and an army of beaters was sent to scour the hills and drive in the
game. At dawn a gallant company--all the proud lords of Carthage and
the comrades of Æneas--gathered at the palace gates and waited for the
Queen. At length she descended from her chamber, robed in gold and
purple, and the long cavalcade rode forth headed by Dido and Æneas.
When they reached the hills they scattered far and wide in the ardor
of the chase, and the royal pair found themselves alone. On a sudden
the heavens were darkened and the rain descended in torrents, and Dido
and Æneas betook themselves for shelter to a mountain cave. Thus had
Juno planned it, for she hated the Trojans and would have kept Æneas
in Carthage. There, in the dark cavern, the Trojan plighted his troth
to the Carthaginian Queen. That day the tide of death set in. The
heavens thundered and the mountain nymphs wailed over their bridal.
But the triumph of Juno was short-lived, for Jupiter, from his throne
on Olympus, beheld the founder of the Roman race forgetful of his
destiny and sunk in soft dalliance. He called to him his son Mercury,
and bade him bind on his winged sandals, and bear to Carthage this
stern reproof: "Shame on thee, degenerate hero, false to thy mother
and thy son, thus sunk in luxury and ease! Set sail and leave this
fatal shore."
The heart of the hero, when he heard this message, was torn in twain.
How could he disobey the voice of the god? How could he bring himself
to desert the Queen whose heart he had won, and break his troth?
But what were the closest of human ties when the god had spoken? So he
called to him his comrades and bade them in secret make ready the
ships for departure. But lovers' ears are keen, and rumors of the
preparation reached the Queen in her palace. She raved like a
madwoman, and called down curses on the perjured traitor. Grown
calmer, she sought Æneas and, with mingled reproaches and appeals to
his pity, besought him at least to delay his departure. The lover's
heart was touched, but the hero was unmoved; and with the gentlest
words he could frame, he told the Queen that he had no choice but to
follow his weird as Heaven ordained. He could never forget her
lovingkindness, and would cherish her memory to his dying day.
Then the Queen knew that she was betrayed, and flatteries and soft
words served but to rekindle her rage. She bade the perjured wretch
begone; she cursed his false gods and their lying message, and swore
that she would pursue him with black flames, and that after death her
ghost would haunt him in every place. This said, she turned and left
him, and he saw her nevermore.
Æneas would fain have stayed to calm her grief and soothe her rage,
but duty bade him go, and he urged on his men to equip the fleet for
departure. They, nothing loath, set to, and the harbor was like an
ant-hill, with the sailors shaping new oars and loading the beached
vessels. Soon the black keels rode the waters all along the shore.
Dido, perceiving this from her tower, sent her sister Anna with a last
message imploring Æneas yet a little to delay. But Æneas, steadfast as
a rock, turned to her a deaf ear, and into the heart of the unhappy
Dido came despair and thoughts of death.
To death, indeed, dark omens turned her mind. For when she offered
sacrifice, the wine which she poured upon the smoking incense turned
to blood; and at night, when kneeling before the shrine of her dead
husband, she heard his voice bidding her arise and come to him.
So the Queen, interpreting these dark signs as her sick heart
dictated, made ready to die.
Calling her sister Anna, she declared that she would now make use of a
magic charm given to her by a priestess to bring back faithless lovers
or make the love-sick whole. To work this spell it was necessary to
collect and burn all tokens of the light of love.
"Do you, therefore," said Dido to Anna, "gather together the arms and
garments which Æneas in his haste to be gone has left behind him, and
lay these upon a vast funeral pile, which I beseech you to erect
secretly in the inner court of the palace, under the open sky."
As she spoke, a deadly pallor overspread the face of Dido. But her
sister Anna, suspecting nothing, made haste to obey the Queen. The
great pile was quickly erected, with torches and fagots of oak, and
crowned with funeral boughs. On it were placed the weapons and raiment
of Æneas, while the Queen offered sacrifices, and herbs cut by
moonlight with brazen sickles.
Next morning, before daybreak, Æneas called upon his comrades to set
sail. With his own sword he cut the hawsers, and his men, pushing off,
smote the sounding waves with their oars, and the wind filling their
unfurled sails, they swept out into the open sea as the sun rose over
the waters.
From the tower of her palace Queen Dido saw them depart. And lifting
up her voice she laid a curse upon them, prophesying that for ages to
come dire enmity should rage between the race of Æneas and the
Carthaginian people.
Then, very pale, she entered the inner court and mounted the funeral
pile. A little while she paused, musing and shedding her last tears.
