and wide shall the bordering cities be driven by celestial portents to appease thy dust; they shall rear a tomb, and pay the tomb a yearly offering, and for evermore shall the place keep Palinurus' name.'The words soothed away his distress, and for a while drove grief away from his sorrowing heart; he is glad in the land of his name.
So they complete their journey's beginning, and draw nigh the river. Just then the waterman descried them from the Stygian wave advancing through the silent woodland and turning their feet towards the bank, and opens on them in these words of challenge: 'Whoso thou art who marchest in arms towards our river, forth and say, there as thou art, why thou comest, and stay thine advance. This is the land of Shadows, of Sleep, and slumberous Night; no living body may the Stygian hull convey. Nor truly had I joy of taking Alcides on the lake for passenger, nor Theseus and Pirithoüs, born of gods though they were and unconquered in might. He laid fettering hand on the warder of Tartarus, and dragged him cowering from the throne of my lord the King; they essayed to ravish our mistress from the bridal chamber of Dis.' Thereto the Amphrysian soothsayer made brief reply: 'No such plot is here; be not moved; nor do our weapons offer violence; the huge gatekeeper may bark on for ever in his cavern and affright the bloodless ghosts; Proserpine may keep her honour within her uncle's gates. Aeneas of Troy, renowned [404-437]in goodness as in arms, goes down to meet his father in the deep shades of Erebus.If the sight of such affection stirs thee in nowise, yet this bough' (she discovers the bough hidden in her raiment) 'thou must know.'Then his heaving breast allays its anger, and he says no more; but marvelling at the awful gift, the fated rod so long unseen, he steers in his dusky vessel and draws to shore.Next he routs out the souls that sate on the long benches, and clears the thwarts, while he takes mighty Aeneas on board.The galley groaned under the weight in all her seams, and the marsh-water leaked fast in.At length prophetess and prince are landed unscathed on the ugly ooze and livid sedge.
This realm rings with the triple-throated baying of vast Cerberus, couched huge in the cavern opposite; to whom the prophetess, seeing the serpents already bristling up on his neck, throws a cake made slumberous with honey and drugged grain.He, with threefold jaws gaping in ravenous hunger, catches it when thrown, and sinks to earth with monstrous body outstretched, and sprawling huge over all his den.The warder overwhelmed, Aeneas makes entrance, and quickly issues from the bank of the irremeable wave.
Immediately wailing voices are loud in their ears, the souls of babies crying on the doorway sill, whom, torn from the breast and portionless in life's sweetness, a dark day cut off and drowned in bitter death. Hard by them are those condemned to death on false accusation. Neither indeed are these dwellings assigned without lot and judgment; Minos presides and shakes the urn; he summons a council of the silent people, and inquires of their lives and charges. Next in order have these mourners their place whose own innocent hands dealt them death, who flung away their souls in hatred of the day. How fain were they now in upper air to endure their poverty and [438-472]sore travail!It may not be; the unlovely pool locks them in her gloomy wave, and Styx pours her ninefold barrier between.And not far from here are shewn stretching on every side the Wailing Fields; so they call them by name.Here they whom pitiless love hath wasted in cruel decay hide among untrodden ways, shrouded in embosoming myrtle thickets; not death itself ends their distresses.In this region he discerns Phaedra and Procris and woeful Eriphyle, shewing on her the wounds of her merciless son, and Evadne and Pasiphaë; Laodamia goes in their company, and she who was once Caeneus and a man, now woman, and again returned by fate into her shape of old.Among whom Dido the Phoenician, fresh from her death-wound, wandered in the vast forest; by her the Trojan hero stood, and knew the dim form through the darkness, even as the moon at the month's beginning to him who sees or thinks he sees her rising through the vapours; he let tears fall, and spoke to her lovingly and sweet:
'Alas, Dido!so the news was true that reached me; thou didst perish, and the sword sealed thy doom!Ah me, was I cause of thy death?By the stars I swear, by the heavenly powers and all that is sacred beneath the earth, unwillingly, O queen, I left thy shore.But the gods, at whose orders now I pass through this shadowy place, this land of mouldering overgrowth and deep night, the gods' commands drove me forth; nor could I deem my departure would bring thee pain so great as this.Stay thy footstep, and withdraw not from our gaze.From whom fliest thou?the last speech of thee fate ordains me is this.'
In such words and with starting tears Aeneas soothed the burning and fierce-eyed soul. She turned away with looks fixed fast on the ground, stirred no more in countenance by the speech he essays than if she stood in iron flint or Marpesian stone. At length she started, and fled wrathfully [473-508]into the shadowy woodland, where Sychaeus, her ancient husband, responds to her distresses and equals her affection.Yet Aeneas, dismayed by her cruel doom, follows her far on her way with pitying tears.
Thence he pursues his appointed path.And now they trod those utmost fields where the renowned in war have their haunt apart.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. The souls throng round him to right and left; nor is one look enough; lingering delighted, they pace by his side and enquire wherefore he is come.But the princes of the Grecians and Agamemnon's armies, when they see him glittering in arms through the gloom, hurry terror-stricken away; some turn backward, as when of old they fled to the ships; some raise their voice faintly, and gasp out a broken ineffectual cry.
And here he saw Deïphobus son of Priam, with face cruelly torn, face and both hands, and ears lopped from his mangled temples, and nostrils maimed by a shameful wound.Barely he knew the cowering form that hid its dreadful punishment; then he springs to accost it in familiar speech:
'Deïphobus mighty in arms, seed of Teucer's royal blood, whose wantonness of vengeance was so cruel?who was allowed to use thee thus?Rumour reached me that on that last night, outwearied with endless slaughter, thou hadst sunk on the heap of mingled carnage.Then mine own hand reared an empty tomb on the Rhoetean shore, mine own voice thrice called aloud upon thy ghost.Thy name and armour keep the spot; thee, O my friend, I could not see nor lay in the native earth I left.'
[509-541]Whereto the son of Priam: 'In nothing, O my friend, wert thou wanting; thou hast paid the full to Deïphobus and the dead man's shade.But me my fate and the Laconian woman's murderous guilt thus dragged down to doom; these are the records of her leaving.For how we spent that last night in delusive gladness thou knowest, and must needs remember too well.When the fated horse leapt down on the steep towers of Troy, bearing armed infantry for the burden of its womb, she, in feigned procession, led round our Phrygian women with Bacchic cries; herself she upreared a mighty flame amid them, and called the Grecians out of the fortress height.Then was I fast in mine ill-fated bridal chamber, deep asleep and outworn with my charge, and lay overwhelmed in slumber sweet and profound and most like to easeful death.Meanwhile that crown of wives removes all the arms from my dwelling, and slips out the faithful sword from beneath my head: she calls Menelaus into the house and flings wide the gateway: be sure she hoped her lover would magnify the gift, and so she might quench the fame of her ill deeds of old.Why do I linger?They burst into the chamber, they and the Aeolid, counsellor of crime, in their company.Gods, recompense the Greeks even thus, if with righteous lips I call for vengeance!But come, tell in turn what hap hath brought thee hither yet alive.Comest thou driven on ocean wanderings, or by promptings from heaven?or what fortune keeps thee from rest, that thou shouldst draw nigh these sad sunless dwellings, this disordered land?'
In this change of talk Dawn had already crossed heaven's mid axle on her rose-charioted way; and haply had they thus drawn out all the allotted time; but the Sibyl made brief warning speech to her companion: 'Night falls, Aeneas; we waste the hours in weeping. Here is the place where the road disparts; by this that runs to the right [542-574]under great Dis' city is our path to Elysium; but the leftward wreaks vengeance on the wicked and sends them to unrelenting hell.'But Deïphobus: 'Be not angered, mighty priestess; I will depart, I will refill my place and return into darkness.Go, glory of our people, go, enjoy a fairer fate than mine.'Thus much he spoke, and on the word turned away his footsteps.
Aeneas looks swiftly back, and sees beneath the cliff on the left hand a wide city, girt with a triple wall and encircled by a racing river of boiling flame, Tartarean Phlegethon, that echoes over its rolling rocks. In front is the gate, huge and pillared with solid adamant, that no warring force of men nor the very habitants of heaven may avail to overthrow; it stands up a tower of iron, and Tisiphone sitting girt in bloodstained pall keeps sleepless watch at the entry by night and day. Hence moans are heard and fierce lashes resound, with the clank of iron and dragging chains. Aeneas stopped and hung dismayed at the tumult. 'What shapes of crime are here? declare, O maiden; or what the punishment that pursues them, and all this upsurging wail?' Then the soothsayer thus began to speak: 'Illustrious chief of Troy, no pure foot may tread these guilty courts; but to me Hecate herself, when she gave me rule over the groves of Avernus, taught how the gods punish, and guided me through all her realm. Gnosian Rhadamanthus here holds unrelaxing sway, chastises secret crime revealed, and exacts confession, wheresoever in the upper world one vainly exultant in stolen guilt hath till the dusk of death kept clear from the evil he wrought. Straightway avenging Tisiphone, girt with her scourge, tramples down the shivering sinners, menaces them with the grim snakes in her left hand, and summons forth her sisters in merciless train. Then at last the sacred gates are flung open and grate on the jarring hinge. Markest thou what sentry is seated in [575-609]the doorway? what shape guards the threshold? More grim within sits the monstrous Hydra with her fifty black yawning throats: and Tartarus' self gapes sheer and strikes into the gloom through twice the space that one looks upward to Olympus and the skyey heaven. Here Earth's ancient children, the Titans' brood, hurled down by the thunderbolt, lie wallowing in the abyss. Here likewise I saw the twin Aloïds, enormous of frame, who essayed with violent hands to pluck down high heaven and thrust Jove from his upper realm. Likewise I saw Salmoneus in the cruel payment he gives for mocking Jove's flame and Olympus' thunders. Borne by four horses and brandishing a torch, he rode in triumph midway through the populous city of Grecian Elis, and claimed for himself the worship of deity; madman! who would mimic the storm-cloud and the inimitable bolt with brass that rang under his trampling horse-hoofs. But the Lord omnipotent hurled his shaft through thickening clouds (no firebrand his nor smoky glare of torches) and dashed him headlong in the fury of the whirlwind. Therewithal Tityos might be seen, fosterling of Earth the mother of all, whose body stretches over nine full acres, and a monstrous vulture with crooked beak eats away the imperishable liver and the entrails that breed in suffering, and plunges deep into the breast that gives it food and dwelling; nor is any rest given to the fibres that ever grow anew. Why tell of the Lapithae, of Ixion and Pirithoüs? over whom a stone hangs just slipping and just as though it fell; or the high banqueting couches gleam golden-pillared, and the feast is spread in royal luxury before their faces; couched hard by, the eldest of the Furies wards the tables from their touch and rises with torch upreared and thunderous lips. Here are they who hated their brethren while life endured, or struck a parent or entangled a client in wrong, or who brooded [610-643]alone over found treasure and shared it not with their fellows, this the greatest multitude of all; and they who were slain for adultery, and who followed unrighteous arms, and feared not to betray their masters' plighted hand. Imprisoned they await their doom. Seek not to be told that doom, that fashion of fortune wherein they are sunk. Some roll a vast stone, or hang outstretched on the spokes of wheels; hapless Theseus sits and shall sit for ever, and Phlegyas in his misery gives counsel to all and witnesses aloud through the gloom, Learn by this warning to do justly and not to slight the gods. This man sold his country for gold, and laid her under a tyrant's sway; he set up and pulled down laws at a price; this other forced his daughter's bridal chamber and a forbidden marriage; all dared some monstrous wickedness, and had success in what they dared. Not had I an hundred tongues, an hundred mouths, and a voice of iron, could I sum up all the shapes of crime or name over all their punishments.'
Thus spoke Phoebus' long-lived priestess; then 'But come now,' she cries; 'haste on the way and perfect the service begun; let us go faster; I descry the ramparts cast in Cyclopean furnaces, and in front the arched gateway where they bid us lay the gifts foreordained.'She ended, and advancing side by side along the shadowy ways, they pass over and draw nigh the gates.Aeneas makes entrance, and sprinkling his body with fresh water, plants the bough full in the gateway.
Now at length, this fully done, and the service of the goddess perfected, they came to the happy place, the green pleasances and blissful seats of the Fortunate Woodlands. Here an ampler air clothes the meadows in lustrous sheen, and they know their own sun and a starlight of their own. Some exercise their limbs in tournament on the greensward, contend in games, and wrestle on the yellow sand. Some [644-676]dance with beating footfall and lips that sing; with them is the Thracian priest in sweeping robe, and makes music to their measures with the notes' sevenfold interval, the notes struck now with his fingers, now with his ivory rod.Here is Teucer's ancient brood, a generation excellent in beauty, high-hearted heroes born in happier years, Ilus and Assaracus, and Dardanus, founder of Troy.Afar he marvels at the armour and chariots empty of their lords: their spears stand fixed in the ground, and their unyoked horses pasture at large over the plain: their life's delight in chariot and armour, their care in pasturing their sleek horses, follows them in like wise low under earth.Others, lo!he beholds feasting on the sward to right and left, and singing in chorus the glad Paean-cry, within a scented laurel-grove whence Eridanus river surges upward full-volumed through the wood.Here is the band of them who bore wounds in fighting for their country, and they who were pure in priesthood while life endured, and the good poets whose speech abased not Apollo; and they who made life beautiful by the arts of their invention, and who won by service a memory among men, the brows of all girt with the snow-white fillet.To their encircling throng the Sibyl spoke thus, and to Musaeus before them all; for he is midmost of all the multitude, and stands out head and shoulders among their upward gaze:
'Tell, O blissful souls, and thou, poet most gracious, what region, what place hath Anchises for his own?For his sake are we come, and have sailed across the wide rivers of Erebus.'
And to her the hero thus made brief reply: 'None hath a fixed dwelling; we live in the shady woodlands; soft-swelling banks and meadows fresh with streams are our habitation. But you, if this be your heart's desire, scale this ridge, and I will even now set you on an easy [677-708]pathway.'He spoke, and paced on before them, and from above shews the shining plains; thereafter they leave the mountain heights.
But lord Anchises, deep in the green valley, was musing in earnest survey over the imprisoned souls destined to the daylight above, and haply reviewing his beloved children and all the tale of his people, them and their fates and fortunes, their works and ways.And he, when he saw Aeneas advancing to meet him over the greensward, stretched forth both hands eagerly, while tears rolled over his cheeks, and his lips parted in a cry: 'Art thou come at last, and hath thy love, O child of my desire, conquered the difficult road?Is it granted, O my son, to gaze on thy face and hear and answer in familiar tones?Thus indeed I forecast in spirit, counting the days between; nor hath my care misled me.What lands, what space of seas hast thou traversed to reach me, through what surge of perils, O my son!How I dreaded the realm of Libya might work thee harm!'
And he: 'Thy melancholy phantom, thine, O my father, came before me often and often, and drove me to steer to these portals.My fleet is anchored on the Tyrrhenian brine.Give thine hand to clasp, O my father, give it, and withdraw not from our embrace.'
So spoke he, his face wet with abundant weeping.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.
Meanwhile Aeneas sees deep withdrawn in the covert of the vale a woodland and rustling forest thickets, and the river of Lethe that floats past their peaceful dwellings. Around it flitted nations and peoples innumerable; even as in the meadows when in clear summer weather bees settle on the variegated flowers and stream round the snow-white [709-742]lilies, all the plain is murmurous with their humming.Aeneas starts at the sudden view, and asks the reason he knows not; what are those spreading streams, or who are they whose vast train fills the banks?Then lord Anchises: 'Souls, for whom second bodies are destined and due, drink at the wave of the Lethean stream the heedless water of long forgetfulness.These of a truth have I long desired to tell and shew thee face to face, and number all the generation of thy children, that so thou mayest the more rejoice with me in finding Italy.'—'O father, must we think that any souls travel hence into upper air, and return again to bodily fetters?why this their strange sad longing for the light?''I will tell,' rejoins Anchises, 'nor will I hold thee in suspense, my son.'And he unfolds all things in order one by one.
'First of all, heaven and earth and the liquid fields, the shining orb of the moon and the Titanian star, doth a spirit sustain inly, and a soul shed abroad in them sways all their members and mingles in the mighty frame. Thence is the generation of man and beast, the life of winged things, and the monstrous forms that ocean breeds under his glittering floor. Those seeds have fiery force and divine birth, so far as they are not clogged by taint of the body and dulled by earthy frames and limbs ready to die. Hence is it they fear and desire, sorrow and rejoice; nor can they pierce the air while barred in the blind darkness of their prison-house. Nay, and when the last ray of life is gone, not yet, alas! does all their woe, nor do all the plagues of the body wholly leave them free; and needs must be that many a long ingrained evil should take root marvellously deep. Therefore they are schooled in punishment, and pay all the forfeit of a lifelong ill; some are hung stretched to the viewless winds; some have the taint of guilt washed out beneath the dreary deep, or burned away in fire. We [743-777]suffer, each a several ghost; thereafter we are sent to the broad spaces of Elysium, some few of us to possess the happy fields; till length of days completing time's circle takes out the ingrained soilure and leaves untainted the ethereal sense and pure spiritual flame.All these before thee, when the wheel of a thousand years hath come fully round, a God summons in vast train to the river of Lethe, that so they may regain in forgetfulness the slopes of upper earth, and begin to desire to return again into the body.'
Anchises ceased, and leads his son and the Sibyl likewise amid the assembled murmurous throng, and mounts a hillock whence he might scan all the long ranks and learn their countenances as they came.
'Now come, the glory hereafter to follow our Dardanian progeny, the posterity to abide in our Italian people, illustrious souls and inheritors of our name to be, these will I rehearse, and instruct thee of thy destinies. He yonder, seest thou? the warrior leaning on his pointless spear, holds the nearest place allotted in our groves, and shall rise first into the air of heaven from the mingling blood of Italy, Silvius of Alban name, the child of thine age, whom late in thy length of days thy wife Lavinia shall nurture in the woodland, king and father of kings; from him in Alba the Long shall our house have dominion. He next him is Procas, glory of the Trojan race; and Capys and Numitor; and he who shall renew thy name, Silvius Aeneas, eminent alike in goodness or in arms, if ever he shall receive his kingdom in Alba. Men of men! see what strength they display, and wear the civic oak shading their brows. They shall establish Nomentum and Gabii and Fidena city, they the Collatine hill-fortress, Pometii and the Fort of Inuus, Bola and Cora: these shall be names that are now nameless lands. Nay, Romulus likewise, seed of Mavors, shall join [778-810]his grandsire's company, from his mother Ilia's nurture and Assaracus' blood. Seest thou how the twin plumes straighten on his crest, and his father's own emblazonment already marks him for upper air? Behold, O son! by his augury shall Rome the renowned fill earth with her empire and heaven with her pride, and gird about seven fortresses with her single wall, prosperous mother of men; even as our lady of Berecyntus rides in her chariot turret-crowned through the Phrygian cities, glad in the gods she hath borne, clasping an hundred of her children's children, all habitants of heaven, all dwellers on the upper heights. Hither now bend thy twin-eyed gaze; behold this people, the Romans that are thine. Here is Caesar and all Iülus' posterity that shall arise under the mighty cope of heaven. Here is he, he of whose promise once and again thou hearest, Caesar Augustus, a god's son, who shall again establish the ages of gold in Latium over the fields that once were Saturn's realm, and carry his empire afar to Garamant and Indian, to the land that lies beyond our stars, beyond the sun's yearlong ways, where Atlas the sky-bearer wheels on his shoulder the glittering star-spangled pole. Before his coming even now the kingdoms of the Caspian shudder at oracular answers, and the Maeotic land and the mouths of sevenfold Nile flutter in alarm. Nor indeed did Alcides traverse such spaces of earth, though he pierced the brazen-footed deer, or though he stilled the Erymanthian woodlands and made Lerna tremble at his bow: nor he who sways his team with reins of vine, Liber the conqueror, when he drives his tigers from Nysa's lofty crest. And do we yet hesitate to give valour scope in deeds, or shrink in fear from setting foot on Ausonian land? Ah, and who is he apart, marked out with sprays of olive, offering sacrifice? I know the locks and hoary chin of the king of Rome who shall establish the infant city in his [811-843]laws, sent from little Cures' sterile land to the majesty of empire. To him Tullus shall next succeed, who shall break the peace of his country and stir to arms men rusted from war and armies now disused to triumphs; and hard on him over-vaunting Ancus follows, even now too elate in popular breath. Wilt thou see also the Tarquin kings, and the haughty soul of Brutus the Avenger, and the fasces regained? He shall first receive a consul's power and the merciless axes, and when his children would stir fresh war, the father, for fair freedom's sake, shall summon them to doom. Unhappy! yet howsoever posterity shall take the deed, love of country and limitless passion for honour shall prevail. Nay, behold apart the Decii and the Drusi, Torquatus with his cruel axe, and Camillus returning with the standards. Yonder souls likewise, whom thou discernest gleaming in equal arms, at one now, while shut in Night, ah me! what mutual war, what battle-lines and bloodshed shall they arouse, so they attain the light of the living! father-in-law descending from the Alpine barriers and the fortress of the Dweller Alone, son-in-law facing him with the embattled East. Nay, O my children, harden not your hearts to such warfare, neither turn upon her own heart the mastering might of your country; and thou, be thou first to forgive, who drawest thy descent from heaven; cast down the weapons from thy hand, O blood of mine. . . . He shall drive his conquering chariot to the Capitoline height triumphant over Corinth, glorious in Achaean slaughter. He shall uproot Argos and Agamemnonian Mycenae, and the Aeacid's own heir, the seed of Achilles mighty in arms, avenging his ancestors in Troy and Minerva's polluted temple. Who might leave thee, lordly Cato, or thee, Cossus, to silence? who the Gracchan family, or these two sons of the Scipios, a double thunderbolt of war, Libya's bale? and Fabricius potent in poverty, or [844-875]thee, Serranus, sowing in the furrow?Whither whirl you me all breathless, O Fabii?thou art he, the most mighty, the one man whose lingering retrieves our State.Others shall beat out the breathing bronze to softer lines, I believe it well; shall draw living lineaments from the marble; the cause shall be more eloquent on their lips; their pencil shall portray the pathways of heaven, and tell the stars in their arising: be thy charge, O Roman, to rule the nations in thine empire; this shall be thine art, to lay down the law of peace, to be merciful to the conquered and beat the haughty down.'
