through the thickest of the foe, an arrow-wound right in his face,
darts, beseeching Turnus by his name. 'Turnus, in thee is our last
safety; pity thy people. Aeneas thunders in arms, and threatens to
overthrow and hurl to destruction the high Italian fortress; and already
firebrands are flying on our roofs. On thee, on thee the Latins turn
their gazing eyes; King Latinus himself mutters in doubt, whom he is to
call his sons, to whom he shall incline in union. Moreover the queen,
thy surest stay, hath fallen by her own hand and in dismay fled the
light. Alone in front of the gates Messapus and valiant Atinas sustain
the battle-line. Round about them to right and left the armies stand
locked and the iron field shivers with naked points; thou wheelest thy
chariot on the sward alone.' At the distracting picture of his fortune
Turnus froze in horror and stood in dumb gaze; together in his heart
sweep the vast mingling tides of shame and maddened grief, and love
stung to frenzy and resolved valour. So soon as the darkness cleared and
light returned to his soul, he fiercely turned his blazing eyeballs
towards the ramparts, and gazed back from his wheels on the great city.
And lo! a spire of flame wreathing through the floors wavered up skyward
and held a turret fast, a turret that he himself had reared of mortised
planks and set on rollers and laid with high gangways. 'Now, O my
sister, now fate prevails: cease to hinder; let us follow where deity
and stern fortune call. I am resolved to face Aeneas, resolved to bear
what bitterness there is in death; nor shalt thou longer see me shamed,
sister of mine. Let me be mad, I pray thee, with this madness before the
end.' He spoke, and leapt swiftly from his chariot to the field, and
darting through weapons [682-718]and through enemies, leaves his
sorrowing sister, and bursts in rapid course amid their columns. And as
when a rock rushes headlong from some mountain peak, torn away by the
blast, or if the rushing rain washes it away, or the stealing years
loosen its ancient hold; the reckless mountain mass goes sheer and
impetuous, and leaps along the ground, hurling with it forests and herds
and men; thus through the scattering columns Turnus rushes to the city
walls, where the earth is wettest with bloodshed and the air sings with
spears; and beckons with his hand, and thus begins aloud: 'Forbear now,
O Rutulians, and you, Latins, stay your weapons. Whatsoever fortune is
left is mine: I singly must expiate the treaty for you all, and make
decision with the sword.' All drew aside and left him room.
But lord Aeneas, hearing Turnus' name, abandons the walls, abandons the
fortress height, and in exultant joy flings aside all hindrance, breaks
off all work, and clashes his armour terribly, vast as Athos, or as
Eryx, or as the lord of Apennine when he roars with his tossing ilex
woods and rears his snowy crest rejoicing into air. Now indeed Rutulians
and Trojans and all Italy turned in emulous gaze, and they who held the
high city, and they whose ram was battering the foundations of the wall,
and unarmed their shoulders. Latinus himself stands in amaze at the
mighty men, born in distant quarters of the world, met and making
decision with the sword. And they, in the empty level field that cleared
for them, darted swiftly forward, and hurling their spears from far,
close in battle shock with clangour of brazen shields. Earth utters a
moan; the sword-strokes fall thick and fast, chance and valour joining
in one. And as in broad Sila or high on Taburnus, when two bulls rush to
deadly battle forehead to forehead, the herdsmen retire in terror, all
the herd stands dumb in dismay, and the heifers murmur in doubt which
shall be [719-752]lord in the woodland, which all the cattle must
follow; they violently deal many a mutual wound, and gore with their
stubborn horns, bathing their necks and shoulders in abundant blood; all
the woodland moans back their bellowing: even thus Aeneas of Troy and
the Daunian hero rush together shield to shield; the mighty crash fills
the sky. Jupiter himself holds up the two scales in even balance, and
lays in them the different fates of both, trying which shall pay forfeit
of the strife, whose weight shall sink in death. Turnus darts out,
thinking it secure, and rises with his whole reach of body on his
uplifted sword; then strikes; Trojans and Latins cry out in excitement,
and both armies strain their gaze. But the treacherous sword shivers,
and in mid stroke deserts its eager lord. If flight aid him not now! He
flies swifter than the wind, when once he descries a strange hilt in his
weaponless hand. Rumour is that in his headlong hurry, when mounting
behind his yoked horses to begin the battle, he left his father's sword
behind and caught up his charioteer Metiscus' weapon; and that served
him long, while Teucrian stragglers turned their backs; when it met the
divine Vulcanian armour, the mortal blade like brittle ice snapped in
the stroke; the shards lie glittering upon the yellow sand. So in
distracted flight Turnus darts afar over the plain, and now this way and
now that crosses in wavering circles; for on all hands the Teucrians
locked him in crowded ring, and the dreary marsh on this side, on this
the steep city ramparts hem him in.
