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DUBLIN

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

SERIES.

THE

AENEID

OF

VIRGIL

IN

BLANK VERSE,
WILLIAM

J. THORNHILL.

' I AM not so much enamoured of the name Translator, as not to
wish to be something better, tho' it yet want a name.'-CowLEY,
Preface to PindaricOdes.

DUBLIN

UNIVERSITY

PRESS SERIES.

THE

AENEID OFVIRGIL
FREELY TRANSLATED INTO

ENGLISH BLANK

VERSE

BY

WILLIAM J. THORNHILL, B.A.,
LATE SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN,

Canon of St. Pa/rick's Co/heral,and Rector of ZRalhcoole, Dablia.

DUBLIN : HODGES, FIGGIS, & CO.,, GRAFTON-STfREET.

LONDON:

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1886.
[All

rightis

reserved.]

DUBLIN :
PRINTED

AT

THE

UNIVERSITY

PRESS,

BY PONSONI3Y AND WELDRICK.

<7t

INSCRIBED,
BY PERMISSION,

TO MY RESPECTED AND BELOVED DIOCESAN,

THE MOST REV. RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.,
LORD ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN,
PRIMATE AND METROPOLITAN

OF

IRELAND,

AND

BISHOP OF GLENDALOUGH AND KILDARE.

W. J. T.
RECTORY,

0

4
C}

RA3IHCOOLE, DUBLiN1,

October, 1884.

PREFACE.
I

GRATEFULLY acknowledge that in the interpreting

and rendering of not a little of my Author in the
following version of the Aeneid, and more particularly of
some of his nicer and more subtle turns of expression
(Notes on Preface, N. I.), I have been much indebted to
the accurate and tasteful scholarship of the late lamented
Professor Conington and Mr. Henry Nettleship in their
joint Commentary on the poem in the Bibliolkeca Classica
(London: Whittaker & Co., 1863-1875), as also to Mr.
Conington's translations, prose and verse, of the poem;
but my first two books were finished very much as they
now stand before either of Mr. Conington's versions had
appeared. And however great I found the merit of these
performances to be, it could not of course affect the impression under which I had commenced my own work,
namely, that a blank verse translation of the poem-whoever was to make it-was still a desideratum in English
literature. [I was not at this time aware of the two blank
verse versions, one by Mr. C. R. Kennedy, and the other
by the late Mr. John Miller, nor of course of the still later
b

PREFA CE.

joint version of Mr. G. R. Rickards and Lord Ravensworth.]
My notion, however, in attempting such a version myselfapart from the pleasure which I soon found the attempt
was calculated to afford me-was not so much that I could
ever aspire to the supplying of the want, as that I might
perhaps-here and there, in the way of suggestion or otherwise-contribute some quota however small towards that
end in the hands of others after me. For I am inclined to
hold of translators and commentators alike that, as each
in succession has the benefit in some way of his predecessors' labour, the best performance eventually in either
of their departments must be, virtually, the product and:
outcome of all-an opinion in which Mr.G.K. Rickards, in
his admirable Preface to his blank verse rendering of the
first half of our poem, would appear to agree with me:
' it is by means of a competition of translators that the
desired result is most likely to be attained.' (We may perhaps say of the wholly original translator now-a-days of a
poem so often and so variously translated as the Aeneid
what Dryden, in the Dedication of his version, says of
the wholly original modern poet, that 'he is yet to be
born-he and the Jews' Messias will come together.')
How warrantable this my hope, the reception which my
work shall meet with will of course show; and such is
my conviction of the fairness as well as of the soundness
of public criticism (exercised certainly in this department
of classical translation to no small amount of late years),
that I shall most contentedly acquiesce in its verdict even

PREFA CE.

iii

if unfavourable, and shall.-most unaffectedly subscribe
to it.
I would ask, however, to be judged on my dealing with
the best portions and passages of my author; and a little
reflection will, I think, suffice to acquit me of presumption herein:-' There is no end of passages in Homer,'
writes Cowper, in his Preface to the second edition of his
translation of the Iliad, 'which must creep unless they
are lifted; and to give relief to such without seeming
unseasonably tumid, is extremely difficult.' And although
Virgil has very few indeed of such passages, yet has he
occasionally-and this only in common with all fiction
writers of antiquity-narratives and details wholly and
exclusively belonging to the classical age, to which it is
impossible, in anything of a faithful rendering, to impart
positive interest or attractiveness for a modern who reads
them in his own language-ornarires ipsa negat. The
portions, then, of my work on which I would desire to be
specially tried are those which purport to render what
the classical reader will pronounce to be the best passages
and portions of the original; in the other parts of my
version I shall be content, as I trust my reader will also
be, if I do not sink below the level of ordinary poetical
diction and style.
I believe there are not a few to whom the name of
a translation conveys a wrong notion; they in some
way regard such a work as purporting to be a veritable
reproduction of the original-a copy, like a cast from a
bz

PRE FA CE.

statue, identical with it in every respect. That such an
idea of translation, however conceivable, lies beyond the
domain of possible realization one may easily show, even
assuming the translator to possess, beside other essential
qualification, what has been pronounced to be the prime
requisite for him, namely, 'an

exact understanding and

an absolute mastery of the language he translateth from,
and the language he translateth into':- Words are the
instrument with which, in common with his author, the
translator works; and, as Archbishop Trench has most
happily expressed it, 'words are enclosures from the
great outfield of meaning; but different languages have
enclosed on different schemes, and words in different languages, which are precisely co-extensive with one another,
are much rarer than we incuriously assume' (Remarks on
the Authorized Version of Scripture, p. 48). And hence the
necessity for paraphrase, and expansion, and all those
other shifts whereby the truly 'fidus interpres' can alone
truly reproduce his author; but which expedients, even
when most successful, still have the effect of exhibiting him to some minds as being more 'alter' than
' idem,'
Mr. Willmott, in his edition of Fairfax' Tasso's Jerusalem
Delivered (London: Geo. Routledge & Sons, I865), refers
to the saying of Butler, that 'a translator dyes an author,
like an old stuff, into new colours, but is never able to
impart the lustre of the first tincture'; and he shows the
dictum to be practically refuted by the acknowledged fact

PREFA CE.

that in Fairfax' version of the great Sorrentine, 'the
English hues sometimes out-dazzle the Italian'. More
true to the case is Mr. Willmott's own idea, that 'the finest
version of a poem can only be a copy in different lights
and shades'; an illustration which he very happily varies
in the reason which he adduces for the correctness of his
view : 'The identical landscape may not be carried over,
for the truth is equal to the grace of the observation, that
the beauties of a poem spring up from the soil in which
they are imbedded, and that the flower withers without
its root'-reminding us of Denham's illustration in his
too arbitrary canon:
'Nor ought a genius less than his that writ
Attempt translation; for transplanted wit
All the defects of air and soil doth share.'

Still more happy, however, as more germane to the matter
of
'The music heard in silence,'

as poetry, or verbal metrical composition, has been beautifully designated (N. II.), is the notion quoted by Cary
in his most admirable blank verse translation of Dante's
Divina Commedia from his author's prose work of the
Conv'lo: "'Sappia ciascuno' &c. ' every one should know
that nothing harmonized by musical enchainment can be
transmuted from one tongue into another without breaking all its sweetness and harmony.' " (Hell, c. iv. n. 3.)
Still, although such a version of a poem as would be a
veritable reproduction of the original be thus out of the

PREFA CE.

question, the fact is not conclusive against the thing being
attempted-and pleasingly attempted-as an approximation: the 'paulum summo decessit in this department of
poetical composition does not necessarily sink such a
performance 'ad imum'; nor does even the proscribed
mediocrity wholly preclude ini it either the ' profit' or the
'pleasure' which the poet originally proposed to himself
for his reader (N. III.). The difference of light and shade
in the copy may call out new beauties, even if it eclipse
more striking ones: some of the transplanted flowers may
droop in the foreign soil; yet may the peculiar affinities
of the new compost endow others with a healthier development and a more attractive bloom: much of the
sweetness and melody of the original composition may be
marred in its transfer to the new vehicle; yet better even so
than that it should remain to many as 'sweet instruments
hung up in cases that keep their sounds to themselves'
(N. IV.): the ' sweet bells' may be ' jangled'; yet may the
ear find their
'discord ruinous
Harmony still.'

So much for translation as the case regards the unlearned; but on the other hand it has been said that
'scholars do not need ,a translation; that whatever may
be its merits, their knowledge of the original will more
than dispense with any version of it.' I am inclined to
think, however-judging from the way in which I find
myself affected-that the pleasure experienced in an intel-:

PRE FA CE,

vii

ligent appreciation of an original poem is in a manner
doubled by reading it again in anything of a successful
version. The happy turns of expression in one language
impart a new and distinctly pleasurable enjoyment by
their felicitous reproduction in another, the pleasure
alternating and propagating itself as we turn from the
original to the version, and from the version to the origi
nal, the original seeming to be as much a translation of
the version as the version of the original, the one aiding
the comprehension of the other, the one enhancing the
enjoyment of the other (N. V.); so that there is as much
truth as there is shrewdness in the remark of Dr. Trapp
'He who says he values no translation of this or that poem
because he understands the original, has indeed no true
relish, that is, in effect, no true understanding, of either.'
(Preface to Translation of the Aeneid.) And to the same
effect is the observation made by Professor Conington :
It is this principle [i.e. the interpretation of an original]
which constitutes the true value of a really good translation-not as superseding the original even to the worst
scholar, but as explaining it even to the best.' (Miscellaneous
Writings, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1872, vol. i.;
The Academical Study of Latin, p.
I have chosen the heroic blank verse for my metre, both
as being in my judgment the most epic English metre and
the truest equivalent for the classical hexameter, as also
on account of its admitted superior capabilities--however I may have succeeded in exhibiting them-of varied

208.)

viii

PREFA CE.

expression. The difficulty of blank verse may be all that
it has been represented to be by the late Mr. Worsley
(Preface to his Iliad) and Mr. Conington (Preface to his
Aeneid); but why passable success in it as a medium by
which pleasingly to reproduce what these eminent scholars
themselves have admitted it to be best suited to, should be
so utterly unattainable as they have pronounced it to be, I
would take most respectful leave to question, if I might do
so without being understood as self-complacently pointing
to my own performance in justification of my doubt. Mr.
Worsley in support of his view lays down the following
canon for the metre:-' But let it be clearly understood
what blank verse means. An essential condition to its
existence is, that not the line only, but each whole sentence and paragraph should really scan. A series of blank
lines, though each line in itself may be full of merit, is no
more blank verse than good bricks are of necessity a good
structure.' (Preface to Iliad, p. ix.) Some comparisons are
rather elusive-it is hard to deal with them, especially
where they are employed as arguments, or to back up arguments-to say exactly where they 'have' you, or where
you are to 'have' them; but I would submit that, in this
particular illustration from building-at least as I comprehend it-it would be in better keeping to represent the
as the courses of the
and surely if the bricks be but well-shaped, and
masonry;
apt in themselves and aptly laid, and the courses of them
well and duly plumbed and squared, and the building itself
words as the 'bricks,' and the 'lines'

PREFA CE,

ix

artistically planned-if all this be not 'begging' Mr. Worsley's requirement of sentence and paragraph scanningdo not these conditions of the composition constitute of
themselves the goodly structure of blank verse ? (N. VI.)
But apart from any artistic difficulties of the metre, some
persons consider blank verse to be essentially prosaic,
while others insist on its deficiency in sweetness, and so
object to it as being especially unsuited to the characteristic music of Virgil's verse. These and similar objections
proceed upon the assumption that rhyme, or the terminal
consonance of verses-the 'poet's chiming close,' as it has
been too restrictedly designated-is a sine qua non of metrical sweetness; a position which I am at a loss to conceive
how anyone can maintain who has ever read admittedly
good blank verse. What, for example, can be more melodious than the opening of Book III. of the ParadiseLost,
Milton's sublime address to Light, and the touching
allusion to his own blindness ? or Cowper's Task ? or
the lMorte d'Arthur, or the Tithonus, of Lord Tennyson ?
or the stately march and solemn tenderness of Mr. Lewis
Morris's Epic of Hades, or of Professor Dowden's Heroines ?
(N. VII.) Not only does the metre possess, together with
the sweetness, all the capabilities which any other metre
possesses for the expression of lofty poetical conception
and varied emotion, but being more dignified than any
other-even more so, I should think, than-owing to the
metrical pause in the middle of the line which too often
interferes with the immediate grammatical sequence

PREFA CE.

and sense-connexion of the words-the fourteen-syllabled
verse adopted by Chapman for Homer, and lately employed
so effectively by Dean Merivale in his vigorous version of
the Iliad; and later still by Mr. William Morris in his version of our poem; and lastly by 'Avia' (Mr. Arthur S. Way,
M. A., Head-Master of Wesley College, Melbourne, Australia) in his somewhat free, but most readable, because most
poetical, version of the Odyssey - it is essentially better
adapted for anything of a long and serious work; while
its being blank disembarrasses the writer of those exigencies of the rhymed structure which often compel him to
' travel out of the record' in search of a rhyme, and justify
the stricture of the witty author of Hudibras(II. i. 27, seqq):
' Those that write in rhyme still make
The one verse for the other's sake;

For one for sense, and one for rhyme,
I think's sufficient at one time';

and Prior's irony (Poems, Alma, Cant. i.):
'Rhyme with reason may dispense,
And sound has right to govern sense.'

Of the metre, Mr. Rickards says well, in addition to more
to the same effect equally good (Preface to his first six
books of our poem, pp. xvi and xviii) :
'The superior terseness of which blank verse is thus shown to be capable gives it, in my opinion, a great advantage over other metres; but
this is only one of its superiorities. In the hands of our great poets,
from Shakspeare and Milton to Wordsworth and Shelley, it has been
proved to be capable of the highest flights of sublimity and beauty, and

has vindicated its title as the noblest of English metres-the true and
worthy vehicle of the Epic Muse. Its freedom, its flexibility, the va-

PREFA CE.

xi

riety of pauses and modulations of rhythm which it admits 6f, mark it
as the true counterpart of the classical hexameter. It adapts itself to
every exigency of the composition-the abrupt apostrophe, the terse
dialogue, the lucid narrative, or the flowing description. It may be
made, in skilful hands, to the full as harmonious as the most exquisitely
balanced couplets of Pope, and may more than compensate to the ear
for the absence of the rhyming termination by the more subtle melody
of rhythm. .. . I maintain that if Virgil is to be translated at all, he
ought to be translated in that measure which most readily assimilates
with his own, and in which an English writer may represent most
truthfully not only the language, but, what is more important, the
manner and spirit of the original. The rhymed metre, with its inevitable tendency to expand and weaken the sense, and its monotonous
repetition of balanced periods, is, in my estimation, far more wearisome to the ear and mind than the unrhymed verse, which, even if it
be not of the highest order of poetry, may at least be terse in style,
natural in movement, and free from those palling expletives and makeweights which are needed to fit the dimensions of the unvarying couplet'.
Notwithstanding his own modest disclaimer of ability
to wield it successfully, I cannot help thinking that it was
unfortunate for the poet to whom he has otherwise rendered such varied and valuable service, that the lamented
Mr. Conington did not give us his metrical version of the
Aeneid in this noble measure, or even in the rhymed heroic couplet.

In my humble judgment the comparison

which he scrupled to provoke with Dryden in the latter
would have been far more safely incurred, considering the
not infrequent roughnesses and even coarseness in much
of Dryden's rendering (N. VIII.), than the comparison
which his employment of the octosyllabic measure has
challenged-and

before a much larger world of non-

classical readers-with

those unrivalled masters

of the

ii

PREFA CE.

metre, Butler, Swift, and Scott.

With reference to the

last, whom he proposed to himself more particularly as
his model, this choice of metre-which I cannot help
regarding as intrinsically also an unhappy one-has
placed the resulting performance, notwithstanding all its
elegance and all its scholarly faithfulness, in a predicament in which it is hard to say, as we go along with it,
what it exactly is: where the versification falls short of
the vigour of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, or the smoothness and polish of the Lord of the Isles, or the melodious
sweetness of the Lady of/he Lake, or the epic grandeur of
Marmion, we feel that it is not Scott we are reading; and
where it nearest approaches him in these characteristics,
its undignified curtness painfully reminds us that it is not
Virgil. The present Bishop of Derry, Dr. Alexander,
referring to the version in a Lecture which his Lordship
delivered in Dublin in I868, as an introduction to a Specimen of a Translation by himself of the earlier part of
the Sixth Book of the Aeneid, says:
'Professor Conington's recent work must make us give the first place
[among the measures adopted by the translators of Virgil] to the octo-

syllabic measure. That work stands too high in the estimation of
scholars to need praise so little worth as my own. It is sufficient to
say that, while those who know "small Latin and less Greek" can
read it with realpleasure, the microscopic and generally malignant industry of critical scholars can scarcely detect a flaw ; yet I am obliged
to confess that the choice of the octosyllabic measure seems to me to
be an unhappy one, and to necessitate its own failure. It suits exactly
the genius of him who wrote"When civil dudgeon first grew high,
And folk fell out, they knew not why "

PREFACE.

Xiii

it gives point to the antitheses of the witty Dean who made a wellknown bequest to Dublin,
" To show by one satiric touch

No nation needed it so much "-

but it can scarcely be so modulated as to give our ears an equivalent
for the varied and long-drawn music of Virgil. I admit that Scott can
do wonders with the octosyllabic line when the trumpet of battle is in
his ears, or when his spirit gallops with the hunter in the storm of
chase along the hills. I admit that Byron has sometimes breathed
into it the tempest of his passion, and Wordsworth the chastened
wisdom of his meditative morality. But I maintain that there are incurable defects in the measure for a long and serious poem. It cannot
be sustained at a high pitch. Its fatal facility is a perpetual temptation. It reminds one too often of the dignity of a man extremely short
and extremely fat who aims at impressiveness with a jerking hobble
and an asthmatic grunt.'
(Specimen of a Translation of Virgil:
Opening of Book VI.; a Lecture.)
As for the Spenserian metre-adopted by the way by the
writer just quoted in his Specimen-the complexity of its
structure rendering its numerous rhymes a burden to the
over-taxed ear, its Procrustean requirement of fitting the
varied narrative to the unvarying nine-lined stanza, with the
never-failing sledge-hammer fall of the Alexandrine at the
end, where there can be no uniformly recurring demand for
such heavy-metalled expression (N. IX.)-these peculiarities of the metre, even of themselves, are to me conclusive
against its eligibility as a pleasingly tractable instrument
for rendering the verses either of Virgil or Homer; and as
blank verse-I mean of course verse really worthy of the
name-is the most, if not the only, true epic metre as yet
known to our language, or as we may fearlessly assert that

xiv-

PREFA CE.

will ever be known to our language, while it is also admittedly an instrument of universal poetical capability, I must
hold of Virgil, as Lord Derby did of Homer, that if ever
justice is to be done in our language to the nervous melody and long-sustained music of his finished hexameternot alone the sweetest, but, as the Laureate has well designated it,
' the stateliest measure

Ever moulded by the lips of man'-

it must be in that heroic blank verse which Milton has
consecrated to our Epos, and which Mr. Worsley has
well designated as ' the noblest organ of English poetry.'
Any even moderately successful rendering in this metre
is in that degree an approach to the desired perfection; while the perfection of success in any other isin a sense and by reason of that very success-the quam
longissime of aberration from it. The one is the asymptote
of an hyperbola, ever approaching but never meeting its
curve; while the other is the non-parallelism of two lines,
ever becoming the more marked the farther the lines are
produced in the direction of divergence. The more you
perfect in its speciality an instrument that is specially unsuited to your purpose, the more unsuited you are rendering
it to your purpose. And in reference to the present question, it is remarkable that the very first specimen of blank
verse in our language is the translation of Books ii. and iv. of
the Aeneid by a writer whom Pope designates as 'one of the
first refiners of the English poetry' ( Windsor Forest, 1.295, n.:

PREFA CE.

xv

Globe ed.), namely, the ill-fated Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey (1517-1547); a performance which Warton describes

as 'a noble attempt to break the bondage of rhyme,' and
of which as a version a modern editor is well warranted in
asserting, that, 'albeit deficient in the pomp of diction,
elaborate artifice, and rich melody of Milton, nor exhibiting the sweetness and nervous ease of Thomson or Cowper,
it contains passages here and there of absolute excellence,
combining almost textual closeness with remarkable energy
and freedom of expression.' (See Introduction to the Version among the Poetical Works of Surrey in the Annotated
Edition of the English Poets by Robert Bell. London
J. W. Parker & Son, I854.)
It will be seen that I now and then introduce an Alexandrine-especially in the early books-into my blank
verse; i.e. in emphatic places, at the end of some paragraphs, &c. I am aware that usage will furnish a presumptive argument against me herein; nor do I deny that
custom and prescription may claim weight in such questions. And yet, in simple sooth, I cannot conceive on
what intrinsic impropriety a verse should be held-if it be
held-as utterly inadmissible in the unrhymed heroic
measure which is freely admitted in the rhymed (N. X.).
Surely to render such a tenet valid,
' there's something more
Required than saying, 'twas not done before.'

I see that the writer in Blackwood's Magazine (April,

PREFACE.

xvi

1865),

reviewing Lord Derby's Iliad, wishes that his Lordship had, after the example of Shakspeare, frequently
mixed hendecasyllabic with the ordinary decasyllabic
iambics; and he remarks that 'such an admixture would
be a great defence against monotony, and a source of
new and varied musical combinations.' And albeit I have
not availed myself of the licence for these, I should think
the remark to be true of the Alexandrine also, and should
regard its effect as rather more musical, it being an evensyllabled line--of course 'sparingly and judiciously used,'
if I have observed the condition. I find Young admitting
such a line at the emphatic close of a paragraph : the passage is (Night Thoughts, Night ix. 11--123):' When down thy vale, unlocked by midnight thought,
That loves to wander in thy sunless realms,
O Death! I stretch my views; what visions rise! &c.
The visionary hosts of dead renown,
Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause,
With penitential aspect as they pass:
All point at earth, and hiss at human pride,
The wisdom of the wise, and prancings of the great !'

And Rowe does the same not unfrequently (The True End
of Education-apassage per se well worthy citation):' And therefore wert thou bred to virtuous knowledge,
And wisdom early planted in thy soul,
That thou might'st learn to rule thy fiery passions,
To bind their rage, and stay their headlong course;
To bear with accident and every change
Of various life, to struggle with adversity,
To wait the leisure of the righteous gods,

PRE A CE.

xvii

Till they, in their own good appointed time,
Shall bid thy better days come forth at once,
A long and shining train; till thou, well pleased,

Shalt bow and bless thy fate, and say the gods are just'-

where it will be observed we have the hendecasyllabics
also intermixed. 'Dramatic poetry,' it may be replied;
but surely the ear is not less nice, nor required to be so,
on the stage, and certainly nowhere to be tolerant of anything positively inharmonious. The liberties, however,
which I have taken in this way will be found to be very
few.

It will also be noticed that I have now and then adopted
in my version some special expressions, and in some few
cases even whole lines, from Milton, Shakspeare, &c.
Such obvious appropriations I have thought it superfluous
to indicate by marring the uniformity of my lines with inverted commas; for, having no notes on the text, I could
not make the acknowledgment otherwise. These adoptions, if not inaptly made, will, I trust, vindicate themselves to the reader's judgment, and not be the less
acceptable to him for his previous familiarity with their
subjects. Perhaps my employment of some of those
expressions or lines might even be vindicated as simply
restitution to the rightful owner, they having been evidently either directly rendered from Virgil, or, probably,
indirectly suggested by him:-for example, my rendering
of i. 394, of the eagle, ' aetheria quos lapsa plaga &c.', by
Milton's, P.L., xi. I85, of the same, 'The bird of Jove,
c

xviii

PREFA CE.

stooped from his aery tour'; and again, of iv. 253-4, ' toto
praeceps se corpore ad undas Misit,' by Milton's, ib. iii.
741, of Satan's descent upon Mount Niphates, 'Throws
his steep flight'; and again, of ib. z85, 'animum nunc
huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc,' by Lord Tennyson's,
Morle d'Arthur, 'This way and that dividing the swift
mind'; and again, of ib. 293-4 , 'mollissima fandi Tempora,' by Shakspeare's, Othello, i. 3, 'a pliant hour'; and
again, of v. 585, of ' pugnae simulacra sub armis' by Id. i.
K. H. Iv.-ii. 3, 'all the 'currents of a heady fight'; and
again, of vi. 884, seqq., the Marcellus passage; ' manibus
date lilia plenis,' &c., ' Purpureos spargam flores,' &c., by
borrowing from Milton, Lycidas, 142, seqq., 'Bring the
rathe primrose,' &c., 'To strow the laureate hearse where
Lycid lies'; and again, of viii. 280, ' Devexo interea proprior fit Vesper Olympo,' by Id. ib. 30, 31, slightly altered;
'Oft till the star that rose at evening bright Towards heaven's descent had slop'd his west'ring wheel'; and similarly, wholly or in part, throughout my other books.
I have designated my version as a free one; by which I
would be understood only to imply that my aim has been
to exhibit what I conceived to be the spirit rather than
the letter of my author-enlarging a little ('opening,' as
Dryden expresses it, Dedication) where the original seemed
to need it, or advantageously to admit of it; adding, or
expanding, or varying an epithet where I thought the
version would be the better for it; supplying a nexus
where the connexion was not very obvious to the general

PRE FA CE.

xix

reader, &c., &c.; but in no case consciously importing
anything irrelevant or superfluous. And all this is surely
not only a legitimate but quite a necessary dealing with
any author whom we undertake to interpret, whether in
prose or verse; and the reasonableness of the proceeding disposes, I submit, of not a little of what the last
prose translators of the Odyssey, Messrs. Butcher and Lang
(London: Macmillan & Co., 1879), have somewhat slightingly said of verse translations in general (N. XI.). It is in
the same way, and for such reasons, that I have not been
rigidly exact in some matters of minor detail; e.g. in the
description of the caestus in the boxing-match, b. v., preferring to give an idea of something more in harmony
with our modern conception of a gauntlet or glove than
with its antique classical make, as consisting simply of
a strip of hide, tanned or raw, wound round the hand,
and weighted with iron or lead; and similarly in some
similar matters of description.
It may be right for me to add that the only versions
which I knew of, or had before me, to the end of b. ii.,
were those of Trapp, Dryden, and Pitt, with each of wyhom
I find I have occasionally some identities and similarities;
although I think it will be seen that it is only where their
renderings were no way very strongly marked or individual, and merely such as, without much profit or loss on
either side, any translator might appropriate, or even unconsciously fall in with (e. g. I was well on in b. i. before I
had read Dr.Trapp's translation, and my opening line is the
C2

xx

PR EFA CE;

same with his). Subsequently, and for the remaining four
of the first six books, I had the benefit of Mr. Miller's,
and Mr. C. R. Kennedy's, and Mr. Benson Rose's metrical versions, and later again that of Mr. W. Morris's
somewhat quaint, but generally very poetical and faithful
version: advantages to which I mean the preceding remark respecting identities or similarities of renderings
very much to apply. After my first six books were finished,
I had the pleasure and benefit of making the personal acquaintance of the late Dr. James Henry, author of the
Commentary, Notes of a Twelve Years' Voyage of Discovery
in the First Six Books of the Eneis; a work to which Mr.
Conington, in the Preface to his Commentary on the
poem, acknowledges much obligation, and to which he
refers constantly in the notes; and to which work, as also
to Dr. Henry's metrical version of those six books (rather
quaintly entitled by him Six Photographs of the Heroic
Times, an accurate, terse, and masculinely English rendition), I have been not a little indebted in the work of
revision, as in the same stage of my work to his Aeneidea
also, as far as the publication of that elaborate and scholarly commentary has as yet progressed (1886) under the
able editorship of Dr. J. F. Davies, Professor of Latin
in the Queen's College, Galway, namely, to the end of
book vii. Later still, and after an interval of some five
years between my finishing of the first half of the poem
and my commencing of the second, I incurred much
various obligation-in addition to the works already men-

PREFA CE.

xxi

tioned-to Mr. Conington's very nervous and masterly,
albeit evidently somewhat hurriedly accomplished, prose
version. And last of all, and after I was in type to
nearly the end of book iii., I became acquainted with
the Clarendon Press Virgil by Mr. T. L. Papillon, M. A.;
and, while I found not a little in that gentleman's compendious and very judicious notes on the Aeneid from
which I trust I profited in the further revision of my
remaining books, I was most pleased to find that not a
few of my own renderings of particular words and even
occasionally of almost entire lines, were happily identical with his; and I noticed the coincidences accordingly with much satisfaction in my manuscript.
I have to express my regret that the excellent prose version of the Aeneid by Mr. J. W. Mackaill, M.A., Fellow of
Balliol College, Oxford (London : Macmillan & Co., I885),
did not appear, or at least come under my notice, till I
was so far in actual print as to preclude the possibility of
my deriving any hints from it for my interpretations and
renderings beyond, I think, only a very few in the very
last books.
I now submit my version to the test of public criticism,
and I do so 'in utrumque paratus'; thoroughly believing
that if the work merits approval, it will meet with the
award; and that if it shall not, it will be simply because
it does not merit it. I heartily adopt what Dr. Trapp
wrote of his translation in his day :-' Of mine the world
will and ought to be judge, whatever I may say or think,

xxii

PREFACE.

and its judgment in these cases is never erroneous' (Pref.);
and I would only add that, even if the verdict be against
me, I shall most unaffectedly declare with Pope when he
supposed the case of a similar sentence upon himselfif I may without presumption even on such a supposition
couple so great a name with mine-that I ' shall think
the world in the right; not so much as wishing so irrational a thing as that everybody should be deceived merely
for my credit.' (Pope: Preface to his Works, adfin.)
It remains for me in taking my leave of Virgil to make
him, in my humbler way, the same grateful acknowledgment, mulatis mutandis, which the amiable Cowper made
to Homer on concluding his version of the Iliad (Preface to first edition of the Iliad, ad fin.) :-'And now
I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended.
To the illustrious Roman I owe the smooth and easy flight
of many thousand hours. He has been my companion at
home and abroad, in the study, in the garden, and in the
field; and no measure of success, let my labours succeed
as they may, will ever compensate to me the loss of the
innocent luxury that I have enjoyed as a translator of
VIRGIL.'
I cannot, however, close without a brief word of thankful acknowledgment to the eminent names both of individuals and publications which preface the several
'Opinions' &c., subjoined to this work for such valued
encouragement of me in its prosecution. And amongst
them I would specially mention those of two distinguished

PREFA CE.

xxiii

scholars from whom I received not only encouragement,
but most useful hints and suggestions in various parts of
my work--DR. INGRAM, late Regius Professor of Greek,
Librarian and Senior Fellow, and DR. DOWDEN, Professor of English Literature, in the University of Dublin.
To the former accomplished scholar I am still further
indebted for the most kind and untiring assistance in the
work of revision, as also, generally, for the most valuable
aid from his learned, judicious, and candid criticism extended to me throughout my entire task.
I beg also, in fine, to express my deep-felt obligation to
the PROVOST AND SENIOR FELLOWS of Trinity College for
the honour which they have done me in adopting my book
as one of their Dublin University Press Series of Works.

*** The progress of this work through the press has been unavoidably retarded for a period of about two years, and hence it has not
appeared until after the death of the eminent Prelate to whom, by his
kind permission, it had been dedicated.

May, 1886.

( xxiv

)

NOTES TO PREFACE.
NOTE I.,

Page i.

WHAT Mr. Conington himself alludes to in his Preface (p. vi) as his
author's 'delicate intricacies of expression which stimulate curiosity
while they baffle analysis'-and what I find well described, generally,
by Mr. F. P. Roe (Poems, London: J. C. Hotten, 1866. Rhythmical
Etchings, by Thomas Trite, Esquire) :
'The inner burden of a line,
Undertoned with meanings fine,
Vibrant 'neath the patent sense
With fibrous far significance,
Half thought, half sound-of scarce defined
Import on the ear of mind,
As voice had loosed the silent spells
Held in these haunted syllables;
Nerve-notes like those the air-harp sighs,
Octaved with heart-analogies,
Like echoes of a bygone strain
In luten shell long dormant lain,
Wherewith the strings were wont to thrill,
Swept by a sweet forgotten quillThe witchery of those lettered chords,
Harmonious wonder-work of words!'

NOTE II., Page v.
i. e. melody to the mind's ear. So the vielle-player, in 7ohn Ingle.
sant (vol. ii. p. 2), of music in type: ' What can be more wonderful
than that a maestro in the art can take delight in sound, though he
does not hear it; and when he looks at some black marks upon paper,
he hears intellectually, and by the power of the soul alone!'
Dr. Trapp has a ' pretty conceit' in his Preface : ' Poetry itself being
the music of thoughts and words, as music is the poetry of sounds.'
And hence I would remark the superiority of poetry over the music

NOTES TO PREFACE.

xxv

of mere sound, as superadding to it the charm of intellectuality.

On

the same ground Milton places ' discourse,' or high philosophical reasoning

eloquently

conducted,

above mere

'song,'

or music (P. L.,

ii. 555-6) :

'Discourse more sweetFor eloquence the soul [intellect], song charms the sense ';

or, as it might perhaps be more fully expressed:
'For song [music] the sense, spe6ch [oetry] charms both sense and soul.'
'In

poetry we

clothed in
Verse.

have

sound, thought,

musical sound).'-J. J.

and

words (i.e. thought

Sylvester, LL.D.,

So Thomas Carlyle: 'Poetry

The Laws of

we will call musical Thought.'

(Heroes, Lect. iii.)

Referring to Dr. Trapp and Poetry-I have met with no one passage, with the single exception of the conclusion of Book I. of
Hooker's Ecclesiastical
Polity,-H.'s

magnificent tribute to the ma-

jesty and beneficence of Law*,-to my taste so pleasing in every
respect, so musical, so sonorous, so majestic,

as the opening of the

Professor's Preface to his blank verse Translation of the Aeneid, his
encomium of Poetry ; it is worthy of its subject, and that is the highest
commendation :' However Poetry may have been dishonoured by the follies of some and the
vices of others, the abuse or corruption of the best things being always the worst,
it will notwithstanding be ever regarded, as it ever has been, by the wisest and
most judicious of men as the very flower of human thinking, the most exquisite
spirit that can be extracted from the wit and learning of mankind.'
O si sic omnia !
Cowley also (Preface to his Works) speaks of the abuse and desecration of the ' art Divine,' and similarly in connexion with a performance
that had but indifferent success in

retrieving it in any way from its

alleged state of degradation :'Amongst all holy and consecrated things which the Devil ever stole and alienated from the service of Deity, as altars, temples, sacrifices, prayers, and the like,
there is none that he so universally and so long has usurped as Poetry. It is time

* ' Wherefore that here we may briefly end : of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of
the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and

xxvi

NOTES TO PREFACE.

to recover it out of the tyrant's hands, and to restore it to the kingdom of God,
who is the father of it. It is time to baptize it in Jordan, for it will never become
clean by bathing it in the waters of Damascus. There wants, methinks, but the
conversion of that and the Jews for the accomplishment of the kingdom of Christ'and he writes his 'Davideis, or an Heroical Poem of the Troubles of
David, Designed into Twelve Books, after the Pattern of our Master,

Virgil'; a performance of which Dr. Hayley wrote even in his day
(Essay on Epic Poetry and Epic Poets) :'Ingenious Cowley, the fond dupe of wit,
Seems like a vapour o'er the field to flit;
In David's praise he strikes some epic notes,
But soon down Lethe's stream their dying murmur floats.'

(With Dr. Trapp's eulogy of Poetry we may perhaps in somewise
parallel Bacon's--'Poetry may seem deservedly to have some participation of Divineness, because
it doth raise the mind and exalt the spirit with high raptures by proportioning the
shows of things to the desires of the mind, and not submitting [lowering] the mind
to things as reason and history do; and by these allurements and congruities
whereby it cherisheth the soul of man, joined also with concert of music whereby
it may more sweetly insinuate itself, it hath won such access, that it hath been in
estimation even in rude times and barbarous nations, when other learning stood
excluded.' (Advancement of Learning,iii. 13.)

NOTE III., Page vi.
' Aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare poetae.'
HOR., A. P., 333.

NOTE IV., Page vi.
'And now my tongue's use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or harp,
Or like a cunning instrument cased up.'
SHAKSPEARE, K. R. II., i. 3 (said by the banished Norfolk).

NOTE V., Page vii.

I am pleased to find Mr. Conington owning to the same experience :-' There is to me a distinct pleasure in seeing an author
men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and
manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace
and joy.'

NOTES TO PREFACE.

xxvii

whom I know transfused well into English-a sense of correspondence
which appeals to me strongly.' (Miscellaneous Writings, vol. I.,
Memoir, p. lxiii, Letter to W. J. Courthope, Esq.)
NOTE VI., Page ix.
Cowper, to be sure, says of the metre :-' It is not sufficient that the
lines of blank verse be smooth in themselves, they must also be harmonious in the combination.' (Preface to Iliad.) But the essential requisite for securing such general effect according to him is-not that each
whole sentence or paragraph should scan, but that the pause should
be continually varied, so as to save the ear the pain of an irksome monotony : ' He [the blank-verse writer], in order that he may be musical,
must exhibit all the variations, as he proceeds, of which ten syllables
are susceptible: between the first syllable and the last there is no place
at which he must not occasionally pause. And the place of the pause
must be perpetually shifted. To effect this variety, his attention must
be given, at one and the same time, to the pauses he has already made
in the period before him, as well as to that which he is about to make,
and to those which shall succeed it. On no lighter terms than these is
it possible that blank verse can be written which will not, in the course
of a long work, fatigue the ear past all endurance.' (lb.) And he adds
in illustration of the comparative difficulty of success in the metre
where it is so achieved: ' If it be easier, therefore, to throw five
balls into the air and to catch them in succession, than to sport in that
manner with one only, then may blank verse be more easily fabricated
than rhyme.'
I know not whether this canon of Cowper's virtually or in any way
falls in with Mr. Worsley's requirement for blank verse of sentence
and paragraph scanning, nor am I at all certain that I comprehend the
requirement itself; but with all deference to both Cowper and Mr.
Worsley, I question whether any successful versification was ever
intentionally conducted on any such fixed and rigid principles. Where
success as to pauses or any other metrical excellence has been achieved,
I should rather think that it was the result of purely undesigned composition almost unconsciously prompted by the poetical following out
of ideas into words, in the same way as I would regard alliteration,

xxviii

NOTES TO PREBA CE.

correspondencies, in rhythm or sound, of expression with the idea, &c.,
to come in undesignedly, and in a manner spontaneously, and all the
more effectively, too, for that very reason, in the language of the poet
or the orator. If the mental temperament that is needed for the conception and expression of high poetical sentiment and ideas-the ' fine
frenzy' of the poet-be any way akin to what it has been often compared with or referred to, namely, madness, to require that the ' attonitus vates' should consciously and designedly work upon lines so
precisely laid down for him, would be virtually to require such a
madness' as would soon deprive him of much of his
'method' in his '
fire, and would commit him to the absurdity ridiculed by Horace of the
man who ' insanireparet certa ratione modoque.' (Sat. H. iii. 270.)
NOTE VII., Page ix.
'If some gentlemen are resolved that blank verse shall be prose, they have my
free leave to enjoy their saying, provided I may have theirs to think they mean
nothinz by it unless they can prove that rhyme is essential to metre; consequently
that the Goths and monks were the first inventors of verse, and that Homer and
Virgil, as well as Milton, wrote nothing but prose.' (Dr. Trapp, Pref. to Aeneid.)

It is the same assumption-but here a doubly false one, as confounding 'verse' with 'rhyme,' and denying any merely measured line to be
'verse'-that gives their 'point pointless' to Lloyd's lines (Johnson's
Poets, vol. viii., p. 165):
'How few-say whence can it proceed ?Who copy Milton e'er succeed !
But all their labours are in vain;
And wherefore so? the reason's plain:
Take it for granted 'tis by those
Milton's the model mostly chose,
Who can't write verse, and won't write prose.'

Milton himself seems to use rhyme with this false and narrow distinction (P. L., i. 16)
'Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.'

But the following will show that Milton maintained his blank lines to
be 'verse,' and verse, too, superior as blank to rhyme :' Dryden carried his earlier notions about rhyme so far that he is said, in his
only interview with the great Milton, now in his declining years, to have gravely

NOTES TO PREFACE.

xxix

asked his permission to turn his ParadiseLost into rhyme; to which Milton sardonically replied : "aye, sir; you may tag my verses if you will"'-an answer of
which Mr. Bell well remarks that the language of the permission was a reproof
in itself . .. Dryden, however, as is well known, totally altered his opinion about
rhyme in his after years ; and Mr. Richardson, in his notes on Milton, relates that
he exclaimed when he first read ParadiseLost, "This man cuts us all out, and
the ancients too" : and that many years afterwards, when he had entered upon his
translation of our poet, he said "he would not have done his Virgil in rhyme
if he had to begin it again."' (See Memoir of Dryden in Bell's English Poets.
London: C. Griffin & Co.-vol. i. 'John Dryden,' pp. 42, 43. n.)

The following was prefixed by Milton to his P. L., in 1668, on ' The
Verse' :'The measure is English heroic verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek,
and of Virgil in Latin; rime being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem
or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to
set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some
famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation,
hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part
worse, than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause, therefore,
some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime both in
longer and shorter works; as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a
thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which
consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn
out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault
avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect
then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to
vulgar readers, that it is rather to be esteemed an example set, the first in English,
of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern
bondage of riming.'

NOTE VIII., Page xi.

I have often thought it a thing to be regretted, that it was not the
tuneful Pope who translated Virgil, and the nervous Dryden who undertook Homer; the peculiar styles of the two ancients would so have
better found their respective representations in the characteristic versification of the two

moderns.

In

an article entitled Remarks on

Translation in the Classical Museum (vol. i., p. 400), the writer,
Mr. R. H.

Homrne, observes of Pope as a translator of the Iliad :-'

By

his indoor, modern life, his drawing-room associations, his mechanical
refinements and polished grace, Pope was the natural opposite to Homer, and one of the very last men who should have meddled with his

works.' And he might have said the same of Dryden for Virgil for the
opposite qualities of the man and his style.

xxx

NOTES TO PREFACE.
NoTt IX., Page xiii.

So Mr. Hughes, in his edition of Spenser in six volumes, 1715, says
of the metre in his remarks on the poem, p. 95 :'The defect of it, in long or narrative poems, is apparent. The same measure,
closed always by a full stop in the same place, by which every stanza is made, as
it were, a distinct paragraph, grows tiresome by continual repetition, and frequently breaks the sense where it ought to be carried on without interruption.'

NOTE X., Page xv.

Dryden has twenty-two Alexandrines in his first book, and several
of them ending triplets, and they are, I believe, equally numerous in
the other books; while in his general poetry he has them as thick as
stars in the Milky Way. (See his Tales from Chaucer, &c., &c.)
I submit that it is not to make against my plea herein that Dryden
was, to be sure, rather addicted to giving ' good measure' in his verses,
particularly when, as Mr. Bell expresses it, ' his sweeping versification
rolled at flood-tide '-e.g.the monster line so attacked in its day, in
his savage Satire on the Earl of Shaftesbury, The Medal:
'Thou leap'st o'er all eternal truths in thy Pindaric way'-

a line which, Mr. Bell tells us, was noticed as 'the longest line in
Christendom, except one which went round some old hangings representing the history of Pharaoh and Moses, and measured forty-six
good feet of English metre, running thus :
" Why, was he not a rascal,
Who refused to suffer the children of Israel to go into the wilderness with
their wives and their families, and their flocks and their herds, for to
eat the Paschal ?" '

Mr. Bell might have found a fellow-monster for the line from The
Medal, along with a characteristic spice of his political polemics, in the
author's rendering of our poet's description of Fame, or Rumour,
b. iv., 270:'With court-informers haunts and royal spies,
Things done relates, not done she feigns, and mingles truth with lies.'

NOTES TO PREFACE.

xxxi

Mr. Conington terms these lines Mr. Dryden's 'plusquam-Alexandrines.'
(M2iscellaneous Writings, vol. i., p. 24, n.)
Compare also the following from Addison (Translation of Virgil's
Fourth Georgic) :
'A soul,
Diffused throughout the matter of the whole,
To all the vast unbounded frame was given,
And ran through earth and air and sea, and all the deep of Heaven.'

And again, Id. (Account of the greatest of English poets-of Pindar in
Cowley's PindaricOdes) :
'Well pleased in thee he soars with new delight,
And plays in more unbounded verse, and takes a nobler flight.'

Mr. Conington quotes another ' plusquam-Alexandrine'
from his version of b. iii. of Lucretius, ad fin.

of Dryden's

'What is it but in reason's true account
To heave the stone against the rising mount,
Which, urged and laboured and forced up with pain,
Recoils, and rolls impetuous down, and smokes along the plain.'

NOTE XI., Page xix.
Messrs. Butcher and Lang, in the Preface to their very excellent
joint prose version of the Odyssey, would seem to hold that the
'simple truth about the matter of a poem,' when it has to be translated, can only be given in prose, and they subscribe to the dictum of
Mr. Matthew Arnold, that ' in a verse translation no original work is
any longer recognisable'; and in support of the view they adduce
Pope, Mr. Worsley, and Dr. Hawtrey, as adding to Homer when these
translators speak respectively of "'tracing the mazy lev'ret o'er the
lawn,' or about the islands that are ' stars of the blue Aegaean,' or
'the Earth's soft arms,' when Homer says nothing at all about
the 'mazy lev'ret,' or the ' stars of the blue Aegaean,' or the 'soft
arms' of earth." If by the simple truth about the matter of a poem
these gentlemen mean the bald literalism of the composition, of course
anything really exceeding this defeats the search after such truth--tanto
minus, quanto majus. But where, owing to the differences of signification in the terms of different languages, the exact verbum verbo

xxxii

NOTES TO PREFACE.

transference of a composition from one tongue to another is an impossibility (p. iv. supra), such a bare rendering of a poem, even if feasible, as
these gentlemen would seem to regard as the alone truthful one, would
not, I submit, give us even their ' half truth' about the poem-it would
deprive us of more than its 'song': it would not only 'be-prose the
rhyme,' but it would strip the subject of its most essential properties.
The poet suggests, as well as defines; paints to the imagination, as
well as describes to the eye; and where new or irrelevant ideas are
not introduced, or the meaning not essentially altered, or the descriptions not overdone, and the persons and things not marred with
incongruous epithets or smothered with superfluous ones, or where
a nexus is supplied that may not lie on the surface for the general
reader;-in these and such like cases the translator cannot be said
with truth to add to his original, where he does not really and essentially exceed what the original just as much suggests as it conveys
what it actually expresses. If I describe a landscape to a painter, and
set him down to produce it on his canvas, he cannot be said to add to
my description because he paints the sky blue and the trees green,
although I may have said nothing at all to him about the blueness of
the sky or the greenness of the trees. Such colouring, where not inconsistent with the particular description, is implied in the description,
and is only properly exhibited in the painting; and so, I submit, of
other likely features and appropriate accessories of the scene : all such,
even where not so necessarily implied as those which I have just instanced, may be legitimately introduced into the picture, where not
inconsistent with its general character, or calculated to overcrowd, or to
essentially alter it. I hold, therefore, that the translator of any literary
work who, in order to give me the natural whole of its subject-and I
cannot well imagine less than the whole being expected from him-presents me with the substance of the work spiritedly enlivened with the
natural attributes and accompaniments of its persons and things, deserves better both of his author and of me, than the man who, in order
to keep strictly within the bare letter of his author, gives me only the
half loaf of the same-in this respect, too, the summum jus may
often prove practically summa injuria.
Messrs. Butcher and Lang have certainly given us, notwithstanding
its inornate bareness, a very readable exposition of the matter of the

NOTES TO PREFACE.

xxxiii

great Sea Epic (and in what I cannot help thinking some have belauded
too much as 'pure Saxon English,' ignoring, if not depreciating, the
enhanced advantages of our composite language), as the latter gentleman, in conjunction with Mr. Walter Leaf and Mr. Ernest Myers, has
given us the same of the Iliad also: I only regret that the learned and
accomplished quartette did not go farther and give us the whole truth
about the two grand old Epics in verse. I know nothing about Messrs.
Butcher's and Leaf's poetical abilities; of Mr. Myers' I have heard
very favourably; while of Mr. Lang's no one can entertain any doubt
who has had the very great pleasure of reading Helen of Troy.

,** THE READER will kindly make the following

CHANGES

Page 3, line
2, II,
214,

20,
27

23,

99

31,

99

34,
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47,

~

,
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88,

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99

113,

152,
99 174,
99

95

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177,
179,

1, full
stop after Ganymede
,, 13, for dinning read inmost
,2 i,
readUnalterably fixt
,, 4, for thine ear readyour ears,
,, II, from foot,for structure reedfrontage
for soul's read heart's
,,
,, 4, comma after now
,, 6, for t'was read 'twas
,, 3, from foot, comma after Greece
,, I, comma after dream
,, 2, from foot,forwe read us
for 'nor-wester readnor'-wester
,, 9,,,,,9
for name! read name:
, I,,,,
,, 14, read and arm him for the fray.

15,

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fordrawnreadlaid,

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for conduct read attend,

,721,

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,, 448.
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from foot, for hooves' read hoofs'
read responsive to their strains,
for At read'Gainst

last, for own read own !
3, read forced them now to torn
8, from foot, for weapons read armours,
for streams read streams !
23,,,,,~

,

,
for this read mine
,,
three
,, for aread
4,
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12, for 'scaped not one, read came forth none,
5, dele it

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I, for rude readrough
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2,
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,852,~

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72 208,

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4, forRhaehus, read Rhoebus,
59 from foot, for ills readills !

18&2, read e'en though he should O'ermatch

14, from foot, for M6tiscus, read Metiscus',
7,

,,

9,

for dying read hapless

LATIN
TEXT,

I-8.

THE AENEID.
BOOK

I.

Lo, I am he did erst on oaten reed
Tune the light lay; then, faringforth the woods,
I bade the neighbouring
fields, perforce subdued,
To sate the tiller's greed, how craving e'er,
And won for meed the rustic's thank ; but now

ARMS and the man I sing who first from Troy,
Foredoomed to fly, to far Italia came,
Lavinium's destined shore, long tossed and wide
By flood and field of adverse Powers above,
For cruel Juno's unforgiving wrath;
Sore trial too he bore of war and fight,
While as he still submissive struggled on
His town to build and shrine his homeless gods
On Latian soil, whence came the Latin race,
Old Alba's sires, and walls of queenly Rome.
Say what the cause, 0 Muse, what purpose high
Thwarted and crossed, or what the dire offence,

THE AENEID.

[ 9-28

That she, great queen of heaven, should drive a man
So gentle, good, and true, the round to tread
Of toil and risk, to face such brunt of ill;
In heavenly bosoms finds such hate its home?
Founded in days of yore, a town there was,
Planted from Tyre, and Carthage was it hight;
To Italy across the main afar
And Tiber's distant mouths opposed it stood;
Powerful and rich, and to war's dread pursuits
With ardour giv'n. 'Bove the whole world beside
'Twas said queen Juno loved that favoured spot,
To Samos' self preferred..; here were her arms,:
And here her chariot stood yea here e'en then,
Might only Fate assent, a throne she planned
Should rule the world, and hugged the fond design.
But she had heard that now of Trojan blood
There came a warrior race which low in dust
Should one day lay her Tyrian towers--a folk
Of empire wide and martial glory proud,
For Libya's fall ordained, her destined scourge;
So spun the Fates, and this she dreaded sore.
Yea, and withal well she remembered too
That olden feud herself had foremost fought
Erewhile at Troy, for darling Argos waged;
Nay, nor the seed of that fell enmity,
The sting of bitter griefs, had quit her soul:
Deep in her memory lay, for vengeance stored,
Paris' unjust award, the galling wrong
Done to her slighted charms, the hated race,

29-48]

BOOZ .

And honours heaped on heaven-rapt Ganymede
Fired by all this beside, the goddess still
From Latium drove the wretched Trojans far,
O'er ocean tossed, a piteous remnant left
Of Grecian swords and fierce Achilles spear ;
And now for years on years they roamed the deep,
While fates imperious ever urged them on:
Such travail sore it asked to found the might of Rome!
Scarce beyond ken of fair Sicilia's isle
Seaward their galleys bore, and onward clave
With brazen keels the foaming fields of brine
Full cheerily, when lo, the rankling wound
Aye nursing at her heart, thus to herself
The indignant queen:
'Ha! baffled must I yield,
Nor power be mine to keep from Italy
This hated prince of Troy ? The Fates forsooth
Say nay; but what! had Pallas power to burn
That Argive fleet and drown the crews to boot,
All for mad Ajax' single guilt and crime ?
Yea from the clouds her daring right hand launched
Jove's volleyed bolts, scattered their navies wide,
With storm uptore the main, and him, the wretchHis thunder-riven breast forth panting flameBorne in the blast away and smitten home,
Impaled upon a jag of splintered rock;
While I, who queen it through these courts of heaven,
Sister and wife of Jove, with one poor clan
For years sans count still wage my bootless wars.
BZ

TIE

AENEID.

[49-69

Who then henceforth will Juno's power invoke ?
What hand lay tribute on her altars more?'
Her very soul with such like thoughts aflame,
The goddess to Aeolia reached-Aeolia,
Bleak land of storm, the tempests' teeming womb;
Here in a cavern's depths king Aeolus
The struggling winds doth hold and howling blasts,
Prisoned and chained, tames their rebellious wrath,
And breaks them to his sway. Fiercely they rave
Their dungeon bars around, the rocky vault
Re-murmuring to their growl; the while on high,
Sceptered and throned, sits Aeolus without,
And still that wrath controls. Did he not so,
Ocean and earth and firmament profound
Had fled before them, swept through endless space.
But Heaven's all-ruling sire, forefending this,
Here in dark dens hath pent them, and atop
A towering mass of rugged mountain piled,
And o'er them set a king, as who should know,
By terms of compact fixt, both when to curb,
And when at high behest to give them rein.
To whom in suppliant tones the goddess thus:
'Aeolus !-for thee the great All-Sire and King
Empowers alike or with thy winds to lay
The waves at rest, or wake their wrath-see there
Out on the Tuscan main a folk I hate,
Bearing their Troy to Italy, with all
Her vanquished gods that ever failed to save:
Scourge me the winds to fury for the nonce,

3o-89]

BOOK L

Sink ships and crews, or send my foes adrift,
And strew the drowning miscreants on the floods!
Twice seven young Nymphs are mine of matchless
charms;
Of whom, in guerdon of the deed, will I
Bestow thee straight the fairest, Deiop6,
To wive in wedlock sure, that so she may
Unite for mutual bliss her years with thine,
And make thee father of a goodly race.'
Then he: 'What thou, great queen, art pleased to will
'Tis thine to weigh; thy sovereign hests to work
Of bounden duty mine. And well; 'tis thou
Dost give what here of empery we hold,
The favour thou and :smiles of sceptered Jove,
'Tis thou with gods still giv'st me to recline
At Heaven's high banquet-boards, thou to command
These airy realms and fierce tempestuous Powers.'
He spake; and on the word his kingly staff
Against the hollow mountain's side he drave
With forceful dint: out at the sudden door
The winds in column rush, and sweep the land
In hurricane. Anon upon the sea
East, West, and South, together settling down,
Ride the vext flood, and, from the depths upheaved,
Lash the long surges on the trembling shores.
Hark to the cries of seamen through the storm!
Shrills the strained cordage to the gale ! -and now
Cloud upon cloud blots daylight and the sky
To Trojan. eyes; black night invests the deep;

5

THE AENEID.

[9o-109.

Flash after flash red lightningsfire the air,
Loud thunders peal from pole to pole, and death,
Immediate death, on every hand appals.
Chill horror thrilled Aeneas' frame, unstrung;
He groans, and lifting high both hands to Heaven,
'Happy,' he cries, '0 more than happy they,
Who nobly died before the walls of Troy,
While parents' eyes looked on to bless their deeds !
Tydides, bravest of the sons of Greece,
Why did not I on Troy's loved champaign fall,
And drain these veins to that red hand of thine,
Where by Achilles' spear bold Hector lies,
Where huge Sarpedon sleeps:, where Simos oft
Rolled shields and, helms and gallant heroes slain,
Swept his choked tides along ?'E'en as he spake,
A furious gust, loud whistling with the North,
Strikes full upon the sail, and to the stars
Up flings the brine; crash go the oars; the prow
Swings round, and broadwise to the wave presents
The reeling galley's side; then swells amain,
Steep as a precipice, one monster sea,
And bursts, a liquid mountain, o'er the crew.
Some ride the towering billow's crest; to some
Adown the trough old Ocean bares his bed,
Where chafes the seething surf with shoaling sand.
Three ships the South on sunken rocks doth castRocks which, encircled by the dashing waves,

Ilo-I29]

BOOK -L

Clear o'er the surface thrust their back-bone huge,
By Tuscan mariners 'The Altars' namedThree more the East on shoals and quicksands drives,
Piteous. to see.! and, dashed upon the flats,
Engirdles them about with mounds of sand.
One, which Orontes and his Lycians bore,
A mighty sea before his very eyes
Straight from o'erhead smites full upon the poop
Sheer overboard the..helmsman's headlong washed,
Torn from his post, while her the wheeling wave
Thrice in the one wild whirl whisks round and round,
And the mad eddy sucks. her down the deep.
Anon, just glancing to the eye, are seen
Arms, drowning men,. and spars and precious things,
Scattered afloat the vast abyss all o'er.
Now to the storm Ilioneus' stout ship,
And now Achates' yields; then Abas' too,
Then old Al6tes' next; now all alike
Through gaping seams and loose disjointed sides
Let in at many a leak the watery foe.

Meantime the sea with turmoil huge embroiled
God Neptune knew, the storms let loose, and all
His liquid reign from stillest depths upheavedAnd his dread wrath 'gan stir. Sternly serene
He reared his awful brows above the flood,
Then looked abroad: Aeneas' fleet he sees
Dispersed, the Trojans by the waves o'erborne,
And all the crashing down-rush of the skies.

THE AENEID.

[130-150

Nor failed great Juno's jealous wrath and wiles
To flash suggestive to her brother's thought;
So West and East he bids before him come,
And thus rebukes:

' Smacks then your insolence
Of your audacious stock so true, ye Winds,
That thus you dare confound both earth and sky,
And raise such mountain-billows on the main,
Sans hest or leave from me? Now I-but no;
Better we now these troubled floods allay;
Your next offence far other reckoning waits.
Speed hence your flight, and say ye to your lord,
That not to him of Fate's decree was giv'n
Dominion of the deep to hold, and sway
The awful trident, but to me. His realm
Are caves and savage rocks; those thy fit home,
Bold East, and thy co-mates'; in those bleak halls
Bid Aeolus rant-yea, king it if he will,
But bar up first his subjects in his jail.'
And, done ere said, the swelling floods he lays,
The clouds disperses, and re-lumes the day;
Cymothoe and Triton lend their aid,
And heave the vessels off the pointed crags;
Trident in hand, the god then floats them forth,
Channels the shoals, and smoothes the ruffled deep,
And scuds along the waves on lightsome wheels.
As when-what oft doth hap-sedition stirs
Some mighty crowd, and, the low rabble throng
Rising in wrath, soon stones and brands 'gin fly,

151-i69]

BOOK I

For fury still finds arms; if chance they see
Some grey-beard sire for patriot worth revered,
Anon they hush and lend the listening ear,
While he with words persuasive rules their wrath,
And soothes their angry mood; so sunk at once
The waves' whole uproar wild, soon as, emerged,
The Ocean-lord looked forth upon the sea,
And, to his sliding chariot slacking rein,
Went flying o'er the deep mid cloudless skies.
Wearied and spent, Aeneas and his crews
Hoist every sail to make the nearest land,
And stand in, tacking, for the Libyan shore.
Far up into the land, indented deep,
There goes a firth; in front an island thrown
Shapes it a haven by its jutting sides;
'Gainst which no wave from middle ocean rolls
But spends its force, and thence in rippling curves
Parts to the deeper hollows of the shore.
This side and that bold rocks, a twin-like pair,
Shoot up in threatening pinnacles to heaven,
While safe and still the waters sleep beneath.
Where o'er the cove the mainland heights impend,
A mimic amphitheatre of woods
Rustles its twinkling boughs against the sky,
And lower down a grove with sombrous shade
Frowns o'er the floods. Facing the view a grot,
Roofed of o'er-arching rocks, with bubbling springs
And seats of living stone, the sea-maids' bower;
No cable here nor biting anchor holds

Io

THE

AENEID.

[r-o-190

The labouring bark. Hither, with scarce seven ships
Mustered from all his fleet, Aeneas comes;
The Trojans, eager for the welcome land,
Spring out impatient on the wished-for shore,
And stretch their brine-drenched limbs upon the beach.
And first Achates from the flint smote out
The latent flash, and caught the fire on leaves,
Then all around dry fuel heaped, and soon
Fanned up the spreading sparkles into flame.
Their bread-corn next, sore damaged by the waves,
With Ceres' grinding gear they bid bring out,
Parch o'er the flames, and 'twixt the quern-stones bruise,
And, spent and famished, so prepare to eat.
Meantime Aeneas scales a beetling cliff,
And wide all round the watery prospect sweeps
In hope some storm-tost friend to spy, the barks
Of Antheus, or of Capys, it might be,
Drifting the deep, or, flashing from afar,
The shields upon Ca'cus' towering poop.
Sail there is none in sight; but lo, three stags
Ranging the beach beneath : these the whole herd
Follows anon; and now the lengthening train
Grazes the valleys through. He stayed him here;
Then instant to his hand the bow he took
And arrows fleet which good Achates bore;
And first the chiefs, as high their branching heads
They proudly tossed, along the sward he lays;
The vulgar next; then all the routed throng,

191-2l2]

BOOZ I.

tr

With galling missives plied, the hero drives
In wild confusion through the greenwood glades,
Nor stints his hand till on the turf he spreads
Seven goodly carcases, and with the ships
Makes even tale. Portwards he then returns,
And shares the welcome quarry with his crews.
The generous wine the chieftain next serves out,
Which good Acestes on Trinacria's shore
Had filled in casks, and made his parting gift;
Then seeks he thus to raise their drooping cheer:
'Friends, sharers of my toils !-for toils ere now,
And worse we've known, and these too Heaven will end-:
Fell Scylla's rage and dinning cavern's roar
Ye proved with me; with me the Cyclops' den
Ye braved; bid back those hearts, and banish fear:
These sufferings, too, may-hap, will one day be
Our memory's joy. Through all these varied risks,
These hazards dire, our destined pathway lies
To promised Latium, where the Fates foreshow
Our peaceful seats; once there,-such Heaven's high
willTroy shall revive, and mount her throne again.
Then on, brave souls, and bide your better days.'
So spake the chief, and, inly sick with care,
Feigns hope in look, and locks his breast on woe.
All to the prey address them straight: first some
Flay off the hide and lay the carcase bare;
Some into junks divide, and pierce with spits

I2

THE AENEID.

[213-231

The quivering joints; others along the beach
Sling brazen caldrons o'er the flames arow,
And tend the needful fires. Soon the good cheer
Woos back their strength, and, laid along the turf,
Of wine and venison they take their fill.
Hunger now quelled and boards all set aside,
Their missing comrades next bid sorrow wake
To long and anxious talk; and still they guess,
Still hang 'twixt hope and fear, or did they live,
Or were they now no more! was loving call
To death's dull ear addrest ! First in such cares,
But to his own sad thoughts apart, the prince
Now brave Orontes' cruel hap bemoans,
Now Amycus, by hap as cruel lost,
Bold Gyas, Lycus, and Cloanthus bold.
At length the weary day 'gan close, when Jove,
With sovran eye from height of heaven bent down
O'er seas and lands and shores and nations wide
Outstretched his ken beneath, so looking paused
There on the starry pinnacle, and full
On Libya fixed his gaze. The moment apt,
As cares imperial rose before his soul,
Fair Venus seized, and thus with winning grief,
Her sparkling eyes o'er-brimmed with blinding tears,
Her earnest suit the goddess pressed:
'0O thou,
Whose sway eternal rules both gods and men,
Whose thunders scare the prostrate world o'erawed,
What sin so great could my poor son commit,

......
232-25

'1
1

, "

T /"

f"l T

BOOK

"!"
I.

3

O how might Troy offend, that now, with all
Their ills before, not Italy alone
Is 'gainst them barred, but the whole world beside
For Italy ? But surely, mighty sire,
Surely thy word was pledged that yet from them,
As years rolled on, those sons of Rome should come,
From them, through Teucer's royal line restored,
Those warrior princes spring whose world-wide rule
All lands and seas should own; Father, then say
changed opinion hath thy purpose changed.
In this bright prospect still for Troy's sad fall
Solace I sought, and fates 'gainst fates would weigh;
But to this hour the same hard lot unchanged
With all their sufferings past pursues them still.
What ending, mighty monarch, wilt assign
Their woes' sad history ? Antenor, 'scaped
The swarming hordes of Greece, might pierce unscathed
Illyria's gulf, and past Liburnia's realm
Win his bold way above Timavus' fount,
Where through nine mouths, in echoing caverns pent,
From subterranean depths it bursts, a sea,
And pours a roaring deluge o'er the fields;
Yet Padua here he built, here fixed his seat,
New-named his Trojans, and hung up his arms;
And see him now! his settled state secure
In peace he rules; while we, of higher strain,
Sprung from thyself, and whom thy sovran nod
Bids hope the bright inheritance of heavenOur vessels lost-O woe too great for words !
Forlorn are thus-and all for one heart's spite-

.What

14

THE AENEID.

[252-270

Abandoned to the worst, and flung thus wide
Of promised Italy ! Is such the meed
Our duteous worth requites? Father, is this
To give us back our throne?'
And on her smiled
The General Sire with that same look benign
That clears the stormy face of heaven, then pressed
His daughter's lips, and thus outspake :
' Fear not,
Cythera's queen; thy people's fates remain
Fixt and unalterable ; thine eyes shall yet
Lavinium's promised town and towers survey,
And brave Aeneas to these starry seats
Thine arms shall bear, nor is my purpose changed.
He-for I now, to ease thine anxious soul,
Will speak thee plain, and 'fore thy ken will lay
The distant secrets of the future bareShall war in Italy a mighty war,
Shall rugged tribes and haughty nations crush,
And for his toil-worn followers shall set up,
With laws and arts, a town and polity,
Till, all subdued, the third fair summer find
His rule in Latium owned, and winters three
Have seen the conquered Rutules hail him lord.
Then young Ascanius, now lulus hightIlus the name while Troy yet held her swayThrice ten great cycles of revolving moons
Shall measure with his reign, and then transfer
The sceptre from Lavinium, and shall make

271--c 4

-1

BOOK I.

1i5

His fortress of Long Alba town. Now here
For full three hundred years the throne shall stand
In Hector's line, till Ilia, at once
A priestqss and a queen, shall to great Mars
Teem at a birth twin goodly sons. And then
Bold Romulus, in tawny wolf-skin clad,
His foster-mother's fell, shall mount the throne,
And rear his town to Mars, and from himself
The people Romans call.. To these nor bound
Of power I fix, nor term in space or time;
I grant them empire without end. Nay more:
E'en Juno's self, their restless foe, who thus
Of jealous fear racks heaven and earth and sea,
Shall change her mood, and, friendly grown, shall yet
E'en vie with me to bless the sons of Rome,
The world's proud lords, the nation of the gownSo it is willed. There yet shall dawn a day,
As Rome's great ages lead the march of time,
When, old Assaracus, thy royal house
Shall Phthia and Mycenae hold in thrall,
And lord it over Argos' vanquished town.
Of Troy's fair line a Caesar then shall come,
Whose rule let ocean bound, the stars his fame;
Julius-a name from great Iiilus drawn.
Him, in due time, encumbered with the spoils
And gorgeous trophies of the conquered East,
Thyself shall welcome to these blest abodes,
So quitted of thy care; him too shall Rome
Invoke, a god. Then shall the ages fierce
To mildness turn, and wars be known no more-;

THE AENEID.

[292-31c

Then hoary Faith again with Vesta knit,
And Remus with his brother twinned anew,
In holy league shall join to bless the world
With righteous laws: the dreadful Gates of War
Strong iron bolts and bars shall close for aye,
And, fettered on a pile of murderous arms,
His impious hands behind his captive back
With many a brazen knot fast linked and chained,
The demon Strife shall idly rave within,
And gnash his bloody fangs and yell for rage.'
He spake, and from on high sent Maia's son
That Libya's realm might ope and Carthage town
To guest the sons of Troy, lest blind to fate
Dido should.drive them from her shores. The god
On oary wings rows. down the vast expanse,
And soon on Libya's shore alights; when straight
His mission speeds: all fierceness from their souls
At Heaven's behest the Punic folk dismiss;
Foremost their queen goodwill towards Troy conceives,
With thoughts of peace, and feels her heart grow kind.
Full many an anxious care that livelong night
The chieftain knew, and now at last resolves,
When dawns the genial day, to sally forth
And search these. regions strange-what coasts be these
He so had made, by stress of weather forced,
And what held dwelling here, or man or beast,
For all looks wild, and back his tidings bear..
His ships from view concealed, where to the cove

31 -330]

BOOK I.

I7

The wooded sides converge, and steeped in shade,
Beneath a sheltering rock secure he leaves;
Then fares the hero forth, Achates sole
Companion of his way, and in his hand
Two steel-tipt javelins shook. Anon, when now
His steps had reached the forest's midmost depths,
Before him, lo, his heavenly mother stood
In guise as Spartan huntress-maid equipt
And silvan trim, or like Harpalyc6,
When as in Thrace she tires the steeds outrun,
And heads swift Hebrus' stream. Her borrowed form
The shapely bow beseemed, on shoulder slung,
And tresses to the winds given free, the robe
In gathered folds looped up, and white knee bare;
When she:
'Ho, gentle youths, if thwart your path
There strayed a huntress-sister of our train,
I pray show where: a quiver at her back
Was slung ; her vest the dappled lynx's hide;
Or happed belike the foaming boar she pressed
Full cry'-tlius Venus.
When thus Venus' son :
'No sister we of thine or heard or saw,
O thou--but what, fair lady, deign to say
Thy rightful style: for nought of mortal mould
Thy face would speak, nor sounds that tongue of earth:
A goddess sure: art Phoebus' sister, then,
Or at the least of the chaste Dian's train
Some favoured nymph ? Whate'er thou better hear'st,
Thy grace vouchsafe and help our sore distress,
c

S8

THE A EAEID.

[331-349

And what this clime declare, what shores we tread,
For wildered here we stray, unknown alike
Or what the places be, or who the folk,
And hither by the winds and wild waves tossed;
So in requital at thine altars yet
Oft shall the victim by this right hand bleed.'
Then she: ' Good sooth, fair sir, not mine to claim
Such greeting high: plain huntress-maid of Tyre
This quiver light would speak and booted leg,
Our wonted wear. But to thy question now:
A Punic realm thou seest; Agenor's town,
A colony from Tyre; the frontiers round
Hlowbeit do Libyans own, a folk in war
Full hard to cope withal; the sovran rule
Fair Dido holds as lady of the land,
Who fled from Tyre to 'scape a brother's wrath.
'T were long to tell the story of her wrongs,
Tale long and intricate; fain would I thus
Comprise it brief: Sychaeus was her spousey
Richest in land of all Phoenicia's sons;
For, as she loved-ah, too well loved !-her sire
In first connubial rites, a virgin bride,
Had so bestowed his child. Pygmalion then,
Her brother, filled the throne of Tyre, for crime
Among the worst unmatched. When 'twixt the pair
A feud of deadliest hate fell out, the king,
Blinded with greed of gold, in secret hour
At disadvantage foul Sychaeus takes,
And impious at the very altar stabs,

3.50-373]

BOOK L

19

Regardless of his sister's love ; then long
Concealed the deed, and with pretences vain
And idle hopes untrue bemocked her grief.
But in her sleep--and lifting up withal
A ghastly visage, 0, so wondrous pale!The ghost of her unburied husband came;
The altar's cruel tale he told, his breast
Where passed the tyrant's steel laid bare, and all
The guilty secret of the house unveiled;
Then counselled her to fly, and to her aid
Shows where in earth long buried and unknown
An untold weight of gold and silver lay.
Dido, alarmed, for speedy flight prepared,
And casts about for friends-nor looks in vain:
Soon all make common cause, as well who hate
The monster for his wrongs, as feared his power;
Some ships they seize that by good hap were found
For sea equipt, and lade them well with gold;
Greedy Pygmalion's wealth takes wing, and lo,
'Tis fearless woman heads the daring deed!
Then they arrived the place where soon may'st see
The walls and towers of our new Carthage rise,
And such breadth bought of land as one bull's hide
Might compass round--thence Byrsa named. But now
Who ye, pray, strangers, show, and whence ye come,
And whither hold your way.'
Whereto, with sighs
And voice from labouring breast hard-fetcht, he thus:
'Should I, 0 goddess, from their early date
Our woes' sad annals trace and thou might'st hear,
c2

20

THE A ENEID.

[374-394

Heaven's gates would close upon the dying day,
And Vesper strew his bier, ere all were told.
From ancient Troy we sailed, if name of Troy
E'er reached thine ear, and long o'er divers seas
We drove, till here our fleet a storm's wild stress
On Libya cast. That good Aeneas I-So Fame doth gild my name--who in his fleet
Still bears his household-gods from foemen saved;
For Italy my course is bent, for there
I look to find my true ancestral home
And heaven-descended kin. With twice ten ships
I clomb the Phrygian main, and followed still
A goddess-mother's guidance and my fates';
My ships-ah !now scarce seven remain, and they
Shattered of wind and tide; while here, alas !
Unknown, in need, I roam these deserts drear,
From Europe as from Asia's limits barred.'He said; nor more might Venus bide to list,
But brake in middle speech his plaint in twain :
'No step-child thou of Heaven,-in sooth I ween,
What else may'st be, to Tyrian home-steads come !
Then on, and to our queen repair , for here
I bid thee know thy fleet and friends are safe,
Of shifted winds brought back; poor augurs else
My parents both, nor taught the craft to me.
Yon twice six swans observe in marshalled flight
All jubilant on high : but short space since,
Stooped from his aery tour, the bird of Jove
Chased these o'er all the wide unsheltered skies;

395-416]

BOOK 1.

21

Yet see them now: their ground in lengthened string
They choose, or, chosen, eye with downward gaze
Or ere they fold their pinions to alight.
As these, returning safe, in mazy rounds
Disport them through the void on whirring wing,
And strain their tuneful throats in joyance thus,
E'en so thy ships and crews or hold the port,
Or make its mouth full sail. Then hie thee on,
And where this path will show pursue thy way.'
She turned, and lo! flashed to his dazzled gaze
Her roseate neck, ambrosial scents divine
Her dewy locks diffused around, down dropt
Her robe in lengthening folds, and goddess true
She looked and moved. His mother known, the prince
Pursues her steps, and thus: 'Why mock thy son
With borrowed shapes so oft ? thou, too, unkind!
Why not with hand in hand and accents true
Our converse held?'
Upbraiding so, he yet
Bends for the town his course. But Venus now
With mist of filmy air doth hedge their steps,
As goddess might, and shrouds them from all view
In veil opacous, wrought of cloudy woof,
That so, unseen, their progress none might stay,
Nor question of their coming idly make.
To Paphos then she hies her through the air,
Well pleased-her favoured seat, where in her fane
A hundred altars to her worship burn

22

THE AB NEID.

[417-436

Arabia's odorous gums, and, sweet-exhaled
From 'fadeless blooms, waft flowery scents around.
Meantime the pair, a'following of the path,
Have sped their way, and now they clomb the hill
That hangs its steepy mass above the town,
And from atop o'erlooks the towers and domes
That swell to meet the view. With wondering gaze,
Where once but lowly huts, the prince beholds
Great lordly structures rise, admires the gates
And paven ways, and lists the busy hum.
All Tyre is hot at work: the ramparts these,
Those raise the citadel, and up the steep
Bid roll the unwieldy blocks; some for a house
Lay out the site and plough the trench around;
Laws others, others magistrates ordain,
And some the reverend senate; others there
The future port scarp out, while others here
A theatre's foundations lay, and hew
Great marble columns from the quarried rock,
The stately garniture of coming scenes:
Varied their toil, as what in summer's prime
Through flowery meads beneath the noontide beam
Employs the bees : some lead their youth abroad,
The nation's hope full-grown; some knead the sweets,
Flowing and clear, and pack the bursting cells;
Some ease the new-come carriers of their load,
Delicious spoil, or, formed in ordered bands
And marshalled companies, beat off the drones,
A lazy kind : full briskly goes the work,
And sweet of herbs the fragrant honey breathes.

437-455]

BOO

1A

'Ah, happy folk, who see your walls thus rise!
The prince sighs forth, as now, arrived the plain,
The tall embattled ports arrest his gaze;
Anon he passes in, and, progress strange!
Cloud-wrapt about moves on unseen by all
Full in the centre of the city stood
A sacred grove, of dense umbrageous growth;
The spot wherefrom, long tossed of winds and waves,
Those Punic rovers dug that token forth
Which queenly Juno to their hope foreshowed,
The fiery courser's head; for by such sign
The goddess chose their favoured lot to mark,
Prowess in war unmatched through rolling years,
With rich abundance backed and foison rare.
'Twas here that now to royal Juno's name
A gorgeous fane Phoenicia's daughter raised,
With costly offerings rich, but richer far
By special presence of the goddess made.
Of bronze throughout the pillared structure stood;
Of bronze the threshold, and the steps were bronze,
To jambs of bronze the bronzen lintels joined,
And bronze the doors, on creaking hinges hung.
This hallowed spot a wondrous sight disclosed
Which first Aeneas' fears rebuked, here first
His drooping heart revived, here first dared hope
His fortunes yet might mend. While as he gazed
This temple round, expectant of the queen,
And, lost in marvel at such prosperous lot,
About him viewed the rival artists' feats,

23

24

7HE AENEID.

[456-473

Their diverse handicraft and works of skill,
Lo! on the walls the battle-fields of Troy,
Scene after scene pourtrayed, those wars by fame
Now blazoned through the world; the brother chiefs
Of Atreus' royal line, king Priam too,
And stern Achilles-stern alike to both.
Paused he and wept; then: ' O Achates, say,
Wide as the world, what region so remote,
What nook that rings not of the woes of Troy!
See where our Priam stands: yes, even here
True worth finds tribute meet; here man with man
Weeps kindly drops, and here poor human hearts
Are touched to sympathy by human ills.
Dismiss thy fears, and take thy prince's word
This fame will stand thee in no small behoof.'
He said, and on the empty mockery
Was fain his soul to stay, groaning the while
And shedding plenteous tears; for there he saw
How, as of old, around the leaguered walls
Here fled the Greeks, while Troy's hot youth pursued;
There Troy gave ground, and, hanging on her rear,
The plumed Achilles thundered in his car.
The tents of Rhesus next, nor far removed,
Provoke his tears, their snow-white cloths well known;
Surprised in sleep-that first sad sleep in TroyTydides there had heaped the floors with slain,
And now, with havoc red, is driving off
The fiery stallions to the ships and camp,
Or ere they taste the pasturage of Troy,

.474-492]

BOOK I.

Or drink of Xanthus' stream. Elsewhere, behold,
Flying along young Troilus is seen,
Nor shield nor lance hath he ! Ah, luckless boy,
And all ill-matched to dare Achilles' might!
Whirled by his team along the pass of war,
Still to his empty car he clings supine,
Still grasps the flowing reins; his comely neck
And tresses sweep the ground; the idle spear
Furrows the indented dust, and trails behind.
Anon to Pallas' all unfriendly shrine
Here Ilian dames in sad procession move,
And bear the votive robe: in suppliant guise
They rend the hair, and beat the beauteous breast;
In vain: the goddess, disregarding, holds
Her eyes averted, fixt upon the ground.
Thrice had Achilles round the walls of Troy
Bold Hector dragged, and now the breathless corse
There to his weeping sire doth sell for gold.
Sobs from the hero's inmost heart it drew
Those spoils to see, that blood-stained car, and ah!
The very body of his lifeless friend,
And Priam with those helpless hands uplift.
Himself too, mingled in the foremost fight
Among the haughty lords of Greece, he sees,
And swarthy Memnon in his arms he knew
His Eastern troops among. And furious there
Penthesil6a to the fray led on
Her banded Amazons with moony shields,
Kindling her martial fire to meet the foe:
One swelling breast, to view protruded fair,

25

26

THE AENE ID

[493-5 4

The golden baldric bares, while all unsexed
The warrior maid dares heroes to the fight.

As spell-bound thus the Dardan chief perused
These wondrous walls, in mute amazement fixt,
Lo to the fane, encircled with her guards,
In flower of matchless charms queen Dido moves.
As on Eurotas' banks or Cynthus' top
When Dian leads the dance; though on her steps
A thousand Oread nymphs attendant hang,
Thronging their quivered queen, high o'er them all,
Matchless in grace divine, the goddess towers,
While silent raptures thrill Latona's soul:
So joyous there the peerless Dido passed,
So did the gladsome presence of the queen
Cheer on those growing glories of her reign.
Then out before the goddess' inmost shrine
And"neath the central dome, on chair of state,
Fenced round with glittering arms, high-placed she sat.
Laws to the lieges first dispensed, she next
Their tasks apportioned or by lot assigned,.
When, all unlooked for, lo, Aeneas sees
On to the temple, thronged of gazing crowds,
Antheus, Sergestus, and Cloanthus too,
With other valiant lords of Troy, advance,
Whom late the storm o'er the broad seas afar
On other shores had cast. With joy at once,
At once with fear astoned, the heroes twain
Impatient longed to grasp their friendly hands;

515-536

BOOK I.

But sore perplext, their state thus all unknown,
They check the impulsive promptings of their souls,
And from their cloudy covert watch to glean
What hap befell the men, their ships where left,
And what their errand here; for chosen men
Were sent from every crew to sue for grace,
And now with clamour sought the sacred courts.
Admitted straight and boon of audience giv'n,
Of reverend years and placid mien, their chief
Ilioneus began:
'O mighty queen,
Favoured of Jove this infant state to found,
And savage tribes to curb with sovran law,
We, wretched Trojans, tossed o'er many a sea,
To thee our suit prefer; O save our ships
From fiery bane, protect a righteous folk,
And, nearer viewed, our true condition know.
We come not, we, or with the sword to waste
Your Libyan homes, or your rich booties drive
In triumph down the strand: such wrongful deed
Our souls revolts, nor suits our vanquished plight.
A land there is, of Greeks Hesperia named,
A land of olden fame for arms renowned
And eke its fertile glebe:
men
First eared the soil; folk say their children since
Have called the land Italia from their chief.
Thither our course, when ah! with sudden rise
Stormy Orion, mounting through the sky,
Dashed us on sunken shoals, and, sundered far,

CEnotrian

27

28

THE AENEID.

[537-556

By winds resistless and the tide o'erborne,
Drove o'er the sea and cast on fatal reefs.
A wretched remnant we, and scarce well saved
From rock and wave, just drifted to thy shore,
When-O what savage clime such deed allows,
What race miscalled for men ?-with levied war
The barren strand's poor welcome they refuse,
The outmost hem and border of their land !
What though your arms may mortal vengeance scorn,
Yet know and tremble that the Powers above
Still note of human deed the right and wrong.
Aeneas was our king, nor ever reigned
Monarch more just, more gentle, or more brave;
If, saved of Fate, our hero still survives,
If still he breathes this air of heaven, nor yet
Hath laid him down in cold Death's cruel gloom,
Our fears are done, nor thou shalt rue the day
That challenged him to rivalry of good.
Sicilia, too, holds many a town for us,
And helpful arms that wait our need; nay more,
Her king Acest6s kins our Trojan blood.
Then grant the boon to land our shattered barks,
New planks to hew us from your woods, new oars
To cut and shape, that so forthwith we mayIf favoured still for Italy to steer,
Our prince and friends restored-for Italy
Our course with joy resume; or, if our all
Be lost, and thou, best father of our folk,
In Libyan waves dost weltering lie, nor ah !
Our hopes may live in young iilus more,

557-575]

BOOK L

29

Yet we may make Sicania's straits again,
And those fair homes we left when hither driven,
And hail the good Acestes for our king.'
So spake Ilioneus, and to his words
A deep assent the Trojans murmured all.
Then briefly thus, with downcast looks abashed,
Answered the queen :
'Teucrians, lay by these cares,
Unlade your heavy hearts of fear and dread;
A throne unsettled and an infant state
Ask of my heed precautions strict, e'en thus
To fence with armed guards my frontiers round.
Breathes there a stranger to Aeneas' name ?
Who knoweth not Aeneas' folk, Troy town,
Troy's hero sons, her valorous deeds, and all
Her mighty war that set the world aflame ?
Not so insensate our Phoenician hearts,
Nor yon bright sun, when yoking of his steeds
He mounts the morning skies, so turns his back
On this our Tyrian town. Or be your choice
Hesperia's land, where Saturn ruled of old,
Or Eryx' bounds and good Acestes' realm,
Convoyed secure and holpen with my stores
Forth shall ye sail; or would ye bide with us,
And equal terms with mine own lieges proveSee ye this city now in building here ?
'Tis yours; beach ye your ships : with me ye'll find
Carthage and Troy shall differ but in name.
Yea, would that here, driv'n of the selfsame gale

30

THE AENEID.

[576-594

That drove yourselves, we had your monarch too,
The great Aeneas' self; e'en as it is,
True men I'll send forthwith, and bid search out
In length and breadth our Libya's utmost reach,
Should so it be he now may roam the woods,
Or stray from town to town.'

Cheered in their souls
Such gracious speech to list, the chieftains twain
Long yearned and sore to rend their cloudy screen;
When first Achates, earnest: ' Goddess-born,
What nice debate can now that anxious soul,
What strife of purpose, know ? All safe thou seest,
Ships, crews, and all brought back; lacks there but one,
And him we saw in ocean's depths engulfed;
True to thy mother's words all else appears.'
Scarce had he spoken thus, when, lo, dissolves
The circling cloud and clears away to air!
Forth to the gaze of all Aeneas stood
Mid radiant day revealed, in face and form
Majestic as a god; such grace divine
Beauty's own queen had breathed upon her son,
Soft clustering locks, the roseate flush of youth,
And beaming eyes with sprightly lustre fraughtHeightened each charm, e'en as the craftsman's skill
New grace to polished ivory lends, or when
Silver or marble gleams, enchased in gold;
Then thus, while wondered all, he to the queen :

595-614]

BOOK I.

31

'Lo, whom ye seek, Aeneas I, of Troy,
Saved from your Libyan waves. O kindly heart,
The one we have found of all the world beside
That makes our Ilion's matchless woes its own,
Yea and to these, poor leavings of the foe,
O'erwrought by flood and field, in this their hour
Of utter need, its town and home doth ope!
To quit our debt with thank of worthy deed,
Lady, is not in us, nor yet in all
The poor survivors of our Dardan name,
Who now roam homeless, through the world dispersed,
A peeled and exiled few. May Heaven the more,
If Heaven regards the virtuous and the good,
If Earth one claim of justice owns, or, best,
May thine own soul's sweet conscious sense of right
Sole fitting meed bestow. Happy this age
That showed thee to the world ! blest parents they
Who bade such virtues to their child descend!
While brimming rivers to the sea shall roll,
While hills shall shift their shadows with the sun,
O'er Heaven's blue fields while starry flocks shall feed,
Thy glory, name, and praise shall still live on,
Let Fate what land, what distant clime soe'er
Assign to me.' This said, with friendly grasp
His right hand greets Ilioneus, his left
Serestus hails; then each and all in turn,
Cloanthus, Gyas, and their brave compeers.
His wondrous presence first, and next therewith
His strange disastrous lot,-these held full long,

32

THE AENEID.

