yellow dawn shone rose-charioted; when the winds fell, and every breath
sank suddenly, and the oar-blades toil through the heavy ocean-floor.
And on this Aeneas descries from sea a mighty forest. Midway in it the
pleasant Tiber stream breaks to sea in swirling eddies, laden with
yellow sand. Around and above fowl many in sort, that haunt his banks
and river-channel, solaced heaven with song and flew about the forest.
He orders his crew to bend their course and turn their prows to land,
and glides joyfully into the shady river.
* * * * *
Forth now, Erato! and I will unfold who were the kings, what the tides
of circumstance, how it was with ancient Latium when first that foreign
army drew their fleet ashore on Ausonia's coast; I will recall the
preluding of battle. Thou, divine one, inspire thou thy poet. I will
tell of grim wars, tell of embattled lines, of kings whom honour drove
on death, of the Tyrrhenian forces, and all Hesperia enrolled in arms. A
greater history opens before me, a greater work I essay.
Latinus the King, now growing old, ruled in a long peace over quiet
tilth and town. He, men say, was sprung of Faunus and the nymph Marica
of Laurentum. Faunus' father was Picus; and he boasts himself, Saturn,
thy son; thou art the first source of their blood. Son of his, by divine
ordinance, and male descent was none, cut off in the early spring of
youth. One alone kept the household and its august home, a daughter now
ripe for a husband and of full years for marriage. Many wooed her from
wide Latium and all Ausonia. Fairest and foremost of all [56-93]is
Turnus, of long and lordly ancestry; but boding signs from heaven, many
and terrible, bar the way. Within the palace, in the lofty inner courts,
was a laurel of sacred foliage, guarded in awe through many years, which
lord Latinus, it was said, himself found and dedicated to Phoebus when
first he would build his citadel; and from it gave his settlers their
name, Laurentines. High atop of it, wonderful to tell, bees borne with
loud humming across the liquid air girt it thickly about, and with
interlinked feet hung in a sudden swarm from the leafy bough.
Straightway the prophet cries: 'I see a foreigner draw nigh, an army
from the same quarter seek the same quarter, and reign high in our
fortress.' Furthermore, while maiden Lavinia stands beside her father
feeding the altars with holy fuel, she was seen, oh, horror! to catch
fire in her long tresses, and burn with flickering flame in all her
array, her queenly hair lit up, lit up her jewelled circlet; till,
enwreathed in smoke and lurid light, she scattered fire over all the
palace. That sight was rumoured wonderful and terrible. Herself, they
prophesied, she should be glorious in fame and fortune; but a great war
was foreshadowed for her people. But the King, troubled by the omen,
visits the oracle of his father Faunus the soothsayer, and the groves
deep under Albunea, where, queen of the woods, she echoes from her holy
well, and breathes forth a dim and deadly vapour. Hence do the tribes of
Italy and all the Oenotrian land seek answers in perplexity; hither the
priest bears his gifts, and when he hath lain down and sought slumber
under the silent night on the spread fleeces of slaughtered sheep, sees
many flitting phantoms of wonderful wise, hears manifold voices, and
attains converse of the gods, and hath speech with Acheron and the deep
tract of hell. Here then, likewise seeking an answer, lord Latinus paid
fit sacrifice of an hundred woolly ewes, and [94-127]lay couched on the
strewn fleeces they had worn. Out of the lofty grove a sudden voice was
uttered: 'Seek not, O my child, to unite thy daughter in Latin
espousals, nor trust her to the bridal chambers ready to thine hand;
foreigners shall come to be thy sons, whose blood shall raise our name
to heaven, and the children of whose race shall see, where the circling
sun looks on either ocean, all the rolling world swayed beneath their
feet.' This his father Faunus' answer and counsel given in the silent
night Latinus restrains not in his lips; but wide-flitting Rumour had
already borne it round among the Ausonian cities, when the children of
Laomedon moored their fleet to the grassy slope of the river bank.
