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. 128-149.
Trojan Horse
Mixed Metal Sculpture by Serena Thirkell
© Serena Thirkell
(Image used with permission).
[1-31]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 glory is aught, 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 Circe the cruel goddess 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 awful shores, Neptune filled 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 yellow Dawn shone in her rosy car; 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 129[32-70] banks and the channel of his flood, 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 times, how it was with the state of ancient Latium when first that foreign army drew their fleet ashore on the Ausonian coast, and will recall the preluding of battle. Thou, divine one, instruct 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, to a greater work I set my hand.
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 is Turnus, of long and lordly ancestry, whose union to her daughter the queen-consort urged with wondrous desire; 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 give his settlers their name of 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 130[71-109] quarter, and reign high in our citadel.’ Furthermore, while maiden Lavinia stands beside her father feeding the altars with holy fuel, she seemed, O 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 ruddy light, she scattered fire over all the palace. That sight was rumoured wonderful and terrible; herself, the 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 has 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 holds speech with Acheron and the deep tract of hell. Here then, likewise seeking an answer, lord Latinus paid fit sacrifice of an hundred wooly ewes, and 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 keeps not within locked lips; but wide-flitting Rumour had already borne it round among the Ausonian cities, when the seed 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 131[110-148] their meats — so Jove on high prompted — and crown the platter of corn with wilding fruits. Here haply when the rest was spent, and dearth of food set them to eat their scanty bread, and with hand and venturous teeth break the round of the fate-fraught cake and spare not the broad slabs: ‘Ha, we are eating tables and all!’ cries Iülus jesting, that and no more. The voice no sooner heard set their toils a limit; and soon 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 the tables where the feast falls short, on the unknown shores whither thou shalt sail, then in thy weariness hope for home, and there let thine hand remember to build thy bulkwarks and place thy first dwelling.” This was 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 underworld. 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. The 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, 132[149-188] they part to search out the town, and the borders and shores of the nation: these are the pools and springs 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 sets to work on the site, girdling this first settlement on the shore, camp-fashion, 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 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 the tradition was for their kings to receive the 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 Stabinus, planter of the vine, still holding in show the curved pruning-hook, and grey 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 133[189-224] 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 fathers’ 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 overseas, what seek you? what the cause or whereof the need that has borne you over all these blue waterways to the Ausonian shore? Whether wandering on 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 add 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 him and adds one to the ranged altar of the gods.’
He ended; and Ilioneus pursued his speech with these words:
‘King, Faunus’ illustrious progeny, neither has black tempest driven us with stress of waves to shelter in your lands, nor has 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 is the source of our race; in Jove the men of Dardania rejoice as ancestor; our King himself of Jove’s supreme family, Aeneas of Troy, has 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 134[225-261] worlds, even he has heard who is sundered in the utmost land where the ocean surge recoils, and he whom stretching mid-most of the four zones the zone of the intolerable sun holds in severance. Escaped from that deluge and borne over many desolate seas, we crave a scant dwelling for our country’s gods, an unmolested landing-place, and the air and water that are open to all. We shall not disgrace the kingdom; nor will the rumour of your renown be lightly gone or the grace of a deed so great 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 — has sought us for itself and desired our alliance; but yours is the land that heaven’s high ordinance drove us forth to find. Hence Dardanus had his birth: 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 nor the sceptre of Priam so greatly move the King, as he ponders his daughter’s marriage and bridal chamber, and turns over in his heart the oracle of ancient Faunus. This is he, the wanderer from a foreign home, foreshewn of fate for his son-in-law, 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 lack foison of 135[262-296] rich land nor Troy’s own wealth. 