[6.15-633

The fair Sidonian queen in marvel lost;
Then she: ' What evil fate, 0 goddess' son,
Still dogs thine every step ? what cruel Power
Hath cast thee on these savage coasts ? And art
That famed Aeneas, whom by Simois' stream
Fair Venus to Anchises bore ? Yea now
I do in sooth recall how Teucer once,
Banished his fatherland, to Sidon came,
And, to secure him on a throne anew,
Craved Belus' powerful aid: Belus, my sire,
Had then rich Cyprus won, first harried sore
With fire and steel, and bowed it to his sway,
As conquerors wont. So ever since that tide
Well known to me, familiar to mine ear,
Your Ilion's fall, thine own illustrious name,
And those Pelasgian kings. The Teucrians he,
E'en foeman as he was, would ever more
With lavish praise extol, and proudly traced
His lineage to the olden Teucrian stock.
Then welcome to our homesteads, gallant lords;
Myself, like you, till Heaven here gave me rest,
A kindred lot through varied sufferings tossed;
Taught by experience what the wretched know,
Be mine to succour what 'twas mine to feel.'
She said; then straightway to the palace leads
The Trojan prince, and bids forthwith prepare
In all the shrines thankofferings to the gods;
Next to the shore, with no less kindly heed,
Tendering his crews' sore lack, she thoughtful sends

634-654]

BOOK I.

Twice ten fat beeves, a hundred broad-chined boars,
A hundred bleating lambs, each with its dam,
And cheery wine, boon of the genial god.
And now all dazzling gleams the house within,
In regal state set out, and sumptuous feasts
Amid the halls are spread; now couches glow,
In kingly purple dight and broidery rare,
And tables groan with massive silver piled
And storied gold, where, carven fair, are shown
Her brave forefathers' deeds; a roll,of fame
From years remote through many a hero traced,
E'en from the founding of the olden line.
Aeneas now--for the good father's care
Still to his soul or rest or ease deniedDoth send Achates to the ships in haste
To bear the tidings to Ascanius' ears,
And speed his own dear self to Carthage straightStill to his child, in joy alike or woe,
The loving parent's heart doth fondly turn.
Rich presents, too, saved from the sack of Troy,
He bids him bring withal; a mantle stiff
With figured gold, and veil with saffron fringe
Of bright acanthus wrought-these Helen wore,
What time she left Mycenae, and for Troy
And lawless bridals sailed, marvels of art,
Her mother Leda's gifts-the sceptre too
That erst Ilione's fair hand had swayed,
The eldest born of Priam's daughters; last
D

33

34

THE AENEID.

[655-673

The pearl-strung neck-band, and the crown that flamed,
A double circlet, starred with gems and gold:
Commissioned so, Achates portwards fares.
But new designs Cythira's goddess now
New schemes doth anxious plot; how, changed in shape,
Cupid should come in sweet Ascanius' stead,
And with the presents fire the frenzied queen,
Through all her frame to love and passion wrought;
For sore she dreads the two-faced Punic folk,
The treacherous house of double-dealing Tyre:
Fell Juno galls her evermore, and aye
As night returns, returns her anxious care.
So to the winged Love these words she spake :
' My son, sole source of all thy mother's sway,
Her chiefest power and might, who laugh'st to scorn
The great All-Father's giant-quelling bolts;
Lo, at thy feet, a suppliant for aid,
Thy godship here I sue: how through the world
Thy Trojan brother roams for Juno's hate,
Still tossed from shore to shore, thou knowest full well,
For oft herefor thy mother's grief was thine.
Him now Phoenicia's daughter hath in hold,
And fond with honied blandishment doth woo
His lengthened stay; but ah, my son, I fear,
When Juno so turns host, how all may end;
Where matters thus at nice conjuncture stand,
The dame, I wis, no idle time will prove.
My tactics, then, are to outflank our foe

674-694]

BOOK I.

35

And storm this queen with love, that by no power
She may yet change, but to Aeneas hold
With heart as leal as mine. How this may be,
List now what I propose: the princely boy,
Dear object of my care, to Tyre e'en now
At his loved father's call prepares to go,
Charged with rich presents saved from wreck and flame:
Him, lulled to sleep, or on Cythera's heights
Or mid Idalia's sacred bowers will I
Lay down remote, that so our plot he may
Nor know nor mar. Do thou for one brief nightNot more I ask-assume his borrowed shape,
And, boy thyself, his boyish looks put on;
That so, while as the royal feast proceeds
Mid flow of wine, and at her height of joy
The queen shall kiss and clip thee in her arms,
Thou may'st, unknown, the secret flame light up,
And dart the subtle poison to her soul.'
The mother spake, the duteous Love obeys;
And now, his pinions doffed, with humour sly
In young Iluus' gait moves gravely on.
Venus the while o'er all Ascanius' limbs
Sheds the light dews of sleep, and, lulled to rest,
Conveys him, gently on her bosom laid,
To Idaly's tall groves; where, cradled soft,
The flowery marjoram with fragrant shade
And scented sweets from opening blossoms breathed
Curtains him round.
D2

36

THE

AENE1
D.

[695-7;2.

Pleased with his trusty guide,
And all obedience to his mother's word,
Cupid the while followed Achates' lead
And Tyreward bare the gifts, and straight arrives
When as the queen her middle chair of state
On the high dais-floor had newly ta'en,
With cloth of gold o'erhung, while either hand
Aeneas and the valiant lords of Troy
Their purple couches pressed. The menials now
Serve water for the hands, with napkins soft
Of smoothest pile, and from the well-filled maunds
Dispense the manchets, bounteous Ceres' gift.
Fifty neat handmaids by allotted turns
Course after course the varied meats supply
Still as consumed, and feed the hearth-gods' flame:
Twice fifty more and youths in equal tale,
Sorted alike in years, have charge to lade
The board with viands and set on the cups.
The Tyrians, too, on broidered couches lie
As bidden guests, and throng the festive halls.
'Tis wonder, all they see I with wonder first
Aeneas' gifts they view, Iulus next,
The glowing looks that spake the latent god,
His mimic tones, and all the part he played;
Then o'er again, unsated, eye the gifts,
The crown, the pall, and how in mazy twine
Acanthus edged the saffron veil with gold.
But chief, to future fatal passion doomed,
Their hapless queen; with hungry soul unfilled

713-73o

BOOK L

37

She gazed and gazed, and, kindling as she gazed,
Not more the presents than the boy devours.
With artful tact Aeneas' kisses first
The wily god with mock affection sought,
Hung on his neck and nestled in his breast,
And all the so-feigned father filled with joy;
Then hies him to the queen: all eye, all soul,
She on his every motion hangs, and fond
Still to her bosom clasps the lovely boyAh, little dreaming, Dido, what a Pow'r
There plots that bosom's bane! Begins he now,.
Cautious and slow, heeding his mother's charge,
From lost Sychaeus and her former care
To wean her soul, then wake its dormant fires,
And, with a living passion ta'en anew,
Surprise her unsuspecting heart with love.
Soon as the feasting first began to lull,
And boards were cleared and viands all removed,
Now down the massive bowls are set, and wreathed
With flowers. Deepens the festive din, and fast
From hall to hall the bandied voices roll;
From golden roofs the blazing cressets hang,
And night, defeated, flies the flambeau's glare.
Then called the queen, and bade with wine unmixed
Fill high a gemmed and massive golden cup,
The same which erst king Belus wont to use,
And all the kings of Belus' royal line;
Then, silence through the halls proclaimed, she prayed:

38

THE AE NEID.

[731-794

'Almighty Jove-for host and guest, 'tis said,
Own thee alike for lord-vouchsafe, I pray,
This day to Tyrians and these Trojan folk
Auspicious prove, and may our sons with joy
Its fixt observance keep. Be Bacchus, too,
Mirth-giver, here, and Juno, friendly Pow'r,
And you, my lords of Tyre, with goodwill all
Our meeting pledge.'
She said, and on the board
The due libation spilled; then, to her lips
First touched, to Bitias bade pass the cup
With challenge boon; nor hung the Tyrian back:
One deep-breathed draught, he drained the foaming
gold,
And bade the brimmer flood his inmost soul;
Then all the lords. Now to his ringing lyre,
Bard of the flowing locks, Iopas sings
The lore great Atlas taught his youthful skill;
What gives the wandering moon to change, and why
The labouring sun doth sicken with eclipse,
Whence men, whence beasts, whence rain and fire have
birth,
Arctfirus and the showery Hyades,
The Bears, and why the wintry suns so haste
To dip them in the main, and what retards
The cripple-gaited nights. With cheer on cheer
The Tyrians greet the lay, and Troy responds.
Nor song alone; in colloquy more sweet
Of varied theme ill-fated Dido still
Spun out the night, and quaffed full deep of love ;

750-756]

BOOK 1.

Of Hector now, now much of Priam asked,
Now in what arms Aurora's Memnon came;
Anon what steeds the great Tydid6s drave,
And all the might of Peleus' matchless son.
Then thus :
'Nay, not by parcels, good my guest;
But from the first the tale at large unfold
Of Danaan fraud, and how proud Ilion fell,
With all thy travels' history since; for now
The seventh fair summer this doth see thee still
A world-wide wanderer by land and sea.'

39

40

THE AENEID.

BOOK

[I-I3

II.

STINTED each tongue, and all were hushed to hear;
Then from the dais-seat the prince began:
" Too sad the tale, O queen, thou bidd'st me tellAnd, telling, wake the grief afresh-how Greece
The throne and weal, ah me ! of Troy o'er-threw,
With all those piteous sights t'was mine to see,
Yea bear large part therein. Such tale to list,
What rudest soldier of the Grecian host,
What wretch that owned Achilles' stern command,
Or Pyrrhus' rule, Dolop or Myrmidon,No, not Ulysses' own congenial crew
Might stay the gushing tear! Now, too, behold !
There dewy Night doth hurry'down the sky,
And setting stars give urgent call to rest;
Still, for thy soul so craves our grief to know,
And hear in few Troy's last death-struggle sore,
Though my shocked thought recoils and flies the theme,
E'en let me thus essay.
Worn out by war,
And baffled too by Fate, and all the more

z4-38 ]

BOOK H.

41

As years rolled on and grew, the Danaan chiefs
A horse-shaped fabric build of mountain size
By Pallas' art, and rib its ,sides with fir;
A vow to win them happy conduct homeThis the pretence, and such the tale they spread;
But here by stealth, in those dark sides concealed,
A chosen band they stow, and all its bulk
And roomy womb cram thick with men and arms.
In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle
Once famed for wealth, while Priam's empire stood;
Now a mere bay, where ships unsafely ride;
For these deserted shores they steer, and lie
In ambush close. We deemed them gone, and bound
With favouring winds for home; and so all Troy,
Quit of long grief, flings wide her gates, and O,
What pleasure now to walk abroad and view
Where Greece had whilom camped, her lines thrown up,
Our shores without a foe! Some point and note;
'Here the Dolopians pitched-Achilles thereThere ranged the ships-here edge to edge we met:'
Some with blank awe Minerva's offering view,
Destructive gift! and eye the monster horse.
And first Thymoetes fain would have it drawn
Within the walls, and in the Fort set upWhether by foul collusion with the foe,
Or Troy's ill fates now drawing to her doomBut Capys and the wiser sort would drown
Or burn this Grecian cheat, or with the sword
Bade pierce its hollow sides, and probe the fraud;

42

THE AENEID.

[39-.62

The while, in factions split, the giddy crowd
Hold part to this resolve, and part to that.
But lo, with haste and foremost of a troop
Laocon speeds him from the Castle down,
And yet afar; ' Infatuate ! say,' he cried,
'What frenzy this to deem the foe is gone,
Or guileless aught from Greeks! Is this to know
Ulysses and his wiles ? Or foes shut up
Tenant yon planks, or 'tis some engine built
To o'erpeer our walls, and swoop upon our town,
Or other fraud there's some. Ye men of Troy,
Trust not the horse: be it whate'er it may,
A foe's a foe, for aught his hand may give'And on the monster's flank and rounded womb
With strength prodigious launched his javelin fell:
Quivering it stood, while all the echoing frame
Boomed hollow to the shock, and rang and clanged
again:
So had he won-but, ah! the fates unkind,
Or fatal folly of our blinded souls!
Our good swords else had marred those Greekish dens,
And Troy were standing now, and, Priam, thou
Had'st to this day thine high-built palace held!
But see! with shouts some Trojan shepherds hale
A youth with pinioned arms before the kingE'en such his plan, for self-presented he,
And nerved alike to win his desperate game
And open Troy to Greece, or yield to death-

63-86]

BOOK HI.

43

While round the captive wretch from far and near
Our Trojans throng, and vie who'll mock him most.
Hear now this fraud, and be one caitiff Greek
Sample of all. As wildered there he stood,
Hemmed in of gazing crowds, and helpless viewed
Our Phrygian powers around, 'Alas!' he cried,
'What spot by sea or land may shelter now,
What shift be mine, what last resource is left
A wretch like me ? in Greece no home, and here
My Dardan foes claim vengeance from my blood!'
Changed every heart that moving wail to list,
And violence fled abashed: we bid him show
Whence he, and what his news, with aught beside
Might warrant trust and plea of mercy make.
Then he-dismissing slow his seeming fears:
'Yes, all to thee, O king, be what it may,
With truth I'll tell, nor may I here disownThis to begin-a Greek by birth am I:
Wretch though he be, thanks to blind Fortune's frown!
Sinon defies her worst to make him false.
If Palamedes' name, great Belus' son,
His world-wide fame and all his high renown,
E'er reached thine ears-the same whom Greece condemned
Guiltless, on perjured evidence to death,
For that his voice still banned the war, though now
She rues the deed too late-me, yet a youth,

44

THE AENEID.

[87-Io7

A needy father to the war did send
As squire to him, his kinsman, too, by blood.
While, all unfallen as yet from place and power,
His wisdom swayed the councils of the kings,
I, too, some influence owned; but when by dint
Of sly Ulysses' lies-what all men knowHe left this world of light, as crushed to earth
I dragged a wretched life in dole and gloom,
And, inly chafing, mourned his guiltless fate.
Fool, had I held my peace ! but no; aloudWhen fitting time should serve, if Heav'n should e'er
Bring me in triumph to my home againVengeance I swore, and roused his deadly hate.
From this my ruin dates; e'en from that hour
Fresh accusations still Ulysses brought
That shook my soul with dread, still broadcast strewed
Dark hints among the crowd, and, stung by guilt,
Plotted my taking-off. Nor ceased he till,
With Calchas for his tool-though why spin out
A thankless tale, barren of good? what boots
Delay ? If all Achaia's sons ye hold
Villains alike, nor needed more-enough
Inflict the long, too long, suspended blow :
This is what he of Ithaca would hail,
And Atreus' sons, ay buy at half their gold.'
So burn we now the more, and press to hear
The how and why, undreaming all how far
Might villainy and Greekish guile! Then he
With trembling frame and lying heart proceeds:

T) /", /'1 T7

1o8-129-

BOOK

TT"

11.

45

'Oft had the Greeks resolved to abandon Troy,
Sick of the war, and take their several flight;
And would to Heaven they had! but, oft as tried,
Rude storm barred up the deep, and, still as launched,
The boisterous south winds scared their navies back;
Yea worst when, framed of woven planks, yon horse
Rose into air, o'er all the face of heaven
Fierce tempest swept and roared. Perplext, we send
Eurypylus to ask of Fate : and he
From Phoebus' shrine this doleful answer brings:
'What time, O Danaan folk, ye loosed for Troy,
Ye slew your maid, and won your winds with blood:
And blood must buy return; nor other may
Now too find grace than flows in Grecian veins.
Stunned all the host that dread response to list,
Horror thrilled every heart, and shuddering fear
Quailed at the dreadful guess, whom Heaven should
mean,
Whose blood the god demand. Ulysses here
With great ado reluctant Calchas hales
Before the crowd, and loud insists to know
This secret will of Heaven. Many could now
Forewarn me of the trickster's cruel plot,
Albeit with bated breath, and mutely saw
The event in ordered course. No word the seer
For twice five days would speak, and, close housed up,
Declines by voice of his whome'er to name,
Or doom one wight to death. O'erborne at length
By this vile Ithacan's persistent cries,
He loosed his tongue-such the concerted plan-

46

THE AENEID.

[I30-151

And to the altar dooms unhappy me.
All cried assent, too glad to see what each
Feared for himself on this poor head alight.
'Twas come, the dreadful day! and all was now
Prepared and ready for the sacrifice,
The meal, the salt, the chaplet for my brows;
I tore me from the death-the deed I own!And burst my bonds ; then all that night I lay
Screened in the sedges of a slimy fen,
'Till they should hoist-O, would they ever hoist
Those tardy sails for Greece! But now no hope
Or native land to see, or darling babes,
Or aged father dear; nay, doubtless Greece
Those forfeit lives will claim, will bid their blood
Wipe out the guilt of this my foul escape.
But thee, O mighty monarch, I adjure
By every god, by all those sacred Powers
Who know the facts I tell, by what of faith,
Stainless and pure, still binds 'twixt man and man,
Pity my matchless woes, O spare an injured wretch.'
Touched by these tears, not life alone we grant,
But melt to pity too; the good old king
Bids free his corded hands forthwith, and loose
The galling bonds; then thus with gracious speech:
'Be who thou may'st, forget the Greeks henceforth,
And cast them off: be Troy's and mine; and now
Resolve my questions true: Why here set up
This monster steed ? whose the device, and what

152-171']

BOOK II.

The end proposed ? is it of pious vow,
Or engine else of war ? '-so spake the king.
Adept in Greekish guile, his unbound hands
Forth to the stars he spread; then thus exclaims
' Ye ever-living fires above, and all
Your dread inviolate Powers! ye altars too
And horrid knives I 'scaped ! ye bands and wreaths
That bound this victim head! bear witness all
That, justly here renounced all faith to Greece,
I'm free her sons to hate, am free to bring
Her guilty secrets to this light of day,
Nor holds one law to bind me to my race!
Now, Troy, d9 thou, as truth thou'lt find I tell,
And quit thy mercy with a large return,
Bide by thy troth, and faith with him preserve
Who thee preserves.
Whate'er of hoped success
Or to begin the war emboldened Greece,
Or wage, begun, all on Minerva's aid
Reliant leaned; but from the fatal night
When impious Diomede, with Ulysses leaguedThat arch-contriver of all villainy !First slew the guards that watched your sacred Fort,
And then presumed from forth her shrine to tear
The goddess' image, and with bloody hands
Defiled the maiden fillets of her head,
Ebbed from that hour the refluent hopes of Greece
Her strength declined, and Pallas smiled no more.
Nor dark the signs that showed Tritonia's wrath:

47

48

THE A ENEID.

[172-190

Ere well within the camp her image stood,
Flashed from her staring eyes red quivering flames,
Salt sweat drenched every limb, and from the groundO marvellous to tell !-shield, spear and all,
Full thrice the goddess sprang. Calchas forthwith
To all the host declares it Heaven's high will
They brave the stormy main in homeward flight,
For ne'er should Greekish steel raze towers of Troy,
Until, fresh auspices at Argos ta'en,
They so bring back that favouring aid divine
That erst had blessed them when they loosed from
Greece.
So, for they have launched and gone, 'tis but to win
Heaven's favour to their arms, and by and by,
When least ye look to see, they'll cross the seas
And land again-so Calchas reads the sign.
Till then, howe'er, of that same warning 'twas
That, in amends of wrong and violence done
Her outraged image and to clear the guilt,
To Pallas here they raised yon shape; howbeit
Such size the seer for special end prescribed,
And bade them rear their knitted beams thus high
And pile the work to heaven, that so it ne'er
Might pass your gates, nor, drawn within the walls,
A new Palladium prove to shield your folk
Beneath the safeguard of the olden spell.
For-'twas his word-if ever hand of yours
Should harm this gift in Pallas' honour framed,
Then signal ruin-which may Heaven forefend,
And hurl the averted vengeance on himself !

191-213]

BOOK

i.

49

Awaited Priam's empire and his Troy;
Where, should it mount with your assisting hands
And scale your city's height, all Asia then
Vindictive war should bring to Pelops' walls,
And so your fates requite us in our sons.'
Such the perfidious Sinon's art and guile,
The specious tale's believed; and thus were we
Caught with mock tears and trapped with glozing lies,
Who braved Tydides and Achilles' might,
A thousand galleys, and a ten years' war.
But greater now and more appalling far
Another marvel meets our eyes, and worse
Our blind infatuate souls confounds. Just then
Laocon-for him the lots had drawn
Priest for the nonce-at Neptune's altars slew
A lordly bull; when lo from Tenedos,
Waking those slumbering depths-shudders my soul
To tell !-two monstrous serpents launch, and shoot
Their trains' enormous orbs along the tide,
With even movement steering for the shore.
With jutting chests and blood-red manes erect
Above the waves, their hinder parts afloat
In sinuous wreaths warp onward through the deep,
The foaming waters roaring in their wake.
And now the monsters reach the destined strand,
Their glaring eyeballs fleckt with blood and flame,
And lick their hissing jaws with nimble tongues.
We fly the sight aghast: with steady march
They for Laocoon hold; and first both snakes,

5O

THE AENEID.

[214-238

Folding in dire embrace his children twain,
Unflesh their tiny limbs with greedy fangs;
Himself the next, as, hurrying axe in hand,
The father drew anigh for aid, they seize
With deadly gripe, and lock in giant rings,
And lashing soon their scaly backs in coils
Full twice his waist and twice his neck about,
O'ertop him with their heads and towering crests.
Strains he at once with clutching hands to rend
The living knots-his priestly stole with blood
And venom fouled-the while his hideous cries
Fill all the affrighted air; not louder heard
When from the altar breaks a bellowing bull,
The erring axe, ill-aimed, tossed from his bleeding front.
Their work now done, straight to Minerva's shrine
And high-built tower glide off the serpents twain,
And 'neath the Dread One's feet and orbed shield
Couch them secure. Strange terrors thrilled the crowd,
Awe-struck: anon with one accord they vote
Laocodn's doom meet quittance for his deed,
Whose impious hand that guilty lance had flung,
And harmed the sacred wood. Breaks forth the cry,
And spreads from mouth to mouth : 'To Pallas' fane
Draw we the horse, and cry the goddess grace!'
We breach the walls, and lay our city bare :
All gird them to the work: some 'neath the feet
Smooth-running rollers fix; long cables some
Strain from the neck: the fatal fabric spurns,
Big with its armed load, the levelled walls,

239-258]

BOOK i.

While all around our youths and maidens raise
Their holy chant, and joy to touch the rope.
Up, up it mounts, and now with threatening mien
Slides to the very bosom of our town.
O fatherland beloved ! great Ilus' towers!
Home of my sires ! to every god a home !
O battle-dinted Dardan walls ! four times
E'en at the threshold of the gate it stopped,
Four times rang out the clang of arms; and yet
Duped of blind zeal, all reckless press we on,
And lodge the accursed monster in our Fort.
Then too Cassandra oped her prophet lips
In warning of our doom ; but ah! those lips
No Trojan e'er-so willed the god-believed.
Thus to the end poor thoughtless wretches still
Give we the day with boughs and festive fronds
To deck our city fanes-and yet that day our last!
Meantime, the sphere revolving, night ascends
From ocean's caves, and wraps in mantling gloom
The heavens and earth and Graecia's darker wiles,
And weary Trojans through the city wide
Forgat in sleep the labours of the day;
The while from Tenedos, in gallant trim,
Befriended of the night and stilly moon,
Full on its course the Grecian squadron bore
And made the well-known beach; when all at once
The royal ship runs out a signal-light,
And Sinon, shielded of untoward fates,
In stolen hour from wooden durance frees
E2

51

52

THE AENEID.

[259-281

The prisoned Greeks, and opes the massive doors;
With joy once more to breathing air enlarged,
The yawning steed gives back its living load;
And now impatient down the cable slide
Thessander, Sthenelus, Ulysses tooThese led the way-Thoas and Acamas;
Pyrrhus, Achilles' son; Machaon next;
Then Menelaus, and Epius' self
Who forged the fatal cheat. Buried in wine,
The slumbering town 's surprised; the warders first
Are slain; and now at open gates they pass
Their fellows in, and knit their complice gangs.
'Twas just the hour most sweet to toil-worn man
When slumber first, as Heaven's best boon, o'ersteals
His wearied sense, and deepens to repose;
When, as I lay, lo Hector seemed to stand,
In floods of tears dissolved, before mine eyes,
Fresh from the whirling chariot-wheels as once,
And black with blood and dust, his swollen feet
Bored with the cruel straps; ay me, his plight!
How sadly from that Hector changed who erst
To Troy returned in proud Achilles' spoils,
Or hurled our Trojan fires on Danaan decks!
A squalid beard he showed and locks all tagged
With clotted gore, with every gash and bruise
He so had ta"en around his native walls.
With answering tears and mournful accents thus
Methought I first began:
'Thou light of Troy,

282-3041

BOOK I./

53

Her tried, best hope ! ah where so long detained ?
Say from what shores thrice-welcome Hector comes.
Of weary waiting sick--such numbers slain,
Such toils endured !-O, what the' joy to see
Our chief at last returned ! Tho' say, how marred
That calm, majestic face, or why these wounds ?'
Inquiries vain, whereon no answer he,
Nor heed whate'er bestowed; but with deep sighs,
'Fly, fly,' he cried, ' O prince, and 'scape the flames !
The foeman holds our walls, and Troy e'en now
Stoops from her pride of place. Thine all is done,
And well, to king and state; could mortal arm
Now save our Troy, mine in my day had saved.
Her gods howbeit, with all she sacred holds,'
Lo, to thy care consigned : these take to share
Thy fates; for these that mighty city build
Which time shall yet behold thee raise, though not
Till traversed first the wide sea's vast expanse.'
He said, and then from forth her inner shrine
Great Vesta fetched, her wreaths, and quenchless fire.
Meantime with varied agony and woe
The city fills, and, though our palace stood
Aloof the town and bosomed deep in trees,
Louder and clearer still the sounds roll on,
Peals out the din of fight. I spring from sleep,
And mount with hasty steps the sloping roof,
Then stand with listening ears: so when the spark,
Fanned of high winds, hath fired the bladed corn,

54

THE AENEID.

[305-324

Or from the hills the swollen torrent sweeps
O'er smiling fields and ripened crops, with all
The oxen's toil, and whirls whole woods along;
On crag-top high, catching the distant roar,
The swain bewildered stands. Now the full proof
Appears, nowtreacherous Greece stands forth unmasked:
Already there, Deiphobus, came down
Thy lordly mansion thundering to the ground,
Of hungry flames o'ertopped-; now side by side
Thy neighbouring walls, Ucalegon, catch next
The fiery plague; Sig6um's waters now
Gleam with reflected light from shore to shore,
While shouts of men and blare of trumpets rose.
Frenzied I catch up arms; nor, now in arms,
Or plan or purpose know, save that my soul
One longing burning wish doth own, to draw
A gallant head of war, and man the Fort:
Rage and revenge impel me on, and prompt
The ready thought, How glorious death in fight !
But see where Panthus, new-escaped the spears
And volleyed missiles of Achaean foesOld Othrys' son and Phoebus' priest whose shrine
Stood in the citadel--straight to our door,
All laden with his gods and holy things,
Distracted runs, and hales his grandson too,
A tender child, along: 'Say, Panthus, say
How stands our all ? what stronghold left us still?'
Then, groaning, he:
'Dardania's final hour

325-343]

BOOK H.

Is come, her fixt, resistless hour of doom;
Trojan, and Troy-names of the past ! no more;
Our day, our pride is gone; too cruel Jove
To favoured Argos bids our all to pass,
And blazing Troy now owns no lords but Greeks!
Fixt in our city's heart, the towering horse
Unwombs its armed hosts in endless teem,
And Sinon, mocking- flushed with proud successScatters the flames. Here through the gatesBoth valves flung open wide-are pressing in
Thousands on thousands, all that e'er, would'st say,
From great Mycenae came; with weapons there
Others the narrow streets beset, to foil
Force or escape: a serried hedge of steel,
The naked blades present their glittering points,
And thirst for blood: a feeble stand at best
The foremost warders at the gates maintain
Mid press of odds, and blind resistance make.'
So Othrys' son, and such the tale he told
Of Heaven's untoward will: desperate I plunge
Mid fire and steel where the grim battle-fiend,
Where shout and shriek called on, and loudest din
Fraying the vaulted skies. Stout Rhipeus soon
Appears, and Epytus in arms renowned,
And Hypanis and Dymas eke; these all,
Shown by the beaming moon, now join my side,
With bold Coroebus too, old Mygdon's son:
But newly he, with frantic passion fired
For fair Cassandra's charms, to Troy was come,

55

56

THE AENEID.

[344-36Y

And, an accepted suitor, brought along
His powers to Priam's aid-poor boy! ah why
Despise the warning of thy prophet bride ?
- These though I saw thus resolute for fight
And close arrayed, I fire them yet the more:
' Most valiant youths-but ah, that valour vain !Still, if resolved with daring hearts and hands
To follow thus your prince's desperate lead,
Ye see how hopeless all: yes, every god
Hath shrine and altar left who propped our realm;
Would save a town in'flames ! Then death's resolved ?
And be that death in fight: still to the lost
Remains one hope, to bid e'en hope despair.'
And now their courage up to madness mounts.
Then, like gaunt wolves whom hunger's pinch drives
forth
Mid blackest fog to prowl, nor danger reck,
The while at home their cubs with lolling tongues
Bide their return; thus on through darts, through foes
We speed to certain death, and hold our way
Straight for the centre of the town, while night
With raven wing dispread folds us around.
The havoc of that night what tongue may tell,
What eye beweep with equal sum of tears ?
Our ancient city's fall, an empire's queen,
Time-honoured mistress of the nations round,
Her homes, her streets, her holy temples strewn
With helpless slain, the dying and the dead!

366-388]

Nor
The
The
Nor
And

BOOK

II.

57

bleed her sons alone; not seldom too
vanquished feel their hearts new-nerved, and fast
conquering Greeks before their steel go down;
aught the while but terror, wail, and woe,
death in many a shape meets eye or ear.

First in our pathway met, Androgeos,
Heading a band of Greeks, now, erring, hails
Our company for friends: 'Haste, haste ye, men!
Why lag ye thus the last ? See, others sack
And pillage blazing Troy, while here come ye
But now new-landed from your gallant ships!'
He said, and straight-for ready answer none,
Nor watch-word true we gave-his blundered hap
On thick of foes perceived, and startled, checked
Rash foot and tongue. E'en as the unwary swain,
Plodding with laboured step some tangled copse,
Sets foot on sudden snake, and backward flies
The reptile's wrath up-sprung and swelling gorge;
Scared at our sudden sight, Androgeos so
'Gan back withdraw: closed up and sword in hand
Fierce fall we on, and now-beset all round,
New to the place and seized with panic wildMow we the wretches down; so Fortune smiles
Propitious on our first essay.
Anon,
Flushed with success, and fired of youthful blood,
Coroebus cries : 'My friends, where Fortune thus
The way to certain conquest points, and shows
Her ready aid, e'en let us take the tide

58

THE AENEID.

[389-409

Come, change we shields forthwith, and fit us on
What else may suit us from these Danaans here:
Valour or craft, who questions in a foe ?
So arm us Greece 'gainst Greece! '-and on the word
Dons he Androgeos' blazoned shield and casque
With nodding plume, and buckles to his side
His Argive blade. Bold Rhipeus doth the like,
Dymas, and all my youthful band; thus each
With joy equips him from the new-won spoils.
With Heaven thus pressed in aid, so march we on
Mixt with the Greeks, and mid the seeling night
From many a fray full many a foe we send
To grisly Pluto down: some to their ships
And safer shore retreat full speed, and some
Of abject fear the monster steed remount,
And skulk for refuge to its womb again.
But ah, no trusting Heaven when Heaven no trust
will have!
Lo, where all rudely by her streaming hair
Cassandra's haled from Pallas' inner shrine,
Our Priam's royal maid, and lifts in vain
With straining gaze her burning eyes to heaven!
Her eyes alas! for see-those flower-soft hands
Rude galling cords confine. The madding sight
Coroebus might not brook : frantic he plunged
Straight through their thickest files to do or die;
Follow we all, and now in dense array
Pour on the foe; and here our first reverse!

41o-432]

BOOK II.

.59

Down from the temple's topmost roof alights
A shower of crushing missiles on our heads,
Rained of our Trojan friends; thus bleed we now,
And fall full thick around-most piteous hap !
Of Greekish arms and crests mis-shewn for foes.
Indignant then, and fired with furious wrath
Should so the rescued virgin 'scape their hands,
The rallied Greeks from every point assail
Our slender band, Ajax in fiercest mood,
The two Atridae, the Dolopians all:
In whirlwind so, when rival blasts rush forth
From adverse points, and mix their airy war,
Fierce East with West, with South fierce North engaged,
Loud roar the woods, his trident Nereus wields,
And all his lowest depths upheaves in foam.
Nay, whom at first by stratagem and night
We broke and chased o'er all the burning town,
E'en these again appear; these first detect
Our borrowed arms' untruth, and note our speech,
Of alien tones bewrayed. And now all's o'er!
Borne down, we yield to odds: Coroebus first,
By Peneleus at Pallas' altar slain ;
Rhipeus the next, though none more just in Troy
Or righteous found-but Heaven disposes best!
Next Hypanis and Dymas die, and pierced
Of friendly hands; yea powerless, Panthus, too
Thy pious worth to shield thee in thy fall,
As eke Apollo's fillet on thy brows.
Troy! by thine ashes, by thy funeral flames,
Say-for thou knowest-if in thy doom I shunned

6o

THE

A ENEID.

[433-450

From far or near what Greece had worst to wreak;
Yea, were it my fate to fall, earned not this hand
The death for which it wrought ?

Here from the rest
Part Iphitus and Pelias and IIphitus old and stiff, and Pelias
Sore maimed and halting from Ulysses' handFor shouts are heard and din of clamorous cries
That call us off to Priam's royal seat.
And here, arrived, most deadly fray we find,
A fearful conflict waged: would'st say all Troy
No other strife had known, no contest else,
No work besides of death; so fierce the fight:
The storming Danaans streaming to the roof,
And all the doors below blockaded close
With tortoise-fence run up, shield locked in shield.
There, scaling-ladders grappled to the wall,
From round to round still up and up they strain,
E'en by the very doors; the shielded left
Wards off the darts, the right hand grasps the eaves;
The while from parapet and roof above
Towers, domes, and battlements despairing TroySuch weapons now her last sore need compelsPlucks up and hurls upon the climbing foe,
With rafter-work of gold, the pride and pomp
Of many an olden king; while as below,
In close array compact and sword in hand,
The household troop defends the basement doors.

45r-471]

BOOK IA

Anon, new-nerved, resolve I now once more
To help the royal house, sustain its guards,
And add fresh vigour to their fainting powers.
Rearward an entry stood, with secret door,
Of common passage to the several courts
Of Priam's house, disused and lone, whereby
Hapless Andromach6 in better days
Oft unattended sought the royal pair,
And young Astyanax to his grandsire fetched:
Through this blind postern to the roof I mount,
The topmost pitch, whence our poor Trojans showered
With fruitless toil their missiles on the foe.
There hung an out-built turret o'er the front,
Piled and roofed up to heaven, from whence we still
Were wont all Troy around to view, with all
The Achaean camp and Danaan fleet beyond:
This, from both sides with weapon points assailed
Where the top tie-beams readiest severance gave,
Out from its deep-laid bed with powers combined
We prise; then push the pile: yields it, and now
Falls out with thundering crash and buries wide
Whole troops of Greeks; but others fast succeed,
And swarm as thick; nor ever slacked the work,
Nor nowise flew therefor one volley less,
Stones, darts, and javelins, from friend or foe.
Before the very gate with fiendish glee
Now here, now there the new-come Pyrrhus strode,
One blaze of dazzling brass: e'en so the snake
Bloated and frozen from his wintry swoon

62

THE AENEID.

[472-492

Crawls forth to light; but soon trimmed up afresh,
His slough new-cast and fed on noxious herbs,
Glossy and smooth he wreathes his glistering coils
To sunwards reared, and darts his forky tongue.
The stalwart Periphas now joins his side,
Automedon, his father's charioteer,
And all the flower of Scyros' chivalry.
Anon, combined, on to the house they move,
Assault the walls, and roofwards hurl their fires.
Poleaxe in hand, himself before the van
Hews ever at the doors, bronze-plated, strong,
Till from their pivots rent, with plank on plank
Hacked out, clean through the heart of oak he delves,
And rives a spacious gap. Outshows at once
The house within; wide corridors lie bare,
The long-drawn vista of the hall, as eke
The private chambers of Troy's early kings,
And Priam's rooms of state: all, all show out,
Of every eye profaned, and in the porch
Lo, mail-clad guards are seen. But inner still
'Tis dire confusion all: voices of wail
Fill the great house; the echoing chambers ring
To women's shrieks ; the clamour smites the stars.
Pale with affright, o'er all the building's space
From room to room distracted matrons rush,
And hug the pillars for a farewell kiss;
Pyrrhus the while, with all his father's fire,
Wielding the axe, and-pressing on and on-See! bolts nor bars may further stay him back;
Shattered as by the ram, the doorway yields,

493-511]

BOOK II.

63

The valves, unhinged, drop from their jambs, and now
The entry's forced ! Furious the Greeks rush in,
Butcher whom first they meet, and all the house
Deluge with soldiery: not with such force
From levelled dams and burst embankments breaks
The foaming flood, and soon o'er all the plain,
A raging mass of whelming water, sweeps
Whole herds and stalls along. Yes, with these eyes
That fierce new-comer to the war I saw,
Maddened with blood and fight; saw either chief
Of Atreus' house there on the threshold stand;
I saw queen Hecuba, and round her marked
Her hundred daughters weep as Priam's blood
Defiled those very altar-fires the which
His evening prayer had, newly blessed; I saw
Those fifty bridal bowers-so large the hope
The princely line should long succession knowThe doors emblazoned with barbaric gold
And hung with warlike spoils, in ashes sink,
Or, where the fire had flagged, the Greeks hold ground.

Would'st know what Priam's fate ? When as he saw
His captured city nodding to its fall,
His palace stormed, and all its sacred courts
Of the rude foeman's troops profaned and filled,
To arms long strange, and palsied too with years,
Still dons he harness on those trembling limbs,
Feeble and stiff, takes his unhelpful sword,
And totters forth to die mid thick of foes.

THE AENEID.

[512-533

Midmost the central court and bare to heaven
A lofty altar rose, and thereby grew
An aged bay, which o'er the household gods
Still drooped in circling shade; here Hecuba
And all hex trembling dames-like frightened doves
Sheltering precipitate from some gathering stormClose huddled round filled all the sacred pale,
And mutely sat, and clasped their gods in vain.
But when she saw in youthful arms equipt
Her aged lord, ' Ah, wretched spouse!' she cried,
'What weapons these, or what thy frenzied thought,
Or whither would'st ? Far other aid than such
The hour doth need, nor aught may come from man;
No, were my Hector's self now here. Then turn
E'en still, and seek to Heaven; this altar screen
Shall bid all live, or death at least not part.'
So to her side she drew the aged king,
And placed him on the hallowed seat. When lo,
Polit6s, one of Priam's sons, new-'scaped
Through foes and darts from Pyrrhus' slaughtering hand
With death-wound ta'en, thrids the long corridors
And empty courts, and flies and bleeds along,
The while behind with offered stab and blow
Pyrrhus is on him hot, now here, now there
Grasps with the hand, and speeds the final thrust;
Till, just arrived before his parent's eyes,
He dropped, and with a gush of blood expired.
Helpless albeit, with foes encompassed round,
And face to face with death, nor righteous wrath

534-553]

BOOK II.

Nor word bated the king: 'May Heaven,' he cried,
'If there be ruth above-and Heaven must sure
Kind nature's charities too well regard
To slight such deed-yet own thy crying guilt
With fitting thank; vile miscreant, to bid
A father's eyes his child's foul murder view,
And file their light with blood ! Far other foe
In him thy lying vaunt would claim for sire
Did aged Priam prove; Achilles knew,
His generous cheek e'en blushed with knightly grace,
An humbled foeman's sacred claims to own;
Back to an honoured tomb the hero gave
My Hector's corse, and sent me safely home.'
And therewithal he flung a feeble lance,
Which, instant from the muttering brass repelled,
Pierced not the targe, but idly dangling hung,
Held in the plating of the spiky boss.
When Pyrrhus thus ' Be then our envoy down,
And greet from us our sire Pelid6s well;
Nor prithee fail at fitting length to speak
Our crying deeds, and how his graceless boy
Doth prove a recreant to his knightly blood;
Now die.' And with the word the trembling sire
On to the very altar steps he drew,
Staggered, and sliding through the plenteous gore
Shed from his murdered son; and, twining fast
His wreath6d left hand in his silvery hair,
High in the right he bared his flashing blade,
Then hid it to the hand-grip in his side.
F

66

THE

AENEID.

0554-

573

Such Priam's fate and end, his closing scene,
With Troy in flames, her towers in ashes laid
His dying eyes before, whom Asia once
Had owned the monarch of her countless States;
He lies a mighty trunk upon the beach,
Headless, untombed, a corse without a name.
Horror till now unfelt here seized my soul
Rushed to my thought-and all aghast I stoodMine own loved father's image as I saw
The murdered king, his fellow too in age,
Gasp out his life beneath that cruel wound;
Creiisa too rose to my fondest fears,
Defenceless left, a sacked and rifled home,
And his, my little one's, Iulus' fate.
I look around and scan with anxious eye
What friends were left to rally on the roof;
But ah ! my friends were gone; had desperate leapt
With headlong plunge amid the foes beneath,
Or dropt exhausted through the stifling flames.
So now I stood alone; when, cowering close
And silent skulking in a dim recess
Of Vesta's fane, lo Helen I espy;
Such light the garish flames might now afford
My roving glance, and every object showed.
There would she now, forewarned of coward fear
What Troy might well, what Greece of vengeance claim,
And what her injured lord-the bane alike
Of Greece and Troy-fain hide her shrinking form,
There crouching sat, like some vile hated thing,

574-597]

H.

BOOK

67

Close by the altar's screen ! Kindled my soul
To flame; furious I owned one burning wish
To quit my country's debt, and wreak its fall
In righteous vengeance on that guilty head:
'And shall this wretch to Sparta's royal halls,
Or fair Mycenae's proud ancestral towers
Scathless return-yea as a queen return,
With train of Trojan serfs and Ilian dames,
And boast to husband, parents, children, home,
Her victory won ? What ! and king Priam slain,
Troy fired, and all our Dardan beach so long
One reek of blood ! No, no: true though to man
Scant honour still doth grow from woman's pain,
And poor the triumph from such conquest gained,
Yet shall the praise that thus, of fitting meed,
Yon fair-faced mischief plagues a world no more,
E'en gild the act; yea, 'twill be sweet relief
To bid our grudge thus batten on revenge,
And Troy's unresting ghost yet sleep in peace.'
And, raving so, I rushed infuriate on;
When to mine eyes--nor e'er so radiant seen,
In clearest light mid ambient gloom revealed-My mother flashed, and all the god displayed,
Tall as in heaven she moves. With gentle check
Took she mine hand, while from her roseate lips
These accents fell: 'Whence this unbridled wrath,
My son, these transports wild ? Recks then thine heart
Of me and mine no more ? nor wilt not first
See where Anchises left, thine aged sire,
F2

68

THE A ENEID.

[598-6i8

Or if thy wife Creiisa still survive,
And young Ascanius too ? Know roving foes
Are round them rife; and, but my care withstood,
The flames ere this had ta'en them off, the sword
Had drunk their blood. Not, as dost rashly deem,
Not the weird charm of Spartan Helen's face,
The hated Tyndarid child, not Paris' act
Of all men blamed and banned-not these, my sonNo, no; the gods, the unpitying gods it is
Who this great realm o'erthrow, and bid your Troy
Stoop from her soaring top. Turn here thine eyes;
For lo, I bid the cloud remove which now
Doth curtain close their mortal ken bedimmed,
And hangs in dankest mist before their senseYet fear not thou, for all shalt see, to list
Thy mother's word or heed what she enjoins :
Yonder, where all those shattered piles lie loose,
Stones rent from stones, mid surging dust and smoke,
See, Neptune there his mighty trident plies,
Up from their deep foundations heaves the walls,
And all the city levels from its base:
There-to the front--doth ruthless Juno hold
The Scaean gate, and fierce with wafted sword
On from their ships still becks her minion Greeks:
Now too--look back--there on the Castle's height
Tritonian Pallas sits, and flashes down
The lightning terrors of her Gorgon crest,
With lurid glories crowned: there Jove himself
Courage and aid auspicious lends the Greeks,
And stirs all Heaven to foil our Dardan arms.

6r9-637]

BOOK H.

Then seize, my son, the precious hour to fly,
And bid thy struggle end; my guardian care
Shall tend thy steps till to thy father's seat
I bring thee safe." The goddess spake, and then
Plunged mid the shades of night. Now all around,
Evolving from the gloom, dread Forms stood out,
And shaped them to my sight-Troy's mighty foes,
The Majesties of Heaven !
And now me-seemed
All god-built Troy before mine eyes sunk down
In one vast fiery gulf, whole Ilium fell,
Razed and o'erthrown : e'en as with might and main
The sturdy hinds hew down some aged ash
That long hath stood the mountain blasts, and ply
The frequent axe: it ever and anon
With quivering top and leafy sides convulsed
Nods to the stroke and bows with every blow;
Till slowly now, and spent with spreading wounds,
With loud last groan it crashes to its fall,
And strews, a giant wreck, the cumbered plain.
Descending straight and goddess-led, I find
My wondrous passage cleared through fires and foes,
The darts give way, the sloping flames retire;
But ah! arrived the old paternal seat,
He whom I sought before all else and fain
Would lift for safety to the distant hills,
E'en my loved sire, of firm resolve declines
Further to live now Troy's no more, and bide

69

70

7HE

AENEID.

[638-659-

An exile's doom: " You, you," he cries, "whose blood,
Unthinned of years, still gives your strength to stand
Self-centred, whole, nor lean to others' aid,
Fly you; had Heaven willed me to live, this seat
Had still of Heaven been mine. Enough-too muchThese eyes beheld, nor closed in death to see,
One Ilion fall before ! Here laid for dead,
Be last farewell my living corse addressed,
Then take your several ways: weak though this arm,
'Twill death command ; at worst some pitying foe
Will give the boon, and take my spoils in lieu.
For bier and burial, light the loss to me;
Useless to man and odious to the gods,
My irksome years have all too well forestalled
Hell's dreaded doom, since angry Jove first blew
With lightning breath, and scathed these limbswith fire."
He said, and held his purpose firm; while we,
Myself and-son, my wife and household too,
With pleading tears insist-" O would he thus
Bid swift destruction speed, and ruin all ?"
In vain; persists he still, nor foot nor purpose shifts.
Crushed down with grief, resolve I now to seek
The fight anew, and, wretched, challenge death:
Yes, for what left me else ? what better do,
Or what remained for hope ?-' Ha ! I to fly,
And thou left here! Father, was this thy thought,
And 'scaped a parent's lips such impious speech ?
No, no; if Heaven so rules no wreck shall live
To mark where once this queenly city stood,

660-6;9 ]

BOOK II.

7I

And, so resolved, thy acquiescent will
Must crown the ruin with thyself and thine,
The death we bide shall straight have open door;
Reeking from Priam's blood, in Pyrrhus soon
Thy pitying foe will come-the wretch who first
Butchers the son before the father's eyes,
The father next within the altar's pale.
And, gracious mother, was it then for this
Thou ledd'st me safe thro' fire and steel, to see
Th' insulting foe within these sacred walls,
Sire, wife, and son--poor slaughtered victims !-steeped
Each in the other's blood ? Arms, arms, my friends!
Their day of doom now calls the vanquished on;
Give, give me to the fight again; unhand,
And speed me to the foe ! not all at least
Shall this day unresisting die.'
And now,
Harnessed once more, I fixed and braced my shield,
And hurried forth; when at the door my wife
Hung on my parting steps with close embrace,
And young Iulus to his sire held up;
And ' O,' she cried, 'if 'tis for death thou'rt bound,
Bid us too share the doom; or if that sword,
Not now first proved, would hope bespeak, defend
This house 'fore all; to whom, ah say, would'st leave
Thy child, thy sire, and her once called thy wife ?'
E'en so with pleading cries and broken sobs
She filled the ringing house; when straight appears

72

THE AENEID.

[680-7o2

!

A portent strange: lo from Iulus' head,
As there betwixt his sorrowing parents' hands
And lips he hung, a pointed flame streamed out
In flickering light, and still with harmless touch
Licked his soft locks and round his temples fed.
We, all alarm, run quaking to and fro,
Full fain to shake the blazing ringlet off,
Or from the fount bid quench the holy flame:
Not so Anchises; hands and eyes, o'erjoyed,
To heaven he lifts; then thus: ' Amighty Jove,
If prayer might ever move, look down this once
With favouring eye, and, if our righteous due,
Father, thine aid accord, and vouch this sign.'
Scarce was it said, when, thundering to the left,
A sudden peal is heard, and from the sphere
A star unfixt shot flashing thwart the gloom,
Profuse of light, and drew a fiery train:
Straight o'er the roof we saw it dart along,
Graving its path, then bright with lightning-burst
Vanish mid Ida's groves, its deep-ploughed wake
One rift of dazzling light, while sulphurous fumes
Filled all the region round.
And now, o'erpowered,
Uprose Anchises straight, and hails the gods,
And owns the holy star: 'Ye Pow'rs, from me
No more delay; lead where ye will, I'm there.
Gods of my sires, O save our house; protect
My grandson dear; this sign is yours, and Troy

703-726]

BOOK H.

'3

At your disposal lies. I go, my son,
Nor further say thee nay, to share thy fates.'
E'en as he spake, louder and fiercer still
Crackled and roared the flames, the blazing flood
Nearer and hotter rolled-' Haste, then, dear sire;
Haste, mount my back; these limbs shall bear thee well,
Nor feel the welcome load. Betide what may,
One hap shall be to both for weal or woe;
With us shall young Iulus wend; my wife
At safer distance track our steps behind.
And ye, my train, heed well the charge I give:
Forth of the town, where Ceres' mouldering fane
Crests the lone mount, and where that cypress old
So long held sacred of our sires, e'en there
By different routes we all shall meet in one.
These holy vessels and our country's gods,
Father, be thine to bear; for me, still fresh
From new-spilt blood, or e'er the living stream
Have purged the filthy witness from these hands,
To touch were to pollute.'
Then o'er my back
A lion's fell I spread and tawny spoils,
And, stooped, make broad my shoulders to the load;
lulus locks his tiny hand in mine,
And ekes his shorter steps to mate his sire's;
My wife fares on behind. Through darksome ways
Hold we our wary course, and me whom late
Not all the volleyed weapons of the Greeks,

74

THE A ENEID.

[727-748

Nor Greeks themselves in hostile bands arrayed,
Availed to daunt, now every breeze bids start,
Each sound appalls, hair-hung twixt hope and fear,
For whom I led alarmed and whom I bore.
Now drew the gates in sight, and fond I deemed
Our perilled way safe sped, when all at once
Smote on mine ear the close quick tramp of feet,
And, peering through the dark, my father cried:
'Haste, haste, my son; the foe is near; I see
Their glittering shields ahead and flashing mail!'
Sad pass of wild alarm and dread, whereat
Some hostile Power must sure of wit have reft
My flurried soul; for here-diverging wide
To shun the dangers of the beaten track-Alas! Creiisa from my anguished heart
Was torn of Fate; though to this hour unknown
Or stopped she short, or devious roamed astray,
Or, tired, was fain to rest; but never more
Blessed she these eyes in life. Nor did I e'en
Or note the loss, or heed whate'er bestow,
Till Ceres' lonely fane and mount we reached;
Unmissed till then, our gathered train here viewed,
Her one sad absence marred the perfect whole,
And mocked the hopes of husband, son, and friends.
Whom did I not--maddened of grief-upbraid,
In heaven-on earth ? what in all flaming Troy
Gave pang so cruel keen ? Sire, son, and gods,
All to my friends consigned, and safe disposed,
Hid in the hollows of a winding glen,

749-766]

BOOK 11.

75

Back to the town I trace my lonely way
In arms equipt, and bent once more to tread
All Troy throughout, all risks once more renew,
Defy all deaths once more.
Regain I first
The wall and gateway dark wherethro' my steps
Had issued on the plain, and heedful thence
Retrace my every footfall o'er again
Mid gloom and night, and search with roving eye.
Turn where I would, a nameless horror froze
My soul with dread; the very stillness shocked.
Then to our house I fared in hope-faint hopeHer steps had that way trod; but there the Greeks
Had just burst in, and now filled every nook;
And soon aloft, on wings of driving wind,
The sheeted flames rose up and topped the dome,
Firing the very skies. So, parting thence,
I visit next the Citadel once more,
Her father's royal seat; and here alike,
Posted in Juno's empty courts, I found
Phoenix and dire Ulysses, chosen wards,
Guarding the spoil, and 'fore mine eyes beheld
In one vast heap fair things of Troy piled up;
Yea, holy tables of her plundered gods,
Snatched from their burning shrines, and massive cups
Of solid gold, with costly vestments rich
From many a rifled home; while all about,
Ranked in long rows, the wretched captives stood,
Children and trembling dames. Then, desperate grown,

76:

THE AENEID.

[767-786

With daring voice I filled each ringing street,
And scared the shades of night with random cries;
And louder still, with iteration vain,
I called-and called again-my loved Creiisa's name.
As wildly thus o'er all the city's breadth
My frantic search held on, nor knew an end,
Rose to mine eyes-and larger too, me-seemed,
Than known erewhile in life-my lost one's shade,
Her phantom form, my poor Creiisa's ghost!
O'erawed, aghast, with freezing fear uphove
My bristled scalp, nor word might utterance find;
When spake she thus, and bade my grief be soothed :
"Ah why, my dearest lord, bid sorrow thus
On madness verge ? not, save of Heaven's high will
And linked with issues great, befalls this stroke;
Nor Fate did give thee e'er, nor might great Jove,
Controller of the skies, the deed allow,
To bear thy loved Creiisa o'er the main,
Companion of thy way. Before thee lies
A world of homeless wandering o'er the deep,
Long leagues of sea to plough; then shalt thou reach
Hesperia's land, where still mid richest tilth
In gentlest volume Lydian Tiber rolls:
There fair prosperity shall bless thy lot,
A crown and royal bride await thee there.
Nor weep the loved Creiisa's favoured fate:
Not now shall I, a captive thrall, behold
O'er distant seas our haughty victors' home,
Or stoop to serve the imperious dames of Greece,

787-804]

BOOK II.

Of Troy's blood-royal I, and wife of Venus' sonNo; me the mighty Mother of the Gods
Doth to herself on these loved shores detain.
So now farewell; and what of love was mine,
Bid still survive to bless our common child.'
'Twas said, and then, e'en while I wept and fain
Ten thousand words of loving breath had framed,
She fled, and melted into air; ay thrice
Flung I these folding arms her neck around,
And thrice their void embrace the spectre foiled,
Light as the viewless winds, and fleeting as a dream.
Sad night, so spent ! yet spent, I now at last
Re-seek my friends; and here amazed I find
A numerous host of new companions joined,
Matrons, and men, e'en youth for exile met,
A piteous motley throng. Yes, from all parts
Eager they flocked, and tendered heart and hand,
Lead where I would, to bide my fortunes still.
So now-for Lucifer o'er-peered the ridge
Of Ida's hill and ushered in the day,
And,-posted thick at every gate and pass,
The Danaan sentinels held watch and ward,
Nor hope whate'er was left-I bow to fate,
And, bearing up my sire, make for the distant hills."

77

78

THE AENEID.

BOOK

[1-15

III.

" OUR Asian weal and Priam's guiltless realm
Of Heaven's mysterious will thus lowly laid,
And god-built Troy still smoking from the ground,
Warned from above, the wanderer's lot we hail,
For distant lands :and desert regions bound,
And-'neath Antandros' self and Ida's heights
'Gin build our fleet, unwitting whither Fate
May shape our way, or where vouchsafe our rest,
And muster all our force.
Scarce summer now
Had well set in, when lo, Anchises bids
Pursue our fates, and hoist our parting sails :
With tearful eyes I quit my fatherland,
Her shores, and ports, and plains where once had stood
Dear native Troy, and, sighing, so put forth,
With son and friends and all my country's gods,
A homeless exile on the trackless main.
Not distant far, in ample steppes outstretched,
The War-god's land doth lie, of Thracians tilledThe fierce Lycurgus ruled the realm of yoreAnd erst to Troy, while Fortune still was ours,

136-38]

BOOK III.

By federate gods and strict alliance joined.
Here landing first, I straight begin to trace
Where curved the winding beach my future town
In evil hour commenced, and call my folk,
Styled from myself, Aeneadae by name.
So happed, as here with offered rites I prayed
My mother's power and all her fellow gods
To bless our work begun, and on the shore
To Heaven's high lord a milk-white bull would slay,
A shrubby knoll was nigh, its summit crowned
With cornel rods and myrtle's spear-like wands;
Thither I drew, and as with straining hand
I now 'gan tug the bushy growth away
To deck the altars with the leafy spoil,
Lo, to mine eyes a portent dread disclosed!
Scarce from the bank, its earth-bound fibres snapt,
The first green sapling quivered in my grasp,
Ere from its roots, in trickling ooze distilled,
Black gouts of blood fall heavy one by one,
And stain the turf with gore. Chill horror shook
My trembling frame, unnerved; curdled my blood
With terror thicked, and froze in every vein.
Nathless once more a new tough twig I try,
And try withal the mystery to solve;
When from this other, too, black blood doth drip.
Bewildered sore, I prayed the Dryad nymphs
And him, Gradivus hight, the Thracian's god:
'0 might their grace to happy issue bring
This omen dread, and aught malign avert!'
But when, with knee against the sand hard thrust

79

80

THE AENEID.

[39-56

A third tall lance with greater strain I drew,
Say shall I speak, or leave the thing untold ?
Forth the deep mound an anguished moan is heard,
And human accents smite my tingling ear:
'Ah why, Aeneas, rend a wretch like me ?
Laid at the last to rest, O spare my grave,
Or, truer said, e'en spare thyself withal,
Nor stain thy righteous hands with guilt profane.
No chance-found stranger I, but Trojan-born,
Nor from these roots distills no alien blood;
It kins thine own, nor knows a meaner source.
O fly this barbarous, avaricious land!
For I am Polydore : here murdered laid,
The pointed shafts that in my body met
Took root and grew, and now, an iron crop,
Have o'er me shot, and bristled into spears.'
Appalled I stood, with fear and doubt perplext,
My hair on end, my lips with terror sealed:
This Polydore our Priam sent by stealthPoor luckless Priam !-to the Thracian prince
With store of gold should buy the tyrant's care,
When first his heart 'gan fail, as now he saw
His leaguered town blockaded by the foe.
But-Troy once crushed, her better fortunes goneThe faithless wretch to conquering Greece falls off,
Breaks every sacred tie, slays Polydore,
And lays his robber grasp upon the gold.
Gold-greed accurst ! what guilt revolts the heart
Whose greed is gold!

57-74]

BOOK IH.

Soon as my trembling frame
Unthrilled from fear and horror left my limbs,
This portent dread to Troy's assembled peers,
My sire before the rest, I straight report,
And what their mind inquire. In full accord
Their voices all, concurrent, vote we quit
This wicked land, to sacred friendship false,
And give the winds our fleet. So in due form
We do to Polydore the last sad rites;
And tomb-wise first we heap the mound with earth,
And rear our funeral altars to the dead,
With sable fillets wreathed and cypress dark,
The while around, as aye their country's wont,
Our Ilian dames with locks dishevelled stand,
In mourner fashion dight; then, frothy bowls
Of new-drawn milk in tepid stream outpoured
And cups of hallowed blood, we lay the sprite,
In burial meet to rest composed, and thrice
In loudest voice outspeak the last farewell.
Anon, this done, when now with warrant safe
Our fleet, me-seemed, might trust the smiling sea,
And, whispering light, the south wind's gentle breath
Kissed the smooth waves and wooed us to the deep,
My mates haul down the ships and crowd the beach;
When, soon.afloat, we clear the distanced port,
And towns and shores roll backward as we fly.
Clipped of the circling sea there lies a land,
A pleasant isle, to watery Doris dear,
G

8r

82

THE AENEID.

[75-89

Old Nereus' queen, and Neptune, Ocean's lord;
Whilom unfixt, loose drifting to and fro
The seaboards round, till now the Archer-god
Of filial love his native isle made fast,
To Mycon moored and Gyar's sister strand,
And gave it so, of wind and wave secure,
A homestead fast, to set the storms at naught;
Here safe put in 'mid hush of breathless calm,
The peaceful port receives our wearied crews.
Anon debarked, as next with worship due
We bade Apollo's town and temple hail,
Lo meets us here, his brows with bay-leaves bound
And holy fillet-bands, king Anius,
Monarch at once of men and Phoebus' priest,
And in my sire an olden friend doth own;
When, hand to hand in ready welcome pledged,
He bids us on, and to his palace leads.
Here in his hallowed pile of old-world stone
Great Phoebus' deity I thus adored:
' God of our Trojan Thymbra, grant, I pray,
O grant our toils a homestead of our own,
A race to bide, a town and walls secure;
A second Troy's new Pergamus to be
O save in us-us the poor remnant left
From Danaan swords and fierce Achilles' spear!
Whom for our guide to take ? how steer our course ?
Our seat where fix ? Speak, speak, great sire; vouchsafe
One ray divine, and our dark souls illume.'

90-Io8]

BOOK III.

83

Scarce was it said, when, smit with tremblings strange,
The temple courts, me-seemed, 'gan stir and heave,
Nodded the holy bays, and all the mount
Quaked to its lowest base, while from the cell,
The sacred doors unfolding to their width,
The shaking tripod vibrates into sound.
Prostrate with reverent awe we fall to earth;
When to our ears a heavenly utterance came:
'Great Dardan's hardy sons ! the fertile land
That saw your race from stock ancestral spring,
The same must take you to its bosom back,
With rich abundance blest; seek till ye find
Your ancient mother out: there 'tis decreed
Aeneas' house shall sway the subject world,
His sons, and theirs, and who from them shall be.'
Apollo so; when straight a thrill arose
Of wild tumultuous joy, and eager each,
' What country that,' his wondering fellow asked,
'Whither the god our errant course would call,
And, re-directed, lead our wanderings back.'
Then spake my sire, and, musing deep, revolved
The dim traditions of the olden time :
'Chieftains, give ear, and what your prospects learn:
Amid the sea lies Crete, Jove's parent isle,
Mount Ida's seat, and cradle of our race ;
A hundred cities stud the favoured land,
And teeming plenty crowns its fertile plains.
Now this the place, if true my memory serves,
Whence our great ancestor, bold Teucer, first
GZ

84

YHE

AENEID.

[zo9-126

Made the Rhoet6an coast, and, landing, chose
His seat of empire there: not Ilion yet,
Nor Ilion's fort, great Pergamus, had risen;
In glens remote and lowly valleys green
The people dwelt. Thence our great patroness
And Mother-god, from Cybel6 surnamed,
Her favoured mountain-haunt; thence too derived
Her Corybantes' clashing cymbals came,
Thence Ida's grove with all its mystic rites,
The solemn silence on her votaries bound,
And lions harnessed to our Lady's car.
Then speed we so our Heaven-directed course,
Appease the winds, and steer for Gnossian shores:
Nor far the way, I ween; let Jove but smile,
The third fair morn we strike the Cretan strand.'
He said, and straight to every god doth bid,
As use prescribed, his several victim bleed;
A bull to Neptune, and to thee a bull,
Apollo bright, a black-woolled lamb to win
The Stormy Power, a white to Zephyr fair.
Now takes our ear a flying rumour strange
Of prince Idomeneus expelled his throne,
And forced a fugitive from Crete to fly,
And how that so, our foes all fled and gone,
The vacant homes stood open to our need.
Then, old Ortygia's port and harbour left,
'Neath flying sails we skim our watery way
A'past fair Naxos' Maenad-trodden heights,
Donysa's verdant isle, Oleiros,

I27-I42]

BO K III.

And snowy Paros' gleaming quarries white;
Then in and out the Cyclad group we thrid
Mid channelled seas with clustering islands sown,
The while in rival strains from ship to ship
Is tossed the burden of the seamen's song:
'For ancient Crete and our great fore-sires, ho!'
Thus on till now, of following breezes borne,
We grate at last the old Cur6tes' shore.
Anon I next proceed with eager haste
To rear on chosen ground my city's walls,
From Troy's old citadel Pergamia called,
And bid our folk, pleased with the olden name,
To love with loyal souls their homes and hearths,
And raise the fortress high with roof and dome.
So now went all things fairly on; the ships
Were high and dry upon the beach hauled up,
Our settled youth, on thoughts.domestic bent,
Were wiving fast, and tilled the new-found soil,
Myself the while, the growing realm to mould,
Enacting laws and lotting lands and homes;
When all at once, from skies infected shed,
On man's enfeebled frame distemper fell,
Slow wasting joint by joint, with poisonous blight
For tree and field, a year of plague and death;
And one by one their pleasant lives they left,
Or dragged their languid limbs, while overhead
The blazing dog-star scorched the sterile plains,
And all about, with gasping herbage strown,
The chappy glebe and sickly crop denied
Their wonted sustenance to man or beast.

85.

86

THE AENEID.

[143-164

Then bids my sire we measure back once more
The sea to Phoebus and Ortygia's shrine,
There sue the godhead's grace, and ask withal
What end his will to these our toils would give,
Whence aid be sought, and whither shaped our course.
'Twas night, and slumber held all living things;
When lo, me-seemed, the Phrygian household-gods,
Those very Shapes my care had with me brought,
From burning Troy-town's midmost ruins saved,
Before me stood in clearest light revealed,
As sleeping there I lay where now at full
The pearly moon did through the lattice stream;
When spake they thus, and eased my troubled soul:
' What Phoebus' voice, should'st thou Ortygia seek,
Would there disclose, lo here he bids thee know,
And, all unasked, doth send us to thy doors.
We who, since burning Troy succumbed to Fate,
Still followed thee and thine all-puissant arms,
And sailed the stormy waters 'neath thy flag,
E'en we, unchanged, will yet in days far on
High as the spheres exalt thy coming seed,
And boundless empire on thy town bestow.
Then on, and build-our greatness asks them greatIts destined walls, nor shirk, though hard it seem,
The tedious travel of thine Ocean way.
Yes, change we must this spot; not these the shores,
Nor Crete the place Apollo meant thy seat.
A land there is, of Greeks.Hesperia named,
A land of olden fame, for arms renowned,

165-185]

B00I III.

And eke its fertile glebe; the soil erewhile
Oenotrians eared, men say their children since
Have called the name Italia from their chief:
There our true seat and there our rightful home,
There Dardanus and there Tisius ownedOur founders twain-the land that gave them birth.
Then up, and, glad that doubt is now at end,
Acquaint thy sire herewith; bid him seek out,
And own on shrewder thought, Cortona's soil
And old Ausonia for thy proper seat;
Great Jove denies thee rule on Cretan ground.'
Amazed, awe-struck, at all I saw and heardFor dream 'twas none; but plain, familiar known,
Their braided locks and features face to face
My waking senses owned, while, bathed in sweat,
My clammy limbs confessed the vision true- Forth from my couch I spring, and, pouring, shed
Of unmixed wine libati6n on the hearth;
Full gladly then, the worship duly paid,
I seek my sire and all the thing unfold.
The double stock he owned and doubtful race,
Twyfold-derived, and smiled withal to own,
By error strange misled, his guess so wide:' O son,' he cries, ' sore tried by Troy's hard fate,
Oft to mine ear such strange wild strain did chant
One voice alone-Cassandra's-who but she ?
Comes now the burden back, how still she sang
Of these same realms as destined for our folk,
And oft Italia, oft Hesperia named.

87

88

THE AENEID.

[186-204

But who could think, what heart that day might dream
Of Trojans coming to the Westland's shore,
Or who would heed poor crazed Cassandra then ?
Yield we to Phoebus straight, our error own,
And, truer taught, the truer course pursue.'
He said, and all with full assent obey;
This region too we quit, and first a fewSo willed themselves-as settlers left behind,
We hoist our sails, and, pent in hollowed oak,
Scud o'er the vasty deep.
And now our ships
Had gained the open main, nor aught was seen
Save sky and sea the wide horizon round;
When, big with night and storm, a livid cloud
Dark lowering drew above our heads, and all
The ruffled deep gave back the scowl of heaven.
Anon the winds in long continuous swell
Uplift the waves, and, stirred from lowest depths,
Old Ocean heaves and rises in his might.
Scattered diverse, we rove the watery waste,
Mist chokes the day and humid night the sky,
While forky lightnings cleave with frequent flash
The riven clouds. Flung from our course, we roam
The pathless waters blind, while day from night
E'en Palinure doth own his skill at fault
To read aright from out the murky sky,
Or gather up again his reckoning lost.
Three twilight days with blinding fog obscured
We drift the deep, and three long starless nights;

205-226 ]

BOOK III.

89

The fourth at last, up-peering from the wave,
Land shows ahead, and now at nearer view
Gives far-off hills to sight and curling smoke:
Down drop the sails, and, taking to the oars,
We toss the spray, and sweep the foaming flood.
Saved from the wrecking waves, the Strophades
Next hail our rescued fleet-twin lonely isles,
So known and named in speech of Greekish men,
And girdled with the vast Ionian main;
Here dread Celaeno and her Harpy troop
Their dwelling hold, since, chased king Phineus' doors,
They fled the board their riot erst defiled.
Plague more accurst or direr scourge to man
Ne'er Heaven in wrath from lowest Hell evoked:
Women above, and feathered birds below;
Hands long and clawed, with features ghastly pale
And ever hunger-pinched, while, aye discharged,
Most fetid foulness from their inwards flowed.
Here, as we made the port, o'erjoyed we see
Fat oxen browsing o'er the meads at large,
And flocks of goats, untended, through the plain :
Straight, sword in hand, we rush upon the prey,
And call upon the gods and Jove himself
To share the spoil;. then on the winding beach
We pile our turfy seats, and fall to feast;
When, sudden pouncing from the hills anear,
With hideous swoop and din of clanging wings
The Harpy brood are on us all about,

go

THE

A4
ENE ID.

[227-246

And snatch our meats, and taint with contact foul
Whate'er they touch, while screamings loud and harsh
Mid sickening stench invade our deafened ears.
Once more, adown a lone secluded dell,
Beneath the shelter of a caverned rock,
With trees shut in and quivering shade of woods,
We spread our board afresh, and light anew
Our altar fires extinct; when lo, again,
From other skies and secret lairs remote,
The yelling crew with taloned feet assault
Our ravaged cheer, and all they taste pollute.
Indignant then I bid my comrades all
Betake them to the steel, and hand to hand
Do battle with the accursed kind; whereon
Obedient they, with swords in ambush laid
And shields concealed along the grassy sward,
Await the foe. Then, as with downward rush
Their whirring pinions made the shores to ring,
With trumpet-signal from his high look-out
Misenus sounds the charge: anon pell-mell
My mates invade the pack, and, all unused,
Essay this warfare strange, with spear and sword
To maim and wound those ocean birds unclean.
But, mailed in proof, their strong-quilled sides refuse,
Of hurt secure, or stroke or thrust to take;
When, skyward soaring straight, they leave behind
Their slavered prey half-gnawn and loathly trail;
All but Celaeno : on a cliff's tall peak
Fierce perching down, with croaking voice she spake,
Curst prophetess of ill! these words of fear:

P
"

T /%/" T
z247-2zj

BOO

K

TTT
.

91

' War would ye too, Laomedon's true sons,
War for the steers and oxen ye have slain,
And, quitting murderous raid with levied arms,
Thrust the poor Harpies from their rightful home ?
Now list ye well, and bid your souls lay up
What here I speak-no idle words or false :
From Jove what Phoebus heard, from Phoebus I,
Hear ye from me-ay, me the Furies' queen:
For Italy ye steer, and, for the winds
Your bidding wait, to Italy shall come,
Vouchsafed fair passage to the wished-for port;
But know that long or ere the rising wall
May gird your town, famine will wreak our wrong,
And force your need, for this your outrage foul,
To gnaw with desperate jaws your boards for bread.'
She spake, and back on sooty pinion borne,
To wooded coverts fled.
With sudden shock
Curdled my comrades' blood, of fear congealed,
Their spirits fell, nor thought was more of arms,
But one and all they bid with prayer and vow
We cry these creatures grace, be they whate'er,
Or gods or dire disgustful birds of prey.
With upturned hands from off the beach outspread,
My sire invokes the mighty Powers above,
And vows withal meet sacrifice to each :
'Forfend these threats, ye gods, avert the curse,
And, won to mercy, shield the just from harm.'
This done, he bids we next cast off from shore,
And loose the sheets slacked out. Up-sprung a'stern,

rrtT'r'lr

92

THE

A lrTt 'r rTt.
"/'lr'
,

AENEID.

[268-2 04

Fair breezes fill our sails, and swift and free
We scud the seething waves, as wind and pilot call.
Now from mid sea Zacynths to our ken
Uplifts its crest, with waving forests crowned;
Dulichium next we sight, and Same next,
And craggy Neritos heaves next in view;
Wide berth and large to Ithaca we give,
Laertes' rocky rule, and curse the landSo might we well !-was dire Ulysses' nurse.
Anon Leucata's storm-capped peaks appear,
And Phoebus soon his cliff-perched fane outshows,
The seaman's dread. Thither we steer, and gladO'ertoiled and spent-drop anchor from the prow
Before the little town, and landwards face our sterns.
Thus safe put in where hope so late was none,
We pay our lustral rites to Jove, and bid
His altars blaze in quittance of our vows;
Then give the lonely Actian shore to see,
In festive guise, the native games of Troy:
Their naked limbs with slippery oil o'er-rubbed,
In wrestler fashion stript, our youth enact
The plays that erst in fatherland they played:
' 'Tis joy,' they cry, 'our way so far is wonAnd safely won--past all these Argive towns,
And hosts of swarming foes.'
The sun meanwhile
Rolls round the mighty year, and winter frore

285-302]

BOOK IIl

Deforms the ruffled deep with Northern blasts.
Here to the temple gate affixt I set,
Of hollow bronze, what erst great Abas wore,
A buckler round, for legend thus inscribed:
'AENEAS

HANGS THIS ARMOUR ON THESE DOORS ;

HE WON IT

OF HIS GRECIAN CONQUERORS.'

Then I command my crews to quit the port,
And, taking to their oars, to man the thwarts;
With rival strokes in concert drawn they lash
The smitten floods, and sweep the marble plain.
Soon, dipt beneath the wave, Phaeacia's heights
Vanish our lessening ken, and now we coast
Epirote lands, and, to Chaonia's port
Put safely in, we scale Buthrotum's steep.
Here find we rife a tale would mock belief:
Prince Helenus, our Priam's son, a kingA Grecian king-with Pyrrhus' crown and wife,
And fair Andromach6 espoused again
To one by birth compatriot with herself!
Lost in amaze, I burn with strong desire
To greet my friend and learn his fortunes strange
So, ships and haven left, I set me forth.
It chanced Andromach6 that very tide,
Amidst a grove without the city wall,
And where a so-named Simois' streamlet flowed,
Did yearly offerings make, with mournful rites

93

94

THE

AENEID.

[303-320

And invocation of her husband's shade,
Before an empty grass-green mound the which
The widowed spouse had raised for Hector's grave,
With altars twain, where to withdraw and weep.
Soon as she there my near approach beheld,
And, sore distraught, with looks bewildered knew
My Trojan garb; as scared by some weird sight,
The vital heat forsook her stiffened limbs,
She swooned and fell; then, faltering, spake at last:
'Com'st thou a real shape, O goddess-born,
An earthly man, and bring'st me earthly news?
Or, if a ghost and quenched thy light of life,
O where, when thou art here, can Hector be!'And straight the flood-gates of her tears gave way,
And all the grove was vocal with her shrieksHer transports such, that scarce, with much ado
And lips long oped ere broken utterance came,
Thus to her ravings made I brief reply:
'Yes, I am living man, or, truer said,
I drag through worst of ills a living death;
So truce to doubt : 'tis very sooth thou seest.
Thee, princess, too-ah, what a fall was thine,
From that first match declined ! But is in truth
This meeter lot thine hap ? or, if untrue,
Holds fair Andromach6 to Hector still
Her widowed love, or fills, a captive thrall,
King Pyrrhus' bed ?'
With tearful eyes down-cast
And lowly tones abashed the fair replied:

321-33 6]

BOOK III.

'O blest beyond compare, supremely blest,
Sole and alone of Priam's daughters, she,
That royal maid whom Greece so bade to die,
Slain at her foeman's tomb 'neath Troy's high wall!
For her no lots were cast; free and unstained,
Ne'er was it hers to touch a conqueror's bed;
While wretched we, from burning homes enforced,
And rapt in hostile keels o'er ocean wide,
Have proud Achilles' prouder son endured,
Served his hot lust, and ta'en his foulest scorn,
Yea, known in chains and bonds a mother's throes,
The poor slave-suckler of his infant child.
But, cloyed full soon, the tyrant youth must next,
Lured by a Spartan match, his love transfer
To young Hermion6, a meeter spouse,
Of Leda's stock, and Helen's worthy seed,
And me casts off, to Helenus made o'er,
A bondsmaid to a bondsman's bed consigned.
But young Orestes, maddened by his guilt,
The Furies' retribution for his deeds,
And fired with vengeance for his ravished bride,
Came on his lone, unguarded hour, and there,
E'en at his sire's own altar, slew the wretch.
By Pyrrhus' death-so tardy justice willed
Slight compensation for the tyrant's wrongDevolved on us this portion of his realm;
And now hath Helenus the region called
Chaonia, from Trojan Chaon's name,
And yonder fort that crowns those girdling hills
Did there up-build, our Pergamus to be.

95

96

THE AENEID.

[337-358

But you--what winds, what fates have driven you here ?
Or was't some god so shaped your course o'er-ruled,
Thus all unwitting on our shores to land ?
Say, lives Ascanius too, and recks he still
Of that dear mother lost ? Shows in the boy,
Waked of his uncle's and his father's fame,
Aught of the olden worth shall stamp him yet
For Hector's nephew and Aeneas' son?'
So flowed for what was bootless now to wail
Mid sobs and tears her plaintive speech still on;
When lo, attended with a gallant train,
Forth of the town king Helenus doth fare,
And owns his kin, and, gladsome welcome given,
On to his palace leads, while tears of joy,
Shed thick and fast, fall ever mid his words.
And now, so wending on, methinks I see
Dear Troy in miniature around me grow ;
Here a small Pergamus, would mock the great,
And there a scanty brook from Xanthus named,
And here I hug a Scaean gate once more.
Nor less my mates the friendly town enjoy;
Guests of the king, where round in ample sweep
The columned porticoes enclosed the hall,
There day by day to Bacchus boon they raised
The wine-cup high, while gleamed the board with gold.
So day and day wore on, while now the breeze
Filled our puffed sails, and wooed us to the deep;
At last I thus our seer host address:

359-376]

BOOK I1.

97

True son of Troy, interpreter of Heaven,
And 'fore whose gifted sense doth naked lie
Apollo's secret lore, with what of fate
The Clarian bays and sacred tripod tell,
Who knowest the stars, the tongue of birds, and all
The varied omens of the rapid wing;
Declare-but not my course; this, plain fore-shown,
From first to last have prosperous rites disclosed,
And all the gods with signs concurrent point
To far Italia for my destined goal;
Sole note of ill that vengeance strange denounced
And famine dire by fell Celaeno's voiceBut say what perils first, as first to come,
For wary shunning plead, what plan pursued
Help to surmount the labours of my way.'
Hereon, meet victims at the altars slain,
The seer doth first with votive blood entreat
The Powers divine, and from his sacred brows
Unwinds the fillet-bands, and hand-in-hand
Conducts me to thy doors, Apollo bright,
Awe-struck and trembling at thy Presence large;
Then chants that priestly tongue its prophet-strain:
'Said'st sooth, thou son of Heaven; too plainly
marked
For doubt or dread the signs that shape thy way;
So as didst read the Fates ordain, and Jove
Disposes true the lot assigned; yea bids,
E'en now in course, the great events proceed.
H

98

THE A ENEID.

(377-397

Then list as here, that so may'st safer track
Those unknown seas and make the Ausonian port,
Scant hints and brief I now impart; for more
Or Fate from ken of Helenus removes,
Or--all as bad-dread Juno seals his lips.
First then; that Italy thou deem'st so near
Would'st think, fond man, to make these ports close by,
A long, long trackless stretch of sea doth far,
With far-off lands between, from hence divide:
Trinacria's wave must bend thy tugging oars,
Thy wearied barks explore Ausonia's main,
Hell's burning meres be crossed, with that far sea
That laves Aeaean Circ6's wizard isle,
Or ere may'st build, in peace and safety reared,
Thy promised city on the looked-for soil.
The tokens now--and bear them well in mind:
When as, with cares opprest, thou roam'st beside
A broad sequestered stream, and 'neath the oaks
That fringe its grassy marge thine eyes shall note
A great new-littered sow there laid along,
With thrice ten piglings clustered round her dugs,
White both alike, the farrow and the dam;
E'en there thy city's site, there look to find,
With toil fordone, thy labours' end and goal.
Nor fear, though dread it sound, the wrath denounced
That dooms in hunger's pang thy boards for bread;
Fate will find means, and Phoebus bides the prayer.
But these nigh lands and yon Italian coast
Whose fronting line our ebbing billows wash,

398-418]

BOOK 1IH.

99

Beware and shun; these all are studded thick
With towns and thorps where hostile Grecians dwell;
From Naryx here have Locrians reared their walls,
And here in arms Idomeneus of Crete
Holds with his sword Salentum's leaguered plains;
Here small Petelia, Philoctetes' fort,
Of that great Meliboean chieftain built,
And fenced secure behind its bastioned wall.
Further, when now thy barks at anchor ride,
These seas o'erpassed, and on the shingly beach
With altars reared thou pay'st thy vows, be sure
Thou veil'st thy muffled head in purple coif,
Lest in mid prayer, and while the hallowed fires
Blaze high and bright in worship of the gods,
Some foeman's eye meet thine, and mar the rites:
This use must thou, this same thy folk observe,
To this thy pious sons for aye be bound.
But when, cleared thence, the driving breeze shall
bring
Sicilia on thy bows, and, nearer seen,
Pelorus' narrow gates shall open wide,
Wear to the larboard, and, though long about,
Stand well to sea; shun starboard, sea and shore.
These lands, they tell, with huge disruption rent
In by-gone days-such change may time achieveDid leap a'twain, when erewhile both were one;
The sea with thundering burst came in between,
And tore Trinacria from Hesperia's side;
H2

I00

THE AENEID.

[419-439

So ever since, with several shore and shore,
A narrow frith doth intersecting flow
The severed fields and parted towns betwixt.
The right-hand pass doth Scylla guard, the left
Charybdis holds, who down her swirling maw
Thrice sucks the great flood tumbling in, and thrice
Forth spouts again, and lashes heaven with spray.
A cavern's darksome hole doth Scylla hide,
With jaws thrust out above the waves, on watch
The heedless vessel to her den to draw:
Human above, a maiden's, fair and full,
That faultless bust, but downward all is fish
Of monstrous size, with process foul and strange
Of dolphin's tail to she-wolf's belly knit.
Better with loss of time and circuit wide
Pachynus' head, ay doubled o'er and o'er,
Than one scared glance at Scylla in her cave,
Those rocks aye ringing to her sea-dogs' cry.
Yet more; if skill to Helenus pertain,
If aught of worth be his for seer-craft,
If sooth inform his soul, of Phoebus taught,
This further charge, dear prince, this warning word,
Urged o'er and o'er again, shall head the rede,
Yea, sum up all in one: 'fore and above
All worship else great Juno's godhead own,
To Juno still with hearty zeal unfeigned
Chant, vow, and pray; nor ever know surcease
Till suppliant suit prevail, and, won to grace,
The puissant dame be vanquished and o'ercome;

440-458]

BOOK IH.

rot

Triumphant so, from old Trinacria sped,
At last thou'lt land thee on Italia's shore.
When thither borne, and now thy way is won
To Cumae town and those drear woods that moan
Avernus' weird and gloomy tarn around,
There shall thine eyes that frenzied maid behold
Who in the darksome cave beneath the rock
Forth chants her fateful strains, and still commits
To forest leaves her marks and notes of doom.
The mystic scrolls so writ, the virgin next
Lays them in rows and in the cavern shuts,
Each several rede apart ; and, marshalled so,
Unmoved they lie, nor from their places stir;
But should so hap the door on turning hinge
With breezy waft have whirled them light in air,
And sent them flitting all the cavern through,
Ne'er recks her more the dancing leaves to catch,
Their ranks recall, or join her strains again:
Unanswered thus, in dole and dudgeon high
Her suitors leave, and curse the Sibyl's grot.
But know 'twere time's worst thrift-though friends may
chide,
Thy voyage cry despatch, and may'st at help
Have winds to puff thy sails-should'st thou, dear
prince,
E'en scruple so that weird dark cave to seek,
Its inmate see, and at her lips unlocked
With prayer and vow thy doom out-worded crave;
Italia's tribes, thy coming wars, and how

102

THE AENEID.

[459-479

Each toil may'st best avoid, or warned endure,
She will resolve thee true, and, rightly sued,
Will grant thee voyage fair.
The counsels these
Our tongue hath leave to give; then on, and now
Raise by thy deeds our Ilion to the skies.'
So spake the friendly seer, and then doth bid
Rich presents to be borne on shipboard straight,
Carved ivory, and gold, and stores our hulls
With massive silver plate, and therewithal
Great brazen caldrons, Dodonaean-shaped,
A chain-mail cuirass, triply leashed with gold,
And burnished helm, with cone and flowing plume,
Erst Pyrrhus' wear: nor unremembered eke,
For suited gifts reserved, my aged sire;
Horses and guides he adds, and makes anew
Our tale of oars, and fits my crews with arms.
Meantime Anchises urged us hoist forthwith
The sails atrim, nor lose the favouring breeze;
Whom thus with reverence high the seer bespake:
'Thrice-honoured sire, rare mortal worthy found
Fair Venus' bed, thou darling of the skies,
Twice saved of Heaven from ruined Ilion's fall;
See there before thee stretched Ausonia's coast,
Prize for thy ready sails ;' and seize it too:
But no; this nigh-hand side thou must of needs
Shoot far apast; for far beyond it lies
The true Ausonian shore which Phoebus shows.

480-496]

BOOK III.

Then on-for why more words and winds delayed ?O father blest to call such worth thy son.'
With no less kind concern, and grieving sore
The last sad parting hour to see so near,
Andromach6 doth fetch rich robes of price,
With needlework o'er-pictured fair, and wrought
The whole throughout with thread of gold, and eke
A Phrygian cloak for loved Ascanius' useNor fails the wearer's worth to grace the giftYea loads him, too, with presents from her loom,
And thus withal the favoured youth bespeaks:
' Nay, take these too, dear boy, and let them be
Memorials of our hands, and speak the love
Of her may'st yet in distant years recall,
Andromache, great Hector's sometime wife.
Take them, the last thy kin may give, O thou
Sole image left, in whom me-seems revived
My own Astyanax doth live again :
Yes, these his hands, his eyes, his looks, and now
His ripening years, like thine, had so beseemedAh, blighted bloom !-the promise of their spring.'
With gushing tears my parting word I spake :
' Live and be blest; as blest full sure their lot,
Whose fortunes won may chance and hap defy;
While wretched we, the sport of chequered fates,
Still toss in endless maze from change to change.
Rest and repose are yours; no seas to plough,
No Italy to mock your eager quest,
Still further fled, as further still pursued;

1o3

1o4

THE AENEID.

