THE FUNERAL GAMES.
Far off at sea, Æneas and his crew see the flames go up from Dido’s
palace.
“What cause has lit so fierce a flame
They know not; but the pangs of shame
From great love wronged, and what despair
Will make a baffled woman dare,--
All this they know; and knowing tread
The paths of presage vague and dread.”
Not yet is their course clear for Italy. A storm comes on, and they make
for refuge towards the friendly coast of Sicily, and run their vessels
into a sheltered bay under Mount Eryx. Their return is gladly welcomed
by their late host, Acestes, who receives the wanderers, as before, with
princely hospitality, still mindful of his own Trojan blood. It chances
that the morrow is the anniversary of the burial of Anchises; and Æneas,
summoning an open-air council of his crews, announces to them his
intention of commemorating his father by a solemn public sacrifice. It
is a day which--wherever his lot may be hereafter cast--he will ever
keep holy; and not without some providential guidance, as he deems, has
this opportunity been afforded him, by his being driven back to Sicily,
of celebrating it on friendly soil under the auspices of his kinsman.
There shall be nine days of sacrifice and prayer; then shall follow
funeral games, with prizes at his own cost.
The sacrificial oxen are duly slain, and the libations poured at the
tomb of Anchises; the bowls of new milk, of wine, and of blood, and the
fresh spring flowers, which were reckoned acceptable offerings to the
dead. Then Æneas lifts his voice in prayer to the shade of the hero, and
a startling omen follows the invocation. A serpent, dappled with green
and gold, glides out of the tomb, tastes of the offerings, and
disappears again. Æneas sees in the creature the tutelary genius of the
spot, or, it may be, the special attendant of his father’s shade. In
either case, he accepts its appearance as a good omen, and joyfully
redoubles his devotions.
In the funeral games which follow, the Roman poet no doubt had two
models in his mind. He was ambitious to reproduce, or perhaps to rival,
in Roman, song, for an audience of his countrymen, the grand description
which his great master Homer had given of the games which Achilles
celebrates in honour of the dead Patroclus. He wished also, there can be
little doubt, to pay a poet’s best compliment to his imperial patron,
and to weave into his song, with such licence of embellishment as is
allowed to all poets, a record of those funeral games which Augustus
had instituted in remembrance of his uncle, the great Dictator Julius.
But Virgil is here very far from being a mere copyist from Homer. In
lieu of the chariot-race, the great feature in the games of the Iliad,
he has given us a galley-race, the incidents of which are quite as
exciting, and to our modern comprehensions more thoroughly intelligible.
The day fixed for the great spectacle has arrived, and the Sicilians
from far and near flock to it, some to take part in the games, and all
to see. First of the various contests comes the galley-race, for which
four of the fastest vessels in the fleet have entered--the Shark, the
Centaur, the Chimæra, and the Scylla; each displaying, no doubt, as its
figure-head, a representation of the monster whose name it bore. Their
captains were men well known. Humouring a genealogical fancy of his
Roman countrymen for tracing their descent to some one of the old Trojan
colonists,--much after the fashion of English houses who try to find an
ancestor on the Roll of Battle Abbey,--the poet tells us that three at
least out of the four gave their names in due time to patrician houses
in Rome. Mnestheus, who commands the Shark, left his name (certainly
with considerable modification) to the _gens_ or clan of Memmius. The
captain of the Centaur, Sergestus, is in like manner the reputed
ancestor of the Sergian clan, as Cloanthus, who sails the Scylla, is of
the Cluentian. Only Gyas, the captain of the Chimæra, a bulky craft, “as
big as a town,” has no such genealogical honours assigned him.
The course lies out in the bay, and the competing vessels are to round a
rock, covered at high tides, on which an oak has been set up, leaves and
all, to serve as a mark for the steersmen. They take up their positions
by lot, and await the signal, to be given by sound of trumpet. The
picture of the start would suit, with wonderfully little alteration, the
description of a modern University boat-race:--
“And now on rowing-bench they sit,
Bend to the oar their arms close knit,
And straining watch the sign to start,
While generous trembling fills each heart,
And thirst for victory.