Anon she spoke, and bade farewell to the light of the sun: "I have
lived my life; I have finished the course ordained to me by Fate. I
have raised a glorious city. I descend illustrious to the shades
below."
She paused, and her voice fell to a low wail as she added: "Happy, ah,
too happy, my lot had the Trojan ships never touched my shores!"
Then, unsheathing the sword, she plunged it into her bosom and fell
down upon the pyre.
Her handmaidens, seeing her fall, rent the air with their cries. And
Anna, rushing in, raised her dying sister in her arms, striving in
vain to stanch the flowing blood, and crying with tears: "Oh, sister,
was it for this that you bade me raise the pyre? Ah, would that you
had let me be your companion in death!"
But the last words of Dido, Queen of Carthage, had been spoken.
* * * * *
Far out at sea, Æneas saw a great smoke rising from Carthage, as it
were from a funeral pyre. And a sore pang smote him, and bitterly he
divined what had passed. But he held upon his destined way, nor looked
he back again, but turned his eyes towards the promised land of
Latium.
ÆNEAS IN HADES
BY V. C. TURNBULL
"The journey down to the abyss
Is prosperous and light;
The palace gates of gloomy Dis
Stand open day and night;
But upward to retrace the way,
And pass into the light of day,--
There comes the stress of labor--this
May task a hero's might."
VIRGIL.--_Conington's Translation._
Æneas, in the course of his wanderings, landed on the shores of Cumæ
in Italy. Here he sought out the Sibyl, the inspired prophetess who
dwelt in a cave behind the temple of Apollo, and gave forth to
inquirers the answers of the god. High destinies she promised Æneas,
but not without many further trials.
Æneas, undismayed, besought the Sibyl to guide him on his way: "O
Priestess, it has been told that here are the gates of the lower
world. Open for me, I beg of you, that portal, for I long greatly to
speak once more with my dear father. I bore him on my shoulders from
flaming Troy, and in all my voyages he accompanied me, facing, though
infirm, the terrors of sea and sky. Nay, more, it was at his bidding
that I came a suppliant to thy temple. Have pity upon us both, O
Sybil, and enable us to meet once more."
Then the Sibyl, in reply, warned Æneas that though many went down
with ease into the Abode of the Dead, few--very few, and they the
specially favored of the gods--returned therefrom. "But if," she went
on, "you are determined to dare the desperate enterprise, seek out in
this dark wood a tree that hides one branch all golden. This bough is
sacred to Proserpine, Queen of the Lower World, and to her must you
bear it as a gift. Without it no living being may enter the Lower
World. Pluck it, and if the Fates have willed it so, it will yield at
a touch, else no mortal force can wrest it from its parent stem."
So Æneas and Achates plunged into the primeval forest near which the
Sibyl dwelt. They had not gone far when two doves alighted on the
sward hard by. Then Æneas was glad, for he knew them to be the birds
of his mother Venus, and he besought his mother that her messengers
might guide him on his way. And the doves flitted on before them till
they lighted at last on a lofty tree, amid the boughs of which Æneas
discerned the gleam of gold. This was the Golden Bough, growing like
mistletoe from the oak, and there was a tinkle in the air as the
breeze rustled the golden foil. Joyfully Æneas broke it from the
trunk, and bore it back to the dwelling of the Sibyl.
Then the priestess led the way back into the gloomy wood, halting
before a cavern, vast and hideous with its yawning black mouth, from
which exhaled so poisonous a breath that no bird could cross it
unhurt. Here Æneas and the Sibyl offered sacrifices to the Gods of the
Lower World. At sunrise the ground began to rumble beneath their feet,
and a baying of hell-dogs rolled up from the chasm.
"Avaunt, ye profane!" cried the priestess, "and, Æneas, do thou draw
thy sword and march boldly forward; now is the hour to try thy
mettle."
So saying, she plunged into the dark cavern, and Æneas, following,
entered the world of the dead.
In a desolate country on the outskirts of the spirit-world they saw
the forms of Grief and vengeful Cares; here dwelt disconsolate Old
Age, Fear, Famine, Death, and Toil. Murderous War was here, and
frantic Discord, whose viperous locks are bound with bloody fillets.
All these they passed, coming to the turbid flood Acheron, on which
the ferryman Charon, a grisly, unkempt graybeard, with eyes of flame,
plied to and fro.