[497-5r4

Here Xanthus glads your eye, here mimic Troy,
Built of your very hands-and may it prove
With happier omens built, and which shall still
Lie far aloof the pathway of the Greek!
If Tiber e'er and Tiber's bordering plains
'Tis mine to see, and see withal upreared
Those walls by Fate long promised to my folk,
Of these our kindred towns and neighbour states,
This in Epirus, in Hesperia that,
As one their founder and their fortunes one,
So be it ours of twain one Troy to make,
In heart and soul still knit, and may our sons,
As we to-day, the happy compact own!'
Afloat once more, and coast-wise holds our way
The tall Ceraunian peaks beneath, whence lies
The shortest course to Italy by sea.
Down drops the sun, and soon, to night resigned,
The dusky hills are steeped in formless gloom.
In parties now, as told off for the oar,
Earth's welcome bosom folds us to our rest,
With food and wine refreshed, and scattered so,
Stretched on the windy beach, soft sleep bedews,
By turns indulged, our weary aching frames.
Drawn of the stilly Hours, Night's sable car
Not yet had topped heaven's midmost arch, when lo
Good Palinurus springs alert from sleep,
Explores the winds, and harks the challenged breeze,
And shifts his straining ear to every breath;

515-533]

BOOK III.

105

Notes he withal the radiant orbs of night
O'er heaven's broad convex hold their noiseless way,
Arcturus, Hyads, either Northern Bear,
And mailed Orion, brightest of the host,
riding high with belt and sword of gold.
Then, all betokening fair, straight from the poop,
Heard clear and shrill, he winds the wonted blast,
Signal to weigh, and we, forthwith decamp'd,
Essay our course, and spread our canvas wings.

.Now

The starry train had fled the springing light,
And ruddy dawn was flushing into day,
When on our bows in distance dim we spy
The hills and lowly plains of Italy:
'Italia !' exclaims Anchises first,
'Italia! ' with joy my shipmates shout;
All bid with glad acclaim Italia hail.
Then raised Anchises high a flow'r-crowned bowl,
And filled it up with wine, and prayed the gods,
Forth standing on the stern: 'Ye Powers whose rule,
Submissive owned, earth, sea, and sky obey,
Vouchsafe fair course, and breathe propitious gales.'
Freshens the wished-for breeze, and now more near
The growing harbour broadens on the view,
And, clear descried, Minerva's adry fane
Outshows upon the heights; whereon we furl
Our shortened sails, and shorewards turn our prows.
Scooped of the westward-setting flood, the port
With graceful roundure sweeps into a bow,

io6

THE AENEID.

[534-553

'Twixt barrier rocks concealed, that molewise jut
And take the dashing surf, while either hand
Great flanking cliffs with gradual slope let fall
Their guardian arms, and form a double pier,
And, nearer view, the temple flies the shore.
Here meets mine eye the first-seen token dread
Of Heaven's high will, four snow-white coursers tall,
Browsing the mead at large: 'War!' cried my sire,
' Yes war, O stranger land, thy bodings speak;
For war the horse; these cattle threaten war:
Yet is there when these same are trained to draw
The peaceful wain, and brook the yoke in pairs;
There's prospect too of peace.' To Pallas then,
Dread queen of clanging arms, who welcomed first
Our shouting crews to land, we make our prayer,
With hooded heads in Phrygian coverings wrapt;
And, heeding Helenus' grave charge and strict,
To Argive Juno pay the rites prescribed.
Anon, this service done, with brisk despatch
We put about our sail-clad yard-arms' horns,
To windwards turned, and head our ships to sea;
And, distanced soon, we so leave far behind
Our fears of Greeks with these mistrusted shores.
Thy gulf, Tarentum, now we sight, fair town,
Of Herc'les built, if speaks the legend sooth;
Next, raised in counterview, thy temple's steep,
Lacinium's goddess, lifts itself in air,
And Caulon's towers outshow, and that ill bay
From Scylax named, with frequent wreck bestrewn.

554-574]

BOOK II.

Then right ahead, emergent o'er the main,
Trinacrian Aetna looms into our ken :
Straight from afar the beaten rocks we hear
And moaning sea, mid ceaseless sounds and hoarse
In broken murmurs rolling to the shore;
The boiling depths upleaping from below,
And surf and sand in wild commotion mixt.
'Charybdis this ! ' exclaims my sire; ' these, these
The frightful rocks good Helenus foretold;
Mates, to your oars, and snatch us from the death ! '
'Twas said, and done: stout Palinurus first
Around to larboard drives the plashing prow;
And larboard straight with oars and sails amain
The general squadron bore. Now on the swell
To heaven we mount, and now, the water gone,
Impetuous shoot adown to hell beneath:
Thrice rang the rocky bottom to our keel,
And thrice, emerged, mid arching spray we saw
The welkin splashed, and all the stars adrip;
The while, of sun and wind forlorn, we drift,
Our reck'ning lost, upon the Cyclops' shore.
Ample the port, and fenced to every blast;
But night and day grim Aetna thunders nigh
In frightful peals, and now to heaven doth belch
Black clouds of rolling smoke in pitchy whirls,
With embers glowing white, and flings aloft
Great globes of fire, and licks the stars with flame;
Anon with loud discharge out-hurls in air

107

io8

THE AENEID.

[575-593

The shattered entrails of the mountain's maw,
Disploded rocks, and jets of molten stone
Sluiced from its burning core, and brimming now,
O'er all its blazing sides infuriate boils.
'Tis said Enceladus' vast bulk is pressed,
All scorched and scarred, with thunderbolts intrenched,
This mighty mass beneath; and so, o'erlaid,
The riven hill, in furnace mouths agape,
Forth spouts his fiery gaspings to the air;
And, oft as shifts that weary tortured side,
Trinacria still from base to surface quakes
With inward throes, and shrouds the heavens in smoke.
Hid in the woods that dreadful night all through
The dire unearthly wild hubbub we heard,
With terror dumb, unwitting of the cause;
For stars were none, nor glowed the silent blue
With living fires inlaid; but clouds instead
Obscured the skies o'ercast, and midnight blank
Still held the muffled moon in durance dark.
Now rose the morrow from the early East,
And bright Aurora from the heavens had drawn
Night's humid shades before the springing day;
When, sudden darting from the woods, appeared
The ghastly figure of a wight unknown,
Wasted and famine-clung, and suppliant tossed
With gesture wild his hands towards the shore.
We turn to view the sight; 'twas squalor's self,
From sole to scalp a miracle of filth:

594-612]

BOOK III.

1o9

Matted his beard, and, low depending, swept
His breast, o'ergrown; tattered his garb and loose,
And here and there with tagging spinelets pinned;
In all besides a Greek, and one had waged
His country's feud against the arms of Troy.
Soon as the startled wretch from far beheld
Our Dardan dress, and knew his foes withal,
Scared at the sight he faltered, and stopped short:
'Twas but a moment's pause; anon full speed
Right to the strand with tears and prayers he flew:
'By Heaven's bright stars, by this blest light we breathe,
By all the gods, take, take me, Trojans, hence;
Hence-'tis enough; yea, anywhere, so hence!
I know, nor here forget, a Greek am I,
One from the Danaans' fleet, your foeman's crews,
And warred erewhile to spoil your Ilian homes;
For which, if vengeance holds the guilt so black,
Here shred me piecemeal to the weltering surge,
Dislimbed and torn, yea, drown me in the depths;
Content, if death this wretched life must end,
The hands that give it are the hands of men.'
Then dropped the imploring wretch, and, abject flung,
Writhed round our knees, and wallowed in the dust.
We bid in cheering tones our suppliant show
Who, of what blood, he was, and how had happed
His evil case; nor paused Anchises' self
His plighted hand at ready pawn to lay,
And bade the friendly pledge rebuke his fears.
Then, so assured, the stranger thus replies:

110

THE AENEID.

[613-631

'An Ithacan by birth, Ulysses I
As follower served, and shared his luckless fates;
My name is Achemenides; my lotWhat could it else-poor Adamastus' son ?Was poverty: ah had I been content!
But no; in evil hour I joined the host
A'setting out for Troy-and hence my woes;
For here, o'erlooked, as fast with terror winged
They fled his cruel doors, my comrades all
Forgot, and left me in the Cyclop's den.
Gloomy and vast that hall of feastings dread,
With slaughter foul, a banquet-room of blood;
Himself of towering height, and every stride
Knocks at the lofty stars-kind Heaven, withdraw
Your heavy scourge from earth !-a monster grim
Nor eye might brook, nor tongue hold speech withal.
The limbs of captive wretches are his food,
His drink their spouting blood. These eyes beheld,
When as his hand's prodigious grasp had seized
Two trembling victims of our company,
-How, backward bent and springing to the blow,
He dashed them shrieking 'gainst the battered rock,
The purple pavement floating with their gore;
I heard him crunch their crackling bones, and saw
The life-warm muscles quiver 'neath his teeth.
Thank Heaven, not unavenged ! Ulysses' blood
Ill brooks at best aught scathe to follower done,
But here my countryman e'en passed himself.
Soon as, with wine o'ercome and cloyed with food,
The drowsing savage drooped his sunken head,

632-652]

BOOK III.

And, senseless laid, sprawled his enormous bulk
From side to side the cave, belching the while
In drunken sleep great ill-chewed gobbets raw,
With gory wine regorged and parbreak foul;
We, one and all, with prayer to Heaven addressed,
And each his several part by lot assigned,
Enring the snoring monster all about,
And so, held down, with sharpened stake gouge out
His one great eye that 'neath his scowling brow
Low-sunken glared, broad as the solar disk
Or Grecian shield; and blithely so we venged
Our comrades' ghosts. But fly, poor wretches! fly,
Cast off in haste your cables from the beach;
For such and huge as Polyphemus here
His woolly people pens and drains their dugs,
E'en full as fierce and huge of thews and limb
A hundred Cyclops more frequent these shores,
Their common haunt, and range the lofty hills.
Three weary moons their crescent horns have filled
With borrowed light, since here in woods and wilds
I drag with beasts of prey a wretched life
In ceaseless fear, watching with peering eye
The giant Cyclops on the mountain's side,
And quaking as I hear their voice or tread.
A sorry sustenance the boughs afford,
Berries and stony fruits, or whiles I pluck
The up-torn herb, and feed me on the root.
Long looked I out escape; at length I spied,
First ray of hope, this fleet approach the shore:
Instant resolved I vowed me yours, unrecked

ii

-

•
rT*T'T'T

12

TH1L

A 'T

AEI

'/'L TT

z'.

r

6
53-

7

Or friends or foes; enough, surrendered thus,
I 'scape yon horrid crew. So welcome now
At these your hands what worst of deaths you please.'
Scarce was it said, when on the height above
Our eyes behold great Polypheme himself
Moving in all his bulk among his flocks,
And wending straight adown the hill-side steep
His well-known shoreward path-a hideous form,
Mis-shapen, huge, and sightless now to boot.
An uptorn pine directs his groping hand,
And stays his staggering steps; his fleecy care
Their giant swain attend-his solace they,
Sole comfort left him now to cheer his hap.
Soon as he reached the strand, and now had felt
The lapping waters cool, there, stooping down,
He rinsed his eyeless socket from the gore,
And gnashed his teeth withal, and groaned for pain;
Then, frantic plunging, stemmed the midmost depths,
Nor yet one billow wet his towering loins.
We speed our flight aghast-receiving first,
As well his due, our suppliant on boardAnd, straight embarked, in silence cut the ropes,
Bend to the oar, and sweep with rapid strokes
The marble plain. The giant heard, and quick
Addressed his altered course towards the noise;
But when he found, at utmost length out-raught,
His hand still short to reach our fleet, as eke
Too slow his speed to match the Ionian ebb,

I.

672-694]

BOOK 111.

II
3

He raised forthwith a monstrous roar, whereat
Affrighted Ocean throbbed through all his waves,
Trembled all Italy, and inland far
Red Aetna's winding caves rang loud and long.
Roused by the peal, from wood and mountain high
The whole Cyclopian kind rush trooping down,
And throng the crowded port. There saw we-each
With baffled rage and glowering eyeball fixtAetna's grim brethren stand, assemblage dread !
Their tall heads 'mid the clouds; so crowns some hill
Or Hecate's cypress wood, or oaks of Jove.
Fear prompts my mates or right or left to sail,
And loose the sheets to any wind that blew;
While counter quite good Helenus' command
Stands plain opposed to passage onward held
'Twixt Scylla and Charybdis' pool, a path
But, either side, a scant remove from death.
'Bout ships and back !-resolved, and well nigh done,
When, timely sent from forth Pelorus' strait,
A brisk 'nor-wester blew; and soon apast
Pantagias' mouth of living rock we shoot,
The bay of Megara and Thapsus low;
So Achemenides, Ulysses' mate,
Did name these several places to my view,
Familiar known, his former course retraced.
Outstretched before the broad Sicanian bay,
Where vext Plemyrium fronts the ceaseless surf,
An island lies, Ortygia hight of old;

114

THE AENEID.

[695-71z

Hither, 'tis said, from Elis' distant shore
His secret way did fond Alpheus work
Full many a fathom deep beneath the sea,
Till here his tide with thine commingling flowed,
Loved Arethusa, to Sicilia's main.
Advised, we hail the local Powers, and then
Hel6rus' marshy mouth, alluvial-choked,
With might and main at highest tide I pass;
Then, rounding close Pachynus' lofty head
And beetling spurs far jutting out to sea,
Bring Camarina next in sight, the fen
To drainer's hand forbid by Fate's decree.
Vast Gela's bordering plains we next descry,
And Gela's town-so from its river named.
Next steepy Acragas displays afar
Its massive walls to view and ramparts huge,
In other days for generous steeds renowned.
Sped of the favouring breeze, thee too I leave,
Selinus fair, with all thy palms behind,
And Lilybaeum's treacherous shallows, thick
With sunken reefs, I cautious cruise along.
The port of Drepanum next greets my fleet,
Sad joyless strand; for here alas! I lose,
Ay, after all these buffetings by sea,
My sire Anchises, him whom still I found
In every strait my solace and my stay;
Here, best of sires, did'st leave thy wearied son,
Ah, saved in vain from countless risks and deaths !
Not prophet Helenus, in all his roll
Of coming ills foreshown, spake aught of this,

713-718]

BOOK III.

I5

This grief not dire Celaeno's self foretold!
This my last stroke, my long, long wanderings' goal ;
Departing thence, Heaven cast me on thy shores."
Aeneas so, while all kept hush around,
Rehearsed his fortunes, and his travels showed;
And, pausing here, he ended, and was done.

I2

THE AENEID.

BOOK

IV.

BUT secret pangs the while and love's sore hurt
Preyed on the queen; and now the stealthy flame
Feeds on each burning vein, and wastes its tide;
The hero's worth, the glories of his race,
His words, each look imprinted on her heartAll to her anxious soul by turns come back,
And take her every thought ; the wakeful care
Haunts e'en her troubled rest.

The morrow now
'Gan streak the morning skies with orient light,
And from the heavens Aurora's hand had drawn
Night's misty veils before the springing day,
When, sore distraught, the enamoured fair one spake
Her sister dear, the sharer of her heart:
'Anna, what dreams this night have scared my soul!
Such frightful visions from the world of sleep!
Say what it bodes; or who this wondrous guestNe'er saw mine eyes his peer-arrived our doors ?
What face and mien-did'st mark ?--and bearing high!
What noble breast and stalwart might of arm !

12-28]

BOOK

IV.

117

Certes he comes of gods--I hold it soothNor shames the strain; where worth has swerved from
kind,
ever speaks the base degenerate soul.
Fear
But, woe is me! what troubled lot was his !
What toils by flood and field ! what dreadful wars
He bravely fought, yet told, ay sweet as song !
Were it not still my fixt and firm resolve
To join this hand with none in marriage bond,
Since early love so mocked my hopes with death;
But for my soul with sickened sense revolts
At thought of nuptial torch and bridal bower,
Haply I might to this one weakness yield.
Yes, sister mine-for unreserved I trust
The new-found secret of my soul with theeSince that sad hour when 'neath a brother's hand
My loved Sychaeus fell, and dyed our home
And very hearth-gods with the stain of blood,
This man alone hath taught my heart to throb,
And warped my yielding will ; sister, too true
I own the tokens of that olden flame.
But O! may Earth her lowest depths disclose
And swallow quick, or heaven's hot levin bolts
Dismiss me stricken from this cheerful day
To lie with ghosts in Erebus and nightPale ghosts of Erebus and night's abyssEre, wifely Truth, I shame thy matron face,
Or break thy lightest law : no ; who first linked
My love with his, bore all my love away;

THE AENEID.

(29-45

His be it still, nor ever -quit his tomb !
And gushing tears filled all her bosom's depth.
When Anna thus : 'What, dearest sister mine!
Yea, not the light to these fond eyes so dearShall sorrow's canker mar thy golden prime,
And doom thy youth to lonely grief a prey,
Denied the joys a mother's heart doth prove,
No children thine, nor bliss that Venus gives!
Strange thought, to deem the grave's poor senseless
dust
Or knows thy mad resolve, or recks to know!
Be it that erst, while sorrow still was green,
Nor Libya's haughty lords, nor Tyre's before,
Thine heart once touched, or warped thy yielding will;
larbas sued and all those chiefs in vain
Whom warlike Afric boasts her noblest sons,
Say, would'st resist a pleasing flame withal ?
Stirs not the thought, if other plea were none,
Mid whose broad plains thine alien city stands ?
Here fierce Gaetulia's towns begird thee round,
Whose valiant sons ne'er vailed their crest to foe,
With rude Numidia's wild unbridled hordes,
And, churlish as their shoals, the Syrtes' boors;
There, parched with thirst, a desert region spreads,
And Barca's roving bands thy frontiers vex.
Needs me advise what gathering storm of war
Still lowers from Tyre, and threats our brother's wrath?
For me-good sooth, not wayward winds, I trow,
But Heaven itself and Juno's special grace

46-63]

BOOK IV.

II9

Have brought this Trojan navy to thy strand;
Link but this tie, and, sister, what a power,
What broad-based empire from such union springs!
Troy's puissant arms confederate with Tyre,
How proud the pitch our Punic glory soars!
Then fail not thou, where Heaven so much hath done,
Thy proper part, nor heed those brain-sick dreams:
Go, pray the gods, and, their good favour won,
Play still the host, nor stint thy welcome too;
And weave withal a web, as haps shall serve,
Of pleas to hold him on : say seas are rough,
Orion charged with rain, his ships unrigged,
And frowning skies with threatened storm o'ercast.'
With breath like this she fanned the rising flame,
Gave hope for fear, and solved each honest doubt.
Behold them now; on holy errand bound,
From shrine to shrine with tireless zeal they go,
And pray for grace, and weary Heaven with rites;
To Ceres first, who first gave laws to man,
Choice full-grown sheep, as use prescribed, they slay,
Then Phoebus sue, then sire Lyaeus next,
But Matron Juno most, as who of right
Claims love's sweet bondage to her proper care.
Chalice in hand, there lovely Dido stands
In all her charms, and sheds the hallowed wine
A snow-white heifer's budding horns betwixt;
Or, where the gods from shrine and niche look down,
Paces in solemn pomp.the altars round,
With larger vows still ushers in the day,

120

THE AENEID.

[64-80

And, gazing on the victim's opened breast,
Asks the yet quivering heart-strings of her fate.
Vain seers and blind ! what here your craft avail ?
Where reason stoops to passion's frenzied rule,
Can vows, can shrines, the wilful mischief stay ?
No, no; unchecked, the subtle flame meanwhile
Her vital powers consumes; the hidden wound
Lives on unhealed within, and bleeds unseen.
With soul aflame, unhappy Dido now
O'er all her city wide distracted roams,
And feeds love's madding fire: so fares the doe,
Whom, heedless roving mid the woods of Crete,
The swain hath pierced with random shaft from far,
And, all unwitting, left the feathered steel
Fast in the wound; so bounds with pain distraught
O'er lawns, through glades-vain flight! the mortal
reed
Clings to her sobbing flank, nor quits its hold.
Now she conducts Aeneas at her side
Her new-made city through, displays the wealth
Of Sidon's merchant trade, the walls, the homes,
All built, and fair, and ready to the use;
Begins to speak, then stays amid a word,
The half-told utterance dying on her tongue;
Anon at eve, as fails the waning light,
She craves once more the feast of yesterday,
Entreats once more the tale of Troy to hear,
And hangs enraptured on those lips once more.
Then-parted all and gone-when as the moon,
Alternate setting, hides her beams withdrawn,

81-99]

BOOK IV.

12I

And paling stars invite to sleep, alone
That lonely hall in mournful mood she treads,
O'erleans where late the loved one lay, and fond,
In reveries lost, with fancy's wizard sense
Still sees that absent form, that voice still hears;
Or whiles-vain guile to ease a lover's smart !Is fain Ascanius in her lap to hold,
Charmed by the father's image in the child.
Meantime the rising towers have ceased to rise,
To sudden standstill brought; the youth no more
In tilt or tourney practise mimic war,
No havens shape, no bulwarks 'gainst the foe:
The works arrested stand; nor bastion frowns,
Nor engine threats the sky.
Whom hapless thus
Jove's dear consort from her heaven beheld
When
With love's sore plague possest, and passion's flood
Before it sweep the barrier of her shame,
To Venus straight such parley she began:
'Brilliant renown, good sooth, rich spoil and rare
Achieved by Venus and her precious son,
A deed to boast of and a name to live;
Gods-and but two-to dupe one mortal fair!
Nay, nay; no dullard I: 'tis gross to sense,
For that we there hold rule, thy jealous heart
Mistrusts that Tyre should home thy homeless friends.
But where the end ? to what all this ado ?
What if we now, for strife as hereto waged,
Abiding peace should knit and nuptial ties ?

122

THE AENEID.

[Ioo-I I8

'Tis done; thou hast gained, yea and with all my heart
What with all thine did'st seek: weak Dido loves;
Nay, not the current of her blood alone,
But bone and marrow feed the madding flame.
Then let us each, with share alike of power,
Still sway the mingled folks as one; let her
E'en stoop to serve this Phrygian for her lord,
And yield her Tyre in dowry to thine hand.'
Piercing the crafty fraud would so divert
Italia's sceptre to the Libyan shore,
Venus replied, and countered guile with guile:
'Proposal fair ! what fool would say it nay,
Or crazed prefer great Juno for a foe,
If but when done, 'twere wisely done, and so
Success be sequel to the deed ? but here
My thought is all adrift, misdoubting sore
Might Fate allow, would Jove himself approve,
One town should hold the sons of Tyre and Troy,
And formal leagues cement such mongrel state.
His consort thou; 'tis thine of wifely right
His will to sound, or bend if needs with prayer.
Lead but the way : I follow where thou lead'st.'
And answer quick imperial Juno made:
'That task be mine; and now how best despatched
What cometh first-attend !-brief speech shall show :
'Tis fixt the Trojan and this love-sick dame
Shall fare for hunting to the forest-side,
Soon as to-morrow's sun with earliest beam

Ii9-135]

BOOK IV.

123

Unveils the world, and lights the welkin up:
There, as with stake and net the beaters all
Compass the lawns, and scour the greenwood glades,
I from above a blackening storm will shed
Of hail and rain, shall mar their trim array,
While thunders rock the skies; their frightened folk,
Scattered, and wrapt in night of blinding mist,
Unseeing and unseen, shall diverse fly;
Meantirre thy hero and our royal fair
Shall hap for shelter on the one same cave;
I shall be there, if I may count on thee,
Will hold the bridal and assign her his;
And so shall speed the happy spousal rite.'
And, yielding soft in that she nought gainsaid,
Venus bows low, but inly smiles to think
The deep-laid scheme so well she found and foiled.
Meantime Aurora quits her ocean couch,
Up-ris'n; and now at earliest streak of day,
With silvan gear equipt of wide-meshed toils
And spears broad-tipped with steel, at open gates
Forth fares the hunter-train, while, mustering fast,
Massylian horsemen gallop to and fro,
And, keen and staunch, the unkennelled pack comes
out.
The Punic lords before the palace doors
Attendant 'bide the coming of the queen
As yet delaying in her robing-room,
The while her steed, in gold and purple trapt,
Impatient frets, and champs the creaming curb.

124

THE AENEID.

[136-16

At length, escorted by a numerous suite,
In gallant guise she issues forth; her scarf
With broidered hem from Sidon's costliest loom,
Her quiver gold, with braids of gold up-looped
Her plaited hair, while linking clasps of gold
The purple cloak confine. Anon, full blithe
Iulus heads his Phrygian peers, and meets
The princess' train; and fairest far of all,
In manly grace unmatched, Aeneas last
Draws to her side, and joins the cavalcade.
As, when for Delos' clime, his mother's isle,
Apollo quits his Lycian winter-seat
And frozen Xanth, and now in mystic dance,
Footing his altars round, Dryop, and Crete,
And painted Agathyrsian, bid uplift
The wildly joyous chant; to join the rout
The god down Cynthus moves, and checks the while
His locks' luxuriant flow in pliant wreath
Of softest leaf, and twines it up in gold,
The laden quiver ringing as he goes;
So fared with step as light Aeneas on,
Such godlike grace his peerless features beamed.
Anon, arrived the steepy mountain-sides
And trackless coverts of the savage kind,
Lo to their view, dropping from crag to crag,
Here startled wild-goats plunge adown the slopes,
There huddled deer for dusty flight combine,
And scour the plains, and leave the hills afar;
While midmost of the glens with boyish glee,

157-1741

BOOK IV.

125

Proud of his sprightly steed, Ascanius still
Leads on the chase, and heads his mates outrun,
And eager longs mid all the feebler game
Some foaming boar may bless his prayers, or best
A tawny lion down the hill-side stalk.
Meantime the heavens are all confused and filled
With mighty murmuring sound, and rain ere long
With sleety drift comes rushing down the sky;
Anon, dispersed, the Tyrian gallants all
And Trojan youth, with Venus' grandson prince,
To diverse shelter flee, a frightened mob,
While swollen rivers down the hill-sides pour;
When lo, fair Dido and the lord of Troy
Meet in the one same cave. Then mother Earth
And Juno give the sign. The frowning sky
That bridal saw, and blazed with meteor fires;
Red lightnings glared for nuptial torch, and loud
The wood-nymphs' boding cry from mountain peak upshrilled.
Sad day, prime source of misery and death!
Nor public eye, nor public comment free,
More moves the queen: adieu clandestine love,
'Tis marriage now; and frailty for a cloak
Takes wedlock's sacred name.
Rumour forthwith
Through Libya wends her way-Rumour, than whom,
Of all the pests that are, is none more fell,

26

THE

AENEID.

[175-189

Nor swifter rides the air. Motion her life,
She waxes as she goes. Pigmy at first,
A very babe for fear, her foot anon
Scarce earth shall base, the skies not roof her head.
Youngest of all the giant brood, and worst,
And teemed by Earth, 'tis said, to spite high Heaven.
Swift foot, strong wing; and for each feather there,
O marvellous to tell ! 'neath every plume
The hideous monster on her body wears,
A watchful eye is hid, a clacking tongue
And babbling mouth, sly prickt a listening ear.
A-nights she flies the through dusk of middle air
On waft of rustling wing, nor ever shuts
An eye in slumber sweet; on tower by day
Or dizzy roof-top perched, for news still bides
The patient scout, and fills great towns with dread;
Now tells the truth, but, not o'er-nice, bruits now
The false and foul as lief, and, bruited, holds.

Such she who now in flush of fiendish joy
'Gan fill the general ear with divers tales,
Nor cared if false or true : 'Aeneas come,
Trojan by blood, and-worthy mate in sooth !-Fair Dido stoops to call the stranger lord;
And how they now in mutual dalliance soft
And amorous toy the livelong winter wear,
Surrendered thralls to luxury and ease,
And reckless of their kingdoms' weal or woe!'
Such talk the shameless goddess broadcast sows

190-214 ]

BOOK IV.

I2 7

In all men's mouths; then straightway shifts her sail
For king Iarbas' court, and with her news
Fires his fierce soul, and rouses all his ire.
He, son of Ammon by a Libyan nymph,
Of forced embraces born, had newly raised
To Jove his sire through all his broad domains
A hundred shrines, where now the hallowed fire
Eternal vigil on each altar kept,
While victim blood still fed the fatted floors,
And post and pillar drooped with varied blooms.
Stung e'en to madness at the bitter news,
The prince, they tell, before the altars came,
And mid the holy Presences around
With uplift hands and earnest prayer bespake
His great celestial sire:
' All-puissant Jove,
To whom, albeit till this our reign unwont,
The feasting Moor, on broidered mat reclined,
Pours now the homage of the wine-cup forth,
Behold'st thou this ? or, fooled of idiot fears
What time thy forky lightnings are abroad,
Is ours an idle dread, nor knows weak man
The flash is aimless, and the thunder noise ?
A dame, chance-flung upon our shore, to whom
Ourselves as lords some strip of strand assigned,
Who built her petty town full cheap, and now
On grant from us holds lordship of the spot,
E'en she our proffered hand hath spurned, and ta'en
Aeneas to her bed and vassal's throne;

128

THE AENEID.

[215-234

And so this other Paris, with his crew,
Well matched, of foplings like himself unsexed,
With essenced locks and head-gear gay and chin
Maeonian-wise close reaped and lady-smooth,
E'en wins and wears; and well, good sooth ! while we
With loyal vows frequent these courts as thine,
Our so-said sire's, and boast an empty name.'
That suit, or ere his quivering hand unclenched
Upon the altar-horn, the Father heard,
And Tyre-ward turned his glance where, lapped in ease,
The lovers dreamed, nor recked their better fame;
Then thus to Mercury:
'Despatch, my son,
Bid Zephyr breathe, and prone on sinking wing
Down borne, accost the Dardan prince who there
In Carthage idly waits, nor heeds how Fate
To other lands would point his hopes, and take
Our mandate quick below. Not such the man
His beauteous mother pledged us in her son,
And so twice claimed him from the sword, but one
Should rule Italia big with future sway
And fierce in war; should hand us down the race
Of valiant Teucer's blood and lineage high,
And bow the subject world beneath his law.
If, all unfired of glory such as this,
Not self may plead to win his soul from ease,
Nor lists him more to take his task in hand
And build the fabric of his own renown,
A father he ?-and yet withal indulge

234-254]

BOOK IV.

129

The jealous grudge would rob his son of Rome!
What aims distract, what traitor hopes amuse,
That there he loiters mid a race of foes,
Nor heeds his great Ausonian progeny,
Lavinium, and his seat of future rule ?
Let him to sea! Enough; that word from us sum all.'
He spake; and straight the duteous Power prepares
His sire's behest to speed: first to his feet
His wing6d shoon he ties of downy gold
That waft his buoyant flight o'er moist and dry,
Swift as the rushing gales; then grasps his wandWeird rod, wherewith he calls pale ghosts from hell,
To dismal Tartarus sends others down,
Gives sleep, or takes away, and bids unclose
The lidded eye, death-sealed. Equipt, the god,
Winging his cloudy way, tramps the slant winds,
And sails the scudding rack. And 'neath him now
Old Atlas' peak he spies and steepy sidesAtlas, whose travail sore still props the sky;
His pine-crowned head in swathe for ever wrapt
Qf pitchy cloud, and lashed with sleet and wind;
His giant shoulders robed in sheeted snow
Thrice sifted of the storm; while down that face,
Channelled of untold eld, the torrent leaps,
And all his crusted beard is shagged with ice.
Here first, hovering on balanced wings, down dropt
Cyllene's god; thence to the flood full swoop
Throws his steep flight; and now, as bird that quests
K

130

THE AENEID.

[255-274

His finny prey beside the cliffs, and shaves
With level wing low-stooped the marble tide,
E'en so, from Atlas stooped, his midway flight
'Twixt earth and heaven Cyllenian Hermes steered,
And clave the winds to Libya's sandy beach.
Anon, descending light, his feathered foot
Scarce touched the suburb roofs, when lo he sees,
Rebuilding old and planning structures new,
The truant prince of Troy :-sparkled his sword,
Jewelled from hilts to point and jasper-starred;
A purfled scarf hung loose his shoulders down
In flowing folds, and blazed with Tyrian dye;
Fond Dido's costly gift, whose own fair hand
Had wrought the web, and, crossed in slender stripe,
Had shot the chequered warp with gleam of gold:
When sharp the god :
' Aeneas thou ?-and here
Build'st Carthage town to please thy lady's eye,Or would'st, besotted, plead a husband's name ?
Thy promised crown forgotten quite, with all
Its higher cares! From bright Olympus I,
Of him sent down whose nod all nature sways,
And special charged this high behest to bear:
What aims distract, what traitor hopes delude,
That here wilt dally in this Libyan land ?
If, all unfired of coming glories high,
Not self may plead to win thy soul from ease,
Not recks thee more to take thy task in hand,
And rear the fabric of thy proper praise,
Let some regard thine heir lulus claim,

275-2951

BOOK Iv.

131

The promise of Ascanius' growing years,
Predestined lord of Italy and Rome.'
And in mid parle, to mortal vision lost,
The vanished god was mingled with the skies.

Amazed Aeneas heard, o'erawed, aghast,
Each hair on end, his tongue with terror chained:
Fain would he straight that summons dread obey,
Fain quit the dear enchanting land; but ah !
How now approach the loving queen ? where first
Break ground and draw his lines about ? how smoothe
His wary tongue ? what prelude sweet attuned
Fore-run the jarring theme ?-this way and that
Dividing swift the swiftly veering mind,
To no point fixt. So tossed of warring thoughts,
One plan at length his wavering purpose sways:
He calls Sergestus and Serestus straight,
With trusty Mnestheus too; bids them unmarked
Fit out the fleet and muster all the crews,
With ready gear equipt : ' Yet why such change,
Let plausive pretext hide; himself the while,
And all the better too, as Dido still
Doth rest secure, nor e'en so much as dreams
Aught ill could hap to rend such ties in twain,Will feel his way, choose him a pliant hour,
Break of the thing when likeliest chance to soothe,
Then act as need and circumstance shall prompt.'
Well pleased they hear, and speed with ready zeal,
E'en one and all, their chieftain's sovran hest.
KZ

132

THE AENEID.

[296- 3 15

But all too true-ah, who may hoodwink love ?The queen's prophetic soul divined the fraud;
Too true that ear, sharpened of jealous dread
Where all seemed safe, the first faint whisper caught
Of coming change; then boiled her fury o'er,
When tell-tale Rumour now once more brings news
Of barks rigged out, and all for sea prepared;
Anon, distraught, of wit and reason reft,
She flies a raving maniac through the town:
So raves the Thyiad, nor less wildly roams,
Roused of her clanging shrine and shouted god,
What time the midnight orgies fire her soul,
And dark Cithaeron calls her with loud cries.

At length, abrupt, she spake Aeneas thus:
'Did'st hope too, false one, thou should'st hide thy
crime,
And thief-like skulk in silence from my shore,
Nor may our love, nor that right hand so pledged,
Nor Dido soon a bitter death to die,
One moment stay thy flight ? ay, would'st e'en sail
'Neath these wild wintry skies, and tempt the deep,
Too cruel wretch! when winds their rudest blow ?
What, if not bound for unknown lands and climes,
Old Troy still stood and wooed thy homeward sails,
Say would'st for Troy yon raging sea defy ?
Or-can it be !-am I the foe thou fly'st ?
Then hear me plead-but what ? e'en Dido's all,
All her own act hath left her now to plead;

316-333]

BOOK IV.

133

These tears-thy troth-our first of love--and ah
Those wedded joys that seem scarce well begun;
By each and all-if joy from me or good
Was ever thine, did ever aught in me
Thy fancy please-e'en of thy mercy prop
A falling house, and, if still room for prayer,
Lay, lay thy purpose by ! For thee I plucked
Fierce hate from Libyan hordes on this lone head,
For thee woke wrath in petty kings, for thee
Lost Tyrian hearts estranged,--ay, made for thee
Shipwreck-O fool !--of honour, wifely truth,
Yea what alone had raised me to the skies,
My olden fame unsmirched. Then say to whom
Would'st dying Dido leave-sweet guest, since ah!
That name is all remains of husband once.
Yes, what now left should plead for life prolonged ?
Is it to see Pygmalion batter down
These walls tmy care hath raised ? or this frail form,
A captive thrall, to Moor Iarbas' couch
Dishonoured led ? Nay, had I at the least,
Or ere thy flight, but some fair child of thee,
One tiny shape in these lone halls to play,
Whose face might still-whate'er it else recalledRe-image to my soul the once-loved sire,
I so had dreamed I was not all forlorn.'
Here stopped the queen: nor eye the while might he,
O'erawed of Heaven, nor one fixt look unbend,
With effort strong o'ermastering pain within;
Then thus in few :

134

THE AENEID.

[334-ss-

'Count as thou wilt, O queen,
Ne'er shall this heart deny that, still unsummed,
Thy favours pass thy best of power to count;
Nor--memory true, these limbs with life informedMay aught but joy one thought attend that yet
Shall Dido's name recall. Then hear thus brief
What truth and fact, not guilty need, bid say,
A plain and simple tale: I ne'er designedForbear the thought--to quit thy court by stealth,
No bridegroom I with nuptial torch in hand,
Nor to such pact, a casual guest, I came.
Had Heaven but left me free my life to shape
As choice should point, and lay my cares at rest,
First in my heart and firstling of my hand,
Old Troy had seen her sainted dust revive,
Her dear remains had waked to brighter life,
Priam's tall roof-tree were upreared for aye,
And Pergamus, by this right arm restored,
Had cheered our Ilion's vanquished sons again.
But Latium now, and great Italia's realm,For these-still these-Apollo's warning voice,
Through Lydian priest and Lycian seer alike
Unvarying sent, still draws my course o'er-ruled;
There lies my heart, my fatherland lies there.
If, born at Tyre, here Libyan walls may claim
To charm thy soul and chain thy spell-bound gaze,
Lady, why grudge great Teucer's sons should seek,
When Heaven so wills, Ausonia for their seat ?
We too may sure look outward for new homes.
Comes never night in dewy shades to wrap

352-3,

1]

BOOK IV.

The shrouded earth, never the bright stars rise,
But me Anchises warns, his troubled sprite
Scares slumber from my couch. Ascanius too
Still chides his sire's delay, and pleads his wrong,
Dear injured boy ! robbed of his Latian rule,
Those fair Hesperian fields he holds of Fate.
Nay 'twas but now-vouch it thy life and mine !Heaven's messenger, of Jove himself despatched,
Bore me his mandate down the sky; these eyes
Beheld the god alight in open day,
These ears drank in his speech; then ah! forbear
With fruitless plaint to vex thyself and me:
Not will of mine holds Italy in quest.'

With rolling eyes and scornful looks askance
The queen the while had coursed his person o'er,
Nor loosed the wrath that lowered upon her brow,
'Till here he paused-then flashed her fury forth:
'Nor goddess gave thee birth, false-hearted wretch,
Nor Dardanus thy miscreant kind begot,
But thou from flinty Caucasus wast hewn,
Congenial grain! and tigers gave thee suck.
Yes, why mince words, and wait for baser wrong ?
What! see me weep, nor heave one kindly sigh!
Moved he those eyes ? shed he one answering tear ?
Yea, was e'en pity to my pangs denied!
Though why note this or that, or how award
The palm for worst where barbarous all alike ?
Ay me ! not man alone-not Juno now,

135

136

7HE A ENEID.

[37Z-388

Nor Jove himself hath ruth of wretches' wrong !
Yes, yes; no trusting more or Earth or Heaven.
This ingrate I, what time our angry waves
Flung out the needy waif upon these shores,
Not housed alone and fed, but bade him shareAh, fool !-my throne and state, and snatched withal
His shattered barks and starving crews from death.
Hal that way madness lies-my brain's afire !
'Tis Phoebus now--'tis now some Lycian seerAnon--and special sent of Jove himselfE'en Heaven's own herald cleaves his aery way
To bear the dread command. Yes, fitting task,
Belike, for gods' employ ! such cares-'tis apt !Must ruffle Heaven's repose! But I, good sooth,
Nor court thy stay, nor deign thy lies refute:
Go then, and chase coy Latium's realm afar!
Woo winds and waves to waft thee to her shore 1
Nathless, if holy Heaven may wage the right,
Strong hope is mine that soon 'mid wrecking rocks
Thy perjured soul shall fitting vengeance find,
That drowning tongue oft syllable my name.
Yes, as a fiend, with fires of black remorse,
Shall injured Dido yet, though far away,
Aye dog thy guilty thought; yea, and when death
With icy touch hath sundered life and limb,
Flee where thou wilt her ghost shall haunt thee still.
A heavy reckoning, villain, shall be thine,
Nor paid unheard; the welcome news will come,
And glad my spirit in the world below.'
And with the word she brake the conference short,

389--405]

BOOK .IV.

137

And sickening fled his sight, and flung her forth,
Nor further parley stayed; while he, perplext,
The ready accents crowding to his tongue,
Was fain, yet feared, to speak. Now, deathly-pale,
Her trembling maids their swooning mistress lift,
And, to her marble chamber senseless borne,
Lay gently on her couch.
But the good prince,
For all he longed with balm of tender word
To ease her pain, and soothe her anguished heart,Sighing full sore, and ever and anon
His purpose shaken by the might of love,Yet sets him straight Heaven's dread behest to speed,
And hastens to the fleet. The Trojans now,
Fired of their chieftain's word, ply their glad toil
With eager zeal, and soon o'er all the beach
Haul down their lofty vessels to the main;
Now floats the keel, careened and launched, and now
Great boughs for oars are brought, all leafy green,
And oaks, new-felled, unfashioned from the woods;
Such ardour now to fly. There had you seen,
From every quarter of the town afoot,
The swarming exiles thronging to the shore
E'en as when ants, forefending winter's pinch,
Make boot upon some heap of golden spelt,
And store their tiny cells; forth through the field
The black battalion goes, and, to and fro
Repassing swift, the precious spoil conveys,
Thridding the grassy sward in narrow file;

I38

THE AENEID.

[4o6-422

Some with their shoulders push, o'er-great to lift,
The unwieldy grains along; some dress the line,
And scourge the lagging rear: with life and work
The path is all aglow from end to end.
But ah ! what pangs, unhappy queen, were thine
That sight to see ! what sighs heaved that fair breast,
As, from thy lofty turret looking forth,
Thou saw'st before thine eyes the crowded beach,
That seething bay, and all the ocean plain
With hubbub voices filled! Yet must she still,
Constrained of cruel love,--ah, tyrant Love,
What spurns the heart must brave that owns thy sway!To' passion bend that haughty soul once more,
Once more essay what weeping may avail,
What prayers may do; yea, all expedients prove,
Lest, aught untried, she die a needless death:
'See, Anna, see yon bustling shore; behold
From all sides round the mustering crews collect ;
The loosened canvas woos the gale, and hark!
The shouting mariners e'en now have hung
Gay wreaths from every poop. For that my soul,
E'en from the first forewarned of something ill,
Could calmly brook to c6ntemplate this blow,
Now that 'tis come, sister, I'll bear it too.
Needs me howe'er-for O, it tasks me sore !One precious boon, dear Anna, at
thy hands:
To thee alone that faithless man deferred,
Unclasped his secret soul to thee, thou knew'st

423-440]

BOOK IV.

His softer moods, how best essayed and when
Each path that led directest to his heart;
Go then, and tell our haughty foe from me:
I ne'er with banded Greece at Aulis vowed,
A sworn ally, to work the fall of Troy;
No fleet sent I, nor stirred with hands profane
Where, housed in death, his father's relics lay;
Not one such pretext serves why thus he shut
Those stony ears 'gainst any word of mine :
Then whither thus ? or, if he needs must go,
One last request his wretched lover makes,
Wait he for safer flight and fairer gales.
False to his plighted troth, I ask not now
For those old vows renewed he so forswore,
Nor that he should for aught of mine forego
His fair Italian town and Latian throne:
Soars not my suit so high; the boon I beg'Twill tax him light !-asks but some brief delayA short reprieve-poor breathing-space may serve
My fevered brain to cool, till, humbler grown,
This breaking heart be schooled to bear its grief.
This let thy pitying love convey, and thenThat grace conferred, the last his lover cravesFree to depart, soon death shall crown his deed.'
So charged the weeping queen, such tearful pleas
The sorrowing sister takes, and takes again;
But tears nor pleas avail: unmoved he stands,
Inexorably firm; the fates oppose,
And Heaven has deafed those gentle ears to love.

i39

140

THE .AENEID.

[441-459

E'en as with rival blasts this side and that
Fierce Alpine winds would fain some oak o'erthrow
Of stubborn strength, the growth of many a year;
Fast to the cliff, though swinging stem may creak,
And leaves and mast bestrew the thickened sward,
The royal plant, as ruder blows the gale,
But firmer grappling takes, and thrusts his root
To hell as deep as soars his head to heaven:
With no less storm assailed of tears and prayers,
The Trojan chief so feels his mighty heart
Thrill to its inmost nerve with keenest pang;
E'en so, unchanged, that heart's firm purpose stands,
And prayers must plead, and tears be shed, in vain.
Then sore dismayed and maddened by her doom,
Unhappy Dido sues with earnest prayer
For very death: 'tis weary more to live,
View the broad sky, and drink the garish day.
Yea, and thereto-would Heaven so prompt the deed,
So nerve her weak resolve to quit the light ?She saw what time, while incense steamed around,
Her offered gifts were on the altars laid,
The holy liquors take a livid hue,
Revolting change ! and curdle all to blood.
That presage dire she breathed to none, not e'en
Her sister's ear must latch the horrid tale.
Yea too, within the court, and sacred named
To her first love's dear murdered lord, there stood
A marble fane, the which she honoured much,
Still decking it around with festal fronds

460-477]

BOOK IV.

}41

And snowy wool; thence-or did fancy dream ?Unearthly sounds were heard and ghostly cries
When as the night did shroud the earth, as though
The dead man called, and summoned her away.
Oft from the roof the solitary owl
Death-boding plained, and dropped his dirge-like note
In one weird, long-drawn, melancholy wail.
Strange prophecies beside, unread till now,
Uttered of holy seers in by-gone days,
Give warning dire, and fill her soul with dread.
Now-in her dreams-with stern unpitying face
Aeneas' self her maddened flight pursues;
Now seems it she is ever left alone,
Wends some long way alone, and ever seeks
Her Tyrians in some lone deserted land
So frantic Pentheus raves what time he sees
Those troops of Furies and the two-fold sun,
While Thebes looms double to his maniac gaze;
So flies the mad Orestes o'er the scene,
The while, with snaky scourge and firebrands armed,
The murdered mother hounds his flight, and all
The vengeful Dread Ones on the threshold sit.
Upwrought at length to frenzy's highest pitch,
When as she now, with agony fordone,
Had brought the monster of her thought to birth
And fixed to die, the time and manner next
Her secret soul debates; and-this resolvedWith look that well her dreadful purpose masked,
And brow serene where hope's fair semblance sat,

142

THE AENEID.

[478-497

She straight accosts her sorrowing sister thus:
'Dearest !-now give me joy-I have found a way
Shall win him back, or free me from his love:
Hard by the ocean marge and falling sun
A region lies, the Ethiop's utmost clime,
Where mighty Atlas on his shoulder wields
The spinning sphere with burning stars o'erfret;
From this far country 'twas my hap to find
That priestess old, of high Massylian strain,
Who, charged the Western fane to watch and keep
The holy boughs unrifled on the tree,
Its guardian dragon fed, and drugged his rage
With drowsy drench of poppy juice and mead.
She doth engage by spell and charm to free
What hearts she will, and what she will to rack
With heavy pangs; will stay the torrent's flow,
Roll back the stars, and raise the midnight ghost:
Look you ! the ground shall rumble 'neath your tread,
The tree, unrooted, down the hill-side moveNay, start not back! by heaven's high Powers I swear,
And, sister sweet, by that dear life of thine,
Revolts my soul these magic arms to wield.
Thou then, within the palace inner court
And 'neath the open sky, build me a pile,
And there atop those self-same arms be laid
Which yon false traitor in the chamber left,
All doffed apparel of the man, and ah!
The bridal couch that wrought thy sister's bane;
Be nought withheld : whate'er was his, or serves
E'en to recall remembrance of the wretch,

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BOOK IV.

143

The priestess wills and bids me thus destroy.'
She said, then stinted speech, her conscious cheek
With ashy pale o'erspread. Not Anna so
May guess her sister's strange unwonted rites
But cloaked the death she so devised to die;
No; not her soul, less fiery-mixed, e'en dreams
The frenzy-pitch of desperate love, nor fears
Aught worse than happed what time Sychaeus died:
Her charge she therefore speeds.
And now the pile
Of oaken fagots reared and cloven pine
Within the court and 'neath the open sky,
The queen doth hang the place around with boughs
Of dark funereal leaf, and there atop
The doffed apparel lays, the sword, and last
The waxen image on the nuptial bed,
Well knowing what shall be. On every side
Stand altars all ablaze, and mid the ring,
With hair flung loose and voice of thundrous tone,
On full three hundred gods the priestess calls,
On Chaos hoar, and Erebus profound,
And Hecat-Dian of the three-fold face.
Then all about, and feigned Avernus-drawn,
The lustral lymph she sprinkles wide, with herbs
Of downy leafage rank and milky stem
With juice of deadliest venom fraught, and cropt
With brazen shears beneath the moonlight wan;
Nor eke forgot, and ere the dam had snatched,
The love-charm severed from the bleeding front

144

THE AENEID.

[516-534

Of new-foaled colt. With leaven cake prescribed
Of salt-besprinkled meal, and stainless hands,
The queen herself before an altar bends,
One foot unshod, her ungirt raiment loose;
And now, or ere she die, to Heaven appeals,
With all its stars that Fate's dark secrets know:
'And O, if in that world above one Power
May feel for hearts ill-paired, and pitying makes
The slighted lover's pain his special care,
Righteous and true, that Power avenge her wrongs!'
'Twas noon of night, and now o'er all the world
Earth's wearied myriads knew the balm of sleep,
And woods were still, and raging seas had rest;
The hour when stars their midway courses wheel,
When all the land is hushed, beast and gay bird
That skims the mere or haunts the tangled brake,
In quiet couched with silent night o'erhead,
Forget their pains, and steal their hearts from care-All creatures slept, nor toil nor trouble found;
All but Tyre's hapless queen: not slumber once
May lay that weary frame to rest, not once
Or breast or eye let in the quiet night;
Nay all the worse her cares more thickly crowd,
The flowing tide of passion heaves afresh,
And wrath, conflicting, tempests all her soul.
'Ay me ! '-'twas thus she harped her burden sad'What now remains ? what left I now may do ?
To former loves, an abject suitor, seek ?And give those petty lords their turn to scoff,

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BOOK IV.

145

Whose proffered hands I scorned so oft! Well then
The Trojan's fleet attend ?-and tend withal,
A cringing slave, his meanest minion's will!
Nathless why not ? true, and for warranty
The aid I gave now stands me in such stead,
And Troy is grateful for my favours past!
But let that be, and say were such my will,
Who give me leave ? what lord in all their fleet
Take hated Dido to his haughty ship ?
Betrayed, undone,-and hast thou yet to learn
Forsworn Laomedon still lives and lies
In every son that owns his perjured stock ?
What rests ? say shall I join his crews in all
The triumph of their flight ?--unfollowed, lone
Or, backed with trusty Tyre and all my power,
Bear down upon the foe ? yes, and whom late
I scarce with much ado from Sidon saved,
Bid tempt the perilous deep again, and fling
Their flying sails to every felon wind!
No, none of these: then die; 'tis all remains,
And fitting meed withal. Keen though the steel,
'Twill keener pangs avert. Ah, cruel-kind!
Sister, 'twas thou, of my mad tears o'ercome,
Did'st lay this weary burden on my soul,
Did'st, too complying, yield me to the foe.
O had I kept, as forest-dwellers free,
My unwed state, nor love's sweet bonds renewed,
Unknown its joys, its sorrows too unknown,
Not self-reproach were mine, nor pangs like these;

!

146

THE AENEID.

[552--5 o

But now too late, and Heaven is just : I broke
The faith I pledged to my Sychaeus' tomb!'
Such wailings sad from that wrung bosom brake.
Aeneas in his galley slept the while,
His voyage fixt, and all for sea prepared;
When lo, once more, with face and mien unchanged,
That selfsame Form divine before him stood,
And thus his dreaming sense did chide afresh
'Twas Hermes all: the voice, the rosy hue,
The goi en locks and comely limbs of youth,
All spake the herald-god:'Ha! son of Heaven,
Sleep at this crisis of thy fate ? unheard,
Infatuate man ! how springing Zephyr breathes,
And woos thy sails ? unthought, what perils may
But one brief moment hence beset thee round ?
Yes, perils great and instant : reckless grown,
Yon furious woman broods some desperate deed,
Nor sticks her fierce resolve at death, for all
The stormy passions of her soul are up.
Then fly, while fly thou may'st; full soon shalt see
Tormented Ocean 'neath her galleys chafe,
The torch glare red, and all the hurrying shore
With beacon-fires ablaze, if morning's dawn
O'ertake thee lingering on this hostile strand.
Away, begone! a changeful thing at best,
From love to hate soon shifts a woman's heart.'
espakie, then mixed with night.

571-590]1

BOOK

IV

147

In wild amaze,
Scared at the sudden Shape, Aeneas springs
From forth his sleep, and loud with instant voice
Calls up his mates: ' Wake, wake ye, gallants, wake !
Unfurl the sails, and man the benches all!
Lo yet again the God, from heaven despatched,
Bids speed our flight, and cast our moorings loose.
Thee, holy Power-or what thy rightful styleWe straight attend, and thy behest once more
Glad we obey. And now befriend our need,
And light propitious stars, may guide our course.'
He spake, and from its silver sheath out-flashed
His lightning blade, and smote the cord in twain:
At once, fired with like zeal, from man to man
The catching ardour flies; unmoored, put forth,
The last ship soon hath left the port, and now
The ocean-floor beneath the fleet is hid:
All stretching to the stroke with vigour whirl
The spray aloft, and sweep the seething flood.
Now, rising from Tithonus' saffron couch,
Aurora shed her earliest beams abroad,
When from her tower the wakeful queen doth note
The whitening dawn creep upward through the sky,
The gallant fleet before the steady breeze
'Neath even canvas standing out to sea,
And port and pier with not one oarsman left:
'Great Jove!' she cried-and thrice and o'er she smote
Her beauteous breast and rent her golden hair'Shall he then go ? go, and our kingdom left
L2

148

THE AENE ID.

[591-6o7

Insulted, mocked, to point a rover's scoff!
What, lieges, ho !-Will they not arm and out,
All Carthage quick ? not chase the faithless foe ?
Not pluck those laggard vessels from the docks ?
Away ! forth fire and sword ! ply sail and oar !Yet hold; what words are these ? where, what this
place ?
What madness whirls my brain ? Ah, wretched queen,
Needs guilty deed to touch thy dainty sense ?
Late wailed what's done; wise, had'st thou rued in time,
When heart and sceptre at thy giving lay.
Mirror of knighthood's truth ! and this is he,
The world-famed prince that ever with him bears
His country's gods about ! the model son,
Who on his back did safe from foes bear off
The helpless burden of his aged sire!
Might not this hand-fool, to forbear the deed!Have shred his mangled carcase to the waves,
Slain friends and followers, yea done to death
Ascanius' self, and at the father's board
Have served him up his murdered boy to boot ?
True, 'twere to fight at risk; but what of that ?
Self-doomed to death, whom-what-had I to fear ?
No; I had fired their fleet, each gangway filled
And smothering deck with flame, slain sire and son,
With all the cursed brood extinct, and crowned
The blazing ruin with myself and mine!
S.

. Thrice-glorious Sun, whose burning eye still views

All works on this terrene; and Juno, thou

608-625]

BOOK IV.

149

Of pangs like these sole confidante and judge;
Grim Hecate,-too, night-howled where cross-ways meet,
Dread name to fright the startled town from sleep;
Avenging Furies, and ye Powers that wait
On guiltless deaths, as Dido now must die;
Hear, all, her prayer; bend down your high regards,
And bid your vengeance wreak her cruel wrongs:
If so must be this wicked man shall make
The Latian port, and reach the foreign land;
If Jove and Fate have willed it so, nor may
What so willed change, unalterably fixt;
Yet let the wretch, by some bold patriot foe
Worsted in war and arms, driven from his home,
Torn from his child's embrace, still beg for aid,
Still see before his eyes in battle die,
And basely die, each worthless friend he owns;
Nor, when the truckling slave on terms hath bought
Of some hard peace his so loved life and throne,
Or throne or life let him enjoy, but fall
In manhood's prime, untimely slain, and lie
A rotting corse unburied on the sand !
Such wish take he from me, this parting curse
Here with my streaming blood to Heaven I pour.
Then, Tyrians, you with endless feud still vex
His seed, breed, kind-yea, all shall ever trace
His caitiff line; with this meet tribute still
Present your Dido's tomb. Be love nor league
Your hostile realms betwixt! 0 from our dustHear, righteous Heaven, the prayer !-some Champion
start,

150

THE AENEID.

[626-643

Some bold Avenger, doomed with fire and sword
To hunt those Trojan vagrants thro' the world,
Be it to-day-to-morrow-or whene'er;
No time unmeet, shall will and means supply:
Fight shore with shore opposed, wave fight with wave,
Fight all--who--what-or are, or e'er shall be!'
She said, and racked her thought in what wise now
Be speediest snapt the thread of odious life;
Then briefly thus she spake Sychaeus' nurseHer own had long to native mould returned:' Good Barc6, hie thee fast, and hither straight
My sister Anna bring; but let her first
Sprinkle her body from the running stream,
And with her fetch, as erst the priestess showed,
Those victim sheep, with what atonements else
Our pious purpose asks and use prescribes;
So let her come; and thou thyself, sweet nurse,
In holy fillets twine thine aged brows.
Fain would I now those solemn rites despatch
To Stygian Jove, the which, long set afoot,
I have all too long deferred; fain light yon pile
That soon shall see-and so end all my woeThe Trojan's image melt before the flames.'And-speaking still-her hest with old-wife zeal
The tottering crone 'gan speed.
Then Dido straightThe purposed deed now madding all her soul,
Blood-streaked, each rolling eye, her quivering cheeks

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151

Spotted with hectic' red, else ghastly-white,
And wanning fast with hues of coming deathBursts through the inner doors with furious step,
And mounts in frantic haste the lofty pile,
And grasps the Dardan sword-sad gift, but ah
For other uses meant-and bares the blade;
When, as her eye the Trojan weeds beheld
And well-known couch, she lingered yet a space
To think and weep-then laid her on the bed,
And spake her latest words:
'Ye dear remains,
Dearest while Fate and kindly Heaven allowed,
All left me now of that sweet time of love,
Receive this soul, and end my mortal cares.
I have lived my life, have won the utmost bound
That Fate and Fortune to my course assigned,
And now, as fits my state, a queenly Shade,
I'll down majestic to the world below.
I builded this great town, have reared its walls,
Avenged a husband, quit a brother's guilt;
Blest, ah too blest! had never Dardan keel
Touched on my happy shore!'
Then-and withal
She pressed her quivering lip upon the couch'What-die ? and unavenged ! Yet let me die;
Die, and pass thus; yea better thus than live. . .
Now the false Trojan, from his deck afar,
Feed on the balefire's glare his guilty gaze,
And with him take-'twill light him to his doom !-The fiery portent of my boding death.'

I52

THE A ENEID.

[663-681

And speaking so, and ere the word was done,
Her damsels mark her fallen upon the sword,
The reeking blade with frothing blood a'stream,
And either lily hand besprent with gore;
And loud upwent their piercing cry and smote
The vaulted roof. Straight through the startled town
Roams Rumour wild, and spreads the madding news;
Soon groan and sob and woman's shrilly scream
Commingling rise, and swell the loud lament,
The welkin rings amain: not less the wail
Than if all Carthage or ancestral Tyre
Were fallen before the foe, and flooding flame
In one red deluge rolled o'er fanes and homes.
Smote on her sister's ear that startling cry,
Aghast: anon, with wild disordered mienNail-rent each bleeding cheek, her bosom fair
With bruising hands defaced--at frantic speed
She parts the shattered throng that hems her round,
And shrieks aloud her dying sister's name!'This then the drift of all! ah, Dido, soAnd to such end-did'st trustful Anna cheat?
Pile, altar, fire-and all to work me this!
Forlorn, undone, 0 where my plaint begin ?
What!-bound for death, and slighted I denied
Companionship in doom ? had'st but so called,
One day, one hour had sped us twain alike;
Nay, did these sister's hands yon pile uprear,
This tongue our country's gods invoke, and all
That at the last-and thou thus lowly laid-

682-699]

BOOK IV.

I53

I-cruel I !-should fail thy latest need?
Ah, sister, sister, thou hast all fordone,
Thyself and me, thy town and people all,
At one mad blow despatched! Ho water! haste!
Yea, let me bathe her wounds-they bleed apaceAnd catch, ere yet it part, what breath of breath
Still flutters on those lips ! 'And up the steps
Her eager speed had flown, and, clasping there,
Her dying sister to her breast she drew,
And sobbed the while, and fondly strove to stanch
The black and flowing gore against her robe.
Slowly those heavy eyes are raised-in vain;
Fail sense and power anew; nor sound comes now
Save, planted deep, the death-stab's gurgling flow.
Thrice was she fain, on propping arm upstayed,
To lift her head ; thrice backward swooning fell:
Thrice ranged with swimming gaze the heavens for light,
And thrice she moaned to find the light still there.
Then Juno, touched with pity of her pain
And all that long-drawn agony of death,
Sped Iris from above, and charged her straight
To part the struggling soul and clinging limbs;
For since nor Fate, nor meed of death-doom just,
But grief o'ermuch had wrought her bane, and all
Before her day, to sudden frenzy fired,
Not yet Persephone from that fair crown
Had shred the fatal tress, not yet consigned
The gentle victim to the Powers below.

154

THE AENEID.

So dewy Iris from on high displayed
Her saffron wings, that flashed a myriad rays
Of changeful hue against the fronting sun,
And, lighting down, above her head she stood' Lo, this at high behest I here bear off
To Pluto due, and free thee from thy clay'So shears the lock; and, vital heat extinct,
Resolving to the winds the spirit fled.

[700 705

--

1]

BOOK V.

BOOK

155

V.

MEANTIME Aeneas held his course right on,
Nor wavered once, but cut his watery way
Through billows darkening to the Northern blast,
For all he still, with fond reverted eye,
Would seek those walls whence now rose bright and
clear
The funeral flame of hapless Dido's pyre.
What sudden cause hath lit that beacon strange
Is mystery all; but O, the cruel pangs,
The scorpion stings of strong love crossed, and what
A desperate woman's frantic rage might prompt,
No mystery this; and, helpt to saddest guess,
Vague dark surmisings dog the Trojans on.

Now stood the fleet well out, nor aught was seen
Save sea and sky the wide horizon round,
When, big with night and storm, a lurid cloud
Drew right above the hero's head, and all
The ruffled deep gave back the scowl of heaven.
E'en Palinure himself, alarmed, was heard
From off the lofty poop: ' Ah why such clouds
Enwrap the sky, or, Neptune, what would'st now ?'

THE .AENEID.

[15-36

And straight he bids them gather tackle in,
And ply with might and main the lusty oar;
Then slants the flapping canvas to the gale,
Veered sideways round, and thus bespeaks the prince:
'Most noble chief, though Jove himself had pawned
His word thereto, small hope e'en so were mine
'Neath such a sky to make Italia's coast :
See how with adverse change these squally gusts
Roar from the darkened west and thwart our course,
While all the air is thickened into mist,
And we may neither struggle, nor make head.
Resolve we then, since Fortune so prevails,
To yield and shift our courses to her will.
Nor deem I too thy brother Eryx' land
Far distant hence and old Sicania's ports,
If memory serves me true, as, backward scanned,
I read the stars retraced which erst I watched.'
When thus the chief: 'Good sooth, I long had marked
The winds so would, and you opposed in vain :
Yes, change our course forthwith; what land could I
More welcome hail, or where my weary ships
Find liefer refuge from the storm, than what
In Troy's Acestes holds me such a friend,
And garners in its lap Anchises' dust?'
Then steer they for the port; when favouring winds
Belly the sails, and, sped athwart the flood,
At last with joy they strike the well-known strand.
With wondering eyes from off a hill afar
SAcestes marked the friendly barks' approach;

37-55]

BOOK V.

157

Nor stood he long at gaze, but hurries down,
All as he was, in simple silvan trim
Of hunting-spear equipt and bear's rough fellHim to a river god, Crimisus hight,
His mother bore, a dame of Dardan blood.
True to the old maternal tie, the king
With ready welcome greets his friends' return;
And, soon debarked, with rustic pomp received,
He glads their jaded spirits with his cheer.

Now when with earliest beam the morrow's sun
From heaven's bright face had chased the routed stars,
Aeneas calls his mates from all the beach,
And on a rising knoll bespeaks them thus:
'Brave sons of Dardan, heaven-descended race,
A year hath now its rounded course fulfilled
Of moons complete, since here to mother earth
My sainted father's loved remains we gave,
And raised our funeral altars to his shade;
And now, if true my count, the day is here,
The annual day, of me-so Heaven hath willedFor ever mourned, for ever honoured too.
This day would I-o'ertake me where it might,
Or homeless cast on far Gaetulia's shoals,
Or, storm-bound, girt with foes on land or sea,
Argolic main, or e'en Mycenae's streetsStill sacred keep with solemn pomp and vow,
And heap the laden altars with my gifts;
But see us now-by hap unsought arrived,

THE AENEID.

[ 56-7 3

Though not, I ween, sans Heaven's especial will,
E'en side by side with that dear parent's grave,
His very dust and bones, and, safe put in,
At anchor riding in this friendly port.
Then speed we so the glad solemnity,
E'en one and all, and pray his sainted sprite
To grant us winds, and gracious too assent,
When as our promised town and walls be raised,
That year by year we do him such like rites
In holy temples to his worship built.
Nor lack we wherewithal to sacrifice :
Two head of neat, each several crew a pair,
Troy's worthy son, Acestes, gives your ships.
Then bid we to the feast the home-gods all,
Our own, and those our generous host adores.
Nay more; if nine morns hence Aurora brings
The dawning clear, and light unveils the world,
Then shall I bid-first trial of your skillOur Trojan galleys in the race compete;
And who besides in speed of foot excels,
Who vaunts his art the flying shaft to launch
And wing the feathered arrow to the mark,
Or, gloved in raw bull-hide, will dare the fight,
Let all attend, and, as their several worth,
Who nobly win full sure expect the prize.
Now-for our rites commence-forbear, I pray,
All idle speech, and bind your heads with green.'
He said, and straight his brows with myrtle twines,
His mother's tree; so too doth Helymus,
And so Acestes, now in years mature;

74-92]

BOOK V.

And next, with boyish glee, Ascanius so
His temples wreathes; then all his young compeers.
Now from the council forth the hero fares,
Conspicuous seen mid all the circling throng,
And to the tomb proceeds. Anon, arrived,
With formal rites upon the sward he sheds
Two bowls of unmixt wine, and two of milk,
And two of hallowed blood, strewing withal
Bright vermeil flowers, and thus salutes the dead
'Hail, sainted sire, once more, and once more hail,
Ye dear remains, my father's shade and sprite,
O saved so oft--but ah, I saved in vain,
Denied with thee Italia's fated quest,
And Latian Tiber's-whate'er Tiber be!'
He ceased ; when lo from out the vault beneath
A sleek-skinned snake forth pushed his large array
Of circling spires, in seven-fold volume coiled,
And, slipping gently all the tomb about,
Did in and out betwixt the altars slide;
His speckled back with red and green be-dropt,
And all his streaky coat and burnished scales
Ablaze with gold; e'en as the showery bow
Through dripping clouds its myriad radiance shoots
In glistering lances 'gainst the fronting sun;
Then, as amazed the Chieftain paused, behold
'Twixt cups and bowls the creature slowly wound
His lengthy train, and sipped the holy meats;

159

I6o

THE AENEID.

[93--I lo

Then, harmless, slunk beneath the tomb again,
And left the altars whereon thus he fed.
Herefor the more the prince resumes the rites
In worship of his sire, unknowing all
Or should he deem that this the Genius was
Of that weird spot, or menial of the dead.
Choice two-year sheep before the altars set,
E'en two at each his ready blade doth pierce,
Two bristly swine, two heifers glossy black,
With wine in bowls out-poured, calling the while
With uplift voice on great Anchises' soul,
His father's sprite from Acheron enlarged.
Nor less his mates, respectful-some bring gifts,
As each may best, and slay their victim steers;
Others in rows the seething caldrons range,
And, stretched at ease along the sward, rake out
The coals beneath, and roast the spitted flesh.
Now came the looked-for day, and bright and clear
That ninth fair morn the Sun-god's team brought in;
Acestes' name and loud-tongued Rumour's voice
Have far and near the flocking country called,
Expectant drawn, and, packed in dense array,
Folk thronged the shore and filled the crowded plain,
Impatient some the Trojan feats to see,
And some e'en bent to try their proper skill.
And first, set out conspicuous to the view,
The costly prizes 'fore their eyes are shown,
Green coronals, and sacred tripods, palms,

111-131 ]

BOOK V.

The victor's special meed; with purple vests
And burnished arms, silver withal and gold,
A talent each; and from a central mound
The clarion's peal proclaims the sports begun.
Four galleys first, the flower of all the fleet,
Of equal oarage to the race advance;
The rapid Pristis valiant Mnestheus drives,
Of lusty rowers manned--Mnestheus who yet
Shall found in Italy the Memmian house;
The huge Chimaera owns brave Gyas' charge,
For size a town afloat, of Dardan youths
In triple bank with measured strokes impelled;
Their oars, three tiers, tier above tier arow,
Together rise, with flashing spray adrip.
Sergestus next the bulky Centaur speeds;
From him the Sergian line: Cloanthus fourth
The sea-green Scylla to the strife brings up,
From whom, Cluentius, flows thy noble blood.
Fronting the foamy beach, to seaward far,
There stands a rock; the swelling billows beat
Its head submerged, what time the wintry gales
Obscure the skies o'ercast; in calms 'tis hushed,
And tops the moveless deep, a table land,
Where basking seafowl plume them in the sun.
E'en here for goal Aeneas' hand sets up
A leafy oak, should note the steerman's eye
Where, put about, his rounded course to wheel,
And, fetching compass, double back again.
M

161

162

THE AENEID.

[32-151

Then takes his station each, as falls his lot,
The captains foremost on the lofty poops
Refulgent set, in gold and purple tricked,
The while, with poplar crowned, the general crews
Bare-shouldered gleam, o'er-rubbed with sheeny oil.
Now, seated all with ready oars in grip,
They wait the signalled start, each heart athrob
'Twixt hope and fear, the generous greed of praise.
Then, as the shrilling trumpet rang its peal,
Forth from their barriers one and all are sprung:
The seamen's shouts smite upwards to the skies,
The billows foam, of stalwart arms up-turned;
Onwards abreast they plough the furrowed brine,
While, cleft with plunging oars and three-tined beaks,
Old Ocean's shattered floor yawns wide and deep.
Not so precipitate forth spring afield
The twy-yoked chariots in the heady race,
With fiery speed careering for the goal;
Less eager far the shouting charioteer
Shakes o'er his flying team the reins outflung,
And, hanging forward, bends him to the lash;
With cheers and cries and ringing plaudits loud
The woods in concert shout, the pent-up shores
Bandy the sounds prolonged, the echoing hills,
Reverberant struck, seem bounding to and fro.
Lo, mid the rush and hurry of the start,
Gyas shoots out ahead, and, running smooth,
Now cuts the foremost waves before the tide;

152-174]

BOOK V.

163

Cloanthus next-the better craft to row,
But, cumbrous built, the pine's weight holds him back;
The while, to rear, at equal distance each,
Centaur and Pristis battle for the lead;
And now the Pristis gains, the Centaur now
Wins on her rival's speed; now side by side
With level bows the twain ride on abreast,
And cleave the billows with their length of keel.
And now they brought the turning-point in view,
When-leading still, his race nigh halfway wonYoung Gyas loud, with earnest voice, reproves
His helmsman thus: 'Why, why, Menoetes, keep
To starboard so ? this, this way steer our course;
Hug close the land, and let with finest touch
The bladed oar just feel the larboard cliffs;
Leave others, if they will, to stand to sea.'
He said, but lo, of sunken reefs afraid,
To seaward still Menoetes heads the prow.
'What I steering wider yet ? ' now louder shouts
Gyas once more; ' Menoetes, make the rocks !'
When, looking aft-distraction !-there he sees
Cloanthus near, and gaining on him fast;
Who now, betwixt the rock and Gyas' lee
Close edging in, just shaves the dangerous pass,
Then sudden shoots ahead, and, rounding fast
The doubled goal, so gains the roomy seas.
Stung to the quick, the young man's grief was flame;
Nor lacked his cheek of tears: unrecked alike
Or seemly deed, or comrades' perilled weal,
M2

164

THE AENEID.

[175-192

Sheer o'er the poop, up-gathered in his arms,
He flings the dastard pilot to the waves;
Then takes the helm himself, and, steersman now,
Cheers up his crew, and heads in for the shore.
Slowly the while, as what with weight of years,
And weighted eke with clinging garments dank,
Poor old Menoetes from the depths came up
To sight once more, and strikes out for the cliff;
And feebly now, all dripping as he lands,
Crawls up the rock, and dries him on its peak.
Loud laughed his merry mates to see him fall,
Loud laughed to see him swim, and louder now
They laugh to see him sputter from his throat,
With wry grimace, his brackish draught disgorged.
Gyas thus losing time and way, anon
Bold Mnestheus and Sergestus hail alike,
Though hereto running last, a dawning hope
They yet might pass their lagging victor by.
The foreway prompt Sergestus takes, and draws
Anear the rock; yet not full length ahead:
Half-keel's length first, his other half abaft
The rival Pristis covers with her beak.
But Mnestheus now, amidships passing quick
From tier to tier, heartens his listening mates:
'Now, now, brave men! now rise ye to the oar,
Great Hector's comrades old, and whom I chose
In Troy's last agony to share my fates !
Bid now that worth appear, that vigour prove,
Ye so put forth mid far Gaetulia's shoals,

193-209]

BOOK

V.

165

Ionia's main, and Malea's racing waves!
No palm your Mnestheus seeks, nor he the man
To lift his hopes presumptuous to the prize;
And yet O would !-though no; be theirs the palm
Whom, Neptune, thou wilt have to win the dayBut not to lag the last-prize in itself,
Win, win ye this, my men, defeat the shame!'
And now, to utmost effort fired, they all
With might and main outstretch them to the oar;
The brazen galley vibrates to their blows
From stem to stern, and, leaping to the stroke,
The smitten waters vanish 'neath her keel:
Thick comes their breath, short pantings shake their
frames,
Parched is each gasping throat, sweat streams from
every pore.

Mere chance bestowed what else were wished in vain;
For while Sergestus to the rock works up
His reckless way, and takes the dangerous ground,
Ousting his rival from the inner pass,
He ran-ill hap !-upon the jutting ledge:
Jarred the struck reef, the splintered oars break short,
Snapt on the flinty crag, and high and dry,
Trussed on the stabbing points, the foreship hung.
Up-leap all hands, and, shouting loud, lie to,
To sudden standstill brought; anon they ply
Great poles thrust out, with handspikes iron-shod,
And gather in their broken gear afloat.

x66

THE AENEID.

[2Io-229

Nerved of the lucky chance, and flushed with joy,
Bold Mnestheus quick, with helpful winds invoked
And rapid oars full swing in vigorous play,
Makes for the open space, and shoreward now
Down the smooth tide-fall speeds his easy course
E'en as a dove, roused from some harbouring rock
Where hangs her high-built nest and nestlings dear,
Springs from her covert o'er the plain to fly,
And, sore affrayed, claps loud her clanging wings;
Then, swinging smooth adown the quiet skies,
Skims on her liquid way, nor ever once,
On air dispread, her floating pinions stirs:
So Mnestheus, so her final water now
E'en of her own mere moment Pristis cuts,
Her own speed's impulse now so wings the bark along.
And first Sergestus far astern he leaves,
Fast on the rock, mid shoals and shallows wedged,
Loud hailing aid in vain, and learning slow
With broken oars to win his onward way.
Gyas he next pursues; nor long the run:
Her pilot lost, soon huge Chimaera yields.
Cloanthus, at the very finish, now
Alone remains ahead; whom to o'ertake
He straight essays, and all his might puts forth.
Then shouts on shouts, redoubling all around,
Help him along, and nerve him for the chase,
The welkin rings amain: fired both alike;
Indignant those if, balked of what they hold,
The prize just won should slip their baffled grasp,

23o-247]

BOOK V.

And willing, ay, to barter life for fame;
While these success inspires: they've proved their
worth,
And conscious power is surety for the deed.
And haply now, with beak and beak abreast,
The rivals so had shared the prize alike,
But lo, just then, with hands to seaward spread
And earnest prayer out-poured, Cloanthus called
The ocean gods, and pledged them to his suit:
'Ye Powers, who rule the deep, whose seas I ride,
Here will I slay, yea on this very strand,
Let but your favour bind me to the vow,
A snow-white bull before your altars set,
And gladly so mid streaming wine present
Its hallowed inwards on these briny waves.'
He spake, and far their crystal depths adown
The Nereids heard his prayer, heard Phorcus too
And virgin Panopi, with all their trains,
And old Portunus with his ample palm
Propelled the bark, and sped her onward course;
When, fleet as wind, or arrow from the string,
The galley flew, and snug in harbour lay.
Then, all in form convoked, Anchises' son
Bids cry Cloanthus conqueror in the strife,
By herald's voice proclaimed, and twines withal
His victor brows with wreaths of verdant bay;
And bids him choose, of three fat steers designed
For all the ships alike, the first and best,
His own crew's proper prize, with store of wine,

168

THE

A ENE ID.

[248"268

And silver, talent weight. The chiefs themselves
Have special honours to their worth assigned;
The conqueror's meed a gold-embroidered scarf,
Its ample field with regal purple edged
In double maze; where life-like here, inwove,
The royal boy on leafy Ide doth hold
With uplift spear the flying hart in chase,
Hot on his game-would say ye heard him pantWhen, swooped adown, the winged squire of Jove
Now bears him there in taloned gripe aloft,
While hoary guardians raise their hands on high
In fruitless plaint, and deep-mouthed dogs agaze
With furious barkings bay the chidden skies.
But he whose prowess won the second place,
To him for prize the prince doth next present
A chain-mail hauberk, triple-leashed with gold,
The which by.Simois' stream 'neath Troy-wall high
His own red hand had sometime reeking rent
From slain Demoleos' breast; e'en this he gave,
At once a glory and defence in fight.
Of many plies, quilted and padded.thick,
Scarce two stout esquires bare the coat along,
Phegeus and Sagaris; but, clad therein,
Demoleos oft the scattered Trojans chased
At top of speed, and cleared the routed field.
For third fair prize, twin brassy caldrons next
The chief bestows, and silver ewers, a pair,
Of cunning work, with carven figures rough.
All guerdoned thus, and glorying in their gains,

269-289]

BOOK V.

169

The rival chiefs were wending on their ways,
Their leafy brows with scarlet ribbons twined,
When, from the rock with much ado set free,
With tackle lost and crippled of a tier,
His hooted craft Sergestus rowed to land.
E'en as the unwary snake, in darting caught
By brazen wheel the causeway's crown athwart,
Or whom, surprised, with blow on blow discharged,
The cruel traveller half-dead hath left,
Stretched on the stony ridge, and battered all;
In vain the grovelling wretch; to flight addrest,
Forth darts his loosened train in many a wreath,
Unscathed one-half, and fierce, defiant reared,
With flashing eyes and hissing throat agape,
The while, sore maimed, his hinder half adrag
Cripples his onward course and holds him back,
Twined in himself, a maze of writhing rings :
So worked the slow disabled bark along;
Yet spreads her sails, and makes the harbour's mouth.
But not the less the prince accords her chief
The promised gift, pleased at the ship brought back
And crew all saved his prize a female slave,
In house-wife work expert, and Cretan-born,
Fair Pholo6 hight, with twins upon her breast.
This contest o'er, the good Aeneas next
Leads to a grassy plain, the which all round
High wooded hills begirt, while in the vale,
Theatre-wise, a race-ground lay enclosed;
E'en here the prince, of eager crowds fore-run,

170

THE AEIVEID.

[290-312

Sat midmost down, on turfy throne high-placed;
And now who next the foot-race fleet will try
He straight invites, and sets the prizes forth.
Quick to the lists the ready runners flock,
Troy's hardy sons with Sicil's intermixt,
Bold Nisus and Euryalus the first:
This for his beauty famed and youthful bloom,
That for affection to the lovely boy:
Diores next, of Priam's royal seed;
Whom Salius next and Patron follow soon,
Epirote one-from Acarnania heArcadian this, and Tegeaean-born;
Brave Helymus and Panopes the next,
Two stout Sicilian youths to wood-craft trained,
Who oft the chase with old Acestes led;
With many more whom dim tradition hides.

Whom, gathered round, Aeneas thus bespeaks:
'Friends, hear my words, and cheered be all to hear:
Of this large goodly company not one
Shall prizeless quit our listed field to-day;
Two polished darts of Crete's best work I'll give,
Headed with steel, as eke an axe, its helve
In silver chased: meed these alike for all.
The foremost three shall special prizes claim,
And bind their brows about with olive crowns.
The first a steed shall win, with trappings decked;
The next an Amazonian quiver, stored
With feathered Thracian shafts, the which, light-hung,

313-3321

BOOK V.

A belt o'erlaid with beaten gold suspends,
Its jewelled lid with diamond hasp secured;
The third must cheer him with this Argive helm.'
Ended his words, at once they take their stands;
And now, the signal heard, with sudden spring
They spurn the bar, and stretch them to the course
In fleet career, a cloud with tempest winged,
While aye their straining eyes are on the goal.
Far out, ahead of all his distanced mates,
Darts Nisus swifter than the lightning's glimpse;
Whom next, but next, long interval between,
Salius succeeds; then, farther still to rear,
Euryalus a third, and followed close
By Helymus; hard upon whom behold
Trojan Diores flies, and toe with heel
Near grazing rubs, in contact imminent
Of forward shoulder upon shoulder flung,
And, did more ground remain, those glancing limbs
Had shot clean past, or dubious left the prize.
And now, the race nigh done, the runners all
Fast neared the goal, with toil and sweat forespent,
When luckless Nisus slides amid a plash
Of slippery blood, the which from bullocks slain
Had newly soaked the grassy sward around;
Here, as, with joy elate, his eager thought
Already clutched the prize, he failed to keep
His feet that bit not on the ground they trod,
And, pitching forward, fell full-face mid all

171

172

THE AENEID.

[333-350

The filthy draff and sacrificial gore.
Yet might he not Euryalus e'en then,
Nor that dear tie of mutual love forget:
Up-springing lightly from the sloppy turf,
He cast thwart Salius' intercepted speed
His body's bulk, who instant, backward flung,
Measured his length along the miry sod.
Out-springs Euryalus, and leading nowThanks to his friend-mid storm of deafening cheers
Comes in the first, and shoots him to the goal;
Him Helymus succeeds, and now, next prize,
Diores third.
Anon with noisy plaints
Here Salius deafs the wide arena round,
But chief the reverend elders' foremost rows,
And loud insists be straightway given him back
The prize they saw so lost him by a trick.
Thus he, and pleads the right; but favour more
Besteads Euryalus-so fair in tears,
His manly worth of added grace enhanced,
In comely person shown. The favourite's cause
Diores backs, and swells the general voice,
As who in vain may claim the third reward,
If Salius so shall vindicate the first.
When thus Aeneas : 'Youths, your prizes stand
Assured to each and fixt; nor no man dreams
The settled order of the palm to change;
Still, of your favour, be it mine to show,
Where fortune more than merit was in fault,
Some proof of pity for a friend's mishap.'

351-369]

BOOK V.

173

And, speaking so, to Salius he gives
A lion's shaggy fell with gilded claws.
Drolls Nisus then : ' If fare the beaten so,
And falls be passport to our prince's grace,
What may ye give to match with Nisus' worth,
Mine who had won the foremost meed, had not
That selfsame curst ill-fortune wrought me bale,
That wrought for Salius too ? '-and showed therewith
His grimy face besmirched, and every limb
With trickling ordure fouled. Smiled the good prince,
And, smiling, bade an esquire forth to bring
A votive shield, of Didymaon's make,
And torn by Danaan greed, where long it hung,
From Neptune's temple doors: with this fair gift
The worthy chief endows the gallant youth.
The running done, and prizes given away,
'Now what man's spirit here, bold, ready, cool,
Will dare the fight, forward,' Aeneas cries,
'And lift his sinewy arms with gauntlets braced 'And for the fray two prizes forth he sets,
The victor's meed a bull with gilded horns,
In ribbons decked, and, solace for defeat,
A sword and burnished helm.
Prompt to the call,
Big-limbed, well-knit, in all his might displayed,
Here Dares shows his face above the crowd,
While round the field the murmured whisper ran,
How this was he, the one sole man did oft

174

THE AENEID.

[370-389

Change blows with Paris in the lists at Troy;
Yea, at the tomb where mighty Hector sleeps,
Felled conquering Butes, who to Trojans there
His giant make and proud Bebrycian strain,
From fighting Amycus' high lineage drawn,
Did vaunting show, and, stricken in his might,
Stretched him expiring on the yellow sand.
E'en Dares such; and such, o'erweening, rears
His towering head and brawny shoulders' breadth,
And hand with hand, prelusive to the fight,
Alternate squares, and beats the air with blows.
His match is called for, and a search begins;
But vain the quest: not one from all that throng
Will face the man, and arm his hands for fight.
Elated so, and pleased full well to think
How all had quit pretension to the prize,
Straight out before the chief he stepped, and there,
With right hand laid upon the bullock's horn,
Nor more ado, triumphant spake: 'My prince,
If no man dares adventure on the fight,
How long behoves me further here to stand ?
Nay, bid your Dares lead his prize away.'
And, one and all, his word the Dardans back,
And loud demand their champion's promised meed.
Acestes here with curt reproof and sharp
Entellus chides, as on the grassy bank,
Close by his side, the grey-beard elder sat:
'Entellus, once-but sure the award was vain !Judged bravest of our brave; what ! tamely brook

390

-4071

BOOK V.

175

Such prize unchallenged from the ring to go,
Nor lift one hand to vindicate our claim?
Where now great Eryx gone, our vaunted god,
That master's skill, his whilom pupil's boast ?
Where, where thy fame though all Sicilia voiced,
Those trophies pendent from thy pillared roof ?'
Fired at the word, Entellus quick replies:
"Tis not that craven dread one spark hath dimmed,
Or quenched the passion of my soul for fame ;
But, chilled with frosts of age, old blood runs dull,
And strength will ebb when time hath sapped the frame.
Had I but now, O might these years revert
To that fair prime which once I called mine own,
And, flushed with which, yon braggart blusters so,
Forth had I stept at first-yet not, I ween,
Drawn of the prize, fair though I grant the steer;
Such meeds I reck not now.'
And on the word
Twin gauntlets out amid the ring he flung
Of weight immense, wherein great Eryx wont
Of yore his fights to wage and string his arm
Full elbow-high their stubborn thongs withal.
Amazement seized all hearts how, wrap on wrap,
Seven plies of stark bull-hide lay welded there,
Stiffened with padded lead and iron-knobbed,
But most bold Dares' self, who farthest flies
The sight aghast, and straight declines the fray;
And, lifting now, the hero-prince himself
Handles their weight, and, poising to and fro,

176

THE AENEID.

[4o8-427

This way and that the monstrous weapons turns,
And eyes their complex straps and massive folds.
When answer thus the veteran champion makes:
'And what if any here the gloves had seen
Of great Alcid6s' self, and viewed as I
The fatal fight upon this very strand ?
These arms of ours thy brother Eryx wore,
Stained to this day, may'st see, with blood and brain;
In these 'gainst mighty Hercules he stood,
Ay, foot to foot, and long maintained the strife;
To these was I in that far day inured
When richer blood still fed my strength, nor yet
Had jealous time thus sown this head with grey.
But -if your Trojan champion so demurs
Our country's arms, and so your prince approves,
And my good backer here Acestes wills,
Then equal we the fight: in deference soNay, man, put by thy fears !-these arms I yield,
Grim Eryx' rigid skins, and prithee thou
Thy Trojan gloves undo.' He spake, and straight
The quilted doublet from his shoulders flung,
And, instant stript, his frame's huge fabric bared,
Great joints and bony arms, and stood him forth
Of giant build and size amid the ring.
Then even gauntlets, pair and pair alike,
Aeneas bade from forth the ships be brought,
And matched their hands, with equal weapons bound.
Anon, full height updrawn, the champions stand,
And fearless lift their stalwart arms in air;

428-446]

BOOK V.