Thus lord Anchises, and as they marvel, he so pursues: 'Look how Marcellus the conqueror marches glorious in the splendid spoils, towering high above them all!He shall stay the Roman State, reeling beneath the invading shock, shall ride down Carthaginian and insurgent Gaul, and a third time hang up the captured armour before lord Quirinus.'
And at this Aeneas, for he saw going by his side one excellent in beauty and glittering in arms, but his brow had little cheer, and his eyes looked down:
'Who, O my father, is he who thus attends him on his way?son, or other of his children's princely race?How his comrades murmur around him!how goodly of presence he is!but dark Night flutters round his head with melancholy shade.'
Then lord Anchises with welling tears began: 'O my son, ask not of the great sorrow of thy people. Him shall fate but shew to earth, and suffer not to stay further. Too mighty, lords of heaven, did you deem the brood of Rome, had this your gift been abiding. What moaning of men shall arise from the Field of Mavors by the imperial city! what a funeral train shalt thou see, O Tiber, as thou flowest by the new-made grave! Neither shall the boyhood of any [876-901]of Ilian race raise his Latin forefathers' hope so high; nor shall the land of Romulus ever boast of any fosterling like this.Alas his goodness, alas his antique honour, and right hand invincible in war!none had faced him unscathed in armed shock, whether he met the foe on foot, or ran his spurs into the flanks of his foaming horse.Ah me, the pity of thee, O boy!if in any wise thou breakest the grim bar of fate, thou shalt be Marcellus.Give me lilies in full hands; let me strew bright blossoms, and these gifts at least let me lavish on my descendant's soul, and do the unavailing service.'
Thus they wander up and down over the whole region of broad vaporous plains, and scan all the scene.And when Anchises had led his son over it, each point by each, and kindled his spirit with passion for the glories on their way, he tells him thereafter of the war he next must wage, and instructs him of the Laurentine peoples and the city of Latinus, and in what wise each task may be turned aside or borne.
There are twin portals of Sleep, whereof the one is fabled of horn, and by it real shadows are given easy outlet; the other shining white of polished ivory, but false visions issue upward from the ghostly world.With these words then Anchises follows forth his son and the Sibyl together there, and dismisses them by the ivory gate.He pursues his way to the ships and revisits his comrades; then bears on to Caieta's haven straight along the shore.The anchor is cast from the prow; the sterns are grounded on the beach.
BOOK SEVENTH
THE LANDING IN LATIUM, AND THE ROLL OF THE ARMIES OF ITALY
Thou also, Caieta, nurse of Aeneas, gavest our shores an everlasting renown in death; and still thine honour haunts thy resting-place, and a name in broad Hesperia, if that be glory, marks thy dust. But when the last rites are duly paid, and the mound smoothed over the grave, good Aeneas, now the high seas are hushed, bears on under sail and leaves his haven. Breezes blow into the night, and the white moonshine speeds them on; the sea glitters in her quivering radiance. Soon they skirt the shores of Circe's land, where the rich daughter of the Sun makes her untrodden groves echo with ceaseless song; and her stately house glows nightlong with burning odorous cedarwood, as she runs over her delicate web with the ringing comb. Hence are heard afar angry cries of lions chafing at their fetters and roaring in the deep night; bears and bristly swine rage in their pens, and vast shapes of wolves howl; whom with her potent herbs the deadly divine Circe had disfashioned, face and body, into wild beasts from the likeness of men. But lest the good Trojans might suffer so dread a change, might enter her haven or draw nigh the ominous shores, Neptune filled [23-55]their sails with favourable winds, and gave them escape, and bore them past the seething shallows.
And now the sea reddened with shafts of light, and high in heaven the yellow dawn shone rose-charioted; when the winds fell, and every breath sank suddenly, and the oar-blades toil through the heavy ocean-floor.And on this Aeneas descries from sea a mighty forest.Midway in it the pleasant Tiber stream breaks to sea in swirling eddies, laden with yellow sand.Around and above fowl many in sort, that haunt his banks and river-channel, solaced heaven with song and flew about the forest.He orders his crew to bend their course and turn their prows to land, and glides joyfully into the shady river.
Forth now, Erato!and I will unfold who were the kings, what the tides of circumstance, how it was with ancient Latium when first that foreign army drew their fleet ashore on Ausonia's coast; I will recall the preluding of battle.Thou, divine one, inspire thou thy poet.I will tell of grim wars, tell of embattled lines, of kings whom honour drove on death, of the Tyrrhenian forces, and all Hesperia enrolled in arms. A greater history opens before me, a greater work I essay.
Latinus the King, now growing old, ruled in a long peace over quiet tilth and town. He, men say, was sprung of Faunus and the nymph Marica of Laurentum. Faunus' father was Picus; and he boasts himself, Saturn, thy son; thou art the first source of their blood. Son of his, by divine ordinance, and male descent was none, cut off in the early spring of youth. One alone kept the household and its august home, a daughter now ripe for a husband and of full years for marriage. Many wooed her from wide Latium and all Ausonia. Fairest and foremost of all [56-93]is Turnus, of long and lordly ancestry; but boding signs from heaven, many and terrible, bar the way. Within the palace, in the lofty inner courts, was a laurel of sacred foliage, guarded in awe through many years, which lord Latinus, it was said, himself found and dedicated to Phoebus when first he would build his citadel; and from it gave his settlers their name, Laurentines. High atop of it, wonderful to tell, bees borne with loud humming across the liquid air girt it thickly about, and with interlinked feet hung in a sudden swarm from the leafy bough. Straightway the prophet cries: 'I see a foreigner draw nigh, an army from the same quarter seek the same quarter, and reign high in our fortress.' Furthermore, while maiden Lavinia stands beside her father feeding the altars with holy fuel, she was seen, oh, horror! to catch fire in her long tresses, and burn with flickering flame in all her array, her queenly hair lit up, lit up her jewelled circlet; till, enwreathed in smoke and lurid light, she scattered fire over all the palace. That sight was rumoured wonderful and terrible. Herself, they prophesied, she should be glorious in fame and fortune; but a great war was foreshadowed for her people. But the King, troubled by the omen, visits the oracle of his father Faunus the soothsayer, and the groves deep under Albunea, where, queen of the woods, she echoes from her holy well, and breathes forth a dim and deadly vapour. 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. Here then, likewise seeking an answer, lord Latinus paid fit sacrifice of an hundred woolly ewes, and [94-127]lay couched on the strewn fleeces they had worn.Out of the lofty grove a sudden voice was uttered: 'Seek not, O my child, to unite thy daughter in Latin espousals, nor trust her to the bridal chambers ready to thine hand; foreigners shall come to be thy sons, whose blood shall raise our name to heaven, and the children of whose race shall see, where the circling sun looks on either ocean, all the rolling world swayed beneath their feet.'This his father Faunus' answer and counsel given in the silent night Latinus restrains not in his lips; but wide-flitting Rumour had already borne it round among the Ausonian cities, when the children of Laomedon moored their fleet to the grassy slope of the river bank.
Aeneas, with the foremost of his captains and fair Iülus, lay them down under the boughs of a high tree and array the feast. They spread wheaten cakes along the sward under their meats—so Jove on high prompted—and crown the platter of corn with wilding fruits. Here haply when the rest was spent, and scantness of food set them to eat their thin bread, and with hand and venturous teeth do violence to the round cakes fraught with fate and spare not the flattened squares: Ha!Are we eating our tables too? cries Iülus jesting, and stops. At once that accent heard set their toils a limit; and at once as he spoke his father caught it from his lips and hushed him, in amazement at the omen. Straightway 'Hail, O land!' he cries, 'my destined inheritance! and hail, O household gods, faithful to your Troy! here is home; this is our native country. For my father Anchises, now I remember it, bequeathed me this secret of fate: "When hunger shall drive thee, O son, to consume thy tables where the feast fails, on the unknown shores whither thou shalt sail; then, though outwearied, hope for home, and there at last let thine hand remember to set thy house's foundations and bulwarks." This was [128-162]the hunger, this the last that awaited us, to set the promised end to our desolations .Up then, and, glad with the first sunbeam, let us explore and search all abroad from our harbour, what is the country, who its habitants, where is the town of the nation.Now pour your cups to Jove, and call in prayer on Anchises our father, setting the wine again upon the board.'So speaks he, and binding his brows with a leafy bough, he makes supplication to the Genius of the ground, and Earth first of deities, and the Nymphs, and the Rivers yet unknown; then calls on Night and Night's rising signs, and next on Jove of Ida, and our lady of Phrygia, and on his twain parents, in heaven and in the under world.At this the Lord omnipotent thrice thundered sharp from high heaven, and with his own hand shook out for a sign in the sky a cloud ablaze with luminous shafts of gold.A sudden rumour spreads among the Trojan array, that the day is come to found their destined city.Emulously they renew the feast, and, glad at the high omen, array the flagons and engarland the wine.
Soon as the morrow bathed the lands in its dawning light, they part to search out the town, and the borders and shores of the nation: these are the pools and spring of Numicus; this is the Tiber river; here dwell the brave Latins. Then the seed of Anchises commands an hundred envoys chosen of every degree to go to the stately royal city, all with the wreathed boughs of Pallas, to bear him gifts and desire grace for the Teucrians. Without delay they hasten on their message, and advance with swift step. Himself he traces the city walls with a shallow trench, and builds on it; and in fashion of a camp girdles this first settlement on the shore with mound and battlements. And now his men had traversed their way; they espied the towers and steep roofs of the Latins, and drew near the wall. Before the city boys and men in their early [163-196]bloom exercise on horseback, and break in their teams on the dusty ground, or draw ringing bows, or hurl tough javelins from the shoulder, and contend in running and boxing: when a messenger riding forward brings news to the ears of the aged King that mighty men are come thither in unknown raiment.He gives orders to call them within his house, and takes his seat in the midst on his ancestral throne.His house, stately and vast, crowned the city, upreared on an hundred columns, once the palace of Laurentian Picus, amid awful groves of ancestral sanctity.Here their kings receive the inaugural sceptre, and have the fasces first raised before them; this temple was their senate-house; this their sacred banqueting-hall; here, after sacrifice of rams, the elders were wont to sit down at long tables.Further, there stood arow in the entry images of the forefathers of old in ancient cedar, Italus, and lord Sabinus, planter of the vine, still holding in show the curved pruning-hook, and gray Saturn, and the likeness of Janus the double-facing, and the rest of their primal kings, and they who had borne wounds of war in fighting for their country.Armour besides hangs thickly on the sacred doors, captured chariots and curved axes, helmet-crests and massy gateway-bars, lances and shields, and beaks torn from warships.He too sat there, with the divining-rod of Quirinus, girt in the short augural gown, and carrying on his left arm the sacred shield, Picus the tamer of horses; he whom Circe, desperate with amorous desire, smote with her golden rod and turned by her poisons into a bird with patches of colour on his wings.Of such wise was the temple of the gods wherein Latinus, sitting on his father's seat, summoned the Teucrians to his house and presence; and when they entered in, he thus opened with placid mien:
'Tell, O Dardanians, for we are not ignorant of your city and race, nor unheard of do you bend your course [197-228]overseas, what seek you?what the cause or whereof the need that hath borne you over all these blue waterways to the Ausonian shore?Whether wandering in your course, or tempest-driven (such perils manifold on the high seas do sailors suffer), you have entered the river banks and lie in harbour; shun not our welcome, and be not ignorant that the Latins are Saturn's people, whom no laws fetter to justice, upright of their own free will and the custom of the god of old.And now I remember, though the story is dimmed with years, thus Auruncan elders told, how Dardanus, born in this our country, made his way to the towns of Phrygian Ida and to the Thracian Samos that is now called Samothrace.Here was the home he left, Tyrrhenian Corythus; now the palace of heaven, glittering with golden stars, enthrones and adds him to the ranged altars of the gods.'
He ended; and Ilioneus pursued his speech with these words:
'King, Faunus' illustrious progeny, neither hath black tempest driven us with stress of waves to shelter in your lands, nor hath star or shore misled us on the way we went. Of set purpose and willing mind do we draw nigh this thy city, outcasts from a realm once the greatest that the sun looked on as he came from Olympus' utmost border. From Jove hath our race beginning; in Jove the men of Dardania rejoice as ancestor; our King himself of Jove's supreme race, Aeneas of Troy, hath sent us to thy courts. How terrible the tempest that burst from fierce Mycenae over the plains of Ida, driven by what fate Europe and Asia met in the shock of two worlds, even he hath heard who is sundered in the utmost land where the ocean surge recoils, and he whom stretching midmost of the four zones the zone of the intolerable sun holds in severance. Borne by that flood over many desolate seas, we crave a scant dwelling [229-261]for our country's gods, an unmolested landing-place, and the air and water that are free to all.We shall not disgrace the kingdom; nor will the rumour of your renown be lightly gone or the grace of all you have done fade away; nor will Ausonia be sorry to have taken Troy to her breast.By the fortunes of Aeneas I swear, by that right hand mighty, whether tried in friendship or in warlike arms, many and many a people and nation—scorn us not because we advance with hands proffering chaplets and words of supplication—hath sought us for itself and desired our alliance; but yours is the land that heaven's high ordinance drove us forth to find.Hence sprung Dardanus: hither Apollo recalls us, and pushes us on with imperious orders to Tyrrhenian Tiber and the holy pools of Numicus' spring.Further, he presents to thee these small guerdons of our past estate, relics saved from burning Troy.From this gold did lord Anchises pour libation at the altars; this was Priam's array when he delivered statutes to the nations assembled in order; the sceptre, the sacred mitre, the raiment wrought by the women of Ilium..'
At these words of Ilioneus Latinus holds his countenance in a steady gaze, and stays motionless on the floor, casting his intent eyes around.Nor does the embroidered purple so move the King, nor the sceptre of Priam, as his daughter's marriage and the bridal chamber absorb him, and the oracle of ancient Faunus stirs deep in his heart.This is he, the wanderer from a foreign home, foreshewn of fate for his son, and called to a realm of equal dominion, whose race should be excellent in valour and their might overbear all the world.At last he speaks with good cheer:
'The gods prosper our undertaking and their own augury! What thou desirest, Trojan, shall be given; nor do I spurn your gifts. While Latinus reigns you shall not [262-294]lack foison of rich land nor Troy's own riches.Only let Aeneas himself come hither, if desire of us be so strong, if he be in haste to join our friendship and be called our ally.Let him not shrink in terror from a friendly face.A term of the peace for me shall be to touch your monarch's hand.Do you now convey in answer my message to your King.I have a daughter whom the oracles of my father's shrine and many a celestial token alike forbid me to unite to one of our own nation; sons shall come, they prophesy, from foreign coasts, such is the destiny of Latium, whose blood shall exalt our name to heaven.He it is on whom fate calls; this I think, this I choose, if there be any truth in my soul's foreshadowing.'
Thus he speaks, and chooses horses for all the company.Three hundred stood sleek in their high stalls; for all the Teucrians in order he straightway commands them to be led forth, fleet-footed, covered with embroidered purple: golden chains hang drooping over their chests, golden their housings, and they champ on bits of ruddy gold: for the absent Aeneas a chariot and pair of chariot horses of celestial breed, with nostrils breathing flame; of the race of those which subtle Circe bred by sleight on her father, the bastard issue of a stolen union.With these gifts and words the Aeneadae ride back from Latinus carrying peace.
And lo!the fierce wife of Jove was returning from Inachian Argos, and held her way along the air, when out of the distant sky, far as from Sicilian Pachynus, she espied the rejoicing of Aeneas and the Dardanian fleet.She sees them already house-building, already trusting in the land, their ships left empty.She stops, shot with sharp pain; then shaking her head, she pours forth these words:
'Ah, hated brood, and doom of the Phrygians that thwarts our doom! Could they perish on the Sigean [295-326]plains?Could they be ensnared when taken?Did the fires of Troy consume her people?Through the midst of armies and through the midst of flames they have found their way.But, I think, my deity lies at last outwearied, or my hatred sleeps and is satisfied?Nay, it is I who have been fierce to follow them over the waves when hurled from their country, and on all the seas have crossed their flight.Against the Teucrians the forces of sky and sea are spent.What hath availed me Syrtes or Scylla, what desolate Charybdis?they find shelter in their desired Tiber-bed, careless of ocean and of me.Mars availed to destroy the giant race of the Lapithae; the very father of the gods gave over ancient Calydon to Diana's wrath: for forfeit of what crime in the Lapithae, what in Calydon?But I, Jove's imperial consort, who have borne, ah me!to leave naught undared, who have shifted to every device, I am vanquished by Aeneas.If my deity is not great enough, I will not assuredly falter to seek succour where it may be; if the powers of heaven are inflexible, I will stir up Acheron.It may not be to debar him of a Latin realm; well; and Lavinia is destined his bride unalterably.But it may be yet to defer, to make all this action linger; but it may be yet to waste away the nation of either king; at such forfeit of their people may son-in-law and father-in-law enter into union.Blood of Troy and Rutulia shall be thy dower, O maiden, and Bellona is the bridesmaid who awaits thee.Nor did Cisseus' daughter alone conceive a firebrand and travail of bridal flames.Nay, even such a birth hath Venus of her own, a second Paris, another balefire for Troy towers reborn.'
These words uttered, she descends to earth in all her terrors, and calls dolorous Allecto from the home of the Fatal Sisters in nether gloom, whose delight is in woeful wars, in wrath and treachery and evil feuds: hateful to [327-360]lord Pluto himself, hateful and horrible to her hell-born sisters; into so many faces does she turn, so savage the guise of each, so thick and black bristles she with vipers.And her Juno spurs on with words, saying thus:
'Grant me, virgin born of Night, this thy proper task and service, that the rumour of our renown may not crumble away, nor the Aeneadae have power to win Latinus by marriage or beset the borders of Italy.Thou canst set brothers once united in armed conflict, and overturn families with hatreds; thou canst launch into houses thy whips and deadly brands; thine are a thousand names, a thousand devices of injury.Stir up thy teeming breast, sunder the peace they have joined, and sow seeds of quarrel; let all at once desire and demand and seize on arms.'
Thereon Allecto, steeped in Gorgonian venom, first seeks Latium and the high house of the Laurentine monarch, and silently sits down before Amata's doors, whom a woman's distress and anger heated to frenzy over the Teucrians' coming and the marriage of Turnus.At her the goddess flings a snake out of her dusky tresses, and slips it into her bosom to her very inmost heart, that she may embroil all her house under its maddening magic.Sliding between her raiment and smooth breasts, it coils without touch, and instils its viperous breath unseen; the great serpent turns into the twisted gold about her neck, turns into the long ribbon of her chaplet, inweaves her hair, and winds slippery over her body.And while the gliding infection of the clammy poison begins to penetrate her sense and run in fire through her frame, nor as yet hath all her breast caught fire, softly she spoke and in mothers' wonted wise, with many a tear over her daughter and the Phrygian bridal:
'Is it to exiles, to Teucrians, that Lavinia is proffered in marriage, O father? and hast thou no compassion on [361-392]thy daughter and on thyself?no compassion on her mother, whom with the first northern wind the treacherous rover will abandon, steering to sea with his maiden prize?Is it not thus the Phrygian herdsman wound his way to Lacedaemon, and carried Leda's Helen to the Trojan towns?Where is thy plighted faith?Where thine ancient care for thy people, and the hand Turnus thy kinsman hath so often clasped?If one of alien race from the Latins is sought for our son, if this stands fixed, and thy father Faunus' commands are heavy upon thee, all the land whose freedom severs it from our sway is to my mind alien, and of this is the divine word.And Turnus, if one retrace the earliest source of his line, is born of Inachus and Acrisius, and of the midmost of Mycenae.'