Therewith Aeneas pursues, though ever and anon his knees, disabled by
the arrow, hinder and stay his speed; and foot hard on foot presses
hotly on his hurrying enemy: as when a hunter courses with a fleet
barking hound some stag caught in a river-loop or girt by the
crimson-feathered toils, and he, in terror of the snares and the high
river-bank, [753-786]darts back and forward in a thousand ways; but the
keen Umbrian clings agape, and just catches at him, and as though he
caught him snaps his jaws while the baffled teeth close on vacancy. Then
indeed a cry goes up, and banks and pools answer round about, and all
the sky echoes the din. He, even as he flies, chides all his Rutulians,
calling each by name, and shrieks for the sword he knew. But Aeneas
denounces death and instant doom if one of them draw nigh, and doubles
their terror with threats of their city's destruction, and though
wounded presses on. Five circles they cover at full speed, and unwind as
many this way and that; for not light nor slight is the prize they seek,
but Turnus' very lifeblood is at issue. Here there haply had stood a
bitter-leaved wild olive, sacred to Faunus, a tree worshipped by
mariners of old; on it, when rescued from the waves, they were wont to
fix their gifts to the god of Laurentum and hang their votive raiment;
but the Teucrians, unregarding, had cleared away the sacred stem, that
they might meet on unimpeded lists. Here stood Aeneas' spear; hither
borne by its own speed it was held fast stuck in the tough root. The
Dardanian stooped over it, and would wrench away the steel, to follow
with the weapon him whom he could not catch in running. Then indeed
Turnus cries in frantic terror: 'Faunus, have pity, I beseech thee! and
thou, most gracious Earth, keep thy hold on the steel, as I ever have
kept your worship, and the Aeneadae again have polluted it in war.' He
spoke, and called the god to aid in vows that fell not fruitless. For
all Aeneas' strength, his long struggling and delay over the tough stem
availed not to unclose the hard grip of the wood. While he strains and
pulls hard, the Daunian goddess, changing once more into the charioteer
Metiscus' likeness, runs forward and passes her brother his sword. But
Venus, indignant that the [787-818]Nymph might be so bold, drew nigh
and wrenched away the spear where it stuck deep in the root. Erect in
fresh courage and arms, he with his faithful sword, he towering fierce
over his spear, they face one another panting in the battle shock.
Meanwhile the King of Heaven's omnipotence accosts Juno as she gazes on
the battle from a sunlit cloud. 'What yet shall be the end, O wife? what
remains at the last? Heaven claims Aeneas as his country's god, thou
thyself knowest and avowest to know, and fate lifts him to the stars.
With what device or in what hope hangest thou chill in cloudland? Was it
well that a deity should be sullied by a mortal's wound? or that the
lost sword--for what without thee could Juturna avail?--should be
restored to Turnus and swell the force of the vanquished? Forbear now, I
pray, and bend to our entreaties; let not the pain thus devour thee in
silence, and distress so often flood back on me from thy sweet lips. The
end is come. Thou hast had power to hunt the Trojans over land or wave,
to kindle accursed war, to put the house in mourning, and plunge the
bridal in grief: further attempt I forbid thee.' Thus Jupiter began:
thus the goddess, daughter of Saturn, returned with looks cast down:
'Even because this thy will, great Jupiter, is known to me for thine,
have I left, though loth, Turnus alone on earth; nor else wouldst thou
see me now, alone on this skyey seat, enduring good and bad; but girt in
flame I were standing by their very lines, and dragging the Teucrians
into the deadly battle. I counselled Juturna, I confess it, to succour
her hapless brother, and for his life's sake favoured a greater daring;
yet not the arrow-shot, not the bending of the bow, I swear by the
merciless well-head of the Stygian spring, the single ordained dread of
the gods in heaven. And now I retire, and leave the battle in loathing.
[819-854]This thing I beseech thee, that is bound by no fatal law, for
Latium and for the majesty of thy kindred. When now they shall plight
peace with prosperous marriages (be it so!), when now they shall join in
laws and treaties, bid thou not the native Latins change their name of
old, nor become Trojans and take the Teucrian name, or change their
language, or alter their attire: let Latium be, let Alban kings endure
through ages, let Italian valour be potent in the race of Rome. Troy is
fallen; let her and her name lie where they fell.'