Then, at the trumpet’s piercing sound,
All from their stations onward bound:
Upsoars to heaven the oarsmen’s shout,
The upturned billows froth and spout.
* * * * *
With plaudits loud and clamorous zeal
Echoes the woodland round;
The pent shores roll the thunder-peal,
The stricken hills resound.”
[Our modern oarsmen would certainly be wiser in this, that they would
reserve their own breath (of which they would find considerable need
towards the end of the race), and leave the whole of the shouting to be
done by enthusiastic spectators.]
“First Gyas issues from the rout,
And holds the foremost place:
Cloanthus next; his oarsmen row
More featly, but his bark is slow,
And checks him in the race.
Behind at equal distance strain
Centaur and Shark the lead to gain;
And now the Shark darts forth, and now
The Centaur has advanced her bow;
And now the twain move side by side,
Their long keels trailing through the tide.”
So goes the race, until the galleys near the rock which they have to
round. Gyas sees that his steersman, from over caution, is giving it too
wide a berth, and that there is danger of the Scylla, more venturous,
cutting in between. He shouts an order to keep closer in; but the old
seaman is somewhat obstinate, and it is very soon too late. Cloanthus
has seen his advantage, shot round the rock at very close quarters, and
now leaves Gyas in the Chimæra behind. Burning with fury, Gyas turns on
his steersman, and pitches him into the sea. Happily he can swim, and
the rock is close at hand; he climbs upon it, and sits there dripping,
to the considerable amusement of the spectators, who, like all
lookers-on, seem unmercifully alive to the ludicrous element in any
disaster.
Deprived of her helmsman, the huge Chimæra loses her course for a
moment, and the two galleys in the rear are quick to take advantage of
it. The Shark and Centaur are now rounding the rock almost side by side.
But Sergestus, in his eagerness not to lose an inch of advantage,
emulates the manœuvre of the Scylla too closely, and takes the Centaur
too near. Her broadside of oars touch some of the jutting crags, the
oars are broken, and the boat’s head takes the rock, and hangs there
hard and fast. All efforts of the crew to get her off are unavailing.
Mnestheus makes the dangerous turn safely on the outside of his rival,
and his men, encouraged by success, redouble their efforts. The Chimæra
has no good steersman to replace old Menœtes, who is still drying
himself on the rock, and she is easily passed on the return course
homewards. The struggle becomes now one of intense interest between
Mnestheus and Cloanthus, who is still leading in the Scylla.
“The cheers redouble from the shore;
Heaven echoes with the wild uproar;
Those blush to lose a conquering game,
And fain would peril life for fame;
These bring success their zeal to fan--
They can, because they think they can.”
The Shark has a stern chase, but the Scylla rows heavily, as we have
been told, though she has the best crew, and the distance lessens at
every stroke. Had the course been longer, the Shark would have made at
least a dead heat of it. But as it is, amidst a storm of shouts, the
Scylla wins. The turning-point of victory is one which does not approve
itself to modern readers. The sea-deities interfere. Standing high upon
his quarter-deck, Cloanthus lifts his prayer to the powers of ocean, not
to permit his prize to be snatched from him at the last. He vows an
offering of a milk-white bull and libations of red wine if they will
help him at his need.
“He said; there heard him ’neath the sea
The Nereid train and Panope;
And with his hand divinely strong,
Portunus[28] pushed the bark along.”