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 friendly faces. In my terms of peace shall be the touch of your monarch’s hand. Do you now convey in answer my message to your King. I have a daughter whom the oracles of my ancestral shrine and many a celestial token alike forbid me to unite to one of our own nation; a bridegroom 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; so I deem, so I would have it, 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 cloths of 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 consort 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 building homes, 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 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 is fed full and satisfied? 136[297-336] Nay, it is I who have been fierce to follow them over the waves when hurled from their country, and on all the seas to cross their flight. Against the Teucrians the forces of sky and sea are spent. What have 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 found; if I cannot bend the gods, I will stir up Acheron. It may not be to debar him of a Latin realm; be it so; and Lavinia is destined his bride unalterably. But it may be yet to draw out and breed delay in these high affairs; 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 has 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 awful goddesses in nether gloom, whose delight is in woeful wars, in wrath and treachery and evil feuds: hateful to 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 her black viper-growth. With these words Juno spurs her on, saying thus:
‘Grant me, virgin born of Night, this thy proper task and service, that our renown may not be broken or our fame dwindle, nor the Aeneadae have power to win Latinus by marriage or beset the borders of Italy. Thou canst set in armed conflict brothers once united, and overturn families 137[337-371] 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 their warriors at once desire and demand and fly to 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 has all her breast caught the fire, softly she spoke and in mothers’ wonted wise, with many a tear over her daughter’s Phrygian bridal:
‘Is it to exiles, to Teucrians, that Lavinia is proffered in marriage, O father? and hast thou no compassion on 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? But is it not thus the Phrygian herdsman, winding his way to Lacedaemon, carried Leda’s Helen to the Trojan towns? What of thy plighted faith? What of thine ancient care for thy people, and the hand Turnus thy kinsman has clasped so often? If one of alien race from the Latins is sought to be 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 138[372-408] 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 whilom 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; with 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, about thee she circles in the dance, to thee she trains and consecrates her tresses.’ Rumour flies abroad; and the matrons, their beasts kindled with madness, run at once 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 has yet any favour in your affection, if care for a mother’s right pierces you, untie the fillets from your hair, begin the orgies with me.’ Thus, amid woods and wild beasts’ solitary places, does Allecto drive the queen on and on with the Bacchic sting.
When their frenzy seemed heightened and her first task complete, the purpose and all the house of Latinus turned upside down, the dolorous goddess next flies onward, soaring 139[409-444] on dusky wing, to the walls of the gallant Rutulian. That city Danaë, they say, borne down on the streaming southern gale, built and planted with settlers of Acrisius’ blood. The place was called Ardea once of old; and still Ardea remains a mighty name; but its fortune is past. 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 fillet-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, mow down the Tyrrhenian lines; give the 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, unless he consents to give thee thy bridal and abide by his words, be aware and 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 has 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 images and temples; war and peace shall be in the hands of men whose task is warfare.’
140[445-481]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 band. He breaks from sleep in overpowering fear, his limbs and frame bathed in sweat that starts out all over his body; 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 caldron, and the boiling tides leap 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, in breach of 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 the splendour of his youthful beauty, one his royal ancestry fires, another the noble deeds of his hand.
While Turnus fills the Rutulians with daring courage, 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 trouble, and kindled 141[482-519] the rustic hearts to war. The stag, beautiful and high-antlered, Tyrrheus’ boys had stolen from his mother’s udder and reared, they and their father Tyrrheus, master of the royal herds, and ranger of the plain far and wide. 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 uncalled to the door he knew. Far astray, he floated idly down the stream, and allayed his heat on the green bank, when Iülus’ furious 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 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. Silvia, smiting her arms with open hands, begins to call for aid, and gathers with cries the hardy rustic brotherhood. They, for a fell destroyer is hidden in the woodland, are there before her expectation, one armed with a stake hardened in the fire, one with a heavy knotted trunk; what each one finds in searching, wrath turns into a weapon. Tyrrheus calls up their band, breathing vengeance, as he was haply splitting an oaken log in four clefts with cross-driven wedges, the axe caught up in his hand.