To her smilingly the designer of men and things:
'Jove's own sister thou art, and second seed of Saturn, such surge of
wrath tosses within thy breast! But come, allay this madness so vainly
stirred. I give thee thy will, and yield thee ungrudged victory. Ausonia
shall keep her native speech and usage, and as her name is, it shall be.
The Trojans shall sink mingling into their blood; I will add their
sacred law and ritual, and make all Latins and of a single speech. Hence
shall spring a race of tempered Ausonian blood, whom thou shalt see
outdo men and gods in duty; nor shall any nation so observe thy
worship.' To this Juno assented, and in gladness withdrew her purpose;
meanwhile she quits her cloud, and retires out of the sky.
This done, the Father revolves inly another counsel, and prepares to
separate Juturna from her brother's arms. Twin monsters there are,
called the Dirae by their name, whom with infernal Megaera the dead of
night bore at one single birth, and wreathed them in like serpent coils,
and clothed them in windy wings. They appear at Jove's throne and in the
courts of the grim king, and quicken the terrors of wretched men
whensoever the lord of heaven deals sicknesses and dreadful death, or
sends terror of war upon guilty cities. One of these Jupiter sent
swiftly down from heaven's height, and bade her meet Juturna for a
[855-888]sign. She wings her way, and darts in a whirlwind to earth.
Even as an arrow through a cloud, darting from the string when Parthian
hath poisoned it with bitter gall, Parthian or Cydonian, and sped the
immedicable shaft, leaps through the swift shadow whistling and unknown;
so sprung and swept to earth the daughter of Night. When she espies the
Ilian ranks and Turnus' columns, suddenly shrinking to the shape of a
small bird that often sits late by night on tombs or ruinous roofs, and
vexes the darkness with her cry, in such change of likeness the monster
shrilly passes and repasses before Turnus' face, and her wings beat
restlessly on his shield. A strange numbing terror unnerves his limbs,
his hair thrills up, and the accents falter on his tongue. But when his
hapless sister knew afar the whistling wings of the Fury, Juturna
unbinds and tears her tresses, with rent face and smitten bosom. 'How, O
Turnus, can thine own sister help thee now? or what more is there if I
break not under this? What art of mine can lengthen out thy day? can I
contend with this ominous thing? Now, now I quit the field. Dismay not
my terrors, disastrous birds; I know these beating wings, and the sound
of death, nor do I miss high-hearted Jove's haughty ordinance. Is this
his repayment for my maidenhood? what good is his gift of life for ever?
why have I forfeited a mortal's lot? Now assuredly could I make all this
pain cease, and go with my unhappy brother side by side into the dark.
Alas mine immortality! will aught of mine be sweet to me without thee,
my brother? Ah, how may Earth yawn deep enough for me, and plunge my
godhead in the under world!'
So spoke she, and wrapping her head in her gray vesture, the goddess
moaning sore sank in the river depth.
But Aeneas presses on, brandishing his vast tree-like spear, and
fiercely speaks thus: 'What more delay is there [889-924]now? or why,
Turnus, dost thou yet shrink away? Not in speed of foot, in grim arms,
hand to hand, must be the conflict. Transform thyself as thou wilt, and
collect what strength of courage or skill is thine; pray that thou
mayest wing thy flight to the stars on high, or that sheltering earth
may shut thee in.' The other, shaking his head: 'Thy fierce words dismay
me not, insolent! the gods dismay me, and Jupiter's enmity.' And no more
said, his eyes light on a vast stone, a stone ancient and vast that
haply lay upon the plain, set for a landmark to divide contested fields:
scarcely might twelve chosen men lift it on their shoulders, of such
frame as now earth brings to birth: then the hero caught it up with
trembling hand and whirled it at the foe, rising higher and quickening
his speed. But he knows not his own self running nor going nor lifting
his hands or moving the mighty stone; his knees totter, his blood
freezes cold; the very stone he hurls, spinning through the empty void,
neither wholly reached its distance nor carried its blow home. And as in
sleep, when nightly rest weighs down our languorous eyes, we seem vainly
to will to run eagerly on, and sink faint amidst our struggles; the
tongue is powerless, the familiar strength fails the body, nor will
words or utterance follow: so the disastrous goddess brings to naught
all Turnus' valour as he presses on. His heart wavers in shifting
emotion; he gazes on his Rutulians and on the city, and falters in
terror, and shudders at the imminent spear; neither sees he whither he
may escape nor how rush violently on the enemy, and nowhere his chariot
or his sister at the reins. As he wavers Aeneas poises the deadly
weapon, and, marking his chance, hurls it in from afar with all his
strength of body. Never with such a roar are stones hurled from some
engine on ramparts, nor does the thunder burst in so loud a peal.