Aeneas, with the foremost of his captains and fair Iülus, lay them down
under the boughs of a high tree and array the feast. They spread wheaten
cakes along the sward under their meats--so Jove on high prompted--and
crown the platter of corn with wilding fruits. Here haply when the rest
was spent, and scantness of food set them to eat their thin bread, and
with hand and venturous teeth do violence to the round cakes fraught
with fate and spare not the flattened squares: _Ha! Are we eating our
tables too?_ cries Iülus jesting, and stops. At once that accent heard
set their toils a limit; and at once as he spoke his father caught it
from his lips and hushed him, in amazement at the omen. Straightway
'Hail, O land!' he cries, 'my destined inheritance! and hail, O
household gods, faithful to your Troy! here is home; this is our native
country. For my father Anchises, now I remember it, bequeathed me this
secret of fate: "When hunger shall drive thee, O son, to consume thy
tables where the feast fails, on the unknown shores whither thou shalt
sail; then, though outwearied, hope for home, and there at last let
thine hand remember to set thy house's foundations and bulwarks." This
was [128-162]the hunger, this the last that awaited us, to set the
promised end to our desolations . . . Up then, and, glad with the first
sunbeam, let us explore and search all abroad from our harbour, what is
the country, who its habitants, where is the town of the nation. Now
pour your cups to Jove, and call in prayer on Anchises our father,
setting the wine again upon the board.' So speaks he, and binding his
brows with a leafy bough, he makes supplication to the Genius of the
ground, and Earth first of deities, and the Nymphs, and the Rivers yet
unknown; then calls on Night and Night's rising signs, and next on Jove
of Ida, and our lady of Phrygia, and on his twain parents, in heaven and
in the under world. At this the Lord omnipotent thrice thundered sharp
from high heaven, and with his own hand shook out for a sign in the sky
a cloud ablaze with luminous shafts of gold. A sudden rumour spreads
among the Trojan array, that the day is come to found their destined
city. Emulously they renew the feast, and, glad at the high omen, array
the flagons and engarland the wine.
Soon as the morrow bathed the lands in its dawning light, they part to
search out the town, and the borders and shores of the nation: these are
the pools and spring of Numicus; this is the Tiber river; here dwell the
brave Latins. Then the seed of Anchises commands an hundred envoys
chosen of every degree to go to the stately royal city, all with the
wreathed boughs of Pallas, to bear him gifts and desire grace for the
Teucrians. Without delay they hasten on their message, and advance with
swift step. Himself he traces the city walls with a shallow trench, and
builds on it; and in fashion of a camp girdles this first settlement on
the shore with mound and battlements. And now his men had traversed
their way; they espied the towers and steep roofs of the Latins, and
drew near the wall. Before the city boys and men in their early
[163-196]bloom exercise on horseback, and break in their teams on the
dusty ground, or draw ringing bows, or hurl tough javelins from the
shoulder, and contend in running and boxing: when a messenger riding
forward brings news to the ears of the aged King that mighty men are
come thither in unknown raiment. He gives orders to call them within his
house, and takes his seat in the midst on his ancestral throne. His
house, stately and vast, crowned the city, upreared on an hundred
columns, once the palace of Laurentian Picus, amid awful groves of
ancestral sanctity. Here their kings receive the inaugural sceptre, and
have the fasces first raised before them; this temple was their
senate-house; this their sacred banqueting-hall; here, after sacrifice
of rams, the elders were wont to sit down at long tables. Further, there
stood arow in the entry images of the forefathers of old in ancient
cedar, Italus, and lord Sabinus, planter of the vine, still holding in
show the curved pruning-hook, and gray Saturn, and the likeness of Janus
the double-facing, and the rest of their primal kings, and they who had
borne wounds of war in fighting for their country. Armour besides hangs
thickly on the sacred doors, captured chariots and curved axes,
helmet-crests and massy gateway-bars, lances and shields, and beaks torn
from warships. He too sat there, with the divining-rod of Quirinus, girt
in the short augural gown, and carrying on his left arm the sacred
shield, Picus the tamer of horses; he whom Circe, desperate with amorous
desire, smote with her golden rod and turned by her poisons into a bird
with patches of colour on his wings. Of such wise was the temple of the
gods wherein Latinus, sitting on his father's seat, summoned the
Teucrians to his house and presence; and when they entered in, he thus
opened with placid mien:
'Tell, O Dardanians, for we are not ignorant of your city and race, nor
unheard of do you bend your course [197-228]overseas, what seek you?
what the cause or whereof the need that hath borne you over all these
blue waterways to the Ausonian shore? Whether wandering in your course,
or tempest-driven (such perils manifold on the high seas do sailors
suffer), you have entered the river banks and lie in harbour; shun not
our welcome, and be not ignorant that the Latins are Saturn's people,
whom no laws fetter to justice, upright of their own free will and the
custom of the god of old. And now I remember, though the story is dimmed
with years, thus Auruncan elders told, how Dardanus, born in this our
country, made his way to the towns of Phrygian Ida and to the Thracian
Samos that is now called Samothrace. Here was the home he left,
Tyrrhenian Corythus; now the palace of heaven, glittering with golden
stars, enthrones and adds him to the ranged altars of the gods.'