On the banks of the river stood a great company of ghosts, matrons and
men, boys and maidens, numerous as swallows flying south, or leaves
before the autumn wind. They stood praying to be taken into the boat,
and stretching their hands towards the farther shore; but the sullen
boatman would take only a few, choosing whom he would. Then, in reply
to his questions, the priestess told Æneas that the bodies of those
whom the boatman refused had been left unburied upon earth, wherefore
these ghosts were doomed to flutter for a hundred years along the
shores of Acheron before Charon would consent to ferry them across.
By this time they had reached the landing-stage, and the priestess
beckoned to Charon; he refusing at first to carry a mortal across that
river till she showed him the Golden Bough. At the sight of this
Charon came at once with his boat, pushing out the ghosts that sat
therein to make room for Æneas. Groaning beneath the weight of a
mortal the boat was well-nigh swamped, but at length the priestess
and the hero were safely landed on the farther shore.
But now at the gate stood Cerberus, the three-headed dog, making those
realms resound with his barking. To him the priestess threw an opiate
of honey-cakes, and he, snatching at it with his three mouths, lay
down to sleep, thus permitting them to pass.
Now to their ears came the wails of infants, ghosts of those who had
been bereft of sweet life even at their mother's breast. Next came
those who had been condemned to death unheard or falsely charged. Full
justice they now received; Minos the judge metes out to each his
proper sentence.
After these Æneas came upon a group of those unhappy ones who with
their own hands had destroyed their lives. Ah, gladly now would they
endure poverty and toil could they but revisit the kindly light of the
sun!
Now Æneas entered a region named the Fields of Mourning, inhabited by
the ghosts of those who had died for love. And among them, in a wood,
Æneas saw, or deemed he saw, dim as the new moon in a cloudy sky, the
form of Dido, still pale from her death-wound. Tears in his eyes, he
addressed her sad ghost with loving words as of old: "So, as I feared,
it was true, the message of those funeral fires. And was I, alas! the
cause of your death? O Queen, believe that it was against my will that
I left thy coasts! Unwilling, I swear, by the behest of the gods did I
leave thee, even as now, by the same behest, I tread the land of
darkness and despair. Ah, tarry but a little! 'Tis our last
farewell."
[Illustration: ÆNEAS IN HADES]
So he spoke, seeking to soothe the injured shade. But she, with
averted eyes, stood still as a statue of stone. Then in silent scorn
she fled to seek her first lord, Sichæus, who answers sorrow with
sorrow.
Thence to the farthest fields they passed the haunts of heroes slain
in battle; and here Æneas greeted many comrades of early days. But
when the ghosts of Agamemnon's Greek army beheld the mighty hero, his
arms gleaming through the shades, they quaked, and many fled as
erstwhile before to their ships, while others, trying to raise the
war-cry, could utter only "the bat-like shrilling of the dead."
A pitiful shade, with marred visage and mangled body, approached them,
and Æneas recognized the ghost of Deiphobus, son of Priam, and asked
of his cruel fate; and Deiphobus poured forth the long tale of his
wife's treachery, and how he had been foully slaughtered in his sleep.
Long had they thus conversed, but the Sibyl plucked Æneas by the robe
and warned him: "Night falls apace; 'tis time to go. Thou hast come to
the parting of the ways. Here lie Elysium and the fields of the
blessed, and there, to the left, Tartarus and the tortures of the
damned." And even now Æneas descried vast prisons inclosed with a
triple wall, round which the river Phlegethon rolled its threefold
floods of flame, while rocks whirled roaring down the stream. Over
against the stream stood a massive gateway, whose adamantine columns
defied all force of men or gods, and above the gate rose a tower of
iron. Here sat the Fury Tisiphone, watching all who entered. And from
within the gate came groans and the whistling of scourges and the
clanking of chains.
Æneas asked what meant this woful wailing, and the Sibyl replied:
"None innocent may cross that threshold. There Rhadamanthus judges
the dead, and avenging Tisiphone scourges the guilty. Within the gate
rages the Hydra with fifty gaping mouths. Downward sinks the pit,
twice as deep as the heavens are high. In it groan the Titans, hurled
down with thunderbolts, and the giants, Otus and Ephialtes, who strove
to overturn the throne of Jupiter himself. There lies Tityus, o'er
nine roods outstretched, and eternally does a vulture tear his liver
with her beak. Over some hangs a rock threatening ever to fall; before
others a bounteous banquet is continually spread, but the hands that
they stretch to take the food are evermore struck back by the Furies.
Some roll a huge stone, others are bound to the revolving wheel. Here
lie they who heaped up riches for themselves, an unnumbered multitude;
here also they who hated their brothers or lifted cruel hands against
their parents. Take warning by their fate, and ask no further
concerning their awful doom."
