From Virgil's Works, The Aeneid, Eclogues, Georgics translated by J. W. Mackail, Introduction by Charles L. Durham, Ph.D., New York: the Modern Library; 1934; pp. 104-127.
Trojan Horse
Mixed Metal Sculpture by Serena Thirkell
© Serena Thirkell
(Image used with permission).
[1-31]SO speaks he weeping, and gives his fleet the rein, and at last he glides in to Euboïc Cumae’s coast. They turn the prows seaward; the ships grounded fast on the anchor-flukes, and the curving sterns 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 Androgeos’ 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 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 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 105[32-69] 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 the 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 spell-bound 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:
‘Phoebus, who has 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 fields that the Syrtes fringe; now at last we catch at the flying skirts of Italy; 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 106[70-107] 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 thou for whom the great perils of the sea are at last over, 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 provided in Latium, he too 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, 107[108-145] 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 shared my journey 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 the courts. Have pity, I beseech thee, on son and father, O gracious one! for thou art all-powerful, nor in vain has 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.’
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 airs, this is the task, this the burden. Some few of gods’ lineage have availed, such as Jupiter’s gracious favour or virtue’s ardour has upborne to heaven. Midway all is muffled in forest, and the black sliding 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 has plucked the golden-tressed fruitage from the tree is it given to enter the hidden places of the earth. This has 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 108[146-187] 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 in silence.
Aeneas goes forth, and leaves the cavern with lowered eyes and sad countenance, his soul revolving inly the unseen 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 pass 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 thus idly prays: ‘If but now that bough of gold 109[188-228] would show 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 has 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 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, wither 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 sheen 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 of 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 cleft 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 caldrons 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, 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 110[229-269] 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 bough of fruitful olive, and spoke the words of farewell. 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 scathless, 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 to their throats, 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 to thee, O Proserpine. 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 y 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 in ecstasy 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.
They went darkling through the dusk beneath the solitary night, through the empty dwellings and bodiless realm of 111[270-309] 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, in the entry of the jaws of hell, Grief and avenging Cares have made their bed; there dwell wan Sickness and gloomy Eld, and Fear, and ill-counselling Hunger, and loathly Penury, 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 hundred-fold Briareus, and the beast of Lerna hissing horribly, and the Chimaera armed with flame, Gorgons and Harpies, and the form of the triple-bodied shade. Here Aeneas snatches at his sword in a sudden spasm 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 the 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 all 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 eyes a steady flame; 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 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 112[310-347] 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 dries them to sunny lands. They stood pleading for the first passage across, and stretched forth passionate hands to the farther shore. But the grim mariner 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 ancient 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 has 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-wester overwhelmed and wrapped the waters round ship and men.
Lo, there went by Palinurus the steersman, who of late, while he watched the stars in their Libyan passage, had slipped from the stern and fallen amid the waves. To him, soon as he barely 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. Lo, is this his promise-keeping?’
And he: ‘Neither did Phoebus on his oracular seat delude 113[348-384] thee, O prince, Anchises’ son, nor did any god plunge 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 mountain-headlands, the barbarous people attacked me in arms and ignorantly deemed me a prize. Now the wave holds me, and the winds toss me on 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 any wise that may be, if 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 hand, and bear me over the waves in thy company, that at last 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, or draw near the bank unbidden? 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; the land is glad in his name.
So they complete their journey’s beginning, and draw nigh 114[385-423] the river: and now the waterman descried them from the Stygian wave advancing through the silent woodland and turning their feet towards the bank, and open on them in these words of challenge and chiding: ‘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 pass in the Stygian ferry-boat. 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 very King’s throne; 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 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 115[424-463] warder overwhelmed, Aeneas makes entrance, and quickly overstrides the bank of the irremeable wave.
Immediately wailing voices are loud in their ears, the souls of babies crying, whom, taken from sweet life at the doorway and torn from the breast, 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 impeachments. 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 sore travail! It may not be; the gloomy pool of that unlovely wave confines them, and Styx pours her nine-fold 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 has 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 into 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’ commands, which now compel me to pass through this shadowy place, this land of mouldering overgrowth and deep night, drove me imperiously 116[464-501] forth; nor could I deem my departure would bring thee pain so great. Stay thy footsteps, 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 spirit. 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 into the shadowy woodland, where Sychaeus, in responsive passion and equal love, is her husband as long ago. 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 sons of Antenor, and Polyboetes, Cere’s priest, and Idaeus yet charioted, yet grasping his arms. The souls throng round him to right and left; nor is one look enough; it delights them to linger on, to pace by his side and learn wherefore he is come. But the princes of the Grecians and Agamemnon’s armies, when they see him glittering in arms though 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, all his body hacked and his face barbarously 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 117[502-538] to use thee thus? Rumour reached me that on that last night, outwearied with endless slaughter of the Pelasgians, 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.’