He ended; and Ilioneus pursued his speech with these words:
'King, Faunus' illustrious progeny, neither hath black tempest driven us
with stress of waves to shelter in your lands, nor hath star or shore
misled us on the way we went. Of set purpose and willing mind do we draw
nigh this thy city, outcasts from a realm once the greatest that the sun
looked on as he came from Olympus' utmost border. From Jove hath our
race beginning; in Jove the men of Dardania rejoice as ancestor; our
King himself of Jove's supreme race, Aeneas of Troy, hath sent us to thy
courts. How terrible the tempest that burst from fierce Mycenae over the
plains of Ida, driven by what fate Europe and Asia met in the shock of
two worlds, even he hath heard who is sundered in the utmost land where
the ocean surge recoils, and he whom stretching midmost of the four
zones the zone of the intolerable sun holds in severance. Borne by that
flood over many desolate seas, we crave a scant dwelling [229-261]for
our country's gods, an unmolested landing-place, and the air and water
that are free to all. We shall not disgrace the kingdom; nor will the
rumour of your renown be lightly gone or the grace of all you have done
fade away; nor will Ausonia be sorry to have taken Troy to her breast.
By the fortunes of Aeneas I swear, by that right hand mighty, whether
tried in friendship or in warlike arms, many and many a people and
nation--scorn us not because we advance with hands proffering chaplets
and words of supplication--hath sought us for itself and desired our
alliance; but yours is the land that heaven's high ordinance drove us
forth to find. Hence sprung Dardanus: hither Apollo recalls us, and
pushes us on with imperious orders to Tyrrhenian Tiber and the holy
pools of Numicus' spring. Further, he presents to thee these small
guerdons of our past estate, relics saved from burning Troy. From this
gold did lord Anchises pour libation at the altars; this was Priam's
array when he delivered statutes to the nations assembled in order; the
sceptre, the sacred mitre, the raiment wrought by the women of
Ilium. . . .'
At these words of Ilioneus Latinus holds his countenance in a steady
gaze, and stays motionless on the floor, casting his intent eyes around.
Nor does the embroidered purple so move the King, nor the sceptre of
Priam, as his daughter's marriage and the bridal chamber absorb him, and
the oracle of ancient Faunus stirs deep in his heart. This is he, the
wanderer from a foreign home, foreshewn of fate for his son, and called
to a realm of equal dominion, whose race should be excellent in valour
and their might overbear all the world. At last he speaks with good
cheer:
'The gods prosper our undertaking and their own augury! What thou
desirest, Trojan, shall be given; nor do I spurn your gifts. While
Latinus reigns you shall not [262-294]lack foison of rich land nor
Troy's own riches. Only let Aeneas himself come hither, if desire of us
be so strong, if he be in haste to join our friendship and be called our
ally. Let him not shrink in terror from a friendly face. A term of the
peace for me shall be to touch your monarch's hand. Do you now convey in
answer my message to your King. I have a daughter whom the oracles of my
father's shrine and many a celestial token alike forbid me to unite to
one of our own nation; sons shall come, they prophesy, from foreign
coasts, such is the destiny of Latium, whose blood shall exalt our name
to heaven. He it is on whom fate calls; this I think, this I choose, if
there be any truth in my soul's foreshadowing.'
Thus he speaks, and chooses horses for all the company. Three hundred
stood sleek in their high stalls; for all the Teucrians in order he
straightway commands them to be led forth, fleet-footed, covered with
embroidered purple: golden chains hang drooping over their chests,
golden their housings, and they champ on bits of ruddy gold: for the
absent Aeneas a chariot and pair of chariot horses of celestial breed,
with nostrils breathing flame; of the race of those which subtle Circe
bred by sleight on her father, the bastard issue of a stolen union. With
these gifts and words the Aeneadae ride back from Latinus carrying
peace.