Possibly, after all, the poet only means us to understand that this was
Mnestheus’s explanation of his defeat--that the luck was against
him.[29]
Cloanthus is crowned with bays as the victor of the day, and receives as
his prize an embroidered robe of rare device--one of those miracles of
divers colours of needlework in which the classical age seems to have as
far excelled us as the mediæval ladies certainly did. Each crew receives
three oxen and a supply of wine, while a talent of silver is divided
amongst the men of the victorious Scylla. Mnestheus, as second in the
race, wins a shirt of mail whose scales are of gold, which two of his
attendants bear off with difficulty. The third of the captains has a
pair of brazen caldrons and chased silver bowls. But while the awards
are being distributed, the crippled Centaur has got off the rock, and is
brought into harbour; and a Cretan slave-woman, with her twin children,
is allotted, by the liberality of Æneas, as a consolation to her
captain.
From the shore of the bay the company now move off to a natural
amphitheatre close at hand, where the rest of the games are to be
exhibited. Æneas takes his place high in the midst on an extemporised
throne. For the foot-race, which comes first on the list, a crowd of
competitors enter, both of native Sicilians and of their Trojan guests.
Among the Sicilians are Salius and Patron, of Greek families settled in
the island, and Helymus and Panopes, friends and companions of Acestes.
The favourites among the Trojans are Diores, one of the many sons of
Priam, and Nisus and Euryalus, noted for their romantic friendship, of
which we shall hear more hereafter. The prizes in this contest are a
war-horse with full trappings for the first, an Amazonian quiver for the
second, and a helmet--the spoil of some conquered Greek on the plain of
Troy--for the third. Nisus goes off with a strong lead, and has the race
easily in hand. Next him, but at a long interval, comes Salius, Euryalus
lying third, Helymus and Diores, close together, fourth and fifth. But
when within a short distance of the goal, Nisus slips up in the blood
and filth which has been left uncleared at the spot where the oxen have
been sacrificed, and falls heavily to the ground. Knowing himself to be
out of the race, he determines that his dear Euryalus shall win. So, by
a piece of most unjustifiable jockeyship, which ought to have led to his
being warned off from all such contests for ever after, he rises up at
the moment that Salius is passing, and brings him down upon him.
Euryalus has thus an easy victory, Helymus and Diores coming in second
and third. Very naturally, there is much dispute about the award. Salius
complains loudly of unfair play; but young Euryalus is handsome and
popular, and Diores backs his claim energetically; for it is very
evident that if Salius is adjudged the first prize, Euryalus the second,
and Helymus the third, then he--Diores--will be nowhere. So the result
is accepted by the judges as it stands. But Æneas quiets the reasonable
objections of Salius by the present of a lion’s hide with gilded claws.
Then Nisus makes appeal for compensation, pointing out to the laughing
spectators the blood and dirt which are the very disagreeable evidences
of his mishap, and protesting, with a consummate impudence which suits
with the popular humour, that the whole thing was an accident, and that
he, as the winner that would have been, is the real object of
commiseration. If a fall deserves a prize, who has so good a claim as
the man who fell first? Again the generosity of Æneas answers the
appeal, and Nisus is presented with a shield of the finest workmanship,
another Greek trophy. Successful knavery, if the knave be somewhat of a
humourist withal, always wins a sort of sympathy from the public--in the
Augustan epic as well as in modern comedy.
The prizes of the foot-race having been thus decided, the lists are
cleared for the boxing-match. The boxing-match of the classical ancients
was very different indeed from a modern set-to. The combatants certainly
wore gloves; but these were meant to add weight and force to the blow,
not to deaden it. The stoutest champion of the modern prize-ring might
shrink from encountering an antagonist whose fists were bound round with
strips of hardened ox-hide. But such was the “cæstus” which was worn by
the pugilists of this heroic age. The prizes are displayed by Æneas; for
the conqueror, a bull with gilded horns; a helmet and falchion for the
loser. Up rises the Trojan Dares, whose strength and skill are well
known. The only man whom he acknowledged as his superior in the ring was
one whom we might have least expected--Paris, who certainly bears no
such reputation in Homer. At the great games held in honour of the dead
Hector, of which we have the very briefest note in the Iliad, Dares had
defeated the huge champion Butes, sprung from a race of athletes, and so
mangled him that he died on the spot. No wonder that when he now steps
forth, and goes through some preparatory sparring with the air, no one
is found bold enough to put on the gloves with him. So, after a glance
of triumph round the admiring circle, he advances to where the bull
stands in front of Æneas, lays his hand upon its horns, and claims it as
his rightful property in default of an antagonist.