Thus warned, Æneas went forward in silence, and at the direction of
the Sibyl he offered the Golden Bough at the gate.
Now came they at length to the regions of joy, the green retreats and
happy groves of Elysium. An ampler ether and a purer light invest
these fields, for the blessed have their own sun and stars. In jousts
and races, in dance and song, they fleet the golden hours, a blessed
company of bards and patriots, paladins and victors in the races.
Among them Æneas marked Ilus, a former king of Troy, and Dardanus,
that city's founder. Their chariots were empty, their spears stood
fixed in the ground, their horses fed at large throughout the plain,
for the ruling purpose in life survives the grave.
There, in a sequestered dale, stood Anchises surveying the souls that
were to revisit earth once more, among them his own offspring yet
unborn. But when he saw Æneas moving to meet him, with outstretched
arms and tearful eyes he cried: "O my son, my son, hast thou come to
me indeed? Am I permitted to see thy face and hear thy well-known
voice once more?" And Æneas answered, weeping also: "Give me thy hand,
my father, and take me to thy breast." Thrice he strove to throw his
arm round his father, thrice the phantom slipped from his embrace,
thin as the fluttering breeze or like a dream of the night. Gazing
around him he saw in a wooded glade numberless peoples and tribes,
hovering above the brakes like bees in summer-time, and he inquired of
his sire what these might be.
Then Anchises taught Æneas many wonderful things concerning the state
of departed souls in Elysium and the future of the Trojan race. And
touching the first, he said that after suffering many things the evil
of their natures was washed or burned away, and they passed to
Elysium, there to dwell for a thousand years. "All these," he
continued, "are then summoned forth by the gods in a great body to the
river Lethe, wherein they leave all memory of the past and again
become willing to return into mortal bodies."
Saying this, he led Æneas to the summit of a hill from which they who
were to be born could be seen passing in an endless file before them.
"See you," he said, "that youth leaning on a pointless spear? He shall
be Silvius, the child of thy old age, and shall reign over Alba Longa.
Behold there Romulus, the founder of Rome, the city of the seven
hills, he shall rule the world. The graybeard behind him is Numa, the
lawgiver, and next comes Tullus, the warrior. Those that follow are
the proud Tarquins. There, too, is Brutus, unhappy man, who shall give
liberty to Rome; and, unhappy father! whose inflexible justice shall
doom to death his guilty sons."
All these and many others who sprang from Æneas' loins, did Anchises
point out, crying as he ended: "To you, O Romans, be it given to rule
the nations, to dictate terms of peace, to spare the humbled, and to
crush the proud."
Last they watched the great Marcellus, the terror of the Gauls, the
conqueror of Carthage.
Then Æneas asked: "What youth is he, O father, who walks by his side
in shining armor; but his countenance is sad, his eyes fixed upon the
ground? Is he a son, or haply a grandson?"
And Anchises wept as he replied: "Alas, my son, for the sorrows of thy
kindred! Dear child of pity! could'st thou but burst thy fate's
invidious bar, our own Marcellus thou! Ah! woful shall be the day of
his death! Could he but live none had faced his onset. Bring
lilies--lilies in handfuls; let me heap bright flowers on the shade
unborn, and pay at least this empty tribute."[1]
Thus they passed through Elysium, Anchises showing and explaining all
to Æneas, firing him with the thoughts of future fame, and instructing
him how to act throughout the struggles of his remaining life. Then,
when all had been shown and said, Father Anchises sent back his son
Æneas and the Sibyl to the mortal world by that shining Ivory Gate
where through pass the dreams that visit the slumbers of men.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The reference is to Marcellus, nephew and son-in-law of Augustus,
and his destined heir. He died at the early age of eighteen.
NISUS AND EURYALUS
BY F. STORR
Æneas was absent from the camp. Warned by Father Tiber he had gone
with a picked band of followers to seek the alliance of his kinsman,
King Evander, who with his Arcadians had settled themselves on the
seven hills which now are Rome.
Whilst he was away, the camp was left in charge of his son Iulus, and
as adjutant and counselor to the young prince he appointed his most
experienced general, old Aletes.
But Juno, the implacable foe of Troy, had despatched to Turnus, the
Rutulian Prince, her messenger Iris to tell him of Æneas' absence and
bid him seize the occasion to storm the Trojan camp. So all day long
the garrison, reduced in numbers and without its great captain, saw
the tide of horse and foot, Latins, Rutulians, and Etruscans,
gathering in the plain and sweeping onward to overwhelm them, like the
Nile in full flood. As Æneas had bid them, they retired within their
intrenchments, too strong to be carried at the first assault.