Carrying grim death with it, the spear flies in fashion of some dark
whirlwind, and [925-952]opens the rim of the corslet and the utmost
circles of the sevenfold shield. Right through the thigh it passes
hurtling on; under the blow Turnus falls huge to earth with his leg
doubled under him. The Rutulians start up with a groan, and all the hill
echoes round about, and the width of high woodland returns their cry.
Lifting up beseechingly his humbled eyes and suppliant hand: 'I have
deserved it,' he says, 'nor do I ask for mercy; use thy fortune. If an
unhappy parent's distress may at all touch thee, this I pray; even such
a father was Anchises to thee; pity Daunus' old age, and restore to my
kindred which thou wilt, me or my body bereft of day. Thou art
conqueror, and Ausonia hath seen me stretch conquered hands. Lavinia is
thine in marriage; press not thy hatred farther.'
Aeneas stood wrathful in arms, with rolling eyes, and lowered his hand;
and now and now yet more the speech began to bend him to waver: when
high on his shoulder appeared the sword-belt with the shining bosses
that he knew, the luckless belt of the boy Pallas, whom Turnus had
struck down with mastering wound, and wore on his shoulders the fatal
ornament. The other, as his eyes drank in the plundered record of his
fierce grief, kindles to fury, and cries terrible in anger: 'Mayest
thou, thou clad in the spoils of my dearest, escape mine hands? Pallas
it is, Pallas who now strikes the sacrifice, and exacts vengeance in thy
guilty blood.' So saying, he fiercely plunges the steel full in his
breast. But his limbs grow slack and chill, and the life with a moan
flies indignantly into the dark.
THE END.
NOTES
BOOK FIRST
l. 123--_Accipiunt inimicum imbrem._ Inimica non tantum hostilia sed
perniciosa.--Serv. on ix. 315. The word often has this latter sense in
Virgil.
l. 396--_Aut capere aut captas iam despectare videntur._ Henry seems
unquestionably right in explaining _captas despectare_ of the swans
rising and hovering over the place where they had settled, this action
being more fully expressed in the next two lines. The parallelism
between ll. 396 and 400 exists, but it is inverted, _capere_
corresponding to _subit_, _captas despectare_ to _tenet_.
l. 427--_lata theatris_ with the balance of MS. authority.
l. 550--_Arvaque_ after Med. and Pal.; _armaque_ Con.
l. 636--_Munera laetitiamque die_ ('ut multi legunt,' says Serv.),
though it has little MS. authority, has been adopted because it is
strongly probable on internal grounds, as giving a basis for the other
two readings, _dei_ and _dii_.
l. 722--_The long-since-unstirred spirit._
And weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd woe.
SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet XXX.
l. 726--_dependent lychni laquearibus aureis._ Serv. on viii. 25,
_summique ferit laquearia tecti_, says 'multi lacuaria legunt. nam lacus
dicuntur: unde est . . . lacunar. non enim a laqueis dicitur.' As Prof.
Nettleship has pointed out, this seems to indicate that there are two
words, _laquear_ from _laqueus_, meaning chain or network, and _lacuar_
or _lacunar_ from _lacus_, meaning sunk work.
BOOK SECOND
l. 30--_Classibus hic locus._ Ad equites referre debemus.--Serv. Cf.
also vii. 716.
l. 76--Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 234--_moenia pandimus urbis._ Moenia cetera urbis tecta vel aedes
accipiendum.--Serv. This is the sense which the word generally has in
Virgil: it is often used in contrast with _muri_, or as a synonym of
_urbs_; and in most cases _city_ is its nearest English equivalent.
l. 381--_caerula colla tumentem._ Caerulum est viride cum nigro.--Serv.
on vii. 198. Cf. iii. 208, where it is used of the colour of the sea
after a storm.
l. 616--_nimbo effulgens._ est fulgidum lumen quo deorum capita
cinguntur. sic etiam pingi solet.--Serv. Cf. xii. 416.
BOOK THIRD
l. 127--_freta concita terris_ with all the best MSS.; _consita_ Con.
l. 152--_qua se Plena per insertas fundebat Luna fenestras._ The usual
explanation, which makes _insertas_ an epithet transferred by a sort of
hypallage from _Luna_ to _fenestras_, is extremely violent, and makes
the word little more than a repetition of _se fundebat_. Servius
mentions two other interpretations; _non seratas, quasi inseratas_, and
_clatratas_; the last has been adopted in the translation.