And, sparring now, with heads to backwards drawn,
They ward the stroke, and foil the parried blow,
Mix hands with hands, and slow provoke the fight.
More active, this on youth and spring of foot
Reliant leans; in size superior that,
And weight of limb; but ever and anon
The tottering knee betrays the mighty frame,
And painful wheezings rack his labouring lungs.
Full many a hit, alternate dealt, in vain
The heroes give and take; stroke after stroke
Bounds from their hollow sides, and, frequent heard,
Deep on the echoing ribs and chest resounds;
And whiles again the ever busy fist,
Untiring plied, o'er ears and temples roves,
And jaw-bones jar beneath the heavy play.
Self-centred, firm, his very weight up-stays
Entellus fixt, and asks but wary eye
And swerving frame to balk the baffled blow,
Else moveless left and straight; the while, as chief
Who some great high-built fort with siege invests,
Or sits him down a mountain-hold before,
E'en Dares so now this, now that approach
Persistent tries, proves all his art, and, foiled,
Varies the foiled assault a thousand ways.
Now, rising to a blow, Entellus showed
His arm uplift; the other quick foresaw
The stroke's descent, and nimbly slipped aside:
On air the veteran's strength is spent, and down,

177

178

THE AENEID.

[447-461

Drawn of his weight's vast unresisted sway,
Heavy to earth he rushed; so toppling falls
A hollow pine, of failing roots o'erthrown,
On Ida's ridge or Erymanthus' brow.
Up leap at once, of diverse bias swayed,
Troy's and Sicilia's sons-heaven rings with shouts:
Hastens Acestes first, and pitying helps
His old companion from the ground to rise;
But all unhurt, nor daunted by his fall,
The aged champion to the fight returns
With keener zest, and, stung with generous shame,
Bids anger now and conscious worth combined
Awake his might, and rouse his goaded powers;
And straight ablaze, to fire and fury rapt,
Right out before him all the ring around
He Dares headlong drives, and forth o'er all
The listed field, still following up the foe
With knock and bruise, now with the right hand
showered,
Now with the left, nor rest nor respite gives;
Thick as adown mid-winter's driving blast
The volleyed hailstones rattle to the roof,
With volleyed hail of blows the hero so
To right and left doth reeling Dares ply,
Alternate struck, and buffets to and fro.
Then good Aeneas-for it liked him not
The strife should on too far, nor, thus unchecked,
Entellus' wrath to further fury grow,

BOOK V.

179

Embittered all-bade cease the fight forthwith;
And, rescuing Dares, fainting and fordone,
E'en thus the balm of soothing speech applies
'What spell is on thy soul, my hapless friend?
Or seest not yet that other strength is here
Were vain t'oppose, and Heaven hath shifted sides?
Desist, and own the God'-and, speaking so,
Arrested straight, he stays the parted fight.
But him anon, with tender care conveyed,
His trusty comrades to the ships conduct,
Trailing his powerless limbs, and tossing oft
From side to side his languid neck convulsed
And swaying head, while ever and anon
The battered mouth agape ejected black
Great clots of gore, wherewith were teeth mixed up;
And, summoned now, the casque and sword they take,
And to Entellus leave the palm and steer.
Swelled proud and high the veteran's heart elate,
The day his own ! and thus his joy found vent :
'Now, goddess-born and all ye Trojans, mark
What strength erewhile this shrunken arm might boast,
And what the death from whose near door recalled
That timely word your rescued Dares saves 'And out before the beauteous bull he drew,
That all unconscious stood, the battle's prize,
And, shortening to his side his arm drawn in,
And rising to the aim, straight out discharged
The levelled blow point-blank the horns betwixt;
N2

180

THE AENEID.

[480-500

And to the wrist through skull and flying brain
Drave in the iron glove: drops the dead ox,
And, quivering, smites the sod with heavy thud.
Then o'er the carcase spake the old man thus:
'A better life, Eryx, I pay thee here
In Dares' stead, and conqueror here resign,
For aye renounced, my gauntlets and the ring.'
Next, who may care with arrows fleet to vie
In archer-craft, the prince forthwith invites,
And names each several prize; and high the while
His stalwart hand uprears a tapering spar
Ta'en from Serestus' ship, and there atop,
As mark whereto the shooter's steel should tend,
A fluttering pigeon in a noose suspends.
The bowmen met, a brazen casque receives,
Each duly marked, the lots cast in; and first,
Hailed of his shouting friends with plaudits loud,
Forth leaps Hippocobn's name; him Mnestheus next,
Late second in the naval race, succeedsMnestheus, whose brows the verdant olive twines;
Eurytion third, thy brother, Pandarus,
Illustrious Lycian ! first of old to cast,
When bidden from on high to break the truce,
That well-aimed shaft amid thy Grecian foes:
Last of the band, and lowest in the helm,
Acestes' ballot lay, not scrupling he,
Albeit old, the feats of youth to prove.
Anon in turn each lusty marksman bends

5oI-21]

BOOK V.

His tough yew bow, with might and main o'ercome,
And forth his quiver draws the feathered reed;
And first thro' heaven, from off the twanging string,
Lo young Hippocoon's shaft doth whistling cleave
The parted air, and winging onward, comes,
And smites the timber of the mast, infixt;
The struck spar shook, the frightened bird aghast
Flapped its frayed wing, and the wide champaign round
Rang to the deafening cheer. With bow full arched
Then stepped keen Mnestheus forth, and, pointing high,
His shrewdest glance along the arrow sends:
But ah ! the very bird he missed; the steel
Just cut the noose and flaxen span that held
Her hampered foot, loose dangling from the mast;
When straight, unfettered, to the winds she flew
And murky clouds, and lessened up the sky.
Then, quick as thought, as long he stood and yare
With ready shaft upon the bow-string notched,
Eurytion to his brother breathed a vow,
And, sighting well, as mid the lofty vault
She clapped her joyous wing, careering free,
Pierces the dove beneath a sable cloud:
Down drops the bird, its sweet life left in air,
And fetches back the arrow in the wound.

Sole champion now, and with no prize to win,
Acestes so is left; yet shoots he too
His random shaft in air, fain to show off
His veteran's skill at once and sournding bow;

182

2HE AENEID.

[522-542

When lo ! a sudden sight, and one should yet
Be known for portent dread; so all too late,
Taught of the sequel dire, the seers explained
Its import high, and owned the omen's truth.
The feathered shaft, as winging of its way
It pierced the fluid clouds, burst out alight,
And graved its path in flame; then, quickly spent,
Evanished to the winds : as from the sphere
Oft stars, unfixt, will thwart the midnight sky,
And, shooting, trail a length of fiery hair.
Awe-struck, aghast, in doubt and terror lost,
Sicil and Trojan bowed them down in prayer;
Nor great Aeneas may the sign reject:
The good Acestes to his heart he drewO'erjoyed himself, and proud, distinguished soLoads him with noble gifts, and thus accosts:
'Yes, take them all, good sire; his will supreme
Olympus' ruler by this sign doth show
That special meed be thine; lo, thou shalt have
This golden cup, was once Anchises' own,
With carven figures chased, and which of yore,
A royal gift, king Cisseus gave my sire,
Keepsake at once, and token of his love.'
He said; then wreathes his aged brows with bays,
And bids with herald's voice Acestes hail
'Fore all his peers first victor in the strife.
Nor good Eurytion grudged the claim preferred,
For all 'twas his true shaft alone had fetched
The soaring pigeon from the skies adown:

543-564]

BOOK
f.

183

The next fair prize who cut the cord doth own,
And he whose arrow nailed the spar, the last.
But ere the archer match was done, the prince
Had hailed by signs the son of Epytus,
The young Iiilus' faithful guide, and thus
In whispered speech his trusty ear addressed:
'Go, and Ascanius bid, if that his troop
Of youthful knights be marshalled and arrayed,
He lead them forth to grace his grandsire's day,
And let himself and them in arms be seen'And straight commands from all the listed ground
The surging populace withdraw, and leave
In length and breadth the open champaign free.
Anon the striplings to the field advance
In glittering lines, in arms and dress alike,
And proudly sit, as 'neath their fathers' gaze,
Their managed steeds, while clappings loud and long
From either people greet them on their way.
Their locks with trim-cut wreaths are bound, and each
Two steel-tipped spears of cornel wood doth bear,
And polished quivers some; while twisted gold
Entwines each taper neck in pliant coil,
And, pendent thence, the fair young breast o'erlies.
Three companies the youthful horsemen form,
Three several chiefs ride spurring to and fro,
Each chieftain's side twelve gallant youths attend
In equal tale, and owning like command.
The first gay band doth little Priam lead,
In4t whom, revived, his grandsire lives anew;

184

THE AENEID.

[565-582

Thy princely seed, Polites, and who yet
Shall grace Italia with thy stock and name :
A Thracian piebald bore the noble boy,
Dappled with flecks of white, its pasterns white,
And tossing high a forehead starred with white.
Atys the next, from whom the Atian name,
Illustrious clan; young Atys, graceful boy,
And, boys alike, to young Iiilus dear.
In order last, but first in face and form,
Iiilus reins a black Sidonian barb
Of Tyrus' fiery breed, fair Dido's gift
In token of her love : the rest bestride
Sicilian steeds of old Acestes' stud.
With storm of loud applause the Trojans hail
Their near approach, and cheer their fluttering hearts
'Twixt hope and fear athrob, and note with joy
Their foresires' features in the children shown.
At length, when now the cavalcade had fared
Around the gazing field in circuit wide
And joyed their fathers' eyes, with token shout
Shrilled from afar the son of Epytus
Signals the bands, and smacks his sounding thong;
When, breaking up, the companies divide
In equal force, and gallop right and left,
Three troops a'side; and now at call each troop
Wheels full face round, and, front to front arrayed,
They couch their spears and charge the adverse foe;
Then, charged in turn, they counter-charge again,
Retreat, advance, pursuing and pursued,

583-6o]

BOOK V.

185

And come and go, still right and left opposed;
Anon, in new manoeuvres o'er the ground,
They wheel and form, and, closing, wheel afresh,
Severed, mixed up, circle in circle locked,
And all the currents of a heady fight,
True to the life, their mimic war presents;
Now here in flight they turn their backs, now there
With levelled spears the rallying ranks engage,
And now at peace they ride the field abreast:
As once in lofty Crete the Labyrinth
'Twixt blind blank walls its wily passage wound,
Intricate, dark, a thousand ways in one,
Where, traced in vain, the tangled maze still mocked
The traveller's signs confused, and, endless found,
Alike detection or return defied;
E'en in such tangled web these lads of Troy
Involve their moves, and weave in martial play,
Crossed and re-crossed, their battles and their flights;
So to and fro the playful dolphins dart
Amid the Libyan or Carpathian sea,
Disporting free, and gambol through the deep.
These gamesome tilts and knightly tourneys gay
Ascanius first, what time with ramparts high
He walled long Alba town, revived anew,
And taught the fathers of the Latin name
To hold them so as here himself, a lad,
And with him all these lads of Troy did hold;
These same the Albans taught their youth; and thus,
From sire to son in long succession drawn,
Imperial Rome received the ancestral game,

186

THE AENEID.

[6o2-618

And to this day doth use, e'en naming still
From Troy alike the players and the play.
Thus far in honour of the sainted sire
With pomp and pageantry the games were sped,
When fickle Fortune first brake faith, and changed:
While as in varied wise the festive crowd
With divers sports the hallowed tomb frequent,
Lo, Juno sends fair Iris from on high
Down to the ships, and breathes swift winds withal
To help her flight, still hatching plots, nor yet
Had fatted to the full her ancient grudge.
Instant adown her myriad-tinted bow
From heaven to earth the lightfoot maiden ran,
Unseen of all; when at the lists she notes
That concourse vast; then, shoreward looking, marks
The port deserted and the navy left;
While far aloof, secluded and apart,
The Trojan dames beside the lonely beach
Bewept Anchises dead, and, weeping so,
Still out upon the wide and wasteful deep
Their sorrowing looks were sent; and ah, to think,
With all those long and tiresome wanderings past,
Such breadth of sea still asked their weary toil!
E'en such from every tongue the ceaseless cry;
O that a town were theirs! it irks them sore
This tedious travel of the boundless main.
So now, of harmful wiles not inexpert,

619--637]

BOOK V.

187

She lights amid them down, but first puts off
Her goddess' garb and mien, to Bero6 changed,
Thracian Dorkclus' aged spouse of yore,
As one that erst had children, rank, and name;
E'en thus she makes her of the Dardan wives
As one herself, and swells the murmuring cry:
' Yes, hapless we, good sooth, whom Greekish hands
Haled not to death beneath our native walls!
Ay, wretched folk so spared; for what worse doom
By cruel Fate's ingenious spite reserved ?
The seventh fair summer this to winter wanes
Since Ilion fell, and we the weary while
O'er seas, lands, rocks, inhospitable wilds,
Still travel thus, with Italy in chaseCurst Italy ! that further flies our quest,
As further we the bootless quest pursue,
And, still deluded, toss from shore to shore.
Lo, here is Eryx' brother-land and rule;
Who, what, gainsays here founding of his walls,
And giving here poor homeless folk their home ?
O fatherland beloved! O hearth-gods dear,
Saved from the foe, but saved, alack! for nought;
Shall never city more for Troy be named,
Must still these eyes Xanthus and Simois seek,
Our Hector's streams, and seek them still in vain?
Nay, join me, friends, and fire those luckless ships:
Sleeping last night, Cassandra's form, methought,
Did fill my trembling grasp with flaming brands:
" Here," the pale phantom cried, "surcease your search,

188

THE AENEID.

[638-657

Here where you are ; find here your Troy and home !"
And now thereto, as let nor stay should be
Where marvels call, occasion woos the deed:
Lo, altars four to Neptune here ablaze;
The very god so finds us will and means! '
She said, and led the way; then furious seized
The baleful brand and whirled it up on high,
And, whirling, flings. Roused of the daring deed,
The mothers stood confounded and amazed;
When out-spake one, and she the eldest there,
The royal nurse of Priam's many sons,
And Pyrrho hight: 'Dames, ye may well comply;
No Beroe this, I ween, nor have ye here
Doryclus' consort from Rhoetbum wed;
Observe the notes of godhead's beauty there,
The sparkling eyes, the more than mortal mien,
The looks, the tones, and what a gait is hers !
Myself but now, a'coming here, did leave
Our sister Bero6 in her chamber laid,
Ailing and sick, and heard her grieve withal
As sole debarred her share in this day's rites
And pious office to Anchises' shade.'

But, wavering first, the dames might only cast
Their eyes' malignant glances on the ships,
Uncertain still and racked with yearnings sore
Betwixt the present and the fated lands;
When through mid air, on balanced wings uplift,

658-674]

BOOK V.

189

The goddess rose, and, ever as she flew,
Spanned with her mighty bow the welkin wide.
Then at the portent fired, as frenzy-smit,
The maddened wives shriek out with one accord;
Some from the hearths within red embers snatch,
While others strip the altars of their green,
Wrecked and despoiled, and, heaped in reeking mass,
Boughs, brands, and drift-wood on the navy cast;
When soon, with loosened rein, sans let or stay,
Through thwarts and oars and sterns of painted fir
The raging Fire-god riots uncontrolled.
Scarce good Eum6lus to Anchises' tomb
And all the concourse of the Circus' seats
Had borne the tidings of the fleet in flames,
Ere, self-announced, lo to their backward gaze
The sooty smoke-drift whirling up the sky !
Ascanius first, as gleeful there he led
His boyish knights, and marshalled all the field,
Pricks forth full speed, accoutred as he was,
And eager seeks the troubled camp, nor may
His breathless guardians stay his headlong course:
'Daughters of Troy !' he cries, 'ah, hapless dames,
What strange curst frenzy this, or what your thought ?
Not foeman's camp nor Argos' hostile fleet,
No, but your own, your Troy's best hopes ye burn !
Nay, look again; your own Ascanius I'And therewithal his helm the prince undid,
The which so late he wore in mimic war,

TT

g190

THE

A 7

X T ; TT

AENEID.

[67

And cast it ringing at their feet adown.
Anon, hot haste, Aeneas too arrives,
And with him all the frightened Teucrian host;
When now, of guilty dread impelled, the dames
Fly diverse, scattered o'er the beach affeared,
And, cowering, skulk where'er, or far or near,
Woods, rocks, or caves may safe concealment show,
All ill at ease, and loathing light and life;
Full sore their deed they rue, and, sobered now,
Juno perforce is cast from every heart.
But not therefor the flames, unknowing ruth,
May slack their rage, or bate their force controlled;
The caulking tow 'twixt moistened planks afire
Lives in the pitchy seams, and, smouldering on,
Vents-sluggish smoke; the sullen mischief works
Contagious down, preying on hull and keel,
And subtle spreads through each fair goodly frame;
Nor now may all the might of stalwart men,
Nor whole injected floods avail to save.
Then good Aeneas from his shoulder rends
His princely robe, and calls with uplift hands
On Heaven for aid : 'Almighty Jove, if Troy
Be yet not wholly from thy love estranged,
If, unextinct, thine olden mercy still
One spark retain may feel for human woes,
Father, vouchsafe the fleet to 'scape the flames,
And save, O save these poor remains of Troy;
Or if our crimes, most righteous judge, deserve

E90

691-7o8]

BOOK V.

191

The last worst vengeance of thy wrathful bolts,
On all-this wretched all !-that vengeance pour,
And with thy red right hand o'erwhelm us here.'
Scarce was it said, when lo, a burst of rain,
Sluiced from the dark horizon, broad descends,
With rage unwonted sweeping to the plain;
Now hills and valleys to the thunders quake,
The deluge deepens, and from all the sky,
Thickened of southern winds and pitchy black,
The rushing element continuous pours:
High o'er the decks the swelling floods prevail,
The half-charred planks are soaked, till gradual now
The fire relents extinct, and, four ships lost,
The perilled fleet is rescued from the flames.
But good Aeneas, staggered at the blow,
Perplexed his troubled soul with anxious thought,
And high debate did hold, e'en two ways drawn,
Or should he here in Sicily sit down,
Nor further heed his fates, or onward still
Pursue Italia's quest. Then Nautes old,
Minerva's favoured sage, whose gifted soul
The goddess still with varied wisdom stored'Twas she inspired him in the present strait,
Bidding him know what Heaven's dread wrath would
mean,
As lately wreaked, and how withal might speed,
As Fate required, the destined course of thingsE'en he such comfort in these words suggests:

192

THE A ENEID.

[709-729

'Prince, be it ours, or forward called or back,
To follow still as Fate still gives the call:
Past cure be aye past care; betide what may,
In Fortune's fight he conquers who endures.
Lo for thy need, of Dardan's stock divine,
Acestes here, our Trojan kith and kin:
With him confer, and halve thy patriot cares;
Assign to him-nor fear he'll say thee nayThose useless hands that now-four vessels lostO'er-stock our crowded: fleet; whome'er it irks
Thy great emprise to share and fortunes high,
Old men and matrons travel-sick, e'en all
Infirm and timorous who from peril shrink,
All such weed out; then give them leave to build
Their city here, and they withal shall name
The town Acesta, with assent from thee.'
Stirred of the senior's words, the prince now feels
His anxious soul with fiercer cares distraught,
And troubled sore; when, as Night's ebon car
Upclomb the sky, what seemed Anchises' shape,
Down sliding soft, his musing sense addressed:
son, dearer than life, whilst life was mine,
In Troy's hard destinies well schooled and trained;
I come at Jove's command, the god who saved
Thy ships from fiery bane, and from on high
That timely mercy to thy need vouchsafed :
Old Nautes' sage advice be thine to heed;
The flower of all thy youth, the stoutest hearts
Of all thou hast, such, and such only, take

'0

730

-747]

BOOK

T

To Italy; a rude and hardy race
In Latium bides whom thou must quell in war.
Howbeit first, or ere thou comest there,
Come thou to nether regions down, where Dis
His dwelling holds; yea, through Avernus' depths
My son must seek a meeting with his sire;
For not with sprites accurst in Tartarus pent,
The dark unhappy impious house of hell,
Abides thy father's soul; but free I roam
Elysium's meads, the pleasance of the Blest;
The Sibyl maid will give thee guidance down
On passport meet of sable victims' blood:
There shalt thou learn at large thy future sons,
And those great city-walls shall yet be ours.
And now farewell; for dewy Night doth slope
Her course half-sped, and cruel Dawn comes up
On panting steeds-their breath is on me blown.'
He said; then, mist-like, vanished into air :
' Ah, whither fled ? why speed thee thus away ?
Whom would'st so fly? or what ill Pow'r forbids
A father's arms to take his son's embrace ?'
Aeneas thus; and, waking on the hearth
The dormant fires and smouldering embers low,
With wheaten flour and censer full adores
Old Troy's home-god and hoary Vesta's shrine.
Anon with haste his friends are summoned all,
Acestes first, and told what Jove's command,
His sire's advice, and how at length, o'er-ruled,

193

194

THE AENEID.

[748-764

His wavering thought to settled purpose grew.
Brief the debate with Troy; nor, sanctioned so,
May good Acestes to the plan demur:
Soon for the town, with free consent debarked,
Matrons and men-whoever will-they draft,
Souls all uncovetous of high renown;
Themselves, this done, new-deck and bench the
ships,
Re-place the half-charred oaken planks with new,
And shape new oars, with ropes and tackling gearA slender band, but gallant hearts for war.
A town meanwhile, in circuit broad described,
Aeneas plans, and ploughs the lines around;
And now, the several quarters lotted out,
Bids this be Ilion named, and that be Troy.
Acestes, Trojan true, well pleased assumes
His new-made rule: a court forthwith he holds,
Convenes the summoned peers, and frames the laws.
To Venus next, Idalia's loving queen,
They rear on Eryx' top a lofty fane,
And to Anchises' tomb and sacred mound
Appoint a priest, and consecrate a grove.

And now their nine days' feast the nation all
Had fully made; the rites were duly sped;
The quiet winds had smoothed the ruffled seas,
And whispering Auster wooed them to the deep;

765--782]

BOO

V.

When all along the curving beach uprose
A voice. of wailing and a loud lament :
Fain would they now, embracing and embraced,
The swift-foot night retard and rapid day,
Full loath to part; the mother folk themselves,
E'en aged men whose eyes so late the sight
Of ocean scared, their ears its very name,
Would now fain go, would gladly now face all
The dreaded way and hardships of the main;
Whom good Aeneas cheers with kindly word,
And to their kinsman prince with tears commends.
On Eryx' altars three fat calves he slays,
And eke a lamb to win the weather-god;
Then, one by one, he bids them loose from shoreHimself the while, with trim-cut olive crowned,
Charger in hand, forth standing on the poopAnd, on the weltering surge, far cast ahead,
The holy entrails in due form doth lay,
Shedding the wine withal. Up-sprung astern,
A fresh'ning breeze fast speeds them on their way;
And now with rival strokes in concert drawn
They lash the floods, and sweep the marble plain.

Meantime, with cares opprest, fair Venus thus
To Neptune's ear a mother's plaint doth pour:
If lowly thus, great father of the floods,
I bend me here a suppliant at thy feet,
'Tis Juno's wrath, her cruel grudge unslaked,
Compels the abject suit-imperious dame,
oz

195

196

THE AENEID.

[783- 800

Whose sateless malice tract of time alike,
Or touch of ruth, or hest of very Jove,
Yea destiny itself has failed to bate;
Ay, to this day 'tis up and working still 1
'Tis not enough her hate's enormous greed
Tare out the town from Phrygia's inmost heart,
And dragged its wretched folk through every woe;
She still with unrelenting spite must hound
The bones and ashes of poor murdered Troy:
Haply herself such rancour may explain.
How great a coil on Libya's troubled deeps
She lately raised, thyself will bear me out;
Earth, sea, and air, the elements confused,
In one wild wrack she blent, trusting forsooth
To Aeolus and his winds--presumptuous,
In thy domain! Yea, 'twas but now she made
The poor duped Trojan dames her tool, and lo
Our vessels foully burnt, and my good son
Compelled for loss of ships to quit his crews,
Abandoned to a strange and distant shore!
So-for what yet to come-as boon I crave
Their sails committed to thy guardian care ;
Accept the trust, and guarantee they make,
In safety reached, Laurentian Tiber's mouth,
If Heaven my prayer allows, if Fate accords
By that fair stream a city to their race.'

Then Saturn's son, the tamer of the deep :
'Cythera's lady sooth may well confide

801-817]

BOOK V.

In Neptune's realm, wherefrom her birth she drew;
Yea, that such trust his proper self may claim,
Let service done attest: not once, I ween,
But times past count for her and hers I quelled
The raging storm, and hushed the uproar wild
Of sea and sky. And that by land no less
Aeneas proved our care, let Xanthus speak,
And conscious Simois too: when, backward borne,
Achilles dashed the fainting hosts of Troy
E'en on their rampart walls, and still slew on,
Till, carnage-clogged, the choking rivers groaned,
Nor Xanthus found, encumbered with the dead,
To roll his crimson billows to the main;
Aeneas then, for fight with Peleus' son
Unequal joined, in strength and gods o'er-matched,
Did I in hollow cloud snatch far away
Aloof his deadly lance, for all I wished
False Troy to level with the groun'd, albeit
Built of my very hands. Now too, unchangedPut by thy fears!-my mind is still the same;
Avernus' port, goal of thy fondest wish,
Safe shall he reach; one only shall he miss,
One comrade whelmed adown the welteringdeeps;
One victim head shall ransom all the rest.'
The goddess' anxious heart to joy afresh
Tuned of such gracious speech, the Father next
Beneath his car in golden yoke doth join
His ocean steeds, and checks their foaming jaws

197

198

THE AENEID.

[818-832

With bit and curb; then, through his hands let run,
Slacks them the reins full length. Cerulean-hued,
The light-wheeled chariot cuts the crystal plain,
The waves fall flat, subsiding Ocean smoothes
His floor beneath that axle's thundrous sweep,
And storm and cloud from all the welkin flee.
Now, from their caves emerged, his motley train,
The creatures of the deep, attendant throng
To right and left, and gambol round their king;
Enormous whales and monsters of the flood,
Old Glaucus' sea-green choir, the Tritons swift,
Palaemon, Ino's child, Phorcus with all
His azure crew, Thetis and Melit6,
The sea-maid Panope, Nesae6 fair,
Spio, Thalia, and Cymodoce;
With more beside, the daughters of the main.

Soothed of the pleasing calm, here-grateful changeAeneas feels his heart a'thrill with joy:
He bids them step their every mast upreared,
And stretch the swelling canvas to the yards:
Together all now right, now left slack out
The sheets eased off, and to the pin belay,
Hauling the wind; and now together all
Turn to and fro the sailyards' horns aloft,
As blows the shifting gale; and now astern
Propitious breezes waft the fleet ahead.
To vaward far good Palinurus leads

BOOK V.

199

The close.array compact in gallant trim;
The rest, as ordered, shape their course by his.

Now dewy Night had well-nigh rounded full
Heaven's highest cope, the hardy rowers all
'Neath thwart and hatchway stretched their weary
limbs,
Each by his oar; when from the ethereal stars,
Winnowing the filmy mists and dusky air
On waft of noiseless wing, lo treacherous Sleep
To thee, doomed Palinure, descending hies,
On mission sad despatched, ill dreams to bring,
Ah, guileless soul! shall work thee scathe and woe.
Straight on the lofty stern alighting soft
In Phorbas' shape and mien, the wily god
I-n murmured accents low his ear doth take:

'Look, son of Jisus; see, of itself
The marbled sea-plain shoots the fleet along,
The gales blow fair, and lo, of Heaven indulged,
The sacred hour is come should woo repose;
Then, good my friend, that aching head recline,
And steal from toil thy weary eyes, o'erwatched;
Be mine the while to take thy charge in hand.'
To whom thus Palinure--while scarce he raised
His heavy eyes to where the phantom stoodCautious replies : 'What! me, forsooth, would'st bid,

. I'T Tt .
T

200oo

THE

/i T?.

TT T T"

ENEID.

rO .-..

0/';..

[849-86 7

Knowing, not know this halcyon calm serene,
These siren wiles of Ocean's smiling face ?
What! I confide in monster such as this,
Commit Aeneas and his fortunes high
To lying winds-I who so oft have rued
My trust misplaced, when skies had promised fair! 'And, still as on he spake, his hand the while
With unrelaxing gripe the tiller held,
Nor once let go, his eye still sought the stars.
When lo, the god o'er both his temples shakes
A drowsy bough with dews Lethean wet,
And steeped in fatal Styx; and--struggling stillDoth straightway loose his swimming eyes to sleep.
Nor well had now the slumbrous Pow'r unstrung
His yielding members, one by one surprised,
Or ere, o'erlain and pressed, the ugly Sprite
Forth hurls him headlong to the clear cold waves,
The broken helm and tiller in his grasp,
While all in vain his cry still rose for aid;
Which done, himself, on soaring pinions raised,
Hies upward through the air.
Its course meanwhile,
Imperilled none the more, the fleet pursues,
And rides sans fear, in Neptune's promise safe;
Till, as anigh the Sirens' rocks they drewA perilous coast of old, all glancing white
With many a seaman's bones, but whence came now
The ceaseless roar of breakers on the cragsThe watchful chief first notes the bark to reel,

868-871]

BOOK V.

Unsteady borne, her faithful pilot lost ;
Then takes the post himself, and steers her safe
The midnight waters through, sighing the while,
And sorely staggered by his friend's mishap:
'Guileless thyself, ah, fatal trust reposed
In guileful skies and ocean's treacherous calm!
Cold, stark, and lone our Palinure shall lie,
A tombless corse, and on a foreign strand.'

201

202

THE AENEID.

BOOK

VI.

WEEPING he spake; then sped him on full sail,
And makes at length Euboean Cumae's shore:
Anon, fast held, with prows to seaward swung,
The anchor's fang 'gan one by one to moor
The vessels all, till now the rounded sterns
Fringe the long line of coast. The youthful crews
Spring ardent forth, and greet Hesperia's soil;
Then, parting diverse, some for fire bid search
The flint-stone's veins, and strike the seedling spark;
Some scour the woods, the wild beasts' tangled haunts,
Or point to new-found streams, and whence they flow.
But good Aeneas scales the holy mount
Where Phoebus sits enshrined, and rearward there
The weird recesses of that cavern dim
Where awful Sibyl dwells, the maid in whom
The Delian seer doth ever breathe his own
Great soul and mind, and shows her things to be;
Then, faring on through Trivia's sacred grove,
Lo, to their gaze, the goddess' house of gold.
'Tis said that Daedalus, what time he fled

I5-34]

B001 V .

203

Old Minos' rule, and all unfearing durst
Commit him to the sky on rapid wings,
Swam to the chilly north his unused way,
Rowing still on, till here on Chalcis' steep
He dropped him lightly down; here where he first
Touched earth again, Phoebus, he vowed to thee
The vans had oared his flight, and built withal
This ample fane. Graved on the panelled doors,
Behold Androgeos' death; next, Cecrops' sons
Condemned, ah woe! those forfeit souls to pay,
An annual mulct, seven sons' and daughters' livesThere stands the urn, the fatal lots new-drawn.
And there opposed in counterview responds
The Gnosian isle, emergent o'er the deep;
And here Pasiphaie's wild love is shown,
Infliction dire ! the passion for the bull,
The stolen commerce, and its mingled fruit,
The twy-formed child, brand of kind Nature's wrong.
Here too the bower of never-ending toil,
The tangled maze no wight should ever thrid;
But, touched with pity of the royal maid,
The artist's self his own dark riddle solved,
Unravelling all the building's tanglement,
And gave a clue should guide those eyeless steps.
Thou too, wept Icarus, large space had'st filled
There on that storied slab, might grief permit:
Twice he essayed to carve thy fate in gold,
Twice dropped the father's hand.
So one by one
Thecir eager eyes had read the sculptures o'er,

2o4

THE AENEID.

[35-51

But now, returning from his mission sped,
Achates leads Deiphobe along,
Old Glaucus' prophet-child and priestess eke
\Of Dian's and Apollo's fane; who thus
Lispeaks the prince: ' Far other work, I wis,
Not food for idle gaze, the time would crave:
Here slay me straight-'twill stead thee more, I trowSeven victim steers unbroken to the yoke,
And seven choice spotless ewes '-this to the chief ;
Nor failed his train to speed her mandate high ;
Which done, she bids them to the lofty fane.
The seaward face of Cumae's templed rock
Is hollowed to a cave, whereto there lead
By broad-wayed paths a hundred avenues,
A hundred doors, whence pealing, hundred-tongued,
Come echoing voices forth and mystic sounds,
The Sibyl's words of doom. Arrived the cell,
Still rang the stony threshold to their tread,
When thus the seer, abrupt: 'The moment serves
To question Fate: lo ye, the god, the god!'
And, speaking so within the cavern's mouth,
With sudden start the life-blood fails her cheek,
Her braided locks in wild disorder part,
Thick comes her breath, her heart with frenzy heaves,
And, larger grown, dilating to the eye,
Not mortal accents from her lips sound more,
As breathes the nearer Presence on her soul:
'What ! dumb,' she gasps, ' illustrious man of Troy ?
Or halts thy palsied tongue to vow and pray ?

S2-70]

BOOK VI.

205

Pray, Trojan, pray; of other spell un-oped,
Yon awful shrine will close its lips for aye.'
This said, she hushed; while icy shudderings ran
The hardy Trojans' iron bodies through,
O'erawed, and trembling for the birth of fate;
When thus their chieftain pours his heart in prayer:
'Phoebus, who aye did'st feel for Ilion's grief,
Did'st level Paris' Dardan bow, and spedd'st
His Dardan shaft 'gainst great Pelides' frame;
Full many a sea, encircling mighty lands,
I've ranged obedient to thy guiding voice,
Have trod Massylia's distant bounds, and seen
Where Libya's quicksands belt her torrid plains;
And now at length, with weary task fordone,
Lo, here our grasp on flying Latium laid.
Enough, so far Troy's evil fates have dogged
Her exiled sons! And ye too, hostile Powers,
Goddess or god, whose jealous eye malign
Still scowled upon our Ilion's glories old,
Ah spare, as well ye may, her sons henceforth !.
And thou, dread maid, whose ken the future scans,
Vouchsafe that Troy, her toilsome wanderings o'erMy fates may challenge what my suit would craveFind here her seat and home, here shrine at last
Her way-worn gods in peace on Latian soil.
To Phoebus then and Trivia's honoured power
So will I raise, of shapely marble built,
A holy fane, where days of jubilee
Shall hymn their godheads' names from age to age

2o6

67HE AENEID.

[71-89

Thee, virgin, too in those our realms to be
A goodly shrine awaits; there will I lodge
Thine oracles abd words of doom pronounced,
Benignant dame, to all my raceand line,
Aid
consecrate withal, the trust to-guard,
A chosen priesthood to the service vowed,
Only to leaves commit not, gracious maid,
Thy precious strains, lest, to the breezes tossed,
They fly, the sport of any wind may blow;
Sing them thyself, I pray.' He said; then ceased.
The seer meanwhile, to Phoebus still unbroke,
Raves through the grot, might she so skill to foil
The mighty god, and fling him from her soul;
While he the more with mastering manege galls
Her stubborn mouth, rebellious to the curb,
Tames her wild heart, and moulds her to his will.
And now, self-oped, the hundred doors fly wide,
And waft abroad the Sibyl's fateful voice:
'Ha ! done at last with perils of the sea;
But worst remain by land! Dardania's sonsSet here thy soul at rest-full sure shall reach
Lavinium's realm; but not be glad withal
'Twas ever reached ! Wars, dreadful wars, I see,
And Tiber foams, a cataract of blood.
Nor Simois shall be lacking to thee here,
Nor Xanthus eke, nor Dorian camp to boot;
Yea, Latium sends a new Achilles forth,
And him too goddess-born; while Juno's hate,

go-io8]

BOOK VfL

207

Troy's leech-like scourge, shall fail ye never more.
Ay me; sore pressed, to what far states and courts
Dire need shall send thy bootless suit for aid!
Yea, and to Troy the self-same cause again,
The olden source of all her world of woe,
An alien consort and a foreign bride!
But thou-faint not ! frown Fortune as she may,
Outface with bolder front her every frown,
E'en to the list and limit of thy fate;
And-what shalt least expect, and when-the first
Bright glimpse of safety shall from Graecia dawn.'
So from her inner cell, high, quick, and shrill,
The seer of Cumae chants her bodings dark,
And sooth in mystery wrapped, while loud and long
The reboant cave reverbs the words of doom;
The cruel god with tightened rein so wrings
Her rabid mouth, and plies the stinging goad.
Now fell the extatic fury, ebbing low,
And fevered cheek and foaming lip were still;
When quick the chief: 'Come when it may, dread
maid,
Not new to me nor unexpected falls
What type or shape may toil or peril take;
Suffered ere dealt, my prescient soul hath long
Forestalled each stroke, and ta'en it o'er and o'er.
One boon be mine: since here HI lLgteo, 'tis said,
And here that dismal pool, dark, broad, and deed
From flooding Acheron fed, 0 pass me hence
To my dear father's--sight and presence down,

208

THE AENEID.

[109-130

Conduct my steps, and ope those awful doors.
Him on this back through flames aMTinyriad spears
I saved from following foes; my flight he shared,
Braved sea and sky with me, and, bowed with eld,
Took scathe and toil with heart beyond his day;
Yea, 'twas his voice still urged me here to seek
Thy potent help, a pilgrim to thy cell.
Yes, pity, gracious maid, both sire and son;
Needs but the will: almighty power is thine;
Nor, Hecate's delegate, may'st claim to rule
Avernus' woods, and hold an empty sway.
If Orpheus wrought with tuneful shell to win
His ghostly mate, from shades of death recalled;
If generous Pollux from the tomb redeems,
By turns exchanged, his mortal brother's life,
And comes and goes th' alternate road so oftWhy need I Theseus, why Alcides name ?I too derive my birth from Jove supreme.'
So prayed the prince, and grasped the altar horn;
When thus in turn the seer: ' Blood of the gods,
Trojn Anchises' son, adown to hell
'Tis easy path and smooth, and night and day
Swart Pluto's gate doth open stand to all;
But backward thence with steps retraced to win.
4
Theuward ay, and re-ascend to light,
This, this the task, and here the labour lies.
A few howbeit whom righteous Jove did love,
And ardent worth, enkindled from on high,
Bade spurn at earth and soar their native skies,

131-5t]

BOOI VI.

And sprung themselves of gods, have won the feat.
Dense woods fill all the space 'twixt it and us,
And, broad and deep, Cocytus winds around
His black and sinuous flood ; but if thy soul,
Of yearning dire impelled, would fain twice swim
The dismal Stygian mere, and, mad resolve,
Must twice the dark Tartarean pool explore,
Attend what first the daring project asks.
Deep in a shady tree from sight doth lurk
A limber twig, its stem and leaflets gold,
And sacred held to Juno of the Shades:
This all around the forest's depths enclose,
And bosky hollows shut it from the day;
Nathless no entering of the under-world
Or ere be plucked from forth the magic bole
That goodly growth with golden tresses dight;
Such passport fair hath Proserpine adjudged
Her fairer self, and claims the precious gaud.
One rent away, another straight succeeds,
And, bud for bud, bourgeons alike in gold.
Then look it out full well, and, duly found,
Pluck boldly with the hand, for nothing loath
'Twill follow at a touch, if so be Fate
Invite thy steps; else may no strength avail,
Nor edge of hardest steel shall hew the spray.
But now-a further need or ere may'st go:
A comrade's corse-alack, thou know'st it not!Lies stiff and stark, and taints thy fleet with death,
Whilst thou art here consulting fate, and hang'st
Our doors about: him first in mother earth

209

210

THE AENEID.

[152-173

Pious bestow, and give him resting meet,
And swart-fleeced victims for atonement fetch,
May purge the unconscious guilt; then, all fulfilled,
So shall thine eyes the Stygian groves survey,
Those gloomy realms of living foot untrod.'
She spake; and silence sealed her closing lips.

With down-cast eyes and pensive visage sad
Aeneas quits the cave, and, lost in thought,
His secret soul revolves those issues dark,
While at his side, with measured step and slow,
Achat6s wends, and halves his chieftain's care.
Varied their guess, as high debate they held
What comrade dead, what corse for burial rite
The seer should mean; when lo, upon the beach,
Cold, stiff, and stark, amid the ebbing tide,
Misinus stretched, and all ignobly slain!
Misenus, son of Aeolus, like whom
Was none beside with martial song to breathe
The warrior trump, and fire the flagging fight.
Great Hector erst he served, at Hector's side
Full many a field with trump and lance he walked;
But, Hector slain of great Pelides' spear,
Aeneas' conquering arms he followed next,
Nor found the fortunes of a worser lord.
But of a day, as by ill hap he set
The seas a'ringing to his hollow conch,
And blew rash challenge to the sea-gods all,
Triton, of jealousy-if sooth the tale-

174-193]

BOO

VI.

2II

At ambush took him mid the treacherous rocks,
And sunk him there amid the foaming surf.
So, gathering round, they raise the loud lament,
His comrades all--their chief's the loudest wail;
Then, weeping sore, the Sibyl's mandate next
With eager zeal they speed, and bid uprise,
Of high-piled fagots reared, the altar-pyre.
Anon they move in sad procession all
Where grew an ancient wood, its shady depths
The wild beasts' favoured haunt; and soon, o'erthrown,
The pitch pine crashing falls, rigs to the axe
The smitten holm, smooth beech and splitting oak
Yield to the driven wedge, the giant ash
Thunders adown the steeps. Foremost himself,
The Trojan prince bestirs his comrades' zeal,
And wields like tools as they. Then, musing sad,
While as his eye the boundless forest ranged,
His prompted thought took guise of spoken prayer:
'Fair-spreading grove, 0 would mid all thy depths
That golden b.ough might show upon the tree,
Might so the Sibyl's word come true, as ah !
Too true, Mis6nus, came that word of thee.'
Scarce was it said, when as by chance a pair
Of turtle-doves came sailing down the sky
E'en to the hero's very eyes and ken,
And dropped them lightly on the velvet turf;
His mother's birds the chieftain knew, and glad
With earnest prayer pursues: ' 0, be my guides,
P2

212

THE AENEID.

[I94-212

If any way there be; lead ye o'erhead,
And hold your course the forest through to where,
In golden shadow steeped, that mystic spray
O'er-hangs the precious-teeming glebe; and thou,
Mother divine, fail not my nicest need.'
He said; then stays his steps, and, watchful, heeds
What signs they give and whither hold their way:
By turns they feed, by turns so flutter on
As follower's eye might hold them in its ken;
Till, as they reach where, breathed in noisome reek,
Avernus hung its poison in mid air,
Sudden they mount; then, transverse darting, cleave,
The liquid sky, and, stooping side by side,
Straight on the tree alight, the wished-for spot,
Whence, seen in contrast with the boughs' dark green,
The bright gold flickered to the flickering breeze.
As in the woods, in depth of winter's cold,
The sprouting mistletoe bursts forth anewA foreign growth upon an alien stemAnd, draped in foliage fair from tree to tree,
Clothes with its yellow blooms the rounded boles;
So gleaming showed the vegetable gold
There in the dark oak's heart, so quivering flashed
The leaves' thin foil, and tinkled to the wind.
With eager haste, impatient of delay,
His prize Aeneas grasps, and, breaking off,
Bears it in triumph to the Sibyl's grot.
Meantime the Trojans on the shingly beach

213-231]

BOOK VI.

21 3

Bewept Misenus dead, and pious paid
The last sad honours to the insensate clay:
And first they raise a mighty pyre on high
With unctuous pinewood rich and cloven oak,
Then weave its sides with sombre foliage round,
And-gloomy cypresses in front reared upBid crown the structure with his beaming arms.
Some from the bubbling caldron's brassy womb
The heated waters stream, and, joint by joint,
Lave the cold corse, and rub with fragrant oils;
When, wild and high, their loud lament arose.
Then--wailing done-they lift the rigid limbs,
And streak him decent on the funeral couch,
And there for pall, what late his living wear,
They lay the purple vestments of the dead.
Some stoop their shoulders to the ponderous bier,
Sad task! and now with eyes averse apply
The kindling torch, as erst their fathers wont.
Whereon, as high the burning pile aspires,
Spices, and gums, and holy meats, flung in,
Together blaze, and feed the mounting flame.
Then, as mid sinking fires the ashes sink,
The smouldering mass and soaking embers cold
They drench with wine; and now the bones with care
Stout Corynaeus in a brazen vase
Doth glean from forth the pyre, and safe in-urns.
Next, font in hand, he thrice in circuit passed
His comrades round, and thrice with olive branch
The lustral lymph in misty showers bestowed;
Then, all so cleansed, out-spake the last farewell.

2I4

THE ,4ENEID.

[232-252

But good Aeneas rears of mighty size
A"monument, with oar and trumpet carved,
The dead man's arms, where rose a foreland high,
From him Mis6nus called, and which should still
From age to age hand down the deathless name;
And, this despatched, the Sibyl's bidding next
With zeal he speeds.
Hard by there yawned a cave
All shingle-strown, with lake close-skirting fenced
Of inkiest hue, and woods of sombrous shade:
No fowl that sails the void its way may hold
That weird dark vault above, steamed from its gorge
Such noxious vapour stains the limpid dayAnd hence in Greekish tongue Aornos named.
Here first the priestess next the altar sets
Four goodly steers with backs of glossy jet,
And thwart their foreheads sheds the hallowed wine;
Then, cropping short the forelocks' curly growth,
Casts it for first oblation to the flames,
The while her voice in piercing tones invokes
Grim Hecate, potent or in heaven or hell:
'
Others lay knife to throat, and, hot and black,
The spirting streams of life in goblets catch.
Aeneas' hand a dark-fleeced lamb devotes
To those twin daughters of old Chaos hoar,
Black Night and eke her mighty sister Earth;
And next, dread Proserpine, to thee doth bid
A barren heifer bleed. To Pluto then,
Swart Stygian king, he 'gins the midnight rites,

253-269]

BOOK VI.

215

And all along the blazing altar lays
Whole slaughtered beeves, and still, as sinks the flame,
Rich gums amid the holocaust doth shed;
When lo, as glimmering beams announce the sun,
The reeling earth 'gan rumble 'neath their tread,
The wooded heights went swaying to and fro,
And through the dusk, in dismal howlings heard,
Foul dogs of Hell proclaim the goddess nigh:
'Avaunt, unhallowed ye !' the priestess screams,
'Nor dare in all the grove to stay! and thou,
Aeneas, on, and strip thy ready blade.
A valiant heart, Trojan, behoves thee now,
Now for a soul shall scorn to flinch or quail!'And straight she plunged her down the yawning gorge
In maniac wise, while his unfaltering stride
Keeps pace with hers adown the dark descent.
Ye nether Powers who sway the under-world,
Ye silent Shades and Spirits of the dead,
Thou Phlegethon of fire, and Chaos old,
Wide rule of formless Night, waste, dark, and still,
O, grant the bard, of dim tradition taught,
The secrets or your shadowy realms f61eTl;
May he, unblamed, the eternal blazon make,
And sing to living ear what earth and mystery shroud!
Darkling and lone their dismal way they groped
Mid gloom and night through Pluto's drear abodes,
Through ghostly halls and mansions of the dead,
Waste spectral realms where unsubstantial all;

216

THE A ENEID.

[270-289

So, stumbling on, the lated traveller fares
Through some vast wood, while overhead the moon
From sailing. clouds sheds down a niggard beam,
When Jove hath veiled the sky, and blinding Night
Ta'en form and colour from the things of day.
Close by Hell-gate, in Orcus' opening jaws,
Remorse hath fixed his seat, and vengeful Care,
Diseases ghastly-pale, and joyless Eld,
Hunger that prompts to ill, and coward Fear,
Unsightly Want, and squalid PenuryShapes hideous all to see-and Pain, and Death,
And Death's twin-brother Sleep. There too abide
The soul's unhallowed Joys, and murderous War,
Housed in the very porch. Here couch them too,
Each in her iron lair, the Furies grim,
And madding Discord shows her snaky locks,
In braids blood-dripping twined. Full in the midst
An ancient elm uprears its giant bole,
And lays out wide its aged arms on high,
Umbrageous, vast; here Dreams fantastic find
Meet haunt, 'tis said, and cling 'neath every leaf.
Nor these alone; full many a Thing beside,
Monstrous of shape and kind, besets the door;
There bestial Centaurs stall them by the gates,
Half-fish, half-maid, there twy-formed Scyllas won,
There hundred-handed Briareus, and there
With horrid hiss, the worm of Lerna's fen,
Dread Hydra, shows; Chimaeras belching flame,
Gorgons, Harpies, and that three-bodied Shade,

290-307]

BOOK VI.

217

His sword Aeneas grips in sudden fear,
As straight the goblin crew came trooping on,
The naked weapon pointing at their face;
And, but his sage conductor timely showed
The dreaded Shapes were nnembodied breath,
Thin airy phantoms flitting to and fro
Beneath the hollow counterfeits of form,
He still had rushed, and cleft with idle stroke
The impassive substance, closing aye again.
The portal crossed, now runs the road to where
Tartarean Acheron flows. Turbid with mire,
Here eddying boiled the woeful stream along,
And all its ooze by fitful jets disgorged
Full in Cocytus' flood.
These streams and banks
A grisly toll-man guards, and Charon hight:
Hideous his filth; a fleece of elf-beard grey
Matted his unkempt chin; each staring eye
One orb of flame; and, tied in sloven knots,
A squalid mantle down his shoulders hangs:
Crew in himself, now pole in hand he sculls,
Now sails his dingy craft before the wind,
And ferries in his barge his ghostly freight;
In years well struck, but fresh and sappy-green
The hale old age that speaks the lusty god.
Towards him straight a motley crew pell-mell
Still onward streamed and rushed; matrons and men,
Great captains dead, boys and unwedded maids,

218

THE AE.NEID.

[308-326

And stripling youths on biers untimely stretched
Their parents' eyes before: thick as in woods
The whirling leaves drift downward on the blast
In autumn's nipping prime, or as the birds
Flock shorewards from the deep, whom, southward
driven,
Chill winter sends to sunnier climes afar.
Weeping the wretches stood, and one and all
For foremost waftage prayed, and spread their hands,
And sought with straining eyes the further bank;
But, all unmoved, the sullen boatman takes
Now these, now those, and others, chased afar,
Drives wholly from the brink.
Lost in amaze,
The hero paused, and eyed the wondrous stir;
Then thus, deep-moved: 'Say, gracious maid, what
means
This flocking to the stream ? what seek the ghosts ?
Or what strange law such nice distinction makes,
That yon poor wailing sprites must quit the banks,
While these, more favoured, sweep the livid flood?'
Then briefly thus that ancient dame replied:
'Anchises' son, thou very seed of Heaven,
These are Cocytus' depths, and yon dull stream
Is hateful Styx, by whose dread majesty
No god will falsely swear; that crowd thou seest
Have all in poortith died, and burial lack;
Charon that boatman; those the buried dead

327-344]

BOOK I.

21

9

Who ride the wave; for not one mortal wight
The sable barge o'er yon hoarse flood may take
Or ere his bones the peaceful grave have pressed:
Still here and there a hundred years they roam,
And shivering flit these doleful shores around;
Till so at length, that lingering penance done,
'Tis theirs once more with licensed hopes to see
The much-wished banks and flood.
Touched to the soul,
His steps Aeneas stayed, and, musing deep,
Sore rued their cruel lot. Leucaspis there
Amid the crowd he sees, and with him wend
Orontes, captain of his Lycian fleet,
In saddest teen, of death's last honours reft;
Lamented pair ! whom late, from native Troy
At his loved side o'er stormy billows borne,
That bitter blast had caught, and, foundering there,
Sunk ships and crews amid the stifling waves.
And lo, where now comes Palinure in sight,
His pilot staunch; who late on Libya's main,
As true he steered and still would read the stars,
O'er the tall poop fell headlong to the depths.
So sad the phantom looked and such the gloom,
The prince scarce knew; then, known, bespake him
thus:
'What envious Power, O Palinure, declare
So robbed our fleet, and whelmed thee in the floods ?
Needs thee unfold: for, ne'er before proved false,
Apollo here my trustful hope deceived,

220

THE AENEID.

[345-365

Pronouncing plain that, safe through all the deep,
Our Palinure should reach Ausonia's shoreLo, thus his pledge redeemed !'
Then he:' My prince,
Nor Phoebus played thee false, nor me no god
Did cast o'erboard and drown amid the deeps;
But at my post assigned, as there I held
The rudder tight and steered the good ship's course,
I slipped, unlucky hap ! and, headlong fall'n,
Brought in my gripe the tiller wrenched away.
Yet not for self-by the rude seas I swear !Feared I so much as lest thy ship should fail,
Dishelmed, and rudely from her steersman wrung,
Amid the toppling of such mountain waves.
Still onwards borne, for three long blustery nights
The south wind swept me o'er the watery waste;
Scarce on the fourth at dawning light I spied
From off a billow's crest Italia's coast
Shorewards I slowly swam, and soon were safe,
But ah ! the savage folk, as there I hung,
Clogged with my dripping weeds, and eager clutched
With digging nails the tall cliff's rugged top,
Ta'en for a prize, despatched me with the sword;
So to this day the sport of wind and tide,
I toss with waves, or welter on the beach.
But by that pleasant light of heaven above,
By those fresh gales 'twas rapture once to hear,
By thy dead sire, by all those hopes that hang
On loved Iulus' growing years and prime,
O, free me from these ills, thou dauntless man!

" ,, '

0^'I

366-383]

UBOOKVI.

22

1

And to this end, or cast small dole of dust
There on my weltering corse--nor hard the task;
'Tis but short run to Velia's harbour backOr, if a way there be, if any such
A goddess mother to her son may showFor well I ween not all unhelpt of Heaven
Thou so art fain o'er these dread streams to pass,
And swim the dismal Stygian mere-then ah!
Stretch thy poor friend a hand may stead his need,
And lift me with thee o'er these waters wan,
That e'en in death my bark may ride in peace.'
So he: when thus, preventing, spake the seer:
'Whence, Palinurus, whence such impious wish !
Untombed, unburied,-and shalt thou behold
The Stygian mere and dread Cocytus' flood,
The Furies' haunt, and tread yon bank unbid ?
Forbear the thought, nor dream by vow or prayer
To change what Fate hath fixt past power to change.
Nathless attend, nor let oblivion take
What now I tell-'twill cheer thy sad mishap :
Know then that, plagued of Heaven through all their
bounds,
The brutal dwellers by that fatal shore
Shall yet thy sprite with hallowed rites appease,
Shall build thy tomb, and annual offerings make,
And bid their coast to endless ages on
Hold Palinurus' name.' His care this soothes;
Grief for a time so banished his sad heart,
He joys him in the land shall bear his name.

222

THE AENEID.

8

[3 4-402

Proceed they now, and for the river hold:
Anon, descried, when as that boatman grim
From off the Stygian pool doth note the pair
Wend through the stilly grove, and step by step
Right for the bank draw on, with challenge gruff
He straight demands: 'Be what thou may'st, who thus
In warlike weed would'st fain our streams approach,
Thence-where thou stand'st-thine errand speak, and
check
That foot's presumptuous stride! These be the realms
Of ghostly Shades, of Sleep and drowsy Night;
Ill practice 'twere to grow, nor law allows
Our Stygian keel thus living wights to bear.
E'en as it is, good sooth long rued me sore
The hour I took Alcid6s on the mere ;
Nor joyed I more of Theseus for my freight,
Nor eke his doughty mate, Pirithoiis hight,
For all my plea that these were sons of gods,
Champions of might, were vain to say them nay:
One on Hell's watch-dog laid his jailor's grasp,
And dragged him trembling from our monarch's throne,
While these, more daring still, would fain have forced
Great Pluto's empress from his very bed.'
When briefly thus Amphrysus' priestess spake:
'Part with thy silly fears; plots here are none;
Defence, not force, our arms would speak: for us
Hell's yelping warder may for ever scare,
Chained in his echoing den, your meagre ghosts;
No need, for us, chaste Proserpine o'erstep,
A model wife, her uncle-husband's door.

403-422]

BOOK VI.

223

Aeneas this, of Troy, good as he's brave,
And hither come dark Erebus adown
To see his sire. If filial worth like his
Must fail to move, in living guise displayed,
This branch at least '-and therewithal she showed
The golden sprig her folded robe concealed'Thy grace will own.' Nor needed more: at once
The swelling choler of his bosom fell;
Speechless with awe the fateful bough he gazed,
Unseen so long; then turns his dusky keel,
And nears the brink. Next, from their seats dislodged
Where, closely packed, they thronged the benches all,
He thrusts the ghosts, and, bridge and deck soon
cleared,
Receives on board the great Aeneas straight.
Cobbled and patched, sore groaned the crazy hulk
Such weight to take, and, strained in every seam,
Oft drinks at many a leak the plenteous ooze;
At last, unswamped, he lands mid slush and sedge
The maid and hero on the further bank.
Couched in a cave that fronts their entrant view
Huge Cerberus here with triple-throated bark
Stunned the whole region round; to whom the dameFor straight she marked his mane already up,
A'bristle all with snakes-flings down a cate
In drowsy posset steeped, and honey-sweet:
With eager greed, his every throat agape
For hunger's pinch, the ravenous monster snapped
The falling sop, and, soon with sleep o'ercome,

rZ Fr

224

THE

'

A Z

AEID.

T

TT

rA

A .,r

[A.4

Stretched his huge chine, and sprawled o'er all the den.
Springs to the pass, its guard thus drugged and laid,
Aeneas quick; and now is past the flood
That never sailing on its waters sees
Wight that shall after measure them again.
Straight loud laments are heard and shrilly wails,
The weeping ghosts of infants in the porch,
Babes of span length from undrained nipple snatched,
Whom the black day did rob of pleasant life,
Whelmed in untimely night. To these succeed
All whom arraignment false had done to deathFor, sooth to say, are here no several seats
Apart from law and law's redress assigned;
Judge of appeals, Minos doth here preside,
Shakes the dread urn, the silent court convenes,
Reviews the life, and sifts the charge preferred.
A moping melancholy train doth hold
The places next to these, the self-destroyed;
Unstained of crime, their own rash hand supplied
Death's office on themselves, and, sick of light,
Flung life away. How would they gladly nowAy, beg and drudge in that bright world above!
Vain wish, of Fate opposed: the unlovely mere
Fast binds them in, and, nine times coiled between,
Encircling Styx for ever bars return.
Short space herefrom, fair spread on every side,
The Mourning Fields next take his eye-for such

442-462]

BOOK VI.

225

The name they bear. Here pleach6d hedge-rows hide,
And myrtle groves in secret alleys green
Secluded lodge, all whom unpitying love
Had wasted slow, and clung with pining grief;
Not e'en in death their tender pains may cease.
Here Phaedra he beholds, and Procris' sprite,
And Eriphyle with her bosom bare,
Still pointing to her son's unnatural wound;
Evadn6 and Pasipha6 too, with whom
Laodamia went, and Caenis, now
In woman's shape arrayed, once man, and so
Back to her pristine sex by fate transformed.
Lo, mid the rest, all newly from her wound,
Phoenician Dido roamed the spacious wood,
Tyre's hapless queen; whom when the prince of Troy
Dim through the dusk at nearer view discernedAs who the moon, while yet the month is young,
Or sees through clouds arise, or thinks he sawWith loving words and tear-drops falling fast
Straight he began: ' Then, ah! 'twas all too true,
Unhappy queen, the tale that thou wast dead,
Yea, self-slain too-and I to work thee death !
Now by the stars I swear, by Powers above,
By all is here in Hell most sacred held,
Unsought of me-revolting to my heartThat so I parted from thy friendly shore;
But Heaven's imperious will-that will which now
Constrains my steps these glimmering shades to tread,
These sunless nether wastes, ' dank, squalid, drear,

226

THE AENEID.

[463-481

Night's dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss'Twas this so drave me forth; nor deemed I, sooth,
My flight would plunge thee in such depth of woe.
Nay, stay thy feet, nor shun my yearning gaze;
Think whom wouldst madly fly; 'tis the last time
A wayward fate may give me speech of thee.'
With such fond breath, while still her stern regard
Scowled at each word, the prince was fain to soothe
Her burning ire, and gave his tears to flow;
But all unmoved, with scornful looks averse,
The indignant fair one stared upon the ground,
Nor more might let her stately mien unbend
For all he strove to say, than stood she there
Of hardest flint, or sculptured marble cold;
At length, abrupt, she flung her from the spot,
And hies amid the forest's inmost depths,
Where her first lord Sychaeus shares her care,
And gives her fullest measure for her love;
Yet not the less, panged at her evil fate,
The prince with tearful eyes pursues her long,
And follows to the last her flitting form.
Now wends he on with laboured step and slow
His fated way; when lo the twain arrive
The furthest meads, the which, sequestered, fair,
Those warrior souls possess who shone in arms :
Here Tydeus meets his view, and he once called
Parthenopaeus, famed in battle-field,
With pale Adrastus' shade; here too the chiefs
Of Dardan's line, so wailed and mourned above

48240(]

BOOK. V.

227

As low they lay, in patriot battle slain.
Sore groaned the prince as there in long array
Before his sorrowing sight the heroes passed;
Glaucus, and Medon, and Thersilochus,
With those brave three who called Antenor sire,
And Polyphoetes, Ceres' holy priest,
And bold Idaeus too--his phantom grasp
Still on the chariot laid, still on the shield.
The ghostly muster throng him right and left:
Nor may one sight suffice; fain would they all
Still linger fond and step with him along,
And why he so came down would fain be told.
But Graecia's lords and Agamemnon's hosts,
As scared they saw the warrior and his arms
Outshine the gloom and dazzle through the dusk,
With terror quailed, and shook with utter fear ;
Some turned and fled, as erst they sought the ships;
Others, more brave, with gibbering voice uplift,
Bid call to arins; but, failing faint, the cry
Balks the dumb mouth, and leaves the jaws agape.
Here Priam's son, Deiphobus, he sees,
His face and limbs all marred and mangled sore,
Hands, nostrils, ears, with foul inglorious wounds
Slashed and lopped off; whom, as he trembling stood,
And, cowering, strove to hide his ghastly shames,
The prince scarce knew; then, known, thus hails him
first;
O0say, Deiphobus, right valiant knight,
True son of Teucer's blood, what heart could find
Qz2

228

HE

AENEID.

[502-517

What wretch had leave, the fiendish spite to wreak
That left thee thus ? On that last night of Troy
'Twas current told how, spent with slaying foes,
Thy wearied valour sunk fordone, where soon
Mid slaughtered heaps thy corse unnoted lay;
Then with this hand, to do thee fitting grace,
Did I on our Rhoetean beach upraise
A stately cenotaph, and loudly thrice
Invoked thy sprite; and now thy name and arms
Mark the memorial spot: thyself, poor friend,
Alas! I might not find; else had'st thou had,
Or ere I sailed, a grave in father-land.'
Whereto, in quick reply, thus Priam's son:
'Nay, gentle prince, thy piety may well
Full quittance claim of every duty paid
Thy friend, and this his own true ghostly self.
Not aught of'thee undone-no; fate it was,
And that vile Spartan dame's concurring guilt,
So plunged me in these ills; love-tokens these
Which that leal wife vouchsafed her parting lord.
How we, poor dupes, that fatal night bestowed,
Fooled of false hope, on mad delusive joys,
Thou know'st, dear friend; must needs but too well
know:
At that sad tide, when as the fatal steed
Came bounding up our Castle's steep ascent,
And, big with death, a mail-clad host did bring
Hid in its teeming womb, this precious dame,
On mock pretence for Bacchic dance to lead
A troop of yelling wives about the walls,

5-18-537]

BOOK VI.

Amid the throng, with monster torch uplift,
Signalled the Greeks from'off the topmost tower.
Me then to sleep addressed, o'erwatched and spent,
My luckless chamber held; and there, withdrawn,
Delicious slumber weighed my senses down,
Balmy, and deep, and likest quiet death;
Meanwhile my peerless wife had filched away
All weapons from the house, among the first
My trusty sword from o'er my pillowed head;
Which done, she next with doors laid open wide
Calls Menelaiis in, hoping, be sure,
Such signal boon would please her olden flame,
And grateful Greece condone her misdeeds past.
But to be brief: my chamber door they burst,
He, and that arch-contriver of all crime,
The bastard scion of the Aeolian stock,
Laertes' shame-enough; to Greece, ye godsBe but the prayer with righteous lips preferredMeet quittance give, and these foul maims repay!
But now, in turn, what errand, prince, declare,
A living man, hath hither brought thee down;
Did sudden flaw so cast thee from thy course,
Or comest at Heaven's command ? or say what hap
Doth bid thee tread our sunless regions sad,
This chaos drear, and shadowy land of death?'

By this, as on they spake, Day's roseate car
The purple peak o'er-rode of Heaven's high noon;
And haply so in such like talk were spent

229

230

THDE AENEID.

[538-554

Their stint of measured time ; but the good seer
With curt reproof thus warned the truant chief
'Night falls apace while we, Aeneas, thus
Squander the precious hours in sobs and tears:
Lo, here the spot where cleaves the road in twain;
The right doth close by Pluto's palace wend,
Our route direct Elysiumward; the left
To godless Tartarus leads, where pained the damned.'
When thus Deiphobus: 'Let not, dread maid,
Thine anger burn; my parting leave I take,
Will back to darkness, and fulfil my term,
Re-joining so the dead.' Then to the prince:
'Pass on, thou glory of our folk; be thine
A brighter lot than Heaven assigned thy friend.'
And on the word, nor further parley sought,
He turned his steps, and joined his ghostly mates.
Sudden with backward gaze Aeneas looks,
And 'neath a crag that beetled to the left
A fortress broad doth spy and triple-walled,
The which a fierce swift stream did round empale
With fiery surge and cataracts of flame,
Tartarean Phlegethon, and, hurling, drave
With thundrous roar great molten rocks along;
In front a portal huge, with columns flanked
Of solid adamant, and gates of proof
Might utmost strength of mortal man defy,
Or warring Heaven itself to beat them down;
While sheer upstood against the lurid cope
An iron tower, with ruddy flame illumed.

555-5731'

BOOK VI.

Here fell Tisiphon8 doth day and night,
A sleepless watch, before the threshold stand
In girt-up gown blood-wet; and ceaseless thence
Loud wails are heard, and crack of cruel whips,
And clash of steel, and clank of dragging chains.
The chieftain stood, and pale with tingling ear
Drew in the hideous din : 'What forms of guilt,
O virgin, say, what horrid pains are here,
And whence these rueful wailings to the skies ?
Slowly the seer: ' Illustrious prince of Troy,
Yon threshold curst no righteous foot may tread;
But me great Hecate's self, what time she gave
My trusted care Avernus' woods in charge,
Did fully teach those tortures of the gods,
And hand in hand through all their horrors led.
His iron rule here Rhadamanthus holds,
Crete's sternest judge, who ruth nor mercy knows;
Punished as heard, here every wrong he tries,
And such dark deeds as in the world above
Each guilty wretch did unatoned defer
'Till death's late hour, and hugged his silly cheat,
Perforce confessed, compels him now to own.
Anon Tisiphone with eager leap
Springs scourge in hand amid the convict crew,
And to and fro the spurned souls doth lash,
And, rearing in her left the knotted snakes,
Thrusts in their face, and calls her sister fiends.
And then, the torturing hour arrived, at last
On grating hinge roll back the gates of doom:

23r

232

THE AENEID.

[574-594

See you what watch that vestibule besets,
What hideous Shape the guarded threshold keeps ?
Within, more dire, a monstrous Hydra squats
With fifty black enormous throats agape,
While plumb-down drops blind Tartarus itself,
And twice as deep 'neath lowest hell descends,
As subject earth is topped of highest heaven.
There, as they fell, with thunders stricken down,
Earth's elder progeny, the Titans, lie,
O'erthrown, and wallowing in the lowest pit.
There I beheld Aloeus' twin-born sons,
Enormous pair ! whose daring hands aspired
High heaven to storm, and Jove himself down pull,
Deposed and hurl6d from his selle supreme.
Salmoneus' penal torments too I saw,
Atonement dire ! whose pelting flames must ape
The fires of Jove and thunders of the sphere :
Of four fleet coursers borne and darting brands,
Amidst of Greece and Elis' very streets
In triumph proud the daring miscreant rode,
And claimed, vain brag ! the homage of a god;
Madman! to mock the terrors of the storm,
The all-unrivalled levin peal of heaven,
With rattling brass and horse-hooves' horny beat
But from his dark pavilion in the clouds
The great All-Father cast his weapon forthNo firebrand he, nor pine-wood's sooty flameAnd with the swing and sweep of that one dint
Dismissed him headlong to the dark abyss.
There had you seen besides great Tityos lie,

595-6141

BOOK VI.

Nurseling of mother Earth's all-suckling breast;
O'er nine broad acres spreads his bulky frame,
The while atop a monstrous vulture perched
With curving beak doth still for food explore
The deathless spleen that ever breeds him woe,
Tenants his breast, and deeper mines his side,
Nor rest nor respite to one fibre gives,
Consumed of pangs, -and stillto pangs renewed.
Why name Ixion ? why the Lapith crew,
Pirithoiis and the rest, o'er whom, unpoised,
Hangs the black crag that still doth slip and slip,
And, never falling, ever seems to fall ?
Or whom the festive couch to ease invites,
On golden pillars propped, and 'fore their gaze
In regal pomp the tempting banquet spread;
The while anear in ambushed watch doth lurk
The Fury queen, and still with sudden spring
Forbids one wretch the dainty fare to touch,
And rears her torch, and dins their deafened ears.
Here those besides whose fell disnatured hate
In life's short day did wrong a brother's love;
Whose impious hand a parent smote, or who
A poor dependent's trusted cause betrayed;
Or those, more numerous still, whose hoarded pelf,
Rich to themselves, nor kith nor kin might share;
The foul adulterer, slain of righteous meed;
Who civil feud and wars unnatural waged;
Who troth disowned, and wronged a master's faithAll such alike, here mewed and prisoned close,
The dreaded hour expect. Ask not their pains,

233

234

THE AENEID.

[6r5--635

What several doom, what stage of penal woe
Awaits their fall adown that dark descent:
Some roll huge rocks uphill; some whirling hang,
On wheels dispread; fixt in his fiery chair
Sits Theseus there, and will for ever sit;
And Phlegyas there mid all his misery owns
His torture just, and cries that all may hear:
' Take warning hence, and think no scorn of Heaven.'
This sold his country, and for gold imposed
A tyrant lord to rule the land in blood,
And made, and eke unmade, her laws for gain;
Incestuous that durst climb a daughter's bed,
Of gods and men abhorred; all dared alike
Some monstrous deed, and did the deed they dared.
Had I a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues,
And iron throat with brazen lungs inspired,
No, not e'en so might I comprise entire
The divers forms of guilt, or sum up all
The varied vengeance of their several pains.'
When Phoebus' ancient priestess so had said,
'Now haste,' she cried; ' thy purposed tribute pay,
And mend we so our pace; mine eyes discern
Great Pluto's palace with its bastioned walls
And iron archway forged of Cyclops' hands,
Fronting our path ahead, where rule prescribes
We fix the offering of our sacred bough.'
She said; when soon with quickened step they passed
The last dark space betwixt, and neared the gate:
The door-way prompt Aeneas takes, and-first

636-6551

BOOK VI.

His body sprinkled from the lustral vaseFixes the branch against the portal's front.
Such offering to the goddess made, lo next
The Happy Grounds they reach-fair fields of green
Mid nodding groves, the seats of joy and bliss:
Here, broad diffused, an ampler ether clothes
The verdant plains, in dazzling lustre drest,
And suns and planets of their own they know.
Here athlete pairs their supple limbs disport
In grassy rings, or wrestle on the sand;
There others, singing, weave the mazy dance,
The beaten measure timing with their feet,
The while anear, symphonious to their tread,
The long-stoled bard of Thrace melodious chants
The seven prime powers of sound, or smites them out
With fingers now, and now with ivory quill,
In dulcet chimings from the quivering chords.
Here Teucer's olden race the prince beholds,
Most goodly sons, born in Earth's happier prime;
Ilus, Assaracus, and him revered
For Troy's great founder-chieftain, Dardanus :
Here too with wondering awe his eye doth mark
Their shadowy wains at distance ranged, and spears,
A bristling wood, in earth down-pight, the while
Their steeds, unharnessed, graze the flowery mead.
What joy was theirs in life in cars and arms,
Or what delight the high-bred courser sleek
To feed and break for war, the same e'en here,
To nether worlds removed, attends them still.

236..

THE

AE VE ID.

[656-676

Others to right and left at feast he sees
Of woodland fruits, on grassy slopes reclined,
With choral chants between and paeans glad,
Amid a scented laurel grove, wherefrom
Eridanus to earthwards welling up
'Twixt wooded banks his wealth of waters rolls.
Here who for fatherland contending bled,
Priests who in life were chaste and holy found,
Blest bards whose strains approving Phoebus owned,
Worthies who life by useful arts refined,
Inventive known, or grateful fame achieved,
Thanked of a world for pure unselfish good;
All such, in converse sweet congenial joined,
Here wear-meet badge-trim crowns of maiden white.

Whom, as they streamed around, the Sibyl thus
Addressing spake, Musaeus chief, for him
The crowd enclosed about, and reverent viewed
His goodly shoulders tower above their heads:
' Say, happy souls, and thou, blest Singer, say
What regions, here, what seats, Anchises hold;
To him our errand lies; for him we crossed,
And his dear face to see, Hell's awful floods.'
And thus to her in few the bard again:
'We none have several home; we range at large
These shady gtoves, or rivers' banks, or where
Mid crystal rills the freshened landscape winds:
But-such your wish-o'ertop yon brow with mne,
And soon your feet shall ready pathway find.'

677-697]

BOOK VI,

237

He said; and, leading, from the summit shows
The Shining Meads; then down the hill they fare.
But sire Anchises in the vale below
Was now with earnest gaze reviewing all
The souls there pent and doomed one day to pass
To upper air, and happed just then to scan
With special heed his own dear future race,
What fortunes, fates, what deeds of bold emprise,
Should mark the illustrious line; when, as he saw,
Wending towards him through the mead in haste,
Aeneas' form, with eager joy and tears
Streaming his cheeks adown, both hands he spread,
While from his lips withal these accents fell:
' And art thou here at last, and hath thy love
Won the dread way, and blessed thy father's hope?
O, is it mine that very face to gaze,
To speak and list the tones we knew of old!
Yes, ever such my thought, as hour by hour
With trustful count I sped the time along;
Thrice happy day that brings my reckoning true !
But ah, to think, ere mine to view thee thus,
What tracts of land, what oceans thou hast cross'd,
What varied perils still beset my son !
How feared I too lest that strange Libyan clime,
Fell Juno's rule, should work thee scathe and woe!'
Then he: 'Thy ghost, dear sire, thy sorrowing ghost,
Still coming to me o'er and o'er again,
E'en this it was so drave me to these doors;
My ships, safe anchored, ride the Tuscan main.

238

THE AENEID.

[698-716

But, dearest father, let, O let me clasp
Thy .hand in mine, nor shun a son's embrace 'And ever as he spake glad tears the while
Bedewed each streaming cheek. There fondly thrice
His folding arms he flung his neck about,
And thrice their eager grasp the spectre mocked,
Like to the viewless wind, and fleeting as a dream.
Meantime adown the windings of the glen
A grove of murmuring trees the chief doth note,
Sequestered, fair, and Leth6's silent tide
A'flowing gently past its peaceful bowers.
Around the stream on either bank were seen
Unnumbered nations flitting to and fro,
Peoples, and tribes; thick as in summer's hush
The bees on wing o'er-range the flowery meads,
Light on the varied blooms, or hovering hang
The fair white lilies' drooping bells around,
With drowsy hummings filling all the plain.
Aeneas, startled at the sudden scene,
Questions the cause-' What yonder streams might be,
And why those crowds so thronged and filled the banks.
Anchises then: ' These are the souls for whom
New sets of bodies are decreed by Fate;
There, as thou seest, by Leth6 stream a'stoop,
Its all-forgetful tide they quaff, and drink
A long oblivion at the drowsy wave.
All these, good sooth, my soul hath long been fain
To bid thee know, but most to point thee out

717-735]

BOOK V1.

239

Yon embryo shapes, our progeny to be,
That thou, as I, may'st own with greater joy
Thy quest at last hath destined Latium found.'
'What say'st, dear sire ? or who the thought conceive
That souls, set free by death, would ever quit
These blissful seats, and 'neath terrestrial skies,
Once shuffled off, their cumbrous flesh resume ?
Poor ghosts ! whence such dire fondness still for earth?'
'In sooth, my son, I'll tell, nor further leave
Thy troubled thoughts to anxious doubt a prey,'
Anchises says--then opens all in course.
'Know first, the heavens, the earth, the liquid plains,
The moon's resplendent globe, the sun and stars,
An inward-dwelling Spirit doth sustain,
And through each part a thinking Mind diffused
Blends with the mass, and stirs the mighty whole.
Thence souls of men and beasts, the flying kind,
And all those monstrous shapes old Ocean breeds
Beneath the surface of his marble floor.
Sparks from one common Soul divine, these all
The ethereal laws and fiery energies
Of that their heavenly birth observant own
In so far as, of clogging clay unharmed,
Nor frame of mould, nor dying members gross,
May dull their blunted powers; but, so alloyed,
To weak emotions prone and passions low,
They joy and grieve, desire and fear, nor more,
In fleshly prison mewed of sensuous gloom,
Discern their native skies. Nay, and when life

r

240

TT T

THE

A 7 .

TT

AENEID.

TT

[736-7

With light's last beam is fled,-no, not e'en then
May every ill, nor all the body's plagues,
The wretches quit; needs must full many a stain,
Contracted long, have now struck wondrous deep,
E'en in the substance of the soul ingrained.
For this are various disciplines enjoined,
And penal pangs must former guilts atone:
Some blanch on high, to searching winds hung out;
From some again their in-dyed soils are washed
In steep-down gulfs, or else burnt out with fireSuch ghostly pains, each for his several case,
We all endure; thence through Elysium sent,
The worthier few its happy fields to holdTill lapse of time, the fated cycle filled,
Have purged the inherent taint, and nothing now
Save the pure ether of the soul remain,
The primal ray of unpolluted light.
So, for those sprites thine eye doth yonder scanAll such, when as, through circling seasons sped,
A thousand years have run the destined round,
Doth Heaven thus flocking call to Lethe stream,
That, all remembrance of the past effaced,
They so may mount your upper skies once more,
And to this end, of quickened instinct led,
Own to new longings after flesh again.'
Anchises paused; then out amid the buzz
Of swarming ghosts his princely son doth draw
And eke his Sibyl guide, and mounts a knoll
Whence he might all, as onwards still they streamed,

54

755-776]

BOOK VI.

241

Peruse, and each by feature plain discern'But now what glories wait our Dardan's line
In after days, what sons shall grace his stem,
Graffed of Italia's stock, most noble souls,
And who one day shall link them to our name,
Of such I'll tell, and show thee, too, thy fates.
He there-dost see ?--yon graceful youth who stays
His forward step upon that maiden lanceDoth hold by Fate the nearest place to light,
Foredoomed the first to upper worlds to rise,
Mixed of Italian blood-thy latest son,
Begotten in thy life's declining years,
The fair Lavinia's off-spring, silvan-born,
And hence by Alban name of Silvius known;
King, and the sire of kings; in whose proud line
Our house shall long o'er Alba Longa reign.
Procas the next, pride of the Trojan race,
Capys, and Numitor, and one shall yet
Bring back thy name, Aeneas Silvius,
Yea, rival too thy virtues and exploits,
If ever his the Alban throne to mount.
Look you, what youths! what martial bearing theirs !
How proudly, too, those civic crowns they wear,
Brow-bound with oak! These, these are they shall build
Nomentum, Gabii, and Fidenae's wall,
And bid Collatia's frowning towers o'erlook
Her girdled heights; for these shall Bola rise,
Cora, Pometii, and Inuus' FortNames that to fame shall yet be known, though now
R

242

TI E AENEID.

1777-796

Nor name nor fame the noteless places own.
There--of that group-shall Romulus espouse
His grandsire's cause, and hew the spoiler down;
True son of Mars, whose noble veins shall bound,
Of Ilia born, Assarac's royal blood.
See from his helm the double plume upstand,
And how e'en here with glories all his own
The sire already signs him for the spheres.
Lo, this is he at whose auspicious call
Imperial Rome evoked to life shall match
Her rule with earth, her spirit with the skies,
And, for her single queenly seat embraced,
Shall seven great hills with girdling stone enclasp,
Blest in her breed of men ; so, turret-crowned,
The Berecyntian Dame through Phrygia rides,
Prolific mother of a hundred sons,
All denizens of heaven, all tenants of the skies.
Now this way bend thy strongest glance, and there
Yon dazzling troop survey, thy Roman folk:
See, Caesar there and all Julus' seed,
Foredoomed one day 'neath heaven's high cope to pass.
Lo, this is he, the man of whom so oft
Thine ear hath heard as promised to thy fame,
Caesar, Augustus clept, true Godhead's child,
And who shall yet to Latium's soil restore,
Where Saturn erewhile reigned, its Age of Gold;
Yea, conquering push his empire's boundless sway
Apast far Garamant and Ind, to climes
Beyond the solar walk and circling year,

797-815]

BOOK VI.

Where heaven-pressed Atlas on his shoulder wheels
The spinning sphere with burning stars bestrown.
At his approach e'en now expectant quake
The Caspian realms and far Maeotis' shore,
Of warning Heaven alarmed; e'en now great Nile
At all his sevenfold gates affrighted shrinks.
Such tract of earth not great Alcid6s e'er
In all his conquering march of old o'er-ran,
For all he pierced the brazen-footed hind,
And stilled the groves of Erymanth, and made
E'en Lerna's monster tremble at his bow;
Not Bacchus' self such world-wide travel knew,
The warrior god who down steep Nysa's side
'Neath harnessed tigers guides his ivied car
With viny-muffled reins. Shall we not then
Bid native valour draw these glories forth ?
Shall fear deny Ausonia to our tread?
But who is he afar with olive crown
And holy-laden hands ? Ah, now I know
The unshorn locks and hoary beard of him,
Rome's sainted king, who first shall found anew,
On law re-built, his infant city's rule,
From homely Cures' garth and niggard soil
To mighty lordship called. To whom succeeds
One that shall rudely break his country's peace,
Fierce Tullus hight, whose trumpet-voice shall rouse
Her languid sons to arms, ignobly still,
And warrior hosts to conquest long disused,
Till laurelled victory wreathes her brows again.
R2

243

244

THE AENEID.

[816-833

Ancus the next, vain-glorious prince, his sails
E'en now full spread to catch each breath of praise.
Say would'st thou see the Tarquin monarchs too,
And vengeful Brutus' proud unbending soul,
Who the dread fasces from the tyrant grasp
Of throned oppression to the people wrung ?
First consul, he the magisterial power,
E'en with the rods and ruthless axe conferred,
Shall stern assume, and straight in Freedom's cause
To death consign, uncompromising judge,
His rebel sons, conspiring treasonous warFather unblest ! yet recks he light of this,
Or later comment challenging the deed;
Answer the patriot's love, the quenchless thirst of praise!
And near him now, with rival axe severe,
Torquatus mark, and there, devoted three!
The Decii, the Drusi bold, and there
Camillus with the standards marching back.
But yonder twain whom now may'st gleaming note
In arms alike, in souls congenial one,
While here in darkness mewed, ah me, what wars
Shall 'twixt the pair ensue, what hosting fierce,
What carnage dire and foughten fields, if once
'Tis theirs from hence to upper light to win!
From Alpine heights and steep Monoecus' fort
The sire descending to the unnatural strife,
The son impetuous to the shock addrest
With all the Eastern world in arms arrayed.
Nay, nay, my sons; your unblest feud forbear,

834-851]

BOOK V1.

245

Unteach your souls such bloody lore, nor turn
Your country's hand against your country's heart;
And thou-be thou the first to stint who dost
From bright Olympus draw thy lineage high,
Scion of Heaven ! fling, fling those weapons down,
Blood that thou art of mine !
Now hither look:
Yon victor chief shall conquered Corinth fire,
And up the Capitol in godlike state
Triumphant ride, glorious from Greekish blood;
This shall the Atridan town Mycenae sack,
The haughty seat of Agamemnon's rule,
Shall raze great Argos' walls, yea and smite down
Aeacid6s, Achilles' seed, e'en so
Avenging Troy and Pallas' outraged shrine.
Who see great Cato, nor proclaim the name ?
Or, Cossus, thee ? or who the Gracchi chiefs,
The Scipio pair, twin thunderbolts of war,
Doomed Libya's scourge and Carthage' direst bane ?
Or, great in low estate, Fabricius, thee,
Or thee, Serranus, o'er thy furrow stooped ?
Breath, breath, ye Fabii ! what tongue unbreathed
Sum the long glories of your patriot line ?
The great one of the name, Cunctator, thou,
Whose wise inaction saves our perilled weal.
Others, I ween, with softer grace shall mould
The breathing bronze, and from the quarried block
Radiant with life the mimic features draw,
Plead the nice cause with more forensic skill,
Map out the skies, and name each rising star;

246

THE A ENEID.

[852-866

Roman ! be thine the nobler arts, to rule
The willing nations with benignant sway,
On subject earth to bind the law of peace,
To raise the humbled, lay the oppressor low.'

And pausing here, the while their ravished sense
Still hung entranced on all he showed and told,
Again proceeds the sire:
'Behold how there
With kingly spoils Marcellus moves along,
And proudly towers o'er all that warrior host;
He, in a day when as our realm of Rome
Doth rock and reel beneath invasion's tread,
With charging chivalry shall stay her up,
Shall Gaul and Tyre with lion ramp o'er-ride,
Insurgent quelled, and to Quirinus' fane,
Imperial palm ! the third proud trophy raise.'

Aeneas here-for with the knight he marked
A youth in gleaming panoply to wend,
Of noblest mould, in manly grace unmatched,
And O, so passing fair! but little glad
That youthful brow o'ercast, and aye those eyes
With looks depressed were set upon the ground'What, father, he who so attends the chief ?
His son, or some high scion of his house ?
Admiring crowds are round him rife, and see,
What noble mien and presence all his own

867-883]

BOOK
AV1.

But ebon night, me-seems, with tristful wing
Hovers his head around.'
Anchises thenAnd tears the while came gushing as he spake:
'Seek not, my son, thy people's grief to know,
Nor ask the sorrows of our after years!
That youth, the brief bestowal of a day,
Shall Fate but show to earth, and, shown, resume.
Shall we of jealousy high Heaven accuse,
And say the gods had feared our Rome o'er-great,
If termless tenure went with boons like this ?
By yon broad plain that skirts the towers of Mars,
Ah me, what trains, what marshalled pomps of woe,
Shall one day sweep while warriors sob around!
What funeral pageantry be thine to see,
Our Tiber's god, as past that new-made grave
There flowing on thy waters seek the main!
O, never more may child of Ilion's seed
Inspire his Latian sires with hopes so high,
Nor e'er again shall old Quirinus' land
Pride her so much in any son she owns!
Ah, gentle worth, to God and man so true!
Ah, stainless honour, worthy ancient days!
Ah, red right hand unconquered in the fray!
No foeman e'er had dared him to the lists,
Or ta'en unrued his onset in the field,
Sought he on foot the adverse war, or raked
His foaming charger's flank with rowelled heel.
Child of our hopes-but, O, our pity too!

247

248

THE AENEID.

[884-898

Break, break that iron doom-O, would thou could'st !
And our Marcellus be!
Bring flowerets here,
In handfuls bring; the lily, virgin-pale,
The blighted bud just opening to the day,
With every bloom that hangs the pensive head,
And velvet leaf that sad embroidery wears;
So let me strow, in rich profusion heaped,
The warrior bier where low my kinsman lies;
So let me pay-but ah, it boots not now
The last poor tribute to the spirit gone.'