At nightfall the enemy withdrew, and the weary defenders lay down to
sleep, but in fear of a night attack they ventured not to unbuckle
their armor, and at each camp-gate was posted a strong guard of
sentinels.
Conspicuous among the captains of the guard was Nisus, whom his
mother, Ida, the world-famed huntress, had sent as squire to Æneas, no
less skilled than his mother with javelin or with bow. With him as
his lieutenant was Euryalus, the fairest youth, save Iulus alone, in
all the Trojan host, the down of manhood just showing on his cheek,
elsewise as round and smooth as a girl's.
The two were more than brothers-in-arms, inseparable as twin cherries
on a single stalk; the one followed the other as his shadow, and their
love was more than the love of man and maid.
And now as they kept watch together they thus conversed:
NISUS. I know not what ails me, brother, but to-night I feel a wild
unrest, a strange prompting to be up and doing some doughty deed. What
think you, brother? Is it an inspiration of heaven or only my own
fiery spirit, pent up within these walls and fretting for the fray?
Mark you, brother. The enemy's camp is silent as the tomb. Not a
sentinel is stirring, and the rare watch-fires burn low. 'Tis plain to
me that the captains, having driven us back to our trenches, have been
celebrating their victory and are now buried in drunken slumber. Now I
will expound to thee the plan that is working in my brain. At all
hazards Æneas must be summoned back from the city of Evander--so our
generals and men are all agreed. If only my proposal is accepted,
methinks I have discovered a way to bear the message and work our
deliverance.
EURYALUS. Verily 'tis a glorious venture and well worth the risk, but
thou speakest as if the venture were thine. Can I have heard thee
aright? Truly, brother, the plan is _thine_, but the execution is
_ours_. Thinkest thou, brother, alone to put thy head into the lion's
mouth? Shall I not share thy triumph or thy death? In life we have
been one, and in death we shall not be divided.
NISUS. Nay, brother, I never doubted thy courage or thy love. This
thought alone, perhaps a selfish thought, was mine: if perchance I
should fall--and sanguine as I am of success I know 'tis a perilous
hazard--I would fain one sure friend survived to lay my body in mother
earth, or if that grace is denied, at least to perform due rites at my
cenotaph. I thought, moreover, that thou art the younger man and thy
mother's only son.
EURYALUS. Out on thy vain excuses! Only if thou takest me with thee
will I forgive them. My mind is set. Let us to work.
So they called to the nearest sentinels to relieve them of their guard
and hurried to seek Iulus. They found him in his tent presiding over a
council of war, but the sentries let them pass on business that would
not wait. It chanced that the captains were at that moment debating
how possibly to convey a message to Æneas informing him of their
pressing need, and when Nisus expounded to them his plan, assuring
them that as a young hunter he had explored every inch of the ground
and knew a secret forest path that would lead them to the rear of the
enemy's camp, he was welcomed as a messenger sent from heaven. Old
Aletes laid his hands on their heads and with tears in his eyes
blessed the gods for sending such deliverers. "Young heroes!" he
cried, "your virtue is its own reward, but Æneas, when he returns,
will know how to recompense you." Iulus, with boyish generosity,
promised them his choicest treasures, embossed tankards and two
talents of gold, aye and the charger and arms of Turnus, whose fall
was certain when Æneas returned; and he put his arms round Euryalus'
neck (the youth was scarce older than himself) and called him his
brother-in-arms.
Boldened by this signal favor of the prince, Euryalus, on bended knee,
besought one parting boon. "Prince," he cried, "I have an aged mother
who for my sake left her native home and the court of King Acestes to
accompany me to the wars. I may not stay to bid her farewell and
receive her blessing, nor could I dare confide to her our perilous
errand. Thou hast deigned to call me brother: O prince, be to her a
son. To know that thou wilt be here to solace and comfort her will
give me fresh confidence." The prince swore to love and cherish her no
less than his own lost mother, Creusa, and wishing him Godspeed he
girt on his shoulder the sword of that famous Cretan swordsman,
Lycaon, with hilt of wrought gold and scabbard of ivory. To Nisus,
Achates gave his own helmet, that had borne the brunt of many a shrewd
blow.
Thus armed and charged with many messages from Iulus to his father
they left the camp, and the captains sent after them a parting cheer.