When in this vain essay of words she sees Latinus fixed against her, and the serpent's maddening poison is sunk deep in her vitals and runs through and through her, then indeed, stung by infinite horrors, hapless and frenzied, she rages wildly through the endless city. As whilome a top flying under the twisted whipcord, which boys busy at their play drive circling wide round an empty hall, runs before the lash and spins in wide gyrations; the witless ungrown band hang wondering over it and admire the whirling boxwood; the strokes lend it life: with pace no slacker is she borne midway through towns and valiant nations. Nay, she flies into the woodland under feigned Bacchic influence, assumes a greater guilt, arouses a greater frenzy, and hides her daughter in the mountain coverts to rob the Teucrians of their bridal and stay the marriage torches. 'Hail, Bacchus!' she shrieks and clamours; 'thou only art worthy of the maiden; for to thee she takes up the lissom wands, thee she circles in the dance, to thee she trains and consecrates her tresses.' Rumour flies abroad; and the matrons, their breasts kindled by the furies, run all at once [393-426]with a single ardour to seek out strange dwellings.They have left their homes empty, they throw neck and hair free to the winds; while others fill the air with ringing cries, girt about with fawnskins, and carrying spears of vine.Amid them the infuriate queen holds her blazing pine-torch on high, and chants the wedding of Turnus and her daughter; and rolling her bloodshot gaze, cries sudden and harsh: 'Hear, O mothers of Latium, wheresoever you be; if unhappy Amata hath yet any favour in your affection, if care for a mother's right pierces you, untie the chaplets from your hair, begin the orgies with me.'Thus, amid woods and wild beasts' solitary places, does Allecto goad the queen with the encircling Bacchic madness.
When their frenzy seemed heightened and her first task complete, the purpose and all the house of Latinus turned upside down, the dolorous goddess flies on thence, soaring on dusky wing, to the walls of the gallant Rutulian, the city which Danaë, they say, borne down on the boisterous south wind, built and planted with Acrision's people.The place was called Ardea once of old; and still Ardea remains a mighty name; but its fortune is no more.Here in his high house Turnus now took rest in the black midnight.Allecto puts off her grim feature and the body of a Fury; she transforms her face to an aged woman's, and furrows her brow with ugly wrinkles; she puts on white tresses chaplet-bound, and entwines them with an olive spray; she becomes aged Calybe, priestess of Juno's temple, and presents herself before his eyes, uttering thus:
'Turnus, wilt thou brook all these toils poured out in vain, and the conveyance of thy crown to Dardanian settlers? The King denies thee thy bride and the dower thy blood had earned; and a foreigner is sought for heir to the kingdom. Forth now, dupe, and face thankless perils; forth, cut down the Tyrrhenian lines; give the [427-458]Latins peace in thy protection.This Saturn's omnipotent daughter in very presence commanded me to pronounce to thee, as thou wert lying in the still night.Wherefore arise, and make ready with good cheer to arm thy people and march through thy gates to battle; consume those Phrygian captains that lie with their painted hulls in the beautiful river.All the force of heaven orders thee on.Let King Latinus himself know of it, unless he consents to give thee thy bridal, and abide by his words, when he shall at last make proof of Turnus' arms.'
But he, deriding her inspiration, with the words of his mouth thus answers her again:
'The fleets ride on the Tiber wave; that news hath not, as thou deemest, escaped mine ears.Frame not such terrors before me.Neither is Queen Juno forgetful of us.But thee, O mother, overworn old age, exhausted and untrue, frets with vain distress, and amid embattled kings mocks thy presage with false dismay.Thy charge it is to keep the divine image and temple; war and peace shall be in the hands of men and warriors.'
At such words Allecto's wrath blazed out.But amid his utterance a quick shudder overruns his limbs; his eyes are fixed in horror; so thickly hiss the snakes of the Fury, so vast her form expands.Then rolling her fiery eyes, she thrust him back as he would stammer out more, raised two serpents in her hair, and, sounding her whip, resumed with furious tone:
'Behold me the overworn!me whom old age, exhausted and untrue, mocks with false dismay amid embattled kings!Look on this!I am come from the home of the Dread Sisters: war and death are in my hand..'
So speaking, she hurled her torch at him, and pierced his breast with the lurid smoking brand. He breaks from sleep in overpowering fear, his limbs and body bathed in [459-494]sweat that breaks out all over him; he shrieks madly for arms, searches for arms on his bed and in his palace.The passion of the sword rages high, the accursed fury of war, and wrath over all: even as when flaming sticks are heaped roaring loud under the sides of a seething cauldron, and the boiling water leaps up; the river of water within smokes furiously and swells high in overflowing foam, and now the wave contains itself no longer; the dark steam flies aloft.So, for the stain of the broken peace, he orders his chief warriors to march on King Latinus, and bids prepare for battle, to defend Italy and drive the foe from their borders; himself will suffice for Trojans and Latins together.When he uttered these words and called the gods to hear his vows, the Rutulians stir one another up to arms. One is moved by the splendour of his youthful beauty, one by his royal ancestry, another by the noble deeds of his hand.
While Turnus fills the Rutulian minds with valour, Allecto on Stygian wing hastens towards the Trojans. With fresh wiles she marked the spot where beautiful Iülus was trapping and coursing game on the bank; here the infernal maiden suddenly crosses his hounds with the maddening touch of a familiar scent, and drives them hotly on the stag-hunt. This was the source and spring of ill, and kindled the country-folk to war. The stag, beautiful and high-antlered, was stolen from his mother's udder and bred by Tyrrheus' boys and their father Tyrrheus, master of the royal herds, and ranger of the plain. Their sister Silvia tamed him to her rule, and lavished her care on his adornment, twining his antlers with delicate garlands, and combed his wild coat and washed him in the clear spring. Tame to her hand, and familiar to his master's table, he would wander the woods, and, however late the night, return home to the door he knew. Far astray, he floated idly down the stream, and allayed his heat on the green bank, when Iülus' [495-528]mad hounds started him in their hunting; and Ascanius himself, kindled with desire of the chief honour, aimed a shaft from his bended bow.A present deity suffered not his hand to stray, and the loud whistling reed came driven through his belly and flanks.But the wounded beast fled within the familiar roof and crept moaning to the courtyard, dabbled with blood, and filling all the house with moans as of one beseeching.Sister Silvia, smiting her arms with open hands, begins to call for aid, and gathers the hardy rustics with her cries.They, for a fell destroyer is hidden in the silent woodland, are there before her expectation, one armed with a stake hardened in the fire, one with a heavy knotted trunk; what each one searches and finds, wrath turns into a weapon.Tyrrheus cheers on his array, panting hard, with his axe caught up in his hand, as he was haply splitting an oaken log in four clefts with cross-driven wedges.
But the grim goddess, seizing from her watch-tower the moment of mischief, seeks the steep farm-roof and sounds the pastoral war-note from the ridge, straining the infernal cry on her twisted horn; it spread shuddering over all the woodland, and echoed through the deep forests: the lake of Trivia heard it afar; Nar river heard it with white sulphurous water, and the springs of Velinus; and fluttered mothers clasped their children to their breast. Then, hurrying to the voice of the terrible trumpet-note, on all sides the wild rustics snatch their arms and stream in: therewithal the men of Troy pour out from their camp's open gates to succour Ascanius. The lines are ranged; not now in rustic strife do they fight with hard trunks or burned stakes; the two-edged steel sways the fight, the broad cornfields bristle dark with drawn swords, and brass flashes smitten by the sunlight, and casts a gleam high into the cloudy air: as when the wind begins to blow and the flood [529-560]to whiten, gradually the sea lifts his waves higher and yet higher, then rises from the bottom right into the air.Here in the front rank young Almo, once Tyrrheus' eldest son, is struck down by a whistling arrow; for the wound, staying in his throat, cut off in blood the moist voice's passage and the thin life.Around many a one lies dead, aged Galaesus among them, slain as he throws himself between them for a peacemaker, once incomparable in justice and wealth of Ausonian fields; for him five flocks bleated, a five-fold herd returned from pasture, and an hundred ploughs upturned the soil.
But while thus in even battle they fight on the broad plain, the goddess, her promise fulfilled, when she hath dyed the war in blood, and mingled death in the first encounter, quits Hesperia, and, glancing through the sky, addresses Juno in exultant tone:
'Lo, discord is ripened at thy desire into baleful war: tell them now to mix in amity and join alliance.Insomuch as I have imbued the Trojans in Ausonian blood, this likewise will I add, if I have assurance of thy will.With my rumours I will sweep the bordering towns into war, and kindle their spirit with furious desire for battle, that from all quarters help may come; I will sow the land with arms.'
Then Juno answering: 'Terror and harm is wrought abundantly.The springs of war are aflow: they fight with arms in their grasp, the arms that chance first supplied, that fresh blood stains.Let this be the union, this the bridal that Venus' illustrious progeny and Latinus the King shall celebrate.Our Lord who reigns on Olympus' summit would not have thee stray too freely in heaven's upper air.Withdraw thy presence.Whatsoever future remains in the struggle, that I myself will sway.'
Such accents uttered the daughter of Saturn; and the [561-594]other raises her rustling snaky wings and darts away from the high upper air to Cocytus her home.There is a place midmost of Italy, deep in the hills, notable and famed of rumour in many a country, the Vale of Amsanctus; on either hand a wooded ridge, dark with thick foliage, hems it in, and midway a torrent in swirling eddies shivers and echoes over the rocks.Here is shewn a ghastly pool, a breathing-hole of the grim lord of hell, and a vast chasm breaking into Acheron yawns with pestilential throat.In it the Fury sank, and relieved earth and heaven of her hateful influence.
But therewithal the queenly daughter of Saturn puts the last touch to war. The shepherds pour in full tale from the battlefield into the town, bearing back their slain, the boy Almo and Galaesus' disfigured face, and cry on the gods and call on Latinus. Turnus is there, and amid the heat and outcry at the slaughter redoubles his terrors, crying that Teucrians are bidden to the kingdom, that a Phrygian race is mingling its taint with theirs, and he is thrust out of their gates. They too, the matrons of whose kin, struck by Bacchus, trample in choirs down the pathless woods—nor is Amata's name a little thing—they too gather together from all sides and weary themselves with the battle-cry. Omens and oracles of gods go down before them, and all under malign influence clamour for awful war. Emulously they surround Latinus' royal house. He withstands, even as a rock in ocean unremoved, as a rock in ocean when the great crash comes down, firm in its own mass among many waves slapping all about: in vain the crags and boulders hiss round it in foam, and the seaweed on its side is flung up and sucked away. But when he may in nowise overbear their blind counsel, and all goes at fierce Juno's beck, with many an appeal to gods and void sky, 'Alas!' he cries, 'we are broken of fate and driven helpless in the [595-626]storm.With your very blood will you pay the price of this, O wretched men!Thee, O Turnus, thy crime, thee thine awful punishment shall await; too late wilt thou address to heaven thy prayers and supplication.For my rest was won, and my haven full at hand; I am robbed but of a happy death.'And without further speech he shut himself in the palace, and dropped the reins of state.
There was a use in Hesperian Latium, which the Alban towns kept in holy observance, now Rome keeps, the mistress of the world, when they stir the War-God to enter battle; whether their hands prepare to carry war and weeping among Getae or Hyrcanians or Arabs, or to reach to India and pursue the Dawn, and reclaim their standards from the Parthian. There are twain gates of War, so runs their name, consecrate in grim Mars' sanctity and terror. An hundred bolts of brass and masses of everlasting iron shut them fast, and Janus the guardian never sets foot from their threshold. There, when the sentence of the Fathers stands fixed for battle, the Consul, arrayed in the robe of Quirinus and the Gabine cincture, with his own hand unbars the grating doors, with his own lips calls battles forth; then all the rest follow on, and the brazen trumpets blare harsh with consenting breath. With this use then likewise they bade Latinus proclaim war on the Aeneadae, and unclose the baleful gates. He withheld his hand, and shrank away averse from the abhorred service, and hid himself blindly in the dark. Then the Saturnian queen of heaven glided from the sky, with her own hand thrust open the lingering gates, and swung sharply back on their hinges the iron-bound doors of war. Ausonia is ablaze, till then unstirred and immoveable. Some make ready to march afoot over the plains; some, mounted on tall horses, ride amain in clouds of dust. All seek out arms; and now they rub their shields smooth and make their spearheads glitter with [627-659]fat lard, and grind their axes on the whetstone: rejoicingly they advance under their standards and hear the trumpet note.Five great cities set up the anvil and sharpen the sword, strong Atina and proud Tibur, Ardea and Crustumeri, and turreted Antemnae.They hollow out head-gear to guard them, and plait wickerwork round shield-bosses; others forge breastplates of brass or smooth greaves of flexible silver.To this is come the honour of share and pruning-hook, to this all the love of the plough: they re-temper their fathers' swords in the furnace.And now the trumpets blare; the watchword for war passes along.One snatches a helmet hurriedly from his house, another backs his neighing horses into the yoke; and arrays himself in shield and mail-coat triple-linked with gold, and girds on his trusty sword.
Open now the gates of Helicon, goddesses, and stir the song of the kings that rose for war, the array that followed each and filled the plains, the men that even then blossomed, the arms that blazed in Italy the bountiful land: for you remember, divine ones, and you can recall; to us but a breath of rumour, scant and slight, is wafted down.
First from the Tyrrhene coast savage Mezentius, scorner of the gods, opens the war and arrays his columns.By him is Lausus, his son, unexcelled in bodily beauty by any save Laurentine Turnus, Lausus tamer of horses and destroyer of wild beasts; he leads a thousand men who followed him in vain from Agylla town; worthy to be happier in ancestral rule, and to have other than Mezentius for father.
After them beautiful Aventinus, born of beautiful Hercules, displays on the sward his palm-crowned chariot and victorious horses, and carries on his shield his father's device, the hundred snakes of the Hydra's serpent-wreath. Him, in the wood of the hill Aventine, Rhea the priestess [660-693]bore by stealth into the borders of light, a woman mingled with a god, after the Tirynthian Conqueror had slain Geryon and set foot on the fields of Laurentum, and bathed his Iberian oxen in the Tuscan river.These carry for war javelins and grim stabbing weapons, and fight with the round shaft and sharp point of the Sabellian pike.Himself he went on foot swathed in a vast lion skin, shaggy with bristling terrors, whose white teeth encircled his head; in such wild dress, the garb of Hercules clasped over his shoulders, he entered the royal house.
Next twin brothers leave Tibur town, and the people called by their brother Tiburtus' name, Catillus and valiant Coras, the Argives, and advance in the forefront of battle among the throng of spears: as when two cloud-born Centaurs descend from a lofty mountain peak, leaving Homole or snowy Othrys in rapid race; the mighty forest yields before them as they go, and the crashing thickets give them way.
Nor was the founder of Praeneste city absent, the king who, as every age hath believed, was born of Vulcan among the pasturing herds, and found beside the hearth, Caeculus.On him a rustic battalion attends in loose order, they who dwell in steep Praeneste and the fields of Juno of Gabii, on the cool Anio and the Hernican rocks dewy with streams; they whom rich Anagnia, and whom thou, lord Amasenus, pasturest.Not all of them have armour, nor shields and clattering chariots.The most part shower bullets of dull lead; some wield in their hand two darts, and have for head-covering caps of tawny wolfskin; their left foot is bare wherewith to plant their steps; the other is covered with a boot of raw hide.
But Messapus, tamer of horses, the seed of Neptune, whom none might ever strike down with steel or fire, calls quickly to arms his long unstirred peoples and bands [694-727]disused to war, and again handles the sword.These are of the Fescennine ranks and of Aequi Falisci, these of Soracte's fortresses and the fields of Flavina, and Ciminus' lake and hill, and the groves of Capena.They marched in even time, singing their King; as whilome snowy swans among the thin clouds, when they return from pasturage, and utter resonant notes through their long necks; far off echoes the river and the smitten Asian fen.Nor would one think these vast streaming masses were ranks clad in brass; rather that, high in air, a cloud of hoarse birds from the deep gulf was pressing to the shore.
Lo, Clausus of the ancient Sabine blood, leading a great host, a great host himself; from whom now the Claudian tribe and family is spread abroad since Rome was shared with the Sabines.Alongside is the broad battalion of Amiternum, and the Old Latins, and all the force of Eretum and the Mutuscan oliveyards; they who dwell in Nomentum town, and the Rosean country by Velinus, who keep the crags of rough Tetrica and Mount Severus, Casperia and Foruli, and the river of Himella; they who drink of Tiber and Fabaris, they whom cold Nursia hath sent, and the squadrons of Horta and the tribes of Latinium; and they whom Allia, the ill-ominous name, severs with its current; as many as the waves that roll on the Libyan sea-floor when fierce Orion sets in the wintry surge; as thick as the ears that ripen in the morning sunlight on the plain of the Hermus or the yellowing Lycian tilth.Their shields clatter, and earth is amazed under the trampling of their feet.
Here Agamemnonian Halaesus, foe of the Trojan name, yokes his chariot horses, and draws a thousand warlike peoples to Turnus; those who turn with spades the Massic soil that is glad with wine; whom the elders of Aurunca sent from their high hills, and the Sidicine low country [728-761]hard by; and those who leave Cales, and the dweller by the shallows of Volturnus river, and side by side the rough Saticulan and the Oscan bands.Polished maces are their weapons, and these it is their wont to fit with a tough thong; a target covers their left side, and for close fighting they have crooked swords.
Nor shalt thou, Oebalus, depart untold of in our verses, who wast borne, men say, by the nymph Sebethis to Telon, when he grew old in rule over Capreae the Teleboïc realm: but not so content with his ancestral fields, his son even then held down in wide sway the Sarrastian peoples and the meadows watered by Sarnus, and the dwellers in Rufrae and Batulum, and the fields of Celemnae, and they on whom from her apple orchards Abella city looks down.Their wont was to hurl lances in Teutonic fashion; their head covering was stripped bark of the cork tree, their shield-plates glittering brass, glittering brass their sword.
Thee too, Ufens, mountainous Nersae sent forth to battle, of noble fame and prosperous arms, whose race on the stiff Aequiculan clods is rough beyond all other, and bred to continual hunting in the woodland; they till the soil in arms, and it is ever their delight to drive in fresh spoils and live on plunder.
Furthermore there came, sent by King Archippus, the priest of the Marruvian people, dressed with prosperous olive leaves over his helmet, Umbro excellent in valour, who was wont with charm and touch to sprinkle slumberous dew on the viper's brood and water-snakes of noisome breath.Yet he availed not to heal the stroke of the Dardanian spear-point, nor was the wound of him helped by his sleepy charms and herbs culled on the Massic hills.Thee the woodland of Angitia, thee Fucinus' glassy wave, thee the clear pools wept.
Likewise the seed of Hippolytus marched to war, Virbius [762-796]most excellent in beauty, sent by his mother Aricia.The groves of Egeria nursed him round the spongy shore where Diana's altar stands rich and gracious.For they say in story that Hippolytus, after he fell by his stepmother's treachery, torn asunder by his frightened horses to fulfil a father's revenge, came again to the daylight and heaven's upper air, recalled by Diana's love and the drugs of the Healer.Then the Lord omnipotent, indignant that any mortal should rise from the nether shades to the light of life, launched his thunder and hurled down to the Stygian water the Phoebus-born, the discoverer of such craft and cure.But Trivia the bountiful hides Hippolytus in a secret habitation, and sends him away to the nymph Egeria and the woodland's keeping, where, solitary in Italian forests, he should spend an inglorious life, and have Virbius for his altered name.Whence also hoofed horses are kept away from Trivia's temple and consecrated groves, because, affrighted at the portents of the sea, they overset the chariot and flung him out upon the shore.Notwithstanding did his son train his ruddy steeds on the level plain, and sped charioted to war.
Himself too among the foremost, splendid in beauty of body, Turnus moves armed and towers a whole head over all. His lofty helmet, triple-tressed with horse-hair, holds high a Chimaera breathing from her throat Aetnean fires, raging the more and exasperate with baleful flames, as the battle and bloodshed grow fiercer. But on his polished shield was emblazoned in gold Io with uplifted horns, already a heifer and overgrown with hair, a lofty design, and Argus the maiden's warder, and lord Inachus pouring his stream from his embossed urn. Behind comes a cloud of infantry, and shielded columns thicken over all the plains; the Argive men and Auruncan forces, the Rutulians and old Sicanians, the Sacranian ranks and Labicians with [797-817]painted shields; they who till thy dells, O Tiber, and Numicus' sacred shore, and whose ploughshare goes up and down on the Rutulian hills and the Circaean headland, over whose fields Jupiter of Anxur watches, and Feronia glad in her greenwood: and where the marsh of Satura lies black, and cold Ufens winds his way along the valley-bottoms and sinks into the sea.