So ranged they free those shadowy regions through,
In spacious plains outspread, and viewed the whole;
All which when now the sire had shown the son,
And fired his soul with thirst of coming fame,
What wars were yet to wage he next unfolds,
Unfolds him too Latinus' town and folk,
Laurentum's tribes, and how he still should best
Each threatened blow avert, or, warned, endure.

Two several Gates there are, and named of Sleep;
Said this of horn to be, whereat with ease
Their ready egress truthful Spirits find;
Of ivory that, as polished mirror wrought,
But aye therethro', of nether Powers sent up,
Delusive Dreams and lying Visions pass.
Thus far the sire with parting speech attends

899-902]

BOOK VI.

249

His princely son and eke his Sibyl guide,
And there dismissed them by the ivory gate.

So to his ships Aeneas speeds his way,
Visits his crews, and lifts their drooping cheer;
Then, sailing coastwise, makes Cai6ta's port,
Where, anchors dropped ahead, the sterns are landwards swung.

250

7HE AENELID.

BOOK

VII.

THOU, too, Caieta, great Aeneas' nurse,

Dying, didst give our shores eternal fame,
And to this day thy glory haunts the spot,
Thy deathless name still evermore doth mark
Thy place of rest, in great Hesperia laid,
If that may stead thee aught!
But the good prince,
Soon as all rites were paid, and eke upreared
The high sepulchral cairn, when now the seas
Were laid and still, speeds on his way full sail,
And leaves the port. Nightwards the breezes blow,
Up-sprung afresh, nor doth the silvery moon
Gainsay his course; beneath her quivering light
The rippling deep with myriad lustre shines.
Next, skirting still the shore, they glide anear
The beach of Circ6's land, where in rich state
The queenly daughter of the Sun doth thrill
The groves no foot may tread with ceaseless song,
And in her haughty mansion burns anights
The scented cedarn torch, the while she runs
The ringing shuttle 'twixt the silken warp.
And ever thence were growling voices heard

16-34]

BOOK V1.

251

Of angry lions chafing with their chains
And roaring loud amid the dead of night,
Bears raging in their dens, and bristly boars,
And shapes of monstrous wolves that howled; all which
Circ6, fell goddess, had from human form
By herbs of power and magic potions changed
To wear the visage and the hide of brutes.
And, lest such dire mishap should there befall
The righteous sons of Troy, if thither borne
They made the port or neared the shore accurst,
God Neptune filled their sails with favouring winds,
And holp their flight, and sped them swiftly on
Apast those boiling shoals.
/And now the sea
Was reddening to the dawn, and from on high,
In robe of saffron hue and roseate car,
Aurora shed her glistering beams adown ;
When all the winds died off and every breath
Was laid in sudden calm, and, tugging slow,
The labouring oars scarce heaved the sluggish main.
Herewith Aeneas from the sea beholds
A mighty forest stretching to the shore,
While through its midst the pleasant Tiber flood,
With yellowing sand and whirling eddies swift,
Rolled onward to the deep. Around, above,
Birds of all plumes and fowls of every note,
Familiar tenants of the banks and stream,
Charmed the hushed air with song, or on the wing
Fluttered from spray to spray. Anon he bids

252

THE AENEID.

[35-52

His comrades turn aside, and landwards set
Their every vessel's prow; and gladly so
He enters straight the river's shady bed.
Now aid me, Erato,. and I will tell
What kings bore rule, how olden Latium stood,
And what the crisis of affairs, when now
The stranger landed on Ausonia's shore,
And trace the first beginnings of the strife,:
Yea, Muse, prompt thou the bard; for I must sing
Of haughty kings, by jealous fury spurred
To deathful deeds, Etruria's warrior hosts,
And all Hesperia marshalled under arms:
A grander scene is opening on my view,
A loftier chord I strike.
'Twas e'en the time
When king Latinus, stricken well in age,
For many a year of peaceful life had ruled
O'er realm and city with a monarch's sway;
The son of Faunus he-so records toldAnd that Laurentine nymph Marica hight;
Picus was Faunus' sire, and, Saturn, he
Doth claim from thee his birth, to thee goes back
For first beginner of his blood and line.
No son by Fate's decree, nor issue male
Of man's estate, Latinus owned, for each
In budding youth was early snatched away;
One only daughter in his halls abode
To prop his princely house and race, and she

53-72]

BOOK VII.

For wedlock ripe, of womanhood mature.
And many were they who from far and near,
From Latium and from all Ausonia, came,
And sought the virgin's hand; among the throng,
But fairer far than all and nobler-born,
Young Turnus wooed the beauteous maid, and him
The proud queen-mother yearned full sore to see
So to her house for chosen son allied;
But heavenly portents still with fearful signs
And terrors manifold barred up the way.
Full in the centre of the palace court
A laurel grew, sacred in every leaf,
And many a year by holiest awe preserved;
This, planted found where first he reared his wallsSo was it said-father Latinus' self
Hallowed to Phoebus' power, and therewithal
Did name his folk Laurentines from the tree.
Hereon, atop the very highest bough,
A swarm of bees, with loudest hummings borne
Athwart the liquid air, did light adown,
And, linking foot with foot in closest twine,
All in a moment so were seen to hang,
A sudden cluster, from the leafy spray.
Forthwith the prophet thus: 'Here we behold
A foreign hero's advent shown; we see
A foreign host from yon same quarter come,
And bound alike for this same quarter too,
And soon to lord it in the highest place.'
Yea too, as next her royal father's side
The maid Lavinia nigh the altar drew,

253

254

7HE AENEID.

[73-91

And touched the hearth-stone with the lighted brands,
All in a trice, full terrible to see!
Her flowing tresses caught the torches' flame,
The crackling fire on caul and head-dress seized,
And jewelled crown and all her queenly locks
Burned on and on, till, wrapt in smoke and glare,
She spread the ruddy sparkles through the house.
This thing the seers pronounced of special dread,
And two ways drew the sign; foretelling how
The maid herself should fates illustrious prove,
But, kindled thence with conflagration dire,
A mighty war should on the nation fall.
So now the king, by these dread signs distressed,
To Faunus' oracle, his prophet sire,
For counsel goes, to question at the groves
Where high Albunea frowns-the queen of woods,
That still doth hear the haunted streamlet flow,
And, steeped in shade, breathes noxious vapours forth,
Steamed from its noisome depths. To this weird spot,
On all emergencies of doubt or dread,
Italia's tribes and all Oenotria sought
For guidance from on high. Here when the priest
Hath brought the votary's gifts, and laid him down
Mid hush of night on fells of slaughtered ewes,
And wooed and won repose, anon he sees
Strange phantom shapes and forms about him flit
In wondrous wise, now various voices hears,
Holds converse now with Powers above, and now
Confers with Acheron in depths below.

92-109]

BOOK VII.

255

E'en here, as erst, the king for counsel came;
And first a hundred woolly sheep he slew,
Ewes of the second year; then spread their fells,
And stretched him there, and on the fleeces lay;
When, pealing forth the thicket's inmost depths,
A sudden utterance came: ' Look not, my son,
To mate thy daughter with a Latian bed,
And put no faith in nuptials now a-foot'Tis evil trusting where too ready found:
Know, foreign bridegrooms come; bridegrooms whose
blood
Shall mount our name to heaven, and from whose stem
There springs a seed shall yet beneath their feet,
Whate'er the sun in wide diurnal round
From east to west 'twixt either ocean views,
See all things move obedient to their will.'
Such the monitions of his prophet sire,
His counsels uttered mid the still of night:
Nor kept the king closed lips; but Rumour now
Had flown therewith, and voiced the rede through all
The length and breadth of fair Ausonia's land,
When as the youthful bands of Troy made fast
Their vessels to the river's grassy bank.
Anon Aeneas and the Dardan lords
And fair Iulus stretch their limbs at ease
Beneath the branches of a lofty tree,
And, setting there a hasty banquet forth,
Lay out beneath-'twas Jove inspired the thoughtFlat cates of finest flour along the sod,

256

THE AENEID.

[I10-132

And heap the wheaten board with wilding fruits.
So happed that here, all else consumed and gone,
A lack of viands now constrained them turn
Their greedy jaws on these same scanty rounds,
Good Ceres' bounteous gift, profaning so
With daring hands and chaps the circles thin,
Nor spare the quarterings of the fateful crust;
' What!' in a gamesome mood Iulus cries,
'Eating our tables, too ?'--this, and no more.
That word, the token of their ended toils,
Aeneas caught, and stayed his further speech,
Musing in wonder on the sign fulfilled;
Then this, o'erjoyed : ' Hail to thee, fated land,
And likewise hail our Ilion's household gods,
Faithful and true! Yes, here our home at last,
Our country here; my sire, as now I mind,
Bequeathed me these same secrets of the fates;
And these withal the mystic words he spake :
" 0 son, when, wafted to an unknown shore,
Urged by keen hunger, and for lack of cheer,
Thou eat'st thy very boards for meat, e'en then
Remember this, and reckon there to find
A resting-place from toil, there set thee up
Thy first-reared roofs, and raise the rampart round."
This sure is that same lack, this the dread hap
So long in store, and destined for our last.
Then come, take heart, and with the morrow's dawn
Search we what lands be these, who dwell herein,
And where their city lies, and from the port
Pursue by divers ways our several quest.

133-152]

BOOK V1.

257

But now pour forth your cups to Jove, invoke
By prayer and vow my sire Anchises' soul,
And set again the goblets on the board.'
And therewithal he twined his brows about
With leafy sprays, and, bending lowly down
Invokes with prayer the Genius of the Soil,
And Earth, the first-begotten of the gods,
The Nymphs and Rivers all as yet unknown,
Night and Night's new-born Stars, and Ida's Jove,
And Phrygia's Dame, the mighty Mother-queen,
And last his parents twain, in heaven and hell.
Thereat full thrice the great All-Father bade
Through skies serene portentous thunders roll
In peals full loud and long, and thrice his hand
Before their eyes a burnished cloud displayed,
With golden rays lit up. Anon the cry
Goes through the Trojan ranks, how here was come
The day whereon to found their promised walls;
So, eager-swift, they spread the feast anew,
And, gladdened by the mighty sign, bid set
The beakers down, and wreathe the wine with flowers.
But when the morrow's dawn with kindling torch
Lit up the lands, on bold adventure bound,
They bend them several ways, and, scattering, search
City, and coast, and all the sea-board's length;
And here they learn is old Numicius' fount,
There flows the lordly Tiber flood, and there
The hardy Latin folk their city hold.
Hereon Anchises' son from every grade
s

258

7 HE

AEAEID.

[153--I7

A hundred envoys chose, and bids them seek,
With gifts in hand and crowned from Pallas' tree,
The royal town and court, and there entreat
A boon of peace and friendship from the king;
Who, setting out anon, with ready zeal
Despatch their chief's command. Himself the while
Marks out his city with a shallow trench,
Breaks up the soil, and campwise so surrounds
His first coast-settlement with stake and mound.
Meantime the legates had despatched their way,
And now before them, rising tall and fair,
Turrets and roofs they see, the Latins' town,
And draw anigh the walls. Without the gate
Were boys and youths in flower of earliest bloom;
Part backed the steed, or wheeled the dusty car,
Part bent the sturdy bow, or hurled the dart,
Or in the race or ring provoked the strife;
When, pricking forth the field, a messenger
Bare tidings to their aged monarch's ears
Of folk new-come, tall, and of stalwart frame,
And clad in foreign garb; who straight commands
They bid the men for audience to the Hall;
And there in royal state, with guards begirt,
He seats him midmost on his ancient throne.
A reverend pile it was, of amplest size,
And reared upon a hundred pillars tall,
Crowning the city's.height, the palace erst
Where Picus the Laurentine kept his court,

172-190]

BOOK VII.

Palace and fane at once; .and ever there
A brooding horror reigned of twilight groves,
Sombre and still, with solemn memories linked
Of old world creeds and men long dead and gone:
Here wont the kings assume the sceptre-staff,
Here first take up the fasces and the axe ;
This was their senate house, this fane the place
Where still were held their holy feasts; here too,
On festive days and high solemnities
When as they slew the ram, the seniors wont
To banquet down long lines of tables laid
On either side the hall. Within the porch
The early fathers of the nation stood,
From antique cedar carved : there Italus,
And there Sabinus, planter of the vine,
With hook in hand, as erst in life he showed;
There ancient Saturn too, and Janus there
His twy-fold face displayed; with more besides,
Kings of the olden time, and warrior chiefs
Who erst for fatherland contending bled.
And there withal was many an armour seen,
Hung on the holy doors, and captive cars,
Axes and helms, gates with their massy bolts,
Halberds and shields, with many a brazen beak
From ships of battle torn. There, too, in state,
Dressed in the scanty robe, great Picus sat;
His right hand bore Quirinus' crooked staff,
His left the sacred shield-the horseman king
Whom beauteous Circ6 loved, but, jealous grown,
Smote with her golden wand, and by her spells
s2

259

260-

THE ALNE ID.

[191-21I

Changed to a bird with diverse-coloured wings.
E'en such the fane within whose hallowed walls
Latinus, seated on his kingly throne,
Bade call the Trojans to the Presence there;
And, straight admitted, thus with gracious mien
Bespake them first:
'Brave sons of DardanusFor who ye are we know, and whence ye come,
Nor all unheard of crossed ye so the deepSay what your quest may be, what cause, what need
Hath drawn your ships o'er all those leagues of sea
To our Ausonia's shore ? If ye have strayed
From out your course, or if by stress of wind
Or what hap else wont mariners befall
Ye so did make our river's mouth, and now
Are riding safe in port; shun not, I pray,
Our friendly cheer, but deign to know in us
Old Saturn's seed, his genuine sons, a folk
Not just by law or virtuous of constraint,
But self-controlled, observant of the right,
And freewill followers of our ancient god.
And now I mind in sooth-howbeit years
Have nigh obscured the record of the taleThat old Auruncans wont of yore to tell
How Dardanus, in these our regions born,
Made hence his way to Phrygian Ida's towns
And Thracian Samos, since called Samothrace;
From Tuscan Corythus he went, and now,
Throned in the golden palace of the sky,
He swells the bead-roll of our native gods.'

2I2-231]

BOOK VII.

261

Latinus thus; and prince Idomeneus
Thus made reply:
' O king, great Faunus' child,
Nor storm so drove us to your friendly shore,
Nor star nor coast beguiled us of our way;
But we of purpose and freewill have sought
Your city's walls-poor exiles from a realm,
The greatest once that still from east to west
Yon circling sun in all his course surveyed.
The well-spring of our race is Jove, in Jove
The sons of Dardan glory for their sire;
From very Jove our monarch's blood is fet,
Trojan Aeneas, who doth send us here.
What storm of war from fierce Mycenae swept
O'er Ida's plains, how fates disastrous bade
Two warring hemispheres in conflict clash,
Europe with Asia in collision hurled,
E'en he hath heard whom earth's last nook doth hold,
Whence ebbing Ocean calls his waters back,
Or whom beneath the chariot of the sun
The middle zone dissevers from his kind.
From out that wreck for many a weary year
By winds and tides o'er stormy billows borne,
Lo, we are come at these your hands to crave
A humble homestead for our country's gods,
A narrow strip of sea-side land whereon,
Unharmed and harmless, we may look to dwell,
With air and water free alike to all.
Not all unworthy would we hope to prove,
Nor wholly fail to win thee some renown:

J2

THE AL NE [D.

[232--252

Fair fame shall be your meed ; no tract of time
Shall see the record of the boon effaced,
Nor e'er Italia find cause to rue
That so she took the Trojans to her heart.
By our Aeneas' destinies I swear
And that right hand of his still powerful found,
Whether in friendship proved or felt in war,
Full many a time-I pray ye scorn us not
For that we bear these garlands in our hands,
And sue in suppliant guise with words of prayerHave mighty nations our alliance sought,
And wooed us for their friend; but heavenly Powers
Still drave us on to seek these realms of thine.
Yes, hence came Dardanus, and now in us
Apollo bids the hero back again
To Tuscan Tiber and Numicius' springs.
Our prince withal doth give thee by our hands
A few poor offerings of his former state,
Mere relics saved from burning Troy's o'erthrow ;
From this bright gold his sire Anchises poured
When as he made libation to the gods,
And these king Priam bore, oft as he called
His summoned lieges to receive the laws,
The sceptre-staff and sacred diadem,
With these fair robes, the work of Ilian dames.'
Latinus heard; but, set in downward gaze,
Not once might lift his looks from off the ground,
Rolling his eyes intent; nor robe of state
Nor kingly staff so weighing with the king,

253-272]

BOOK VIL

As dwelt the father's thought upon his child,
Her fated spousals, and those mystic words
From olden Faunus' shrine at midnight heard;
Concluding sure that doubtless here must be
The destined bridegroom from the foreign land,
The stranger called for colleague of his throne;
Here he from whom that progeny should come
Whose might was yet to subjugate the world.
At last, o'erjoyed, he spake:
'Now may the gods
Speed their own signs, and bless our act withal!
Lo, Trojan, here I grant thee all thy suit,
Nor eke decline these goodly gifts ye bring;
Long as Latinus reigns ye ne'er shall lack
Of fruitful soil, nor miss the wealth of Troy.
But let Aeneas-if so be your prince
Doth yearn in sooth to know ourself and ours,
And fain would be our ally and our friendE'en come himself, nor shun our friendly gaze;
His hand in ours must guarantee our league.
And now bear back this message to your king:
I have a daughter whom with man to wed
That cometh of our country's kith and kin,
Nor voices from my father's shrine allow,
Nor tokens manifold from heaven disclosed,
Importing, one and all, that o'er the deepSuch fates they say abide this Latian landA foreign bridegroom cometh to our shores,
One who shall yet by mingling of his blood
Exalt our name with glory to the spheres:

263

264

THE AENEID.

['273-290

That this is he, the man whom Fate demands,
My thoughts do shrewdly hold; and, if my soul
Forecasts aright, good sooth I wish it too.'
So spake the king; then bade forthwith choose out
The goodliest horses of the royal stud,
Whereof three hundred, sleek and glossy-fair,
Stood in the lofty stalls,-for every chief
A mettled courser strong, all fleet of foot,
In trappings rich and broidered purple dight:
Their poitrels gold, their housing-cloths of gold,
Of gold their bridles, and they champed on gold.
Nor less the monarch for their prince bade bring
A twy-yoked car, of fiery-snorting steeds,
Ethereal bred, of that same matchless blood
Which crafty Circ6 of her father stole,
Crossing the Sun-god's team with mortal dam.
With such fair gifts and courtesies from the king
The mounted envoys take their homeward way,
And bear the peaceful tidings to their prince.
But there the while was Jove's relentless wife
Returning through the air from Argos town,
And holding now the middle region high
In full career; when all that length of way,
From far Sicilia and Pachynus' head,
Lo, she espies Aeneas and his crews,
Sees them e'en now, elated and o'erjoyed,
Building their walls and rearing up their roofs,
The stranger soil now taken for their home,
Trusted and sure, and, beached upon the strand,

291-3o0]

BOOK VII.

265

Their very fleet deserted and forsa'en.
Stung to the heart, she stayed her there a space;
Then shook her haughty head, and loosed in words
The fury of her soul:
'Ah, hated brood!
Ah, fates of Troy for ever thwarting mine !
Say could they fall on those Sig6an fields,
Be ta'en, when ta'en, made captives to the foe,
And slain, revive, and ta'en, escape again ?
Did Troy town burn, and burned she too withal
Those living men of Troy? Nay, through the flames,
Through fire and steel, the hottest of the strife,
Their way was fought and won ! But then, may-hap,
Juno was wearied out, or else, belike,
The olden grudge was fatted to the full,
And so she stayed, nor further fought her foe:
I who, when flung from country and from home,
Still dogged them on where waves might farthest roll,
And faced the miscreants upon every deep!
What sea and sky might utmost do was provedAnd idly proved-on this one Teucrian clan.
What have my Syrt6s, what my Scyllas done,
Or dread Charybdis what ? Lo where they ride,
Scathless and safe, in very Tiber's bed,
The long-wished haven made at length and won,
And mock belike at Ocean and at me!
Yet Mars might slay that giant Lapith folk;
The very Father of the gods gave up
Old Calydon itself to Dian's wrath:
Lapith and Calydon-and what, good sooth,

266.

TEE AENEID.

[307-323

Had these worse done to win them such a doom ?
But I, the consort of the mighty Jove,
I, who could leave no wretched shift untried,
Who plumbed all depths, was everything by turns,
Am foiled--and by Aeneas foiled! Well, then,
If might like mine be all too weak, needs must
I turn me now to aught may elsewhere be;
If Heaven my suit gainsays, now be it mine
To see if Hell may help me to my wish.
Grant it, I ne'er may keep him from the throne,
And, fixt and changeless by the will of doom,
The fair Lavinia waits him for his bride;
Yet may I still--and all the likelier, too,
Where countless haps on such great issues hangDraw out the time, and work them sore delays;
Yet may I still, ay, root and branch, cut off
The subjects of these doughty monarchs twain.
So to their contract now, father and son,
The cost their peoples' lives! Yes, royal maid,
Thy dowry shall be Troy's and Latium's blood,
Bellona waits to light thee to thy bower !
Not Cisseus' daughter the sole dame whose womb
Conceived its brand, and teemed its nuptial fires;
Another Hecuba repeats the birth,
Such travail of her own hath Venus too,
A second Paris in her son is here,
A funeral torch to burn reviving Troy!
And down to earth the dreadful goddess dropt,
With vengeance big, and up from nether depths,

324-342]

ZPOOK VI.

267

From Stygian darkness and abysmal night,
Where dwelt the Fury with her sisters twain,
She calls Alecto to the realms of dayDirest of fiends ! her soul's one joy supreme
Bloodshed, and war, and stratagems, and wiles;
E'en Pluto's self with loathing views his child,
Her fell Tartarean sisters hate the pest;
So many shapes the dreadful monster wears,
So terrible her looks, so thick and black
The clustering snakes that sprout around her headWhom Juno spake, and whets her thus withal :
'Daughter of Night, bestow me here, I pray,
A service for my need, lest Juno lose
Worship and fame at once, should wily Troy
O'er-reach Latinus with this match, and so
Make good her footing on Italian soil.
None for the nonce so fit : who may as thou
'Twixt very brothers armed discord set,
Embroil whole households, and, where concord erst,
Let loose the scourge and light the midnight brand ?
Countless thy names and shapes, as countless, too,
Thy harmful means and modes of working ill.
Come, stir me up that mischief-teeming breast,
Unsolder all the peace, and broad-cast sow
The crimeful seeds of war: be arms the cry;
Yea, seized when cried, and wielded stoutly too.'
And now, heart-steeped in venom's blackest gall,
To Latium straight and Latium's royal court
Alecto hies, and there doth sit her down

268

THE

A4ENEID.

[343-362

At queen Amata's silent chamber door;
Whom, musing on these new-come hosts of Troy,
Her daughter's nuptials, and her blighted schemes
For Turnus planned, a woman's rage and spite
Still robbed of peace or rest. One snaky tress
From forth the tangles of her raven hair
The Hell-hag plucked, and, casting at the dame,
Lodged it deep down within her vesture's folds,
That, stung to frenzy by the madding pest,
She so might all Latinus' house embroil.
In glides twixt ivory breast and silken robe
The beast unseen, and, winding on unfelt,
Imbreathes its viperous soul; and lo, it now,
A golden circlet, clasps her taper neck,
Now as a ribbon from her head-tire hangs,
Now twines her braided locks in gold, and still
In various guises strays o'er every limb.
And so at first, and while the serpent's bane
With subtle moisture worked its stealthy way,
Touching the sense with fire, nor yet her soul
Had caught the flame through all its poisoned powers,
She spake in gentler sort, with many a tear
Wailing her child and this same Phrygian match:
'And must Lavinia, 0 good father, say,
With homeless Teucrians wed, and hast thou so
Compassion none or for thyself or child,
Yea or for me, her wretched mother, none,
Whom with the first fair wind this pirate chief
Will leave bereft, and, putting forth to sea,

363-381]

BOO

V1.

269

Bear off his maid for prize ? Was it not thus
The Phrygian shepherd stole his traitor's way
To Lacedaemon court, and bare off thence
The beauteous Helen to his town of Troy ?
Where is thy sacred word ? the old regard
Thou barest thine own blood ? thy hand-troth where,
So often to our kinsman Turnus pledged ?
If the strange need for these our Latin folk
Be sons whose land is foreign to their own,
If this be fixt, and those thy sire's commands,
Sooth-saying Faunus, shut thee up hereto,
All lands whate'er which, severed and apart,
Own not our sway, for foreign I regard,
And hold withal that Heaven so meant herein.
And Turnus, too, if so be one try back
And trace the spring and fountain of his blood,
Hath Inachus and Acrisius to his sires,
And for his home Mycenae's very heart.'
But when, with words like these assailed in vain,
She finds Latinus still unmoved, and now
The viper's madding plague had wholly passed
Her frame throughout, and leavened all within,
The wretched queen, with horrid fancies ta'en,
Raves through the city wide: like to a top
That, ever twirling 'neath the twisted lash,
The boyish troop, on frolic play intent,
Flog round and round through some great empty court,
In mazy windings scourged; plied with the thong,
It moves in widening rings, while o'er it hang

270

THE

AENEID.

[382-402

The beardless crowd in childish wonder lost
To see the boxwood spin, and how withal
Their blows so lend it life: with speed as swift
The goaded queen through lanes and alleys flies
And pitying looks that scowled upon her wrongs.
Nay, more; upwrought to wilder frenzy still,
She feigns her soul with Maenad fury smit,
And, fleeing to the woods, is fain to hide
Her daughter mid the leafy forest glades,
Might she so balk the Trojans of the match,
And stay the lighting of the nuptial torch:
' Evoe, Bacchus ! thou, and thou alone,
Art worthy of the maid; see how for thee
The virgin votress wields the thyrsus-wand,
For thee doth lead the circling dance, yea all
Her cherished locks holds consecrate to thee!'
Anon flies Rumour forth, and now the same
Mad fervour kindles all the dames alike;
Quitting their homes and flying to the woods,
They give their necks and tresses to the winds,
While others fill the skies with broken shrieks,
And, clad in fawn-skins, toss their vine-staves high.
Amid the rout, with fiery looks aglow,
The queen herself uplifts a blazing pine,
And Turnus' and her daughter's bridal sings,
Rolling her blood-streaked eyes; when all at once
She fiercely cries: 'Ho, Latian matrons all,
Give ear where'er ye be; and, if your hearts
Be kindly strung, and may one spark retain

403-421]

BO O

V1H.

Of loving thought for poor Amata's hap,
If e'er a mother's wrongs might touch your souls,
And wake one feeling of your sex and kind,
Then loose your braided locks, and here with me
Espouse the rites and orgies of the god.'

-Thus,

mid the woods and wild beasts' desert lairs,
With Bacchic stings Alecto goads the queen;
And, deeming now she so had whetted well
The first sharp transports of her rage, and quite
O'erturned the Latin monarch's plans and home,
Away on sooty wings the demon flies
Where rose the Rutule chieftain's walls-those walls
By Danae raised of old, as legends tell,
What time, by south winds blown, she landed there,
And built her sire Acrisius' folk a town,
Hight Ardea of yore, and to this day
Hight Ardea still, albeit its sun is set.
Here in his lofty palace Turnus slept
Mid hush of night, in tranquil slumbers laid;
Forthwith Alecto doffs her hideous mien,
Her Fury's face and limbs; and, shifting straight,
Transforms her to an ancient grandam's shape,
Ploughing her loathly brow with wrinkles deep;
Then, donning on her head the snows of age,
And wreathing it about with olive sprays,
Lo, she is Calyb6, of Juno's fane,
That aged priestess of her house; and now
With words like these presents her to the youth:
'May royal Turnus tamely brook to see

27I

272

THE AENEID.

[422-442

His many warlike toils bestowed for nought,
And Latium's crown and sceptre thus made o'er
To wretched settlers from Dardania's land ?
The faithless king denies thee thy fair bride,
Withholds thy blood-bought dower, and now withal
A foreign heir is sought for to the throne.
Go now, court risks; mow down his Tuscan foes;
Be Latium's shield of peace; and earn withal
Contempt and scorn in quittance of thy pains !
Know these the words queen Juno bade rehearse
Here to thine ears, in midnight slumbers laid.
Then up, and take good heart, and straight command
Thy folk to arm and out, and burn forthwith,
E'en ships and all, those Phrygian chiefs who now
Have moored their navy in our pleasant stream;
'Tis Heaven so bids: let king Latinus now,
If that he still decline to grant the match
And yield him to thy will, so learn his wrong,
And count the cost with Turnus for his foe.'
Whereto the youth, bemocking of the seer,
Makes thus reply : 'The news of ships arrived
In Tiber bed has not, as thou wouldst deem,
Escaped mine ear-forge me no idle fears !Nor royal Juno so forgets us quite.
But, silly dame, good sooth 'tis drivelling eld,
Doting, and stale, and barren of all truth,
So scares thy soul with groundless fantasies,
And, meddling as thou art with cares of state,
Befools thy seer-ship with false alarms.

443-459]

BOOK V1H.

273

'are thou thy temples, tend thy gods and shrines,
And leave us men to manage peace and war.'
Stung by the words, Alecto's wrath brake forth
In utter fire; nor ceased he well to speak
Ere chilly shudderings ran through all his frame,
And each fixt eyeball stared in stony gaze;
So fierce with countless snakes the Fury hissed,
So grim and huge the Shape now met his view.
Then, as he rose and, stammering, sought to speak,
The demon thrust him back, and, plucking off
Twin adders up betwixt her temples reared,
She clanked her serpent-scourge full loud and longThen from her rabid lips these accents fell:
' See here the silly dame whom drivelling eld,
Doting, and stale, and barren of all truth,
So scares in soul with groundless fantasies,
And, meddling as she doth with cares of state,
Befools her seer-ship with false alarms;
Yet know thou this-and heed the tokens well !From those Dread Sisters' home the dotard comes,
And hers the hand that deals with war and death.'
Therewith she cast a firebrand at the youth,
And lodged it, smouldering with lurid glare,
Heart-deep within his breast. Roused from his sleep,
A mighty terror wakes him up aghast,
The while in clammy drops from every pore
A copious sweat o'er all his body brake' My sword!' he wildly cries, seeks for his sword

fT TT T;

274

THE

A 7

77

T ]r-

F'

AEzEIv.

4U60

Chamber, and couch, and all the mansion through;
Strife, and the steel, the wicked lust insane
Of war and blood, and jealous wrath o'er all,
Be-mad his thoughts, in restless ferment tossed:
As when with cracklings loud a fire of sticks
Is heaped around some brazen caldron's ribs,
The seething waters leaping to the flames;
The stream within keeps ever more and more
Surging and bubbling to the vessel's brim,
Till now the steamy tide o'erleaps restraint,
And flies in murky vapour to the sky.
So, breaking terms of peace, he bids forthwith
His chosen chiefs take order for a march
On king Latinus' realm, and muster all
His power in arms: ' He will protect the land,
Expel the intruding foe, and should so be
False Latium join confederate with Troy,
He, single-handed, will be match for both.'
The word so said, and Heaven invoked in aid,
His bold Rutulians, each with rival zeal,
Bestir them to the war; some by his youth
And peerless beauty moved, some by his birth
From kingly foresires drawn, and some withal
Won by the daring deeds his arm had wrought.
While Turnus thus with martial spirit fills
The Rutules' souls and nerves them for the fray,
Alecto to the Trojans speeds her flight,
On new devices bent; for now she marked

477

478-495]

BOOK VII.

Where on the winding beach with net and hound
The fair lulus waged the silvan war.
Here to his questing pack the hellish hag
For madding bait a stag's fresh trail presents,
And taints their nostrils with the well-known scent,
Luring them on, with sudden instinct seized,
To hold in hot pursuit a startled deerPrime head and source of all their after ills,
The spark that fired the hardy swains to war.
A full-grown stag there was, of beauteous form
And tree-like antlers tall, which, ta'en a fawn
And ravished early from the parent hind,
Tyrrheus, the ranger of the royal chase,
And Tyrrheus' children to their home had brought
And reared and fostered with the tenderest care.
Trained and obedient to her gentle sway,
Their sister Silvia oft with flowers would wreathe
Its budding horns, and comb its shaggy coat,
And lave it in the fountain's limpid flow.
Tame to the hand, and now by use inured
To feed familiar at its master's board,
It roamed all day the forest pastures free,
Nor ever failed, how late soe'er the night,
E'en of itself to seek the well-known door.
It so fell out Iulus' maddened dogs
Had roused the beast thus straying far from home,
As whiles adown the stream it floated glad,
And whiles upon the breezy bank secure
Was fain to cool the noontide's fervid heat,
TZ

275

276

THE AENEID.

[496-513

And held it now full-cry in eager chase.
Fired with a hunter's zeal, Ascanius too
Had loosed a shaft thereat; nor failed the fiend
To guide the hand might else have missed its aim;
For, all too truly sped with aid malign,
The whirring reed through flank and belly smote.
Back to the roof and home it knew so well
The wounded creature made for refuge straight,
Then, moaning, gat him to his wonted crib,
And faint and bleeding, crying as for help,
Filled all the homestead with its piteous plaints.
Poor sister Silvia was the first to hear
Its moving cries, when, smiting on her breast,
She calls the hardy peasants to her aid:
They, ere well looked for-for the Fury-fiend
Lurked close at hand amid the stilly grovesStart to her call, one with a stake equipt,
Plucked charred and smoking from the household
hearth,
One with a heavy knotted club; what each
Finds in his hurried quest first come to hand,
Impressed by anger must for weapon serve.
Stout Tyrrheus' self, just as he heard the news,
Cleaving with driven wedge an oak in four,
Leaves there his work undone, and, axe in hand,
Panting with rage musters his rustic bands.
Whereon the goddess from her close look-out,
Seizing the moment most for mischief apt,
Mounts the high stall-shed's roof, and from its top,
Straining her hellish voice at highest pitch

514--530]

BOOK VII.

277

Through all the windings of her wreathen horn,
Bids cry the shepherds' gathering call; whereat
The spreading forest to its centre shook,
And all the woods re-echoed from their depths:
That sound was heard by Trivia's lake afar,
'Twas heard by Nar's pale sulphurous streamlet's flow,
E'en Velia's distant well-springs caught the note,
And trembling mothers hugged their babes for fear.

Quick to the call where'er that clarion dread
Sent out its pealing cry, the sturdy swains
Snatch up their arms in haste, and flocking run
From every side, while from the camp as fast
Stream forth through open gates the men of Troy
To help their youthful chief; and for they now
Have front to front their several battles ranged,
'Tis soon no rustic brawl, with knotty clubs
And stakes fire-hardened waged, but hand to hand
With two-edged steel the dire debate is held;
And all around the ridgy field shows black,
A-bristle all with spears and naked blades,
While brazen weapons, flashing back the light,
Glint to the sun again, and, gleaming, fling
Their myriad radiance to the clouds; so great,
Small at the first, the fray was now become:
So, when the wave first whitens to the blast,
The heaving sea, by slow degrees upwrought,
Higher and higher lifts its flood, till now
From lowest depths it surges to the sky.

278

7HE AENEID.

[153-547

Here, in the very forefront of the fight,
Smit with a whistling shaft stout Almo falls,
Old Tyrrheus' eldest hope; fixt in his throat,
The wounding weapon cleft his windpipe through,
And stopped the passage of his liquid voice
And vital breath, with stifling life-blood chok'd:
Around the youth lay many a corpse besides;
Among the rest, as 'twixt the warring hosts
He fondly stepped to mediate a peace,
Fell old Galesus : none more just than he
Of all Ausonia's sons, nor till to-day
Was none so rich in wealth of teeming fields;
Five bleating flocks and five large herds of neat
He saw each night wend homeward to his stalls,
And with a hundred ploughs he turned the tilth.

While thus the fight on either side the field
In even scale still undetermined hung,
True to her word-the first blood drawn, and so
The pledge and earnest of the war made goodThe infernal demon quits Hesperia's soil,
And, soaring through mid air to heaven's high cope,
Triumphant thus in vaunting tones bespake
Queen Juno's ear: 'See to thine heart's content
The work of discord crowned with baneful war;
Now bid them meet in amity, now join
In friendly league, and plight their mutual troth!
And, for I thus have steeped those Trojan hands
Deep in Ausonia's blood, lo I will add,

548-568]

BOOK VII.

279

If such thy wish, a further boon thereto;
The bordering towns will I by rumour raise
To join the fray, and fire their kindling souls
With madding lust of strife; till, so aroused,
Their ready aids be poured in all around,
And wars and arms sown broad-cast through the land.'
When Juno thus : ' Panic and frauds enow !
Firm stands the feud, past all undoing fixt;
There hand to hand they fight, and this day's broil,
Chance-medley first, has riped to blood and war.
Such bridals now and glad espousal rites
Betwixt them twain let Venus' peerless son
And good old king Latinus solemnize!
But, for thyself-as he the great All-Sire
May nowise have thee thus at large to roam
The fields of upper air--e'en take thee hence;
And if the while aught further hap betide
Shall call for work, myself will see it through.'
She spake; and straight the Fury at the word
Uplifts her wings that hissed with bristling snakes,
And quits the skies, for black Cocftus bound.
Amid of Italy, and high o'er hung
With frowning hill-sides steep, a place there is
Well-known to fame in many a distant clime,
And hight Amsanctus' Vale; hemmed either hand
'Twixt two dark wooded slopes of foliage dense,
While through the midst a broken torrent hoarse
In whirling eddies thrids its rocky bed;
Here you are shown a cavern's awful depth,

280

THE AENEID.

[569-584

The ventage-hole of Hell, and where adown
A gulf profound, from bursten Acheron fed,
Opes wide its baleful jaws: here dived the fiend,
Detested Power ! and, lightened of their load,
Earth, sea, and sky were breathing free again.
Nor fails great Juno's self meanwhile to lend
The final hand that crowns the rising war:
Straight to the city from the field of strife
In one vast crowd rush all the shepherd folk,
And with them bear their dead, young Almo's corse,
And old Galesus with his mangled face,
Calling the while on Heaven, and importune
Latinus to espouse his people's cause.
Yea, mid the clamours at these slaughters raised,
E'en in the heat and frenzy of their rage,
As pealing rose the blood-cry all around,
Turnus appears, and swells the general dread:
' Teucrians forsooth invited to the throne,
A Phrygian graft to cross the royal stem,
And eke himself from court and favour thrust !'
Those too whose matrons at Amata's callFor no mean power is queen Amata's nameFooted the pathless woods in Bacchic rage,
Draw from all sides, and clamour for the fight;
Now all alike, 'gainst omens from on high,
Defying fates and oracles divine,
Yea, in despite accurst of Heaven itself,
Are madly calling for an impious war:
With frantic zeal, in crowds tumultuous packed,

585-603]

BOOK V1I.

They hem Latinus' palace round, while he,
Like some great ocean rock unyielding standsLike ocean rock that mid the rush and crash
Of countless billows barking round its base,
Takes, self-sustained, the onset of the waves;
Swilled with the spray, the peaks and crags around
Roar vainly on, and, lashed against its sides,
The idle sea-wrack is flung back again.
But when he finds no power to countervail
The secret spell at work, and things must so
Move at the beck of cruel Juno's will,
The sire, protesting loud, makes his appeal
To careless gods and seeming-empty skies;
Then thus: 'Alas, the Fates will have their way,
And we perforce must drift before the storm
O, wretched subjects mine! on you will fall
The heavy reckoning that awaits this crime,
Ay, yours the blood shall pay this impious guilt.
Thee, Turnus, too a dread atonement waits,
And all too late the gods will have thy prayer;
For me-rest is at hand, my bark in port,
My only wrong a happy ending lost !'
He said; then close seclusion sought, and quits
The reins of empire and the cares of state.
Whilom in Latium's old Hesperian day
A use obtained, the which, as years went on,
The Alban towns for sacred kept, and still
Imperial Rome, the mistress of the world,
Holds to this day in vogue, what time they first

281

282

THE AENEID.

[60 4 - 62z

Awake up Mars to arms, whether it be
'Gainst Dacian folk to bring the tearful war,
To quell the Arab or their Hyrcan foe,
Or, following to its home the Dawn-star bright,
Challenge the standards from the Parthians' grasp.
Twin folding-doors there are, the Gates of WarSuch name our fathers gave them ages goneHallowed by awe and dread of Mars the Stern:
A hundred brazen bolts shut fast the same
And iron's ever-during strength; and there
Before the threshold Janus day and night
Holds watch and ward, nor ever thence removes.
These gates, when now the Fathers vote the war,
The Consul, in his striped Quirinal robe
And Gabine cincture drest, himself unbars,
With jarring sound thrown wide, and bids evoke
The God of Battles forth; which done, anon
The warrior youths with shouts accordant take
The war-cry up, and, heard in concert harsh,
The brazen cornets breathe their hoarse assent.
E'en in such wise they bid Latinus now
Proclaim the war against, the sons of Troy,
And ope the fatal ports; but the good sire
Shrank from their very touch, and loathing fled
The shocking task, in deeper darkness plunged.
Then, sudden darting from her heaven adown,
The mighty Empress of the gods herself
Smote with her royal hand the laggard gates,
And, from their iron fastenings stricken loose,
Back on their hinges flung the clanging valves.

6t3-640]

BOOK VII.

283

Quiet and still before, Ausonia now
Breaks out ablaze ; her sons are all on fire;
And part will march afield on foot, and part
Will mount the car, and throng the dusty ways:
Arms, arms the cry with all: some with fat seam
Furbish their shields and pointed spear-heads bright,
Some on the whetstone grind the blunted axe;
'Tis joy to hoist the standard to the breeze,
Flung from its folds, and list the trumpet's blare.
Already now full five great towns have set
The stithy up, and forge with eager haste
Their arms afresh, and whet them point and edge:
Atina strong, the lordly Tibur town,
The Crustumerian folk and Ardea too,
And tall Antemnae with her castles crowned;
Some shape them basinets of hollowed steel,
And weave them oziers for the buckler's boss;
Others to breast-plates mould the brass, and beat
The ductile silver into polished greaves.
Scant honour now the rural arms may claim;
Mattock and scythe, all ardour for the plough,
To one fierce passion yield, and, all and each,
They smelt anew the swords their fathers wore.
Anon the clarion sounds, the watchword goes
From mouth to mouth, the token of the war;
And now this plucks his helmet from the roof,
That to the chariot yokes his snorting steeds,
Takes his broad shield, and, clothing for the fight,
Dons the chain-cuirass, triple-piled with gold,
And buckles to his side his trusty sword.

284

THE AENEID.

[64r-66o

Now ope me Helicon, ye tuneful Maids,
Inspire my lays, and teach your bard to sing
What kings here woke to war, what followers each
Bade throng the meads, what valiant hero-sons
E'en in that olden day Italia bred,
What arms she blazed withal; for, Heavenly Ones,
Ye know, and ye may tell; to us at best
A faint slight breath of fame comes scantly down.
First to the war, from old Etruria's shore,
Wends fierce Mezentius, scorner of the gods,
And leads his armed troops to Turnus' aid;
His son young Lausus at his side, than whom
Was none more beauteous seen of form and face,
Save Turnus, the Laurentine-born; Lausus,
Of daring skill to back the colt unbroke,
Or shoot the flying silvan game; and him
A thousand warriors from Agylla town,
Ah, bootless following! followed to the field.
Poor luckless youth-O would some happier lot
Had dooned thy worth a better sire to know,
Nor e'er Mezentius so had called thee son!
Next o'er the grassy mead his laurelled car
And conquering steeds fair Aventinus shows,
The valiant son of Herc'les, brave and fair,
And bears his father's impress on his shield,
The dragon with its hundred serpent heads.
Him in the grove of Aventinus' mount,
A furtive birth, the priestess Rhea bore,

661-680]

BOOK VII.

A mortal mother mingling with a god,
What time, returning from fierce Geryon slain,
The great Tirynthian hero reached at length
Laurentum's meads, and in the Tuscan flood
Bathed the Iberian kine. These bear afield
Long javelins, and goring pikes, and all
Fight with the Sabine spear and tapering blade;
Himself afoot, a lion's monstrous hide
Swinging, loose-hung, his neck and shoulders down,
Frightful with unkempt mane and shaggy fur
And grinning fangs above his head displayed,
Accoutred thus, mid kings and chieftains there
Strode up the royal hall, Herculean-wise,
Rugged in garb and mien.
Twin brethren next,
Catillus and fierce Coras, Argive youths,
Have lordly Tibur's walls behind them left,
The town that holds their princely brother's name,
And now where spears throng thickest in the front,
Rush on impetuous to the battle's van ;
Like cloud-born Centaurs twain, who from the ridge
Of Homol6, or snowy Othrys' top,
In fleet career bear downward to the plain,
While crashing branches part on every hand,
And trampled thickets fall before their stride.
Nor was the founder of Praenest6 town
A missing aid that day, whom all men took
In every age alike for Vulcan's child,

285

286

THE AENEID.

[681-698

Dropt mid the herds among Jove's altar-hearths,
And found, an infant, mid the fires unharmed,
King Caeculus. Him, mustered far and wide,
A peasant legion follows to the field;
They who in steep Praeneste dwell, and they
Of Gabine Juno's fields, and who abide
By Anio's chilly flood and banks, and who
By Hernic rocks with freshening rills bedewed;
And those whom rich Anagnia feeds, and those
Whom, father Amas6nus, thou: not all
In burnished'armours sheathed, nor all equipt
With shield and rattling car; the most part there
Sling balls of livid lead, and some there were
In either hand bare javelins twain; their heads
In furry wolf-skin caps for helmets fenced;
The left foot prints the ground unshod, a shoe
Of stark bull-hide untanned protects the right.
Messapus next, the queller of the steedGreat Neptune's child, and whom by fire or steel
No mortal foeman e'er to death might doHis folk peace-cankered, long to war disused,
At Turnus' summons now to arms doth call,
In sudden musters raised, and takes again
The sword in hand; some from Fescennium called,
And other some Faliscans of the Plain,
Some from Soracte's hill-forts high, and some
Who held Flavinium's corn-lands rich, and who
Cap6na's wooded glens, and Ciminus'
Broad lake and fount. With even step well-timed

699--716]

BOOK VH.

287

Their squadrons marched, and sang their monarch's
deeds;
Like snowy swans amid the watery clouds
That, home returning from the feeding grounds,
Stretch the long neck and trill their dulcet notes,
While, heard afar, the clear Cayster stream
And Asian pool reverberate the sound,
Smit with their throbbing song: scarce might ye deem
'Twas brazen ranks ye heard of mail-clad men
In countless columns thronging to the war,
But high amid the air some noisy cloud
Of clamorous sea-fowl clanging to the shore.
Behold where next, of olden Sabine blood,
Leading his hosts afield, himself a host,
The mighty Clausus comes, from whom derived
The Claudian name and clan have Latium filled,
E'er since, associate in her state and power,
The Sabine folk were given a share in Rome.
With these there marched the Amiternian troops,
A numerous host, the old Quirites too,
And all Er6tum's bands; and those who held
Mutusca's hills with olives clad, and who
Nomentum town, and Veline's Rosean meads;
Who the rude crags of Tetrica, and who
By mount Sev6rus dwell, Casperia,
And Foruli, and cool Himella's stream;
Who Fabaris and Tiber quaff, and whom
Bleak Nursia summoned from her girdling hills;
The warlike aids Etruscan Horta sent,

TilE A ENFI

[D.
[717-735

The olden Latian clans, and those 'twixt whom
Dividing Allia flows, ill-omened name:
Countless as tossing waves on Libya's main
When fierce Orion sets mid wintry storms,
Or ears of corn a'ripening to the sun
On Hermus' plains, or Lycia's yellowing fields:
Their bucklers ring; and, smit with trampling feet,
Affrighted earth re-echoes to their tread.
Halaesus next, of Agamemnon's seed,
Born foe of all that bear the Trojan name,
Yokes his fleet horses to his car, and fierce
Hurries afield his thousand warrior youths
In Turnus' aid; those who with mattock turn
The Massic soil to Bacchus blest, and whom
Auruncan fathers from their hillsides sent,
And close thereby the Sidicinian plains;
Who Cales quit, and those who dwell beside
Vulturnus' shoaly stream, and with them all
Saticula's rough clans, and Oscans rude:
Their arms spike-studded clubs, but these they wont
Hold fastened to the wrist with pliant thongs;
A targe of hide their left hands guards, and all
Use hook-shaped scimitars for closer fight.
Nor, valiant Oebalus, shall verse of mine
Leave thee unsung, whom, as old records tell,
The nymph Sebthis did to Telon bear,
What time as king in good old age he ruled
The Teleboan tribes of Capreae's isle.

736-754]

BOOK V1.

280

But, ill-contented with his sire's domains,
The son, ambitious, now had stretched his sway
O'er divers tribes around, Surrentum's folk,
The plains which distant Sarnus laves, and those
Who Batulum and Samnite Rufrae hold,
Celennae's fields, and those on whom adown
Abella looks from out her apple-trees;
His people all in Teuton fashion trained
To sling the long-barbed dart afar; their heads
Light casques defend, stript from the cork-tree's bole;
Their glittering crescent-targes were of bronze,
Of bronze each glittering sword.
Thee, Ufens, too,
For valour famed and glorious feats of arms,
Did hilly Nersae to the battle send;
Thy folk the Aequiculi, a rugged race,
To ceaseless hunting in the woods inured
Of use and need, for stiff and hard their glebe:
In arms they till the soil, their one delight
To ply the reiver's trade, and live by spoil.
There came besides from far Marruvium's folk
The mighty warrior-priest, brave Umbro hight,
By king Archippus sent to Turnus' help,
And on his helm for plume and crest displayed
A wreath of leaves the blessed olive bare;
Who knew by song and touch of hand to charm
The viper-kind and noxious-breathing snakes,
In tranced slumbers steeped, soothing their wrath,
U.

290

TIE AENEID.

[755-774

And healing by his craft their burning bite;
Yet failed he so with all his art to cure
The Dardan spear-head's thrust; nor slumbrous spell,
Nor magic herbs on Marsian mountains culled,
Availed him aught against that mortal dint :Ah, hapless chief, in flower of manhood slain!
Agnitia wept thee mid her lonely groves,
Thee Fucinus' clear glassy mere bewept,
Thee every crystal lake !
And Virbius, too,
Marched to the war, Hippolytus' fair son,
Whom, well equipt, the nymph Aricia.sent,
Reared mid Egeria's groves where, wide dispread,
The marshy foreshores lay around, and where
Stands Dian's altar, rich in gifts and grace.
For fair Hippolytus, as legends tell,
When for his wicked stepdame's arts and lies
The virtuous youth, torn by his frightened steeds,
Sated his father's vengeance with his blood,
Came back to light again and heaven's bright stars,
By Paeon's drugs recalled and Dian's love.
Whereon the great All-Sire, incensed to see
A mortal man by doom of death reversed
From nether darkness re-ascend to life,
Bared his own arm of power, and thrust adown
The daring wight who such bold leech-craft wrought,
With thunders stricken to the Stygian pool.
But gracious Trivia hid Hippolytus
In secret dells apart, and there consigned

775-793]

BOOK vz.

291

Her darling to the nymph Egeria's care,
Inglorious so to wear his life away,
Obscure and lone, amid Italia's groves,
And eke by change of name be Virbius called.
So to this day are horny-footed steeds
Forbid Diana's fanes and groves, e'er since
The maddened team, by those sea-monsters scared,
O'erturned the youth and chariot on the shore:
Yet none the less therefor the son now lashed
His fiery steeds athwart the level mead,
And sped him in his chariot to the war.

Before his vaward battle Turnus' self
Strode sword in hand, in shape and grace unmatched,
And towered a clean head's height above all there:
His triple-crested helm uprearing high
A winged Chimaera form, with jaws agape
That ever volumed forth Aetn6an fires;
And aye the monster worse and fiercer flamed,
And ever madder of her mood would grow,
As hotter waxed the strife, and more and more
The red blood streamed about the ensanguined field.
His polished buckler bore a rich device,
Ino, with uplift horns and hairy hide,
Now in her heifer shape, wrought all of gold;
There Argus too was wrought, the maiden's ward,
And Inachus, her sire, the River-god,
Poured from the sculptured urn his flowing stream.
A cloud of footfolk followed at his back,
U2

292

7THE AENEID.

[794-8I1

Their shielded squadrons thronging all the plain;
The Argive youth, Aurunca's valiant troops,
Rutulians, and the old Sicanian bands,
Sacranians in their battle-lines arrayed,
And bold Labici with their painted shields;
With those besides who till thy spreading lawns,
Our Tiber's god, and who with ploughshares vex
Numicius' hallowed banks, the Rutule hills,
Circeii's steepy slopes, and where hard by
Great Jove of Anxur on his fields looks down,
And fair Feronia boasts her verdant grove;
Where Satura's black marish spreads, and where
Through swampy flats and fenny bottom-lands
Cold Ufens works his way full hard bestead,
And hides him in the deep.
Last, nor the least,
Volscian Camilla came, and led afield
A troop of horse in gleaming armour gay;
Stern soldier-queen! not hers the soul to ply
Minerva's arts and train her woman's hands
To weave the web and tend the housewife's toil:
A maid, she faced the battle's brunt, and knew
In speed of foot to leave the winds behind;
Yea, she would fly o'er fields of standing grain,
Footing the tallest stalks, nor e'er had hurt
The tender ears beneath her in her flight ;
Or, buoyed upon the heaving surge, would skim
The very midmost sea, nor ever wet
Her nimble soles amid the plashing waves;

812-817]

BOO/( VI/.

And still, as there mid bearded kings and chiefs
With martial mien the warrior maiden went,
Matrons and youths from town and country flocked
In gazing crowds, and thronged her as she passed,
All marvell
marvelling to see how, fair o'er-spread,
The regal purple draped her ivory neck,
How showed her locks with golden snood confined,
And what the grace wherewith the comely queen
Carried her ringing quiver, Lycian-wrought,
And shepherd's myrtle staff, with spear-head tipt.

293

294

THE AENEID.

BOOK

[1-13

VIII.

WHEN now prince Turnus from Laurentum's tower
Had hung his war-flag out, and, pealing loud,
The horns had clanged their hoarse harsh notes afar,
And when withal the fiery chief had roused
His rampant steeds and clashed his ringing arms,
Men's hearts were forthwith stirred, and, rising fast,
All Latium joins the war, confederate sworn,
While martial fury maddens all her sons.
Messipus takes the lead, and Ufens bold,
And fierce Mezentius, scorner of the gods:
These muster first their forces to a head,
With succours raised from every side around,
And strip the fields of all their labouring swains;
Yea, and in quest of foreign aid to boot,
Is Venulus to Diomede despatched
To crave his help, and give the king to know
How Troy was footed on Italian soil,
And how her prince had landed with his fleet,
And now was fain perforce to set him up
His vanquished household gods, saying withal
How he was called by fate to be the king;

[3-28]

BOOK

VIII.

295

That many now had joined the Dardan chief,
And how by this his name was waxen great
Through Latium far-' what he may mean hereby,
On such foundation what yet look to build,
What issue of the fight, should Fortune smile,
May promise to himself ;-all this must needs
Be plainer to the king who knew the foe,
Than to king Turnus and Latinus too.'
So matters fared in Latium land; all which
The Trojan chieftain saw, and, noting allHis troubled soul with racking doubts perplext,
And drifting loose amid a sea of caresDespatches swift the swiftly-veering mind
To every point, now this, now that resolves,
And turns to every side his shifting thought:
E'en as in brazen water-vats the beam
Of trembling light, reflected from the sun,
Or radiant image of the silvery moon,
Keeps ever flitting every place around
From wall to wall, and, upwards darting now,
Plays on the fretwork of the panelled roof.
Came night, and now throughout the world's wide
space
All weary creatures, birds and beasts alike,
In slumber lay; when on the river's bank,
His anxious soul with troublous thought opprest
As war drew on apace, the Trojan prince
There laid him down beneath the chilly cope,

296

7HE AENEID,

[29-49

And gave his frame the tardy boon of sleep;
When lo, the very Godhead of the place,
Old Tiber of the pleasant flood, was seen
To lift his head amid his poplars tall:
An azure robe of fine transparent lawn
Enwrapped his limbs, a crown of river reeds
Shaded his hoary brows; when spake he thus,
And cheered the hero's soul with words like these:
'Seed of the gods, who here dost bring us back
Troy town again, recovered from its foes,
And Pergamus dost bid live evermore,
O looked-for long on our Italian coasts,
Laurentum's soil and Latium's fated plains;
Here is thy sure abode--stir thou not hence !Here the fixt homestead for thine household gods.
Nor dread these threats of war and strife; for know
Heaven hath foregone its jealous fears, and all
Displeasure of the gods is past. And now,
Lest haply this thou count an idle dream,
The coinage of thy sleep, thine eyes shall see
Beneath the oaks that fringe my woody banks
A great new-littered sow there laid along,
With thrice ten piglings clustered round her teats,
White both alike, the farrow and the dam;
The token sure that when, as time wends on,
Full thrice ten years have run the destined round,
Ascanius shall build here his royal town,
Hight Alba from this sign, illustrious name;
Time shall approve what so I sing. But now
How best thou may'st despatch the present need-

50-67]

BOOK VIII.

Attend--few words shall tell. A warlike folk,
Arcadians hight; a race from Pallas sprung,
Following Evander's standards as their king,
Chose here their home of late, and on the hill
Have built their city, Pallanteum calledSo from their great forefather aptly named.

'They with the Latins wage incessant war,

Held as invaders of their native soil:
Bid these as friends and allies to thy camp,
And bind by troth-plight sure. And, for thy way,Myself will guide thee 'twixt my river's banks
And straight along my flood, that so, up stream,
Thy tugging oars may climb the adverse tide.
Arise then, son of Heaven, and with the first
Of star-set pale address to Juno's power
Thine earnest prayer, and so with duteous vows
O'erbear the goddess' frown; and, when success
Hath blessed thine arms, may'st pay thy dues to me.
For I am he thine eyes do here behold
Slipping with brimming flow these banks along,
And cleaving with my train the fruitful meads,
Cerulean Tiber hight, of all earth's streams
The highest set in favour with the gods;
Here my proud home, and here shall one day rise
The queenly head of mighty towns to be.'

So spake the river-god, and, plunging in,
Dived to the bottom of his oozy bed,
When night and sleep at once Aeneas left.

297

298

7HE

A

ENEID.

[68-85

Then, rising up and gazing where now dawned
The first faint beamings of the sun, the prince
Doth lift up water in his hollowed palm,
Scooped from the river's brim, and prays withal:
'Ye Nymphs, Laurentian Nymphs, from whose bright
urns
The flowing rivers have their birth, and thou,
O father Tiber, with thy hallowed flood,
Receive Aeneas and his fortunes high,
And now, O now, protect him from all ills!
What secret pool thy dwelling-place may be,
Where'er the soil whence, issuing into light,
Thy crystal current wells in beauty forth,
Still to thy shrine, for such like pity shown
Our sad distress, will I for evermore
Gifts and oblations bring, still to thy name
Homage and worship pay; majestic Flood,
Thou horned Monarch of the Western streams
Only be with me, sire, and graciously
Make good thy showing with the promised sign.'
He spake, and, choosing from the fleet a pair
Of twy-banked ships, assigns to each a crew,
And furnishes withal his mates with arms;
When lo, a wondrous portent to behold !
Stretched on the grassy margent full in view
The spotless swine amid the trees is seen,
Like-hued with all her snowy offspring white;
Both which Aeneas' hand to thee doth slay,
Yea, thee, imperial Juno, setting there
Farrow and dam before thine altar rails.

86-io3]

B O OKd VIII.

299

That livelong night propitious Tiber smoothed
His swelling tide, and checked his onward flow,
To seeming standstill brought, as so to lay,
In guise of placid mere or peaceful lake,
Level and plain, his current's crystal face,
That struggle none might task the labouring oar.
So, grateful,.now with shouts auspicious raised
They speed their way begun, the well-pitched keels
All slipping lightly through the shoaly flood,
While woods and waves with utter wonder see
The shields of warriors flashing far ahead,
And painted hulls afloat upon the stream;
With beat of oars they wear out day and night,
And, mounting, leave full many a bend behind
And lengthy reach, with varied foliage fringed,
And, pictured in the river's stilly depths,
Cleave the green forests 'neath the glassy plain.
The sun had climbed his mid-day height full blaze
Up heaven's high arch, when from afar they see
Walls, and a citadel, and lowly roofs
Of dwellings sparsely strown; the place which now
The might of Rome has equalled with the skiesEvander then held there his poor domains;
So shorewards straight with ready haste they turn
Their vessels' prows, and draw anigh the town.
It chanced that day Arcadia's monarch held
To mighty Hercules, Amphitryon's son,
And all his brother gods a yearly rite

30oo

77E

AENEID.

[104-120

Of solemn sacrifice within a grove
Before the city gate; where at his side
Pallas, his only son, and with him all
His warrior chiefs and rustic senate poor
Did incense burn, and bade the altars steam
With new-spilt blood. But when they now beheld,
Gliding towards them 'twixt the shady trees
And thickly-wooded banks, tall ships afloat
That plied with muffled stroke the bending oars,
And ever nearer drew in silence on;
Scared at the sudden sight, they rise with fear,
And, one and all, forsake the banquet-board.
But hardy Pallas bids the guests forbear
To mar the holy rites ; and, snatching up
His ready javelin, flies himself to meet,
Weapon in hand, the so-deemed stranger foes;
Then at a distance from a knoll he cries:
'Say, warriors, what cause hath driven your ships
Thus, all unwont, to try these unknown ways,
And whither ye are bound ; declare ye too
Your name and race, and whether peace or war.'
Then spake Aeneas from the lofty stern,
Taking the challenge, and, in pledge of peace,
Holds forth a branch of olive in his hand :
'Know they are Trojans whom thou here behold'st,
And weapons hostile to the Latin kind,
By whom driven forth with insolence and war,
We seek Evander's court. Take back these words,
And tell your king how chosen chiefs of Troy
Are come, and pray his fellowship in arms.'

x2I-14i]

BOOK ViiI.

301

Dumb for a space, awed by so great a name,
Prince Pallas stood; then, O, debark,' he cried,
' Whoe'er ye be; speak to my father's face
What ye so would, and be our guests withal.'
He said; and, greeting, pledged his friendly hand,
And clung in welcome to the hand he grasped;
Then, wending on towards the holy grove,
They quit the banks, and leave the stream behind.
Aeneas then with friendly courtesy
Bespeaks the king: 'Best of the sons of Greece,
Whom Fortune wills me thus in hour of need
To sue in suppliant guise, and reach thee here
The suppliant's staff with fillet bands enwreathed;
No fear was mine for all I knew thou wast
A Grecian leader and Arcadian-born,
As eke by blood to Atreus' twins allied;
Maugre all this and more, my conscious worth,
Heaven's holy oracles, our kinsmen sires,
And thine own world-wide fame,-all these have drawn
My soul to thine, and sent me here to-day
Of free will choice no less than called of Fate.
Our Ilion's sire and founder, Dardanus,
Born of Electra-so Greek legends tellCame to our Teucer's folk; Electra's sire
Was mighty Atlas who bears up the spheres;
Your sire is Mercury, whom Maia fair
Conceived and dropped on cold Cyllen6's top;
But Maia too, if speaks tradition sooth,
Atlas begot, the same who so bears up

302

THE

AENEID.

r ......
2

[

14 -159

The starry heavens; thus from one common stock
Our lines branch off in twain. Trusting hereto,
Nor embassage I sent, nor, dubious, first
Made cautious overtures by form and rule,
Essaying of your mind, but frankly thus
Have placed my life and person in your hands,
And come myself a suppliant to your doors.
That selfsame Daunian folk that harries you
Doth harry us alike in bitter war,
Whom should they now thrust out, of needs, they deem,
Must all Hesperia own their yoke, and so
Themselves be masters of its seas, both that
Which washes it above, and which below.
Then take our proffered troth, and pledge us yours;
Yea, join us so; and trust with us to find
Stout hearts for war, and hands by deeds approved.'
Aeneas spake ; but long or ere he ceased
Evander's earnest gaze was scanning all
The chieftain's countenance, his form and mien ;
When spake he thus in few : ' O, with what joy,
Thou bravest far of all bold Teucer's sons,
I hail, and bid thee welcome here this day;
Yea, how I now recall the words, the tones,
The very looks of prince Anchises' self,
Thine honoured sire! For well I bear in mind
How Priam erst, Laomedon's great son,
Journeying to Salamis to visit there
His royal sister's realm, Hesions,
Pushed on his progress to the neighbouring bounds

16o-

79

BOOK VTII.

303

Of our bleak Arcady. A stripling then,
The bloom of opening youth first clothed my cheeks:
Much I admired the Trojan chiefs, and much
Laomedon's brave son; but, gait and height,
Anchises stepped the noblest of them all.
My very soul with youthful ardour burned
To greet the hero, and link hand to hand;
Adventuring so, and volunteered for guide,
I led him on to Pheneus' friendly walls;
A golden quiver stored with Lycian shafts
He gave me at our parting, and withal
A gold-flowered scarf, and bridle-bits, a pair,
Which, golden too, my Pallas now doth own.
So here I plight you now the troth you ask,
And, soon as dawning light relumes the lands,
Cheered with mine aid and holpen from my store
Will I dismiss you back. But now the while,
For that ye here are come, and come as friends,
With leal goodwill partake ye here with us
These yearly rites and hallowed feasts, the which
Or to defer were ill, or further stay,
And from this hour inure yourselves as guests
To share the tables of your new allies.'
Therewith he bids bring out the meats again,
And place the wine-cups on the board afresh
Were erst removed, while as himself doth set
The men on grassy seats, but 'fore the rest
Biddeth Aeneas share his rustic throne,
A maple couch and shaggy lion's fell.
Whereon the chosen youths and altar priest

304

THE A ErE

ID.

[180-I97

Bear out in hand the bullock's roasted flesh,
And pile the baskets high with Ceres' gifts,
Serving withal, and deal the wine around;
And so Aeneas and his Trojans feast
On ox-chines whole and sacrificial meats.
Eating now done and craving hunger stayed,
Spake king Evander then :
'Hold not, I pray,
Our annual feasts and high solemnities
And altar-worship to so great a Power
For superstitious rites by fear imposed,
Or wilful slighting of our olden gods;
No, Trojan guest; from dreadful perils saved,
Of gratitude we make these novel rites,
And pay a meed well-earned. Now, prithee, first
Observe where hangs yon beetling crag, and mark
How, loosely strown, these shattered stones lie round,
At random flung; how, all exposed and bare,
The mountain-hold stands desolate and waste,
And, bounding as they fell, the rocks have left,
Indented deep, these traces of their fall;
Here was a cavern once that, burrowing, ran
Far back within the mountain's side, wherein
A hideous form, half human and half beast,
The robber Cacus dwelt. No cheerful ray
E'er pierced its unsunned depths, while floor and wall
Still reeked of new-shed blood, and, hung in rows,
The heads of men adorned the cruel doors,
Ghastly and grim, and dripped with foulest gore.

1.98-218]

BOOK VIl.

305

Vulcan this pest begot; the Fire-god's flames,
Stifling and black, the fiend before him breathed,
As, huge of bulk, he wended on his ways.
To ours at last, as whiles to others' prayers,
Time brought the help and advent of a god;
For he, that great Avenger of all wrongs,
The strong Alcides, to our land was come
In flush of fame from Geryon killed and spoiled,
Him of the triple form, and, conquest-crowned,
Drave by this road the giant bulls, and now
The cattle filled the vale and river's side.
But Cacus, maddened by the fiends of guilt
To fill the measure of his misdeeds up
And leave no crime or villainy undone,
Stole from their stalls four of the largest bulls
And eke as many heifers passing fair;
And, that no forward-pointing tracks might show
Which road they went, the robber haled his prey
Tail-foremost on with foot-prints all reversed,
And hid them in his deep and gloomy den;
No hoof-marks so might cave-wards guide the search.
Meantime when now Amphitryon's son bethought
From booth and crib to drive his herds full fed,
And gat him to the road, the cattle gave,
As grudging to be gone, a parting low,
Filling with noisy plaints the woodland wide,
And took a clamorous farewell of the hills.
A heifer from the den returned the cry,
And, bellowing from her prison's inmost depths,
Bemocked for all his heed her jailer's hopes.
x

306

THE AENEID.

[219-238

Hereon at once blazed fierce and furious forth
Alcid6s' bitter wrath; and, snatching up
His bow and heavy club of knotted oak,
He scales at top of speed the mountain's height.
Never before our country's folk beheld
Cacus afeard, or troubled in his looks:
Swift as the wind away the felon flies
And seeks his den, his feet with terror winged.
Nor had he now well shut himself within,
And, bursting from their stays the chains in haste,
Let fall the enormous rock that hung in front,
Slung in strong iron by his father's craft,
And made the door-way with the barrier fast,
Or e'er, hot speed, in height of furious mood
The man of Tiryns on his track was come,
And, scanning every inlet to the cave,
This way and that his flaming eyeballs rolled,
Grinding his teeth withal. Afire with wrath,
Thrice did he range all Aventine around
In circuit wide; full thrice without avail
He tried the stony doors; and thrice, o'erwrought,
He sat him in the glen.
Before him stood,
With steep-down sides sheer-cut, a pointed rock
That towering rose above the cave behind
Far as the eye might climb, a fitting haunt
Where evil birds did ever roost and build;
This, as its mass leaned leftwards to the stream,
He, straining hard against it from the right,
Shook in its seat; then, loosening from its roots,

139-255]

BOOK VI11.

307

With sudden wrench he sent it toppling down
Full in the river's bed; when all the sky
Thundered responsive to the mighty crack,
The banks leaped wide apart, and, refluent far,
The frightened stream ran backward to its source.
And there adown was Cacus' robber-hold,
Unroofed and stript, with all its dungeon-nooks
And dark recesses open to their depth;
E'en as though earth, by some strange shock convulsed,
Should open to her core, and, yawning wide,
Disclose the nether worlds, unlocking all
Those ghastly realms of God and man abhorred,
And from o'erhead the fathomless abyss
Lie bare to view, and; caught in sudden light,
The ghosts shrink cowering from the flash of day.
In no less sudden light ta'en unawares,
Pent in his rocky lair and braying loud
In strange and hideous sort, Alcides falls
To galling of the monster from above
With shafts and darts, and, calling to his aid
What weapons else came readiest to hand,
Plies him with boughs of trees and granite blocks.
Whereon the wretch-for now good sooth he saw
Was no way left whereby to flee his foeDisgorges from his jaws, 0 wondrous shift!
Volumes of stifling smoke, enshrouding all
The spacious den in thick of blinding fog,
Robbing the eyes of sight, and, cloud on cloud,
Brewing a pitchy night throughout the cave,
Half gloom, half glare, darkness and fire commixt.
x2

3o8

THE AENEID.

[256-271-

Alcides brooked it not; one desperate leap,
And down he hurled him headlong through the flames
Where thickest surged the smoke, and the huge vault
Seethed with the billows of that lurid mist;
And there, where still amid the hottest reek
Stood Cacus belching forth his bootless fires,
He seized him fast, and, locking limb in limb,
Griped him in closest twine, and, throttling tight,
So held him on till, from their sockets forced,
His eyeballs leapt from forth his head, and all
His throat, wrung dry, lay flaccid in his grasp.
Straightway the rocky doors are beaten down,
And all the den laid open to the view,
The stolen beeves, and what beside of spoil
The caitiff thief had oft on oath denied,
Shown out to Heaven, while forth to light of day
The hideous carcase by the heels is drawn.
Nor may our folk now feast their eyes enough
With looking on the dead-his dreadful eyes,
Those features grim, the man-beast's shaggy breast,
And there-scarce yet well quenched-that furnace of
a throat!
E'er since that tide hath worship thus been paid,
And all that after came still kept with joy
Alcid6s' day; Potitius, who first
Founded the use, and, servitors thereat,
Pinarius' house, custodians of the rite.
Our great Deliverer's self it was did here
Set up this altar in the grove, the which

272-290]

BOOK VIII

.309

Shall ever be with us the Great one called,
And ever be in sooth the Great one owned.
So, warriors, come, and, honouring such worth,
Bedeck your locks with leaves; then, cup in hand,
And calling on the god we own alike,
Of good will pour libations to his name.'
E'en as he spake the poplar's twy-hued growth,
Great Herc'les' tree, shaded his temples twain,
And, garlanding his locks in verdant twine,
Hung graceful down; a chalice filled his hand;
Then all the guests with hearty zeal alike
Shed out the wine, and pray the gods withal.
Meantime the star that rose at evening bright
Towards heaven's descent doth slope his west'ring
wheel ;
And now the priests, by old Potitius led,
Went forth in solemn march, in fawn-skins clad
And torch in hand, as aye their fathers wont;
Anon they set the banquet out anew,
Gracing that other board with viands rich
And dainty gifts for second service meet,
And pile the altars high with laden plates.
The Salians next, brow-bound with poplar wreaths,
Circle the blazing hearths with song and dance,
Two several choirs, elders and youths, who both
Resound in holy lauds great Herc'les' deeds;
How in his first of days that baby hand
Strangled those monsters twain, his step-dame's snakes,
And how he beat adown great towns in war,

31

1

IE AE1VIDJ.

[2

9

-3

Troy and Oechalia, and how withal
He bare him through those many labours hard
Of king Eurystheus on him laid by doom
Of ruthless Juno's will :-' yea, thou it was,
O great Unconquered, with that hand of thine,
Didst mighty Pholus and Hylaeus slay,
Those twy-formed children of the cloud; thine hand
The Cretan monster slew, with that huge beast,
The lion 'neath the rocky Nemean steep;
For dread of thee the Stygian pools did quake,
Hell's mastiff-warden quaked for dread of thee,
And, cowering, gat him to his gory den
And bed of mumbled bones. No shape of fear,
Not huge Typhoeus' self, might thee affray,
As, towering to his height, the giant tossed
His brandished arms aloft; e'en Lerna's worm
Begirt thee round with all her throng of heads
And found thee still of all thyself possest.
Hail, Jove's true son ! new glory of the skies!
Vouchsafe thy blest approach; yea, favouring hear
Thy votaries' prayer, and own these rites for thine.'
E'en so they hymned the hero's valiant feats,
Crowning the whole with robber Cacus' den,
And Cacus' self, the fiend whose breath was fire :
Thrilled with the lay, the woods in concert sound,
And hill and dale reverberate the song.
The holy rites so sped, now townwards all
Retraced their steps; amid them fared the king,
Covered with years, and ever as he went"

o7

308-326]

BOOK

VIII.

311

Held at his side Aeneas and his son,
And lightened all the way with varied talk.
With pleasing wonder filled, Aeneas turned
His roving, eyes on every object round;
Each spot delights; and, charmed with all he sees,
He still asks on, and lists with greedy ear
Each tale and record of the men of yore.
Then spake the king who Rome's great fortress built:
'These old-world woods and hoary forest-sides
Were first the seat of native Silvan Powers,
Of Fauns and Nymphs, and eke a race of men
Sprung from the stocks of trees and knotty oaks,
Who rule of life knew none, nor e'en had learnt
To yoke the labourer ox, or win them wealth,
Or husband what they won, but lived on boughs
And what rude sustenance the chase supplied.
Then from Olympus' heights came Saturn down,
An un-kinged exile, fleeing the arms of Jove:
He it was first to civil compact brought
That untaught race on mountain tops disperst,
And fused them into one, and gave them laws,
And, fixing here his seat, did will the land
Be thenceforth Latium called, for that he so
Had lain safe hidden on its friendly shore.
The Golden Age of ancient story was
When he was king, in such unbroken peace
He ruled his subject realms; till by degrees
A worser time crept on, of baser grain
And duller lustre dim, and with it brought

3 12

THE AENE ID.

[327-347

The frenzied lust of war and greed of pelf.
Then the Sicanians and Ausonians came,
And Saturn's olden land was oft new-named;
Then divers kings; Thybris among the rest,
He of the huge gigantic frame, from whom
Our Tiber stream was called in after days,
So losing Albula, its old true name.
Myself the last, an exile from my home,
By winds and waves o'er utmost ocean borne,
Almighty Fortune and resistless Fate
Bade settle in these lands, constrained withal
By awful hests and prophecies, the which
My mother spake, the nymph Carmentis hight,
And he, the seir's god, Apollo fair.'
He said; and, moving on, next shows his guest
The altar and the gate Carmental calledSo styled of Romans still, as then of yore,
In honour of the nymph Carmentis, who,
Soothsaying prophetess, did first fore-show
The coming greatness of Aeneas' sons,
And what renown did Pallanteum wait.
The great wood next he shows was yet to be
By fiery Romulus his Asylum made,
And 'neath a breezy rock Lupercal next,
Named of Lycaean Pan, Arcadia's god.
Then shows he sacred Argil6tum's grove,
And tells, appealing to the conscious spot,
The tale of Argus' death, his whilom guest.
Next to Tarpeia's steep he leads and eke

348-369]

BOOK VIII.

313

The Capitol thereby, now gay with gold,
But then a tangled copse, with brushwood rough
E'en then the rustics viewed the place with awe,
E'en then they trembled at the wood and rock.
'This grove,' he says, 'and hill with leafy crown
A god doth haunt, though who the god unknown;
But our Arcadians deem their eyes have here
Oft seen the very Jove, the while he shook
His darkening Aegis-shield above their heads,
And summoned forth the terrors of the storm.
See yon two towns beside with ruined wallsMemorials these of men long past and gone;
This hight Janiculum, of Janus built,
Saturnia that, called from its founder's name.'
In such like talk now drew they nigh to where
Evander's homely dwelling stood; and there
Saw lowing kine where now the Forum stands
And proud Carinae's gorgeous mansions rise.
The doorway reached, ' This threshold,' said the host,
'The glorious champion, great Alcid6s, crossed,
This house the mighty conqueror's presence held:
Dare thou as nobly too, my honoured guest,
To spurn at pomp, and, rivalling the god,
Set in thy foot, nor scorn our poor estate.'
He said, and straight beneath the lowly roof
The great Aeneas led, and strewed him there
His couch of leaves, with Libyan bearskin spread.
Meantime came seeling Night adown the sky,
And folded earth within her dusky wings;

3 r4

THE AENEID.

[370-387

When Venus, harassed with a mother's careNor idly so, at bruit of Latian threats
And all the outbreak of that sudden warBespake god Vulcan thus, where as she lay
Couched by her consort on the golden bed,
And breathed on every word the spell of love:
'For these long years, while Argive princes warred
To lay our fated Pergamus in dust
And Ilion's towers foredoomed to foemen's fires,
No aid from thee for Troy's unhappy sons
Nor weapons sought I of thy craft to win;
Nor would I, sooth to say, my dearest lord,
Thee and thy toil to bootless end have tasked,
Albeit much to Priam's house I owed,
And oft with tears bewept Aeneas' ills.
But now that he by Jove's command bath set
His foot on Rutule soil, therefore it is
That, suing to the Power I honour most,
I ask thee here an armour for the chief;
As may I not-a mother for her son ?
Old Nereus' daughter moved thee erst with tears,
Tithonus' spouse might bend thee to her will;
Let then thy wife prevail. See but what states,
What powerful tribes, in league together draw,
What mighty towns have closed their gates, and now
Are whetting sword and spear 'gainst me and mine !'

He heard; and-wavering still-about him knew
The goddess' snowy arms wind round and round

388-404]

B OOK VIII.

315

With pressure soft, and fold him every side;
When all at once he caught the wonted glow,
And felt the, warmth through all his vitals shoot,
Thrilling his melting frame; so gleaming flies
The lightning's flash athwart the stormy sky;
And rends the thundercloud with fiery fork:
Nor failed his spouse to note her beauty's power,
Pleased with her art, and conscious of her charms.

Then spake the stern old god, and, yielding, owned
The sovereign might of everlasting love:
'Why all these far-fetcht pleas ? or whither fled,
As chilled by doubt, queen Venus' wonted trust
In Vulcan's love ? Were such thy wish erewhile,
Then too as now my willing hand had found
With Heaven's assent to arm thy folk for war;
For not the great All-Sire nor Fate itself
Forbade your Troy to stand and Priam reign
Another ten years' space. Howbeit still,
If war thou wilt and so thine heart be set,
For whatso best I here may guarantee
As in the range and compass of my craft,
For aught that may by mastery of skill
From fluid ore and tempered steel be wrought,
Let fire but fuse and wind have power to fan,
E'en rest thee so far of thy will assured,
For nought less shall be thine; so truce to words,
Nor e'er again by prayers superfluous doubt
The power thou wield'st o'er this devoted heart.'

30

THE AENEID.

[405-423

He said; then gave withal the wished embrace,
And, sinking soft upon his consort's breast,
Bade dewy sleep o'er all his limbs to steal.
Anon when Night her midway course had won,
And sleep's first rest had chased the slumbrous spell
From mortal eyes-what time the careful dame,
Who hour by hour, to eke out struggling life,
Must ply the loom and Pallas' slender craft,
Wakes up the dormant fires and slumbering ash,
And, making night joint-worker with the day,
Employs her maidens at the live-long task,
E'en into morning sped, and all to keep
Her husband's bed unstained of sin, and rear
His little babes withal,-not less betimes
Nor more a sluggard, from his couch of down
Rose to his craftsman's toils the Lord of Flame.
'Twixt Sicily and Aeolian Lipara
Rises an isle, with smoking hillocks crowned;
'Neath it a cave to distant Aetna joined,
And hollowed by the Cyclops' forges' blasts;
Whence ever to the ear in thunder-peals
Come mighty blows on smitten anvils laid;
And ever there, the whole wide cavern through,
Hot-hissing glows the smelted iron ore,
And furnace jaws pant out their fiery breathVulcan's abode, the land Vulcania named:
Hither in haste from heights of upper air
The Master of the Fire descending hies.

424-441]

BOOK VIII.

Here in their rocky den at work he finds
The one-eyed crew, Bront6s, and Steropes,
And strong Pyracmon, stark and bare of limb,
A'forging of the steel. Amid their hands,
Roughed out and rude, there lay a thunderbolt,
One of those many the great Father casts
From all the welkin down to earth beneath
Part wrought and polished off for use, and part
Unfinished still. Three shafts they welded there
Of frozen rain, and three of watery cloud,
And three of ruddy flame, and three withal
Of winged storm and wind. And now they 'gan
Terrific flashings mid the work to blend,
Noises, and din, and terrors to appal,
And fiery wrath with nimble-darting fork.
Others elsewhere were hurrying on for Mars
The car and flying wheels wherewith the god
Doth madden men and cities to the strife,
Or toiled with quick despatch to burnish bright
Fierce Pallas' shirt of mail and Aegis dread
With dragon scales and gold, and deftly shaped
The snaky tresses, twined in writhing coils,
And for the goddess' breast the Gorgon's self,
Lopt at the neck, each glaring eye-ball still
Rolling distorted in the severed head.
'Cyclops of Aetna, set all these aside,'
The Fire-god cries;, 'surcease ye from these works,
And look to what I give ye now in charge:
A valiant hero needs an armour straight;
Now is the call for strength, behoves ye now

317

3i8

THE AENEID.

[442-457

Your nimblest hands and all your deftest skill;
No tarrying, but despatch.' Nor needed more;
Straight one and all they stir them to their task,
And share the work to each: in rivers soon,
Fused at white heat, the molten metals run;
Copper, and ore of gold, and wounding steel,
The warrior's bane, amid the furnace flow.
And first they cast the buckler's ample round,
A fence sufficient of itself to take
What shafts all Latium on its field might shower,
And, orb on orb, with sevenfold plates o'erlay
The mighty frame, and weld them strong and well;
Others in windy bellows now take in,
And now give out the blast, while others dip
The hissing metals in the cooling trough;
The rocky floor with massive blocks o'erlaid
Is all a'groan; and, thundering through the vault,
The cavern smithy echoes to the blows
Of brawny arms on ringing anvils struck,
While, turn and turn about, with mighty swing
The giant brethren now lift high in air,
And now let fall their ponderous hammers' sway
In measured chime, as still with griping tongs
They turn the glowing mass from side to side.
Whilst on Aeolian shores the Lemnian god
Speeds thus his Cyclops' toils, the gracious dawn
And matin songs of birds beneath the eaves
Have waked Evander from his lowly couch;
Arising straight, and drawing o'er his limbs

458-476]

B OOK

VIII.

319

A linen tunic fair, the senior next
About his feet the Tuscan sandals ties,
And, hanging by his side his trusty sword,
O'er his left shoulder casts a panther's fell
Anon two mastiffs from.the palace porch
Come forth, and wait upon their master's steps.
So faring on the aged hero sought
The quarters of his guest; for well he bore
His last night's words in mind and promised aid.
Nor no whit less betimes Aeneas too
Had stirred himself to meet the morning's dawn,
And, now afoot, drew on to join the king.
Nor either single came; this had his son,
Young Pallas, at his side, Achat6s that.
Meeting anon and linking hand to hand,
They sit them down amid the hall, and there
Enjoy at length their mutual converse free.
When first the king:' Illustrious Teucrian chief,
Whose life whilst Heaven preserves I ne'er may think
Of Troy as lost, or deem her power o'erthrown;
Slender, good sooth, for such a name as ours
The means we own to help thee in thy war;
This side the Tuscan river shuts us in,
Narrowed and circumscribed, while aye on that
Our fierce Rutulian foe doth gall us sore,
And girds our leaguered walls with din of arms.
Yet have I here a sovereign folk in hand,
A puissant host now ready for the field
I mean to join to thee, a saving aid
Which, all unlooked for, Fortune now presents-

320

THE AENEID.

[477-496

Thou comest hither at the call of Fate.
Not far herefrom Agylla's city stands,
Built years and years agone, and where of yore
A Lycian colony, for arms renowned,
Fixed their new seat amid Etruria's hills.
Long did it flourish till, as time went on,
With iron rule and terrors of the sword
Mezentius rose to domineer the land.
What boots to tell the tyrant's deeds of blood,
His foul barbarities and freaks of guilt ?
Keep all, just Heaven, in store, and wreak them soon
In meet requital on himself and his !
Yea, he would chain the living to the dead,
Join hand to hand and very lip to lip,
Till, hideous torment ! fused in foul decay
And rotting piecemeal in such loathed embrace,
He slew the wretches by a lingering death.
Worn out at length, his subjects fly to arms,
Compass his court and palace all about,
And, while the monster raved and stormed within,
Butcher his guards and all his men-at-arms,
And toss the firebrands to the blazing roof.
He mid the carnage making shift to 'scape
Betook him to the Rutules' land, and there
Now shelters him 'neath Turnus' friendly power.
So all Etruria rose in righteous wrath,
And, up in arms, on pain of instant war
Demand their king for vengeance on his head.
Now thee, my honoured guest, I mean forthwith
To give for captain to this mighty host;

497-515]

BOOK VIII.

For all along the seaboard's crowded length
Their landed troops are clamouring for the march,
And bid advance the standards to the field;
The while with much ado an aged seer
Still holds them back, declaring thus the fates:
'Ye chosen warriors of Maeonia's land,
The flower and crown of valiant foresires old,
Ye whom just anger drives against the foe
And wretch Mezentius fires with righteous ire,
So great a folk no man of Italy
May take in hand-choose ye a foreign chief'Whereon the Tuscan army sat adown
Mid yonder meads, awed by the voice of Heaven.
Tarchon himself an envoy sent me here
With tender of the signs of royalty,
The crown and kingly staff, and willed me straight
To join the camp, and take the Tuscan throne;
But envious eld, with frozen blood benumbed
And worn with lapse of years, still says me nay,
And powers now over-old for martial feats.
Myself ere this had urged my son to go,
But that, a Sabine by his mother's side,
This land may claim him half Italian-born.
Be it then thine, blest as thou art of Fate
In age and race, and called of Heaven withal,
To enter straightway on thy proud career,
Sovereign henceforth of Italy and Troy!
Yea, I will give thee this my Pallas too,
The staff and solace of my waning years;
'Neath such a master be it his to learn
Y

321

322

7HE AENEID.