And lo! the fierce wife of Jove was returning from Inachian Argos, and
held her way along the air, when out of the distant sky, far as from
Sicilian Pachynus, she espied the rejoicing of Aeneas and the Dardanian
fleet. She sees them already house-building, already trusting in the
land, their ships left empty. She stops, shot with sharp pain; then
shaking her head, she pours forth these words:
'Ah, hated brood, and doom of the Phrygians that thwarts our doom! Could
they perish on the Sigean [295-326]plains? Could they be ensnared when
taken? Did the fires of Troy consume her people? Through the midst of
armies and through the midst of flames they have found their way. But, I
think, my deity lies at last outwearied, or my hatred sleeps and is
satisfied? Nay, it is I who have been fierce to follow them over the
waves when hurled from their country, and on all the seas have crossed
their flight. Against the Teucrians the forces of sky and sea are spent.
What hath availed me Syrtes or Scylla, what desolate Charybdis? they
find shelter in their desired Tiber-bed, careless of ocean and of me.
Mars availed to destroy the giant race of the Lapithae; the very father
of the gods gave over ancient Calydon to Diana's wrath: for forfeit of
what crime in the Lapithae, what in Calydon? But I, Jove's imperial
consort, who have borne, ah me! to leave naught undared, who have
shifted to every device, I am vanquished by Aeneas. If my deity is not
great enough, I will not assuredly falter to seek succour where it may
be; if the powers of heaven are inflexible, I will stir up Acheron. It
may not be to debar him of a Latin realm; well; and Lavinia is destined
his bride unalterably. But it may be yet to defer, to make all this
action linger; but it may be yet to waste away the nation of either
king; at such forfeit of their people may son-in-law and father-in-law
enter into union. Blood of Troy and Rutulia shall be thy dower, O
maiden, and Bellona is the bridesmaid who awaits thee. Nor did Cisseus'
daughter alone conceive a firebrand and travail of bridal flames. Nay,
even such a birth hath Venus of her own, a second Paris, another
balefire for Troy towers reborn.'
These words uttered, she descends to earth in all her terrors, and calls
dolorous Allecto from the home of the Fatal Sisters in nether gloom,
whose delight is in woeful wars, in wrath and treachery and evil feuds:
hateful to [327-360]lord Pluto himself, hateful and horrible to her
hell-born sisters; into so many faces does she turn, so savage the guise
of each, so thick and black bristles she with vipers. And her Juno spurs
on with words, saying thus:
'Grant me, virgin born of Night, this thy proper task and service, that
the rumour of our renown may not crumble away, nor the Aeneadae have
power to win Latinus by marriage or beset the borders of Italy. Thou
canst set brothers once united in armed conflict, and overturn families
with hatreds; thou canst launch into houses thy whips and deadly brands;
thine are a thousand names, a thousand devices of injury. Stir up thy
teeming breast, sunder the peace they have joined, and sow seeds of
quarrel; let all at once desire and demand and seize on arms.'
Thereon Allecto, steeped in Gorgonian venom, first seeks Latium and the
high house of the Laurentine monarch, and silently sits down before
Amata's doors, whom a woman's distress and anger heated to frenzy over
the Teucrians' coming and the marriage of Turnus. At her the goddess
flings a snake out of her dusky tresses, and slips it into her bosom to
her very inmost heart, that she may embroil all her house under its
maddening magic. Sliding between her raiment and smooth breasts, it
coils without touch, and instils its viperous breath unseen; the great
serpent turns into the twisted gold about her neck, turns into the long
ribbon of her chaplet, inweaves her hair, and winds slippery over her
body. And while the gliding infection of the clammy poison begins to
penetrate her sense and run in fire through her frame, nor as yet hath
all her breast caught fire, softly she spoke and in mothers' wonted
wise, with many a tear over her daughter and the Phrygian bridal:
'Is it to exiles, to Teucrians, that Lavinia is proffered in marriage, O
father? and hast thou no compassion on [361-392]thy daughter and on
thyself? no compassion on her mother, whom with the first northern wind
the treacherous rover will abandon, steering to sea with his maiden
prize? Is it not thus the Phrygian herdsman wound his way to Lacedaemon,
and carried Leda's Helen to the Trojan towns? Where is thy plighted
faith? Where thine ancient care for thy people, and the hand Turnus thy
kinsman hath so often clasped? If one of alien race from the Latins is
sought for our son, if this stands fixed, and thy father Faunus'
commands are heavy upon thee, all the land whose freedom severs it from
our sway is to my mind alien, and of this is the divine word. And
Turnus, if one retrace the earliest source of his line, is born of
Inachus and Acrisius, and of the midmost of Mycenae.'