Therewithal came Camilla the Volscian, leading a train of cavalry, squadrons splendid with brass: a warrior maiden who had never used her woman's hands to Minerva's distaff or wool-baskets, but hardened to endure the battle shock and outstrip the winds with racing feet.She might have flown across the topmost blades of unmown corn and left the tender ears unhurt as she ran; or sped her way over mid sea upborne by the swelling flood, nor dipt her swift feet in the water.All the people pour from house and field, and mothers crowd to wonder and gaze at her as she goes, in rapturous astonishment at the royal lustre of purple that drapes her smooth shoulders, at the clasp of gold that intertwines her tresses, at the Lycian quiver she carries, and the pastoral myrtle shaft topped with steel.
BOOK EIGHTH
THE EMBASSAGE TO EVANDER
When Turnus ran up the flag of war on the towers of Laurentum, and the trumpets blared with harsh music, when he spurred his fiery steeds and clashed his armour, straightway men's hearts are in tumult; all Latium at once flutters in banded uprisal, and her warriors rage furiously.Their chiefs, Messapus, and Ufens, and Mezentius, scorner of the gods, begin to enrol forces on all sides, and dispeople the wide fields of husbandmen.Venulus too is sent to the town of mighty Diomede to seek succour, to instruct him that Teucrians set foot in Latium; that Aeneas in his fleet invades them with the vanquished gods of his home, and proclaims himself the King summoned of fate; that many tribes join the Dardanian, and his name swells high in Latium.What he will rear on these foundations, what issue of battle he desires, if Fortune attend him, lies clearer to his own sight than to King Turnus or King Latinus.
Thus was it in Latium. And the hero of Laomedon's blood, seeing it all, tosses on a heavy surge of care, and throws his mind rapidly this way and that, and turns it on all hands in swift change of thought: even as when the quivering light of water brimming in brass, struck back [23-56]from the sunlight or the moon's glittering reflection, flickers abroad over all the room, and now mounts aloft and strikes the high panelled roof.Night fell, and over all lands weary creatures were fast in deep slumber, the race of fowl and of cattle; when lord Aeneas, sick at heart of the dismal warfare, stretched him on the river bank under the cope of the cold sky, and let sleep, though late, overspread his limbs.To him the very god of the ground, the pleasant Tiber stream, seemed to raise his aged form among the poplar boughs; thin lawn veiled him with its gray covering, and shadowy reeds hid his hair.Thereon he addressed him thus, and with these words allayed his distresses:
'O born of the family of the gods, thou who bearest back our Trojan city from hostile hands, and keepest Troy towers in eternal life; O long looked for on Laurentine ground and Latin fields! here is thine assured home, thine home's assured gods. Draw not thou back, nor be alarmed by menace of war. All the anger and wrath of the gods is passed away . . . And even now for thine assurance, that thou think not this the idle fashioning of sleep, a great sow shall be found lying under the oaks on the shore, with her new-born litter of thirty head: white she couches on the ground, and the brood about her teats is white. By this token in thirty revolving years shall Ascanius found a city, Alba of bright name. My prophecy is sure. Now hearken, and I will briefly instruct thee how thou mayest unravel and overcome thy present task. An Arcadian people sprung of Pallas, following in their king Evander's company beneath his banners, have chosen a place in these coasts, and set a city on the hills, called Pallanteum after Pallas their forefather. These wage perpetual war with the Latin race; these do thou take to thy camp's alliance, and join with them in league. Myself I [57-89]will lead thee by my banks and straight along my stream, that thou mayest oar thy way upward against the river.Up and arise, goddess-born, and even with the setting stars address thy prayers to Juno as is meet, and vanquish her wrath and menaces with humble vows.To me thou shalt pay a conqueror's sacrifice.I am he whom thou seest washing the banks with full flood and severing the rich tilth, glassy Tiber, best beloved by heaven of rivers.Here is my stately home; my fountain-head is among high cities.'
Thus spoke the River, and sank in the depth of the pool: night and sleep left Aeneas.He arises, and, looking towards the radiant sky of the sunrising, holds up water from the river in fitly-hollowed palms, and pours to heaven these accents:
'Nymphs, Laurentine Nymphs, from whom is the generation of rivers, and thou, O father Tiber, with thine holy flood, receive Aeneas and deign to save him out of danger.What pool soever holds thy source, who pitiest our discomforts, from whatsoever soil thou dost spring excellent in beauty, ever shall my worship, ever my gifts frequent thee, the hornèd river lord of Hesperian waters.Ah, be thou only by me, and graciously confirm thy will.'So speaks he, and chooses two galleys from his fleet, and mans them with rowers, and withal equips a crew with arms.
And lo! suddenly, ominous and wonderful to tell, the milk-white sow, of one colour with her white brood, is espied through the forest couched on the green brink; whom to thee, yes to thee, queenly Juno, good Aeneas offers in sacrifice, and sets with her offspring before thine altar. All that night long Tiber assuaged his swelling stream, and silently stayed his refluent wave, smoothing the surface of his waters to the fashion of still pool and quiet mere, to spare [90-121]labour to the oar.So they set out and speed on their way with prosperous cries; the painted fir slides along the waterway; the waves and unwonted woods marvel at their far-gleaming shields, and the gay hulls afloat on the river.They outwear a night and a day in rowing, ascend the long reaches, and pass under the chequered shadows of the trees, and cut through the green woodland in the calm water.The fiery sun had climbed midway in the circle of the sky when they see afar fortress walls and scattered house roofs, where now the might of Rome hath risen high as heaven; then Evander held a slender state.Quickly they turn their prows to land and draw near the town.
It chanced on that day the Arcadian king paid his accustomed sacrifice to the great son of Amphitryon and all the gods in a grove before the city.With him his son Pallas, with him all the chief of his people and his poor senate were offering incense, and the blood steamed warm at their altars.When they saw the high ships, saw them glide up between the shady woodlands and rest on their silent oars, the sudden sight appals them, and all at once they rise and stop the banquet.Pallas courageously forbids them to break off the rites; snatching up a spear, he flies forward, and from a hillock cries afar: 'O men, what cause hath driven you to explore these unknown ways?or whither do you steer?What is your kin, whence your habitation?Is it peace or arms you carry hither?'Then from the lofty stern lord Aeneas thus speaks, stretching forth in his hand an olive bough of peace-bearing:
'Thou seest men born of Troy and arms hostile to the Latins, who have driven us to flight in insolent warfare.We seek Evander; carry this message, and tell him that chosen men of the Dardanian captains are come pleading for an armed alliance.'
Pallas stood amazed at the august name. 'Descend,' [122-154]he cries, 'whoso thou art, and speak with my father face to face, and enter our home and hospitality.'And giving him the grasp of welcome, he caught and clung to his hand.Advancing, they enter the grove and leave the river.Then Aeneas in courteous words addresses the King:
'Best of the Grecian race, thou whom fortune hath willed that I supplicate, holding before me boughs dressed in fillets, no fear stayed me because thou wert a Grecian chief and an Arcadian, or allied by descent to the twin sons of Atreus.Nay, mine own prowess and the sanctity of divine oracles, our ancestral kinship, and the fame of thee that is spread abroad over the earth, have allied me to thee and led me willingly on the path of fate.Dardanus, who sailed to the Teucrian land, the first father and founder of the Ilian city, was born, as Greeks relate, of Electra the Atlantid; Electra's sire is ancient Atlas, whose shoulder sustains the heavenly spheres.Your father is Mercury, whom white Maia conceived and bore on the cold summit of Cyllene; but Maia, if we give any credence to report, is daughter of Atlas, that same Atlas who bears up the starry heavens; so both our families branch from a single blood.In this confidence I sent no embassy, I framed no crafty overtures; myself I have presented mine own person, and come a suppliant to thy courts.The same Daunian race pursues us and thee in merciless warfare; we once expelled, they trust nothing will withhold them from laying all Hesperia wholly beneath their yoke, and holding the seas that wash it above and below.Accept and return our friendship.We can give brave hearts in war, high souls and men approved in deeds.'
Aeneas ended.The other ere now scanned in a long gaze the face and eyes and all the form of the speaker; then thus briefly returns:
'How gladly, bravest of the Teucrians, do I hail and [155-188]own thee!how I recall thy father's words and the very tone and glance of great Anchises!For I remember how Priam son of Laomedon, when he sought Salamis on his way to the realm of his sister Hesione, went on to visit the cold borders of Arcadia.Then early youth clad my cheeks with bloom.I admired the Teucrian captains, admired their lord, the son of Laomedon; but Anchises moved high above them all.My heart burned with youthful passion to accost him and clasp hand in hand; I made my way to him, and led him eagerly to Pheneus' high town.Departing he gave me an adorned quiver and Lycian arrows, a scarf inwoven with gold, and a pair of golden bits that now my Pallas possesses.Therefore my hand is already joined in the alliance you seek, and soon as to-morrow's dawn rises again over earth, I will send you away rejoicing in mine aid, and supply you from my store.Meanwhile, since you are come hither in friendship, solemnise with us these yearly rites which we may not defer, and even now learn to be familiar at your comrades' board.'
This said, he commands the feast and the wine-cups to be replaced whence they were taken, and with his own hand ranges them on the grassy seat, and welcomes Aeneas to the place of honour, with a lion's shaggy fell for cushion and a hospitable chair of maple.Then chosen men with the priest of the altar in emulous haste bring roasted flesh of bulls, and pile baskets with the gift of ground corn, and serve the wine.Aeneas and the men of Troy with him feed on the long chines of oxen and the entrails of the sacrifice.
After hunger is driven away and the desire of food stayed, King Evander speaks: 'No idle superstition that knows not the gods of old hath ordered these our solemn rites, this customary feast, this altar of august sanctity; saved from bitter perils, O Trojan guest, do we worship, and [189-225]most due are the rites we inaugurate. Look now first on this overhanging cliff of stone, where shattered masses lie strewn, and the mountain dwelling stands desolate, and rocks are rent away in vast ruin. Here was a cavern, awful and deep-withdrawn, impenetrable to the sunbeams, where the monstrous half-human shape of Cacus had his hold: the ground was ever wet with fresh slaughter, and pallid faces of men, ghastly with gore, hung nailed on the haughty doors. This monster was the son of Vulcan, and spouted his black fires from his mouth as he moved in giant bulk. To us also in our desire time bore a god's aid and arrival. For princely Alcides the avenger came glorious in the spoils of triple Geryon slain; this way the Conqueror drove the huge bulls, and his oxen filled the river valley. But savage Cacus, infatuate to leave nothing undared or unhandled in craft or crime, drives four bulls of choice shape away from their pasturage, and as many heifers of excellent beauty. And these, that there should be no straightforward footprints, he dragged by the tail into his cavern, the track of their compelled path reversed, and hid them behind the screen of rock. No marks were there to lead a seeker to the cavern. Meanwhile the son of Amphitryon, his herds filled with food, was now breaking up his pasturage and making ready to go. The oxen low as they depart; all the woodland is filled with their complaint as they clamorously quit the hills. One heifer returned the cry, and, lowing from the depth of the dreary cave, baffled the hope of Cacus from her imprisonment. At this the grief and choler of Alcides blazed forth dark and infuriate. Seizing in his hand his club of heavy knotted oak, he seeks with swift pace the aery mountain steep. Then, as never before, did we see Cacus afraid and his countenance troubled; he goes flying swifter than the wind and seeks his cavern; fear wings his feet. As he shut himself in, and, bursting the [226-260]chains, dropped the vast rock slung in iron by his father's craft, and blocked the doorway with its pressure, lo! the Tirynthian came in furious wrath, and, scanning all the entry, turned his face this way and that and ground his teeth. Thrice, hot with rage, he circles all Mount Aventine; thrice he assails the rocky portals in vain; thrice he sinks down outwearied in the valley. There stood a sharp rock of flint with sides cut sheer away, rising over the cavern's ridge a vast height to see, fit haunt for foul birds to build on. This—for, sloping from the ridge, it leaned on the left towards the river—he loosened, urging it from the right till he tore it loose from its deep foundations; then suddenly shook it free; with the shock the vast sky thunders, the banks leap apart, and the amazed river recoils. But the den, Cacus' huge palace, lay open and revealed, and the depths of gloomy cavern were made manifest; even as though some force tearing earth apart should unlock the infernal house, and disclose the pallid realms abhorred of heaven, and deep down the monstrous gulf be descried where the ghosts flutter in the streaming daylight. On him then, surprised in unexpected light, shut in the rock's recesses and howling in strange fashion, Alcides from above hurls missiles and calls all his arms to aid, and presses hard on him with boughs and enormous millstones. And he, for none other escape from peril is left, vomits from his throat vast jets of smoke, wonderful to tell, and enwreathes his dwelling in blind gloom, blotting view from the eyes, while in the cave's depth night thickens with smoke-bursts in a darkness shot with fire. Alcides broke forth in anger, and with a bound hurled himself sheer amid the flames, where the smoke rolls billowing and voluminous, and the cloud surges black through the enormous den. Here, as Cacus in the darkness spouts forth his idle fires, he grasps and twines tight round him, till his eyes start out and his throat [261-295]is drained of blood under the strangling pressure.Straightway the doors are torn open and the dark house laid plain; the stolen oxen and forsworn plunder are shewn forth to heaven, and the misshapen carcase dragged forward by the feet.Men cannot satisfy their soul with gazing on the terrible eyes, the monstrous face and shaggy bristling chest, and the throat with its quenched fires.Thenceforth this sacrifice is solemnised, and a younger race have gladly kept the day; Potitius the inaugurator, and the Pinarian family, guardians of the rites of Hercules, have set in the grove this altar, which shall ever be called of us Most Mighty, and shall be our mightiest evermore.Wherefore arise, O men, and enwreathe your hair with leafy sprays, and stretch forth the cups in your hands; call on our common god and pour the glad wine.'He ended; when the twy-coloured poplar of Hercules hid his shaded hair with pendulous plaited leaf, and the sacred goblet filled his hand.Speedily all pour glad libation on the board, and supplicate the gods.
Meanwhile the evening star draws nigher down the slope of heaven, and now the priests went forth, Potitius at their head, girt with skins after their fashion, and bore torches aflame. They renew the banquet, and bring the grateful gift of a second repast, and heap the altars with loaded platters. Then the Salii stand round the lit altar-fires to sing, their brows bound with poplar boughs, one chorus of young men, one of elders, and extol in song the praises and deeds of Hercules; how first he strangled in his gripe the twin terrors, the snakes of his stepmother; how he likewise shattered in war famous cities, Troy and Oechalia; how under Eurystheus the King he bore the toil of a thousand labours by Juno's malign decrees. Thine hand, unconquered, slays the cloud-born double-bodied race, Hylaeus and Pholus, the Cretan monster, and the huge lion in the hollow Nemean rock. Before thee the Stygian pools [296-329]shook for fear, before thee the warder of hell, couched on half-gnawn bones in his blood-stained cavern; to thee not any form was terrible, not Typhoeus' self towering in arms; thou wast not bereft of counsel when the snake of Lerna encompassed thee with thronging heads.Hail, true seed of Jove, deified glory!graciously visit us and these thy rites with favourable feet.Such are their songs of praise; they crown all with the cavern of Cacus and its fire-breathing lord.All the woodland echoes with their clamour, and the hills resound.
Thence all at once, the sacred rites accomplished, retrace their way to the city.The age-worn King walked holding Aeneas and his son by his side for companions on his way, and lightened the road with changing talk.Aeneas admires and turns his eyes lightly round about, pleased with the country; and gladly on spot after spot inquires and hears of the memorials of earlier men.Then King Evander, founder of the fortress of Rome:
'In these woodlands dwelt Fauns and Nymphs sprung of the soil, and a tribe of men born of stocks and hard oak; who had neither law nor grace of life, nor did they know to yoke bulls or lay up stores or save their gains, but were nurtured by the forest boughs and the hard living of the huntsman. Long ago Saturn came from heaven on high in flight before Jove's arms, an exile from his lost realm. He gathered together the unruly race scattered on the mountain heights, and gave them statutes, and chose Latium to be their name, since in these borders he had found a safe hiding-place. Beneath his reign were the ages named of gold; thus, in peace and quietness, did he rule the nations; till gradually there crept in a sunken and stained time, the rage of war, and the lust of possession. Then came the Ausonian clan and the tribes of Sicania, and many a time the land of Saturn put away her name. Then were kings, [330-364]and fierce Thybris with his giant bulk, from whose name we of Italy afterwards called the Tiber river, when it lost the true name of old, Albula.Me, cast out from my country and following the utmost limits of the sea, Fortune the omnipotent and irreversible doom settled in this region; and my mother the Nymph Carmentis' awful warnings and Apollo's divine counsel drove me hither.'
Scarce was this said; next advancing he points out the altar and the Carmental Gate, which the Romans call anciently by that name in honour of the Nymph Carmentis, seer and soothsayer, who sang of old the coming greatness of the Aeneadae and the glory of Pallanteum.Next he points out the wide grove where valiant Romulus set his sanctuary, and the Lupercal in the cool hollow of the rock, dedicate to Lycean Pan after the manner of Parrhasia.Therewithal he shows the holy wood of Argiletum, and calls the spot to witness as he tells the slaying of his guest Argus.Hence he leads him to the Tarpeian house, and the Capitol golden now, of old rough with forest thickets.Even then men trembled before the wood and rock.'This grove,' he cries, 'this hill with its leafy crown, is a god's dwelling, though whose we know not; the Arcadians believe Jove himself hath been visible, when often he shook the darkening aegis in his hand and gathered the storm-clouds.Thou seest these two towns likewise with walls overthrown, relics and memorials of men of old.This fortress lord Janus built, this Saturn; the name of this was once Janiculum, of that Saturnia.'
With such mutual words they drew nigh the house of poor Evander, and saw scattered herds lowing on the Roman Forum and down the gay Carinae. When they reached his dwelling, 'This threshold,' he cries, 'Alcides the Conqueror stooped to cross; in this palace he rested. Dare thou, my guest, to despise riches; mould thyself to [365-396]like dignity of godhead, and come not exacting to our poverty.'He spoke, and led tall Aeneas under the low roof of his narrow dwelling, and laid him on a couch of stuffed leaves and the skin of a Libyan she-bear.Night falls and clasps the earth in her dusky wings.
But Venus, stirred in spirit by no vain mother's alarms, and moved by the threats and stern uprisal of the Laurentines, addresses herself to Vulcan, and in her golden bridal chamber begins thus, breathing divine passion in her speech:
'While Argolic kings wasted in war the doomed towers of Troy, the fortress fated to fall in hostile fires, no succour did I require for her wretched people, no weapons of thine art and aid: nor would I task, dear my lord, thee or thy toils for naught, though I owed many and many a debt to the children of Priam, and had often wept the sore labour of Aeneas.Now by Jove's commands he hath set foot in the Rutulian borders; I now therefore come with entreaty, and ask armour of the god I worship.For the son she bore, the tears of Nereus' daughter, of Tithonus' consort, could melt thine heart.Look what nations are gathering, what cities bar their gates and sharpen the sword against me for the desolation of my children.'
The goddess ended, and, as he hesitates, clasps him round in the soft embrace of her snowy arms. He suddenly caught the wonted flame, and the heat known of old pierced him to the heart and overran his melting frame: even as when, bursting from the thunder peal, a sparkling cleft of fire shoots through the storm-clouds with dazzling light.His consort knew, rejoiced in her wiles, and felt her beauty.Then her lord speaks, enchained by Love the immortal:
'Why these far-fetched pleas? Whither, O goddess, is thy trust in me gone? Had like distress been thine, [397-431]even then we might unblamed have armed thy Trojans, nor did doom nor the Lord omnipotent forbid Troy to stand, and Priam to survive yet ten other years.And now, if thou purposest war, and this is thy counsel, whatever charge I can undertake in my craft, in aught that may be made of iron or molten electrum, whatever fire and air can do, cease thou to entreat as doubtful of thy strength.'These words spoken, he clasped his wife in the desired embrace, and, sinking in her lap, wooed quiet slumber to overspread his limbs.