[516-534

The soldier's life and all the lore of war,
To note thy deeds, and from his earliest years
With reverence observe and copy thee.
On him will I three hundred horse bestow,
The flower of our Arcadian chivalry,
And Pallas on his own account will give
As many more beside.'
Scarce was it said
When, musing each on threatening perils nigh,
Aeneas and Achates silent stood,
Fixt in deep thought, and so had pondered on,
Had not Cyth6ra's goddess giv'n a sign
Amid the open vault; for, sudden launched,
A fiery fork came flashing from the skies,
And hard thereon a peal; when straightway all
The welkin round seemed crashing down at once,
And Tyrrhene bugles through the air were heard.
All eyes look up ; again and yet again
Crack the tremendous peals; and now, behold,
Plain through the texture of a cloud where else
The firmament showed clear without a fleck,
Bright arms were seen to gleam athwart the sky
With ruddy sheen, and ring, together struck.
The rest were all in speechless wonder lost;
But he, the chief of Troy, bade hail the sound,
And owned therein his mother's word fulfilled;
Then to the king: Be not, my honoured host,
O'er-pained to find what these dread signs import
As drawing on; 'tis Heaven's own call to me :
The signal such ny goddess mother vowed

535-552]

BOOK Vil.

To send me here, if war should so assail;
She to mine aid would fetch me down the skies
An armour fashioned in god Vulcan's forgeAnd lo! her pledge redeemed. Ah me, to think
What havoc threats Laurentum's wretched sons !
Turnus, what vengeance waits thee at my hands!
What helms, and shields, and gallant heroes slain
Shall father Tiber roll adown his stream !
Now reap they to the full the crop they've sown,
Now cry they to the field, and break their leagues !'
He said; and, rising from his lofty seat,
First wakes Alcides' dormant altar-fires,
And, cheered at heart, with pious prayer adores
His new-found household gods of yesterday,
The while Evander and the youth of Troy,
Each side alike, their several victims slay;
Then hies he to his comrades at the fleet,
And there from all the crews doth choose him out
The boldest to attend him to the war;
The rest, returning, drop adown the stream,
And ride sans effort the descending flood,
Charged with full tidings for Ascanius' ear
Of all had so befall'n his sire and friends.
Anon, for mounting of the chosen band
Of warriors destined for the Tuscan plain
Are gallant chargers brought, and for their chief
One of rare beauty to his use reserved,
Whose sides and back a tawny lion's fell,
Shining with gilded claws, doth cover o'er.
Y2

323

324

THE AENEID.

[553-570

Soon through the little city goes the news
Of mounted horsemen pricking forth full speed,
Bound for the quarters of the Tyrrhene king;
And trembling mothers double all their vows,
While fear forestalls the worst, and, nearer seen,
Larger and sterner looms the front of War.
Then as his son at parting rose to go,
Evander grasped his hand, and, clinging fast,
Held him in close embrace, and, weeping on
Sans fill or stay, e'en thus essays to speak:
'O, that great Jove would now but give me back
My by-gone years, and make me what I was
When 'neath Praenest6 walls I mowed me down
The first and boldest of the foeman's van,
When, victor of the field, I burned me there
Whole heaps of taken shields, and this right hand
Sent Erulus their king to Orcus down;
Him whom Feronia, when she bare him, gave
To own amid the fight three several lives,
Thrice fall'n, to rise, thrice stript, find arms to wield,
And thrice of need at foeman's stroke to die;
But whom this hand did nathless there deprive
Of all his lives and strip of all those arms.
Might this but be, ah, never then, my son,
Should I, thy loving sire, be torn as now
From this.t'hy dear embrace, Mezentius ne'er
Had laid dishonour on this aged head,
And, dealing with his sword such havoc foul,
Bereft my city of so many sons.

571-590]

BOOK VII.

But, O you gods above,: and thou great Jove,
Almighty ruler of the Powers of heaven,
Look down with pity on Arcadia's king,
And hear a father's prayer: If so it be
Your will and Fate's may hold me in reserve
My Pallas' safe return; if living be
To live assured to see his face again,
To meet my son, and join him here once more,
Then pray I so to live; let this but be,
And here I bow me to all sorrows else.
But O, if Fortune some disaster threats,
Some ill to come, and what I shrink to name,
Then let me here this day, this very hour,
Be rid of cruel life, while yet my dread
Hangs in suspense, while hope doth balance fear,
And while, my child! my sole, my old man's joy!
These arms may still enfold thee thus, and ere
Some heavier tidings wound a father's ear.'
So at their last leave-taking spake the sire,
And, fainting in the end, is borne away.
And now through open gates the mounted troop
Had ridden forth, and issued on the plain,
Aeneas and Achat6s at the head,
And, following next, the other lords of Troy,
Pallas himself the midmost of the band,
In broidered scarf bedight and inlaid arms:
Like Lucifer, the star whom more than all
The other stellar fires fair Venus loves,
When, risen dripping from his ocean bath,

325

326

7HE

AENEID.

[591-607

He sets his blessd forehead in the sky,
And melts the darkness with his orient beam.
Mothers the while on wall and turret stand
Pale with affright, and follow with their eyes
The dusty cloud and brazen-gleaming bands:
They, all in arms, where lies the shortest route,
Through brake and brushwood urge their onward
march ;
When, gaining soon the open champaign free,
They lift their pealing war-cry from afar,
And, formed in ordered line, the clattering tramp
Of prancing chargers beats the plain to dust.
Hard by where Caere's chilly streamlet flows
A wooded region spreads, umbrageous, lone,
And held from times remote in solemn awe
Of all who dwelt thereby; steep concave hills
Begird it round, with sombre fir-trees clothed,
And shut it every side. Tradition tells,
The old Pelasgian tribes, the folk who erst
Long ages past the Latian frontiers held,
To ancient Silvan, god of fields and flocks,
Hallowed this grove, and to his name withal
A sacred day assigned. Not far herefrom
The valiant Tarchon and his Tuscan powers
Lay posted strong, and from the hill-top high
Their hosts might now in full extent be seen,
As, camped out wide, they pitched o'er all the plain:
Aeneas and his warriors hither draw,
And there refresh them, jaded man and steed.

6fo8-6253

BOOK VHL

327

But now, descending through the clouds of heaven,
Fair Venus was at hand, and bare her gifts;
When, spying by the breezy river's bank
Her princely son in privacy withdrawn,
She came before him and bespake him thus:
'Behold my presents, son, the word redeemed
I pledged thee for my husband's craft and skill;
Let it not fear thee now how soon soe'er
To bid the proud Laurentines to the field,
Or fiery Turnus' self.' And therewithal
Cythera's lady wooed her son's embrace;
Then 'neath an oak she set the glittering arms
Full in the hero's view. Nor may he now,
Smit with the beauty of the goddess' gifts,
*E'er feast enough his eyes' insatiate greed
With looking on the work, but through it still
Rolls his untiring gaze, and, one by one,
Surveys the several pieces o'er and o'er,
Handling and turning each; the crested helm
With nodding terrors plumed and shooting flame,
The fateful sword, dread instrument of doom,
The brass-wrought corslet strong, broad and blood-red,
In hue most like as when a livid cloud
Fires to the kindling of the solar beam,
And shines afar; the polished cuishes too
Of silver-blende, with finest gold inlaid;
The spear; and last, whose wonders none may tell,
The storied shield, a miracle of art.
For, not unknowing of the years to be,
The Lord of Fire had thereon writ at large

3.28.

THE AENEID.

[626-646

Italia's fortunes, and the wars of Rome,
There all Ascanius' future seed, and all
Their triumphs won, in ordered sequence shown.
There had he wrought besides the mother wolf
In Mavors' mossy cave recumbent laid:
The baby twins about her udders clomb
In playful mood, and fearless sucked their dam,
While she by turns caressed them, bending back
Her lissome neck, and shaped them with her tongue.
Anigh hereto the god had deftly drawn
Rome's new-built town, and there the Sabine maids
By lawless deed from forth the Circus haled,
The Great Games still in act; whence sudden war
Upstarting here 'twixt Romulus' bold sons
And Tatius with his austere Cures rude;
Anon the kings, surceasing from their strife,
Sheathed yet in arms and goblets in their hands,
Are standing seen before Jove's altar-fires,
A'striking of their league o'er slaughtered swine.
Not far herefrom, lashed divers ways at once,
The four-yoked cars had Mettus piece-meal tornBut thou, false Alban, should'st have kept thy troth !And now fierce Tullus through the woodland dragged
The traitor's bleeding limbs, while bush and brake
Dripped with the splashing of that bloody dew.
Porsenna here is bidding Rome again
Take banished Tarquin back, and girds the while

647-6641

BOOK VIII.

329

Her leaguered ramparts with his closest siege:
Aeneas' sons refuse, and there in arms
Are rushing on the sword in Freedom's cause.
Him might ye mark in very guise pourtrayed
Of scowling brow and threatening mien, to see
How daring Cocles breaks the bridge adown,
And Cloelia bursts her bonds, and swims the stream.

Before the temple, on Tarpeia's steep,
Stood warden Manlius, and sentinelled
The Capitol--the old Romulean thatch
Showed fresh and sharp upon the palace-roof.
Here flew a silver goose through golden courts,
And, fluttering, told the Gauls were at the gate;
And there the Gauls through bush and copse were
crept,
And scaled the Castle's brow, beholpen well
Of darkness and the boon of seeling night:
Of gold their flowing hair, their raiment gold,
Shining their cloaks and striped ; their milk-white
necks
With golden collars clasped; and each hand there
Two Alpine spears doth grasp, each body there
A length of shield protects.
There, too, were shown
The dancing Salians and Lupercans nude,
The tufted caps that crowned their priestly heads,
And sacred shields that dropped from out the skies;

330

THE AENEID.

[665-682

And high-born matrons through the city rode
In cushioned cars, and bare the holy things.
Apart herefrom the nether realms were seen,
The dismal seats of Tartarus profound,
The lofty gates of Dis, the several dooms
Of crime and guilt, and traitor Catiline
Sheer o'er the rocky verge in act to fall,
And quailing at the Furies' looks below;
While distant far the righteous spirits dwelt
In calm retreats, and Cato gave them laws.
'Mid these, far-stretching in its widest girth,
There went the semblance of the swelling sea,
Done all in gold; howbeit the blue was made
As foaming o'er with flecks of whitening spray;
And all about were silver dolphins wrought
In mazy gambols wide disporting free,
And oaring through the tide with tail and fin.
And midmost there were brazen navies seen,
In proud battalia ranged, the Actian fight;
Leucat6 swarming with the marshalled war,
And all the waves ablaze with burnished gold.
Here with his people, senators, and gods,
High on the stern Augustus Caesar stands,
And leads Italia's warriors to the fray;
His beaming temples shoot the twofold flame,
The Julian star is dawning o'er his head:
The while elsewhere, with gods and winds to help,
Is bold Agrippa bearing for the van

683-700]

BOOK FIII.

331

And towering into view, his glittering brows
Bound with the seaman's crown, the golden beaks;
And there, opposed, proud Antony is seen
With mixt barbaric powers and motley arms,
Victorious from the nations of the Dawn
And Red Sea coasts, and with him brings along
Embattled Egypt, all the Eastern world,
And farthest Bactria with her dusky sons,
While following in his train, O shame accurst 1
Wends his Egyptian wife. Weighing anon,
They stand well out for room; then, closing straight,
With adverse prows the rival squadrons meet,
And, rent with plunging oars and three-toothed beaks,
The sea is all afoam; seemed it ye saw,
Pluckt from their ocean-roots, whole isles afloat,
Or justling hills encountering on the deep;
So tall and huge, with might and main propelled,
They hurled their swimming castles on the foe;
While flaming hemp and arrows winged with fire
Rain thick and fast from every hand, and all
God Neptune's fields are reddening to the fray.
Beating her country's timbrel in their midst,
The queen cheers on her minions to the fight,
Undreaming of her doom, nor sees as yet
Those aspics twain a'following in her rear.
Dog-faced Anfibis, strange and unblest gods
Of mongrel shapes and forms unkindly mixt
Are ranged around, and lift their puny spears
'Gainst Neptune, Venus, and Minerva's self.
Amid the conflict raves the God of War,

332

THE AENEID.

In sculptured steel embossed, and fury Forms
And fiendlike Shapes are hovering in mid air.
And gleeful there mad Discord stalks along
With mantle rent; and, following at her heels,
Bellona grim with bloody scourge in hand
Is moving through the fray.
At sight hereof
Apollo from his lofty Actian height
Is drawing wide his bow; and lo, thereat
Egypt, and Ind, and all Arabia's sons
Turning their coward backs in utter dread,
With all far Saba's hosts; and mid the rout
The queen herself a'crying to the winds,
Crowding all sail, and slacking out the sheets,
In very act to fly. In wondrous wise
The artist god had wrought her there to view,
Wanning with death foreshown, and driving on
Mid blood and carnage, borne of wind and tide,
And Nilus opposite, a giant Form,
Lamenting sore, and opening wide his skirts,
And calling on his vanquished sons to come
And shelter in his blue and reedy lap.
Caesar, in triple triumph entering Rome,
Was hallowing to the gods of Italy
Thank-offerings of a hundred marble fanes
In payment of his vows: the ways were loud
With games and jubilee: in all the shrines
Were Matron choirs; in each an altar smoked,

[70 1-7 8

719-731]

BOOK VII.

333

And slaughtered beeves strewed every pavement there;
Himself the while in Phoebus' dazzling porch
Tells o'er the offerings of the nations all,
And hangs them on the temple's gorgeous doors.
In long array the conquered peoples pass,
In speech as diverse as in garb and arms.
There, one and all, wise Mulciber had wrought
The Nomad wild, swart Afric's zoneless sons,
Lelege, and Carian, Scythians with their bows,
The Morini, remotest of mankind,
And Dahae nations fierce, till now untamed:
The conquered Rivers, too; twy-horned Rhene,
Euphrates' humbled pride, now flowing on
With minished tides, and swift Araxes' stream
Brooking the bridge submiss, nor now as erst
Indignant sweeping pier and arch away.
Such sights on Vulcan's shield, his mother's gift,
The prince admiring views, witting of none,
But ravished with their forms; and, shouldering, lifts
The fame and fortunes of his sons unborn.

334

THE AENEID.

BOOK

IX.

these things pass afar, Juno meantime
Sends swift-foot Iris down the skies in haste,
Charged with a message for prince Turnus' ear,
Where in his sire Pilumnus' holy grove
And secret dell the daring chieftain sat;
To whom from roseate lips the goddess thus:
' Turnus, what scarce thy prayer had ever won,
Lo, time itself hath brought thee here unasked;
Aeneas, quitting camp and friends and fleet,
To Palatine Evander's court is gone;
Nor so content, e'en to the towns hath pushed
Of farthest Corythus, and arms him there
A band of Lydian rustics to his aid.
Why then doubt still, or what would'st further wait ?
Now is the time to call for steed and car;
No tarrying more! be up, and out of hand
Surprise and storm the panic-stricken camp.'
She said; and through mid-air on balanced wings
The goddess rose, and ever as she flew
Clave in her flight her rain-bow's mighty span,
The warrior knew his heavenly visitant,
And, raising to the stars both hands uplift,
WHILE

17-37]

BOOK IX.

335

Pursued her soaring flight with such like speech:
'Iris, fair glory of the skies, what Pow'r
Hath sped thee down the clouds to earth and me ?
What means this sudden brightening of the day !
The firmament divides, and lo, the stars
Are reeling pathless through the ethereal plain!
Whoso thou art that call'st me thus to arms,
I take your omen and attend your will.'
And, speaking so, he turned him to the stream,
And, lifting water from the brimming flood,
Invokes the gods, and burdened heaven with vows.
And now in fullest force athwart the plain,
With steeds, and arms, and vests of broidered gold,
The marshalled host moved onwards to the fray;
The vaward lines Messtpus leads, the rear
Tyrrheus' stout sons array, the centre ranks
Turnus as general doth himself command :
Steady their march as, rising calm and slow,
Deep Ganges pours his sevenfold stream along,
Or fruitful Nile, what time he quits the fields
And, ebbing, hides him in his bed again.
Here from their ramparts' height the Trojans mark,
Condensed and black, a sudden cloud of dust
That, gathering darkness, rose along the plain;
And first Caicus from the fronting mound:
'What murky mass, my countrymen, is this
Which, wrapt in clouds, moves hither o'er the fields?
Fetch, fetch your weapons quick, and man the walls;

336

THE AE E ID.

[38-54

Ho, for the foeman is at hand !'-and straight
The Trojans all, with shouts responsive raised,
Fall back through every pass, and close the gates,
And, forming, throng the battlements; for such,
Prudent and wise, Aeneas' strict command
At parting left-' should aught fall out the while,
They must not venture to draw up their force,
And try the doubtful fortune of the field;
But, biding safe within their lines intrenched,
Keep close in camp, and guard their walls secure.'
And so, for all that shame and anger bade
Go forth and wage the conflict hand to hand,
They do their chieftain's bidding none the less,
And bolt and bar each gate, and, under arms,
Pent in their sheltering towers, await the foe.
But fiery Turnus, pricking on before,
Had gotten start of all his tardier host,
And, coming with a troop of twenty horse,
Shows him, unlooked-for, at the city gate:
A Thracian charger bore the noble youth,
Dappled with flecks of white; a golden helm,
Topped with a crimson crest, defends his head.
'Now, gallants,' cries he, who will be the first
To share with me this onset on the foe ?
Lo, mark ye this !'-and, prelude to the fray,
He casts his javelin townwards through the airThen, towering to his height, he spurred afield.
His youthful comrades cheer the daring deed,
And back the challenge with their loudest shouts

55-75]

BOOK IX.

337

They marvel at the Trojans' craven souls:
'Men, and with arms in-hand-yet lack the heart
To trust them to a fair and open field,
And combat face to face, but, safe ensconced,
Keep close in camp, and skulk behind their walls !'
Furious, he rides the ramparts round and round,
And to and fro from every side explores
Each path and access, yet no entrance finds.
As at some crowded fold in wily watch
A prowling wolf keeps ranging up and down
At dead of night, and, beat with wind and rain,
Whines at the gates, the lambs the while within
Bleating in safety, each beneath its dam
Whereat the more the savage ramps and roars,
And rends in thought the prey he may not reach,
While hunger's craving pang, now rabid grown,
Torments him sore, and jaws unslaked with blood;
So burns the Rutule's wrath, as, scanning fierce
Rampart and walls, his furious soul debates
How best an entry find, what way dislodge
Those Teucrians from the shelter of their lines,
And fling the dastards on the level plain.
So on the fleet he falls, which, fenced around
With earth-works and the stream, adjoined the camp,
Calling aloud for flames, and, fired himself,
Fills with a fiery pine his eager grasp.
Then, one and all, by Turnus' presence spurred,
They set them to the work, and gleeful each
Equips him ready with a blazing torch;
And now the hearths are stript, the smoking brand
z

338

THE AENEID.

[76-92

Sends up a pitchy glare, while soot and flame
The Fire-god drives commingling to the stars.
What god, ye Muses, from the Teucrians stayed
That bane of burning dire ? what Power repelled
The fiery menace from the perilled ships ?
Show ye the thing: dim through the ages loom
The facts that vouch the tale; but, fresh and green,
Its glory lives for aye.
What time erewhile
Aeneas first 'neath Phrygian Ida's heights
'Gan build his fleet to bear him o'er the deep,
The Berecyntian Mother-queen, 'tis said,
Bespake almighty Jove in words like these:
'Vouchsafe thy parent's prayer a boon, my son,
Now that Olympus owns thee for its lord,
Quelled with that parent's aid. Endeared of years,
A wood of pines for ages long was mine,
A sacred grove that crowned my mountain's height,
With pitch-firs dark and trunks of maple-trees,
Whereto my worshippers their offerings brought :
These to the Dardan prince I gladly gave
Whenas the hero needed ships; but now
Distressing dread with anguish wrings my heart,
Alarmed for what my soul so long held dear.
Rid me my fears therefor, and let my suit
Win them thus much, that, free of wind and wave,
Unscathed of ocean-work or tempests' shock,
They ne'er may fail, o'ercome : be it their weal
That once they grew upon my sacred hill.'

93-tt]

BOOK

IX.

339

Whereto her son, who wheels the starry worlds:
' O mother mine, say whither would'st thou wrest
The course of fate ? Know'st what dost ask herein ?
Shall vessels fashioned by a mortal hand
Enjoy a right Immortals only know?
Aeneas tempt the perils of the main,
Assured himself,, where all beside unsure?
What god might ever claim a power like that ?
But this we grant: when, all their service done,
They one day reach the Ausonian harbour's mouth,
Such as shall' then, from wreck and storm escap'd,
Have borne the Dardan chief to Latian soil,
Will I of those their perishable shapes
Divested strip, and bid each thenceforth be
A goddess of the deep, in form the same
As Nereus' children, Galat6a fair
And Doto, when they breast the foaming surge.'
He spake, and bade for sealing of his vow
His Stygian brother's flood and Hell's black gulf,
With swirling pitch aboil, confirm the oath;
Then bowed his awful head, and made therewith
From base to summit all Olympus quake.
So now the promised date was come, and all
The numbered days by destiny fulfilledi
When Turnus' daring threat forewarned the dame
To save her sacred galleys from his brands.
Nor failed the goddess' ready aid; at once
Flashed on the eyes of all a blinding light,
Sudden and strange; and, from the Orient launched,
Z2

340

THE AENEID.

[112-I32

A lustrous cloud was seen to thwart the sky,
And Ida's choirs were heard, while through the air
There fell from upper depths a voice of dread,
Which thrilled the Trojan and Rutulian ranks:
'Haste not, ye Trojans, to defend my barks,
Nor arm your hands thereto; sooner, I trow,
Shall Turnus' fires avail to burn the seas,
Than these my sacred pines. And ye-go free;
Go, goddesses of ocean ; ships no more:
The Mother so commands.' Whereon forthwith
Each :ship breaks short its moorings from the brink,
And diving, dolphin-like, with sunken beaks,
They, one and all, in other forms emerge
And stem the main, as many maiden shapes
As erst beside the beach stood brazen prows.
Appalled the Rutules gazed; Mess pus' self
Reeled back aghast, nor more might rule his steeds;
Affrighted Tiber paused, and, murmuring hoarse,
Recalled his onward flow, from ocean stayed.
But Turnus' daring soul no whit may bate
Of trust or hope; nor only faints he not,
But lifts his fellows' cheer with prompt rebuke:
'These portents touch the Trojans; Jove himself
Takes with their fleet their wonted shifts away;
Lo, fled ere well assailed, no ship might dare
Abide our Rutule swords and flames. So then
The sea no more hath road or path for Troy,
Nor yields them means to fly : the one-half world
Is henceforth lost them quite : the land is ours;

. ..

.. O"I'

133-1481

BOOK

IX.

341

Yea, more than ours; such myriads to our aid,
And armed to boot, Italia sends us here.
I reck not, I, of what these Phrygians vaunt,
Mean what they may, as oracles from heaven
Enough, and more, have Fate and Venus claimed,
That Trojan feet have trod Ausonia's soil:
I, too, my mission have; and 'tis in mine,
Robbed of my bride, ay root and branch to smite
The caitiff race that wrought me such a deed;
For other folk than Atreus' sons will feel
The wrong 'tis still Troy's wont to do, nor may
Mycenae hold monopoly of right
To arm in such a cause. Or will they say,
Their former fall sufficed, nor Fate may claim
Nor Fortune more against them as their due ?

Whereto say I; one fall had well sufficed,
Had so withal one sin sufficed them too,
And they had learned therefrom, as sooth they might,
To all but hate the whole of womankind.
Dastards and fools! to whom a rampart's breadth,
The momentary stop a trench may yield,
Poor thin partitions 'twixt themselves and doom,
Give all they have of heart. What ! saw they not
Troy wall and towers, though built of Neptune's hands,
Sink down in flames'? But ye, my picked confreres,
Which of you now is ready, sword in hand,
To hew their ramparts down, and storm with me,
In this its panic sore, their quaking camp ?
Needeth not me for my new war of Troy
Or arms of proof god Vulcan's hand must forge,

342

THE AENEID.

[49-65

Or fleets and navies of a thousand sail,
Were all Etruria this very hour
To join their ranks, and back their caitiff cause.
Those knavish doings of Troy's Grecian foes,
The darksome passage and the nightly raid,
The robbed Palladium, and its coward theft
That needs must first poor sleeping wardens slay,Let them fear none of these ; no, nor shall we
Skulk in the body of a monstrous horse:
In broad of day and 'fore the very sun
I pledge .. here to ring their walls with flame;
me
Yea, will I teach them how they deal not now
With puny Greeks and weak Pelasgian boys
Whom Hector kept for ten long years at bay.
So, seeing now the day's best part is gone,
For what is left, tend ye your bodies well,
Glad that so much is done; and know ye too
The warrior's joy, that fighting is at hand.'
Meantime Messapus in commission holds
To post relays of guards at every gate,
And gird with watchfires all the works about;
Twice seven Rutulian lords are straight told off
To walk in armed patrol the walls around,
A hundred youths attendant upon each
In crimson crests bedight and gleaming gold.
Anon, arrayed, they tend their several parts,
Relieve each other's guard, and pace the rounds,
Shifting their turns; then, stretched upon the grass,,
Carouse full free, and tilt the wassail-bowls;

166-1.83]

BOOK IX.

Bright shine the fires, and, wearing so the hours,
They pass the wakeful night in watch and play.
Not unobservant from their walls above
The Trojans looked on all these scenes adown,
Nor slacked their care the while : with anxious heed
They test each port, and visit every gate,
Rampart to rampart join and tower to tower,
O'er-bridged secure, and link them, spear in hand,
Brave Mnestheus and Serestus, chiefs in charge,
Urging the work; whom good Aeneas bade,
Should aught of adverse hap fall out the while,
To guide the war and guard the general weal.
So all the host along the leaguered walls
Divide the toil and share the common risk,
Tending their several turns, alternate changed,
Of watch and ward, as each man's charge doth fall.
Young Nisus was the captain of the gate,
The valiant son of Hyrtacus, and whom
The huntress Ida from her woodlands sent
To join Aeneas' arms, a marksman good,
Shrewd at the shaft or spear; and by his side
His friend Euryalus, than whom was none
Fairer in face and form, of all who called
Aeneas chief, or donned the Trojan arms:
In years a boy, the down of opening youth
But just 'gan shade his smooth unrazored cheek.
One love had each for each; to battle both
Rushed side by side; and now, as aye their wont,
United still, they held in common charge

x'43

344

THE AEVEID.

84-20
[X

The station of the gate. When Nisus first:
'Is it the gods, Euryalus, who breathe
This fervour in men's souls, or bids each man
The passion of the hour to be his god ?
Know that for long my spirit spurs me on
To dare the fight, or do some high exploit,
Nor rests content with dull inaction here.
Thou seest what blind o'erweening confidence
Holds our incautious foes ; lo, wide apart,
Their fires, burnt low, show twinkling here and there;
Drowned in debauch and sleep, yonder they lie,
And all is still. Hear next what I revolve,
And what the thought holds mastery of my soul:
All as one man bid call Aeneas back,
People and chiefs alike, bid send forth men
May find the king and show him how we fare.
Now if so be they guarantee for thine
The meed I ask herein-for to myself
The glory of the feat is meed enoughMethinks that 'neath the brow of yonder hill
I can find out a ready path whereby
To fare to Pallanteum town and towers.'
Fired with the love of praise, Euryalus
Awhile stood mute; then to his eager mate:
'All this thyself! and, Nisus, dost thou shrink,
As doubtful of thy friend, from making me
A partner in thy deed ? and would'st thou have
Euryalus to send his Nisus forth
Alone, unaided, to such risk as this.?

201-218]

BOOK IX.

345

Not so my sire Ophelt6s trained his son,
Mid Troy's ill days bred up and Greekish scares;
Nor deem I, sooth, I e'er have borne me so
In later times, when side by side with thee
I followed to this hour Aeneas' fates.
No! here-within this breast-there throbs a heart
Doth mere existence scorn, and holds good cheap,
Though bought with life, the fame whereat thou aim'st.'
When Nisus thus : 'Ne'er was it mine, dear friend,
To question of thee so; nay, sooth to say,
The doubt were most unjust: so may great Jove,
Or what god else regards with kindly eyes
Our mutual love, prosper my steps, and bring
Thy friend in triumph to thine arms again.
But should some luckless hap-as sure thou seest
Too many such on such-like ventures waitShould this, or else some adverse Power malign
Thwart my fair course and mar my hoped success,
Fain would I thou wert left; thy budding years
Are worthier life, and crave a longer date.
Spare me one friend to rescue me in fight,
Or lay me, ransomed, in the wonted clay;
Or, should ill fortune that poor boon deny,
To pay the rites the missing may receive,
And grace my memory with an empty tomb.
Nor may I too, by hearkening to thy wish,
Wring thy poor mother's heart with such a pang;
Hers, who alone of all our mother folk
Durst to this day attend her boy, nor cared
To sit at ease in good Acestes' town.'

346

7HE AENEID.

[219-239

Whereto Euryalus: 'Ill speeds thy work,
Thus stringing plea on plea; nor my resolve
Or change or faltering knows: let us away !'He said; then raised the guard, who straightway take
The vacant post; and, quitting so his charge,
Attends on Nisus, and both seek the prince.
Now o'er the one-half world all creatures else
Were peaceful laid, and, hushed in deep repose,
Forgat their toils, and eased their hearts of care;
The Trojan chiefs, in solemn council met,
A chosen few, conferred their state affairs
Of import grave, and high debate did hold,
What was to do, and whom withal send forth
With tidings for their absent chieftain's ear:
Bucklers on arm, and leaning on their spears,
The warriors stand amid an open space
Full in the centre of the camp; when lo,
The comrades, Nisus and Euryalus,
Instant admission beg-' their business grave,
And one should well repay the pause it asked.'
Whereon Iiilus bids admit the youths,
And, introduced, with kindly words removes
Their modest fears, and then bids Nisus speak;
When, re-assured, the son of Hyrtacus:
'Vouchsafe fair hearing, chiefs, nor let, I pray,
What here we bring be judged of by our years :
The Rutules, drowned in wine and sleep, lie hushed,
Nor more hold watch; their fires, a broken line,
Show few and far between, while, smouldering low,

240-257]

BOOK iX.

347

Their murky vapour blots the midnight sky;
And all is still. Now we ourselves have seen
A way whereby a wily march to steal,
E'en through the sea-gate, where the road divides;
And, chiefs, if you but give us leave to use
The lucky hap. which Fortune so bestows,
Here present shall your eyes full soon behold
Aeneas, fetcht from Pallanteum walls;
Nor only found and fetcht, but won besides
With havoc of our foes, and spoils to boot.
Nor can we miss our road; full oft we both
Have o'er us seen the city's skirts, as still
We roamed in daily chase the valleys dim,
And all the windings of the stream explored.'
Aletes then, in years and judgment ripe:
'Not yours the purpose then, ye gods of Troy,
To wipe out utterly our name and race,
Else had ye left us no such youths as these.'
And clasping, as he spake, their hands and necks,
He bathed his aged cheeks in floods of tears'What guerdons, warriors, may we deem of worth
To countervail the merit of your claims ?
The first, as eke the noblest and the best,
Will Heaven and these your own true hearts bestow;
The rest, and out of hand, your lord shall give;
Nor will Ascanius e'er forget your worth
Through all those years his unbroached life may
count.''Nay I,'-Ascanius' self here breaketh in-

348

THE AENEID.

' Whose welfare hangs upon my sire's return,
Yes, hear me, Nisus ; I adjure ye both
By Troy's great guardian Powers, yea by the gods
Of old Assaracus, and Vesta's shrine,
Reposing in your hands my hopes, my all,
Fetch back my sire ! restore him to my sight !
He once recalled, no sorrow can be here.
Two goblets will I give, of silver wrought,
With sculptured figures rough, the which erewhile
My father took from sacked Arisba's keep;
A pair of tripods, talents twain of gold,
And therewithal a bowl of antique make,
Sidonian Dido's gift. But if it e'er
Be ours to-reign o'er conquered Italy,
To wield its sceptre, and divide the spoils,Thou saw'st the steed whereon proud Turnus rode
Afield to-day, the arms he shone withal,
From spur to plume in panoply of gold ;That steed, those arms, that helm with crimson crest,
I here from hazard of the lot exempt,
And name them, Nisus, from this moment thine.
Yet more, twelve female slaves my sire will give,
Of beauty rare; male prisoners besides,
Them and their arms, with, over and above,
The broad demesne that king Latinus owns.
But thee, :Euryalus, thou noble boy!
Whose years mine own at nearer distance track,
Thee to my heart I take and fold thee there,
My friend, my co-mate for all haps henceforth;
No glory will I woo apart from thee,

279-297]

BOOK IX.

:349

Be war or peace on hand; yea, thine shall be
My sovereign confidence in deed and word.'
Whereto Euryalus : 'No after years,
Let Fate but smile to-night and bid me live,
Shall speak me other than this deed would show.
But now one boon above all gifts I ask:
I have a mother of the olden line
Of Priam's house, whom nor the land of Troy,
Nor yet in Sicily Acestes' town,
Might keep, good soul, from wending forth with me;
And her I now am leaving all untold
Of this night's risk, be what it may, nor took
Her kiss, nor said one parting word; for abNight and thine hand be witness to my truthI might not bear to see my mother's tears!
But O, I pray, help thou her sore distress,
Solace her lonely age; let.me but have
This pledge from thee to bear with me along,
And I the boldlier every risk will face.'

Touched to the soul, the chieftains melt in tears,
But most Iiilus' self, as, imaged true,
The picture of his own fond filial love
Flashed to his conscious thought. Then spake he
thus:
' Be sure of all thy worth so well may ask;
Thy mother shall be mine, Creiisa's self
In everything but name; nor shall she find

350

THE AENEID.

[298-3r8

Her thank but small, who gave us such a son.
Whate'er the issue on this venture waits,
By this my head I swear--my father's oathAll that I now have promised for thine own,
Returning safe with prosperous hap, the same
Shall bide, made good, thy mother and thy kin.'
Weeping he spake; then from his neck un-slung
The sword gold-hilted which with wondrous skill
The Cretan armourer, Lycaon, wrought
And deftly fitted with an ivory sheath;
E'en this his gift. To Nisus Mnestheus gives
A tawny lion's fell and shaggy spoils,
And old Aletes changes helm for helm.
Their arming done, now forth the comrades strode,
While young and old, chieftains and nobles all,
With prayers and vows attend them to the gate;
The fair Iiilus, riper than his years
In soul and forethought, giving many a charge
To carry to his sire; but, breathed in vain,
The night winds catch, and scatter all in air.
So, wending on, the twain o'erpass the trench
And deep-cut fosse, and mid the gloom of night
Make for the fatal camp-yet destined first
To deal their fate to many a slaughtered foe.
Here see they bodies laid in sleep and wine,
Strewn here and there along the grassy sod,
Chariots unhorsed and tilted high in air,
And men among the wheels and traces stretched,

319-336]

BOOK IX.

351

Slumbering secure, while all about them lay
Goblets, and arms, and drunken spilth of wine.
When first the son of Hyrtacus:
My friend,
us now the daring hand; behold
Behoves
Occasion woos it well; here lies our way:
Be thine to watch and keep a wide look-out
That no bold hand assault us from behind;
All here to front will I lay waste, and straight
Will make thee lightsome room to follow on.'
He said, and bates his breath ;and therewithal
His ready blade on haughty Rhamnes falls,
Who breathing hard, on high-piled carpets stretched,
Lay blowing sleep from all his labouring lungs
King Turnus' favourite augur he, and eke
Himself a king; yet failed he none the less
For all his augury to stay his doom.
Then close hereby three serving-men he smites,
As on the grass mid piles of arms they lay;
Then Rhesus' squire, and then his charioteer,
Found where he dropt beneath his very team,
And with his falchion shears their drooping necks;
Then from their lord he lops his head away,
Leaving the shortened trunk a'welling blood,
And floor and couch one reek of steaming gore.
Next Lamyrus and Lamus both he slays;
Then young Serranus, fair of form and face,
Who on that night had played and drunk full deep,
And now lay stretched supine, in every limb
O'erpowered and fettered by the copious god

352

THE AENEID.

[337-353

Ah, better had he bade his game keep pace
With. waning night, and played on till the day !
Thus, hunger-maddened, through some crowded fold
A famished lion stalks mid havoc on,
Rending and mangling all the feeble sheep
That, unresisting, fall before his ramp,
With terror dumb, and grinds his bloody fangs.
Nor less of havoc wrought Euryalus
He, fired alike, ranges the sleeping camp,
Athirst for blood; and now with stealthy step
Falls on a large and vulgar company,
Herbesus, Fadus, Rhoetus, Abaris ;
All sleeping slain, undreaming of their fate,
Save Rhoetus: he, awake and seeing all,
Poor wretch ! had slunk behind a massive jar,
Ill-hidden so; whence rising to escape,
Full in his breast the Trojan close at hand
Drives the whole sword, arid, tugging might and main,
Draws back the blade with copious death distained;
Whereon, with gasp on gasp convulsive oped,
The choking mouth pours forth his crimsoni life,
With mingled wine shed out and plenteous blood.
The youth thus on pursues his furtive raid,
And now for king MessApus' quarter makes;
For there he notes the watch-fires waning low
And flickering to their end, and, tied in rows,
The tethered steeds cropping the grass at ease
When Nisus brief; for that he saw him so

354-370]

BOOK IX.

353

By thirst o'ermuch of blood rapt blindly on:
'Desist we now; unfriendly dawn is nigh;
Lo, we have wreaked our vengeance to the full,
And cleared a goodly passage through the foe.'
This said, they take their way, and leave behind
Full many a spoil-armours of richest work,
Of solid silver wrought, and costly cups,
Arras, and sumptuous rugs, confusedly strown.
But,' loath to part, Euryalus lays hand
On haughty Rhamnes' belt and trappings rich,
With golden studs embossed, the which of yore
The wealthy Caedicus for presents sent
To Remulus, of Tibur, so to bind,
Though distant far, the monarch for his friend;
Who, dying, to his grandson left the gifts;
But he being dead, in border warfare slain,
His Rutule foes so won them for their own;
E'en these the youth strips off, and straight therein
Arrays his manly limbs, but ah, in vain !
And dons withal Messapus' burnished helm,
For wearing light, with waving plumage decked;
Which done, they quit the camp, and, speeding, take
The safer road.
Meantime a troop of horse,
Sent forward from the Latins' town the while
The general host lay halted on the plain,
Had left, and now were on their march full speed,
Charged with despatches for prince Turnus' hand,
Three hundred strong, all under shield arrayed,
2A

354

7HE AENEID.

[371-386

And Volscens at their head. And now they drew
Anigh their fellows' tents, and soon had passed
Beneath the rampart wall, when from afar
They spy the twain diverging to the left,
As wary of the camp; and therewithal,
Seen by the glimmering light, the brazen casque
Bewrayed Euryalus, as, heedless worn,
It met the moon's beam full, and flashed it back.
Nor was it seen for nought: from forth the troop,
'Ho, stand ye, men !' cries Volscens, halting short,
'And speak withal; say who, and why afoot,
And whither bound, and wherefore thus in arms.'
Nought make they of reply, but speed their way
Straight for the wood, and trust them to the night.
At once the horsemen right and left divide,
And all the passes of the wood beset,
Familiar known, and, round about enringed,
At every outlet post their sentinels.
A wood it was with spreading thickets shagged
Of thorn and ilex dark, tangled and wild;
Dense brambles choked it all, and through the copse
A roadway, faintly marked, showed here and there,
By crossing paths perplext, obscure and dim.
The blinding boughs as eke his cumbrous spoils
Hamper Euryalus and retard his flight,
While fear misleads him from the track astray;
But Nisus, happier, emerges safe,
And now, unthinking, had made good his way
Clear of his distanced foes, and gained the place

387-405]

BOOK IX.

Called Alban since, from Alba named, but then
Latinus had built there the royal stalls ;
When here he stopped, and for his absent friend
Looks round with anxious heed, but looks in vain:
'My poor Euryalus ! ah, where so left,
Or how to seek thee out, untreading all
The tangled mazes of that treacherous wood ?
And on the word he traces back with care
His footsteps o'er again, and to and fro
Ranges with listening ear the stilly copse.
He hears the horse-hoofs' tramps, the loud halloos,
The token shouts and signals of pursuit;
Nor long space passed between or ere his ear
Great clamour takes, and therewithal he seesBetrayed by treachery of the ground and night,
By sudden fears confused and wildered soreEuryalus, whom all the troop surrounds,
And now are hurrying off, borne down by odds
And struggling hard in vain. Ah, what to do!
What force 'gainst such a host, what weapons use,
In daring rescue of the youth he loves ?
Or shall he fling him on their thickest swords,
Full sure to fall, and win with quick despatch
A glorious death amid a rain of wounds ?
Anon with stalwart arm bent full stretch back
He poises from his ear his ready lance,
And, looking to the Moon, breathes thus a prayer :
'Thou goddess of the night, vouchsafe thine aid,
Be thou my help, fair watcher of the skies,
Latona's child, and guardian of the woods;
2AZ2

355

356

THE AENEID.

[406-425

If e'er for me my father Hyrtacus
Bare offerings to thy shrine, or if this hand
E'er swelled the tribute with my hunter's spoils,
E'er hung them from thy dome, or set them up,
Fixt on the summit of thy temple's front,
Give me, O goddess, to disperse this troop,
And guide my weapon through the air aright.'
He said; and straight with all his body's strength
Launches the steel, dismissed: forth flies the spear,
Cleaving the shades of night, and reaching, lights
Full upon Sulmo's back, and, there snapt short,
Pierces his midriff with the splintered shaft:
Over he rolls, disgorging from his breast
The life-stream hot that left him cold and stark,
And heaves his labouring sides with long-drawn gasps.
All stand at gaze; when now a second lance
With bolder hand is levelled from his ear;
Nor knew they well or ere the spear, well-aimed,
Through Tagus' either temple sung, and lay
Amid his cloven brain embedded warm.
With rage fierce Volscens storms; yet sees he not,
Look where he may, or who hath dealt the blow,
Or thing whate'er whereon to vent his wrath'But thou meanwhile,' he cries, 'and thy warm blood
Shall forfeit pay of both! '-and therewithal
Tilts sword in hand against Euryalus.
Frenzied, distraught, Nisus shrieks out aloud,
Nor cares he more to cloak him with the night,

426-445]

BOOK IX.

357

Nor further may such agony endure:
'On me, yea me-me here who wrought the deedTurn, ye Rutulians, all your points on me!
Mine all the guilt; nor heart nor hand was his
For such like feats ! by yon bright skies I swear,
And all these conscious stars! his only crime
Was that he loved his hapless friend too well.'
But ah the while the sword with fury sped
Has pierced his side and rends his snowy breast!
Euryalus rolls in death, his beauteous limbs
Purpled with gushing blood, and, drooping low,
His sunken head adown his shoulder falls:
So faints and dies the flowret of the field,
Dissevered by the plough; so poppies hang
The weary neck, when overcharged with rain.
But in amidst the thickest of the troop
Nisus infuriate darts; yet seeks but oneVolscens, and only Volscens, all his quest:
About him throng his foes, and, closing in,
Rain stroke on stroke, and strive to thrust him back;
Yet none the less he bears him, heart and hand,
Unflinching on, and whirls his flashing blade,
Till down the Rutule's shrieking mouth he plunged
The point throat-deep, and e'en in very death
Triumphant bore his foeman's life away;
Then, gashed all o'er and ploughed with countless
wounds,
He cast him down upon his lifeless friend,
And there at length in peaceful death reposed.

358

THE AENEID.

[446-463

Thrice happy pair ! if aught my verse avail,
No lapse of days shall e'er behold your names
Erased the annals of recording time,
Long as the rock-based Capitol shall last
To seat the Aeneian race, and, throned thereby,
A Roman father sway the subject world.
Proud of their conquest and recovered spoils,
The Rutules bear slain Volscens to the camp,
Shedding hot tears the while; nor less the grief
Within the camp itself, when as they find
Great Rhamn6s stretched, a pale and bloodless corse,
With many more besides, the flower and prime
Of all their chiefs at one fell swoop cut off,
Serrfnus dead, and Numa dead. Anon
They flock in crowds to where the bodies lay,
And note the place with new-made carnage warm,
And every spot with copious blood a'stream;
While, closely viewed, from hand to hand passed on,
They own the several spoils, knowing too well
Messapus' gleaming helm and studded belt,
All at such cost of blood and toil regained.
Now, risen from Tithonus' saffron bed,
Aurora sowed the earth with orient light,
And soon the sun, at flood-tide streaming in,
Had all the world with new-born day revealed;
When, sheathed in arms himself, Turnus awakes
His warriors to arms; and straight each chief
Musters his brass-mailed cohorts for the fight,

464-48 ]

BOOK IX.

And whets their martial rage with divers tales.
Nay and, on spears uplift, full sad to see!
Twin gory heads they rear in front to view,
Brave Nisus' and his friend's, Euryalus',
And follow them afield with deafening shouts.
Meanwhile, to leftward of the leaguered wallFor all the right was covered by the streamAeneas' hardy sons draw out their war,
Lining the trenches deep and broad, and stand
High on their lofty towers-doleful of mood,
Missing their absent chief, and grieved withal
To see set up, what all but too well know,
Those ghastly heads, with blackest gore adrip.
Now hasty Rumour through the city speeds,
And to Euryalus' widowed mother's ears
The mournful tidings brings. With instant chill
The vital heat forsook her trembling limbs,
The shuttle from her hand was dashed, and all
The ravelled thread ran off the reel, unwound.
Then, lifting high a woman's piercing shriek,
With rent dishevelled locks, as one distraught,
She hies her to the walls and hostile lines,
The very forefront of the fight, nor recks
What eyes of men look on, what spears and darts,
What varied risks, beset her steps, and thus
Fills with heart-rending plaints the welkin wide:
'Is this, Euryalus, all I see for thee ?
And had'st thou so the heart, prop that thou wast,
Sole stay and comfort, of my failing years,

359

36o

THE AENEID.

[482-50

To leave me, cruel ! thus forsa'en and lone ?
Did'st face a risk like that, nor ever bad'st
Thy wretched mobther take a last farewell ?
And thou, alas ! 'neath alien skies dost lie,
Flung out a prey to Latin dogs and birds,
Nor, ah ! might I, thy own fond mother, streak
Thy decent corpse, or close thine eyes in death,
Or wash thy wounds, or shroud thee in the robe
Which, weaving ever, night and day I sped,
But ah ! for other need of thine, and bade
The loom beguile the old wife of her cares!
Ah, where to seek thee out ? what land now holds
Thy poor dissevered frame and mangled limbs ?
Is this the sole sad relic of thyself
Thou bring'st me back, my son? and was it this
I so did follow still o'er land and sea ?
Ah, pierce me through, if ruth may touch your souls;
Shower, O ye Rutules, all your darts on me,
Despatch me here the first ! Or, O do thou,
Great Father of the gods, in pity smite,
Yea, hurl thy hottest bolts in mercy here,
And thrust to Tartarus this hated head,
Since no means else to break off cruel life !'
Her wailing shook all hearts; a moaning sad
Passed on from rank to rank; and, drooping low,
All martial spirit died in every breast;
Till at the last, as, weeping on and on,
She wrought her grief to wilder plaining still,
Lo, young Iiilus, weeping sore himself,
And eke Ilioneus, bade call the squires,

.502-518]

BOOK IX.

361

Actor and Idaeus, who jointly raise,
And bear her homewards, in their arms conveyed.
But, pealing loud, the trumpet's brazen throat
Now chides the flagging war: answers a shout
On both sides raised, and heaven reverbs the roar;
'Neath pent-house roof well-knit of serried shields
The storming Volscians to the town advance
In even line, and quick fall on to bridge
The ditch and moat, and tear the rampart down;
Others essay to breach or scale the walls,
Scanning where best approached, and, rearing, plant
Tall ladders fixt where'er, as scant of men,
The foes' defence shows weak, and, less compact,
The warders' lines let in the light between.
Nor less on their side too the Teucrians shower
Their missiles thick and fast, and thrust with pikes
The climbing foemen back, taught erst and well
By Troy's long war to keep a leaguered wall,
And roll therewith great stones continuous down,
If haply so the crushing weight may 'vail
To burst the shield-roof strong; while, well content
To bide 'neath such a screen, the Rutules take,
Scathless and safe, what worst their foes may wreak.
Yet by and by it 'gins to fail; for lo,
Where as their thickest files assault the wall,
The Trojans from above heave toppling down
A mighty mass that fells with havoc wide
The hostile ranks, and breaks their buckler-fence.
Nor longer now the daring Rutules care

362

THE AENEID.

[519--538

To wage a blindfold war, but aim to drive
The foemen from their walls with volleyed darts.
Elsewhere the field, full terrible to see,
Mezentius waves a huge Etruscan pine,
And hurls the smoking brand amid the works;
The while Messipus, tamer of the steed,
Great Neptune's child, plucks down the palisade,
And bid's set planks and ladders to the wall.
Muses, and thou, Calliope, in' chief,
Vouchsafe your aid, and prompt your bard to sing
What havoc Turnus made, what slaughter wrought,
What foes each warrior sent that bloody day
To Orcus down; and help me so unfold
The mighty death-roll of that fatal field !
There stood, for fight well set, a turret high,
Knitted by lofty gangways to the mound,
The which Italia's warriors, all and each,
With powers combined essayed to storm, and tasked
Their whole collected might to work its fall;
The sons of Troy the while defending well
With showers of volleyed stones, and raining thick
Jav'lins and darts, through every loop-hole cast.
Foremost bold Turnus hurls a torch thereat,
And pins the blazing mischief to its side,
With impact strong attached; the which anon,
Nursed by the fanning breeze, fires planks and beams,
And preys resistless on the burning posts.
Within is all confusion and dismay;

539-555)

BOOK IX.

363

Bewildered sore they wish, but wish in vain,
To flee the fiery pest; when, huddling close
While as they strive to gain the further side
Whereto as yet the plague had failed to reach,
Lo all at once, o'er-balanced by the weight,
The reeling turret topples to its fall,
And all the welkin thunders with the crash.
To earth scarce half-alive-the monster pile
Descending on their backs-the warders come,
Pierced by their own sharp weapons through and
through,
And every breast with splintered timbers gored.
Save Lycus and Helenor 'scaped not one,
And scantly they: Hel6nor of the twain
In manhood's prime, and whom to Lydia's king,
A furtive birth, the slave Licymnia bore,
And sent him in forbidden arms to Troy,
Lightly equipt with maiden sword unfleshed,
And all inglorious with unblazoned shield.
Soon as, uprisen from his fall half-stunned,
He saw him there amid the closest files
Of Turnus' myriad hosts, and every side
The Latian troops to right and left arrayed-Like to the beast, by hunters hedged about
In close-set ring, that, wotting well his doom,
Defies their points, and, bounding forth on high,
Casts him impetuous on the line of spearsSo rushed the youth amid his foes, and where
The darts rained thickest flings himself on death.
But lo, young Lycus, fleeter far of foot,

r
364

" T
T

7HE

'.

A T

tT T T T
.

AENEID.

l" . L'_, J.
w
-[556-57

Picks out his perilled way 'twixt spears and foes,
And gains the walls, and strives with clutching grasp
To seize the parapet, if so he may
Lay hold upon his comrades' helping hands;
But, followed up full soon with foot and spear,
Turnus reviles him thus: 'And didst thou dream,
Poor idiot that thou art ! to 'scape our hands ?'And on the word, as dangling there he hung,
He gripes him fast, and, tugging might and main,
Plucks him with half the yielding breastwork down:
Trussed in his talons so the bird of Jove
Lifts or a hare aloft, or snowy swan;
So, by its bleating mother vainly sought,
The wolf bears off a lambkin from the fold.
Anon loud shouts go up, and all the foes
Invade the trench, and strive to fill it up
With shattered debris of the mound, while some
Fling blazing firebrands to the topmost roofs.
There, as with torch in hand Lucetius crept
Beneath the wall, intent to fire the gate,
Crushed with the rocky fragment of a hill
Ilioneus smote and felled him to the earth;
So Liger fells Emathion, and so
Asilas Corynaeus; skilled alike,
One the best spear to cast, and one the shaft
Whose feathered flight surprises from afar.
Caeneus Ortygius slays, and Caeneus' self,
A vanquished victor, falls to Turnus' hand :
To Turnus' hand falls valiant Itys too,

3

574-589]

BOOff IX.

365

With Dioxippus, Clonius, Promolus,
And Sagaris to boot, and Idas' self,
Slain as he showed upon the turret's top;
And Capys slays Privernus : him at first
Themilla's flying spear had lightly grazed;
Whereon he dropped his buckler to the ground,
Poor fool! and laid his hand upon the hurt;
When straight there came from Capys' ready bow
A well-aimed shaft on stealthy pinion borne,
Which nailed the member to his side, transfixt,
And, piercing deep, brake up with deadly wound
The lungs and breathing organs of the soul.
All gaily drest in glorious weed of war
The son of Arcens on the rampart stood,
His flowing mantle needle-painted o'er
And scarf in bright Iberian purple dyed,
Noble of face and form; whom, reared where grew
His mother's grove hard by Symaethus' stream
And near to where Palicus' altar stands,
Wealthy of gifts and grace, Arcens his sire
Bade join the war. Mezentius marked the youth;
When, laying for the nonce his spear aside
And catching up his sling, he whirled the thong
At utmost strain full thrice about his head,
Then slipped the string; and heating as it flew,
The molten bullet burst his temples twain,
In sunder smit, as on the bastion's height
He met the blow full front, and dropped him thence,
O'er many a foot of sand extended laid.

366

THE AENEID.

[590-609

'Twas now, men say, Ascanius first did bend
That bow in martial strife with which erewhile
He frayed the flying creatures of the chase,
And laid therewith the bold Numanus low,
By surname Remulus-a wight had late
Prince Turnus' younger sister wooed and won.
Before the battle's van with boastful speech,
Vain of his new-blown rank and royal bride,
The silly braggart stalked, and, shouting loud,
Aired thus with scurrile breath his noisy worth:
'Know ye not shame, ye twice-ta'en Phrygian serfs,
Cooped thus again behind your fosse and mound,
A wall, the coward's shield, 'twixt you and death ?
Lo, these the gay gallants are come o'er sea,
A'wooing of our dames with sword and lance!
What god, what madness, of all countries else
Drave you to Italy ? Not Atreus' twins,
Nor crafty-tongued Ulysses, bide you here:
E'en from our earliest spring a sturdy race,
We bear our infants to the frozen stream,
And harden them betimes mid ice immerged
And icy waters keen and bitter cold :
Our boys are hunters; ere the day is born
They tend the chase and scour the forest glades,
Their dearest sports to rein the restive steed,
Bend the tough yew, and aim the levelled shaft:
Our youths, to toil and scanty fare inured,
Or tame the glebe, or batter towns in war.
Nor war alone ; the steel our whole life through
Is still our wear; we ply the spear reversed,

61o-627]

BOOK IX.

367

And turn the butt to goad the steer afield;
Not age, that cripples all besides, may dull
Our wonted fire, or bate our bodies' might;
We do the helm on hoary hairs, nor aught
So stirs our joy as, forraying day by day,
To drive the spoil, and live the reiver's life.
But ye,-the broidered dress with toys be-fripp'd
And purple-dyed, the vest with saffron stained,These, and the life of sloth, make all your joy ;
The dance your best delight; your tunics flaunt
A length of sleeve, and ribbons tie your caps.
Hence, sexless crew ! or Phrygian wives at best,
Not e'en good Phrygian men ! Go, get you forth !
Hie ye to Dindymus where, squeaking loud,
The double pipe regales your wanton ears;
Hark to the flute and cymbal's brazen clash
From Ida's grove, or Berecyntus' top!
The Mighty Mother calleth to her sons!
Go, join the rout, and leave the martial trade
To men like us, nor meddle more with arms.'
Such bitter jibes and wicked ribald speech
Ascanius brooked not more; but, facing round,
He laid an arrow on the horse-hair string;
Then aimed the shaft; when, drawing both his arms
Full wide apart, he stayed him so, and first
Prayed thus to Jupiter: 'Prosper, great Jove,
Thy suppliant's bold essay : so shall these hands
Bear store of richest offerings to thy shrine,
And year by year before thine altar set

368

7HE AENEID.

[628-646

A goodly steer, brow-gilt and snowy-white,
Tall as his dam of head, with horns full grown
To push withal, and hoofs to spurn the sand.'
The Father heard ; when from a sky serene
Came thunder on the left-and therewithal
Rang out the fatal bow. Launched from the string,
The shaft, drawn home, flies forth with dreadful sound,
And, wfnging onward, cleaves with iron point
Numanus' skull and hollow temples twain :
'Go now, flout valour with thy bragging jeers !
Such the reply we twice-ta'en Phrygians send
To Rutule mocks'-nor said Ascanius more:
The Teucrians back his exploit with their shouts,
O'erjoyed, and mount their spirit to the skies.
It happed just then the long-haired God of Day,
Throned on a cloud, from heaven aloft surveyed
The leaguered town and camp, Ausonia's hosts,
And all the shifting fortunes of the field;
When thus afar he spake the victor boy:
'Fair fall thy new-born prowess, child; so tread
The starward path, son that thou art of gods,
And destined father to a line of gods!
Well may we trust, Assaracus, that yet
Beneath thy princely house all fated wars
Shall sink, o'er-ruled, to peace. And, boy, for thee,Troy will not long suffice to hold thy worth.'
He said; then straightway shoots from heaven adown,
Parting the gales before him in his flight,
And seeks Ascanius; anon, transformed,

647-669]

BOOK IX.

369

He shifts him to old Butes' shape and face,
Anchises' squire of yore and palace-ward;
But, now in years, Ascanius' father bade
The trusted sage be guardian to his son:
So went the god, the veteran's other self
In colour, voice, grey locks, and clanging arms;
Then spake he thus the victor boy elate:
'Enough, Aeneas' son, that sans reprise
The proud Numanus to thy shafts hath fall'n;
The great Apollo freely grants thee this,
Thy maiden meed of praise, nor looks the god
With jealous eye on skill may mate his own:
Henceforth, as stripling should, eschew the fight.'
Apollo spake, and, lost to mortal ken,
Brake short his speech, and vanished in mid air:
The Dardan chieftains knew the quiver's ring,
And marked the flashing shafts, and owned the god.
So now at Phoebus' word and will divine
They hold in check Ascanius' eager zeal,
Of combat fain, while as themselves renew
The broken fight, and fling their dearest lives,
Reckless of risk, where danger plainest shows.
Then shouts on shouts along the ramparts peal,
And bows are bent, and javelins hurled amain;
Spent darts strew all the ground, while helm and shield
Ring to the blows, and fierce the combat speeds;
Fierce as at setting of the showery Kids
The western rain-storms lash the deluged earth;
Or, sped adown the blast, the riven clouds
Discharge their treasured hail-stores on the deep,
ZB

370

THE AENEID.

[670-689

When, armed with southern winds, the might of Jove
Launches the watery hurricane abroad,
And opens all the flood-gates of the sky.
Pandarus and Bitias, Alcanor's sons,
On Ida born, and whom Iaera reared,
Their silvan mother, mid the woods of JoveTwin youths who matched for size and stature tall
The pines and peaks that topped their native hillsO'erweening of their might, fling open wide
The gate assigned them by their chief's command,
And freely bid the foe within the walls;
Then, falling back themselves, they take their stand
To right and left before the gateway tow'rs,
Sheathed each in gleaming steel, and bearing high
Their helmed heads, with waving plumage crowned:
So, high in air, beside the flowing stream
Of pleasant Athesis or banks of Po,
Twin oaks rise side by side, that heavenward rear
Their unshorn heads, and nod their leafy crests.
Anon, well pleased to find the gate thrown wide
And passage free, the Rutule foes rush in;
But soon their best, repulsed or slain outrightQuercens, Aquicolus, the fair in arms,
With fiery Tmarus and young Haemon boldOr fly the fight, themselves and all their hosts,
Or in the gateway lay their lives adown.
Then hotter straight, as foeman foeman met,
Waxes the fray, and fiercer burns their wrath;
And, mustering fast from all the camp within,

690-707]

BOOK IX.

37I

The sallying Trojans draw them to a head,
And, scorning more to wait their foes' attack,
Smite hand to hand, and boldly rush afield.
To Turnus now, as otherwhere afar
He ranged the fight and dealt disorder round,
Came word that told how, flushed with new success,
Emboldened Troy had oped her portals wide,
And held them so to all in-comers free;
Therewith he quits the work in hand, and fierce
At top of speed makes straightway for the gate
And eke its haughty wards, the brethren twain.
Howbeit on his way, as who came first,
Hurling his lance he slays Antiphates,
Sarpedon's offspring by a Theban slave :
The cornel shaft disparts the yielding air,
Cleaves throat and gullet through, and, goring deep,
Sinks to his breast; when straight the yawning wound
Sheds through its ghastly gap a frothy stream,
And the cold steel grows warm amid his lungs.
Then, with strong hand struck down, he next lays low
Merops, Aphidnus, and then Erymas,
And giant Bitias last, as furious there
With fiery-streaming eyes the warrior stood,
And kept the pass: no dart his slayer cast,
Nor to no dart had he surrendered life;
With lightning force, and hurtling as it flew,
The whirl'd phalAric came, whose mortal dint
Nor targe of twofold hide might 'vail to foil,
Nor war-coat true with double scales of gold:
ZBZ

372

THE AENEID.

[708-724

Downwards the massive limbs collapsing rush,
Earth groaning loud, while, following on his fall,
The mighty buckler thunders o'er its lord:
So falls at times on Baiae's pleasant shore
A pile of stone, which, wrought of bonded blocks,
Men cast to sea-ward far; so, yielding slow,
It draws down hideous wrack, and, dashed amain
On shelvy flats and shallows of the bay,
Mid turmoiled seas and flying ooze and sand
Sinks to its ocean bed ; while, heard afar,
High Prochyta re-echoes to the crash,
And lone Inarime, the rugged couch
By Jove's command on huge Typhoeus flung.
Here Mars armipotent with vigour fired
The Latian hosts, and strung their hands anew,
Raising their cheer withal; but bade the while
Pale Fear and coward Flight attend on Troy :
Emboldened so, the thronging Rutules flock
From everywhere the field, now that the foe
With open gates had freely proffered fight,
And all the god was come upon their souls.
When Pandarus saw his fallen brother's corse
Before the gate laid low, and knew withal
What adverse turn the fray had ta'en, and how
Ill Fortune looked as governing the day,
With stalwart shoulder 'gainst the weight hard set
He hurls on swinging hinge the gate aback,

725-741

]

BOOZ IX.

Leaving thereby full many a friend without,
Shut from the town, amid the cruel fight,
While others, pouring from the field amain,
His hand admits, closed with himself within:
Madman ! who saw not mid the flying rout
Of eager runners making for the gate
The Rutule chief himself come rushing through,
But fairly closed him up within the walls,
A tiger pent amid some helpless flock.
Nor stood he well within or ere there streamed
From forth those fiery eyes a strange wild light,
Loud clanged his arms, the dancing crest blood-red
Waved from his helmet's top, and arrowy rays
In blinding lightnings from his buckler shot:
Too late the Trojans own, confused, dismayed,
That hated face and frame of giant mould.
Then forward springs huge Pandarus, and, fired
With fierce resentment for his brother slain,
Bespeaks him thus:
'No bridal palace this,
Nor dowry-house Amata's daughter brings;
No Ardea here doth clip her Turnus round,
Safe in the closure of his native walls!
Before thee lies the foeman's camp, wherefrom
Scant power is thine to make thine exit good.'

Smiling with quiet mien, then Turnus thus :
'If thou hast heart thereto, prithee begin
The fight forthwith; good sooth I guess astray,

373

374

THE AENEID.

[742- 59

Or soon thy tale in Priam's ear will be
How there was found a new Achilles here.'
He spake; whereon, with all his might discharged,
The Trojan hurls his lance--a weapon rude,
Rugged with unpeeled rind, and rough with knots;
But partial Juno turned its flight awry
With warping winds, and lodged it in the gate.
'Not thine, howbeit, to scape this weapon true
Our hand doth wield; for other-sort, I ween,
Who sways the blade and bids it thus to bite'So he in turn; when, rising to the sword,
He smote adown betwixt his temples twain,
And rived in two the broad-browed forehead's wall,
Divided clean, and both his beardless cheeks
Laid severed'wide, shred with a ghastly wound:
Crashing he falls, earth groaning 'neath the weight,
His reeking arms with blood and brain bedashed
And huddled limbs strewing the ground in death;
While, shared in equal parts, the cloven head
Hung right and left from either shoulder down.
This way and that the routed Trojans fly,
With panic seized; and, had the thought but then
Flashed to the victor's soul, by force of hand
Bursting the gates to fetch his comrades in
And storm the camp, that one same day had seen
A nation and the war to ending brought;

760-776]

BOOK IX.

375

But burning rage and madd'ning thirst of blood
Prevailed, and drave him on the flying foe.
First to his sword falls Phalaris, o'erta'en;
Next Gyges, hamstrung as he fled in front;
When, catching up their spears, he hurls them forth,
And galls therewith their fellows' flying backs,
Still following up the rear; for Juno well
Doth yield him strength and courage for the chase.
To join the rest he now strikes Halys down,
Then Phegeus, smitten through his cloven shield,
With more besides, as on the wall they stood
Intent, unwitting, on the fight without,
Alcander, Halius, and Noemon too,
With Prytanis to boot. To Lynceus next,
Who faced about and called for aid, the sword
With widest sway from left to rightward swung
Deals a preventing stroke; when, clean swept off
With that one back-hand blow, helmet and head
Lay from the bleeding trunk long yards away.

Next him falls Amycus, a hunter keen,
Foe to the silvan kind : none other knew
In deadlier bane to dip the poisoned shaft,
And arm the venomed point with surer death;
Then Clytius falls, the son of Aeolus;
Falls Cretheus, too, of every Muse beloved;
Cretheus, the friend and darling of the Nine:
Well did he love to string the minstrel lyre,

376

YHE AENEID.

[777-793

To tune the lay, and build the lofty verse,
And steeds, and arms, and fights did ever sing.
At length at bruit of such disasters foul,
Such rout and slaughter of their friends, Mnestheus
And brave Serestus both, the Trojan chiefs,
Haste to the scene; and, straight arriving, find
Their own in flight, and mid the camp the foe;
When Mnestheus, loud :
'Fly hence! and whither next ?
What town save this, what walls beside are yours ?
My countrymen ! say, shall a single foe,
And he thus hedged with all your ramparts round,
Have made these shambles of your streets and camp,
And sent to grisly death, and unavenged,
So many of your best and bravest youths ?
Your hapless homes and hearths, your ancient gods,
Your great Aeneas and his fortunes high,Say can ye think of these, and, thinking, know
Nor ruth nor shame, base dastards that ye are ?'
So roused, they pluck up heart, and, drawing close,
Shoulder to shoulder stand; when Turnus now
'Gins step by step to back him from the fray,
And seek the river and the parts thereby
Defended by the stream. Whereon the more
With deafening shouts the rallied Trojans press,
And hem him round: as when with galling shafts
A rustic crowd some savage lion bait;
Afeard but fierce, and glaring grim the while,

794-812]

BOOK IX.

The furious beast gives ground, yet wavers long;
Courage and conscious worth forbid him fly,
Yet may he not, will it howe'er he may,
Make head against the spears and hunters' ring;
E'en in such wise, with faltering steps and slow,
Turnus reluctant from the fight withdraws,
His heart aboil with rage. Yea, even then
Twice did he fly amid their thickest files,
And twice pursued them routed round the walls.
But, mustering now from every side the camp,
They band together all, nor Juno more
May lend him strength to face such weight of odds;
For Jove had sped bright Iris down the skies
With no mild message for his sister's ear,
Should Turnus still fight on, nor quit forthwith
The walls and ramparts of the Trojans' camp.
So now, with whelming darts o'erborne outright,
Nor shield nor hand may further stead his need;
With weapon-dint and clink of falling steel
The dinning helmet round his temples rings,
Incessant smit, and, burst with volleyed stones,
The solid plates give way; the battered crest
Is razed from off his head, nor longer now
The bossy shield may stand against the blows;
While fast and faster still the Trojans shower
Spear upon spear, as, thundering in the van,
The fiery Mnestheus ever led them on.
A clammy sweat o'er all his body breaks,
And oozing black, with blood and dust commixt,
Flows down in pitchy streams from every pore:

377

378

THE AENEID.

[813-838

He gasps for breath; and, spent with racking sobs,
Short painful pantings shake his jaded limbs.
At length fordone, accoutred as he stood,
He leapt down headlong to the flood beneath:
The yellow flood received his welcome guest,
Upbore him gently on his buoyant waves,
And, cleansing from each stain of sweat and fight,
Returned him joyous to his friends once more.

379
9

1-13J

BOOK

X.

MEANTIME Olympus opes its crystal doors,

Unfolded wide, and Heaven's almighty Sire
Convenes a council to the starry hall,
Whence, throned aloft, he views all lands at once,
The Trojan camp and Latian peoples wide;
There, in their orders ranged, the summoned Powers
Attendant sit, and throng the spacious courts;
When first the King :
'High denizens of Heaven,
What change is this ? what new revulsion warps
Your better thoughts, and whence these feuds and jars ?
Did not our word for once and all forbid
That Italy should clash with Troy in arms?
Whence then this kicking 'gainst our plain command ?
What jealous fears have prompted these or those
To draw the sword and so provoke the strife ?
The rightful hour for war will yet be here,Nor no.god dare to ante-date the day !When Alpine walls shall fall before her march,
And Carthage fierce through open passes launch
Huge wrack and ruin on the towers of Rome;
Then with all licence may your rancorous hates

380

THE AENEID.

[14"32

Work their full will, then strife and ravin speed!
But for what now,-desist, and lend your aid
To knit the peace our sovran pleasure wills.'

So Jupiter in few; but not in few
Her quick rejoinder golden Venus made:
' O Sire, eternal Might of Earth and Heaven,For what Power else may I and mine implore ?Thou seest how rampant grown these Rutule men;
Whirled by his fiery team, how Turnus there
O'er-rides the field, and, flushed with prosperous war,
Like some fierce torrent sweeps him through the plain.
Closed walls may now protect poor Troy no.more;
Nay at her very gates and rampart mounds
The fight goes hand to hand, and ditch and fosse
Are swimming with her blood; while, worser still,
Aeneas is away, nor knoweth aught.
Father, wilt doom them to eternal war?
From siege and leaguer never set them free ?
Renascent Troy still struggling to the birth,
See stooping o'er her walls new foes once more,
New hosts in arms! see Tydeus' son anew
From distant Arpi 'gainst our Teucrians come !
'Tis odds, I trow, but Venus bleeds again,
Jove's daughter bides new dint of mortal arms!
If without leave from thee and 'spite thy will
Troy's sons so steered their course for Italy,
Atone they for the crime, nor thou no more
Bestead them, Father, with thy potent aid;

33-52]1

BOOK X.

But if herein they did but only heed
Those many signs and oracles divine
Dispensed them from above and eke below,
Who dares pretend to change thy fixt decrees,
And frame the fates anew ? What boots it here
Recounting of our bygone wrongs and ills,
Our fleet consumed on Eryx' friendly shore,
The Lord of Storms and all his blustering Winds
From far Aeolia summoned to her call,
Or Iris from these courts sent hurrying down ?
Nay, now she stirs the very Powers of HellThat one sole world was left as yet untriedAnd, sudden loosed upon the fields of air,
Lo, fiend Alecto through Italia raves!
Not empire moves me now: to that fond hope
I clung, 'tis true, while Fortune still was ours;
But now rule they whom thou wilt have to rule!
Still if there be no spot of earth the which
Thy cruel spouse will grant to Teucer's sons,
Then, Lord and Father, I adjure thee here
By Troy's yet smoking fall, vouchsafe me leave
To snatch Ascanius from the shock of war,
O bid my grandson live ! Let, if needs be,
Aeneas still mid unknown waters toss,
And whatso course his fates assign pursue;
But him let me have power to shield from harm,
And draw in safety from the risks of strife.
Paphos is mine, and Amnathus is mine,
Mine too Cythera and Idalia's bowers;
There let the royal boy inglorious live,

38[

382

THE AENEID.

[53-71

Renouncing arms, nor dream of empire more.
Carthage may then, if such thy partial will,
Tread down Ausojia 'neath her despot heel,
And Tyrus' settlers fear no check from him.
What profit it to have 'scaped the bane of war
And won their way through Graecia's hottest fires,
Their perils numberless by sea and land
In weary quest, e'en to this day pursued,
Of Latium and their second Troy to be ?
Better have stayed where Ilion's embers reeked,
On soil where once their native city stood.
Give back, great sire, O give the wretches back
Their Xanthus and their Simois once more,
And bid, as lesser ill, our Teucer's sons
Fulfil again the destinies of Troy !'
Then, stung to fury, royal Juno thus:
'Must I then silence break ? must I in words
Lay bare the grief long smothered in my breast ?
Say who it was of all the gods or men
Constrained Aeneas so to draw the sword,
And thrust him for a foe on Latium's king?
"Fate," say you, "shaped his course for Italy":
Grant it, and not, as soothlier said, I trow,
The flighty ravings of Cassandra's brain;
Yet was it we advised him leave his camp
And place his life at mercy of the winds ?
Quit the nice conduct of an arduous war
As eke his town, and trust them to a boy ?
Tempt Tuscan loyalty to base revolt,

72-86]

BOOK X.

383

And goad those peaceful nations into strife ?
What god, what tyranny of ours o'er-ruled
His better mind, and swayed it to his hurt ?
Where in all this was Juno to be seen,
Where Iris from these courts sent hurrying down ?
Ay, 'tis foul shame our Italy should draw
Her belt of fire about renascent Troy,
And Turnus hold him to his native soil,Pilumnus' own son's son, and whom withal
The Nymph Venilia to the godhead bore;
Then prithee say, what call you it for Troy
To harry Latium thus with sword and flame,
To lay her robber's grasp on others' lands,
Spoiled and oppressed, and drive their booties off ?
What call you it, as lords to choose at will
Whom they would deign to wed, and plighted brides
Tear from their parents' or their husbands' homes ?
To sue for peace with branches in their hands,
Yet hang their ships with arms from stem to stern ?
You may have power from Greekish hands to draw
Your darling son, and for the man they sought
To place instead a cloud and empty air;
You may at will transform your hero's fleet,
And change it ship by ship to Nereid maids;
But we to lend the Rutuli our aid,'Tis crime, for sooth, and misdemeanour high!
"Aeneas is away, nor knoweth aught"And bide he still away, nor know no more.
"Paphos is yours, Idalium too is yours,
And high Cythera's bowers "-then prithee why

384

'HE AENEID.

[87-1o3

Renounce thy pleasant homes, and seek to move
Rude hearts inured to other wars than thine ?
What ! is it we have laboured to o'erthrow
The tottering fortunes of your Phrygian realm ?
We ? or the spruce gallant who first exposed
The wretched Trojans to the sword of Greece ?
How came it, pray, that, roused to bitter feud,
Two warring continents in conflict clashed,
Europe 'gainst Asia matched, while treachery foul
Dissolved the social bond betwixt them knit ?
When Paris stormed the Spartan nonarch's bed,
Say was it we so pandered to his lust ?
Was it we put weapons in the adulterer's hands,
Or fanned the flame of war with lawless love ?
Then was your time to fear for Troy; but now
You rail too late, and bandy taunts in vain.'
Thus Juno in her own defence; whereon
In divers wise throughout the spacious hall
Their divers minds the heavenly Powers expressed:
So rising faint, in leafy hollows pent,
Prelusive gusts remurmur through the woods,
And roll their deep mysterious mutterings round,
Boding to mariners the coming storm.
When thus began the Universal Sire,
Creation's Lord supreme; at whose dread voice
The lofty palace of the gods grows still,
Earth to her deep foundations quakes and rocks,
High heaven is hushed, the winds are lulled in rest,
And Ocean smoothes his surface to a calm :

104-1I9]

BOOK X.

' List then hereto, ye Pow'rs, and, heeding well,
Bid these my words sink deep within your souls:
For that it may not be the sons of Troy
Join with Ausonia in the bonds of peace,
Nor these your wranglings may no ending know;
What chance soe'er shall this day fall to each,
What prospect either may to-day achieve
Or on the Trojan or Rutulian side,
With equal eyes will I both parties view,
Whether it be of fate that Troy now sees
Italia's leaguer gird her camp about,
Or Troy's own blundering has caused the hap,
And crazy counsels followed to her bane.
Nor herein would I leave the Rutules free:
His own endeavour, or for weal or woe,
Un-helpt of other than his proper deed,
Shall yield to each the outcome of his toil;
So Jove as king will be the same to all,
And Fate work out the issue uncontrolled.'
He said, and bade in sanction of his word
His Stygian brother's lake and Hell's black gulf,
Seething with burning pitch, confirm the rede;
Then bowed his kingly head, and made therewith
From base to summit all Olympus quake.
So closed the great consult; whereon forthwith
The heavenly people, ranged obsequious round,
Attend their sovereign to his palace doors.
Meantime at all Troy gates and leaguered ports
The Rutules press their fierce assault, intent
To slay the men, and gird the walls with flame;
2C

385

386

THE AENEID.

fI20

137

The while, blockaded close, Aeneas' sons
Are cooped within, despairing aid, nor more
Have hope whate'er to 'scape; doleful of mood,
The hapless warriors man the lofty towers,
And line the battlements in thinnest ring:
There Asius stands, the son of Imbrasus,
And there Thymoetes, Hicetaon's son;
And there besides the two Assaraci,
With Thymbris now in years, and Castor brave;
These form the foremost line: and there withal
Stand side by side Sarpedon's brethren twain,
Clarus and Themon, from high Lycia come;
There too is one with all his body's might
Upheaving from the ground a rocky mass,
Itself no scanty portion of a hill,
Lyrnesian Acmon; well in vigour matched
With Clytius his sire, and therein too
Great as his valiant brother, Mnestheus hight.
These, one and all,-some with the spear-head thrust,
And some with stones beat down, the climbing foe,
While others fling the fiery-flying torch,
Or notch the arrow to the bow-string tough.
Amidst of all, Venus' most worthy care,
The royal boy of Dardany doth stand,
His comely head, as late forbid the fight,
Unhelm'd and bare: as, set in yellow gold,
The diamond shines, a grace for throat or breast,
Or polished ivory gleams, by artist's skill
In boxwood chased or darker ebony;
So showed among the train the princely youth,
His silky locks in golden circlet bound

138-157]

BOOK X.

387

O'erspreading all his neck and shoulders fair.
Thee too, brave Ismarus, thy warlike clans
Saw proving there thy worth, and dealing death
With venomed shafts afar; thy noble birth
Drawn from Maeonia's lordliest house, whose glebe
The toiling swain to richest tilth subdues,
And broad Pact6lus irrigates with gold;
There Mnestheus too, to honour's height advanced
Since late he cast prince Turnus from the camp,
And Capys, from whom Capua takes her name.
Thus all day long on either side they waged
The hard-fought strife; when, homeward faring now,
Aeneas ploughed the deep in middle night:
For-soon as, quitting good Evander's court,
The prince had reached the Tuscan monarch's camp,
Told of his name and race, for what he sued,
What offers he can make, and showed withal
What aids Mezentius musters to his side,
And what proud Turnus' haughty violence threats,
And, mingling prayers withal, reminds the king,
How frail the tenure of all human things,
And what reverse the fairest lot might know,Tarchon makes no demur, but straightway bids
Combine their powers, and strikes the league proposed:
Then, quit of Fate, the waiting Tuscan host
Embarks and puts to sea, by Heaven's command
Committed to a foreign chieftain's rule.
Aeneas' royal galley leads the van,
Twin Phrygian lions harnessed at the prow,
z2cz

388

THE AENEID.

[158-175

Of fairest carven work, o'erhung above
By Ida's mount, to Troy's sad exiles dear:
There great Aeneas sits, and ponders deep
The doubtful issues of the coming war,
While ever at his side young Pallas stands,
Now asking of the stars, those road-marks true
That guide the seaman o'er the midnight deep,
Now of the chieftain's varied toils, and all
Befell him in his haps by sea and land.
Now ope me Helicon, ye Heavenly Maids,
Inspire my lays, and teach your bard to sing
What hosts Aeneas from Etruria leads,
What warrior bands are following in his wake,
Their fair equipments and their gallant ships.
The Tigris' brazen keel first cuts the wave,
Brave Massicus in charge, 'neath whom are ranked
A thousand youths, who Clusium's walls have left
And Cosae town hard by: for weapons these
Light quivers bear afield, with store of shafts,
And deadly bows adown their shoulders slung.
Abreast of these grim Abas rides, his host
One blaze of dazzling steel; and on his stern,
Sculptured in glittering gold, Apollo shines:
Six hundred valiant youths in war expert
His native Populonia gave the chief,
And Ilva's island sent three hundred moreIlva, for iron famed and teeming mines.
Asylas as the third,-expounder sage

176-193]

BOOK X..

Of Heaven's dark will to man, whose prophet skill
The wandering stars, the bleeding victim's heart,
The notes of birds, the lightning's warning flash,
Own all alike, and yield him truest lore,Hurries a thousand gallant youths along
In dense array, with bristling spears equipt,
Whom Pisa town has given him to commandPisa, from old Alph6an Pisa sprung,
And planted now upon Etruria's soil.
The next, and he the fairest of the host
In face and form, lo valiant Astyr comes,
Proud of his steeds and many-glinting mail;
His power three hundred strong, all diverse drawn,
But loyal all to march as he shall lead,
From Caer&'s dwellings sent and Minio's plains,
Old Pyrgi, and Gravisca's tainted air.
Nor may the Muse leave Cinyras unsung,
Liguria's bravest lord and chief; nor yet,
Maugre thy following small, Cupavo, thee,
Thy helmet crested with the cygnet-plume;
Thine, Love, the guilt; to thy reproach he bears
That symbol of the shape his father wore.
For legends tell how Cycnus, sore bestead
For love of Phaethon untimely slain,
While as he roamed the sisters' poplar wood
And solaced with the Muse his hopeless pangs,
Sang ever plaining on, till o'er each limb
A downy eld of softest plumage grew;
When, mounting upward, to the skies he passed,
And, quitting earth, rose singing to the stars;

389

390

THE AENEID.

1194-2ix

And now the son, girt with a chosen band,
His peers in age, drives the huge Centaur on,
Who from the prow o'erhangs the water's face
And threats the billows with a mighty rock,
Cleaving the surges with his length of keel.
See next where, summoned from his native coasts,
Brave Oncus leads his country's troops; thy son,
Prophetic Manto, by the River-god,
Etruscan Tiber hight, and who bestowed,
Fair Mantua, on thee thy city walls,
And bade thee by his mother's name be called:
Mantua, in noble foresires rich; yet not
Of one blood all: three several races hers,
Four several cantons ranking under each;
Herself the head supreme, and drawing all
Her best and noblest from her Tuscan blood.
Hence too Mezentius 'gainst his cause enlists
Five hundred vengeful foes, indignant roused,
Whom Mincius' gilded form, Benacus' child,
With river-reeds bedecked and sedges grey,
Bare onwards in his galley to the strife.
And there besides, lo, huge Aulestes moves,
And, rising ever to the rowers' stroke,
Threshes the waves with all his hundred oars,
The smitten sea-plain foaming round his bows :
A giant Triton leads the warrior on,
And frights the waters with his wreathen conch;
Up from his shaggy breast, as there he swims,
The monster gives a human shape to view;
But downward all is fish, and, frothing white,

212-229]

BOOK X.

391

The billows chafe beneath his merman's breastSo many chosen chiefs now wended on
In thrice ten galleys to the help of Troy,
And cut the briny plains with keels of bronze.
And now the day was fled, and Phoeb6 mild
With softest beat of muffled hoof-tramps drave
Her nightly-straying wain half up the sky:
On deck Aeneas, robbed of sleep by care,
Stood helm in hand, and steered the vessel's course;
When lo, amidmost of his watery way,
A goodly company of olden friends
Confronts his wondering view : those Nereid nymphs
To whom of late Cyb6le's grace had giv'n
By change of shape to hold as Ocean-maids
Dominion of the deeps they stemmed as ships;
There swam they now abreast and cut the waves,
A beauteous nymph for every brazen prow
Had erewhile stood at anchor by the beach.
Afar they knew their king, and, rowing nigh,
In choral dances circle him about;
When now Cymodoce, as gifted most
Of all that bevy fair with ready speech,
Swimming behind, takes with her better hand
The galley's gilded stern, and, clinging so,
Shown out breast-high above the glassy flood,
Oars with her paddling left the noiseless tide,
And thus accosts his wonder-stricken ear:
'Art waking, son of Heaven ? Aeneas, wake;
Spread all thy sails, and ease the sheets slack'd out.

392

THE AENEID.

[23o-249:

Lo, we the pines from Ida's holy crown,
Thy whilom ships, but Maids of Ocean now!
For know, what time the false Rutulian prince
Was fain to scare us so with fire and steel,
Reluctant sore we burst thine anchors' chains,
And ever since have sought thee o'er the deep.
The Mother Power it was whose pity changed
Our shapes to those you see, and gave us thus,
Sea-goddesses, to rule the waves, and lead
The life divine amid the Ocean depths.
But know thy son is all this while confined
In close blockade, by dyke and wall shut in,
And hemmed about with spears and Latin foes.
Arcadia's cavalry have formed by this
A junction with their brave Etruscan aids,
And reached the trysting-ground. Now Turnus means
To thrust him in between and cut them off,
And so prevent their uniQn with the camp.
Then up, my prince, and with the earliest dawn
Summon thy friends to arms, and take in hand
That mighty shield the Lord of Fire himself
Forged to thy need, and rimmed it round with gold;
Do thou but this, and then to-morrow's sun,
Unless thou'lt deem my words an idle tale,
Shall look adown on heaps of Rutule dead.'
She spake; and, parting, bade, not inexpert,
Her skilful hand give impulse to the bark;
Whereon the galley through the waters flew,
Swift as a dart or shaft that mates the wind,
While, winged alike, the rest too mend their speed.

250-267]

BOOK X.

393

Amazed the hero stood; yet, musing, bids
The wondrous sight uplift his drooping cheer;
Then, looking to the skies, he briefly prays:
'Blest Mother of the gods and Ida's queen,
Whose joy is Dindymus, whose heart so loves
The tower-crown'd cities' heights, nor less regards
The twy-yoked lions at thy bridle-reins,
Lady, be thou our leader in the fight,
Prosper this augury, and O befriend
Thy Phrygians with goodwill and aid benign.'
Nor said he more.
Meanwhile returning day
Had scattered night, and now dawned full and clear;
Whereon he bids his comrades, one and all,
Observe the battle-signs, prepare their hearts
For deeds of arms, and nerve them for the field.
And now at length from off the towering poop
He brings his Teucrians and their camp in view,
When straight he rears the flaming shield uplift;
Whereat from tower and wall the Dardans raise
A shout that rings to heaven, while, cheered anew,
Hope fires their rage, and, ever faster cast,
They rain their whizzing missiles on the foe:
As loud the shout and weapon-rush through air,
As, screaming onward 'neath the lowering clouds,
Strymonian cranes give forth their noisy cries,
What time they fly the stormy southern gales,
And swim along the skies with clamorous din.
The Rutule prince and each Ausonian chief
Looked on amazed, in utter wonder lost,

394

7HE AENEID.