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 overleapt the sheer ramparts 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 love 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, added to their company. Gods, recompense the Greeks even thus, if with righteous lips I call for vengeance! But come, tell in turn what chances have 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 118[539-576] 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 under the city of great Dis 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 back on a sudden, and sees beneath the cliff on the left hand a wide city, girt with a triple wall and encircled by a swift river of boiling flame, Tartarean Phlegethon, rolling its loud boulders down. 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; the iron tower uprears itself, and Tisiphone sitting girt in blood-stained 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 drank in the tumult dismayed. ‘What shapes of crime are here? declare, O maiden; or what the punishment that pursues them, and all this clashing in mine ears?’ Then the soothsayer thus began to speak: ‘Illustrious chief of Troy, no pure foot may tread these guilty courts; but me Hecate herself, when she gave me rule over the groves of Avernus, taught how the gods punish, and guided 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 has put off, till death makes it too late, the expiation of his crimes. 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 jarring hinge. Markest thou what sentry is seated in the doorway? what shape guards the threshold? More grim within sits the monstrous Hydra with her fifty black yawning throats; and 119[577-618] 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 paying the grim penalty for mocking Jove’s flame and Olympus’ thunders. Borne by four horses and brandishing a torch, he rode in triumph amid the Grecian people and through Elis town, 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 black 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 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 what doom, or in what guise fortune has overwhelmed them. Some roll a vast stone, or hang outstretched on the spokes of wheels; hapless Theseus 120[619-655] 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 ventured some monstrous wickedness, and gained their venture. 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’ ancient priestess; then ‘But come now,’ she cries; ‘hasten 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 overtake the space between, and draw nigh the gates. Aeneas makes entrance, and sprinkling his body with fresh water, plants the bough in front of 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 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, heroic souls 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 to their place under earth. 122[656-693] 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 others, 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 has 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 has a fixed dwelling; we live in the shady woodlands; soft-swelling banks and meadows kept 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 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 has thy love, child of my desire, conquered the difficult road? Is it granted, O my son, to gaze on thy face, to hear and to answer in the speech we know? Thus indeed I forecast in spirit, counting the days between; nor has my care misled me. What lands, what space of seas hast thou traversed to reach me, through 122[694-789] what surge of perils, O my son! How I dreaded lest the realm of Libya might work thee harm!’
And he: ‘Thy melancholy phantom, thine, O my father, came before me often and often, and moved 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 the while 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 the peaceful dwellings. Around it flittered 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 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 endless 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 thee 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 strange sad longing for the light?’ ‘I will tell,’ rejoins Anchises, ‘nor will I hold thee in suspense, O 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 123[730-768] floor. Those seeds have fiery force and divine birth, so far as they are not clogged by sinful bodies and dulled by earthy frames and limbs ready to die. From these is it that they fear and desire, sorrow and rejoice; nor do their eyes pierce the air while barred in the blind darkness of their prison-house. Nay, even when the last ray of life is gone, nor 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 hardened 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 away beneath the dreary deep, or burned out in fire. We suffer, each in his own 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 clotted soilure and leaves untainted the ethereal sense and pure spiritual flame. All these before thee, when the wheel of a thousand years has 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 again, and begin to desire to return 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 who leans on his pointless spear, holds the place allotted nearest to daylight, 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 124[769-807] 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 nameless lands now. Nay, Romulus likewise, seed of Mavors, shall join his grandsire’s company, from his mother Ilia’s nurture and Assaracus’ blood. Seest thou how the twin plumes stand upright on his crest, and his father’s own emblazonment already marks him for upper air? Behold, O son! in his auspices 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 has borne, clasping an hundred of her children’s children, all habitants of the sky, all dwellers upon the heights of heaven. Hither now bend thy twin-eyed gaze; behold this people, the Romans that are thine. Here is Cæsar and all Iülus’ posterity that shall arise under the mighty cope of heaven. Here is he, he of whose promise thou hearest so often, Cæsar Augustus, a god’s son, who shall again establish the ages of gold in Latium over the fields that once were the realm of Saturn, and carry his empire afar to Garamant and Indian, to the land that lies beyond our stars, beyond the sun’s year-long 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 shudder in alarm. Nor indeed did Alcides traverse such spaces of earth, though he pieced the brazen-footed deer, or though he still the Erymanthian woodlands and made Lerna tremble at his bow: nor he who sways his yoked 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? 125[808-845] 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 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 summon forth, 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 they 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 thee, Serranus, sowing in the furrow? Whither whirl you me all breathless, O Fabii? Thou art he, 126[846-882] 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 ordain 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 Quirinus his sire.’
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? What hum of comrades is 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 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 poor boy! if thou mayest break the grim 127[883-901] 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 an 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 he may avoid or endure every burden.
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 lie aground on the beach.
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by Elfinspell