Thereon, so soon as sleep, now in mid-career of waning night, had given rest and gone; soon as a woman, whose task is to sustain life with her distaff and the slender labours of the loom, kindles the ashes of her slumbering fire, her toil encroaching on the night, and sets a long task of fire-lit spinning to her maidens, that so she may keep her husband's bed unsullied and nourish her little children,—even so the Lord of Fire, nor slacker in his hours than she, rises from his soft couch to the work of his smithy. An island rises by the side of Sicily and Aeolian Lipare, steep with smoking cliffs, whereunder the vaulted and thunderous Aetnean caverns are hollowed out for Cyclopean forges, the strong strokes on the anvils echo in groans, ore of steel hisses in the vaults, and the fire pants in the furnaces: the house of Vulcan, and Vulcania the land's name. Hither now the Lord of Fire descends from heaven's height. In the vast cavern the Cyclopes were forging iron, Brontes and Steropes and Pyracmon with bared limbs. Shaped in their hands was a thunderbolt, in part already polished, such as the Father of Heaven hurls down on earth in multitudes, part yet unfinished. Three coils of frozen rain, three of watery mist they had enwrought in it, three of ruddy fire and winged south wind; now they were mingling in their work the awful splendours, the sound and terror, and the [432-469]angry pursuing flames.Elsewhere they hurried on a chariot for Mars with flying wheels, wherewith he stirs up men and cities; and burnished the golden serpent-scales of the awful aegis, the armour of wrathful Pallas, and the entwined snakes on the breast of the goddess, the Gorgon head with severed neck and rolling eyes.'Away with all!'he cries: 'stop your tasks unfinished, Cyclopes of Aetna, and attend to this; a warrior's armour must be made.Now must strength, now quickness of hand be tried, now all our art lend her guidance.Fling off delay.'He spoke no more; but they all bent rapidly to the work, allotting their labours equally.Brass and ore of gold flow in streams, and wounding steel is molten in the vast furnace.They shape a mighty shield, to receive singly all the weapons of the Latins, and weld it sevenfold, circle on circle.Some fill and empty the windy bellows of their blast, some dip the hissing brass in the trough.They raise their arms mightily in responsive time, and turn the mass of metal about in the grasp of their tongs.
While the lord of Lemnos is busied thus in the borders of Aeolia, Evander is roused from his low dwelling by the gracious daylight and the matin songs of birds from the eaves.The old man arises, and draws on his body raiment, and ties the Tyrrhene shoe latchets about his feet; then buckles to his side and shoulder his Tegeaean sword, and swathes himself in a panther skin that droops upon his left.Therewithal two watch-dogs go before him from the high threshold, and accompany their master's steps.The hero sought his guest Aeneas in the privacy of his dwelling, mindful of their talk and his promised bounty.Nor did Aeneas fail to be astir with the dawn.With the one went his son Pallas, with the other Achates.They meet and clasp hands, and, sitting down within the house, at length enjoy unchecked converse.The King begins thus: .
[470-505]'Princely chief of the Teucrians, in whose lifetime I will never allow the state or realm of Troy vanquished, our strength is scant to succour in war for so great a name. On this side the Tuscan river shuts us in; on that the Rutulian drives us hard, and thunders in arms about our walls. But I purpose to unite to thee mighty peoples and the camp of a wealthy realm; an unforeseen chance offers this for thy salvation. Fate summons thy approach. Not far from here stands fast Agylla city, an ancient pile of stone, where of old the Lydian race, eminent in war, settled on the Etruscan ridges. For many years it flourished, till King Mezentius ruled it with insolent sway and armed terror. Why should I relate the horrible murders, the savage deeds of the monarch? May the gods keep them in store for himself and his line! Nay, he would even link dead bodies to living, fitting hand to hand and face to face (the torture!) , and in the oozy foulness and corruption of the dreadful embrace so slay them by a lingering death. But at last his citizens, outwearied by his mad excesses, surround him and his house in arms, cut down his comrades, and hurl fire on his roof. Amid the massacre he escaped to the refuge of Rutulian land and the armed defence of Turnus' friendship. So all Etruria hath risen in righteous fury, and in immediate battle claim their king for punishment. Over these thousands will I make thee chief, O Aeneas; for their noisy ships crowd all the shore, and they bid the standards advance, while the aged diviner stays them with prophecies: "O chosen men of Maeonia, flower and strength of them, of old time, whom righteous anger urges on the enemy, and Mezentius inflames with deserved wrath, to no Italian is it permitted to hold this great nation in control: choose foreigners to lead you." At that, terrified by the divine warning, the Etruscan lines have encamped on the plain; Tarchon himself hath sent ambassadors to me with the crown [506-539]and sceptre of the kingdom, and offers the royal attire will I but enter their camp and take the Tyrrhene realm.But old age, frozen to dulness, and exhausted with length of life, denies me the load of empire, and my prowess is past its day.I would urge it on my son, did not the mixture of blood by his Sabellian mother make this half his native land.Thou, to whose years and race alike the fates extend their favour, on whom fortune calls, enter thou in, a leader supreme in bravery over Teucrians and Italians.Mine own Pallas likewise, our hope and comfort, I will send with thee; let him grow used to endure warfare and the stern work of battle under thy teaching, to regard thine actions, and from his earliest years look up to thee.To him will I give two hundred Arcadian cavalry, the choice of our warlike strength, and Pallas as many more to thee in his own name.'
Scarce had he ended; Aeneas, son of Anchises, and trusty Achates gazed with steadfast face, and, sad at heart, were revolving inly many a labour, had not the Cytherean sent a sign from the clear sky. For suddenly a flash and peal comes quivering from heaven, and all seemed in a moment to totter, and the Tyrrhene trumpet-blast to roar along the sky. They look up; again and yet again the heavy crash re-echoes. They see in the serene space of sky armour gleam red through a cloud in the clear air, and ring clashing out. The others stood in amaze; but the Trojan hero knew the sound for the promise of his goddess mother; then he speaks: 'Ask not, O friend, ask not in any wise what fortune this presage announces; it is I who am summoned of heaven. This sign the goddess who bore me foretold she would send if war assailed, and would bring through the air to my succour armour from Vulcan's hands. . . . Ah, what slaughter awaits the wretched Laurentines! what a price, O Turnus, wilt thou pay me! how many shields and helmets and brave bodies of men shalt thou, [540-573]Lord Tiber, roll under thy waves!Let them call for armed array and break the league!'
These words uttered, he rises from the high seat, and first wakes with fresh fire the slumbering altars of Hercules, and gladly draws nigh his tutelar god of yesternight and the small deities of the household.Alike Evander, and alike the men of Troy, offer up, as is right, choice sheep of two years old.Thereafter he goes to the ships and revisits his crew, of whose company he chooses the foremost in valour to attend him to war; the rest glide down the water and float idly with the descending stream, to come with news to Ascanius of his father's state.They give horses to the Teucrians who seek the fields of Tyrrhenia; a chosen one is brought for Aeneas, housed in a tawny lion skin that glitters with claws of gold.Rumour flies suddenly, spreading over the little town, that they ride in haste to the courts of the Tyrrhene king.Mothers redouble their prayers in terror, as fear treads closer on peril and the likeness of the War God looms larger in sight.Then Evander, clasping the hand of his departing son, clings to him weeping inconsolably, and speaks thus:
'Oh, if Jupiter would restore me the years that are past, as I was when, close under Praeneste, I cut down their foremost ranks and burned the piled shields of the conquered! Then this right hand sent King Erulus down to hell, though to him at his birth his mother Feronia (awful to tell) had given three lives and triple arms to wield; thrice must he be laid low in death; yet then this hand took all his lives and as often stripped him of his arms. Never should I now, O son, be severed from thy dear embrace; never had the insolent sword of Mezentius on my borders dealt so many cruel deaths, widowed the city of so many citizens. But you, O heavenly powers, and thou, Jupiter, Lord and Governor of Heaven, have compassion, I pray, on [574-609]the Arcadian king, and hear a father's prayers.If your deity and decrees keep my Pallas safe for me, if I live that I may see him and meet him yet, I pray for life; any toil soever I have patience to endure.But if, O Fortune, thou threatenest some dread calamity, now, ah now, may I break off a cruel life, while anxiety still wavers and expectation is in doubt, while thou, dear boy, my one last delight, art yet clasped in my embrace; let no bitterer message wound mine ear.'These words the father poured forth at the final parting; his servants bore him swooning within.
And now the cavalry had issued from the open gates, Aeneas and trusty Achates among the foremost, then other of the Trojan princes, Pallas conspicuous amid the column in scarf and inlaid armour; like the Morning Star, when, newly washed in the ocean wave, he shews his holy face in heaven, and melts the darkness away.Fearful mothers stand on the walls and follow with their eyes the cloud of dust and the squadrons gleaming in brass.They, where the goal of their way lies nearest, bear through the brushwood in armed array.Forming in column, they advance noisily, and the horse hoof shakes the crumbling plain with four-footed trampling.There is a high grove by the cold river of Caere, widely revered in ancestral awe; sheltering hills shut it in all about and girdle the woodland with their dark firs.Rumour is that the old Pelasgians, who once long ago held the Latin borders, consecrated the grove and its festal day to Silvanus, god of the tilth and flock.Not far from it Tarchon and his Tyrrhenians were encamped in a protected place; and now from the hill-top the tents of all their army might be seen outspread on the fields.Lord Aeneas and his chosen warriors draw hither and refresh their weary horses and limbs.
But Venus the white goddess drew nigh, bearing her gifts through the clouds of heaven; and when she saw her [610-646]son withdrawn far apart in the valley's recess by the cold river, cast herself in his way, and addressed him thus: 'Behold perfected the presents of my husband's promised craftsmanship: so shalt thou not shun, O my child, soon to challenge the haughty Laurentines or fiery Turnus to battle.' The Cytherean spoke, and sought her son's embrace, and laid the armour glittering under an oak over against him. He, rejoicing in the magnificence of the goddess' gift, cannot have his fill of turning his eyes over it piece by piece, and admires and handles between his arms the helmet, dread with plumes and spouting flame, as when a blue cloud takes fire in the sunbeams and gleams afar; then the smooth greaves of electrum and refined gold, the spear, and the shield's ineffable design. There the Lord of Fire had fashioned the story of Italy and the triumphs of the Romans, not witless of prophecy or ignorant of the age to be; there all the race of Ascanius' future seed, and their wars fought one by one. Likewise had he fashioned the she-wolf couched after the birth in the green cave of Mars; round her teats the twin boys hung playing, and fearlessly mouthed their foster-mother; she, with round neck bent back, stroked them by turns and shaped their bodies with her tongue. Thereto not far from this he had set Rome and the lawless rape of the Sabines in the concourse of the theatre when the great Circensian games were celebrated, and a fresh war suddenly arising between the people of Romulus and aged Tatius and austere Cures. Next these same kings laid down their mutual strife and stood armed before Jove's altar with cup in hand, and joined treaty over a slain sow. Not far from there four-horse chariots driven apart had torn Mettus asunder (but thou, O Alban, shouldst have kept by thy words!) , and Tullus tore the flesh of the liar through the forest, his splashed blood dripping from the briars. Therewithal Porsena commanded [647-681]to admit the exiled Tarquin, and held the city in the grasp of a strong blockade; the Aeneadae rushed on the sword for liberty. Him thou couldst espy like one who chafes and like one who threatens, because Cocles dared to tear down the bridge, and Cloelia broke her bonds and swam the river. Highest of all Manlius, warder of the Tarpeian fortress, stood with the temple behind him and held the high Capitoline; and the thatch of Romulus' palace stood rough and fresh. And here the silver goose, fluttering in the gilded colonnades, cried that the Gauls were there on the threshold. The Gauls were there among the brushwood, hard on the fortress, secure in the darkness and the dower of shadowy night. Their clustering locks are of gold, and of gold their attire; their striped cloaks glitter, and their milk-white necks are entwined with gold. Two Alpine pikes sparkle in the hand of each, and long shields guard their bodies. Here he had embossed the dancing Salii and the naked Luperci, the crests wreathed in wool, and the sacred shields that fell from heaven; in cushioned cars the virtuous matrons led on their rites through the city. Far hence he adds the habitations of hell also, the high gates of Dis and the dooms of guilt; and thee, O Catiline, clinging on the beetling rock, and shuddering at the faces of the Furies; and far apart the good, and Cato delivering them statutes. Amidst it all flows wide the likeness of the swelling sea, wrought in gold, though the foam surged gray upon blue water; and round about dolphins, in shining silver, swept the seas with their tails in circle as they cleft the tide. In the centre were visible the brazen war-fleets of Actium; thou mightest see all Leucate swarm in embattled array, and the waves gleam with gold. Here Caesar Augustus, leading Italy to battle with Fathers and People, with gods of household and of state, stands on the lofty stern; prosperous flames jet round his brow, and his [682-715]ancestral star dawns overhead. Elsewhere Agrippa, with favouring winds and gods, proudly leads on his column; on his brows glitters the prow-girt naval crown, the haughty emblazonment of the war. Here Antonius with barbarian aid and motley arms, from the conquered nations of the Dawn and the shore of the southern sea, carries with him Egypt and the Eastern forces of utmost Bactra, and the shameful Egyptian woman goes as his consort. All at once rush on, and the whole ocean is torn into foam by straining oars and triple-pointed prows. They steer to sea; one might think that the Cyclades were uptorn and floated on the main, or that lofty mountains clashed with mountains, so mightily do their crews urge on the turreted ships. Flaming tow and the winged steel of darts shower thickly from their hands; the fields of ocean redden with fresh slaughter. Midmost the Queen calls on her squadron with the timbrel of her country, nor yet casts back a glance on the twin snakes behind her. Howling Anubis, and gods monstrous and multitudinous, level their arms against Neptune and Venus and against Minerva; Mars rages amid the havoc, graven in iron, and the Fatal Sisters hang aloft, and Discord strides rejoicing with garment rent, and Bellona attends her with blood-stained scourge. Looking thereon, Actian Apollo above drew his bow; with the terror of it all Egypt and India, every Arab and Sabaean, turned back in flight. The Queen herself seemed to call the winds and spread her sails, and even now let her sheets run slack. Her the Lord of Fire had fashioned amid the carnage, wan with the shadow of death, borne along by the waves and the north-west wind; and over against her the vast bulk of mourning Nile, opening out his folds and calling with all his raiment the conquered people into his blue lap and the coverture of his streams. But Caesar rode into the city of Rome in triple triumph, and dedicated his vowed [716-731]offering to the gods to stand for ever, three hundred stately shrines all about the city.The streets were loud with gladness and games and shouting.In all the temples was a band of matrons, in all were altars, and before the altars slain steers strewed the ground.Himself he sits on the snowy threshold of Phoebus the bright, reviews the gifts of the nations and ranges them on the haughty doors.The conquered tribes move in long line, diverse as in tongue, so in fashion of dress and armour.Here Mulciber had designed the Nomad race and the ungirt Africans, here the Leleges and Carians and archer Gelonians.Euphrates went by now with smoother waves, and the Morini utmost of men, and the hornèd Rhine, the untamed Dahae, and Araxes chafing under his bridge.
These things he admires on the shield of Vulcan, his mother's gift, and rejoicing in the portraiture of unknown history, lifts on his shoulder the destined glories of his children.
BOOK NINTH
THE SIEGE OF THE TROJAN CAMP
And while thus things pass far in the distance, Juno daughter of Saturn sent Iris down the sky to gallant Turnus, then haply seated in his forefather Pilumnus' holy forest dell.To him the child of Thaumas spoke thus with roseate lips:
'Turnus, what no god had dared promise to thy prayer, behold, is brought unasked by the circling day.Aeneas hath quitted town and comrades and fleet to seek Evander's throne and Palatine dwelling-place.Nor is it enough; he hath pierced to Corythus' utmost cities, and is mustering in arms a troop of Lydian rustics.Why hesitate?now, now is the time to call for chariot and horses.Break through all hindrance and seize the bewildered camp.'
She spoke, and rose into the sky on poised wings, and flashed under the clouds in a long flying bow. He knew her, and lifting either hand to heaven, with this cry pursued her flight: 'Iris, grace of the sky, who hath driven thee down the clouds to me and borne thee to earth? Whence is this sudden sheen of weather? I see the sky parting asunder, and the wandering stars in the firmament. I follow the high omen, whoso thou art that callest me to arms.' And with these words he drew nigh the wave, and [23-58]caught up water from its brimming eddy, making many prayers to the gods and burdening the air with vows.
And now all the army was advancing on the open plain, rich in horses, rich in raiment of broidered gold. Messapus rules the foremost ranks, the sons of Tyrrheus the rear. Turnus commands the centre: even as Ganges rising high in silence when his seven streams are still, or the rich flood of Nile when he ebbs from the plains, and is now sunk into his channel. On this the Teucrians descry a sudden cloud of dark dust gathering, and the blackness rising on the plain. Caïcus raises a cry from the mound in front: 'What mass of misty gloom, O citizens, is rolling hitherward? to arms in haste! serve out weapons, climb the walls. The enemy approaches, ho!' With mighty clamour the Teucrians pour in through all the gates and fill the works. For so at his departure Aeneas the great captain had enjoined; were aught to chance meanwhile, they should not venture to range their line or trust the plain, but keep their camp and the safety of the entrenched walls. So, though shame and wrath beckon them on to battle, they yet bar the gates and do his bidding, and await the foe armed and in shelter of the towers. Turnus, who had flown forward in advance of his tardy column, comes up suddenly to the town with a train of twenty chosen cavalry, borne on a Thracian horse dappled with white, and covered by a golden helmet with scarlet plume. 'Who will be with me, my men, to be first on the foe? See!' he cries; and sends a javelin spinning into the air to open battle, and advances towering on the plain. His comrades take up the cry, and follow with dreadful din, wondering at the Teucrians' coward hearts, that they issue not on even field nor face them in arms, but keep in shelter of the camp. Hither and thither he rides furiously, tracing the walls, and seeking entrance where way is none. And as a wolf prowling [59-92]about some crowded sheepfold, when, beaten sore of winds and rains, he howls at the pens by midnight; safe beneath their mothers the lambs keep bleating on; he, savage and insatiate, rages in anger against the flock he cannot reach, tired by the long-gathering madness for food, and the throat unslaked with blood: even so the Rutulian, as he gazes on the walled camp, kindles in anger, and indignation is hot in his iron frame.By what means may he essay entrance?by what passage hurl the imprisoned Trojans from the rampart and fling them on the plain?Close under the flanking camp lay the fleet, fenced about with mounds and the waters of the river; it he attacks, and calls for fire to his exultant comrades, and eagerly catches a blazing pine-torch in his hand.Then indeed they press on, quickened by Turnus' presence, and all the band arm them with black faggots.The hearth-fires are plundered; the smoky brand trails a resinous glare, and the Fire-god sends clouds of glowing ashes upward.
What god, O Muses, guarded the Trojans from the rage of the fire?who repelled the fierce flame from their ships?Tell it; ancient is the assurance thereof, but the fame everlasting.What time Aeneas began to shape his fleet on Phrygian Ida, and prepared to seek the high seas, the Berecyntian, they say, the very Mother of gods, spoke to high Jove in these words: 'Grant, O son, to my prayer, what her dearness claims who bore thee and laid Olympus under thy feet.My pine forest beloved of me these many years, my grove was on the mountain's crown, whither men bore my holy things, dim with dusky pine and pillared maples.These, when he required a fleet, I gave gladly to the Dardanian; now fear wrings me with sharp distress.Relieve my terrors, and grant a mother's prayers such power that they may yield to no stress of voyaging or of stormy gust: be birth on our hills their avail.'
[93-126]Thus her son in answer, who wheels the starry worlds: 'O mother, whither callest thou fate?or what dost thou seek for these of thine?May hulls have the right of immortality that were fashioned by mortal hand?and may Aeneas traverse perils secure in insecurity?To what god is power so great given?Nay, but when, their duty done, they shall lie at last in their Ausonian haven, from all that have outgone the waves and borne their Dardanian captain to the fields of Laurentum, will I take their mortal body, and bid them be goddesses of the mighty deep, even as Doto the Nereïd and Galatea, when they cut the sea that falls away from their breasts in foam.'He ended; and by his brother's Stygian streams, by the banks of the pitchy black-boiling chasm he nodded confirmation, and shook all Olympus with his nod.
So the promised day was come, and the destinies had fulfilled their due time, when Turnus' injury stirred the Mother to ward the brands from her holy ships.First then a strange light flashed on all eyes, and a great glory from the Dawn seemed to dart over the sky, with the choirs of Ida; then an awful voice fell through air, filling the Trojan and Rutulian ranks: 'Disquiet not yourselves, O Teucrians, to guard ships of mine, neither arm your hands: sooner shall Turnus burn the seas than these holy pines.You, go free; go, goddesses of the sea; the Mother bids it.'And immediately each ship breaks the bond that held it, as with dipping prows they plunge like dolphins deep into the water: from it again (O wonderful and strange!)they rise with maidens' faces in like number, and bear out to sea.