[268-286

Till, gazing back, they note the vessels' stems
All landwards set, and 'neath the moving fleet
The whole sea-plain as shorewards standing in;
While ever on that head the helm doth blaze,
Red flame is streaming from the crested cone,
And, raised aloft, the buckler's golden boss
Shoots flash on flash a fiery radiance round:
So blood-red comets fire the clear cold night
With lurid glare; so Sirius' blazing star,
Dread harbinger to man of drought and death,
Ascends, and saddens heaven with baleful light.
Yet none the more herefor will Turnus bate
His hardy thought to seize the shore forestalled,
Defeat the landing, and beat back the foe;
But, prompt at once to hearten and reprove,
He chides their fears, and lifts their cheer withal:
'Lo, here vouchsafed the answer to your prayers,
The hour so craved to crush your alien foes!
Then be ye all but men; the brave man's hand
Controls, like Mars, the fortunes of the field.
Now each bethink him well of wife and home,
His valiant foresires and their deeds of worth ;
Descend we to the shore, and, face to face,
Challenge a meeting at the water's edge,
Or ere they form in rank, and while as yet
Their staggering footholds totter on the sand:
Fortune still helps the brave !' He said; then weighs
What troops best lead against the foe, and what
Bid take in charge the storming of the wall.

287-306]

BOOK X.

395

Meantime Aeneas puts his folk ashore
By bridge and gangway from the tall ship-sides;
Impatient some observe the refluent wave,
Receding spent, and mid the shallows jump,
And some take oars and break the venturous leap.
Tarchon the while, surveying all the coast,
Spies out a creek where, undisturbed and smooth,
Nor surges seethed, nor broken billows roared,
But with full tidal flow sans stop or stay
The swell set gently in upon the beach;
E'en thither straight he points his vessel's bows,
And heartens thus his crews: 'Now, gallants all,
Now lay ye to the oars ! now lift your barks!
Cleave with your hostile beaks this foeman's soil,
And bid each keel its own deep furrow delve:
Full gladly would myself in such a port
Break ship and all, could I once make the land.'
He said; whereon his mates, as nerved anew,
Rise to the oar, and urge mid foam and spray
Their rushing galleys on the Latian plains,
Till every beak is high and dry run in,
And every keel come scathless to its berth.
Yet not, brave Tarchon, fared thy galley so;
For while as, driven upon the sandy shoals,
She there hung tottering on the perilous edge,
Long poised in doubt, and buffeted the waves,
She brake atwain, and, falling so to planks,
Spilled out her crew amid the weltering flood;
Where, floundering sore to scale the shelving bank,Entangled in the drift of broken oars

390

THE AENEID.

1307-322

And wreck of floating thwarts,--the refluent tide
With ebbing wash still drew their feet aback.
But Turnus dallies not; with rapid march
He hurls his whole array 'gainst landing Troy,
And draws it out to face the line of beach;
Anon the trumpets sound, and sans delay
Aeneas first-fair presage of the fightFalls on the peasant bands, new-raised and raw,
And disarrays the Latins, panic-struck,
Slaying bold Theron : he, their giant chief,
O'erweening of his size, assailed the prince;
Whereon, with fury sped, the Dardan sword
Through quilted brass and tunic rough with gold
Laid bare his side, and drank his life-blood warm.
Nor stopping here, he smites down Lycus next;
Who, from his mother's lifeless body ripped,
Phoebus, was consecrate to thee, as who
So 'scaped in birth the perils of the steel.
Nor far herefrom Cisseus and Gyas next,
A huge and hardy pair, the hero slays,
As, fierce and strong, they fought on, side by side,
And strewed whole squadrons with their iron clubs :
Vain their Herculean arms and stalwart hands,
By that good blade struck down; nor 'vailed them more
Melampus to their sire, Alcid6s' friend
And constant follower once, while still, uncleared,
Earth teemed her monsters for the hero's toils.
See there how next, as Pharus vented loud
His empty boasts, the chieftain hurls his spear,

323-345]

BOOK X.

397

And plants it in the bawling braggart's throat.
Thou, Cydon, too, as, bent on luckless quest
Thou followed'st blooming Clytius to the fray,
Thy new delight, stretched by the Dardan hand,
Had'st pressed the field forgetful of thy loves,
Had not thy brethren, gallant Phorcus' seed,
In serried line made head against thy foe;
Seven warriors they, and seven at one discharge
The spears they launched, but all with adverse hap;
Part bounding idly from his casque and shield,
And part by Venus deftly turned aside,
Grazing his frame unhurt; whereon the prince
To good Achates near: 'Nay, fetch those spearsNot one shall fly in -vain !-that erst at Troy
Lodged in the bodies of our Greekish foes.'
He said; and, grasping, hurled a mighty lance:
The weapon, flying, crashes through the brass
Of Maeon's shield, and breast and breast-plate rends,
And, holding still its bloody course unchecked,Alcanor on the moment drawing near,
And staying up his brother in his fall,Pierces his arm ; when straight the dying limb
Hangs by its sinews from the shoulder blade.
Then stepped forth Numitor, and, tugging, drew
The weapon from his fallen brother's corse,
And at Aeneas cast; yet might it not
Strike him direct in front; but, glancing past,
Flew harmless on, and grazed Achates' thigh.
In pride of strength and frame of youthful mould,

398

THE AENEID.

[346-362

Here springs out Clausus, who from Cures came,
And from afar smites Dryops with his spear:
The point, deep-fixt, goes home beneath his chin,
And, piercing through his throat in act to speak,
Stops voice and breath at once; when, falling prone,
His forehead butts the ground, and clotted gore
Comes oozing from his mouth. Three more, from
Thrace,
Of Boreas' stock divine, and three beside
To battle by their father Idas sent
And Ismarus their father-land,--all these
In divers wise the hero's hand lays low.
Now to the rescue bold Hal6sus comes,
Heading Aurunca's troops, and therewithal
Steed-famed Melampus too, god Neptune's child;
When, closing straight, to mutual havoc fired,
These strive to hold, and those to win the ground,
Their battle-field Ausonia's very door.
As justling blasts amid the spacious sky
In mutual conflict join, all matched alike
In strength and spirit for their airy war:
Winds, clouds, or sea, neither to other yields;
Whereby in even scale the doubtful fight
Long undetermined hangs, a world of strife;
E'en so, for conflict joined in dense array,
Here closed the Trojan and the Latian lines,
Each foot by foot firm set, and man by man.
Short space herefrom and where a torrent's force
Had whirled great boulders thwart the cumber'd plain,

363-38 ]

BOOK X.

With trees and shrubs up-rooted from its banks,When there young Pallas saw his comrades yield,
Forced by the broken ground to quit their steeds,
And how the men, unwont to fight afoot,
Were fled, while Latium followed on their track,
He tries-nor more was left him in such straitNow with entreaties, now with bitter taunts,
To fire their flagging courage for the nonce :
'Say, whither would ye fly, my friends ? by all
Your valiant deeds, your chief Evander's name,
Your many conquests 'neath his banners won,
Yea and withal by these my own fond hopes
Would fain aspire to mate my father's fame,
Trust not your flying feet; the sword alone
Must ope ye now your passage through the foe;
Where yon dense masses throng, therethro' it is
Our glorious country looks to welcome back
You and your Pallas to her breast again.
Not gods oppose our arms; mortal alike,
We close in conflict with a mortal foe,
With hands as many, nor more lives to lose.
Bethink ye how we stand; lo, close hemmed in,
There Ocean bars us with his mighty wall;
And, for the land?-a narrow strip between,
If fly we would, is all remains for flight;
Which then our way ? to seaward or to Troy ?'
He said; and mid the thickest of the foes
Impetuous rushed; when, led by adverse fates,
Lagus first crossed his course; whom, bending low

399

400

THE AENEID.

[382-397

As fain to lift a stone's enormous weight,
Hurling his lance he smites amid the back,
Just where the ribs are parted by the spine,
And, tugging hard, with labour wrenches back
The weapon sticking deep amid the bonesToo quick herein for Hisbo's hope who thought,
While stooped, to deal him a preventing blow;
For, rushing headlong on like one distraught,
As shocked to see his comrade's cruel death,
Lo, Pallas takes him short, and, facing round,
Buries his steel amid his heaving lungs.
Then slays he valiant Sthenius, and next
Anchemolus, of Rhoetus' ancient line,
Whose impious lust defiled his step-dame's bed.
You too the Rutule plains saw there laid low,
Larid and Thymber, Daucus' sons, twin-born,
And so alike, either to other still,
Your very parents knew not which was which,
But, sore perplext, still each for each mistook,
Nor wished the sweet uncertainty resolved;
But, maimed in divers wise, young Pallas now
Betwixt you twain doth sad distinction setFor, Thymber, lo the keen Evandrian blade
Sweeps off that head of thine, whiles thy right hand,
Larides, severed from its bleeding wrist,
Lies dropt afar, and blindly seeks its lord,
The quivering finger-joints, still half alive,
Twitching, convulsed, to clutch the steel again.
Stung by their chief's rebuke, and nerved to see

398-413]

BOOK X.

His valiant feats enacted in their view,
Here honest shame and grief combined rouse up
Arcadia's sons, and launch them on the foe.
With casual stroke then Pallas' spear doth pierce
Bold Rhoeteus to the heart, as, flying by,
He drave apast him in his twy-yoked car;
This, and no more, the respite Ilus gained,
The death so stayed o'ertaking him the next:
The sturdy spear was after Ilus sent;
But Rhoeteus thrust between and met the fate,
While as, with terror winged, he fled amain
Thine, Teuthras, and thy brother Tyres' sword;
When, tumbling headlong from the rapid car,
He spurns with dying heel the Latian soil.
As when a shepherd on a summer's day,
While welcome winds are rising to his aid,
Scatters his lighted brands among the furze,
And now, the fiery plague contagious blown
From point to :point, the copse breaks out ablaze,
And soon, in one broad belt extended wide,
The Fire-god's hosts along the champaign run,
While o'er the flames on some high eminence
The victor sits, and on their joy looks down;
E'en, gallant Pallas, so thy scattered folk,
Collecting to thy side, from all points draw,
And bend them to thy help.
But see where now,
Up-gathered close behind his covering shield,
Halaesus boldly fronts their coming ranks,
And Ladon, Pheres, and Demodocus,
ZD

4o

40z

THE AENEID.

[414-430

Doth slay o'erthrown; next, as Strymonius raised
His better hand to grasp his throat, he bids
The glittering falchion hew the member off,
And, striking with a stone young Pheres' face,
Scatters the bones with mingled blood and brain.
Forewarning him of fate, his prophet sire
Had hid Halaesus in the woodland dells;
But when he closed his glazing orbs in death,
The fatal Sisters claimed their destined prize,
And doomed the victim to Evander's arms.
Him Pallas now confronts; but, ere he cast,
To Tiber first addressed his earnest prayer:
' O father Tiber, grant this spear I poise
Good hap and passage through Halaesus' breast:
So shall a grateful trophy deck thine oak,
The spoils and armour of my vanquished foe.'
His prayer was heard; for while Halaesus shields
Imaon's breast, hapless he left his own
Exposed defenceless to the Arcadian lance.
But Lausus, conscious of his proper worth
As no small portion of the war himself,
Indignant will not brook his folk dismayed
At all this havoc wrought by Pallas' spear,
But, balancing the loss, he straight smites down
Abas who met him front to front opposed,
The stay and bulwark of the foeman's war;
And, routed soon, before his onset fall
Arcadia's best and all Etruria's too;
Yea and full many a Teucrian foe beside,

431-446]

BOOK X.

403

Whom Greece in days of Troy had failed to slay:
Then, edge to edge opposed, the rival hosts
Conflicting meet, and close in deadliest fray,
Their leaders equal, and their powers the same:
The rearward squadrons, pressing to the front,
Thicken the fight; and soon, for lack of space,
Thronged and blocked up, nor hand nor spear may
move;
Pallas is busy here, young Lausus there;
Fair both of form, nor much unlike in years,
But neither to see home or friends again !
Yet not herefor the great Olympian lord
May bid the pair in mutual conflict meet;
Both have their several fates assigned, doomed each
To fall ere long beneath a mightier foe.
Meantime his sister warns the Daunian prince
To take young Lausus' place; who forthwith cleaves
The tide of battle in his flying car;
And, seeing now his folk, calls thus aloud:
'The hour is come to rest you from the fray;
Withdraw and clear the field; no hand but mine
With Pallas copes; Pallas is mine aloneO were his father here to see us fight!'
He spake; and straight, obedient to his word,
His mates fall back, and leave the champaign free.
Struck with his haughty mien and stern command
As fell the Rutules back and left the field,
Pallas in wonderment on Turnus stares,
ZD

404

THE AENEID.

[447-462

Rolls his keen eyes o'er all that giant frame,
Surveys him limb by limb with fiery glance,
And, scanning fiercely the whole man afar,
Defiant thus the monarch's speech retorts:
' Or thy proud spoils shall grace my fame to-day,
Or else a warrior's death; my sire is nerved
For either fate: begin, and truce to threats.'
He said; then marched afield, while, curdling cold,
The life-blood froze in each Arcadian's heart.

Then leapt bold Turnus from his chariot down
To meet in equal fight his foe afoot:
As when a lion from some eminence
Descries a lordly bull amid the plain,
On battle bent and challenging the fray,
And, bounding, takes the field; so Turnus showed,
Advancing o'er the ground with rapid strides.
But now when Pallas deemed the foe was come
Within the range and compass of his spear,
Sans further pause, in hopes some lucky chance
Might turn the scale or 'twixt them square the odds,
He straight begins; but first with upward look
Prays Hercules: 'Now, as my father's guest,
By that our household board whose friendly cheer
A welcomed stranger thou didst erst partake,
Aid me, Alcides, in my bold attempt;
Let vanquished Turnus feel my hand to-day
Tear from his dying frame its bloody spoils,

463-482]

BOOK X.

And may his eyes, or ere they close in death,
Brook to behold his conqueror in me.'
Alcid6s heard the youth; and, struggling hard,
Stifled a rising sob within his breast,
And, weeping, bathed his cheek in fruitless tears;
Whereon with kindly word the Heavenly Sire
Bespake his sorrowing son in soothing tones:
'All have their term of life: fleeting and brief
Is each man's day, and none may win it back;
Yet fame of worthy deeds may death transcend,
And stretch the span; and this is valour's part.
'Neath Troy's high wall how many gods have seen
Their children bleed and die! Yea, fell not he,
My own true son, gallant Sarpedon's self ?
His doom calls Turnus too; e'en now the prince
Hath well nigh won his life's allotted goal.'
He spake; and from the field averts his look.

Pallas now hurls his lance with all his might,
And plucks his glittering falchion from its sheath:
On flies the steel, and, where the covering shield
Rose to the shoulder-joint, alighting smites,
And, ploughing with its point the buckler's rim,
Grazes at last the mighty frame beyond.
Then Turnus raised his spear's steel-headed shaft,
And, poising long,' See'-thus to Pallas cries'If ours be not the keener weapon far;'
And throws: when straight, for all its iron skin,
Tough plates of brass, and world of stark bull-hide

405

406

THE AENEID.

[483-501

That wrapped it round and round, the quivering spear
Bursts up the shield, and through its midmost drives,
And, heedless of the corslet's idle stop,
Bores through its folds the stalwart breast within.
In vain the youth the reeking weapon tears
From forth the hurt, the life-blood and the life
Both following at one vent the parting spear;
Then, falling forward, sinks upon the wound,
His clashing armour ringing on the field,
And bites with bloody teeth the hostile sod.
When o'er him Turnus thus: 'Arcadians, list,
And well and soothly to Evander bear
The words I speak: Lo, here I send him back
His Pallas dealt with as his sire deserved.
What grace soe'er a tomb may do his dead,
Or what of solace to himself may bring,
I freely grant: nor e'en herewith, I trow,
Aeneas' friendship stands him in small cost.'
He said; then pressed his heel upon the corse,
And tare withal the baldric's heavy weight
From off the breast, with that ill deed embossed
It bare for argument; those fifty youths
So foully of their fifty consorts slain
On one sad wedding night, the nuptial beds
And bridal chambers dabbled with their gore:
This Clonus, son of Eurytus, had there
Sculptured in broadest gold; and Turnus now
Strips off the belt, and glories in the prize.
O blindness of men's souls to destiny,
How all untaught, when swoll'n with prosperous hap,

So-51]

BOOK X.

To hold the mean, and steer the middle course!
The day will come when Turnus fain would buy
At whatso cost young Pallas' life untouched,
And, loathing all too late the deed now done,
Shall rue the hour he won those bloody spoils.
Now, laid upon his shield mid groans and tears,
His weeping friends bear Pallas to the camp ;
Woe, woe the while ! so soon, alas, to meet
A father's eye, his glory and his grief!
O early given to armts, and early lost
The one same day thy first and last of fields!
Yet well thou did'st thy work; lo yon red mead
Heaped with the bloody harvest of thy slain!
Meanwhile no random rumour of the blow,
But surer tidings reach Aeneas' ears,
And how withal his friends at peril stood,
And need was urgent, nor might brook delay,
To aid his Trojans ere they turned to fly.
Mowing all down before him with his sword,
He carves him through the field an ample road,
His one sole quest, unheeding of aught else,
To find thee, Turnus, in thine hour of pride,
Red-handed from the slaughter of his friend :
Pallas, Evander,--ach and all he sees,
All are before him life-like to his thought;
The kindly board that gave him welcome first,
Those out-stretched hands in prompt alliance plight!

407

408

THE AENEID.

85
[5,8-539

Four youths of Sulmo's seed, and other four
By Ufens reared, the prince here takes alive,
Condemned for sacrifice to Pallas' shade,
And destined with their blood to slake his pyre.
Anon he hurls at Magus from afar;
But, Magus deftly cowering to the blow,
The quivering lance o'erflies the craven's head;
When, clasping both his knees, he suppliant sues:
' Now by thy father's soul, by all the hopes
That wait upon Ascanius' growing years,
Spare me in pity of my sire and son !
A lofty house is mine where, buried deep,
Lies silver plate embossed, by talent weight,
And store withal of gold, bullion and wrought;
Your Trojan triumph hinges not hereon,
Nor one poor life may such vast difference make.'
He said; when thus Aeneas makes reply:
' Nay, spare this gold and silver for thine heir,
Nor talk of terms to me; such barter-work
Turnus, your prince, for ever set aside,
E'en from the hour his hand young Pallas slew;
So deems my father's sprite, and so my son'And with the left he took him by the helm,
And, drawing back his neck while yet he prayed,
Drave to the hilt the sword-blade through his throat.
Not far herefrom stood noble Haemon's son,
Dian's and Phoebus' sacred priest, his brows
Done all about with holy fillet-bands,
Radiant in gay attire and brilliant arms;

;A

., _O"1

540-5581

BOOK

X.

E'en him he meets, and, chasing, lays him low;
Then, striding sword in hand above his fall,
He whelms the victim in the dusk of death:
His arms Serestus strips, and, bearing off,
Vows them a trophy, God of War, to thee.
Then Caeculus, of Vulcan's seed divine,
And Umbro, who from Marsian hill-sides came,
Fill up the line, and dress the ranks anew;
Not unopposed, howbeit; the Dardan chief
In furious mood encountering their war.
Anxur's left hand his sword had just hewn off,
And dropped it with the buckler to the plainProud words had Anxur spoke, deeming, to wit,
His might should make them good; and haply so,
Buoyed high in hope, his fondly-dreaming soul
Had promised him grey hairs and length of daysWhen thwart his path, in fulgent arms arrayed,
Came valiant Tarquitus-whom Dryope,
A silvan nymph, to woodland Faunus boreAnd crossed the hero's rage; whereon the prince
Drew back his lance, and, hurling from his ear,
Hampers his frock of mail and ponderous shield,
Together pinned; then, as in bootless suit
The lips still moved and fain would more have said,
He smites his head clean off, and, spurning fierce
The palpitating trunk yet warm with life,
Thus o'er him vents the fury of his soul:
'Now, doughty chief, find there thy lowly bed;
No mother's hand shall streak thy decent corse,
Or pile thy father's tomb above thy limbs;

409

4O

7HE AENEID.

[559-575

But thou shalt lie a prey to carrion birds,
Or waves shall toss thee, plunged amid the deep,
And hungry fishes suck thy gaping wounds.'
Antaeus then and Lucas he runs down,
Of Turnus' foremost ranks; stout Numa next,
And Camers with his locks of sunny gold,
Brave Volscens' valiant seed, the wealthiest lord
In broad domains of all Ausonia's sons,
And who as king o'er mute Amyclae reigned.
E'en as Aegaeon who, as legends tell,
Had arms an hundredfold and hundred hands,
And from the depths of fifty bosoms launched
Through fifty mouths his mimic levin fires,
What time to meet the thunderbolts of Jove
He strook upon as many sounding shields,
And flashed as many swords; so, conquest-fired,
Aeneas raged his fill the whole plain o'er,
When once his reeking blade had warmed with blood.
See! next against Niphaeus' four-yoked car
He turns, intent to meet the team abreast;
But soon as now the steeds from far espied
His onset fierce, advancing o'er the plain,
They swerve aside appalled; then, rearing round,
With sudden plunge they cast their rider out,
And whirl the empty chariot to the shore.
High in their car, by two white coursers drawn,
Bold Lucagus the while, and at his side

576-595]

BOOK X.

411

His brother Liger, dash amid the fray;
The steeds the brother guides, while Lucagus
Keeps wheeling round his head his naked blade:
Aeneas marked, nor more might brook to see,
Their furious onslaught thus o'erbear the field,
But rushed right on, and straight with uplift spear
In all his mighty bulk confronts the twain.
Proud Liger then: 'Trojan, thou seest not now
The steeds of Diomede, nor Achilles' car,
Nor Phrygia's plains; yea nor, as erst at Troy,
Venus or Neptune may not stead thee here:
No; here the spot and this the fated hour
Shall end at once thy warring and thy life.'
In such wild words flew Liger's vaunts abroad;
Yet not in words the Trojan too will deal,
But hurls his spear for answer to the foe.
Whereon, as, bending forward, Lucagus
Pricked with his weapon's point his horses on,
And, setting in advance his left foot forth,
Prepared him for the fight, the fatal spear
Beats through the polished buckler's lowest rim,
And gores the left-hand groin; when, clean flung out,
He grovels dying on the dusty plain.
Whereon with bitter taunts Aeneas thus:
'Ho, Lucagus ! no dastard flight, I ween,
Of startled steeds so played thy chariot false,
Nor foeman's shadow put them to the rout;
No; but that leap of thine so featly made
Leaves car and team thus derelict to me!'
He spake; and seized withal the reins, the while

41.2

THE AENEID.

[596- 6

13

The wretched brother, sliding from his seat,
Stretched forth in suppliance his craven hands:
'Now, by thyself and by those parents twain
Who blessed the world with such a son as thou,
O Trojan hero, spare my forfeit life,
And list with pity to thy suppliant's suit.'
Whereto the prince-and cut his praying short:
'Not such thy style and tone a moment since ;
Die, and let brother bide by brother still.'
And on the word the falchion's point sent home
Unlocks his breast, and lets the life go through.
Such havoc through the field with sword and spear,
Untiring plied, the Dardan chieftain wrought,
Like some black whirlwind or a torrent flood;
Till re-assured, besieged so long in vain,
The young Ascanius and his Trojan mates
Burst from the camp, and take the field once more.
Meanwhile great Jupiter doth silence break,
With banter sly bespeaking Juno thus:
' 0 sister mine and sweetest wife in one,
'Tis Venus sure-thy judgment rarely errsHelps thus the Trojans' might, and not, we see,
The men's own worth, their strong right hands for war,
Their prowess, or their souls in peril brave.'
To whom the goddess, all submission, thus:
'Ah, why, my fairest lord, dost vex thy spouse
Thus sick at heart, and who thy frown so dreads ?
Had but my love the power that once it had,
And still should have, almighty as thou art,

6.t4--632]

BOOK X.

413

Thou never would'st deny me to withdraw
Brave Turnus from the fight and keep him safe
To bless again his father Daunus' eyes;
But perish now the duteous son and glut
The Trojans' vengeance with his righteous blood !
And yet, good sooth, from our own line it is
He draws his name and race, and counts his birth
But four removes from old Pilumnus' loins;
Yea, and full oft thine altars hath he piled
With store of offerings from his bounteous hand.'
To whom in few the sovereign of the skies :
'If what thy suit would ask for this doomed youth
Be respite and reprieve from present death,
And so wilt read the purport of my words,
Then snatch brave Turnus from the field by flight,
And save him for a space from instant fate;
So far compliance with thy wish may go:
But if some larger grace doth underlie
The surface of thy prayer, and thou should'st deem
The war's whole course and issue may be changed,
Thou feedest idle hopes.' Then she, in tears:
'Ah what, dear lord, if, over-riding fate,
Thy heart should grant what now thy tongue denies,
And Turnus should have back his forfeit life ?
O might this only be! But, as it is,
A heavy doom o'erhangs his guiltless head,
Or my poor anxious soul errs wide of truth.
Yet rather be it so ! be Juno mocked
With idle fears, so thou that hast the power,
May'st have the will, to mend such harsh award !'

414

THE AENEID.

[633-653

She said; and forthwith from the lofty skies
Descended swift, wrapt in a wintry mist,
And, driving storm before her through the air,
Makes for the Dardan lines and Latin camp;
And there the goddess of her cloudy screen
Fashions an image to Aeneas' shape,
Airy and thin, a marvel to behold,
And decks the figure with the Trojan's arms,
Buckler and helm, and gives it speech withal,
Mere empty sounds and words without a soul,
Yea, mocks his very gait; such are, 'tis said,
Those spectral forms oft seen when death is past,
Or dreams that cheat the sense in slumber steeped.
So now with jaunty step before the van
The phantom goes, and fierce with brandished dart
And taunting speech defies the Daunian chief.
With brisk despatch comes Turnus on, and straight
Launches his hurtling spear from far; when lo!
The thing turns tail and flies. Whereon when he,
Deluded, thought the Trojan so was fled,
And, wild with joy, quaffed deep of idle hope,
'Aeneas, whither thus ?' he cries,' and why
Desert thy plighted bride ? Stay, and this arm
Shall give thee soon in measure of a grave
Good earnest of the land thou sought'st o'er-seas 'So shouts he still, and still pursues the shade,
Waving his naked sword, nor sees the while
His promised triumph drifting down the winds.

It chanced a ship lay fastened to a ledge

654-672]

BOOK X.

415

Of high projecting rock, with steps let down
And gangway ready laid, the same which late
Bare king Osinius from the Clusian shore:
Thither, as fled in fear, the lying Shape
For shelter hies, and dives adown the hold,
While full as fast Turnus pursues the chase,
O'erleaps all lets, and scales the lofty stairs.
Nor had his foot well touched the deck or ere
Saturnia breaks the rope, and sends the ship
Adrift upon the reflux of the tide,
And with it Turnus; whom, thus far removed,
Aeneas meantime seeks throughdut the field,
And challenges for fight; but, missing, slays
All whqm he meets, to death and Hades sent.
Nor longer now the airy phantom hides,
But, soaring upwards, melts amid the clouds,
Dissolved and lost; the while with wind and tide
Turnus to seaward in the galley drives.
Confused and thankless for a life so spared,
He looks aback, and, lifting hands and voice,
Addressed him thus to Heaven: ' Hast judged me then
Worthy this foul disgrace, Almighty sire ?
Wilt have me pay such bitter penalty?
How came I here, and whither am I sped?
How, why, this coward flight, and-woe the whileHow sunk in all men's eyes 'twill bring me back!
Or shall it e'er be mine to see again
Laurentum's camp and walls ? Ah, what to say
Of those brave youths who, arming in my cause,

416

THE AENEID.

[673-69i

Followed their prince's standard to the field ?
Are they not those whom all, O foul reproach !
I thus abandon to a cruel death,
Whose scattered ranks, to rout and ruin left,
Methinks I see, and hear their dying groans ?
Ah, what to do, or what abyss to find
Of depth to hide my misery and shame ?
Nay,.pity me, ye winds ! on reef, on rockSee it is I-Turnus it is that callsDash me this ship, or strand it on the shoals,
Where Rutule eyes shall never see me more,
Nor tell-tale infamy pursue my steps !'
As wildly thus he spake, his troubled soul
Uncertain sways, 'twixt two resolves perplext,
Or should he, maddened by such dire disgrace,
Impale his frenzied breast upon the steel,
And through his -vitals drive the ruthless blade,
Or plunge amid the welter of the waves,
And so by swimming gain the distant beach,
And rush once more among the Trojan swords.
Thrice either way he tried; and Juno thrice,
Opposing, stayed his hand, and, pitying sore,
Repressed each rash attempt. Onward the while
He glides with wind and tide, and so is borne
Straight to his father Daunus' olden walls.
Meanwhile Mezentius, stirred thereto by Jove,
Takes Turnus' place, succeeding to the field,
And falls in fury on triumphant Troy;
Whereon Etruria's sons in fullest force,

692-7o9]

BOOK X.

417

With all their several hates as fused in one,
And spears as forth one arm discharged, assail
His single might and gall him every side,
A host against a man; yet stands he there
Unmoved and firm, like some great ocean-rock
That, jutting far amid the mighty deep
And naked to the rage of winds and waves,
Defiant takes all threats of sea and sky,
Unstirred itself and fixt. Anon he lays
Stout Hebrus low, old Dolichaon's son;
Next, Latagus; then Palmus, as he fled:
Young Latagus a stone's preventing stroke,
Itself no scanty portion of a hill,
Smites on the face and front, while from behind
He strikes down Palmus, ham-strung, to the ground,
And leaves him crippled, wallowing on the sod,
Bidding young Lausus on his shoulders wear
His arms stript off, and on his head his crest.
Phrygian Evanthes then he slays, and next
Mimas, prince Paris' whilom playmate-friend,
Whom fair Theano with a mother's throes
Had borne to Amycus the self-same night
That Cisseus' daughter, pregnant with a torch,
Brought Troy's worst firebrand, Paris, to the birth;
He sleeps within his native walls, the while
Laurentum's alien soil doth Mimas hold.
E'en as a savage boar, by snapping hounds
Forced from his hillside lair, whom many a year
Laurentum's swamp or piny Vesulus
Has harboured safe and fed on marshy reeds,
ZE

418

THE AENEID.

[7to-729

Arrived among the toils, stands fierce at bay
With bristling back upheav'd and snortings loud;
Of all his doughty foes not one may dare
For very dread engage him in close fight;
All keep aloof, and, wary of approach,
With shouts and darts a distant combat wage,
While he, still unafeard, now here now there
Defiant turns, and, gnashing with his tusks,
Shakes out the javelins from his sides and back:
E'en so, of all the foes whom just revenge
And righteous wrath 'gainst fierce Mezentius fire,
Not one may dare engage him hand to hand
With naked blade, but all with volleyed shafts
And clamours huge assail him from afar.
From olden Corythus had Acron come,
A Greekish wight, and who of late had left
His spousal rites and nuptial joys unsped
Him when Mezentius from a distance saw
Dealing disorder through the centre lines,
With crimson plumes and bridal favours gay,As whiles a famished lion, ranging through
Some forest's depths, by madd'ning hunger stung,
If chance his eyes amid the plain espy
A timorous goat or lofty-antlered deer,
With bristled mane erect and yawning mouth
Springs gleeful on the prey, and, crouching down,
Fast to the entrails clings, while loathly blood
Laves his insatiate jaws and greedy fangs,So flew Mezentius mid his clustering foes.

730-747]

BOOK X.

419

Anon unhappy Acron lies o'erthrown,
Beating with dying heels the blackened sod,
And stains the broken spearshaft with his blood.
Orbdes next he marked; but, thinking scorn
To smite a flying man, or, hurling far,
Bestow him from behind a wound unseen,
O'erta'en in flight he meets him face to face,
And closes with his foe as man with man,
Prevailing not by guile but dint of strength;
Then, treading on the corse which fell to earth
When as his hand 'gan wrench the spear away,
'See there, my friends,' he cries, 'their war's main

prop
O'erturned and laid in huge Or6des' fall'And, taking up their lord's triumphant strain,
His mates, responsive, raise their paean song.
' Whoe'er thou art,' the dying chief returns,
'Not long, nor all unpaid, shalt vaunt o'er me:
Thyself a kindred doom awaits, and thou
Shalt stretch thee soon on this same fatal plain.'
Whereto, with anger mingling in his smile,
Mezentius thus: 'Die thou, and here; of me
Let the great Sire dispose-'tis his concern.'
He spake; and plucked the spear-head from the wound;
When iron sleep and other rest than soft
Weighed down his eyes, and, shutting up their sense,
Curtained their orbs in everlasting night.
Now Caedicus lays low Alcathoiis,
SacrAtor fells Hydaspes, Rapo's hand
ZEZ

420

,HE
AENEID.

[748-764

Parthenius and stalwart Orses slays;
Messapus next does Clonius to death
With Ericet6s, stout Lycaon's son;
The one as, tumbled from his restiff steed,
He lay supine; the other in fair field,
Encountered foot to foot. Against him now
Had Lycian Agis to the front strode forth;
When, not degenerate from his foresires' worth,
Bold Valerus doth cast him to the ground;
Stout Thronius to Salius falls, and soon
Lo, Salius' self by brave Nealc6s dies,
Famed at the spear and far-deceiving shaft.
E'en thus to either side in even dole
The ruthless War-god dealt forth scathe and death;
Alike they slay, alike they fall and die,
Victors and vanquished by alternate turns,
The thought of flight alike to each unknown;
The while in Jove's high court the Heavenly Powers
Look down with pity on the scene of strife,
Mourning the senseless rage of either host,
And grieve for mortals' misery below :
Here Venus sits, spectatress of the fight,
Saturnian Juno there, while ghastly-pale
The fiend Tisiphone embroils the fray.
But see where, brandishing his massive lance,
Mezentius now comes striding o'er the plain,
In height of furious mood; in size as huge
As, wading through old Nereus' midmost depths,
Orion treads his ocean-way, yet shows

765-784]

BOOK A.

His brawny shoulders 'bove the waves upheav'd;
Or when as, wending down some mountain's height
With ashen trunk in hand, the giant sets
His foot on earth, his forehead in the clouds;
So, huge of bulk, Mezentius towered afield.
Aeneas marks him through the ranks afar,
Conspicuous seen, and straight to meet him fares:
Fearless the while Mezentius stands his ground,
Fixt as a rock, and bides his valiant foe;
Then, measuring with his eye his javelin's cast,
Impious exclaims: 'Now stand me in good steadFor other gods Mezentius doth disownMy good right hand and spear that now I cast;
And here I vow, Lausus, this very day
Shall view thee in this sea-thief's armour clad,
My living trophy o'er Aeneas slain.'
He said; and forth his hurtling javelin threw ;
Onward it flies, and, glancing from the shield,
Pierced proud Ant6res 'twixt his side and flank;
Ant6res, Herc'les sometime friend, and who,
From Argos sent, had joined Evander's cause,
And set him in his Latian city down;
But now, stretched hapless by an unmeant wound,
He looks his last upon an alien sky,
And thinks on darling Argos as he dies.
Now hurls the Trojan chief his lance in turn;
Clean through the hollow disk of triple brass,
Through folded linen pads and threefold skin

421

422

7HE

AENEID.

[785-803

Of stark bull-hide beyond, the weapon held,
And lodged at last within the groin low down,
But there stayed, spent, nor carried home its force;
When straight, o'erjoyed to see the Tuscan's blood,
Aeneas plucks his falchion from his thigh,
And presses hotly on his fainting foe.
No sooner Lausus saw the monarch fall,
Than, stung with sorrow for the sire he loved,
He fetched a heart-drawn groan, and, pausing sad,
Hot tears the while rolled trickling down his face.
Nor here, illustrious youth, the bard would leaveIf any eld may such rare worth avouchThy glorious deeds untold and piteous fate,
All worthy as thou art to live in song!
Disabled of a limb and hampered sore,
The sire with halting steps 'gan back withdraw,
The foeman's spear-shaft trailing from his shield;
Forth sprung the youth, and, mingling in the fray,
E'en as with uplift hand Aeneas fetched
A downward stroke, ran in beneath, and stayed
The sword caught up, and gave the Trojan pause;
His mates from all sides round with loud acclaim
Second the deed, and-cov'ring the retreat,
While shielded by his son the sire withdrewKeep raining darts on darts, and earnest strive
With volleyed shafts to beat the chieftain back.
Aeneas chafes with wrath, and, held at bay,
Keeps close within the covert of his shield:
As when at times in furious bursts of hail

804-822]

BOOK X.

423

The storm-clouds sweep to earth, straightway each hind
Deserts the field and every husbandman,
And, safe ensconced, the traveller lies hid
Or 'neath some torrent's bank or caverned rock,
While as the: rain is pelting on the lands,
If so they may, soon as the sun returns,
Resume the busy day afresh; e'en so,
O'erborne with missiles every side, the prince
On his broad shield the war's whole storm sustains,
Till all be overblown; and whiles with prayers,
And whiles with threats, Lausus-still Lausus-chides:
'Why rush on certain death, bold youth ? why aim
At things beyond thy strength ? thy filial love
Doth blind thee to the fate thy rashness courts!'
But, warned in vain, the fearless youth still holds
His mad career right on, whilst, so defied,
The Dardan chieftain's wrath now fiercely burn'd,
And ever higher rose, and thread by thread
The Fatal Sisters' hands are gathering in
The utmost span of gallant Lausus' life;
For furious now, with all his might impelled,
Through the young body's midst Aeneas drives
The sword full-length, and sheathes it in his heart:
It pierced the boyish targe and mail-coat light
The youth so bravely wore, and rent the vest
His mother's hand had broidered o'er with gold,
And flooded all the bosom's depth with blood;
And woeful to the winds the young life ebbed,
'
Loath to depart, and left its clay behind.
But when Anchises' son now bent him down

424

YHE AENEID.

[823-841

And saw his dying look, surveying sad
The fair young face so wondrous pale and wan,
He groaned for very ruth; and, putting forth,
Reached him a pitying hand, as, imaged true,
His own fond filial love lay pictured there:
'What guerdon of such worth, lamented youth,
What meed befitting such a heart as thine,
May now Aeneas give ? These arms at least
'Twas so thy pride to wear be still thine own;
Thyself I give, if recks thee aught thereof,
To join thy foresires' tomb and kindred dust:
Have this, howbeit, for solace in thy death,
Thou fallest by the great Aeneas' hand.'
Therewith he chides his wavering fellows' sloth,
And helps uplift the body from the ground,
There lifeless stretched, and dabbling as it lay
The comely locks with foul unsightly gore.
Meantime the sire, by Tiber flood withdrawn,
Stanched from the chilly stream his gushing wound,
Leaning his languid limbs against a tree :
The brazen casque hangs from a bough above;
Cuirass and sword are resting on the mead ;
A chosen few stand round; breathless and faint,
He stays his drooping head upon his hand;
His flowing beard is o'er his bosom strown:
Of Lausus oft he asks, oft bids send out,
And warn him from his sire to quit the fight;
But ah! the while a wailing train at hand
Are bearing lifeless Lausus on his shield,

842-858]

BOOK X.

425

A warrior by a warrior's hand laid low.
Too truly heard, the father's boding soul
That wail's sad import knew; with plenteous dust
He soils his aged head and hoary beard,
And, spreading forth his hands to heaven uplift,
Hangs fondly o'er the corse: ' And oh!' he cries,
'Had life such charms to give that thee, my son,
Mine own begotten child, I so could leave
To bide for me the foeman's hand ? was I
By these poor bleeding gashes saved, and is
Thy life the cost whereat thy father lives ?
Unchilded, lone, ah me 'tis now I feel
The wretched exile's doom! now, now at last
The blow strikes home! Yea, and I, too, my son,
Stained with my foul misdeeds thy fair young name,
Banned by my subjects' righteous hate, and last
Expelled my country and my father's throne
Long had I owed this debt, and long ere this
'Twere meet I paid my country and its hate
The penalty I owed. Had I but died,
Ay o'er and o'er again, all deaths that are,
Or ever one had touched my Lausus' life!
Nathless I still to this sad hour live on,
Nor quit e'en yet the light and life of men;
But quit them now I will !'
And therewithal
He rears him on his weak and halting thigh;
And, pained albeit and crippled by his wound,
Undaunted bids bring out his battle-steedHe was his pride, his warrior's joy, and still

!

426

THE AENEID.

[85.9-

Had borne him conqueror from his every fieldAnd faintly thus in loving words bespake
The noble horse that sorrowed dumbly near:
' O Rhaebus, you and I have lived full longIf aught be long where all things fade and die;
And now we twain shall this day bear us off
Aeneas' gory spoils and severed head,
And jointly 'venge my darling Lausus' death;
Or, if no force may ope our way thereto,
Thou'lt lay thee down with me; for well I wot
My gallant steed will never deign to brook
A stranger's hand, or serve a Trojan lord.'
He said; and, straightway to his back received,
Adjusts him in the old familiar selleBut first with store of spears charged either handHis brazen helm with nodding horse-hair plumed
A'glitter on his head; e'en so equipt,
He bore him stoutly midmost of the field,
The while his heart with madd'ning passions boiled,
Anger, and shame, and keenest grief withal.
Then thrice he called Aeneas' name aloud:
The voice Aeneas knew, and joyful prayed:
'Great Jove now grant, and great Apollo grant
Thy will so hold, and thou the venture try!'
Nor spake he more, but straight with uplift lance
Confronts him face to face; whereon thus he:
' Fellest of foes, why think to daunt me thus,
Now that thine hand hath robbed me of my child,
Nor I have worse to fear ? Only through him,

8.7 8

879-894]

BOOK X.

As well thou knew'st, the sire might be undone.
I fear not death; and, call on whom thou wilt,
Thee and thy gods I here defy alike;
So truce to threats: Mezentius comes to die,
But brings thee first these offerings from his hand.'
He said ; and flung a javelin at his foe;
Then plants another and another still,
Riding about him in a spacious ring,
While well the golden boss takes every dint.
Thrice round the prince who faced his every turn
He rode in rapid circuits to the left,
So covered by the targe, and, wheeling still,
Spear after spear in quick succession launched;
And thrice the Trojan chieftain bare around
A bristling grove of lances on his shield.
But now, impatient of such long delay,
And wearied sore with plucking spear-heads out,Pressed by the weight of odds withal, set thus
To fight on foot against a mounted foeAeneas quits at last his wary play,
And, springing forward, hurls a well-aimed lance
Right 'twixt the temples of the warrior-steed:
Deep smitten to the brain, the wounded beast
Rears him straight up, and, yerking at the air,
Lashes his heels abroad; then, headlong fall'n,
Bears in his fall his rider to the ground,
Flung from his seat; and, rolling on him there,
O'erlays his prostrate shoulder with his own.

427

428

7HE AENEID.

[895-908

Trojans and Latins rend the sky with shouts;
Forward with eager speed Aeneas flies,
And plucks from out its sheath his ready blade;
Then, standing o'er, bespake the swooning chief:
'Where now is bold Mezentius ? whither now
That scornful, fierce, unbending spirit fled?'
Whereon, when lifting up his eyes anew,
He drank in Heaven's fair light and air again,
And sense flowed back afresh, the Tuscan thus:
'Insulting foe, why taunt and threaten death ?
Kill me, nor spare: I take no wrong thereby;
E'en such the terms whereon I sought the field,
Nor other pact my Lausus when he fell
Made with his slayer for his father's life.
One boon howbeit I crave, if vanquished foe
May claim such grace : Let me in earth be laid.
Full well I know my subjects' bitter hate
Besets me round: protect me from their rage;
And, partner of my Lausus in his life,
Make me the sharer of his tomb in death.'
He said; then in his throat unshrinking takes
The welcomed sword, and sheds his life-blood out
In gushing streams that o'er his armour flowed.

BOOK XLr.

BOOK

429

XI.

Now Morn from ocean rose: the Trojan prince,
Albeit pressed for burial of his friends,
And troubled sore by such sad scenes of death,
Yet to the gods, at earliest streak of day,
As victor should, his grateful vows discharged.
Fixt on a lofty mound he rears straight up
A giant oak, of all its branches lopt,
And hangs the bole around with gleaming arms,
Mezentius' royal spoils, a trophy raised
In laud of thee, thou mighty God of War,
And sets thereon the crest with blood besprent,
The shivered staves, the mail-coat hacked and hewn,
In twice six places dinted and transfixt;
While to the left the brazen targe is hung,
And from the neck the ivory-hafted sword.
Then to his joyous friends, as, thronging thick,
They girt him round, in such wise spake the chief:
'Warriors, the most is done; and, for what rests,
Be all your fears dismissed: behold these spoils,
The war's first-fruits, stript from the despot king;
Yea, what your prince's hands have yonder reared
Is all remains of great Mezentius now:

43.

7I!E AENEID.

[I7-36

Our camp is safe, nor need we more ado
But march upon the Latin monarch's walls.
Then heart and hand prepare, and, so assured,
Let hope forestall the fight; that, soon as Heav'n
Bids pluck our standards up, and, mustering, lead
Our powers from forth the camp, no sudden let
May take you by surprise, nor craven thought
Check your advance with fear. Howbeit now
Consign we these our poor unburied friends
To mother earth, the sole sad office held
Of aught avail in:Acheron below.
Go'--after sorrowing pause resumes the prince-'And pay these noble souls the last respect,
Who won us this our new-found father-land
With shedding of their dear hearts'-blood; but first
Be Pallas to Evander's city sent,
Whom, nowise lacking worth, the evil day
Cut off unripe, whelm'd in untimely death.'
Weeping, he spake; and, turning, sought again
The tent's high door where lifeless Pallas lay,
By old Acoetfs watched, Evander's squire
In days of yore, but who, by fates less kind,
Appointed guardian to his youthful heir,
Had followed to the field his darling charge.
Around the corpse the thronging menials stood,
And men of Troy, and sorrowing Ilian dames
With locks dishevelled loose in mourning wise.
But when Aeneas' steps now passed within
The high pavilion doors, lo, one and all,

37-54]

BOOK XI.

431

They smote upon the breast, and lifted high
A burst of mighty wailing to the stars,
The royal tent re-echoing to their woe.
There when the prince beheld the bolstered head,
The snow-white face, and on the smooth young breast
The gaping wound the Ausonian spear had left,
Tears gushed amain, and thus he spake the dead:
'Was Fortune's brightest smile, lamented boy,
But cover for the frown that laid thee low,
Begrudging thee to see my new found realms
Thou holp'st me win, and so in conqueror's guise
Ride back in triumph to thy home again ?
Ah me I not such the pledge I gave thy sire
That parting day when, folding to his heart,
He sped me on my road to high command,
And warned me with a friend's and father's fears
Our foemen were a brave and hardy race,
In arms expert, nor eath to cope withal;
And haply now, with empty hopes beguiled,
He breathes the prayer and heaps the altar high
With costly gifts, while we alas ! to-day .
With bootless rites attend his darling son,
A lifeless corse, thus all unpitied slain,
And quits with Heaven for vows no god would own.
Father unblest, whose aged eyes are soon
To look upon thy child's untimely bier I
Is this our coming back again ? is such
The triumph we so looked to share, and has
Aeneas' solemn promise shrunk to this ?

43a

THE AENEID.

[55-75

Nathless, Evander, bides thy sorrowing sight
No recreant coward, smit and chased the field
With base inglorious wounds, nor needs the sire
Pray some dread death for riddance of his woes
While as the son in infamy survives.
Ah, what a tower of strength, Ausonia, thou,
And thou, Iiilus, have for ever lost!'
So having wailed his fill, he gives the word
To lift and bear the mournful burden forth,
And bids full twice five hundred chosen men
Attend the last sad honours to the dead,
And, mingling tears, condole the father's woe:
Scant solace sooth for such a mighty grief;
Yet not the less the wretched parent's due.
Others with arbute twigs and oaken boughs
Entwine of wicker-work a woven bier,
And screen the high-piled couch with leafy sprays:
There, on his rustic litter raised aloft,
They lay the beauteous youth; like some fair flower,
Or violet meek or drooping hyacinth,
Which, cropt by maiden's finger, wears as yet
Its lustrous hues undimmed and comely shape,
For all that, severed from the parent stem,
Its native mould may feed its growth no more.
Then forth his tent the loving hero fetched
Twin mantles fair, with gold and purple stiff,
Phoenician Dido's whilom gifts, the which
Her own fond hands had wrought him for his wear,
Pleased so employed, and shot the chequered warp

.76-92]

BOOK XL

433

With gleam of gold : in one for last attire
He shrouds in funeral wise the hapless youth,
In one for hood he wraps his honoured head
And tresses fair so soon to feed the flames.
War-prizes too, Laurentum's battle-prey,
He piles in many a heap, and bids the spoil
Be borne-in long array before the bier,
With store of arms, and captured steeds, the which
His hand in life had won him of the foe;
And there besides, pinioned and linked in pairs,
Those captive youths the chieftain's vengeance doomed
For offerings to the dead, and who should soon
Slake with their streaming blood the funeral fires.
Trunks too of trees, with hostile arms bedecked,
Marked each and all with some slain foeman's name,
He bids the leaders' selves in hand to bear.
Bowed with the weight of years, Acoet6s next
Moves on with feeble step, by others led,
Pausing 'twixt whiles, as ever and anon
He beats his breast, or rends his bleeding cheek,
Or lies full length and grovels in the dust.
The chariot, crimsoned with Rutulian blood,
They next bring out, while backward of the car
The hero's war-horse, noble Aethon, wends,
Unclothed and bare, of all his trappings stript,
Big drops of sorrow coursing down his face;
Some bear the dead man's spear and helm, all else
His conqueror Turnus holds. In close of all
Follows, of divers troops, a mourning train;
Picked men of Troy, Etruria's friendly bands,
2F

434

THE AENEID.

(90-1 13

And last, with arms reversed, Arcadia's sons.
Anon when, ordered so, the train was all
Well gotten on its road in full array,
His steps Aeneas stayed, and, groaning deep,
Adds thus one parting word: ' Pass on, great heart,
While us, alas! the warrior's ruthless doom
Calls hence to other griefs. Adieu, brave prince,
Yea, gallant Pallas, fare thee well for aye '
Nor spake he more; but, turning on the word,
Retraced his footsteps to the camp and walls.
But now, from forth the royal city sped,
Were envoys come with olive boughs in hand,
And craved a grace: 'Would he but give them back
The bodies of their friends whom there he saw
Strewn as the sword had left them on the plain,
And bid them in the earth be decent laid ?
War with the vanquished or the dead was none;
Nor would he sure the boon to those deny
Were once his hosts, and kinsmen of his bride.'
The good Aeneas owns the righteous plea,
Grants them their prayer, and speaks them fair besides
'What all-unworthy hap, ye Latins, say
Hath plunged you in this war, and made you so
Reject our proffered amity and love ?
Ask ye a peace for those in battle slain ?
Fain would I grant it to the living too;
And for ye see me here,-I ne'er were come,
Had Fate not given me here my home and seat.
Nor war I with your folk: your king it was

-1141.28]

BOOK X.

435

Renounced my friendship, and of choice preferred
To trust him to prince Turnus' sword and shield.
And fairer sooth it were if Turnus' self
Had faced the death these hapless slain have met;
If such his thought by deed of arms to end
The war he waked, and drive the Trojans out,
His part had been here hand to hand to meet
With me in fight, nor wage with lesser folk
Ignoble war: had he done this, as sooth
I would he had, then he of us had lived
Whom Heaven and eke his own good arm bade live.
But now go ye, and, with what speed ye will,
Kindle the bale-fires' blaze beneath your dead.'
Aeneas spake; struck with his generous words
Awhile the legates stood in wonder mute,
And, gazing round, each on his fellow looked:
Then spokesman Dranc6s,-eldest of the band,
Young Turnus' foeprofest, and one who still
With spite and calumny pursued the prince,Brake silence first, and makes him thus reply:
' 0 great in fame, but greater still in deeds,
Champion of Troy ! what praise may mate thy worth ?
Matchless in peace and war, say shall I first
Extol thy justice, or thy valiant feats ?
Now shall we, sooth, with thankful hearts bear back
Thy gracious answer to our town and folk,
And, if good hap but grant the means thereto,
Will knit thy friendship to Latinus yet;
While for his need, if he be still for war,
2FZ

436

THE AENEID.

[129-,45

Let Turnus look for allies where he may;
Yea will it be our Latins' hearts' delight
To raise the lordly walls thy fates assign,
And lade our shoulders with the stones of Troy.'
So Drances spake; and all with one accord
Murmured assent. Whereon at twice six days
They fix the term defined; and so at truce,
With peace and amity to part the foes,
Trojans and Latins both, commingling free,
Unharmed and harmless, range the wooded hills.
Anon begins the work: on every side
Rings to the biting axe the smitten ash,
The soaring pine comes crashing to the sod,
Rowan, and oak, and scented cedar sweet,
Yield to the wedge; and all, piled up amain
On groaning waggons, throng the crowded ways.
But cruel Rumour, harbinger of woe,
Had winged her way far on before, and now
Filled with young Pallas' death Evander's ears,
His court, and town; Rumour, whose voice so late
Bruited his triumphs on the Latian plains.
Quick to the gate the hurrying townsmen flock,
Each with his funeral torch in haste caught up,
Their wont of old, and now the dusky road
Gleams with the long array of flambeau fires,
And parts the meadows with its line of light;
To meet them comes the mournful Trojan train,
Advancing slow, and joins the wailing bands.

X46-163]

BOOK XI.

Whom when the matrons from the walls beheld
Wend on and on, and now, approaching, pass
Within the shadow of the towering roofs,
They fill the sorrowing town with shrieks and cries.
Evander heard; and, hearing, spurns alike
Or earnest word, or check of friendly force,
To hold him back: frantic he takes his way,
And, rushing in amid the mourning throng,
When as the bearers set their burden down,
Doth cast him on the bier, and, prostrate there,
Groaning and weeping to his Pallas clings,
Dumb with excess of grief; till thus at last
Exhausted sorrow gave his speech to flow:
'Not such thy promise, Pallas, to thy sire,
To tempt less recklessly the risks of war!
Too well I knew the youthful warrior's joy,
The madd'ning rapture of his maiden field !
Ah sad essays of youth ! firstlings unblest,
And bitter foretaste of the strife at hand !
Ah fruitless vows, and prayers preferred in vain !
Ah, too, for thee, dear partner of my bed,
Blest in thy death, nor left for woe like this;
The while on me, o'erstaying thus my day,
Defeated nature wreaks her grievous wrong,
Dooming my age to lonely fatherhood,
The sire surviving when the child is gone !
Would I had joined that friendly Trojan host,
And fallen by those same Rutule swords and spears,
And me, not Pallas, these sad pomps of death

437

438-

THE AENEID.

[164-i8o

Were bringing home to-day ! Yet mean I not,
Ye sons of Troy, to blame you aught herein,
The league we made, or hands we plighted so;
Such the condition of protracted years,
The tax he pays who over-lives his span.
Howbeit e'en though my boy was doomed to die
Or ere his time, yet 'twill be sweet to think
That, faithful to his new-found friends and cause,
He slew his Volscian thousands ere he fell,
And led the Trojans to Ausonia's door.
Nay nor, my Pallas, might thy loving sire
Have wished a nobler burial for his child
Than great Aeneas and his Phrygian peers
And all Etruria give thee here to-day;
Where, with the living in thine honour joined,
The very foes thy conquering arm laid low
Now yield thy worth these trophies of their spoils;
Yea, and thou too, proud Turnus, had'st stood there,
A giant trunk in arms, had time but matched
His years with thine, and manhood nerved his hand.
But wherefore thus an old man's sorrow keep
The valiant Trojans longer from the field?
Go, and from me bespeak ye thus your king :
If that I still consent to linger out
A loathed life with Pallas dead and gone,
Answer thy hand therefor, the which thou wott'st
Owes Turnus' forfeit blood to me and mine;
Rests there but this, nor needs Evander more,
To crown his boons from Fortune and from thee.
Nor ask I this to glad my life with joy:

18 t-2 o]

BOOK XL,

439

The thought were crime in me; but I were fain
Tocheer my Pallas with the news below.'

And now the morn to wretched mortals brought
Return of light, and waked their toils anew:
Aeneas and the Tuscan chief betimes
Have reared their funeral piles along the beach;
Whereto anon, each with his foresires' rites,
They bear the bodies of their comrades slain;
And soon, ascending from the lighted bales,
A reek of murky vapour shrouds the sky.
Three times afoot, in glittering armour sheathed,
They marched the circuit of the blazing pyres;
Three times they rode the funeral flames around
On prancing steeds, and cried the death-dirge wild:
The sparkling sands are moistened with their tears,
Tears dim their harness' sheen; while, mingling heard;
The shouts of men and blare of trumpets rise.
Some divers spoils amid the death-fires cast,
Won from their slaughtered foes, high-crested helms,
Rich-mounted swords, bridles, and chariot-wheels;
Others memorials of their friends themselves,
Their luckless shields, and lances idly flung.
To sable Death full many an ox is slain,
Great bristly swine, and, reft from all the fields,
Fat sheep are killed to bleed above the flames.
There all day long beside the curving beach
They gaze in sadness on their burning friends;
And tend the smouldering bales, nor, lingering fond,

440

THE AENEID.

[201-219

May tear them from the spot, till dewy Night
Wheels round the sphere with spangling stars bestrown.
With no less care the wretched Latins too
Raise countless structures otherwhere the field;
But of their dead a many where they fell,
E'en as they lay, they dig beneath the sod,
A many they bear off to fields hard by,
Or send them to the city back; all else,
The vast promiscuous carnage of the plain,
Sans note or count are yielded to the fires,
While bright on either side the burning piles
Illume the champaign with their rival flames.
But soon as now the third returning day
Had chased the night's dark shadows from the sky,
Sighing they raked the levelled heaps of ash,
And, culling from the fires the mingled bones,
O'erlaid them with a crust of steaming clay.
But in Latinus' town itself prevails
The loudest wailing and the largest woe;
Here mourning mothers late of sons bereft,
Here youthful brides new-widowed of their lords,
Sisters' fond hearts for missing brothers sore,
And wretched children orphaned of their sires,All with one common voice here banned alike
The cruel war, and Turnus' marriage suit:
'Nay, let this man,' they cried, ' his proper self,
Try out the issue with his single sword,
Who claims Italia's crown and foremost place.'

220-235]

BOOK .XI.

And spiteful Drances aggravates the cry,
Protesting loud how Turnus' self alone
Was called for to the fray, that only he
The challenge underlies. Yet want there not
A many voices too on Turnus' side,
In divers wise expressed: the queen's high name
Backs up his cause; nor fails his own renown
To stead him well, by many a trophy proved.
Mid all these factious feuds, and while the blaze
Of party spirit at its hottest burned,
Lo, as to crown the whole, returning sad
From mighty Diomede's imperial walls,
The legates bring their doleful tidings back,
How naught whate'er at such large cost was gained
Of toil and pains ; how no one whit availed
Or gifts, or gold, or all their earnest prayers;
That Latium now must look for aid elsewhere,
Or peace be sued for at the Trojan's hands.
Crushed as to earth, Latinus' spirit faints,
Rueing full sore the course he late pursued;
For plainly now the anger of the gods,
As shown in this his envoys' ill success,
As eke these new-made graves before his eyes,
Past doubting proved Aeneas so was come
By Fate's decree and clearest will of Heaven.
So now the king by urgent mandate calls
A council of the peers and high estates
Of all the realm within his lofty courts;

441

442

7HE AENEID.

[236-254

Who straightway meet, and, thronging all the ways,
Flock to the palace gates. There in the midst,
Eldest in years as first in kingly state,
With brow howbeit whereon small joyance showed,
Latinus takes his seat. Anon he bids
The legates from the Aetolian town returned
Report in full detail their errand's speed,
What answer theirs, and all in order show.
Then, silence first on every tongue enjoined,
Complying meek, thus Venulus began
'Know, fellow-citizens, our eyes have looked
On royal Diomede in his Argive camp;
Yea, all that road and every risk thereby
Encountered and o'ercome, we touched at last
The hand whereby the realm of Ilion fell;
The chief we found a'building of his town,
Yclept Argyripa from his olden folk,
In Mount Garganus' Iapygian fields,
On soil the which his sword had newly won.
The Presence gained and leave of speech vouchsafed,
We show our name and race, present our gifts,
Tell who had so invaded us in war,
And on what quest we sought to Arpi town.
He heard; then thus with solemn mien replied
"O favoured folk, ancient Ausonia's sons,
Blest lieges of old Saturn's golden reign,
What evil hap so mars your peaceful life,
And tempts you to a war whose end ye needs
Must wot as little as with whom ye fight?

255-2711

BOOK XI.

Know that all we whose unblest weapons erst
Profaned the sanctity of Ilion's soilI waive the hardships of the ten years' siege,
All we endured around those lofty walls,
As eke the gallant hearts whom day by day
That fatal Simois whelmed beneath his tides
Yes, all of us alike the wide world o'er
Have paid in pains and agonies untold
The forfeit of our guilt-wretches, for whom
E'en Priam's heart itself might well have bled,
As Pallas' baleful star too well may vouch,
Euboea, and Caphereus' vengeful mount!
Since that dread war, to divers countries driv'n,
An outcast man, lo Menelaiis roams
To Proteus' Pillars in a distant world,
Ulysses on the dread Sicilian coast
Hath looked on Aetna and the Cyclop crew.
Why talk of Pyrrhus and his portioned realms,
Of prince Idomeneus and his ruined home,
Or Locrians settling on a Libyan shore ?
E'en he, Mycenae's lord, captain and king
Of those Achaean hosts,-dropped he not there,
E'en on the threshold of his palace hall,
Slain by the hands of his adulterous queen ?
Though conquered Asia owned him for her lord,
A wily paramour so wrought his fall.
And ah, my own lot too! by cruel gods
Denied to see my household hearths again,
My long-craved wife, and Calydon the fair!
Yea, to this hour ill-omened portents dread

443

444

THE AENEID.

[272-290

Of horrid aspect dog my exiled steps;
Transformed to birds, my mates of other days
Or wing the sky, or haunt the fishy mereAh, dire infliction on my faithful friends !And fill the sea-cliffs with their doleful cries.
Not less than this, howe'er, yea more and worse,
I well had cause to dread from that curst hour
When, madman that I was I dared invade
With desperate steel the person of the gods,
And outraged Venus with an impious wound.
Nay then, desist; forbear your bootless suit,
Nor seek to urge me to such battles more;
My feud with Trojans ceased when Ilion fell.
I bid not back those by-gone ills, nor when
They come unbid may think of them with joy.
These gifts ye bring me from your distant home
Bear back and offer to the Teucrian prince.
I know him well; have faced his levelled lance,
Yea, fought him hand to hand; trust one who proved
How more than man he rises to the shield,
With what tornado force he hurls his spear:
Had Ida borne but two such champions more,
Then Dardanus 'gainst Inachus had marched,
And, changing place with Troy, victorious Greece
Were mourning now a destiny reversed.
Through all that length of stop our leaguer found
Before the walls of stubborn-hearted Troy,
'Twas valiant Hector's and Aeneas' hands
Still held us so in check, and kept aback
Our Greekish triumph for ten weary years;

'291-3091

BOOK X1.

445

For valorous deeds and prowess in the field
Distinguished both alike, but he the more
For clemency renowned and gentle worth.
Strike hands in amity, if so ye may;
But for encountering arms with arms, beware."
Thus, gracious Sire, thou hast the king's reply,
And what he thought of this our arduous war.'
Scarce had the envoys ceased, or ere there ran
A hum of various voices through the hall;
As in some mountain gorge when rapid streams
Are checked by curbing rocks, confused sounds
Rise from the prisoned flood, and either bank
Keeps babbling to the plashing of the waves.
Soon as the ferment cooled and tongues were still,
With meet preamble to the gods addrest,
Thus from his lofty throne began the king:
'I could have wished, ye peers of Latium's realm,And better far it were,-that long ere now
We planned some measure for the public weal,
Nor met in council at a time like this,
When as the foe is sitting at our gates;
And they no common foe: trust me, my friends,
We wage with demi-gods a desperate war:
No battles wear them; worst them as you may,
Their hands will still be grappling to the sword.
Who looked to far Aetolia for his hope,
May waken from his dream: needs must we now
Find, each man in himself, our proper hopes:

446

THE AENEID.

[3o-329

And these how slender, all may plainly see.
How all things else in utter ruin lie,
Your eyes must note, your very hands may feel.
I cast no slur on none: what valour could,
E'en to its utmost, valour hath achieved;
Nor that, too, man by man: we've waged the strife
With all the strength and sinews of our realm.
Now to what plan my wavering thoughts incline,
Vouchsafe attention whilst I show in few
Skirting the Tuscan stream, there lies a belt
Of old crown-land that stretches westward far
Past the Sicanians' bounds, my own domain;
Auruncans and Rutulians hold the soil,
Subduing with the plough its stubborn hills,
Or grazing with their flocks its rugged slopes.
That whole broad tract and pine-clad mountain ridge
Cede we in friendship to the sons of Troy,
Propound fair terms of peace, and bid them share
As equals in our kingdom's weal and rule;
There let them settle down, if such their wish,
And rear their walls. But should their fancy lean
To lands elsewhere and other folk than us,
And they may hold them free to quit our soil,
Then build we to their need twice ten good ships,
Italia's heart of oak, or build them more,
If more they want, and eke have hands thereto;
Nor lack we store of stuff; the timber lies
Felled by the river's side: be theirs to fix
The number, size, and fashion of the barks,
Stores, brass, and labour be it ours to find.

330-346]

BOOK XL

447

Further--to bear our offers and confirm
The terms of league proposed-I rede we bid
A hundred Latian men of foremost rank
Set out with boughs of olive in their hands,
And gifts withal of ivory and gold,
Of each a talent weight, as eke our chair
And robe of state, the badges of our rule.
Now speak your minds, give each his counsel free,
And aid your king to save the sinking State.'
True to his -wont, unfailing Drances rose,
His spiteful soul by Turnus' glory vexed
And thwart-eyed envy's bitter-rankling stingsRich, nor withal a niggard of his wealth
For party needs ; ready and shrewd of tongue,
But cold and spiritless of hand for war;
No mean adviser deemed at council-board;
A deep intriguer, versed in all the arts
Of faction and cabal: his mother's blood
Gave him some claim to high descent, but by
The father's side of origin obscureE'en he stands up, and straight with words like these
Inflames and aggravates the general wrath:
'To no one dark, nor needing word from us,
The matter, gracious sire, whereon would'st have
Thy subjects' mind. All own they see too well
Whereto the public weal doth plainly point,
But none dares speak, or speaks with bated breath;
In other strain, good sooth, thy people's voice,
Would but that man grant licence of free speech,

448

2HE AENEID.

.[347-364

And bate his swelling pride, whose baleful rule
And perverse ways accurst-yea, will I speak,
For all he menace me with arms and death
Have quenched the light of many a valiant chief,
And plunged our city in this slough of woe,
While he, still trusting to his heels, must storm
The Trojans' camp, and scares the heavens with war.
Yet will I now this counsel free propose,
Let whoso will or nill it as he may:
O'er and above those many gifts thou bidd'st
We send as presents to the sons of Troy,
Add, gracious sire, one more, and crown the whole:
Let no man's arrogance o'erbear thy will,
But, in the fulness of a father's right,
Bestow thy daughter on a worthy son,
And knit with that sure pledge a lasting peace.
Or, if the spell of terror still must hold,
Nor we may act save as our tyrant wills,
Then sue we humbly to his doughty self,
Fall on our knees, and beg him of his grace
To waive his claim and condescend to let
His king and country exercise their right.
Ah me, thou thwarter of the general good !
Why ever thus on open ruin fling
Thy wretched countrymen, source that thou art,
Prime head and spring, of all our Latium's ills
Our war is hopeless, worsted as we are;
So, one and all, Turnus, we ask of thee
Peace, and what only can secure the peace.
Yea, I the first, whom thou wilt have thy foe-

365-38o]

BOOK XI.

449

Nor reck I much, God wot! e'en were it trueYes, I, a suppliant, make thee thus my prayer:
Have pity on thy friends; bring down thy pride,
Own thy defeat, and, beaten, quit the field.
Foiled and o'erthrown, slaughter and deaths enow
Our eyes have seen, and wept full long the sight
Of these .fair fields left desolate and waste.
Bid then the mischief end ; or if so be
A thirst for glory still must prick thee on,
And if such courage -harbour in thy breast,
And royal wives with palaces for dowers
So charm thy soul, prithee be bold for once,
And man thy valiant heart to meet thy foe.
What ! so prince Turnus win a queenly bride,
Must we, forsooth, mean folk of no account,
Bow down before the sword, and strew the plain
In slaughtered heaps, unburied and unwept ?
Go, then, at last, for sure thy turn is comeGo, and if manhood dwell within thy breast,
If one faint touch of native worth,-away!
And look him in the face who bids thee forth.'
At such like taunts young Turnus' wrath blazed out
In utter flame; groaning for very rage,
Forth from his inmost soul this answer brake:
'Dranc6s ! I own thou hast good store of words;
Thou'rt glib of tongue when hands are in demand;
Nor, when the wrangling senate is convened,
Fails thy sure foot to be the first in hall.
But not the need just now to fill the court
ZG

450

THE A ENEID.

[381--402

With that big talk thy noisy tongue lets fly
So safely forth while mounds and walls still keep
The foe at bay, nor swims they ditch with blood.
Yet, blusterer-! thunder on-'tis but thy way;
Yea, tax me, Drances, for a -coward too,
Since well we wot 'twas Dranc6s' hand mowed down
Those swarths of Trojan dead, and studded so
Our Latian fields with trophies of his slain.
What valour may achieve we twain may soon
Put to the proof: foes are not far to seek;
They throng the walls outside. March we then forth ?
What ! lagging still ? and must thy best of man
Harbour for ever in thy ;windy tongue
And those swift feet that serve thee but to fly ?
"Defeated"--I ! Who dares, foul slanderer, name
Defeat to me that to this day may look
On Tiber swollen with the blood of Troy,
Evander's house, branch, stock, and root, cut off,
And all Arcadia's best disarmed and stript ?
Not such huge Pandarus and Bitias found
The hand that stretched them on the bloody plain,
Nor all those thousands whom my conquering arm
In one brief day sent downi to hell, albeit
Cooped as I was within their walls and mounds.
"Hopeless our war!" Go, driv'ller! go, and croak
Such welcome bodings in the Dardan's ear
And thy new partisans'. Prithee proceed;
Desist not thus to spread dismay around,
Cry up to heaven this twice-defeated folk,
Disparage all thou canst Latinus' arms,

4o3-4191

BOOK XI.

Asperse his cause, nor stick to tell us next
How all the mighty Myrmidonian lords,
Tydides and Larissa's valiant chief,
Are quaking at the deeds of Phrygia's sons,
And very Aufidus in full retreat,
Scared refluent to his source from Hadria's sea.
Or hear him when the crafty villain feigns
His dread of Turnus' enmity, and weights
His lying charges with fictitious fears:
Nay, quiet thy alarm; never, I trow,
Shalt lose thy paltry soul by hand of mine;
No; bide it in thy bosom still, and keep
Its fitting home in that ignoble breast.
To thee, O gracious sire, I now come back,
And this our high consult :--If that thou hast
No further trust in aught our arms may do,
If so forlorn our state, and if we be
For one reverse so utterly undone,
Nor fallen fortunes may retrieval know,
Then lay we down the sword, entreat for peace,
And sue with craven hands our victor's grace.
Yet, O, should I-were it but ours to hold
One shred of wonted valour in our heartsAy deem that man above all other blest,
Who, liefer far than look on aught like that,
Should lay him down in death, and once for all
Bite with his bloody teeth the foeman's sod.
But if we still have means enow in store,
Recruits and levies yet intact and fresh,
If friendly Italy may yield us still
2 G2

451

t'.l

452

THE

AIENEID

L42

Confederate towns and peoples at our back,
If not to Troy herself came this success
Save as the purchase of her dearest blood,For Troy too counts her dead; the hurricane
Has swept unsparingly o'er all alike,If things be thus, then O, in Heaven's name !
Why on the very threshold basely faint,
Why tremble ere the trumpet well hath blown ?
Who knows besides what change may yet befall ?
Full many a seeming hopeless ill hath time,
And shifting time's vicissitudes, redressed;
Capricious Fortune, whom she mocked at first,
Hath holp again, and set them up anew.
Aetolian Diomede will aid us not,
He, nor his Arpi; but Messapus will,
Yea will Tolumnius too, and those brave chiefs
Whom many a State has sent us to our need;
Nor scant, I ween, the glory that awaits
The warriors of our soil, our native troops,
The flower of Latium's and Laurentum's plains.
Have we not too, of noblest Volscian blood,
The martial maid Camilla with her train
Of mounted aids in gleaming brass equipt ?
Still with all this, and if the Trojans call
On me alone with challenge to the field,
If too thy will be such, and if in sooth
My single self so thwarts the general weal,
Sure Victory hath not heretofore so shunned
My hated hand that I should now decline
The gage of combat with such prize to win.

o-437

438-454]

BOOK XI.

453

No; I will face him straight, e'en let him be
Great as Achilles' self, and don withal
Harness like his, the work of Vulcan's hands.
Latins, to you, to thee, my royal sire,
Turnus devotes his life, nor fears he'll prove
In aught degenerate from his foresires' worth.
"Aeneas bids me forth "-vouchsafe he may,
Nor doughty Drances fall in Turnus' stead,
If Heaven means wrath herein, or win the palm,
If, as I trow, honour and glory call.'
Now while as these in wordy conflict thus
Held loud debate, nor salved the perilled weal,
Aeneas moved his host from camp to field;
Whereon, behold, there runs a messenger
In hottest haste, and spreads mid tumult huge
His tidings through the royal halls, and fills
Both court and city with dismay and dread;
'How in embattled lines from Tiber flood
The Trojan and Etruscan troops combined
Were sweeping down full force, and covering all
The banks and champaign with their banded powers.'
At once a panic seizes every soul;
The minds of all, courtiers and crowd alike,
Are stunned with fear, and, roused by peril's spur,
No gentle impulse bids their passions rise.
' To arms !' the cry with all; 'to arms !' the youth
Impatient shout, while, cowering unresolved,
The feeble elders may but moan and weep:
A dire confusion reigns; from every side,

454

THE AENEID.

[455-471

Blent with dissensious cries, a deafening din
Of clamorous discord rises to the sky:
E'en as when birds on some tall forest's top
Alight in countless flocks; or when at times
By broad Padfisa's fishy stream the swans
Fill with their screamings harsh the noisy pools'Ay, my good countrymen,' cries Turnus loud,
Seizing a moment while the tumult lulled'Call thus your councils I! thus in close divan
Harangue in praise of peace, and let the foe,
In something more than wordy valour brave,
Rush sword in hand upon the unguarded realm!'
Nor therewith spake he more, but turns about
And flings him quickly from the lofty hall;
Then, to the chiefs who thronged the court without:
'Brave Volusus, bid arm the Volscian troop!
Lead forth the Rutule powers! Messapus, thou,
Thou, Coras, with thy brother, pour abroad
Your mounted pickets o'er the champaign's breadth!
Let some make sure the passes to the town,
Others the ramparts man; the rest employ
Their arms with me, as I shall bid them on!'
At once from all the quarters of the town
By divers ways they hurry to the walls:
Sore shaken by the aspect of the time,
Latinus' self, the father of the State,
Adjourns the council, quits his high designs
Abortive nipped, and blames himself full sore
That, swayed by factious cries, he welcomed not

472-489]

BOOK X.

455

The Dardan for his son, nor gave the state
A husband for the daughter of the crown.
Others before the gates deep trenches cut,
Or raise the palisade with stones and stakes,
While, echoing loud, the shrilling trumpet brays,
Peal upon peal, its call to blood and death.
Matrons and boys enring the walls and mounds
In motley line: none from the work exempt,
So dire the need; the last dread strait calls all.
Now up the citadel to Pallas' shrine,
Attended by a train of high-born dames,
The proud queen-mother in her chariot rides
With votive gifts in hand, while at her side,
Abasing to the earth her lovely eyes,
Lavinia sits, the quarrel's guiltless cause.
They enter in, and soon from floor to dome
With steaming frankincense becloud the fane,
While from the threshold sounds their mournful chant:
'Tritonian maid, dread arbitress of arms!
Break with thine hand this Phrygian pirate's lance;
Yea, cast him down to earth, and lay him prone
To wallow in the dust before our gates.'
With furious haste, impatient of delay,
Now fiery Turnus clothes him for the fight :
The ruddy corslet on his breast he does,
Bristling with brazen scales, and sheathes his thighs,
In golden cuishes cased, his brows as yet
Unhelmeted and bare; and, slinging loose
His starry falchion from the baldric hung,-

456

THE AENEID.

[490-508

Accoutred so, speeds him impetuous down
The Castle's steep, one blaze of dazzling gold,
And, burning for the fight, of conquest sure,
In thought already closes with the foe:
E'en so the steed, when breaking from his bonds
He flees the stall, and, joying to be free,
Has won at last the unfenced open mead,
Or to the pastures of the mares doth fly,
Or, wont to bathe him in the well-known stream,
Bounds forth, and, neighing, tosses high his crest
In wantonness of glee; while, waving loose,
His ample mane o'er neck and shoulder plays.
Athwart the chieftain's path, as now his steps
Had reached the gate and issued on the plain,
Heading her Volscians, lo, Camilla comes,
And 'neath the flanking towers with queenly grace
Dismounts her from her steed, her courteous train
With like observance dropping from their seats;
When spake she thus: ' Turnus, if conscious worth
May yield the brave some title to be bold,
Then boldly here I pledge me to confront
The cavalry of Troy, and stand the shock,
Myself and these, of all Etruria's horse:
Give me with this my valiant Volscian band
The field's first risk to try; stay thou behind
Anigh the walls, and guard the town afoot.'
Then Turnus, gazing on the dreadful maid:
'What gift, thou glory of our Latian land !
What fitting thank to mate such worth as thine,

509-528]

BOOKE XI.

457

May word or act command ? But, as all such
Thy noble soul transcends, have what dost ask,
And share with me the glory of the day.
Aeneas, as both scouts and rumour show,
Hath now with curst activity pushed on
His light-armed horse to scour the country round,
While down the unfrequented hill-side road
He means himself to march upon the town.
Now I, to foil his wily plan, devise
An ambush in yon hollow wooded gorge,
Investing all the straitened dark defile
From end to end, with armed troops beset;
Do thou the while here hand to hand engage
The Tuscan chivalry : thou'lt have for aid
Our bold Messapus, Latium's horse, as eke
Tiburtus' troop; and, for command of all,
Take thou a general's charge.' He said, and straight
Stirs up Messipus and his brother chiefs,
And, all arranged, sets forth to man the pass.
A glen it was of narrow winding length,
For ambush formed and stratagems of war,
Flanked either hand with high o'erhanging walls
Of foliage dark, whereto a single path
By close defiles and passes scant of breadth
Doth guide the traveller on. Unseen, scarce known,
Amid the hills and mountain heights above,
There lies a table land, a level plat,
Whereon, secure, to face your landed foe
To right or left, or, standing on the brow,

458

THE AENEID.

529-549

Roll rocks adown, and stay his steep ascent:
Thither, along the well-known track, the prince
Directs his steps; and, taking up his post,
Besets the treacherous dell in ambush close.
Meanwhile amid the heavenly seats above
Latona's daughter thus in accents sad
Swift Opis spake, a sister of her train
'Behold, dear maid, where fair Camilla hies
To seek this cruel war, and rue too late
That so she dons our silvan arms in vain;
She whom I still so loved! For hear it, Nymph;
No new-born passion this, nor Dian's heart
Avows herein a love of yesterday.
When Metabus, expelled his father's throne
For hate and tyrannous abuse of power,
Left old Privernum's walls, he bore away
Amid the very thickest of the fight
A tender babe to share his banishment,
And called his infant from its mother's name
Camilla, from Casmilla slightly changed.
He, bearing her before him in his arms,
Made ever for the distant mountain-slopes
And lonely wooded glens, while shaft on shaft
Fell round him thick, and missiles galled him sore
From hostile Volscians hanging on his tracks.
But, broad and deep, lay Amas6nus now
Athwart his very road, the swollen flood
Foaming o'er all its banks; such furious rains
Had all night long from out the welkin burst.
Fain to plunge in and swim the opposing stream,

550-570]

BOOK XI.

459

He feared, and paused for love of her he bore.
Ah, what was now to do ? A sudden thought
Swayed his reluctant choice to this as best:
A hunter's pike that by good chance he bore,
Hafted with seasoned oak, knotted and tough,Hereto with swathings from the cork-tree's rind
He bound the tender child, and made her fast,
Tied deftly to the midmost of the shaft;
Then, lifting in his stalwart grasp, he poised
The weighted lance, and thus to heaven exclaimed:
" O maid benign, thou dweller in the woods,
Latona's virgin fair ! lady, to thee
A father here doth consecrate his child;
Thine the first arms she holds, as thwart the void
She flees her foes, and seeks thy guardian care;
Yea, goddess, take thy servant whom I now
Cast forth upon these wild uncertain gales !'
He said, and, heaving back his arm full strain,
Dismissed the loaded spear: loud roared the waves,
And sheer athwart the hurrying river's breadth
Flew poor Camilla on the whizzing shaft.
Then Metabus, as near and nearer still
His fierce pursuers on his traces drew,
Plunged mid the flood, and, reaching maid and spear,
Plucked from the grassy bank my gift, his child.
To house or home no city took him more;
Nor would himself, by nature rude and wild,
Have brooked the social yoke : a lonely wight,
He led amid the hills a shepherd's life:
There, in the woods, among the wild beasts' haunts,

46o

THE AENEID.

[571-591

He reared his daughter from the brood-mare's breast,
Milking the dugs betwixt her baby lips.
Anon, as soon as on her feet she went,
He weighted with the spear her little hand,
And hung her tiny back with shaft and bow.
No coif confined her netted hair in gold,
Nor veil in waving folds flowed graceful down;
For these a brinded tiger's shaggy spoils
O'er head and neck fell loosely to her feet.
E'en then the maiden from her tender hands
Would launch her childish shafts, or round her head
Whirl with the twisted thong the leathern sling,
And from the soaring clouds oft fetched adown
The crane of Strymon, or the snowy swan.
Full many a mother through the Tuscan towns
Still sought and wooed her for her son; but she,
Content with Dian's love, held ever dear
Her virgin vows, and those her huntress' shafts,
A spotless maid-O, that she ne'er was ta'en
With love for other war than ours, nor thus
Sought unprovoked to harm in wanton fight
The sons of Troy! so might she still have been
The favoured maid and sister of my train.
But, for that now a cruel destiny
Darkens around her path, descend, dear Nymph,
And hie to LAtium, where in evil hour
The fatal combat is e'en now begun;
Take these withal, and forth the quiver draw
This keen avenging shaft; with this let him,
Whose hand soe'er shall harm that sacred head,

592-608]

BOOK XI.

461

Let him be Trojan or Italian-born,
Pay me alike the forfeit with his blood.
Then in the bosom of a cloud will I
Bear far away her breathless corse and arms,
By spoiler's hands untouched, and lay adown
My darling in her native soil to rest.'
Thus she; and, hurtling down the skies amain,
Obedient Opis on her mission swooped,
Black clouds and tempest closing round her form.
Meantime the Trojan and Etruscan chiefs
With all their chivalry, a numerous host,
Approach the walls, each rank and file arrayed:
Loud neighs the prancing steed o'er all the field,
The trodden champaign ringing to his hoof,
As, chafing with the curb and tightened rein,
He swerves to right or left, while far and wide
The plain, all iron, bristles thick with spears,
And bickering weapons flash a fiery light;
And there opposed, in adverse lines drawn up,
Is bold Messapus seen, the Latian horse,
Stout Coras at his valiant brother's side,
And maid Camilla with her Volscian troop :
With stalwart arms full strain drawn back, they poise
The levelled lance, and shake the brandished spear;
And ever, as they near and nearer drew,
Louder and hotter waxed the din and breath
Of marching men and fiery-snorting steeds.
Arrived within a javelin's cast, both hosts

462

THE AENEID.

[6o9-627

Halt them a space; then with a sudden shout
They launch ahead, and urge their maddened steeds,
And shower from every side their volleyed darts,
Which, thick as snow-flakes, darken all the sky.
Anon Tyrrhenus and Aconteus tilt
With lance in rest, and, foremost of the fight,
Close with a mighty shock, each charger's breastAs, steed 'gainst steed impelled, the champions metBurst and beat in, against the other's dashed;
When, flung unhorsed, as from an engine shot,
Or like the bolt that rends the summer sky,
Aconteus wallows on the field afar,
His life-breath scattered to the winds of heaven.
At once the line breaks up; with panic seized,
The Latins sling their bucklers at their backs,
And, wheeling round, to townwards spur amain,
While hot and fast, by bold Asilasled,
The Trojan horse give chase. And now were both
Drawing anigh the gates, when lo, again
The Latins in their turn set up a shout,
And, rallying, wheel their managed chargers round;
Whereon the others fly, and, slacking rein,
Pour back impetuous through the field afar:
Like to the sea, that, ever to and fro
Alternate swayed, sets now to landwards in,
And, dashed in spray above the highest cliffs,
Foams o'er the rocks, and drowns the farthest strand;
Anon, in swift return, resorbent draws
Mid surf and sand the grinding shingle back,

1628-644 ]

BOOK X1.,

463

And, ebbing far, leaves shoal and shallow dry.
Twice to their walls the charging Tuscans drave
The routed Rutules back, and, twice repulsed,
With anxious heed and retroverted eye
They watched them following at their shielded backs;
But, for the third fight joined, when now both hosts
Had grappled close, and man chose out his man,
Then shout and shriek and groans of warriors slain
From out the mellay rose; bodies and arms
Lay deep in blood; and dead or dying steeds,

Huddled with fallen men, strewed all the ground,
And fierce the combat raged.
Orsilochus,
Whom fear forbade to face the rider's self,

Strikes from afar the steed of Remulus,
And leaves the lance infixt beneath the ear;
Frantic with pain, the gallant charger reared
Right up erect, and, plunging wildly, yerks,
Impatient of the wound, his legs abroad,
Flinging his lord unseated to the ground;
Catillus brings lollas to the earth,
Dismounted from his horse, and with him too
The great Herminius; a giant he,
And bold of soul as big of thews and limbs:
Bare was his head, with auburn locks a'stream,
And bare his neck and chest, as who not recked,
Exposed in every part, of wounds or death;
So broad he showed, the mark of all the war.
But vain his ample bulk; resistless sped,
The hurtling spear through those vast shoulders smites,

464

THE AENEID.

[645-662

And pins him, doubled, to the earth with pain.
Thus all about the black blood flowed apace;
With rival rage they dealt out death, and sought
A glorious end amid a rain of wounds.

With quivered back and one breast stript for fight,
A very Amazon, Camilla rides
Exulting through the fray, her hand the while
Now raining thick her shafts among her foes,
Now tireless plying bill and sturdy axe,
While from her shoulder sounds the golden bow
And all Diana's gear; wherewith, if e'er,
Repulsed a space, she needs must turn her back,
Yet doth she, fleeing, face about again,
Stringing her bow, and aims her shafts in flight.
A chosen body-guard attends the queen;
Tulla, with young Larina at her side,
And fierce Tarpeia with her brandished axe,
With many more; Italia's daughters all,
Whom for her need the godlike maiden chose,
Her joy at once and pride, skilled all alike
To serve their mistress or in peace or war;
Like Amazons of Thrace, what time they thresh
With ringing tramp Therm6don's frozen streams
And echoing banks, in painted war-gear dight,
And, shouting, throng Hippolyte their queen;
Or when, returned victorious from the war,
Penthesilea in her chariot rides,
Triumphant borne, while round about her car

663-679]

BOOK XI.

465

The woman host with loud tumultuous cries
Ecstatic leap, and smite their sounding shields.
Whom first, dread maid, did thy bold hand that day,
Whom last, unhorse ? how many stalwart foes
Did'st lay in death, o'erthrown ? Eunaeus first,
Old Clytius' son, whose breast, unguarded left
As full opposed he fronted her in fight,
The long spear's pinewood shaft pierced fhrough and
through:
Down goes he there, disgorging streams of blood,
And, biting with set teeth the gory sod,
Writhes him in anguish round the galling wound.
Liris the next, and o'er him Pagasus,
Stretched on his prostrate corse; flung both to earth,
One catching at his restiff charger's rein,
Gored in the flank; the other as he reached
His swordless hand to stay his comrade's fall.
Amastrus next she sends to join the rest,
The son of Hippotas; and, following up,
Straight with a spear smites Tereus from afar,
Chromis, Harpalycus, Demrnophobn;
Nor no one shaft the maiden's hand doth launch
But falls therefor a Phrygian warrior slain.
Conspicuous far, in uncouth arms equipt,
Lo, hunter Ornytus doth ride afield
On Iapygian steed; an undressed hide,
Flayed frdm the wild bull's back, o'erlaying both
His shoulders broad, as through the fight he fares;
ZH

466

THE AENEID.