When in this vain essay of words she sees Latinus fixed against her, and
the serpent's maddening poison is sunk deep in her vitals and runs
through and through her, then indeed, stung by infinite horrors, hapless
and frenzied, she rages wildly through the endless city. As whilome a
top flying under the twisted whipcord, which boys busy at their play
drive circling wide round an empty hall, runs before the lash and spins
in wide gyrations; the witless ungrown band hang wondering over it and
admire the whirling boxwood; the strokes lend it life: with pace no
slacker is she borne midway through towns and valiant nations. Nay, she
flies into the woodland under feigned Bacchic influence, assumes a
greater guilt, arouses a greater frenzy, and hides her daughter in the
mountain coverts to rob the Teucrians of their bridal and stay the
marriage torches. 'Hail, Bacchus!' she shrieks and clamours; 'thou only
art worthy of the maiden; for to thee she takes up the lissom wands,
thee she circles in the dance, to thee she trains and consecrates her
tresses.' Rumour flies abroad; and the matrons, their breasts kindled by
the furies, run all at once [393-426]with a single ardour to seek out
strange dwellings. They have left their homes empty, they throw neck and
hair free to the winds; while others fill the air with ringing cries,
girt about with fawnskins, and carrying spears of vine. Amid them the
infuriate queen holds her blazing pine-torch on high, and chants the
wedding of Turnus and her daughter; and rolling her bloodshot gaze,
cries sudden and harsh: 'Hear, O mothers of Latium, wheresoever you be;
if unhappy Amata hath yet any favour in your affection, if care for a
mother's right pierces you, untie the chaplets from your hair, begin the
orgies with me.' Thus, amid woods and wild beasts' solitary places, does
Allecto goad the queen with the encircling Bacchic madness.
When their frenzy seemed heightened and her first task complete, the
purpose and all the house of Latinus turned upside down, the dolorous
goddess flies on thence, soaring on dusky wing, to the walls of the
gallant Rutulian, the city which Danaë, they say, borne down on the
boisterous south wind, built and planted with Acrision's people. The
place was called Ardea once of old; and still Ardea remains a mighty
name; but its fortune is no more. Here in his high house Turnus now took
rest in the black midnight. Allecto puts off her grim feature and the
body of a Fury; she transforms her face to an aged woman's, and furrows
her brow with ugly wrinkles; she puts on white tresses chaplet-bound,
and entwines them with an olive spray; she becomes aged Calybe,
priestess of Juno's temple, and presents herself before his eyes,
uttering thus:
'Turnus, wilt thou brook all these toils poured out in vain, and the
conveyance of thy crown to Dardanian settlers? The King denies thee thy
bride and the dower thy blood had earned; and a foreigner is sought for
heir to the kingdom. Forth now, dupe, and face thankless perils; forth,
cut down the Tyrrhenian lines; give the [427-458]Latins peace in thy
protection. This Saturn's omnipotent daughter in very presence commanded
me to pronounce to thee, as thou wert lying in the still night.
Wherefore arise, and make ready with good cheer to arm thy people and
march through thy gates to battle; consume those Phrygian captains that
lie with their painted hulls in the beautiful river. All the force of
heaven orders thee on. Let King Latinus himself know of it, unless he
consents to give thee thy bridal, and abide by his words, when he shall
at last make proof of Turnus' arms.'
But he, deriding her inspiration, with the words of his mouth thus
answers her again:
'The fleets ride on the Tiber wave; that news hath not, as thou deemest,
escaped mine ears. Frame not such terrors before me. Neither is Queen
Juno forgetful of us. . . . But thee, O mother, overworn old age,
exhausted and untrue, frets with vain distress, and amid embattled kings
mocks thy presage with false dismay. Thy charge it is to keep the divine
image and temple; war and peace shall be in the hands of men and
warriors.'
At such words Allecto's wrath blazed out. But amid his utterance a quick
shudder overruns his limbs; his eyes are fixed in horror; so thickly
hiss the snakes of the Fury, so vast her form expands. Then rolling her
fiery eyes, she thrust him back as he would stammer out more, raised two
serpents in her hair, and, sounding her whip, resumed with furious tone:
'Behold me the overworn! me whom old age, exhausted and untrue, mocks
with false dismay amid embattled kings! Look on this! I am come from the
home of the Dread Sisters: war and death are in my hand. . . .'