The Rutulians stood dumb: Messapus himself is terror-stricken among his disordered cavalry; even the stream of Tiber pauses with hoarse murmur, and recoils from sea. But bold Turnus fails not a whit in confidence; nay, he [127-158]raises their courage with words, nay, he chides them: 'On the Trojans are these portents aimed; Jupiter himself hath bereft them of their wonted succour; nor do they abide Rutulian sword and fire.So are the seas pathless for the Teucrians, nor is there any hope in flight; they have lost half their world.And we hold the land: in all their thousands the nations of Italy are under arms. In no wise am I dismayed by those divine oracles of doom the Phrygians insolently advance.Fate and Venus are satisfied, in that the Trojans have touched our fruitful Ausonian fields.I too have my fate in reply to theirs, to put utterly to the sword the guilty nation who have robbed me of my bride; not the sons of Atreus alone are touched by that pain, nor may Mycenae only rise in arms. But to have perished once is enough!To have sinned once should have been enough, in all but utter hatred of the whole of womankind.Trust in the sundering rampart, and the hindrance of their trenches, so little between them and death, gives these their courage: yet have they not seen Troy town, the work of Neptune's hand, sink into fire?But you, my chosen, who of you makes ready to breach their palisade at the sword's point, and join my attack on their fluttered camp?I have no need of Vulcanian arms, of a thousand ships, to meet the Teucrians.All Etruria may join on with them in alliance: nor let them fear the darkness, and the cowardly theft of their Palladium, and the guards cut down on the fortress height.Nor will we hide ourselves unseen in a horse's belly; in daylight and unconcealed are we resolved to girdle their walls with flame.Not with Grecians will I make them think they have to do, nor a Pelasgic force kept off till the tenth year by Hector.Now, since the better part of day is spent, for what remains refresh your bodies, glad that we have done so well, and expect the order of battle.'
[159-192]Meanwhile charge is given to Messapus to blockade the gates with pickets of sentries, and encircle the works with watchfires.Twice seven are chosen to guard the walls with Rutulian soldiery; but each leads an hundred men, crimson-plumed and sparkling in gold.They spread themselves about and keep alternate watch, and, lying along the grass, drink deep and set brazen bowls atilt.The fires glow, and the sentinels spend the night awake in games.
Down on this the Trojans look forth from the rampart, as they hold the height in arms; withal in fearful haste they try the gates and lay gangways from bastion to bastion, and bring up missiles.Mnestheus and valiant Serestus speed the work, whom lord Aeneas appointed, should misfortune call, to be rulers of the people and governors of the state.All their battalions, sharing the lot of peril, keep watch along the walls, and take alternate charge of all that requires defence.
On guard at the gate was Nisus son of Hyrtacus, most valiant in arms, whom Ida the huntress had sent in Aeneas' company with fleet javelin and light arrows; and by his side Euryalus, fairest of all the Aeneadae and the wearers of Trojan arms, showing on his unshaven boy's face the first bloom of youth. These two were one in affection, and charged in battle together; now likewise their common guard kept the gate. Nisus cries: 'Lend the gods this fervour to the soul, Euryalus? or does fatal passion become a proper god to each? Long ere now my soul is restless to begin some great deed of arms, and quiet peace delights it not. Thou seest how confident in fortune the Rutulians stand. Their lights glimmer far apart; buried in drunken sleep they have sunk to rest; silence stretches all about. Learn then what doubt, what purpose, now rises in my spirit. People and senate, they all cry that Aeneas [193-226]be summoned, and men be sent to carry him tidings.If they promise what I ask in thy name—for to me the glory of the deed is enough—methinks I can find beneath yonder hillock a path to the walls of Pallanteum town.'
Euryalus stood fixed, struck through with high ambition, and therewith speaks thus to his fervid friend: 'Dost thou shun me then, Nisus, to share thy company in highest deeds?shall I send thee alone into so great perils?Not thus did my warrior father Opheltes rear and nurture me amid the Argive terror and the agony of Troy, nor thus have I borne myself by thy side while following noble Aeneas to his utmost fate.Here is a spirit, yes here, that scorns the light of day, that deems lightly bought at a life's price that honour to which thou dost aspire.'
To this Nisus: 'Assuredly I had no such fear of thee; no, nor could I; so may great Jupiter, or whoso looks on earth with equal eyes, restore me to thee triumphant.But if haply—as thou seest often and often in so forlorn a hope—if haply chance or deity sweep me to adverse doom, I would have thee survive; thine age is worthier to live.Be there one to commit me duly to earth, rescued or ransomed from the battlefield: or, if fortune deny that, to pay me far away the rites of funeral and the grace of a tomb.Neither would I bring such pain on thy poor mother, she who singly of many matrons hath dared to follow her boy to the end, and slights great Acestes' city.'
And he: 'In vain dost thou string idle reasons; nor does my purpose yield or change its place so soon.Let us make haste.'He speaks, and rouses the watch; they come up, and relieve the guard; quitting their post, he and Nisus stride on to seek the prince.
The rest of living things over all lands were soothing their cares in sleep, and their hearts forgot their pain; the foremost Trojan captains, a chosen band, held council [227-261]of state upon the kingdom; what should they do, or who would now be their messenger to Aeneas?They stand, leaning on their long spears and grasping their shields, in mid level of the camp.Then Nisus and Euryalus together pray with quick urgency to be given audience; their matter is weighty and will be worth the delay.Iülus at once heard their hurried plea, and bade Nisus speak.Thereon the son of Hyrtacus: 'Hear, O people of Aeneas, with favourable mind, nor regard our years in what we offer.Sunk in sleep and wine, the Rutulians are silent; we have stealthily spied the open ground that lies in the path through the gate next the sea.The line of fires is broken, and their smoke rises darkly upwards.If you allow us to use the chance towards seeking Aeneas in Pallanteum town, you will soon descry us here at hand with the spoils of the great slaughter we have dealt.Nor shall we miss the way we go; up the dim valleys we have seen the skirts of the town, and learned all the river in continual hunting.'
Thereon aged Aletes, sage in counsel: 'Gods of our fathers, under whose deity Troy ever stands, not wholly yet do you purpose to blot out the Trojan race, when you have brought us young honour and hearts so sure as this.' So speaking, he caught both by shoulder and hand, with tears showering down over face and feature. 'What guerdon shall I deem may be given you, O men, what recompense for these noble deeds? First and fairest shall be your reward from the gods and your own conduct; and Aeneas the good shall speedily repay the rest, and Ascanius' fresh youth never forget so great a service.' —'Nay,' breaks in Ascanius, 'I whose sole safety is in my father's return, I adjure thee and him, O Nisus, by our great household gods, by the tutelar spirit of Assaracus and hoar Vesta's sanctuary—on your knees I lay all my fortune and trust—recall my father; [262-296]give him back to sight; all sorrow disappears in his recovery.I will give a pair of cups my father took in vanquished Arisba, wrought in silver and rough with tracery, twin tripods, and two large talents of gold, and an ancient bowl of Sidonian Dido's giving.If it be indeed our lot to possess Italy and grasp a conquering sceptre, and to assign the spoil; thou sawest the horse and armour of Turnus as he went all in gold; that same horse, the shield and the ruddy plume, will I reserve from partition, thy reward, O Nisus, even from now.My father will give besides twelve mothers of the choicest beauty, and men captives, all in their due array; above these, the space of meadow-land that is now King Latinus' own domain.Thee, O noble boy, whom mine age follows at a nearer interval, even now I welcome to all my heart, and embrace as my companion in every fortune.No glory shall be sought for my state without thee; whether peace or war be in conduct, my chiefest trust for deed and word shall be in thee.'
Answering whom Euryalus speaks thus: 'Let but the day never come to prove me degenerate from this daring valour; fortune may fall prosperous or adverse. But above all thy gifts, one thing I ask of thee. My poor mother of Priam's ancient race, whom neither the Ilian land nor King Acestes' city kept from following me forth, her I now leave in ignorance of this danger, such as it is, and without a farewell, because—night and thine hand be witness! —I cannot bear a parent's tears. But thou, I pray, support her want and relieve her loneliness. Let me take with me this hope in thee, I shall go more daringly to every fortune.' Deeply stirred at heart, the Dardanians shed tears, fair Iülus before them all, as the likeness of his own father's love wrung his soul. Then he speaks thus: . . . 'Assure thyself all that is due to thy mighty enterprise; [297-330]for she shall be a mother to me, and only in name fail to be Creüsa; nor slight is the honour reserved for the mother of such a son.What chance soever follow this deed, I swear by this head whereby my father was wont to swear, what I promise to thee on thy prosperous return shall abide the same for thy mother and kindred.'So speaks he weeping, and ungirds from his shoulder the sword inlaid with gold, fashioned with marvellous skill by Lycaon of Gnosus and fitly set in a sheath of ivory.Mnestheus gives Nisus the shaggy spoils of a lion's hide; faithful Aletes exchanges his helmet.They advance onward in arms, and as they go all the company of captains, young and old, speed them to the gates with vows.Likewise fair Iülus, with a man's thought and a spirit beyond his years, gave many messages to be carried to his father.But the breezes shred all asunder and give them unaccomplished to the clouds.
They issue and cross the trenches, and through the shadow of night seek the fatal camp, themselves first to be the death of many a man. All about they see bodies strewn along the grass in drunken sleep, chariots atilt on the shore, the men lying among their traces and wheels, with their armour by them, and their wine. The son of Hyrtacus began thus: 'Euryalus, now for daring hands; all invites them; here lies our way; see thou that none raise a hand from behind against us, and keep far-sighted watch. Here will I deal desolation, and make a broad path for thee to follow.' So speaks he and checks his voice; therewith he drives his sword at lordly Rhamnes, who haply on carpets heaped high was drawing the full breath of sleep; a king himself, and King Turnus' best-beloved augur, but not all his augury could avert his doom. Three of his household beside him, lying carelessly among their arms, and the armour-bearer and charioteer of Remus go [331-364]down before him, caught at the horses' feet. Their drooping necks he severs with the sword, then beheads their lord likewise and leaves the trunk spouting blood; the dark warm gore soaks ground and cushions. Therewithal Lamyrus and Lamus, and beautiful young Serranus, who that night had played long and late, and lay with the conquering god heavy on every limb; happy, had he played out the night, and carried his game to day! Even thus an unfed lion riots through full sheepfolds, for the madness of hunger urges him, and champs and rends the fleecy flock that are dumb with fear, and roars with blood-stained mouth. Nor less is the slaughter of Euryalus; he too rages all aflame; an unnamed multitude go down before his path, and Fadus and Herbesus and Rhoetus and Abaris, unaware; Rhoetus awake and seeing all, but he hid in fear behind a great bowl; right in whose breast, as he rose close by, he plunged the sword all its length, and drew it back heavy with death. He vomits forth the crimson life-blood, and throws up wine mixed with blood in the death agony. The other presses hotly on his stealthy errand, and now bent his way towards Messapus' comrades, where he saw the last flicker of the fires go down, and the horses tethered in order cropping the grass; when Nisus briefly speaks thus, for he saw him carried away by excess of murderous desire; 'Let us stop; for unfriendly daylight draws nigh. Vengeance is sated to the full; a path is cut through the enemy.' Much they leave behind, men's armour wrought in solid silver, and bowls therewith, and beautiful carpets. Euryalus tears away the decorations of Rhamnes and his sword-belt embossed with gold, a gift which Caedicus, wealthiest of men of old, sends to Remulus of Tibur when plighting friendship far away; he on his death-bed gives them to his grandson for his own; after his death the Rutulians captured them as spoil of war; these he fits on the shoulders valiant [365-396]in vain, then puts on Messapus' light helmet with its graceful plumes.They issue from the camp and make for safety.
Meanwhile an advanced guard of cavalry were on their way from the Latin city, while the rest of their marshalled battalions linger on the plains, and bore a reply to King Turnus; three hundred men all under shield, in Volscens' leading. And now they approached the camp and drew near the wall, when they descry the two turning away by the pathway to the left; and in the glimmering darkness of night the forgotten helmet betrayed Euryalus, glittering as it met the light. It seemed no thing of chance. Volscens cries aloud from his column: 'Stand, men! why on the march, or how are you in arms? or whither hold you your way?' They offer nothing in reply, but quicken their flight into the forest, and throw themselves on the night. On this side and that the horsemen bar the familiar crossways, and encircle every outlet with sentinels. The forest spread wide in tangled thickets and dark ilex; thick growth of briars choked it all about, and the muffled pathway glimmered in a broken track. Hampered by the shadowy boughs and his cumbrous spoil, Euryalus in his fright misses the line of way. Nisus gets clear; and now unthinkingly he had passed the enemy, and the place afterwards called Albani from Alba's name; then the deep coverts were of King Latinus' domain; when he stopped, and looked back in vain for his lost friend. 'Euryalus, unhappy! on what ground have I left thee? or where shall I follow, again unwinding all the entanglement of the treacherous woodland way?' Therewith he marks and retraces his footsteps, and wanders down the silent thickets. He hears the horses, hears the clatter and signal-notes of the pursuers. Nor had he long to wait, when shouts reach his ears, and he sees Euryalus, whom even now, in the perplexity of ground and [397-431]darkness, the whole squadron have borne down in a sudden rush, and seize in spite of all his vain struggles. What shall he do? with what force, what arms dare his rescue? or shall he rush on his doom amid their swords, and find in their wounds a speedy and glorious death? Quickly he draws back his arm with poised spear, and looking up to the moon on high, utters this prayer: 'Do thou give present aid to our enterprise, O Latonian goddess, glory of the stars and guardian of the woodlands: by all the gifts my father Hyrtacus ever bore for my sake to thine altars, by all mine own hand hath added from my hunting, or hung in thy dome, or fixed on thy holy roof, grant me to confound these masses, and guide my javelin through the air.' He ended, and with all the force of his body hurls the steel. The flying spear whistles through the darkness of the night, and comes full on the shield of Sulmo, and there snaps, and the broken shaft passes on through his heart. Spouting a warm tide from his breast he rolls over chill in death, and his sides throb with long-drawn gasps. Hither and thither they gaze round. Lo, he all the fiercer was poising another weapon high by his ear; while they hesitate, the spear went whizzing through both Tagus' temples, and pierced and stuck fast in the warm brain. Volscens is mad with rage, and nowhere espies the sender of the weapon, nor where to direct his fury. 'Yet meanwhile thy warm blood shalt pay me vengeance for both,' he cries; and unsheathing his sword, he made at Euryalus. Then indeed frantic with terror Nisus shrieks out; no longer could he shroud himself in darkness or endure such agony. 'On me, on me, I am here, I did it, on me turn your steel, O Rutulians! Mine is all the guilt; he dared not, no, nor could not; to this heaven I appeal and the stars that know; he only loved his hapless friend too well.' Such words he was uttering; but the sword driven hard home is gone [432-464]clean through his ribs and pierces the white breast.Euryalus rolls over in death, and the blood runs over his lovely limbs, and his neck sinks and settles on his shoulder; even as when a lustrous flower cut away by the plough droops in death, or weary-necked poppies bow down their head if overweighted with a random shower.But Nisus rushes amidst them, and alone among them all makes at Volscens, keeps to Volscens alone: round him the foe cluster, and on this side and that hurl him back: none the less he presses on, and whirls his sword like lightning, till he plunges it full in the face of the shrieking Rutulian, and slays his enemy as he dies.Then, stabbed through and through, he flung himself above his lifeless friend, and there at last found the quiet sleep of death.
Happy pair!if my verse is aught of avail, no length of days shall ever blot you from the memory of time, while the house of Aeneas shall dwell by the Capitoline's stedfast stone, and the lord of Rome hold sovereignty.
The victorious Rutulians, with their spoils and the plunder regained, bore dead Volscens weeping to the camp.Nor in the camp was the wailing less, when Rhamnes was found a bloodless corpse, and Serranus and Numa and all their princes destroyed in a single slaughter.Crowds throng towards the corpses and the men wounded to death, the ground fresh with warm slaughter and the swoln runlets of frothing blood.They mutually recognise the spoils, Messapus' shining helmet and the decorations that cost such sweat to win back.
And now Dawn, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, scattered over earth her fresh shafts of early light; now the sunlight streams in, now daylight unveils the world. Turnus, himself fully armed, awakes his men to arms, and each leader marshals to battle his brazen lines and whets their ardour with varying rumours. Nay, pitiable sight! they [465-499]fix on spear-points and uprear and follow with loud shouts the heads of Euryalus and Nisus. . . . The Aeneadae stubbornly face them, lining the left hand wall (for their right is girdled by the river), hold the deep trenches and stand gloomily on the high towers, stirred withal by the faces they know, alas, too well, in their dark dripping gore. Meanwhile Rumour on fluttering wings rushes with the news through the alarmed town and glides to the ears of Euryalus' mother. But instantly the warmth leaves her woeful body, the shuttle starts from her hand and the threads unroll. She darts forth in agony, and with woman's wailing and torn hair runs distractedly towards the walls and the foremost columns, recking naught of men, naught of peril or weapons; thereon she fills the air with her complaint: 'Is it thus I behold thee, O Euryalus? Couldst thou, the latest solace of mine age, leave me alone so cruelly? nor when sent into such danger was one last word of thee allowed thine unhappy mother? Alas, thou liest in a strange land, given for a prey to the dogs and fowls of Latium! nor was I, thy mother, there for chief mourner, to lay thee out or close thine eyes or wash thy wounds, and cover thee with the garment I hastened on for thee whole nights and days, an anxious old woman taking comfort from the loom. Whither shall I follow? or what land now holds thy mangled corpse, thy body torn limb from limb? Is this all of what thou wert that returns to me, O my son? is it this I have followed by land and sea? Strike me through of your pity, on me cast all your weapons, Rutulians; make me the first sacrifice of your steel. Or do thou, mighty lord of heaven, be merciful, and with thine own weapon hurl this hateful life to the nether deep, since in no wise else may I break away from life's cruelty.' At this weeping cry their courage falters, and a sigh of sorrow passes all along; their strength is benumbed and broken for battle. Her, while [500-535]her grief kindled, at Ilioneus' and weeping Iülus' bidding Idaeus and Actor catch up and carry home in their arms.
But the terrible trumpet-note afar rang on the shrill brass; a shout follows, and is echoed from the sky.The Volscians hasten up in even line under their advancing roof of shields, and set to fill up the trenches and tear down the palisades.Some seek entrance by scaling the walls with ladders, where the defenders' battle-line is thin, and light shows through gaps in the ring of men.The Teucrians in return shower weapons of every sort, and push them down with stiff poles, practised by long warfare in their ramparts' defence: and fiercely hurl heavy stones, so be they may break the shielded line; while they, crowded under their shell, lightly bear all the downpour.But now they fail; for where the vast mass presses close, the Teucrians roll a huge block tumbling down that makes a wide gap in the Rutulians and crashes through their armour-plating.Nor do the bold Rutulians care longer to continue the blind fight, but strive to clear the rampart with missiles.Elsewhere in dreadful guise Mezentius brandishes his Etruscan pine and hurls smoking brands; but Messapus, tamer of horses, seed of Neptune, tears away the palisading and calls for ladders to the ramparts.
Thy sisterhood, O Calliope, I pray inspire me while I sing the destruction spread then and there by Turnus' sword, the deaths dealt from his hand, and whom each warrior sent down to the under world; and unroll with me the broad borders of war.
A tower loomed vast with lofty gangways at a point of vantage; this all the Italians strove with main strength to storm, and set all their might and device to overthrow it; the Trojans in return defended it with stones and hurled showers of darts through the loopholes. Turnus, leading the attack, threw a blazing torch that caught flaming on the [536-570]side wall; swoln by the wind, the flame seized the planking and clung devouring to the standards. Those within, in hurry and confusion, desire retreat from their distress; in vain; while they cluster together and fall back to the side free from the destroyer, the tower sinks prone under the sudden weight with a crash that thunders through all the sky. Pierced by their own weapons, and impaled on hard splinters of wood, they come half slain to the ground with the vast mass behind them. Scarcely do Helenor alone and Lycus struggle out; Helenor in his early prime, whom a slave woman of Licymnos bore in secret to the Maeonian king, and sent to Troy in forbidden weapons, lightly armed with sheathless sword and white unemblazoned shield. And he, when he saw himself among Turnus' encircling thousands, ranks on this side and ranks on this of Latins, as a wild beast which, girt with a crowded ring of hunters, dashes at their weapons, hurls herself unblinded on death, and comes with a bound upon the spears; even so he rushes to his death amid the enemy, and presses on where he sees their weapons thickest. But Lycus, far fleeter of foot, holds by the walls in flight midway among foes and arms, and strives to catch the coping in his grasp and reach the hands of his comrades. And Turnus pursuing and aiming as he ran, thus upbraids him in triumph: 'Didst thou hope, madman, thou mightest escape our hands?' and catches him as he clings, and tears him and a great piece of the wall away: as when, with a hare or snowy-bodied swan in his crooked talons, Jove's armour-bearer soars aloft, or the wolf of Mars snatches from the folds some lamb sought of his mother with incessant bleating. On all sides a shout goes up. They advance and fill the trenches with heaps of earth; some toss glowing brands on the roofs. Ilioneus strikes down Lucetius with a great fragment of mountain rock as, carrying fire, he draws [571-606]nigh the gate.Liger slays Emathion, Asylas Corinaeus, the one skilled with the javelin, the other with the stealthy arrow from afar.Caeneus slays Ortygius; Turnus victorious Caeneus; Turnus Itys and Clonius, Dioxippus, and Promolus, and Sagaris, and Idas where he stood in front of the turret top; Capys Privernus: him Themillas' spear had first grazed lightly; the madman threw down his shield to carry his hand to the wound; so the arrow winged her way, and pinning his hand to his left side, broke into the lungs with deadly wound.The son of Arcens stood splendid in arms, and scarf embroidered with needlework and bright with Iberian blue, the beautiful boy sent by his father Arcens from nurture in the grove of our Lady about the streams of Symaethus, where Palicus' altar is rich and gracious.Laying down his spear, Mezentius whirled thrice round his head the tightened cord of his whistling sling, pierced him full between the temples with the molten bullet, and stretched him all his length upon the sand.