[68o, 697

While, yawning wide, a wolf's great grinning mouth
With jaws agape and gleaming fangs a'row
Serves him for helm, and, rudest of its kind,
A rustic wood-pike arms his stalwart hand;
Accoutred so, he wheeled him mid the ranks,
And towered a clean head's height above all there;
E'en him, o'erta'en and caught,-nor hard the task,
Entangled mid his comrades' flying routShe slays, transfixt; and o'er the fallen corse
Insulting speaks: 'Tuscan, did'st deem thee now
A' driving of the deer through greenwood walks?
The day is come for woman's arms to thrust
That lying vaunt adown your bragging throats
Yet take with thee below no trivial fame,
And mend the boast with showing to thy sires
How death befell thee at Camilla's hand.'
Orsilochus and Butes follow next,
The hugest pair in all the hosts of Troy;
First Butts from behind the spear's point takes
'Twixt helm and mail where, as he sat his steed,
The neck showed bare and white, and, loosely borne,
The buckler hung his left hand side adown;
Orsilochus-making as though she fled,
Riding before him in a spacious ringShe baffles next, closing him in and in,
In narrowing rounds, pursuing and pursued;
When, turning short and rising to the stroke,
Nor heeding of his prayers, she brings the axe,
Blow after blow, on skull and helmet down,

698-719]

BOOK XI.

And breaks up both alike, the ghastly hurt
O'erlaying all his face with reeking brain.
Old Aunus' warrior son from Apennine
Next crossed her path, and, quailing at the view,
Stops sudden short; when, seeing how no speed
Could shun the fight or foil the maiden's charge,
He straight essays-for true Ligurian he
While Fate indulged him still his trickster's lifeBy fraud and artifice to gain his end,
And thus begins: 'Now what so wondrous here ?
A boastful woman trusting to her steed!
Discard this means to fly, dismount thee straight,
Come down, and, girding for a standing fight,
Commit thyself with me on level ground:
Do this, and see whom windy bragging steads.'
He spake; whereon, with high disdain incensed,
She turned her charger to her follower's care,
And straight with naked blade and maiden targe
Fearless confronts her challenger afoot.
Whereon the youth, deeming his craft had ta'en,
Turns with no more ado his horse about,
Flings him the reins, and, spurred to utmost speed,
Digs at his panting sides with iron heels.
'Ligurian base! o'erweening fool ! in vain
Would'st palm thy country's slippery arts on me;
Nor ever more shall all thy knavish wiles
To knavish Aunus bring thee safe again.'
So she; when straight on fiery-flying feet
She heads his horse out-run; then grasps the reins,
2H2

467

468,

THE AENE ID.

[720-74o

And, grappling with the rider face to face,
Feasts to the full her vengeance on his blood:
Not with more ease from off some lofty rock
The falcon overtakes the flying dove
In middle air, and, trussing in his gripe,
Disbowels her with taloned claws, the while
Torn plumes and blood keep dropping down the sky.
Meantime, no blind spectator of the scene,
The great All-Father viewed the work of strife
From high Olympus' top; when straight he prompts
Tarchon the Tuscan to rouse up the fight,
And goads his fury with no gentle stings.
So mid the rout and carnage of the field
He rides, and, calling on each man by name,
Cheers or rebukes as these or those had need,
And rallies to the fray the beaten ranks:
'O dead to shame ! 0 ever craven hearts!
Tuscans, what cowardice hath seized your souls ?
Out! shall a woman chase you scattered thus,
And turn to flight whole squadrons such as ours ?
Why don we armour then ? to what end serve
Those idle spears our hands forbear to use ?
No laggards are ye, sooth, when Venus cries
To softer wars and battles of the night;
Nor fail ye, where the fife to revels calls,
To bide the wine, and wait the lavish feast,
Till, signal for delight, the burly priest
Proclaims the rites as well and fairly sped,
And fatted victims bid you to the groves I'

74-;-758]

BOOK XI.

He said; and, spurring in amid the fray,
Nor recking of the life he too would lose,
Full tilt at Venulus directs his charge;
Then, flinging round his waist one stalwart arm,
Plucks him clean off his horse, and, caught away,
Bears him before him at his saddle bow.
Shouts rend the sky, and all the Latian host
Turn thither as one man their straining eyes:
Athwart the field flies Tarchon fiery-swift,
A'carrying of the man, his arms and all,
And, breaking off the chief's own spearhead bright,
Feels ever for an opening here and there
To plant the fatal stab, his foe the while
Still warding from his throat the busy hand,
Incessant plied, and foiling force with force.
As when a golden eagle, soaring high,
Has swooped adown and borne a serpent off
Clutched in his gripe, and, trussing with his claws,
Tightens his taloned pounces in the prey;
The wounded reptile, coiled in writhing folds,
Bristles her scales erect, and, rearing up
Her hissing jaws, strikes ever at her foe,
Who none the less still plies with curving beak
The struggling worm, nor ever stints the while
A'beating of the air with flapping wings;
So from the very heart of Tibur's folk
Tarchon in triumph bears his captive off;
When, following up their lord's auspicious lead,
Maeonia's sons dash .boldly on the foe.

469

470

THE A.ENEID.

J759-777

But Arruns now, the wight foredoomed of fate,
Hangs on Camilla's steps, and, cautious first,
With wily tact and ready lance in hand
Forestalling all her movements through the field,
Watches the fairest moment for assault:
Where'er amid the war the maiden bends
Her furious charge, there Arruns threads his way;
Where she returns victorious from the fight,
Thither with stealthy hand he shifts the rein,
And now doth this, now that approach explore,
Persistent traversing the field all round
In circuit wide, and shakes his deadly spear.
It so befell a youth now crossed the maid,
Hight Chloreus, one to Cybel6 devote,
And erst her priest: in Phrygian arms equipt,
The warrior showed conspicuous from afar,
And spurred afield a fiery steed, whose sides
A chain-mail cloth, with golden buckles dight
And brazen scales set feather-wise thereon,
Did all o'erlay; himself, in purple deckt
Of rich barbaric grain, shooting the while
Gortynian arrows from a Lycian bow:
The quiver gold that hung his shoulders down,
The morion gold that crowned his priestly head,
His saffron scarf and cloak of rustling gauze
Close knitted up, and caught in ruddy gold,
His broidered vest and silken hosen fine
With flowery needlework o'erpictured fair.

778-79s]

BOOK XI.

4 I

The virgin saw, and, singling from the field
The chief thus gaily drest-whether she thought
To hang the temple gate with Trojan gear,
Or looked to flaunt her in the golden spoilPursued him blindly with a hunter's zeal,
And held in reckless chase the whole field through,
With all a woman's longing for the gauds.
And now it was that prowling Arruns saw
The long-sought moment come to try his chance;
So, putting for the nonce all stealth aside,
Boldly with spear in hand he prays aloud:
'Apollo, guardian of Soracte's height,
Our Tuscans' chiefest god, whose fires we feed
With pinewood fuel heaped, and, strong in zeal,
Tread through their midst with living embers strown;
Vouchsafe, almighty Power, the spear I wield
From us and ours may roll this slur away.
I seek, good sooth, no prize of battle spoil,
No trophy for the conquest of a maid;
My other deeds will best secure my fame:
Let this dread pest but fall beneath my stroke,
I waive all claim to more, too well content
To wend unhonoured to my home again.'
His suit Apollo heard, and in his heart
Bade half the prayer to speed; the other half
He bade, disperst, adown the breezes pass:
To lay by sudden stroke Camilla low,
So much he grants; but safe to wend him home
He granted not, and, tossed to empty air,
He sent the words adrift upon the winds.

472

THE AENEID.

[796-819

So when, dismissed his hand, the whizzing lance
Sounded along the sky, the Volscians turned,
Both one and all, their eyes upon the queen;
But eye or ear herself had none the while
For cornel shaft, or song of weapon's flight
Swooping adown the air, till, fairly sped,
The spear was lodged beneath her naked breast,
And, planted home, drank deep her virgin blood.
Her frightened damsels hurry to her aid,
Fain to stay up their mistress in her fall;
But, scared far more himself than all the rest,
Arruns flees fast away, afeard yet glad,
Nor may he more or trust him to the spear
For further deed, or face the maiden's shafts.
As when a caitiff wolf has newly slain
A hind, or some choice bullock of the herd,
And, cowering, conscious of his daring deed,
Ere spear or shaft may reach him in his flight,
With quivering tail beneath his belly drawn,
Makes for the pathless hill-side lone, and there
Hides him secure in some deep-wooded dell;
So from all eyes bewildered Arruns slunk,
Glad to escape, and mingled with the crowd.
Meantime the queen with unavailing hand
Plucks at the spear: fixt in its own deep wound,
The iron head stands wedged among the ribs :
Fainting for loss of blood, she swoons and sinks,
Her glazing eyes declining dull in death,
And all her once bright colour fled her cheeks.

820-840]

BOOK XI.

Then, fetching slow her last deep parting gasp,
She thus bespeaks the sister of her train
Was most her friend and shared her every care:
'Acca, no more; Camilla's work is done;
The bitter wound defeats my life, and all
Grows dim and dark before my misty gaze.
Fly, and to Turnus bear my latest words:
Bid him succeed me straightway in the field,
And ward the Trojans from the city walls;
And now farewell for aye.'
And with the word
She drops the reins, and, swaying from her seat,
Unconscious slides to earth; then, all unnerved,
A creeping chill relaxing every limb,
She droops her neck and hangs the dying head;
And, shield and spear let go, the youthful life,
Untimely slain, wends sighing to the shades.
Then rose a cry that smote the golden stars,
And hotter waxed the fray, Camilla slain,
The Trojan powers, in fullest force arrayed,
With Tuscany and all Arcadia's horse,
In serried squadrons rushing on the foe.
Meantime fair Opis, Dian's watcher true,
Sat on a hill, and fearless viewed the fight;
When, soon as from afar her heedful eye
Espied Camilla mid the shouting hosts
By that ill stroke laid low, she heaved a groan,
While from her inmost soul these words she fetched:

473

474

THE AENEID.

[841-86o

'Too dearly hast thou quit, lamented maid,
Thine error's tax in warring so on Troy,
And little hath it stood thee in thy need
That once thou ledd'st, to Dian's service true,
The woodland life, and carried'st to the last
Our silvan quiver through the field of fight.
Yet not unhonoured doth our mistress leave
Her favourite in her end; thy death must not
Lack telling to the after times, nor thou
Shalt brook such shame, and perish unavenged;
For he whose stroke profaned that sacred form
Shall have his meed, and blood for blood repay.'
There stood a barrow at the mountain's base,
Dercennus' tomb, an old Laurentine king,
Planted on all sides round with shady oaks;
Here first the beauteous nymph with swift descent
Alights, and Arruns from the height descries,
Marking the youth where now with vaunting mien
He strutted proud, in gleaming arms equipt :
'Now whither thus ?' she cries; 'nay, this way turn
Those errant steps; come hither to thy doom,
And take thy guerdon for Camilla's death
At Dian's bow. And yet ill falls the day,
When blood like thine must stain our Cynthia's shafts!'
She said; and deftly as a Thracian slid
A feathered arrow forth the golden case;
Then laid it on the string, and drew full wide
The cord and bow, till both the curving tips
Were midway met, and, farthest thrust apart,

86-881]

BOOK XI.

475

Her left hand touched the barb, the right her breast:
At once the rushing weapon Arruns heard,
And lo, the shaft was quivering in his heart.
Him, gasping there and groaning out his last,
His mates, regardless and unheeding, leave
Stretched on the dusty plain to die, the while
Opis on soaring wing remounts to heaven.
At once 'tis rout and ruin through the field:
First turn to flight Camilla's light-armed horse,
Their mistress slain; repulsed, the Rutules fly;
E'en bold Atinas flies : leaders and men,
Parted diverse, and broken companies,
Make for some safe retreat, and, wheeling round,
Spur townwards might and main: further may none
Or stand against the Trojans' shattering charge,
Or force to force oppose; but, slinging loose
Their slackened bows athwart their fainting backs,
All take to flight, and straight with clattering tramp
Of rushing chargers beat the crumbling plain.
Raised of their flying hoofs in blinding clouds,
The whirling dust rolls onward to the walls,
And frightened mothers from the ramparts catch
The warning sight, and, smiting on their breasts,
Lift to the golden stars their women's wail.
In vain for life they fly : e'en those who first
Dash through the openi gates in full career
Are borne adown} blent with the headlong rush
Of fierce pursuers pressing on their rear;
Nor may they 'scape their doom: before the gates,

476

THE. AENEID.

[882-903

Within the walls, yea in their very homes,
They breathe their souls out, pierced with hostile shafts.
Some close the gates, nor may for all their prayers
Ope to their friends, so left to certain death;
Whereof anon most piteous slaughter comes,
Those from within a'keeping of the pass,
And these, turned foes, assaulting from without.
Excluded so, and 'fore their parents' eyes,
Some, stumbling mid the press, the causeway miss,
And tumble headlong to the moat beneath;
Some, wild with terror, spur their unreined steeds,
And dash them blindly 'gainst the barricades;
The very matrons on the walls, inspired
By patriot love to mate Camilla's deeds,
With trembling hands shower javelins on the foe,
And where these fail, as last resource impress
Great oaken staves and fire-seared truncheons hard
To do the work of steel; fain one and all
To die the first before their city walls.
Meantime at Rumour's mouth the dismal news
Reaches prince Turnus ambushed in the woods,
And Acca's tidings breed him sore dismay :
'The Volscian troop destroyed, Camilla slain,
The foe triumphant and in full advance,
O'erbearing all before them in their course,
And fright and panic spreading to the town.'
Then, fired with rage, he leaves his hill-side postSo Jove's stern will required-and quits the woods.
Nor had he now well got him from their view

904-915

BOOK XI.

477

And reached the plain, or ere the Trojan chief
Enters full force the undefended pass,
Surmounts the ridge, and clears the treacherous dell.
So either chieftain now directs his way
At top of speed with all his army's strength
Full on the town; nor moved they far apart:
At once Aeneas in the distance marked
The dusty plain, and saw Laurentum's hosts;
And Turnus knew Aeneas near, and heard
The tramp of marching men and neigh of steeds,
Then had they closed that very hour in fight,
But rosy Phoebus now made haste to plunge
His jaded team amid the Western waves,
And brought back night upon the parting day.
So both hosts pitch before the walls, and there,
Intrenched secure, make fosse and rampart good.

478

THE AENEID.

BOOK

XII.

WHEN Turnus saw that Latium fainted so,
Crushed by the adverse war, and knew withal
His promise called for and himself the mark
Of all men's eyes; fierce of himself before,
His fury now past all assuaging burns,
While, rising with the need, his courage mounts,
Defiant roused, and sets his soul afire:
As maddened, smarting from the hunter's hand,
The lordly Libyan lion at the last
Puts forth his might, nor more declines the fray;
Shaking his brawny neck and shaggy mane,
He glares undaunted on his skulking foe,
And, snapping in his wound the galling shaft,
Indignant roars, and bares his bloody fangs;
So, kindling long, young Turnus' fiery wrath
Burst out ablaze, and ever fiercer burn'd.
Then, breaking wildly into speech, he thus,
Scarce master of himself, accosts the king:
' Liars! no hanging back on Turnus' part,
No plea on such pretence why coward Troy
Retract her pledge, and what she said unsay;

[I-12.

r3-29]

Pook X1.

479

Lo, here I stand, and claim to meet my foe.
Then, sire, be thine to bid them hither fetch
The sacred things, and solemnize the truce:
Or I to-day will bid this good right hand
To Tartarus despatch the Dardan lord,The renegade that turned his back on Troy!And singly so wipe out our common shame,
Latium the while at ease and looking on,
Or he may claim the conquered for his thralls,
And fair Lavinia for his royal bride.'
Whereto, with quiet dignity unmoved,
Answers Latinus thus:. ' Heroic youth,
The more thy valour doth in fire transcend,
Behoveth us the more with anxious heed
To weigh resolves, and question what may hap.
Bethink thee well, while yet is time to think:
Thine in reversion are thy father's realms,
Thine many a city by thy valour won;
Latinus owrns good store of pelf, nor lacks
A generous heart to share it with his friend;
Through Latium broad and old Laurentum's land
Are other unwed maids, and they, I trow,
Of no ignoble stock: so let me say
In homely phrase, reserve and guile apart,
What now is said, for all it like thee not.
And hearken too what here I further speak:
'Twas Heaven's high will that I my child should wed
To none of all who erewhile sought her hand;
This gods and men with full accord forbade:
Yet for thy love and worth, and swayed withal

480

A

THE EEID.

[EiO=47

By ties of blood as eke my consort's tears,
I broke all bonds, snatched from her destined lord
His plighted bride, and waged an impious war.
E'en from that fatal day what woes, thou see'st,
What sad mishaps, still follow me and mine;
Ills which thyself of needs art first to feel:
Twice in pitched field o'erthrown, our city walls
May scarce preserve Italia's hopes alive,
While Tiber reeks still warm with Latin blood,
And Latium's plains are whitened with our bones.
Why do I waver thus, now off, now on ?
What madman's shiftings mar my fixt resolves?
If, Turnus slain, I stand prepared to take
These men of Troy for friends, why not the more,
While Turnus lives and breathes, conclude the strife ?
What will our kindred of Rutulian blood,
What all Italia say, if, thwarting so
The course of destiny,: I may therebyAnd Heaven forefend what so I say prove true !
Have sealed the fate of him who woos at once
The father's friendship and the daughter's hand ?
Weigh well the turns, the various haps, of war,
And show some pity for thine aged sire
Now pining lonely in his Ardean home,
Far from his darling son, to grief a prey.'
But no one whit may Turnus bate his rage
For all Latinus' words; the friendly salve
But aggravates the sore it fain would heal,
Anon, when master of his speech again,

48-651

BOOK XII.

He thus rejoins: 'Good sir, these needless fears
For Turnus' weal at Turnus' wish resign,
Or suffer him to barter life for fame.
Yet wherefore speak we so ? Father, we too
Can toss the spear, nor with no weakling's arm,
And blood will follow from the wound we deal;
Nor he will have his goddess-mother nigh
To wrap her recreant woman-like in mist,
And cheat the sight to save herself withal.'
But, at the war's new turn dismayed, the queen
Falls weeping sore, and, as with death in view,
Clings to the fiery prince: ' O by these tears,
By what regard Amata still may claim,Thou who art now her only hope and stay,
The single solace of her wretched age,
On whom too leans Latinus' throne and state,
Sole prop and pillar of his sinking house,Yea grant me, Turnus, grant me one poor boon:
Abandon thy resolve, recall thy gage,
And waive the dread arbitrament of fight;
For know, what hap awaits thee in that strife,
Turnus, the same awaits Amata too;
With thee I quit this hated life, nor e'er,
Aeneas' thrall, shall see him as my son.'
The fair Lavinia heard her mother's words,
And bathed her glowing cheeks in floods of tears,
The bashful red suffusing every look,
2I

481

482

THE

AENE.D.

[66=84

And mantling warm o'er all her flushing face:
As purest ivory shows with purple stained,
Or lilies blush with ruddy roses blent,
Such mingling hues the virgin's visage showed.
The warrior gazed impassioned on the sight,
And fixed his kindling looks upon the maid;
Then, burning all the fiercer for the fray,
In few bespake the queen;
'Nay, mother mine,
Let other auspices than sighs and tears
Attend my footsteps to the stubborn fight;
'Tis not in Turnus, urge him as thou may'st,
To balk his destiny, if doomed to death'Then, turning to the herald, further thus:
'Go, Idmon, and from me this message bear
To Phrygia's prince-'twill like him ill, I trow;
Soon as, returning on her rosy wheels,
Aurora streaks the morning skies with light,
Let him not set his battle in array;
Let Rutule arms and Trojan rest alike,
While point to point we twain decide the strife,
And be Lavinia won in listed field.'
He said; and, striding back toward the stalls,
Bade bring his battle-steeds, and notes with joy
How proud, as 'neath his look, they pawed the ground,
And, neighing, tossed their noble heads on highThe which, of Thracian blood, a royal gift,
To king Pilumnus Orithyia gave,
To match the whiteness of their native snows,

85-Io4]

BOOK XII.

483

And leave the winds behind them in their flight.
Obedient to his call the bustling grooms
Assiduous wait, and, stroking with the palm,
Pat their broad chests, and comb their flowing manes.
Anon, essaying for the morrow's fight,
He dons his hauberk rough with many a scale
Of gold and orichalc, and fits for wear
Buckler and crested helm, and therewithal
The sword whose blade the God of Flame himself
Had forged in Aetna for his royal sire,
And tempered, hissing, in the Stygian flood;
Then the strong spear that, ready to his need,
Leaned 'gainst a pillar in the palace hall,
Auruncan Actor's spoil, he takes in hand,
And, shaking till it quivered in his grasp,
Bespeaks it thus: 'Come thou, my trusty lance,
That never yet did'st fail thy master's call,
The hour draws nigh to prove both thee and me;
The mighty Actor wielded thee of yore,
A greater master, Turnus, wields thee now:
Balk not my call, but O, if ever true,
Give me to lay this sexless Phrygian low,
To strip the corslet from his riven breast,
And, marring what hot steel and myrrh have wrought,
To soil his essenced love-locks in the dust.'
As, stung to fury, thus the hero raves,
From all his face the living sparkles leap,
And vivid flashes lighten from his eyes:
E'en as a bull, or ere he takes the field,
Terrific roars, and, pushing 'gainst a tree
212

t84

THE AENEID.

[-o5-r24

In trial of his horns, butts at the winds,
And spurns the sand for prelude to the fray.
Nor less the while, in arms Vulcanian clad,
His goddess-mother's gift, Aeneas whets
His martial ardour 'gainst the coming fight,
Well pleased that proffered truce should end the war
Nor heeds he less the duties of the hour,
But cheers his friends and calms Iiilus' fears
With showing of the fates; and bids his folk
To bear his answer back to Latium's king,
Precise and fixt, and terms of truce define.
The morrow now scarce touched the mountain-tops
With rosy light, and ushered in the dawnWhat time, emergent from mid ocean's depths,
The sun-god's horses climb the Eastern steep,
And from their uplift nostrils breathe the dayWhen Trojan and Rutulian, mingling free,
Mark out the ground for combat 'neath the walls,
And fix the limits of the listed field;
Others raise hearths amid the central space
And turfen altars to their several gods,
While more bring fire and water from the spring,
In priestly weeds, and vervain round their brows.
Here through thronged gates, in serried lines compact,
Issues Ausonia's band, and there, opposed,
The Trojans come, and all Etruria's sons,
All in their divers arms equipt, as though
The Warrior-god had called them to the fight.

125-1451.

BOOK XII.

485

'Twixt host and host, in purple decked and gold,
The chiefs themselves ride spurring to and fro;
Here Mnestheus, seed of old Assaracus,
And there Asilas, and Messapus bold,
Stout queller of the steed and Neptune's son.
Anon when now each host at signal heard
Had fallen aback and ta'en its post assigned,
Lo, one and all they plant in bristling rows
Their spears aground, and lean their shields thereby;
While, streaming forth their homes in eager crowds,
Old men.and dames, with all the feebler sort,
Beset the towers, and fill the lofty roofs,
Or, swarming, throng the gates and lofty walls.
But Juno, from the hill-top looking forth
That now is styled the Alban mount, though then
Nor name nor fame the noteless mountain owned,
Surveyed the plain and either marshalled host,
Latium and Troy, as eke Latinus' town;
When thus the Empress of the Skies bespake
Young Turnus' goddess-sister at her side,
The Nymph whose rule o'er lakes and streams extends ;
Such honour Jove had on the fair bestowed
In quittance of her maiden charms deflowered:
'0O Nymph, thou glory of the meres and floods,
And favourite of my heart, well dost thou wot,
Of all the Latian maids were e'er beguiled
To climb the fatal couch of mighty Jove,
How thee I still preferred, and with good will
Have given thee thus to share the courts of heaven;

486

THE AENEID.

[46-164

Attend, and learn---nor Juno blame thereforA coming sorrow to thy lot assigned :
So far as Fortune willed and Fate allowed
Prosperity to bless the Latian cause,
I shielded Turnus and thy native walls;
But now I see the head-strong youth is forth
To combat with unequal fates, and how
The day of doom is darkening round his path.
I may not look upon this fight, nor e'en
Behold the rites shall solemnize the truce;
But if that sister's heart of thine may still
Dare something bold to stead a brother's need,
Despatch it quick--'twill well beseem thy part:
Haply some change may yet redress these ills.'
Scarce had she ceased, or ere Juturna shed
A flood of tears from either streaming eye,
And thrice and o'er she smote her beauteous breast-'Nay; no time this to weep,' Saturnia cries;
'Haste, snatch thy brother, if thou may'st, from death,
Or at the least wake up the war anew,
And quash the treaty ere the rites be sped;
Lo, Juno is thy warrant for the deed 'And, parting on the word, she left the Nymph
Perplext, and harrowed in her soul with grief.
Now came the kings afield, Latinus first,
His stately form by four fair coursers borne,
Twelve golden rays about his temples set
To mark him of his grandsire's line, the Sun;
While Turnus by a milk-white pair is drawn,

165-i84]

BOOK XH..

487

And in his hand two broad-tipped halberds clenched;
Aeneas next, stem of the Roman tree,
Blazing with starry shield and heavenly arms,
Fares forth the camp, and at his father's side
Ascanius too, Rome's second hope and stay.
Anon the priest, in spotless vestments clad,
Brings up for offerings to the altar's pale
A youngling swine, as eke a sheep unshorn,
And sets the cattle by the blazing hearths;
Then, turning round to face the rising sun,
They strew the offerings of the salted corn,
And, scoring with the steel the victims' brows,
Shed large.libation from the sacred bowls.
Unsheathing then his sword, Aeneas prays:
'Witness me here, O Sun, and thou fair Land,
For winning of whose soil I steeled my heart
To bear such travail sore; thou too, great Sire,
Almighty Jove supreme, and thou, his Queen,
Old Saturn's child, Troy's whilom foe profest,
But now at last, 0 may we hope, her friend;
Thou too, most glorious Mars, whose sovereign nod
Sways battles as thou wilt; Rivers, and Springs,
You too I now invoke, with what Powers else
Tenant the skies, or hold the dark-blue deeps;
Hear, all, Aeneas' words: If Fortune rules
Ausonian Turnus in this fight shall win,
'Tis here agreed that vanquished Troy forthwith
To king Evander's friendly town withdraw,
Iiilus quit these fields, nor ever more

488

THE AENEID.

[185-203

Aeneas' folk unsheathe the hostile sword
To vex this realm with war. But if so be
Kind Victory shall make the day our own,
As sooth I hope, and O may Heaven vouchsafe!
Then will not I or bid Italia bow
To Trojan rule, or take myself the crown;
From that blest hour let both our nations join
On equal terms, unconquered each and free,
And swear to leagues of everlasting peace;
The gods and worship I shall claim to give;
Let sire Latinus bear the sword of war,
And hold as erst his old imperial sway,
While Troy for me sets up my destined walls,
And fair Lavinia gives the town her name.'
Thus he: whereon, with earnest gaze uplift
And right hand raised towards the heavenly vault,
Latinus next: ' E'en by these self-same Powers,
Earth, Sea, and Stars, Aeneas, here I swear;
By twy-faced Janus, fair Latona's twins,
With all those Sanctities who rule below,
And that dread shrine where ruthless Dis abides;
Yea, hearken too the great All-Sire above,
Whose fiery bolts avenge the broken vow;So sworn and pledged, behold that here to-day
I touch these altars with my hand, and take
The fires and gods that now betwixt us lie
To vouch for me and mine : Befall what may,
No time shall see Italia break this pact,
Nor any force o'er-rule my steadfast will

204-222]

BOOK XII.

To swerve in aught herefrom; not though it bid
The solid earth in midst of ocean melt,
Bring chaos back, and heaven with hell confound:
As sure what thus I vouch, as this my staff,
This truncheon of command my hand doth wield,
Shall never more or twig or bud put forth,
Since, once dissevered from the parent stem,
It shed its leafy honours to the steel;
A tree erewhile, but now by craftsman's art
Sheathed thus in brass for Latium's kings to bear.'
E'en thus in all men's sight the monarchs twain
With mutual vows their solemn compact bound;
Whereon the priests with formal rites now bid
The hallowed beasts to bleed above the flames;
Then, flaying off the fells, they part the flesh,
And, piled in chargers, on the altars lay.
But long ere this, with sore misgivings filled,
The Rutules all had questioned of the fight,
And anxious thoughts held conflict in their souls;
Yea all the more, as now, on nearer view,
They note the combatants ill-matched in strength;
While Turnus' mien-so long to grief a prey,
Crossed in his love-augments their growing fears;
His pensive gate and slow, those sunken eyes
With lowly reverence on the altars bent,
The wan and faded cheek, and that young frame
Wasted, and lacking of its wonted hues.
Juturna, marked such whispers spread, and how

489

490,

THE A ENEID.

(223-239

The warriors' hearts went swaying to and fro;
When, shifting from her own to Camers' formA chief of high descent and famed alike
For valiant deeds, his father's and his ownShe straight conveys her mid the thickest bands,
And, knowing well to shape things to her ends,
Thus sowed heart-burnings broad-cast through the
ranks:
'Blush we not, Rutules, warriors as we are,
To lay on one the risk which all should face,
Or what the plea for singling thus the strife?
Weigh we both sides, and say then, if we can,
Our foes o'er-match our numbers or our might:
Yet here are all 'tis theirs to bring afield,
Their Trojan and Arcadian powers combined,
With all Etruria's self-styled Band of Fate,
Our Turnus' worst and most determined foes;
Nay, should we meet them host to host in fight,
Their whole would scantly mate them with our half,
Our every second man scarce find a foe.
True, Turnus' fame shall mount him to the gods,
For whose dread shrines he so lays down his life,
And live for ever in the mouths of men;
Yet not the less shall we--our country lostAbide perforce an alien master's hests;
And well, God wot! thus sitting here at ease.'
At such like words the youthful warriors' hearts
Are fired to flame, and, spreading through the ranks,

240-26o]

BOOK XII.

491

From band to band the growing murmurs creep:
Nor this wise felt the Rutule lines alone;
E'en Latins and Laurentines, they who late
Hoped rest and respite from their bloody toils,
Chang'd both alike, now burn for arms anew,
Deplore the peace, and wish the truce annulled,
And pity Turnus and his cruel doom.
Nay, and, to add fresh fuel to the flame,
Juturna sends an omen from on high,
A sign than which was none more sure to rouse
Italian hearts, and cheat them as by spell;
For high amid the ruddy tracts of air
The golden bird of Jove was seen to hold
A noisy flock of river-fowl in chase;
When all at once he stooped him to the flood,
Trussed in his taloned claws a noble swan,
And bare him in his felon gripe aloft:
The Latins gazed intent, when lo, the birds
Turn from their flight with screamings loud, and all,
Darkening the air with wings, a cloudlike mass,
Pursue their common foe, till at the last,
O'erborne by odds and cumbered with his prey,
He yields, and drops the quarry to the stream,
And lessens up the sky. With loud acclaim
The Rutule squadrons bid the omen hail,
Shouting o'erjoyed, and lift their hands on high;
Foremost of all the seer Tolumnius thus:
'This then the thing my prayers so ofttimes asked,
And here I own the hand of Heaven! So then,
With me your seer to warrant you the deed,

49

THE AENEID.

[.261-279

Draw forth your swords,--poor wretches that ye be,
Whom this vile foreigner thus scares with war,
Like feeble fowl, and ravages your shores:
Turn, and he too, like yonder baffled bird,
Will take to flight, and, quitting so your coasts,
Will spread his canvas pinions to the wind;
Yea, close ye up like these, and rescue thus
Him whom your foe would rob you of to-day.'
He spake; and, straightway rushing to the front,
Dismissed his javelin at the Trojans' van;
When, whistling as it flew, the cornel spear
Clave through the sky, on no vain errand sped.
Anon loud shouts go up; the ranks are all
Disordered sore, and men's hearts start amazed:
On drave the shaft to where, full front opposed,
A goodly band of thrice three brethren stood,
Comely of face and form, whom each and all
One faithful consort of Etruscan blood
Bare to Gylippus, her Arcadian lord;
E'en one hereof, a youth of beauteous mould
And clad in glittering arms, the javelin smites
Just at the waist, e'en where the leathern belt
Chafed 'gainst the flank, and where the buckle's tooth
Bit the clasped edges of the meeting ends;
Right through the side and ribs the weapon holds,
And lays him grovelling on the yellow sand.
Then, mad with grief and rage, his brethren bold
Seize, some their swords and some their spears and darts,
And charge with reckless fury on the foe:

28o-296 ]

BOOK XIl

493.

To meet them speed the brave Laurentian troops,
While on their side stream forth as in a flood
The Trojan lines, Agylla's ranks, as eke
Arcadia's best, with inlaid armour clad;
One common passion nerving all alike
To try the issue with the dint of steel.
A hurtling sleet of darts flies thick and fast
O'er all the sky, a ceaseless iron shower
Rains down amain; the sacred hearths are wrecked,
And pulled to pieces in the search for brands;
While others, reverent, off the altars snatch
Braziers and bowls, and bear them safe away.
Latinus flies the field, bearing straight off
His outraged gods, and leaves the truce unmade;
Others bid yoke the car, or with a spring
Vault on their steeds, and, drawing forth their swords,
Abide in ordered line the coming fight.
Messapus, eager to annul the peace,
Charging full tilt, for bold Aulestes makes,
A Tuscan warrior-king, and kingly-crowned;
Who, startled sore and falling instant back,
Rolls head and shoulders in amid the wreck
Of altar-hearths that met him in the rear;
When, spear in hand, up comes Messapus quick,
And from his war-steed's height, e'en as the king
Framed prayer on prayer, brings fierce upon him down
The beam-like shaft; and thus insulting cries:
'He hath it home I in this proud fall to-day
A goodlier victim to the gods is given!'-

:494

THE AENEID.

[297-312

And round his bleeding corse the Latins throng,
Uncrown his head, and strip his reeking limbs.
But Corynaeus off an altar plucks
A half-burnt brand, and, just as Ebusus
Drew near him quick and bare a stroke in hand,
Meeting him straight or ere the blow was dealt,
Full in his face doth thrust the blazing wood,
And fills his mouth with flame; when all at once
His long and bushy beard flared out a'light,
And wide diffused a smell of burning hair;
Nor so content, himself now, following on,
Grasps in his left his wildered foeman's locks,
And, pressing with his knee against his chest,
Pins the wretch fast to earth, and so, held down,
Buries the ruthless falchion in his side.
Next, Podalirius doth Alsus chase,
Who, born of shepherd stock, had boldly won
Mid showering shafts the forefront of the fight,
And hangs above him with his naked blade;
But lo, the rustic, swinging back his axe,
Cleaves his pursuer clean from skull to chin,
And splashes all his arms with blood and brain;
When iron sleep with other rest than soft
Weighs down his eyes, and, shutting up their sense,
Curtains their orbs in everlasting night.
But, shocked hereat, the righteous Trojan prince,
Unhelmeting his head and reaching forth
His better hand unarmed, with shouted word
Recalls and chides his folk : ' O whither now ?

3r3-331]

BOOK XII.

What sudden rupture wakes the strife anew?
Restrain this rage, O check your wrath, I pray;
The league is struck, the terms all set and fixt,
And none but I may now the combat claim:
Leave me to wage the fight, to me commit
The common cause, nor yield to groundless fears;
My single arm shall vindicate the truce;
These rites e'en now owe Turnus to my sword.'
Whilst crying so, and mid his very words,
Lo on the chief a whistling arrow lights;
By what hand sped unknown, who winged the shaft,
If lucky chance, or some malignant Power,
So proud a triumph on the foe bestowed:
The feat is lost to fame, nor none was found
To boast him that his hand Aeneas smote.
No sooner Turnus saw the wounded prince
Withdraw him-from the field, and marked withal
The Trojan chiefs in sore confusion plunged,
Scared at such hap, than, fired with sudden hope,
He calls impatient for his car and arms,
Vaults proudly to his seat, and, gathering up,
Plies with his ready hand the flowing reins.
Anon, careering through the field apace,
He gives full many a gallant foe to death,
Leaves others weltering on the sod half-sped,
Crushes whole ranks beneath his flying wheels,
Or, snatching from the slain their spears and darts,
Pours them incessant on the flying crowd.
As blood-stained Mars, by Hebrus' icy flood

495

496.

THE-AENEID.

(3p3--35o

Careering onward, beats his sounding shield,
And, rousing up the war, slacks out the reins,
And goads his maddened coursers to the fight;
They, through the unfenced champaign bounding free,
Out-fly the winds, and leave the storms behind,
While Thrace through all her bounds reverberant rings,
Smit with the beating of the horse-hoofs' tramp,
And, leashed about his car, dread Forms move on,
Tumult, and Wrath, and Stratagem, and Fear,
A dreadful train, liege followers of the god;
E'en so fierce Turnus through the thickest fight
Urges his fiery team a'reek with sweat,
And rides insulting o'er the wretched dead,
While, lashed to utmost speed, the flying hoof
Spirts wide the crimson rain, and blood and dust,
Together stampt, are kneaded into mire.
Already hath his hand to death consigned
Pholus, stout Sthenelus, and Thamyrus;
These twain anigh, that other from afar:
From far the sons of Imbrasus he slays,
Glaucus and Lades both, whom erst their sire
In native Lycia reared, and trained to war,
Equipt alike or hand to hand to fight,
Or mount the steed, and pass the winds outstript.
Elsewhere Eumedes rides amid the fray,
Old Dolon's son, and who in style recalled
His grandsire's name, in heart and hand his sire;
Him, who of yore, to spy the Danain camp,
Durst ask for recompense Achilles' car;

-351-369]

BOOK XH.

But other meed Tydides gave, nor more
His hopes aspired to great Pelides' team.
E'en him when Turnus now beheld afar
Ride through the open plain, a swift spear first
He sent in chase athwart the middle ground;
Then, drawing up his car, he leaped adown,
And, coming on the wretch laid gasping there,
And treading with his foot upon his neck,
Wrenches the glittering sword-blade from his grasp,
And, plunging, steeps it crimsoned in his throat,
Mocking him thus withal : 'Trojan, lie there,
And measure with thy length our Latian fields,
The far Hesperia thou didst seek in war;
Such guerdons theirs who cope with me in arms;
'Tis thus the gallants build their city walls!'

Hurling his spear, Asbuts next he sends
To bear him company; and Chloreus next,
Dares, Thersilochus, and Sybaris,
With stout Thymoetes too, whom, luckless wight!
His restive steed had o'er his shoulders flung.
As when the blast of Thracian Boreas roars
Athwart the Aegaean deep, and, following fierce,
Chases the surges on the sounding shore,
Where'er he stoops in fury on the main
The driving rack before his onset flies;
So before Turnus' car, where'er he cleaves
His bloody path, the broken ranks fall back,
Whole squadrons routed fly; his very speed
2K

497

498-

THE AENEID.

[370-387

Bears him impetuous on, his ruffled plume
A'stream upon the wind that meets his car.
With shame and grief indignant Phegeus marked,
Nor more might brook the chief's o'erweening pride;
But, casting him right out before the team
Full in the chariot's path, he seized the reins,
And, wrenching round their jaws as, foaming white,
They chafed upon the bit, he turned aside
In full career the fiery-flying steeds.
So, dragged along and clinging to the yoke,
The spear-head finds his unprotected flank,
And, piercing through the double-plated mail,
Razes the surface of his silvery skin:
Yet none the less he fronted still the foe,
Turning the shifted shield to every thrust,
And kept him bravely with his naked blade;
Till now the wheel, careering onward, smites
His dangling form, and flings him to the ground;
When Turnus, following with a sword-sweep dealt
Betwixt the helmet and the corslet's rim,
Leaves him a headless carcase on the sand.
While Turnus thus deals havoc through the field,
Meantime bold Mnestheus and Achates true
And young Ascanius with duteous care
Set down Aeneas in the Trojan camp,
All bleeding from his wound and fain to stay
Each other footstep on his ashen lance;
There, fretting sore and struggling hard to pluck

388-407]

BOOK XII.

The broken missile from the galling hurt,
He bids, impatient, as the readiest aid,
To widen with the knife the wound enlarged,
And, opening to its depth the weapon's seat,
So speed him back to meet the foe once more.
Came now Iapis, son of Ilisus,
Apollo's favoured leech, to whom erewhile,
Smit with the stingings of impassioned love,
The longing god, for backing of his suit,
Had proffered fond the option of his arts,
Seer-skill, the lyre, or mastery of the bow;
But the good youth, more studious to extend
A dying father's span, pious preferred
Simples and herbs to know and healing salves,
And exercise unfamed a silent craft.
So now, sore chafing, there Aeneas stood
Propt on his massy spear, a sorrowing band
About him grouped, unmoved himself the while
By all their grief, or e'en liilus' tears.
But he, the aged leech, with sleeve rolled back,
And girt succinct in fashion of his tribe,
Plying the busy healing hand, tries all
Apollo's lenitives and sovereign balms,
All to no end howe'er; all to no end
With gripping forceps tugging at the dart,
Solicits with its fangs the stubborn steel:
No luck will speed his skill, nor aid whate'er
His patron god bestow, while more and more
Alarm and dread are gathering o'er the plains,
And ever nearer draws the mischief on;
2 K2

499

500

THE AENEID.

[408-426

And straight they note the sky one dusty pall,
Horsemen anear, and now amid the camp
A rain of javelins falling thick and fast,
While, heard o'er all distinct, full dismal ring
The shouts and cries of men, of those who kill,
And those who fall, amid the stubborn fray.
Then loving Venus with a mother's care,
Distracted at her son's unworthy pain,
A stalk of dittany from Ida plucks,
A plant of downy leaf and purple flowerFull well the mountain goat its virtues knows,
When in his side -the hunter's shaft has lodged:
This Venus, muffled in a misty cloud,
Brings with her down; herewith the gracious queen
Impregns the waters in the gleaming vase,
Imparting to the stream its secret powers;
And, dropping from her hand in measure due,

Mingles, unseen, Ambrosia's healthful juice
And Panac's all-healing fragrant balm:
E'en with this lymph, nor witting of its change,
The sage foments the hurt; when in a trice
All smart was fled the limb, and, stanched forthwith,
The red blood stinted in the closing wound,
While, following with his hand, the arrow-head
Drops out unforced, obedient to a touch,
And health and vigour are restored again.
'Quick ! give the prince his arms; why stand ye so ?'--O'erjoyed lIapis cries, himself the first
To fire their hearts anew against the foe-

427-444]

BOOK XI.

5ol

'This cometh fiot, my friends, of human aid;
No skill chirurgic hath availed us now,
Nor to this hand, Aeneas, ow'st thy cure:
A greater far than I, a God, is here,
And sends thee back to greater exploits still.'
Meantime the chief, all ardour for the fight,
Had: cased his legs in golden greaves, and now
Shakes his strong spear, impatient of delay;
Anon equipt, soon as, adjusted fair,
The cuirass armed his back, the shield his side,
He clasps Ascanius in his mail'd embrace,
And, kissing through his helm, bespeaks him thus:
'Learn valour, boy, from me and genuine toil;
Let others, happier, school thee to success;
To-day this arm shall shield thee through the fight,
And lead where honour's prizes are to win;
Be thine, when years have riped thy manhood's growth.
To bear in mind the glories of the past;
Think of the great exemplars of thy race,
And, rivalling their worth, approve thee still
For Hector's nephew and Aeneas' son.'
He spake; then towered majestic through the gate,
A massive spear-shaft quivering in his grasp,
Antheus, and Mnestheus, and a numerous train
Attendant on his steps, while all the host
In serried mass stream outward from the camp.
Anon with blinding dust the champaign fills,
Anrid, ever as they move, the hollow plain

So2

THE AENEID.

[445-462

Quakes to the trampling of unnumbered feet.
Turnus beheld them from a fronting mole,
The Latins all beheld, and, smit with dread,
An icy shudder thrilled their every limb,
Foremost of all Juturna owned the sound,
And fled dismayed before the moving war.
On comes the Trojan chief the while, and speeds
His dusky squadrons 'thwart the black'ning plain:
As when a whirlwind, bursting from the sky,
Drives landwards o'er the deep, the wretched swains,
With heavy hearts forecasting of their ills,
Too well divine the mischiefs of the storm;
The forest's wrack, the ruined harvest's bane,
The blasted promise of their painful year,
And all their hopes laid level with the ground;
The gales, its harbingers, fly on before,
And waft hoarse murmurs to the distant coast;
So fierce, so swift, the bold Rhoeteian chief
Hurls his advancing hosts towards the foe,
The dense battalions, massed in close array,
Locking their ranks, and following on his lead.
Full soon engaged, here, foremost of them all,
Thymbraeus' sword cuts huge Osiris down,
Mnestheus Arcetius slays, Achat6s' hand
Smites Epulo, by Gyas Ufens dies;
E'en seer Tolumnius falls, the first of late
To hurl his lance for breaking of the truce.
Loud shouts go up anon, and, forced to yield,
The routed Rutule hosts in turn give way,

463-481]

BOOK XI.

And speed in dusty flight athwart the plain;
But for the Trojan prince,-not he will deign
To smite the fugitives, nor cares to meet
All who would face him front to front in fight;
Turnus is all his quest, Turnus alone
He tracks and shouts for through the dusty field,
Turnus alone he summons to the fray.
Juturna heard, and, seized with mortal dread,
Unseating casts Metiscus from the beam,
Her brother's charioteer, and leaves him there,
Flung to a distance from the pole and wain;
Then takes his place herself, and, handling, plies
The lash and flowing reins, assuming all,
Mien, voice, and arms, that erst Metiscus owned.
E'en as a swallow who, in quest of prey,
Flits through the mansion of some wealthy lord,
And, tireless traversing the spacious courts,
Picks for her twittering brood a scanty fare:
Now through the empty porch her note resounds,
And now 'tis heard around the water-tanks;
So drives Juturna through the thickest hosts,
And flies on rapid wheels from spot to spot;
Now here, now there her princely brother shows,
Yet ne'er will let him fight, but, hurrying off,
Still holds her devious course aloof the foe.
Nor less the while, to cut his flight in twain,
The Trojan prince traces each winding turn,
Thrids all her mazy rounds and sinuous paths,
A' following of his man o'er all the field,

503

.504

THE AENEID.

[482-500

And shouts his name athwart the shattered ranks;
Oft as he spies him out and tries afoot
To match the flying of the winged steeds,
So oft Juturna mocks his baffled search,
And, shunning, wheels the car and team aside.
Ah, what is now to do ? Confused, perplext,
His wavering thought now this, now that way drifts,
Veers to all points, nor ever holds to one.
When lo, Messapus, as in swift career
He crossed him in the field, and in his hand
Twin bending javelins bare with steel-heads tipt,
One at the prince doth launch, and, levelled true,
With aim unerring speeds it to its mark.
Aeneas stayed, and 'neath his covering shield
Withdrew him close, sunk on his bended knee;
Yet none the less the forceful weapon smote
The helmet's tufted top, and, razing, struck
Clean from the glittering cone its waving crest.
Then woke at length the hero's righteous wrath,
Roused by such act, and all the more as now
He sees the chariot wheeling still remote.
So, calling oft on Jove whose altar-fires
Beheld so late the breaking of the truce,
He now falls furious on the whole array,
And, Mars himself enlisting on his side,
Ruth nor distinction in his havoc owns,
But, fired with vengeance, gives his rage loose rein.
What god will now inspire my lays to tell
The varied horrors of that fatal field,

So-518]

.BOOK XII.

What valiant chiefs for doom of scathe and death
Fierce Turnus here, the Trojan hero there,
By turns pursued and routed through the plain ?
And was it so thy will, almighty Jove,
That nations in such murderous broil should strive
Which yet should live in endless love and peace ?
Rutulian Sucro, whose bold onset first
Held in brief check the march of Troy's advance,
Aeneas hand takes short upon the sideNor did the Rutule give him much adoAnd, at the point where death is quickest wrought,
Clean through the ribs and fence-work of the breast
Drave home the ruthless blade. On t'other side,
Encountering afoot whom first he cast
From off his steed, Turnus slays Amycus,
As eke his brother too, Di6r6s hight;
One with the lance arrested as he charged
In full career, the other with the sword;
And, fixing on his car their severed heads,
Bare them, a'drip with blood, through all the field.
Ceth6gus next, Telos, and Tana's,
All three at one assault the Trojan prince
Doth send to Hades down, and-quailing sad,
Scared at his early doom-Onytes too,
Echion's son, of Peridia born;
While as the Rutule slays those brethren twain
Sent from broad Lycia and Apollo's fields,
With that Arcadian youth, Menoetes hight,
Whose gentle spirit shrunk from war in vain;
Content by Lerna's fishy stream, where stood

505

506

THE AENE ID.

[519-537

His lowly cot, to ply the angler's craft,
A stranger to the great, and help his sire
To reap the furrows of another's land.
Like two fierce fires, from adverse points let loose
On some dry copse or wood of crackling bays,
Or torrents twain that down a mountain's side,
Foaming and roaring, hurry to the deep,
While wrack and ruin mark their several roads;
So swift, so fierce these rival captains twain,
Aeneas here, Rutulian Turnus there,
Swept through the field of fight, each hero's heart
With furious wrath afire, while, swelling high,
Their dauntless bosoms e'en to bursting heave,
Unknowing how to yield, and each man's might,
Unstinted plied, is sped in every blow.
One with a pond'rous mass of whirling rock
Hurls from his chariot proud Murranus downWho, boastful wight, had ever on his tongue
The names of sires and grandsires old, and traced
His pedigree through lines of Latian kingsAnd lays him at full length upon the sod;
Where, by the axle thrust 'neath yoke and reins,
His horses' rapid hoofs with yerk on yerk
Beat out his life, unheeding of their lord;
The other, fronting Hyllus as he charged
O'er-weening on, his heart with fury fired,
Full at his gold-bound temples hurls his lance;
When, through the glittering casque, resistless sped,
The weapon drives, and fixes in his brain.

538-.5551

BOOZ X11.

507

Nor might thy prowess, Cretheus, valiant Greek!
Save thee from Turnus' hand, nor eke his gods
Protect Cupencus when Aeneas came;
The steel his bosom found, for small the stead
Wherein, poor wretch! the shield might stand him
then.
Thee too, great Aeolus, Laurentum's fields
Saw that day stretched in death and laid full length,
Thy bulky frame o'er all their surface spread;
Here didst thou fall, whom nor the Argive hosts
Availed to quell, nor e'en great Peleus' son,
Achilles' self, who Priam's realm o'erthrew;
Here was thy mortal goal; thy portion erst
A princely home 'neath Phrygian Ida's shade,
'Neath high Lyrn6sus' walls a princely home;
Now, far removed, thy grave Laurentum's soil!
Thus, erst by turns pursuers and pursued,
Both armies now in conflict close engage,
Full face to face opposed, and foot to foot,
The Latins all, as eke the Trojans all;
Serestus here, and valiant Mnestheus there;
There fierce Messapus, queller of the steed,
And here Asilas and his Tuscan force,
With king Evander's Arcad chivalry;
Each for himself, as in his single arm
The victory lay, his best of might puts forth
Sans stint or stop, and strains his every nerve.
His beauteous mother here Aeneas prompts
To quit the field, and march upon the walls,

Sob

THE AENEID.

[556-574

And, hurling all his powers upon the town,
Confound the Latins with the sudden blow.
As, tracking Turnus through the ranks, he cast
His glance around the field, lo! he beholds
The town exempt from all the scathe of war,
And unmolested in unchallenged peace.
At once the vision of a grander strife
Dawns on his soul; resolved, he calls his chiefs,
Mnestheus, Sergestus, and Serestus brave,
And takes an eminence, whereto anon
The rest of Teucer's valiant sons repair
In close array, nor shield nor spear lay by;
When, standing on the mound, the hero thus:
'Let none gainsay my word--Jove sides with us !
Nor move less prompt to do his prince's will
For that his purpose smacks of sudden thought.
Yon town, the guilty source of all this war,
The home and seat of king Latinus' rule,
Unless they choose to bow them to the yoke
And own them vanquished, worsted as they be,
Will I this very hour o'erthrow, and lay
Its smouldering roof-trees level with the ground.
Am I forsooth to wait till Turnus deign
To suffer of his grace our next assault,
And, beat to-day, please to be beat again?
Yea, trust me, countrymen, there stands the source,
The head and front of this nefarious war.
Fetch, fetch your brands at once, and, fire in hand,
So re-assert the violated truce!'
He said; and, massed in close array compact,

575-592]

.BOOK XII.

509

With eager speed they rush to storm the wall:
Ladders forthwith on every side are seen,
And flames, ere looked for, flash from every hand;
Some hurry to the gates, and, smiting, slay
Whom first they meet; some hurl the flying steel,
And darken-all the sky with showers of darts.
Conspicuous in the van Aeneas' self
Uplifts his hands.beneath the city wall,
And, loud the while upbraiding there the king,
Calls righteous Heaven for witness to his wrong'Unwilling forced to take the field again,
Italia not once but twice his foe,
A second treaty now annulled and broke!'
Meantime within the frightened town itself
Dissension reigns; some bid undo the bolts,
Fling wide the gates to Troy, and fain would drag
The king himself for parley to the walls;
While others will fetch arms, and, sword in hand,
Prepare to hold the ramparts to the last.
As when a shepherd to their home has tracked
A swarm of bees in some close cavern housed,
And filled their hiding-place with pungent smoke,
The tiny folk, in terror for their weal,
Run here and there o'er all their waxen camp,
And rouse their wrath with buzzings loud; meantime
The stifling vapour rolls from cell to cell,
A dull blind hum is heard, and, issuing dense,
The sooty reek distains the limpid air.

5Io

THE AENEID.

[593-612

Nay, as to fill the measure of their ills,
A new mishap now falls on Latium's sons,
And shakes the city to its base with grief:
When from the palace roof the queen beheld
The foe drawn nigh, the walls and town assailed,
And flames in volleys to the roof-tops cast,
Nor saw withal, look where she might around,
Or Rutules to oppose or Turnus near,
Alas ! she deemed the youth in combat slain,
And, wrought to madness by the sudden shock,
Cries out upon herself as cause of all,
Sole head and source of all these countless ills;
And raving so, with frenzied anguish stung,
Loathing of life, she rends with desperate hand
Her purple robe, and from a lofty beam
Makes fast the noose of most revolting death.
Soon as, by Rumour blown, the fatal news
Had reached the hearing of her female train,
The fair Lavinia is the first to tear
Her flower-soft locks and wound her roseate cheek;
When, following on her lead, the general throng
Run madding through the halls and courts, while all
The royal house re-echoes to their wails.
Thence through the town the mournful tidings fly;
All own the grief, and every heart desponds;
With garments rent Latinus goes his way,
Stunned by his consort's doom and city's wreck,
And, soiling all his silvery hair with dust,
Upbraids himself full sore that long ere this

613-633

BOOK XH.

511

He took not to his heart the Dardan chief,
And made him, as he vowed, his son beside.
Meantime upon the battle's verge remote
Turnus still reaped the field, and here and there
Gleaned, though with flagging zeal and heartless cheer,
A few faint straggling foes, and less and less
Pleased with himself, or with his flying team;
When on the breeze, with fears mysterious charged,
Came from afar the turmoiled city's din,
And other shouts than those of joyance smote
Full on his startled ear: 'Ah me!' he cries,
'What mighty sorrow stirs the city thus ?
Why from the distant walls these wailings loud ?
He said; and, laying hand upon the reins,
Sore troubled paused, and stayed the chariot's course.
Whereat his sister, as in borrowed guise
She plied Metiscus' part, and drave the car:
'Heed it not, Turnus; chase we still thus on,
Where Victory points, these flying sons of Troy;
Others there are besides, nor they a few,
Whose stalwart arms may well defend their homes.
Doubtless Aeneas there with might and main
Assails our friends; let us too here no less
Deal death and havoc to his Teucrian mates;
Do this, nor fear thou'lt quit the field to-day
With fewer slain, or less in fame than he.'
' Sister,' the chief replied, ' I knew you well
When first by artifice you marred the truce,
And thrust amid our war; and now, as then,

512

TIlE AENEID.

[634-65r

You vainly hide the goddess from our eyes.
Say who it was thus sent you down from heaven
To share in toils like these; or came you so
To look upon your brother's cruel end ?
For what remains to try ? what chance is left,
What likely hope to warrant me success ?
Did not these eyes behold MurrAnus die ?
Mighty the man, as mighty was his wound !
I heard him call on me to venge his death;
Yes, he than whom I owned no dearer friend!
Fell hapless Ufens too, and all because
He might not brook to look on my disgrace;
His corse and arms are now his slayer's prize.
What should I wait for more ? Say must I let
Our walls and homes be levelled with the groundThat one sole drop yet wanting to the cup !Nor bid this hand give Dranc6s' words the lie ?
Shall I thus turn my back, and own defeat,
And must this land see craven Turnus flee.?
Is there in sooth such bitterness in death ?
Not for the brave; and so, ye Powers below,
Be yours at least to look with favour here,
Since those above have turned their face away;
I'll down to you to-day, a stainless soul,
Unknowing of the coward's brand, nor all
Unworthy of my valiant foresires' fame !'
Scarce was it said, when lo, through thick of foes
Flew wounded Saces on his foaming steed,
Smit with an arrow in his bleeding face,

652-670]

BOOK XII.

513

And, spurring up, on Turnus calls for aid:
'Turnus, on thee our last fond hope relies;
Haste, haste in pity, and relieve thy friends.
A very thunderbolt, Aeneas there
Assaults the walls, and threats forthwith to lay
Our highest turrets level with the dust;
E'en now the brands are flying to the roofs:
No Latian face but turns its looks on thee,
On thee all eyes are bent; the king himself
Wavers uncertain whom to call his son,
To which alliance he should best incline.
Nay worse; your staunchest friend, the queen, is dead,
Slain of her own rash hand, and, scared to see
The coming ills, has fled the light for aye.
Messtpus only out before the gate
And brave Atinas strive to keep the field;
Around the pair, in dense battalions massed,
Fierce foemen surge and press, an iron crop
Bristling with naked swords and pointed spears ;
Whilst thou for whom they fight, aloof from all,
Here wheel'st thy chariot o'er an empty mead!'
Bewildered by such varied show of ills,
Turnus awhile in utter stupor sat
With silent dull regard, shame, anger, grief,
Indignant pride, the lover's hopeless pang,
And conscious worth, all struggling in his thoughts;
But when anon the cloud was rent apart
And light relumed his soul, with troubled mien
He cast his burning eyes towards the walls,
2L

514

THE AENEID.

[671-688

And, rising on his car and looking back,
Surveyed in all its width the mighty town;
And there, behold ! betwixt a turret's floors
A fiery cone of ruddy-streaming flame
Shot up in surging volume to the sky,That tower himself had reared of mortised beams,
And, fitting to its use with gear complete,
Had bridges laid above and wheels beneath.
'Sister !' he cries, 'now, now the Fates prevail
Stay me no longer back; follow we must
Where adverse Heaven and cruel Fortune call.
Yea I will meet Aeneas hand to hand,
And die the death, how bitter e'er it be.
Yes, sister, thou must see me shamed no more!
Then grant me leave, e'en though it madness be,
To give, or ere I fall, the madness vent.'
He said; and, from the chariot vaulting down,
Through foes and darts directs his rapid way,
And, leaving there his sister in her grief,
Dashes impetuous through the midmost ranks.
As, rushing headlong from some mountain's brow,
A rock comes thundering to the plain below,
Whether by winds tempestuous rent away,
Or furious rains have washed it from its bed,
Or loosened, sapped by lapse of creeping years;
Sheer o'er the steep, with force resistless urged,
The reckless mass from ledge to ledge descends,
A world of stone ! and, bounding through the vale,
Sweeps in one wrack trees, herds, and swains along;

689-707]

BOOK X1H.

Scattering before him friends and foes alike,
So through the broken ranks fierce Turnus rushed,
E'en to the city walls; where, deepest soaked,
The plashy ground was all one reek of blood,
And all the welkin rang of whistling darts;
There, beckoning with his hand, he cries aloud:
*Rutules, have done, and Latins, stay your shafts
What fortune Fate may deal, she deals to me;
'Tis juster far that I on your behalf
Should singly expiate the broken truce,
And try the issue by the sword's award.'
Then both the hosts to right and left divide,
And leave him in the midst an open space.
But, hearing Turnus' name, Aeneas straight
Forsakes the leaguer of the wall and towers,
And, breaking off aught else might breed delay,
Strides on o'erjoyed, and, smiting with his blade,
Peals dreadful thunder on his ringing shield,
Towering as Atlas huge, or Eryx' mount,
Or great as father Apennine himself,
As mid the roar of all his waving oaks
He heaves his snowy summit to the skies.
Italians, Trojans, Rutules, all and each,
Turn thither as one man their eager gaze,
As well who manned the lofty walls above,
As who with engines battered them below;
All studious of the sight, unbrace their arms,
And lay their idle bucklers on the sod.
Latinus' self stands wonder-struck to see
2 LZ

515

516

THE A ENEID.

[708-727

Two puissant chiefs, in lands dissevered born,
So distant each from each, here met to try
For him and his their quarrel with the sword.
Anon when now the champions twain beheld
The field betwixt them cleared, with quick advance,
Discharging first their lances from afar,
They close for combat mid the deafening din
Of ringing arms and clash of brazen shields:
The trembling earth beneath their onset groans,
While mid the clang and hurry of the strokes,
Their bickering swords redoubling blow on blow,
Prowess seems now, now lucky chance, to win.
As when on Sila's or Tiburnus' top
Two rival bulls with butting fronts are met,
The trembling keepers fly, while mute with fear
The cattle wait in dread suspense to see
Which shall command the forest-side, which now
The pasture own as monarch of the herds;
Alternate they now take, now deal, the blow,
Push home their digging horns, and, goring deep,
Bathe in large blood their necks and shoulders broad,
While hill and grove re-bellow to their roars;
So closed Aeneas and the Daunian prince
With clashing shields, and frayed the skies with noise.
Great Jove the while hangs out in heaven aloft
Twin scales of even poise, and lays therein
The several fates of both, which of the twain
The struggle dooms to fall, and whose the weight
Shall verge to earthwards down for scathe and death.

7.28-746]

BOOK XII.

Forth Turnus springs, and, deeming he was safe
To help with all his body's size and weight
His uplift sword, bears down a deadly stroke;
Whereat both Trojans and Rutulians raise
A deafening shout on high, and either host
Watches with beating hearts the stricken blow;
But ah ! the faithless brand in shivers flies,
And in mid dint deserts its fiery lordAnd what if flight now fail him in his need !
Swift as the wind away he darts, for lo,
Still in his grasp and lacking of its blade,
A hilt he knows not, and his hand disarmed!
Men tell us how, when first in headlong haste
He clomb his car in battle-gear equipt,
He left his father's sword behind, and caught
His charioteer's, Metiscus, in its place;
The which, while foes before his onset fled,
Stood well the proof, and did him service good;
But, soon as tried on Vulcan's arms divine,
The mortal-tempered blade, like brittle ice,
In sunder flew, and, shivered by the stroke,
Fell into shards that glittered on the sand.
So to and fro the whole wide champaign o'er
Turnus distracted flies, and, doubling fast,
Now here now there in mazy windings wheeled;
For all about the foe had hemmed him close
In armbd ring, and here, to bar his way,
Lay a broad marsh, and there the lofty wall.
Nor less Aeneas, howsoe'er his knees,

517

518

THE AENEID.

[747-765

Slacked by the wound, at times refuse to run,
Holds him in close pursuit, and, step for step,
Finds with his foot his frighted foeman's heel:
As when a hound has got a stag at bay,
Pent by a river's bounds, or scared full sore,
Hedged by the terrors of the crimson plumes,
And, racing, baying, plies him up and down,
And presses on his game; the hunted beast,
Cowed by the steepy banks and thick-set toils,
Turns as he turns, and, doubling to and fro,
Backward and forward flies a thousand ways,
While, staunch and keen, his canine foe the more
Hangs on his panting flanks with jaws agape,
Snaps his white fangs as still in act to seize,
And, baffled still, bites but the empty wind;
The hunters shout, and bank and mere reply,
And all the welkin thunders to the din.
So Turnus flies amain, and, flying so,
Shouts ever fiercely to his Rutule friends,
And, calling each and all aloud by name,
Bids bring him straight his own familiar sword;
The while Aeneas threatens instant death
Should any dare approach, and daunts their hearts,
Denouncing ruin to themselves and town,
And, maimed and halting, holds the chase still on.
Five rings of flight they circle round, and five
They traverse back, and step by step unwind,
Pursuer and pursued; as well they might !
For not for pastime, sooth, the game they play,
Nor small the prize whereat the match is set:
The stake there laid is Turnus' life and blood.

766-785]

BOOK XII.

So happed that here a wilding olive grew,
To Faunus consecrate, which, branch and stem,
Was long by mariners in reverence held;
Here was their wont, from ocean perils saved,
To make their offerings to Laurentum's god,
And hang therefrom their seamen's garments dank,
Vowed in their need; but now the sons of Troy
Had unregardful lopped the hallowed stock,
To leave the listed space for combat free:
Here stuck Aeneas' spear; here, forceful sped,
Its own strong swing had lodged it tight, and now
Still held it fast, wedged in the stubborn stump.
The Dardan stooped to grasp the shaft, as fain
To wrench by force of hand the point away,
That, whom he failed by speed of foot to reach,
The fleeter steel might so o'ertake and smite;
Then cried out Turnus, dazed with utter fear:
'O father Faunus, pity me, I pray,
And thou, kind mother Earth, hold fast the steel,
If I still held your worship dear, the which
Irreverent Troy hath so profaned in war.'
He said; nor with no fruitless vows invoked
The godhead's aid: albeit hard he tugged,
And struggled long above the toughened root,
Aeneas by no strength might force the stock
To loose the hard wood's bite. While vainly thus
The Trojan strove, and bore upon the spear,
Lo, changed again to old Metiscus' shape,
The Daunian goddess joins at running speed
Her brother's side, and gives him back his sword.

519

520

THE .4 ENEID.

[786-799

Then heavenly Venus, sore incensed to see
The daring Nymph achieve so bold a feat,
Hurried adown the skies, and, drawing near,
Plucked forth the weapon from its root-bound hold.
So now once more the rival chiefs advance,
Towering erect, in arms and might repaired,
Strong this in hope, relying on his blade,
That bold and fearless with his lifted spear,
And, foot to foot opposed and face to face,
Panting resume the deadly game of Mars.
Meantime Olympus' lord, almighty Jove,
Bespake his queenly spouse, as, throned on high,
She viewed the combat from a golden cloud:
'What end, fair consort, to all this ado,
Or what device is left thee still in store
To check the course of fate ? Well dost thou wot,
And times past telling hast confessed as much,
How great Aeneas to the stars is due,
A godhead of the land, doomed yet to mount,
By merit raised, to mansions in the skies.
What schemes employ thee still ? what hope o'erbold
Doth keep thee seated here in chilly air?
Say was it well, what e'en but now we saw,
A mortal's wound to harm a god elect?
Meet to give Turnus back-for what, I ask,
Might weak Juturna dare apart from thee ?The sword he so had lost, undo defeat,
And set the vanquished up in strength again ?
Prithee have done at last, and let, I beg,

800-817]

BOOK XI.

521

Jove's warm entreaties sway thee to his will;
Let secret sorrow gnaw thy soul no more,
Nor keen reproach, or sullen discontent,
More pain mine ear from those sweet lips of thine.
The farthest goal is reached, the final bound:
To vex the sons of Troy by sea and land,
To light the flames of most unhallowed war,
To plunge a royal house in mourning weeds,
And hymeneans change to funeral wails,All this and more we erst indulged; but know
The day for such is past: at our command
Desist henceforth, nor further thwart the fates.'
Thus Jupiter; when straight with mien submiss
Spake Saturn's daughter thus; 'For that, dread Jove,
I knew thy will, I left, though loth to part,
My Turnus to his doom, and quitted earth;
Else hadst thou never seen me here in air,
The butt and mark of every wanton wrong;
No; armed with vengeful flames had Juno stood
With red right hand amid their very ranks,
And dragged the Trojans to the swords they shunned.
For aught Juturna did,-I own 'twas I
In pity bade her help her brother's need;
And, where such precious life was so at stake,
I sanctioned what 'twere else o'erbold to do;
Yet said I not that ever hand of hers
Should bend the bow, or aim one single shaftBy Styx' inexorable fount I swear,
The one dread oath that binds us Powers above.

522

THE AENEID.

[818-836

And now I here give up, and loathing quit
This hateful fight it pains my soul to view.
Nathless one boon there is I fain would ask,
A grace no fates forbid thee to bestow;
I ask it too for Latium's sake, for what
Thy sire's own folk's high dignity may claim:
When truce and happy nuptials by and byFor happy let them be !-confirm the peace,
And bonds of amity be knit at last,
Let it not be the native Latians shift
Their ancient name as children of the soil,
Be Trojans, or be called by Teucer's name,
Nor nowise change their language or their garb.
No; be there Latium still, still Alban kings
Age after age to reign; let Rome be great,
Strong in the vigour of her Latian blood;
But Troy is fall'n; and, never more to rise,
E'en fallen be she, name and nation too.'
And, smiling, the great Sire made answer thus:
'Jove's sister true, old Saturn's other seed;
Vouch it those tides of anger in thy soul !
But come; give o'er, and stay this bootless rage;
I grant thee this thy wish, and now, o'erpowered,
Submissive vail my will so far to thine:
Ausonia's sons shall keep their ancient tongue,
Their manners, laws, and customs as of old,
And what their style is now, their style shall be;
Incorporate with the mass, the Trojan folk
Shall simply merge them in the folk they join;
Their rites and worship Jove shall claim to add,

837-857 ]

BOOK XII.

523

Engrafted on the olden Latian forms,
And bid them all be Latins of one speech ;
The blended race, from this admixture sprung,
Thou yet shalt see in godliness transcend
The sons of men, and very Heaven itself,
Nor any folk of all the world shall yield
Such loyal homage to thy name as they.'
The goddess heard, and, pleased, with altered mind,
Bows her assent, and quits her cloudy throne.
This done, the great All-Father next revolves
A new device in thought, and straight prepares
To part Juturna from her brother's side:
Two sister fiends there be, the Dread Ones named,
Whom dismal Night with black Megaera bare,
Three at one birth, and wreathed their locks alike
With snaky coils, and gave them wings withal;
These by the throne of Jove obsequious wait,
His ministers of wrath, and ready still
To rack with fears the souls of wretched men,
Oft as the moody sire doth send abroad
Disease and ghastly death, or wills to scourge
Some high-viced town with turbulence and war;
E'en one hereof the god with haste doth send
From heaven's high summit down, and bids her straight
Confront Juturna for a warning sign.
Forth darts upon the wing the Fury fiend,
And shoots with whirlwind speed to earthwards down:
Like to the shaft that parts the cloudy rack,
Launched or from Parthian or Cydonian bow,

524

THE AENEID.

[858-874

And, doubly armed, with blackest venom tipt,
Flies for the wound no healing may undo,
And, whirring, cleaves the misty veils unseen;
So swift, nor on less fatal errand sped,
The ruthless child of Night swooped down to earth.
There when she saw the rival chieftains' hosts
Arrayed upon the plain, contracted straight,
She dwarfs her to the size of that foul bird
Which, oft on sepulchres and ruined piles
Hooting a'nights, sends ever through the gloom
Its weird ill-boding cry; in such like guise
The fiend keeps ever wheeling to and fro
About young Turnus' head, flits in his face,
And, screaming, beats his buckler with her wings.
O'erawed, unnerved, a sense of strange affright
Benumbs his torpid limbs; his bristling scalp
Upstands erect, and terror chains his tongue.
But when Juturna's ear now caught afar
The whirr and rustling of the Dread One's wing,
In all a sister's frantic grief she rends
Her loosened locks, and tears her bleeding cheeks,
And mars with bruising hand her bosom fair:
'Woe's me !' she cries; 'hard-hearted that I am,
What worse in store, if life must hold me still ?
Turnus, what aid may now thy sister bring ?
What left me yet to lengthen out thy span ?
Gods! how to match me with a Thing like this ?
'Tis done at last! and now I quit the field.

875-8911]

BOOK XII.

Avaunt, nor more appal my trembling soul,
Ye birds of omen ill ! Ah me, too well
I know the flapping of those fatal wings;
The sound is death and doom! too well I read
What hests ye bring, the will of tyrant Jove!
Requites he thus my virgin honours spoiled ?
Why give me, as he did, the life that lasts ?
Why death's kind ordinance annulled to me ?
Else might I end my woes, and hand in hand
Fare with my brother to the shades below.
Immortal !--'tis my curse, when life nor aught
Juturna from this day may look to have
Can please or profit, brother, without thee.
Yawn, Earth, in pity; to thy lowest yawn,
And take a wretched goddess to thy dead.'
Nor more she spake, but, sighing deep and sore,
Enwrapped her in her mantle's azure folds,
And plunged adown the river's closing depths.

But front to front Aeneas now comes on,
His beam-like spear-shaft brandished in his hand,
And thus with high disdain bespeaks his foe:
'What next for subterfuge doth Turnus spy,
Why hangs he back and shirks the fight again ?
Not now the trial of fleet foot with foot,
But hand 'gainst hand must arbitrate our feud;
No shuffling more! Yes, change thee as thou wilt,
Turn thee to every shape; yea muster all
What best thou mays't in courage or in skill;

525

526

THE AENEID.

[892-9Io

Pray Heaven for wings and mount thee to the skies,
Or dive in earth, and hide thee in her womb;
Vain all thy shifts to save thee from this hand!'
Whereto he thus--and shook his head withal:
'Not threats of thine, proud foe, daunt Turnus' soul;
'Tis partial Heaven he dreads and hostile Jove.'
Nor said he more, but, sweeping round his glance,
A mighty stone amid the field espies,
A rock erst set for mearing on the plain
Should rival claims of ownership forefend,
And fix the limits of adjoining lands;
Scarce twelve picked men might heave it from the
ground,
Such men as earth teems now-a-days for sons;
This in his hurried grasp the hero caught
And threw withal, rising full height the while
To aid its force, and running on the cast;
But so distraught that not, when so he ran,
Or when he walked, he knew he ran or walked,
Or whatso thing he did when as his hand
Essayed to lift and hurl the ponderous mass;
His knees together knock, and, curdling thick,
The blood runs dull, and freezes in his veins;
And so the stone, as thwart the void it passed,
Nor cleared the space, nor carried home its blow.
E'en as in dreams by night, when heavy sleep
Has weighed our eyelids down, we seem to wish
With eager feet to follow on our course,
And midway in the effort helpless fail;

911-929]

BOOK XII.

527

The palsied tongue avails us naught, and all
Our powers, relaxed, refuse their wonted aid,
Nor voice nor utterance follows at our will:
So Turnus fares; by whate'er might he strives
To win a way, the Fury thwarts him still.
And now strange fancies throng upon his brain:
He stares upon his Rutules and the town;
He hesitates in dread, and quails to think
The lance is on its way; how to avoid
He nowise knows, nor how to meet his foe;
Nor, turn him where he will, his eye no more
May see his team or sister-charioteer.
As thus he stands irresolute, aston'd,
Aeneas brandishes the fatal lance,
And, gauging for his stroke the likeliest spot,
Launches with all his might the weapon forth:
Less loud the stone, from sieging engine flung,
Batters the smitten wall; ne'er thunder's clap
Shattered the embowelled air with peal so great:
On as with whirlwind force the javelin flies,
Grim death and dire destruction on its wing,
Bursts up the seven-fold buckler's lower marge,
And, ploughing through the corslet's edge unseamed,
Goes griding through the thigh; and 'neath the blow
With doubled knee comes Turnus to the ground.
With pitying cries the Rutules one and all
Spring to their feet, the mountain-sides around
And forest-depths re-echoing to their groans.

528.

THE AENEID.

[930-946.

But he anon with hand and eye uplift
Sues lowly thus his victor's grace:
' I own
My fate for just, nor deprecate thy wrath;
Use what thy fortune gives ; yet if so be
A loving father's grief may touch thine heartAnd such Anchises was erewhile to theeHave mercy on old Daunus' hoary hairs,
And me, or if thou wilt, my breathless corse,
Send back in pity to my friends and kin.
Thine is the victory;, Ausonia's sons
Have seen me here prefer the suppliant's prayer;
Lavinia's hand is thine: rest thee content,
Nor press vindictive for aught more than this.'
Fierce, sword in hand, and bent to deal the stroke,
Rolling his eyes withal, Aeneas paused
A moment's space, and stayed his lifted arm,
And, faltering as he gazed, felt more and more
The words he heard to pity melt his soul;
When on the shoulder of his fallen foe
Young Pallas' fatal belt shone out to view,
With golden studs a'gleam; that well-known belt
Whereof proud Turnus stripped the dying boy
When as his hand had slain him first in fight,
And now in triumph on his shoulder wore.
Soon as his eye had drunk its bitter fill
Of gazing on these tokens of his grief,
Frenzied with rage, to very madness fired,
' Out! wretch,' he cries; 'shalt thou escape my hands,

947-952]

BOOK XII.

Decked with these trophies of my murdered friend ?
Pallas, 'tis Pallas claims his victim thus,
And gluts his vengeance with thy guilty blood.'
He said, and furious plunged the ruthless sword
Full in his breast; when straight the stalwart limbs
And giant frame wax faint with mortal cold;
And, stern and sad, resentful of its doom,
The parted spirit hies to darkness down.

THE END.

2M

529

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, ETC., ON BOOK IV.,
Published, with Notes, as an Instalment of the present completed
Work, under its olden Title of 'The Passion of Dido.'

London:

Geo. Bell & Sons, York-street, Covent Garden; and Dublin: Hodges,
Foster, & Figgis, Grafton-street, Publishers to the University. 1878.

Saturday Review, November 23, 1878:'Mr. THORNHILL, an obviously competent scholar, has always abundant argument
to justify his plausible, and seldom very far-fetched, interpretations. It is by no
means undesirable that the young student should get hold of such a version as
Mr. THORNHILL'S, professing as it does to be a free rendering, and thus be led to
consider how far Virgil's meaning in poetical passages lies beneath the surface.
For instance, all that underlies the graceful expression of Virgil in Aen. IV. 82-3,
of Dido's love-sickness-Stratisque relictis
Incubat : illum absens absentem auditque videtqueis poetically reproduced in the lines:O'erleans where late the loved one lay, and fond,
In reveries lost, with fancy's wizard sense
Still sees that absent form, that voice still hears.
Dido's irony, too, in her most famous speech, where she derides what she deems
the shifts of ZEneas to lay the blame of his desertion on the Olympian GodsScilicet is superis labor est, etc. (379-80),
is brought out to life in the rendering:Yes, fitting task,
Belike, for gods' employ ! such cares-'tis apt!Must ruffle Heaven's repose !
Or, if a sample of a more connected passage is required, we may refer to the
famous description of Rumour in IV. 173-88, as showing the true spirit to infuse
into Virgilian translation.'

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, ETC.
Light: A Journal of Criticism and Belles Lettres, June 8 and 29,
1878:' A free rendering into vigorous and spirited English. That there is felicity in
the renderings, taste and breadth of reading evinced in the Notes, will be clear on
the most perfunctory perusal. .. . . Vigour of language, careful choice of words,
intimate acquaintance with every authority upon Virgil, from Heyne to Henry:
these are some of the many merits of Canon THORNHILL'S scholarly and praiseworthy performance.'

Freeman's fournal, July 1o, 1878:'The Fourth Book of the ZEneid is Virgil's masterpiece. Mr. THORNHILL has
added another verse-rendering, and we venture confidently to assign his scholarly
and spirited version a very high place amongst the best of existing renderings.
The Notes exhibit a happy gift of interpretation, based on a sound critical scholarship, together with a wide and highly cultured acquaintance with the poets of
many lands and languages. ..... We are thankful to acknowledge our indebtedness to Mr. THORNHILL for a fresh perception of old familiar beauties, and for a
new insight into not a few niceties.'

Daily Express, June 25, 1878 :
'A truthful reproduction in poetical Saxon English of perhaps as much of the
pathos and finished melody ofVirgil's celebrated "Fourth AEneid" as is transferable into any other language than its own ..... A scholarly and spirited version
of Virgil's book, and one that very effectively conveys, in nervous and melodious
blank verse (our true English epic metre), the force and energy of the original.
S. ..
The Notes are replete with poetical parallels, imitations, coincidences, etc.,
and indicate great taste and extensive reading ..... Besides some well-selected
"Notices" of the Fourth Book, there is prefixed for English readers a General
Introduction, which, with the pure Saxon English of the whole, renders the book
not only a version of a Latin classic to the classical scholar, but a most readable
English poem to the English reader.'

Saunders' Irish Daily News, July II, 1878:'This is a version in blank verse of the immortal poem, Virgil's Fourth Book of
the Eneid. It is a sort of foretaste of a translation of the whole of the ZEneid. If
the whole work is, in commercial parlance, up to sample, Trinity College bids fair
to reckon among her sons the holder of the blue ribbon of Latin translation, the
scholar who shall have succeeded in presenting to English readers Virgil as he
wrote..
Canon THORNHILL has brought to his task a real poetic fancy,

3

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, ETC.

eeply imbued with admiration for the majestic grace of the Eneid, and a memory
His Notes are full
tored with the jewel-words of Shakspeare and Milton .....
We hope that nothing may be wanted in wellof taste and scholarship .....
merited congratulation and candid sympathy, so dear to every scholar, to encourage him to carry to a happy issue a work destined to reflect fame on himself
and his University.'

HIs GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, DR. TRENCH, February

2I, 1868 (of Books I. and II.):'Your translations from the First and Second Books of Virgil seem to me both
scholarly in their relation to the original, and spirited in themselves.'

(Of Book IV., ' The Passion of Dido '), January 2, 1878 :' I have no hesitation in saying of your work that it is, in my judgment, both
scholarly and spirited. It will be an honourable specimen of Irish scholarship,
and of poetical pains well bestowed, and will, I am sure, be so regarded by as
many as know it and its author.'

Dr. ALEXANDER, Lord Bishop of Derry, November 12, 1868 (of MS.

specimens of the First Six Books) :'I have kept your MSS. long. Your work seems to me, on the whole, the most
poetical rendering of Virgil which I have read. With much respect for your
scholarship, knowledge, and taste, I remain,' &c.

THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM E.
'73,

GLADSTONE, M.P.:HARLEY-STREET,

Ahri125,

2879.

' I thank you for your gift of the version of the "Passion of Dido". You have
undertaken a very arduous task, for this "Passion " is, I think, either the most
beautiful, or one of the two most beautiful portions of the iEneid. But the part I
have already read in haste of your work shows me that you were in every way entitled and qualified to undertake it.'

LEWIS MORRIS, Esq., Author of the 'Epic of Hades':'March 21,

1879.

' I have read the "Passion of Dido", which I think very finely and faithfully
rendered. I shall be very glad if you can give us the whole work, or at any rate
a larger selection from it than the beautiful and characteristic book which you
have chosen. The well-known passages on " Rumour" and "Mercury's Flight"
are particularly effective.'

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, ETC.
THE VERY REV. CHARLES MERIVALE, D.D., Dean of Ely:'DEANERY,

ELY,

fuly

22,

1878.

Your monograph is very well chosen, as well as agreeably.executed. I have
read itwith interest. You seem to me to have great vigour and force of language.'

ROBERT YELVERTON TYRRELL, Esq., M.A., Fellow of Trinity College,

Dublin, and Regius Professor of Greek :
'I have only had time to glance at your translations, but even a hasty glance
has shown me some renderings of rare beauty and admirable vigour. The beginning- of IV., 362, &c., seems to me perfect. I don't think you have been quite so
successful in lines 368-9 and 370, but the rest of the passage is full of fire. " En
dextra fidesque" is admirably rendered by "Mirror of knighthood's truth " I
hope: to appoint a time for an interview with you when I return to College.'

JOHN K.

INGRAM, Esq., LL.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and

late Regius Professorof Greek :'February 14, 1870.
'I have read your translations with much interest and pleasure. They seem to
me to possess merit of a high order. In passages, especially, which require vigour
and energy to do them justice, you appear to me very successful. Your parallels
from modern poets are well chosen, and often most striking.'

'October 30,

1877.

'My repeated reading of your Version has more and more impressed me with a
sense of the great ability shown in it. Much of your work seemed to me almost
as good as it was possible for anyone to produce under the difficult conditions of
the case. As I said to you before, the force and energy of the original you have,
think, very effectively rendered; if you have succeeded less completely in transfusing into your verses the tender grace of Virgil, why, one can only say, that
problem must always be the despair of translators.'

EDWARD DOWDEN, Esq., LL.D., Professor of English Literature,
Trinity College, Dublin :
' anuary14,

1878.

'I am no great judge, and especially of translations, but your work does seem
to me of a very high order, and it certainly gives me great pleasure. Your translations, I think, go as near satisfying me as any I have ever read. I thought the
felling of the ox (Book V.) admirable. You have tested yourself in passages widely
apart in style, and not failed, I believe, in any.'

5

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, ETC.
'August 23, 1878.

' It is not to thank for the copy of your Translation, which you were kind
enough to give me, that I now write ; but it seems natural to tell you how much
true enjoyment it has given me. Your blank verse seems to me to be finely
wrought, and your election of right words to be particularly sure. Virgil, I think,
is a poet who especially calls for an artist in language as his translator, or English
disciple. If ever you see your way to publishing the first six books [all
that were
translatedat the time], I know that I shall look forward to becoming acquainted
with that poem with unusual pleasure.'

T.

J. B.

Professorof Classica
BRADY, Esq., A.M., late Extraordinary
Literature, Trinity College, Dublin :' August 6,

1878.

'I think the "Passion of Dido" should be a success, regarded, however, as a
free and spirited paraphrase, rather than a translation of Virgil. It exhibits, I
think, many felicities of expression, and shows throughout a great command of
language and poetical feeling.'

THE VERY REV. CHARLES P. REICHEL, D.D., Dean of Clonmacnoise
(now Lord Bishop of Meath) :'October21, 1878.
' I have only had time to glance at your book here and there as yet; but I see
many felicities of expression already. It is a difficult task : to my mind Virgil is
the hardest of all poets to translate-his exquisite inuendoes of style are almost
insaisissables,to borrow a French word; and the "Passion of Dido" I take to be
to render.'
the hardest part of the
'April 25, x883.

ZEneid

'I think your Version many times the best in many respects.'

T. W.

MOFFETT, Esq., LL.D.,

President of the Queen's University,

Galway:'November 24, 1878.
' I believe I mentioned to you that, during my late short tour in England, your
Poem was my constant companion. I have always thought that whilst Virgil, of
all the ancient classics, approaches nearest to the modern spirit, he is the most
difficult of all to translate worthily. The remarkably favourable reception which
your instalment has deservedly met with from scholars should encourage you to
proceed with the other parts of the "Divine Poem".'

6

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, ETC.
ALEXANDER LEEPER, Esq., A.M., Warden of Trinity College,

Melbourne:-

October4,

z878.

I hope you will allow me to say that I think your translation of the Fourth
izEneid a very great success-spirited, vigorous, and accurate. I rememher it in
its infancy, and am glad to see what an aaio,-v ir=Uo~v it has grown into. I read
it with much pleasure. Indeed I do not think I was ever before so moved with
the story of Dido's woes. When one, whose trade is scholarship, reads a great
masterpiece like Virgil's Fourth Book, his attention is too liable to he distracted
from the poetry, and constantly directed to the " letter that killeth ". A translaview, than
tion is often, therefore; even more enjoyahle, from the poetical point
the original.'

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The .:neid of Virgil, freely translated into English blank verse. B2
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