In the passage of Lucretius (ii. 114) which Virgil has imitated here,
Contemplator enim cum solis lumina . . .
Inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum,
it is possible that _clatris_ may be the lost word.
l. 684--
_Contra iussa monent Heleni, Scyllam atque Charybdim
Inter, utramque viam leti discrimine parvo
Ni teneant cursus._
In this difficult passage it is probably best to take _cursus_ as the
subject to teneant (_cursus teneant_, id est agantur.--Serv. Cf. also l.
454 above, _quamvis vi cursus in altum Vela vocet_), _viam_ being either
the direct object of _teneant_, or in loose apposition to _Scyllam atque
Charybdim_.
l. 708--_tempestatibus actis_ with Rom. and Pal.; _actus_ Con. after
Med.
BOOK FOURTH
Totus hic liber . . . in consiliis et subtilitatibus est.
nam paene comicus stilus est. nec mirum, ubi de amore
tractatur.--Serv.
l. 273--Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 528--Omitted with the best MSS.
BOOK FIFTH
l. 595--_iuduntque per undas_, omitted with the preponderance of MS.
authority.
BOOK SIXTH
l. 242--Omitted with the balance of MS. authority.
l. 806--_virtutem extendere factis_ with Med.; _virtute extendere vires_
Con.
BOOK EIGHTH
l. 46--Omitted with the majority of the best MSS.
l. 383--_Arma rogo. Genetrix nato te filia Nerei_.
_Arma rogo._ hic distinguendum, ut cui petat non dicat, sed
relinquat intellegi . . . _Genetrix nato te filia Nerei._ hoc
est, soles hoc praestare matribus.--Serv.
BOOK NINTH
l. 29--Omitted with all the best MSS.
l. 122--Omitted with all the best MSS.
l. 281--
_Me nulla dies tam fortibus ausis
Dissimilem arguerit tantum, Fortuna secunda
Aut adversa cadat._
With some hesitation I have adopted this reading as the one open to
least objection, though the balance of authority is decidedly in favour
of _haud adversa_. For the position of _tantum_ cf. Ecl. x. 46,
according to the 'subtilior explicatio' now generally adopted.
l. 412--
_Et venit adversi in tergum Sulmonis ibique
Frangitur, et fisso transit praecordia ligno._
The phrase _in tergum_ occurs twice elsewhere: ix. 764--meaning 'on the
back'; and xi. 653--meaning 'backward'; and in x. 718 the uncertainty
about the order of the lines makes it possible that _tergo decutit
hastas_ was meant to refer to the boar, not to Mezentius. But the
passages quoted by the editors there shew that the word might be used in
the sense of 'shield'; and this being so we are scarcely justified in
reading _aversi_ against all the good MSS.
l. 529--Omitted with most MSS.
BOOK TENTH
l. 278--Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 754--_Insidiis, iaculo et longe fallente sagitta._ The MS. authority
is decidedly in favour of this, the more difficult reading; and the
hendiadys is not more violent than those in Georg. ii. 192, Aen. iii.
223.
BOOK TWELFTH
l. 218--_Tum magis, ut propius cernunt non viribus aequis._
With Ribbeck I believe that there is a gap in the sense here, and have
marked one in the translation.
l. 520--_Limina_ with Med. _Munera_ Con.
ll. 612, 613--Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 751--_Venator cursu canis et latratibus instat._ I take _cursu canis_
as equivalent to _currente cane_, as in i. 324, _spumantis apri cursum
clamore prementem_.
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
The following words appear with and without a hyphen. Spelling has been
left as in the original.
blood-stained bloodstained
hill-tops hilltops
horse-hair horsehair
life-blood lifeblood
new-born newborn
spear-shaft spearshaft
water-ways waterways
The following words are spelled in multiple ways. Spelling has been left
as in the original.
aery aëry
horned hornèd
Nereids Nereïd
Pergama Pergamea
The following corrections have made to the text:
page 173--'[quotation mark missing in original]Nymphs,
Laurentine Nymphs
page 202--in name fail to be Creüsa[original has Crëusa]
page 207--Rumour on fluttering[original has flutttering] wings
page 285--the Rhoetean[original has Rhoeteian] captain drives
his army
The first occurrence of Phoebus was rendered with an oe ligature in the
original.
Ellipses match the original.