Then, it is said, Ascanius first aimed his flying shaft in war, wont before to frighten beasts of the chase, and struck down a brave Numanian, Remulus by name, but lately allied in bridal to Turnus' younger sister.He advancing before his ranks clamoured things fit and unfit to tell, and strode along lofty and voluble, his heart lifted up with his fresh royalty.
'Take you not shame to be again held leaguered in your ramparts, O Phrygians twice taken, and to make walls your fence from death? Behold them who demand in war our wives for theirs! What god, what madness, hath driven you to Italy? Here are no sons of Atreus nor glozing Ulysses. A race of hardy breed, we carry our newborn children to the streams and harden them in the bitter icy water; as boys they spend wakeful nights over the chase, and tire out the woodland; but in manhood, [607-639]unwearied by toil and trained to poverty, they subdue the soil with their mattocks, or shake towns in war.Every age wears iron, and we goad the flanks of our oxen with reversed spear; nor does creeping old age weaken our strength of spirit or abate our force.White hairs bear the weight of the helmet; and it is ever our delight to drive in fresh spoil and live on our plunder.Yours is embroidered raiment of saffron and shining sea-purple.Indolence is your pleasure, your delight the luxurious dance; you wear sleeved tunics and ribboned turbans.O right Phrygian women, not even Phrygian men!traverse the heights of Dindymus, where the double-mouthed flute breathes familiar music.The drums call you, and the Berecyntian boxwood of the mother of Ida; leave arms to men, and lay down the sword.'
As he flung forth such words of ill-ominous strain, Ascanius brooked it not, and aimed an arrow on him from the stretched horse sinew; and as he drew his arms asunder, first stayed to supplicate Jove in lowly vows: 'Jupiter omnipotent, deign to favour this daring deed. My hands shall bear yearly gifts to thee in thy temple, and bring to stand before thine altars a steer with gilded forehead, snow-white, carrying his head high as his mother's, already pushing with his horn and making the sand fly up under his feet.' The Father heard and from a clear space of sky thundered on the left; at once the fated bow rings, the grim-whistling arrow flies from the tense string, and goes through the head of Remulus, the steel piercing through from temple to temple. 'Go, mock valour with insolence of speech! Phrygians twice taken return this answer to Rutulians.' Thus and no further Ascanius; the Teucrians respond in cheers, and shout for joy in rising height of courage. Then haply in the tract of heaven tressed Apollo sate looking down from his cloud on the [640-673]Ausonian ranks and town, and thus addresses triumphant Iülus: 'Good speed to thy young valour, O boy!this is the way to heaven, child of gods and parent of gods to be!Rightly shall all wars fated to come sink to peace beneath the line of Assaracus; nor art thou bounded in a Troy.'So speaking, he darts from heaven's height, and cleaving the breezy air, seeks Ascanius.Then he changes the fashion of his countenance, and becomes aged Butes, armour-bearer of old to Dardanian Anchises, and the faithful porter of his threshold; thereafter his lord gave him for Ascanius' attendant.In all points like the old man Apollo came, voice and colour, white hair, and grimly clashing arms, and speaks these words to eager Iülus:
'Be it enough, son of Aeneas, that the Numanian hath fallen unavenged beneath thine arrows; this first honour great Apollo allows thee, nor envies the arms that match his own.Further, O boy, let war alone.'Thus Apollo began, and yet speaking retreated from mortal view, vanishing into thin air away out of their eyes.The Dardanian princes knew the god and the arms of deity, and heard the clash of his quiver as he went.So they restrain Ascanius' keenness for battle by the words of Phoebus' will; themselves they again close in conflict, and cast their lives into the perilous breach.Shouts run all along the battlemented walls; ringing bows are drawn and javelin thongs twisted: all the ground is strewn with missiles.Shields and hollow helmets ring to blows; the battle swells fierce; heavy as the shower lashes the ground that sets in when the Kids are rainy in the West; thick as hail pours down from storm-clouds on the shallows, when the rough lord of the winds congeals his watery deluge and breaks up the hollow vapours in the sky.
Pandarus and Bitias, sprung of Alcanor of Ida, whom woodland Iaera bore in the grove of Jupiter, grown now [674-709]tall as their ancestral pines and hills, fling open the gates barred by their captain's order, and confident in arms, wilfully invite the enemy within the walls.Themselves within they stand to right and left in front of the towers, sheathed in iron, the plumes flickering over their stately heads: even as high in air around the gliding streams, whether on Padus' banks or by pleasant Athesis, twin oaks rise lifting their unshorn heads into the sky with high tops asway.The Rutulians pour in when they see the entrance open.Straightway Quercens and Aquicolus beautiful in arms, and desperate Tmarus, and Haemon, seed of Mars, either gave back in rout with all their columns, or in the very gateway laid down their life.Then the spirits of the combatants swell in rising wrath, and now the Trojans gather swarming to the spot, and dare to close hand to hand and to sally farther out.
News is brought to Turnus the captain, as he rages afar among the routed foe, that the enemy surges forth into fresh slaughter and flings wide his gates. He breaks off unfinished, and, fired with immense anger, rushes towards the haughty brethren at the Dardanian gate. And on Antiphates first, for first he came, the bastard son of mighty Sarpedon by a Theban mother, he hurls his javelin and strikes him down; the Italian cornel flies through the yielding air, and, piercing the gullet, runs deep into his breast; a frothing tide pours from the dark yawning wound, and the steel grows warm where it pierces the lung. Then Meropes and Erymas, then Aphidnus goes down before his hand; then Bitias, fiery-eyed and exultant, not with a javelin; for not to a javelin had he given his life; but the loud-whistling pike came hurled with a thunderbolt's force; neither twofold bull's hide kept it back, nor the trusty corslet's double scales of gold: his vast limbs sink in a heap; earth utters a groan, and the great shield clashes [710-745]over him: even as once and again on the Euboïc shore of Baiae falls a mass of stone, built up of great blocks and so cast into the sea; thus does it tumble prone, crashes into the shoal water and sinks deep to rest; the seas are stirred, and the dark sand eddies up; therewith the depth of Prochyta quivers at the sound, and the couchant rocks of Inarime, piled above Typhoeus by Jove's commands.
On this Mars armipotent raised the spirit and strength of the Latins, and goaded their hearts to rage, and sent Flight and dark Fear among the Teucrians. From all quarters they gather, since battle is freely offered; and the warrior god inspires. . . . Pandarus, at his brother's fall, sees how fortune stands, what hap rules the day; and swinging the gate round on its hinge with all his force, pushes it to with his broad shoulders, leaving many of his own people shut outside the walls in the desperate conflict, but shutting others in with him as they pour back in retreat. Madman! who saw not the Rutulian prince burst in amid their columns, and fairly shut him into the town, like a monstrous tiger among the silly flocks. At once strange light flashed from his eyes, and his armour rang terribly; the blood-red plumes flicker on his head, and lightnings shoot sparkling from his shield. In sudden dismay the Aeneadae know the hated form and giant limbs. Then tall Pandarus leaps forward, in burning rage at his brother's death: 'This is not the palace of Amata's dower,' he cries, 'nor does Ardea enclose Turnus in her native walls. Thou seest a hostile camp; escape hence is hopeless.' To him Turnus, smiling and cool: 'Begin with all thy valiance, and close hand to hand; here too shalt thou tell that a Priam found his Achilles.' He ended; the other, putting out all his strength, hurls his rough spear, knotty and unpeeled. The breezes caught it; Juno, daughter of Saturn, [746-780]made the wound glance off as it came, and the spear sticks fast in the gate.'But this weapon that my strong hand whirls, this thou shalt not escape; for not such is he who sends weapon and wound.'So speaks he, and rises high on his uplifted sword; the steel severs the forehead midway right between the temples, and divides the beardless cheeks with ghastly wound.He crashes down; earth shakes under the vast weight; dying limbs and brain-spattered armour tumble in a heap to the ground, and the head, evenly severed, dangles this way and that from either shoulder.The Trojans scatter and turn in hasty terror; and had the conqueror forthwith taken thought to burst the bars and let in his comrades at the gate, that had been the last day of the war and of the nation.But rage and mad thirst of slaughter drive him like fire on the foe.First he catches up Phalaris; then Gyges, and hamstrings him; he plucks away their spears, and hurls them on the backs of the flying crowd; Juno lends strength and courage.Halys he sends to join them, and Phegeus, pierced right through the shield; then, as they ignorantly raised their war-cry on the walls, Alcander and Halius, Noëmon and Prytanis.Lynceus advanced to meet him, calling up his comrades; from the rampart the glittering sword sweeps to the left and catches him; struck off by the one downright blow, head and helmet lay far away.Next Amycus fell, the deadly huntsman, incomparable in skill of hand to anoint his arrows and arm their steel with venom; and Clytius the Aeolid, and Cretheus beloved of the Muses, Cretheus of the Muses' company, whose delight was ever in songs and harps and stringing of verses; ever he sang of steeds and armed men and battles.
At last, hearing of the slaughter of their men, the Teucrian captains, Mnestheus and gallant Serestus, come up, and see their comrades in disordered flight and the foe [781-814]let in.And Mnestheus: 'Whither next, whither press you in flight?what other walls, what farther city have you yet?Shall one man, and he girt in on all sides, fellow-citizens, by your entrenchments, thus unchecked deal devastation throughout our city, and send all our best warriors to the under world?Have you no pity, no shame, cowards, for your unhappy country, for your ancient gods, for great Aeneas?'
Kindled by such words, they take heart and rally in dense array. Little by little Turnus drew away from the fight towards the river, and the side encircled by the stream: the more bravely the Teucrians press on him with loud shouts and thickening masses, even as a band that fall on a wrathful lion with levelled weapons, but he, frightened back, retires surly and grim-glaring; and neither does wrath nor courage let him turn his back, nor can he make head, for all that he desires it, against the surrounding arms and men. Even thus Turnus draws lingeringly backward, with unhastened steps, and soul boiling in anger. Nay, twice even then did he charge amid the enemy, twice drove them in flying rout along the walls. But all the force of the camp gathers hastily up; nor does Juno, daughter of Saturn, dare to supply him strength to countervail; for Jupiter sent Iris down through the aery sky, bearing stern orders to his sister that Turnus shall withdraw from the high Trojan town. Therefore neither with shield nor hand can he keep his ground, so overpoweringly from all sides comes upon him the storm of weapons. About the hollows of his temples the helmet rings with incessant clash, and the solid brass is riven beneath the stones; the horsehair crest is rent away; the shield-boss avails not under the blows; Mnestheus thunders on with his Trojans, and pours in a storm of spears. All over him the sweat trickles and pours in swart stream, and no breathing space is given; sick gasps shake [815-818]his exhausted limbs.Then at last, with a headlong bound, he leapt fully armed into the river; the river's yellow eddies opened for him as he came, and the buoyant water brought him up, and, washing away the slaughter, returned him triumphant to his comrades.
BOOK TENTH
THE BATTLE ON THE BEACH
Meanwhile the heavenly house omnipotent unfolds her doors, and the father of gods and king of men calls a council in the starry dwelling; whence he looks sheer down on the whole earth, the Dardanian camp, and the peoples of Latium.They sit down within from doorway to doorway: their lord begins:
'Lords of heaven, wherefore is your decree turned back, and your minds thus jealously at strife?I forbade Italy to join battle with the Teucrians; why this quarrel in face of my injunction?What terror hath bidden one or another run after arms and tempt the sword?The due time of battle will arrive, call it not forth, when furious Carthage shall one day sunder the Alps to hurl ruin full on the towers of Rome.Then hatred may grapple with hatred, then hostilities be opened; now let them be, and cheerfully join in the treaty we ordain.'
Thus Jupiter in brief; but not briefly golden Venus returns in answer: .
'O Lord, O everlasting Governor of men and things—for what else may we yet supplicate? —beholdest thou how the Rutulians brave it, and Turnus, borne charioted through the ranks, proudly sweeps down the tide of battle? Bar [22-58]and bulwark no longer shelter the Trojans; nay, within the gates and even on the mounded walls they clash in battle and make the trenches swim with blood. Aeneas is away and ignorant. Wilt thou never then let our leaguer be raised? Again a foe overhangs the walls of infant Troy; and another army, and a second son of Tydeus rises from Aetolian Arpi against the Trojans. Truly I think my wounds are yet to come, and I thy child am keeping some mortal weapons idle. If the Trojans steered for Italy without thy leave and defiant of thy deity, let them expiate their sin; aid not such with thy succour. But if so many oracles guided them, given by god and ghost, why may aught now reverse thine ordinance or write destiny anew? Why should I recall the fleets burned on the coast of Eryx? why the king of storms, and the raging winds roused from Aeolia, or Iris driven down the clouds? Now hell too is stirred (this share of the world was yet untried) and Allecto suddenly let loose above to riot through the Italian towns. In no wise am I moved for empire; that was our hope while Fortune stood; let those conquer whom thou wilt. If thy cruel wife leave no region free to Teucrians, by the smoking ruins of desolated Troy, O father, I beseech thee, grant Ascanius unhurt retreat from arms, grant me my child's life. Aeneas may well be tossed over unknown seas and follow what path soever fortune open to him; him let me avail to shelter and withdraw from the turmoil of battle. Amathus is mine, high Paphos and Cythera, and my house of Idalia; here, far from arms, let him spend an inglorious life. Bid Carthage in high lordship rule Ausonia; there will be nothing there to check the Tyrian cities. What help was it for the Trojans to escape war's doom and thread their flight through Argive fires, to have exhausted all those perils of sea and desolate lands, while they seek Latium and the towers of a Troy rebuilt? Were it not better to have [59-91]clung to the last ashes of their country, and the ground where once was Troy?Give back, I pray, Xanthus and Simoïs to a wretched people, and let the Teucrians again, O Lord, circle through the fates of Ilium.'
Then Queen Juno, swift and passionate:
'Why forcest thou me to break long silence and proclaim my hidden pain? Hath any man or god constrained Aeneas to court war or make armed attack on King Latinus? In oracular guidance he steered for Italy: be it so: he whom raving Cassandra sent on his way! Did we urge him to quit the camp or entrust his life to the winds? to give the issue of war and the charge of his ramparts to a child? to stir the loyalty of Tyrrhenia or throw peaceful nations into tumult? What god, what potent cruelty of ours, hath driven him on his hurt? Where is Juno in this, or Iris sped down the clouds? It shocks thee that Italians should enring an infant Troy with flame, and Turnus set foot on his own ancestral soil—he, grandchild of Pilumnus, son of Venilia the goddess: how, that the dark brands of Troy assail the Latins? that Trojans subjugate and plunder fields not their own? how, that they choose their brides and tear plighted bosom from bosom? that their gestures plead for peace, and their ships are lined with arms? Thou canst steal thine Aeneas from Grecian hands, and spread before them a human semblance of mist and empty air; thou canst turn his fleet into nymphs of like number: is it dreadful if we retaliate with any aid to the Rutulians? Aeneas is away and ignorant; away and ignorant let him be. Paphos is thine and Idalium, thine high Cythera; why meddlest thou with fierce spirits and a city big with war? Is it we who would overthrow the tottering state of Phrygia? we? or he who brought the Achaeans down on the hapless Trojans? who made Europe and Asia bristle up in arms, and whose theft shattered the alliance? Was it in my guidance the [92-125]adulterous Dardanian broke into Sparta?or did I send the shafts of passion that kindled war?Then terror for thy children had graced thee; too late now dost thou rise with unjust complaints, and reproaches leave thy lips in vain.'
Thus Juno pleaded; and all the heavenly people murmured in diverse consent; even as rising gusts murmur when caught in the forests, and eddy in blind moanings, betraying to sailors the gale's approach.Then the Lord omnipotent and primal power of the world begins; as he speaks the high house of the gods and trembling floor of earth sink to silence; silent is the deep sky, and the breezes are stilled; ocean hushes his waters into calm.
'Take then to heart and lay deep these words of mine.Since it may not be that Ausonians and Teucrians join alliance, and your quarrel finds no term, to-day, what fortune each wins, what hope each follows, be he Trojan or Rutulian, I will hold in even poise; whether it be Italy's fate or Trojan blundering and ill advice that holds the camp in leaguer.Nor do I acquit the Rutulians.Each as he hath begun shall work out his destiny.Jupiter is one and king over all; the fates will find their way.'By his brother's infernal streams, by the banks of the pitchy black-boiling chasm he signed assent, and made all Olympus quiver at his nod.Here speaking ended: thereon Jupiter rises from his golden throne, and the heavenly people surround and escort him to the doorway.
Meanwhile the Rutulians press round all the gates, dealing grim slaughter and girdling the walls with flame. But the army of the Aeneadae are held leaguered within their trenches, with no hope of retreat. They stand helpless and disconsolate on their high towers, and their thin ring girdles the walls,—Asius, son of Imbrasus, and Thymoetes, son of Hicetaon, and the two Assaraci, and Castor, and old Thymbris together in the front rank: by them Clarus and [126-160]Themon, both full brothers to Sarpedon, out of high Lycia.Acmon of Lyrnesus, great as his father Clytius, or his brother Mnestheus, carries a stone, straining all his vast frame to the huge mountain fragment.Emulously they keep their guard, these with javelins, those with stones, and wield fire and fit arrows on the string.Amid them he, Venus' fittest care, lo!the Dardanian boy, his graceful head uncovered, shines even as a gem set in red gold on ornament of throat or head, or even as gleaming ivory cunningly inlaid in boxwood or Orician terebinth; his tresses lie spread over his milk-white neck, bound by a flexible circlet of gold.Thee, too, Ismarus, proud nations saw aiming wounds and arming thy shafts with poison,—thee, of house illustrious in Maeonia, where the rich tilth is wrought by men's hands, and Pactolus waters it with gold.There too was Mnestheus, exalted in fame as he who erewhile had driven Turnus from the ramparts; and Capys, from whom is drawn the name of the Campanian city.
They had closed in grim war's mutual conflict; Aeneas, while night was yet deep, clove the seas. For when, leaving Evander for the Etruscan camp, he hath audience of the king, and tells the king of his name and race, and what he asks or offers, instructs him of the arms Mezentius is winning to his side, and of Turnus' overbearing spirit, reminds him what is all the certainty of human things, and mingles all with entreaties; delaying not, Tarchon joins forces and strikes alliance. Then, freed from the oracle, the Lydian people man their fleet, laid by divine ordinance in the foreign captain's hand. Aeneas' galley keeps in front, with the lions of Phrygia fastened on her prow, above them overhanging Ida, sight most welcome to the Trojan exiles. Here great Aeneas sits revolving the changing issues of war; and Pallas, clinging on his left side, asks now [161-195]of the stars and their pathway through the dark night, now of his fortunes by land and sea.
Open now the gates of Helicon, goddesses, and stir the song of the band that come the while with Aeneas from the Tuscan borders, and sail in armed ships overseas.
First in the brazen-plated Tiger Massicus cuts the flood; beneath him are ranked a thousand men who have left Clusium town and the city of Cosae; their weapons are arrows, and light quivers on the shoulder, and their deadly bow.With him goes grim Abas, all his train in shining armour, and a gilded Apollo glittering astern.To him Populonia had given six hundred of her children, tried in war, but Ilva three hundred, the island rich in unexhausted mines of steel.Third Asilas, interpreter between men and gods, master of the entrails of beasts and the stars in heaven, of speech of birds and ominous lightning flashes, draws a thousand men after him in serried lines bristling with spears, bidden to his command from Pisa city, of Alphaean birth on Etruscan soil.Astyr follows, excellent in beauty, Astyr, confident in his horse and glancing arms. Three hundred more—all have one heart to follow—come from the householders of Caere and the fields of Minio, and ancient Pyrgi, and fever-stricken Graviscae.