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 her hellish voice on the twisted horn; it spread shuddering over all the woodland, and echoed through the deep forests: the lake of Trivia heard it afar; Nar, the river white with sulphurous water, and the springs of Velinus heard; and frightened mothers clasped their children to their breasts. Then, hurrying to the voice of the terrible trumpet-note, on all sides the wild rustics snatch their arms and stream in: therewithal the 142[520-559] Trojan array fling open their camp-gates and pour forth to succour Ascanius. They range their battle-lines; not now in rustic strife is the fight waged with hardwood billets or fire-seasoned stakes; the two-edged steel sways the contest, the broad corn-fields bristle dark with drawn swords, and brass flashes smitten by the sunlight, and casts a gleam high into the cloudy air; as when the flood begins to whiten under the rising wind, gradually the sea lifts his waves higher and yet higher, then mounts to the sky from the depths below. 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 equal battle is waged on the broad plain, the goddess, her promise fulfilled, now she has dyed the war in blood, and mingled death in the first encounter, quits Hesperia, and, glancing through the sky, addresses Juno in accents proud with victory:
‘Lo, discord is ripened at thy desire into baleful war: bid them now mix in amity and join alliance! Insomuch as I have stained the Trojans with 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 unsealed: they fight sword in hand; fresh blood stains the weapons that chance first supplied. 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 143[560-596] presence. Whatsoever fortune remains in the struggle, that I myself will sway.’
Such accents uttered the daughter of Saturn; and the 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 echoes in thunder 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 to the gods and call on Latinus. Turnus is there, and amid the burning outcry at the slaughter redoubles the terror, crying that Teucrians are bidden to the kingdom, that a Phrygian race is mingling with theirs, and that he is thrust from their gates. They too, the matrons of whose kin, stricken 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 shout themselves hoarse for battle. Omens and oracles of gods go down before them, and all clamour for dread war under the malign influence. 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 bellowing all about: the crags and boulders idly hiss round it in foam, and against its side the seaweed 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 by fate and driven helpless in the storm. With your own impious blood will you pay the price of this, O wretched men! Thee, O Turnus, thy crime, thee 144[597-632] thine awful punishment shall await; too late wilt thou address to heaven thy prayers and supplication. For my own rest was won, and full on the harbour-bar, 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 rouse the War-God to enter battle; whether their hands prepare to carry woeful war among Getae or Hyrcanians or Arabs, or to reach to India and pursue the Dawn, and reclaim their standards from the Parthians. 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 lifts 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. Their lord withheld his hand, and shrank away averse from the abhorred service, and hid himself blindly in the dark. Then the Saturnian queen of heaven gliding 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 lofty steeds, ride amain in clouds of dust. All seek out arms; and now they rub their shields smooth and make their spearheads glitter with 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 145[633-672] 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 were called up 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 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 tapered shaft and sharp point of the Sabellian pike. Himself he went on foot swathed in a vast lion skin, shaggy with bristling terrors, whose 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 Tibertus’ name, Catillus and valiant Coras, 146[673-712] 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 has believed, was born of Vulcan among the pasturing herd, 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 feeds, and thou, lord Amesenus. 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 a head-covering caps of tawny wolf-skin; 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 disused to war, and again handles the sword. These hold the Fescennine edges and Faliscan levels, these Soracte’s fortress and the fields of Flavina, and Ciminus’ lake and hill, and the groves of Capena. They marched in even time, singing their King; as whilom snowy swans among the watery 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 deem that 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 great battalion of Amiternum, and the Old Latins, and all the force of Eretum and the Mutuscan olive-orchards; they who dwell in Nomentum town, and the Rosean country by Velinus, who keep the crags of rough Tetrica 147[713-740] and Mount Severus, Casperia and Foruli, and the river of Himelia; they who drink of Tiber and Fabaris, they whom cold Nursia has sent, and the squadrons of Orta and the tribes of Latinium; and they whom Allia, ill-omened name, washes with severing stream; 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.
Next 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 have sent from their high hills, and the Sidicine low country 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 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 the ramparts of Abella look down through apple orchards. 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.
148[750-789]Furthermore, sent by King Archippus, there came 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, and charmed their anger and allayed their bite by his art. Yet he availed not to heal the stroke of the Dardanian spear-point, nor was he helped against wounds 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 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 in blood 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 fiery 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 fire, raging the more and exasperate with baleful flames, as the battle and bloodshed grew fiercer. But on his polished shield was emblazoned 149[790-817] in gold Io with uplifted horns, already a heifer an overgrown with hair, the proud crest of his race, and Argus the maiden’s warder, and Inachus her sire 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 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 virgin warrior who had never used her woman’s hands to Minerva’s distaff or wool-baskets, but a maiden hard 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 the way over mid sea upborne by the swelling flood, or 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.
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by Elfinspell