Let me not pass thee by, O Cinyras, bravest in war of Ligurian captains, and thee, Cupavo, with thy scant company, from whose crest rise the swan plumes, fault, O Love, of thee and thine, and blazonment of his father's form. For they tell that Cycnus, in grief for his beloved Phaëthon, while he sings and soothes his woeful love with music amid the shady sisterhood of poplar boughs, drew over him the soft plumage of white old age, and left earth and passed crying through the sky. His son, followed on shipboard with a band of like age, sweeps the huge Centaur forward with his oars; he leans over the water, and [196-227]threatens the waves with a vast rock he holds on high, and furrows the deep seas with his length of keel.
He too calls a train from his native coasts, Ocnus, son of prophetic Manto and the river of Tuscany, who gave thee, O Mantua, ramparts and his mother's name; Mantua, rich in ancestry, yet not all of one blood, a threefold race, and under each race four cantons; herself she is the cantons' head, and her strength is of Tuscan blood.From her likewise hath Mezentius five hundred in arms against him, whom Mincius, child of Benacus, draped in gray reeds, led to battle in his advancing pine.Aulestes moves on heavily, smiting the waves with the swinging forest of an hundred oars; the channels foam as they sweep the sea-floor.He sails in the vast Triton, who amazes the blue waterways with his shell, and swims on with shaggy front, in human show from the flank upward; his belly ends in a dragon; beneath the monster's breast the wave gurgles into foam.So many were the chosen princes who went in thirty ships to aid Troy, and cut the salt plains with brazen prow.
And now day had faded from the sky, and gracious Phoebe trod mid-heaven in the chariot of her nightly wandering: Aeneas, for his charge allows not rest to his limbs, himself sits guiding the tiller and managing the sails. And lo, in middle course a band of his own fellow-voyagers meets him, the nymphs whom bountiful Cybele had bidden be gods of the sea, and turn to nymphs from ships; they swam on in even order, and cleft the flood, as many as erewhile, brazen-plated prows, had anchored on the beach. From far they know their king, and wheel their bands about him, and Cymodocea, their readiest in speech, comes up behind, catching the stern with her right hand: her back rises out, and her left hand oars her passage through the silent water. Then she thus [228-261]accosts her amazed lord: 'Wakest thou, seed of gods, Aeneas? wake, and loosen the sheets of thy sails. We are thy fleet, Idaean pines from the holy hill, now nymphs of the sea. When the treacherous Rutulian urged us headlong with sword and fire, unwillingly we broke thy bonds, and we search for thee over ocean. This new guise our Lady made for us in pity, and granted us to be goddesses and spend our life under the waves. But thy boy Ascanius is held within wall and trench among the Latin weapons and the rough edge of war. Already the Arcadian cavalry and the brave Etruscan together hold the appointed ground. Turnus' plan is fixed to bar their way with his squadrons, that they may not reach the camp. Up and arise, and ere the coming of the Dawn bid thy crews be called to arms; and take thou the shield which the Lord of Fire forged for victory and rimmed about with gold. To-morrow's daylight, if thou deem not my words vain, shall see Rutulians heaped high in slaughter.' She ended, and, as she went, pushed the tall ship on with her hand wisely and well; the ship shoots through the water fleeter than javelin or windswift arrow. Thereat the rest quicken their speed. The son of Anchises of Troy is himself deep in bewilderment; yet the omen cheers his courage. Then looking on the heavenly vault, he briefly prays: 'O gracious upon Ida, mother of gods, whose delight is in Dindymus and turreted cities and lions coupled to thy rein, do thou lead me in battle, do thou meetly prosper thine augury, and draw nigh thy Phrygians, goddess, with favourable feet.' Thus much he spoke; and meanwhile the broad light of returning day now began to pour in, and chased away the night. First he commands his comrades to follow his signals, brace their courage to arms and prepare for battle. And now his Trojans and his camp are in his sight as he stands high astern, when next he lifts the [262-296]blazing shield on his left arm.The Dardanians on the walls raise a shout to the sky.Hope comes to kindle wrath; they hurl their missiles strongly; even as under black clouds cranes from the Strymon utter their signal notes and sail clamouring across the sky, and noisily stream down the gale.But this seemed marvellous to the Rutulian king and the captains of Ausonia, till looking back they see the ships steering for the beach, and all the sea as a single fleet sailing in.His helmet-spike blazes, flame pours from the cresting plumes, and the golden shield-boss spouts floods of fire; even as when in transparent night comets glow blood-red and drear, or the splendour of Sirius, that brings drought and sicknesses on wretched men, rises and saddens the sky with malignant beams.
Yet gallant Turnus in unfailing confidence will prevent them on the shore and repel their approach to land.'What your prayers have sought is given, the sweep of the sword-arm.The god of battles is in the hands of men.Now remember each his wife and home: now recall the high deeds of our fathers' honour.Let us challenge meeting at the water's edge, while they waver and their feet yet slip as they disembark.Fortune aids daring..'So speaks he, and counsels inly whom he shall lead to meet them, whom leave in charge of the leaguered walls.
Meanwhile Aeneas lands his allies by gangways from the high ships. Many watch the retreat and slack of the sea, and leap boldly into the shoal water; others slide down the oars. Tarchon, marking the shore where the shallows do not seethe and plash with broken water, but the sea glides up and spreads its tide unbroken, suddenly turns his bows to land and implores his comrades: 'Now, O chosen crew, bend strongly to your oars; lift your ships, make them go; let the prows cleave this hostile land and the keel plough [297-330]herself a furrow.I will let my vessel break up on such harbourage if once she takes the land.'When Tarchon had spoken in such wise, his comrades rise on their oar-blades and carry their ships in foam towards the Latin fields, till the prows are fast on dry land and all the keels are aground unhurt.But not thy galley, Tarchon; for she dashes on a shoal, and swings long swaying on the cruel bank, pitching and slapping the flood, then breaks up, and lands her crew among the waves.Broken oars and floating thwarts entangle them, and the ebbing wave sucks their feet away.
Nor does Turnus keep idly dallying, but swiftly hurries his whole array against the Trojans and ranges it to face the beach. The trumpets blow. At once Aeneas charges and confounds the rustic squadrons of the Latins, and slays Theron for omen of battle. The giant advances to challenge Aeneas; but through sewed plates of brass and tunic rough with gold the sword plunges in his open side. Next he strikes Lichas, cut from his mother already dead, and consecrated, Phoebus, to thee, since his infancy was granted escape from the perilous steel. Near thereby he struck dead brawny Cisseus and vast Gyas, whose clubs were mowing down whole files: naught availed them the arms of Hercules and their strength of hand, nor Melampus their father, ever of Alcides' company while earth yielded him sore travail. Lo! while Pharus utters weak vaunts the hurled javelin strikes on his shouting mouth. Thou too, while thou followest thy new delight, Clytius, whose cheeks are golden with youthful down—thou, luckless Cydon, struck down by the Dardanian hand, wert lying past thought, ah pitiable! of the young loves that were ever thine, did not the close array of thy brethren interpose, the children of Phorcus, seven in number, and send a sevenfold shower of darts. Some glance ineffectual from helmet and shield; [331-365]some Venus the bountiful turned aside as they grazed his body.Aeneas calls to trusty Achates: 'Give me store of weapons; none that hath been planted in Grecian body on the plains of Ilium shall my hand hurl at Rutulian in vain.'Then he catches and throws his great spear; the spear flies grinding through the brass of Maeon's shield, and breaks through corslet and through breast.His brother Alcanor runs up and sustains with his right arm his sinking brother; through his arm the spear passes speeding straight on its message, and holds its bloody way, and the hand dangles by the sinews lifeless from the shoulder.Then Numitor, seizing his dead brother's javelin, aims at Aeneas, but might not fairly pierce him, and grazed tall Achates on the thigh.Here Clausus of Cures comes confident in his pride of strength, and with a long reach strikes Dryops under the chin, and, urging the stiff spear-shaft home, stops the accents of his speech and his life together, piercing the throat; but he strikes the earth with his forehead, and vomits clots of blood.Three Thracians likewise of Boreas' sovereign race, and three sent by their father Idas from their native Ismarus, fall in divers wise before him.Halesus and his Auruncan troops hasten thither; Messapus too, seed of Neptune, comes up charioted.This side and that strive to hurl back the enemy, and fight hard on the very edge of Ausonia.As when in the depth of air adverse winds rise in battle with equal spirit and strength; not they, not clouds nor sea, yield one to another; long the battle is doubtful; all stands locked in counterpoise: even thus clash the ranks of Troy and ranks of Latium, foot fast on foot, and man crowded up on man.
But in another quarter, where a torrent had driven a wide path of rolling stones and bushes torn away from the banks, Pallas saw his Arcadians, unaccustomed to move as infantry, giving back before the Latin pursuit, when the [366-400]roughness of the ground bade them dismount.This only was left in his strait, to kindle them to valour, now by entreaties, now by taunts: 'Whither flee you, comrades?by your deeds of bravery, by your leader Evander's name, by your triumphant campaigns, and my hope that now rises to rival my father's honour, trust not to flight.Our swords must hew a way through the enemy.Where yonder mass of men presses thickest, there your proud country calls you with Pallas at your head.No gods are they who bear us down; mortals, we feel the pressure of a mortal foe; we have as many lives and hands as he.Lo, the deep shuts us in with vast sea barrier; even now land fails our flight; shall we make ocean or Troy our goal?'
So speaks he, and bursts amid the serried foe. First Lagus meets him, drawn thither by malign destiny; him, as he tugs at a ponderous stone, hurling his spear where the spine ran dissevering the ribs, he pierces and wrenches out the spear where it stuck fast in the bone. Nor does Hisbo catch him stooping, for all that he hoped it; for Pallas, as he rushes unguarded on, furious at his comrade's cruel death, receives him on his sword and buries it in his distended lungs. Next he attacks Sthenius, and Anchemolus of Rhoetus' ancient family, who dared to violate the bridal chamber of his stepmother. You, too, the twins Larides and Thymber, fell on the Rutulian fields, children of Daucus, indistinguishable for likeness and a sweet perplexity to your parents. But now Pallas made cruel difference between you; for thy head, Thymber, is swept off by Evander's sword; thy right hand, Larides, severed, seeks its master, and the dying fingers jerk and clutch at the sword. Fired by his encouragement, and beholding his noble deeds, the Arcadians advance in wrath and shame to meet the enemy in arms. Then Pallas pierces Rhoeteus as he flies past in his chariot. This space, this [401-435]much of respite was given to Ilus; for at Ilus he had aimed the strong spear from afar, and Rhoeteus intercepts its passage, in flight from thee, noble Teuthras and Tyres thy brother; he rolls from the chariot in death, and his heels strike the Rutulian fields. And as the shepherd, when summer winds have risen to his desire, kindles the woods dispersedly; on a sudden the mid spaces catch, and a single flickering line of fire spreads wide over the plain; he sits looking down on his conquest and the revel of the flames; even so, Pallas, do thy brave comrades gather close to sustain thee. But warrior Halesus advances full on them, gathering himself behind his armour; he slays Ladon, Pheres, Demodocus; his gleaming sword shears off Strymonius' hand as it rises to his throat; he strikes Thoas on the face with a stone, and drives the bones asunder in a shattered mass of blood and brains. Halesus had his father the soothsayer kept hidden in the woodland: when the old man's glazing eyes sank to death, the Fates laid hand on him and devoted him to the arms of Evander. Pallas aims at him, first praying thus: 'Grant now, lord Tiber, to the steel I poise and hurl, a prosperous way through brawny Halesus' breast; thine oak shall bear these arms and the dress he wore.' The god heard it; while Halesus covers Imaon, he leaves, alas! his breast unarmed to the Arcadian's weapon. Yet at his grievous death Lausus, himself a great arm of the war, lets not his columns be dismayed; at once he meets and cuts down Abas, the check and stay of their battle. The men of Arcadia go down before him; down go the Etruscans, and you, O Teucrians, invincible by Greece. The armies close, matched in strength and in captains; the rear ranks crowd in; weapons and hands are locked in the press. Here Pallas strains and pushes on, here Lausus opposite, nearly matched in age, excellent in beauty; but fortune [436-467]had denied both return to their own land.Yet that they should meet face to face the sovereign of high Olympus allowed not; an early fate awaits them beneath a mightier foe.
Meanwhile Turnus' gracious sister bids him take Lausus' room, and his fleet chariot parts the ranks. When he saw his comrades, 'It is time,' he cried, 'to stay from battle. I alone must assail Pallas; to me and none other Pallas is due; I would his father himself were here to see.' So speaks he, and his Rutulians draw back from a level space at his bidding. But then as they withdrew, he, wondering at the haughty command, stands in amaze at Turnus, his eyes scanning the vast frame, and his fierce glance perusing him from afar. And with these words he returns the words of the monarch: 'For me, my praise shall even now be in the lordly spoils I win, or in illustrious death: my father will bear calmly either lot: away with menaces.' He speaks, and advances into the level ring. The Arcadians' blood gathers chill about their hearts. Turnus leaps from his chariot and prepares to close with him. And as a lion sees from some lofty outlook a bull stand far off on the plain revolving battle, and flies at him, even such to see is Turnus' coming. When Pallas deemed him within reach of a spear-throw, he advances, if so chance may assist the daring of his overmatched strength, and thus cries into the depth of sky: 'By my father's hospitality and the board whereto thou camest a wanderer, on thee I call, Alcides; be favourable to my high emprise; let Turnus even in death discern me stripping his blood-stained armour, and his swooning eyes endure the sight of his conqueror.' Alcides heard him, and deep in his heart he stifled a heavy sigh, and let idle tears fall. Then with kindly words the father accosts his son: 'Each hath his own appointed day; short and irrecoverable [468-502]is the span of life for all: but to spread renown by deeds is the task of valour. Under high Troy town many and many a god's son fell; nay, mine own child Sarpedon likewise perished. Turnus too his own fate summons, and his allotted period hath reached the goal.' So speaks he, and turns his eyes away from the Rutulian fields. But Pallas hurls his spear with all his strength, and pulls his sword flashing out of the hollow scabbard. The flying spear lights where the armour rises high above the shoulder, and, forcing a way through the shield's rim, ceased not till it drew blood from mighty Turnus. At this Turnus long poises the spear-shaft with its sharp steel head, and hurls it on Pallas with these words: See thou if our weapon have not a keener point. He ended; but for all the shield's plating of iron and brass, for all the bull-hide that covers it round about, the quivering spear-head smashes it fair through and through, passes the guard of the corslet, and pierces the breast with a gaping hole. He tears the warm weapon from the wound; in vain; together and at once life-blood and sense follow it. He falls heavily on the ground, his armour clashes over him, and his bloodstained face sinks in death on the hostile soil. And Turnus standing over him . . . : 'Arcadians,' he cries, 'remember these my words, and bear them to Evander. I send him back his Pallas as was due. All the meed of the tomb, all the solace of sepulture, I give freely. Dearly must he pay his welcome to Aeneas.' And with these words, planting his left foot on the dead, he tore away the broad heavy sword-belt engraven with a tale of crime, the array of grooms foully slain together on their bridal night, and the nuptial chambers dabbled with blood, which Clonus, son of Eurytus, had wrought richly in gold. Now Turnus exults in spoiling him of it, and rejoices at his prize. Ah spirit of man, ignorant of fate and the allotted future, or to keep bounds when elate with prosperity! —the day will [503-535]come when Turnus shall desire to have bought Pallas' safety at a great ransom, and curse the spoils of this fatal day.But with many moans and tears Pallas' comrades lay him on his shield and bear him away amid their ranks.O grief and glory and grace of the father to whom thou shalt return!This one day sent thee first to war, this one day takes thee away, while yet thou leavest heaped high thy Rutulian dead.
And now no rumour of the dreadful loss, but a surer messenger flies to Aeneas, telling him his troops are on the thin edge of doom; it is time to succour the routed Teucrians. He mows down all that meets him, and hews a broad path through their columns with furious sword, as he seeks thee, O Turnus, in thy fresh pride of slaughter. Pallas, Evander, all flash before his eyes; the board whereto but then he had first come a wanderer, and the clasped hands. Here four of Sulmo's children, as many more of Ufens' nurture, are taken by him alive to slaughter in sacrifice to the shade below, and slake the flames of the pyre with captive blood. Next he levelled his spear full on Magus from far. He stoops cunningly; the spear flies quivering over him; and, clasping his knees, he speaks thus beseechingly: 'By thy father's ghost, by Iülus thy growing hope, I entreat thee, save this life for a child and a parent. My house is stately; deep in it lies buried wealth of engraven silver; I have masses of wrought and unwrought gold. The victory of Troy does not turn on this, nor will a single life make so great a difference.' He ended; to him Aeneas thus returns answer: 'All the wealth of silver and gold thou tellest of, spare thou for thy children. Turnus hath broken off this thy trafficking in war, even then when Pallas fell. Thus judges the ghost of my father Anchises, thus Iülus.' So speaking, he grasps his helmet with his left hand, and, bending back his neck, drives his [536-572]sword up to the hilt in the suppliant. Hard by is Haemonides, priest of Phoebus and Trivia, his temples wound with the holy ribboned chaplet, all glittering in white-robed array. Him he meets and chases down the plain, and, standing over his fallen foe, slaughters him and wraps him in great darkness; Serestus gathers the armour and carries it away on his shoulders, a trophy, King Gradivus, to thee. Caeculus, born of Vulcan's race, and Umbro, who comes from the Marsian hills, fill up the line. The Dardanian rushes full on them. His sword had hewn off Anxur's left arm, with all the circle of the shield—he had uttered brave words and deemed his prowess would second his vaunts, and perchance with spirit lifted up had promised himself hoar age and length of years—when Tarquitus in the pride of his glittering arms met his fiery course, whom the nymph Dryope had borne to Faunus, haunter of the woodland. Drawing back his spear, he pins the ponderous shield to the corslet; then, as he vainly pleaded and would say many a thing, strikes his head to the ground, and, rolling away the warm body, cries thus over his enemy: 'Lie there now, terrible one! no mother's love shall lay thee in the sod, or place thy limbs beneath thine heavy ancestral tomb. To birds of prey shalt thou be left, or borne down sunk in the eddying water, where hungry fish shall suck thy wounds.' Next he sweeps on Antaeus and Lucas, the first of Turnus' train, and brave Numa and tawny-haired Camers, born of noble Volscens, who was wealthiest in land of the Ausonians, and reigned in silent Amyclae. Even as Aegaeon, who, men say, had an hundred arms, an hundred hands, fifty mouths and breasts ablaze with fire, and arrayed against Jove's thunders as many clashing shields and drawn swords: so Aeneas, when once his sword's point grew warm, rages victorious over all the field. Nay, lo! he darts full in face on Niphaeus' four-horse chariot; before his long strides [573-608]and dreadful cry they turned in terror and dashed back, throwing out their driver and tearing the chariot down the beach.Meanwhile the brothers Lucagus and Liger drive up with their pair of white horses.Lucagus valiantly waves his drawn sword, while his brother wheels his horses with the rein.Aeneas, wrathful at their mad onslaught, rushes on them, towering high with levelled spear.To him Liger .'Not Diomede's horses dost thou discern, nor Achilles' chariot, nor the plains of Phrygia: now on this soil of ours the war and thy life shall end together.'Thus fly mad Liger's random words.But not in words does the Trojan hero frame his reply: for he hurls his javelin at the foe.As Lucagus spurred on his horses, bending forward over the whip, with left foot advanced ready for battle, the spear passes through the lower rim of his shining shield and pierces his left groin, knocks him out of the chariot, and stretches him in death on the fields.To him good Aeneas speaks in bitter words: 'Lucagus, no slackness in thy coursers' flight hath betrayed thee, or vain shadow of the foe turned them back; thyself thou leapest off the harnessed wheels.'In such wise he spoke, and caught the horses.His brother, slipping down from the chariot, pitiably outstretched helpless hands: 'Ah, by the parents who gave thee birth, great Trojan, spare this life and pity my prayer.'More he was pleading; but Aeneas: 'Not such were the words thou wert uttering.Die, and be brother undivided from brother.'With that his sword's point pierces the breast where the life lies hid.Thus the Dardanian captain dealt death over the plain, like some raging torrent stream or black whirlwind.At last the boy Ascanius and his troops burst through the ineffectual leaguer and issue from the camp.
Meanwhile Jupiter breaks silence to accost Juno: 'O sister and wife best beloved, it is Venus, as thou deemedst, [609-639]nor is thy judgment astray, who sustains the forces of Troy; not their own valour of hand in war, and untamable spirit and endurance in peril.'To whom Juno beseechingly:
'Why, fair my lord, vexest thou one sick at heart and trembling at thy bitter words?If that force were in my love that once was, and that was well, never had thine omnipotence denied me leave to withdraw Turnus from battle and preserve him for his father Daunus in safety.Now let him perish, and pay forfeit to the Trojans of his innocent blood.Yet he traces his birth from our name, and Pilumnus was his father in the fourth generation, and oft and again his bountiful hand hath heaped thy courts with gifts.'