King Acestes is concerned for the honour of Sicily. There is lying
beside him on the grass a grey-haired chief named Entellus, sometime a
pupil in this art of the great hero Eryx, who gave his name to the
mountain which overhangs the place of assembly. Will he sit tamely by,
Acestes asks, and see this Trojan boaster carry off the prize and the
glory unchallenged? Entellus listens to his friend, and feels the old
fire stir within him. He would willingly enter the ring once more for
the honour of his native island,--
“But strength is slack in limbs grown old,
And aged blood runs dull and cold.
Had I the thing I once possessed,
Which makes yon braggart rear his crest,
Had I but youth, no need had been
Of gifts, to lure me to the green.”
He rises from his seat, however, and throws down in the arena, by way of
challenge, a pair of ancient gloves of a most murderous pattern. Seven
folds of tough bull-hide have knobs of lead and iron sewn inside them.
They are the gloves in which the hero Eryx fought his fatal battle with
Hercules, whom he had rashly challenged, and they still bear the
blood-stains of Eryx’s previous victories. Dares, stout champion as he
is, starts back in dismay when he sees them, and Æneas himself takes
them up and handles them with wonder. Entellus, however, will not insist
on using these; and two pair of less formidable manufacture and of equal
weight are produced, with which the two heroes engage. Virgil’s
description of this ancient prize-fight is highly spirited. It may
remind some readers, who are old enough to remember such things, of the
bulletins of similar encounters between a “light-weight” and a
“heavy-weight,” furnished in past days by sporting writers to our own
newspapers--with the happy omission of the slang of the ring:--
“Raised on his toes each champion stands,
And fearless lifts in air his hands.
Their heads thrown back avoid the stroke;
Their mighty arms the fight provoke.
That on elastic youth relies,
This on vast limbs and giant size;
But the huge knees with age are slack,
And fitful gasps the deep chest rack.
Full many a blow the heroes rain
Each on the other, still in vain:
Their hollow sides return the sound,
Their battered chests the shock rebound:
’Mid ears and temples come and go
The wandering gauntlets to and fro:
The jarred teeth chatter ’neath the blow.
Firm stands Entellus in his place,
A column rooted on its base;
His watchful eye and shrinking frame
Alone avoid the gauntlet’s aim.
Like leaguer who invests a town,
Or sits before a hill-fort down,
The younger champion tasks his art
To find the bulwark’s weakest part;
This way and that unwearied scans,
And vainly tries a thousand plans.
Entellus, rising to the blow,
Puts forth his hand: the wary foe
Midway in air the mischief spied,
And, deftly shifting, slipped aside.
Entellus’ force on air is spent:
Heavily down with prone descent
He falls, as from its roots uprent
A pine falls hollow, on the side
Of Erymanth or lofty Ide.”
Acestes rushes in, like an attentive second, to raise his friend; and
Entellus, roused to fury by his fall, renews the fight savagely:--
“Ablaze with fury he pursues
The Trojan o’er the green,
And now his right hand deals the bruise,
And now his left as keen.
No pause, no respite: fierce and fast
As hailstones rattle down the blast
On sloping roofs, with blow on blow,
He buffets Dares to and fro.”
The unhappy Dares is borne off by his friends in miserable plight,--with
half his teeth knocked out, blood streaming from his face, and hardly
able to stand. All the savage has been roused in Entellus’s nature by
the fight. He is not half satisfied that his victim has escaped him. He
would gladly have sacrificed him to the memory of his great master
Eryx,--here, on the spot where that hero fought his own last fight. He
lays his hand upon the bull, the prize of battle, and addresses Æneas
and the spectators. Dryden’s version of this passage, though it contains
as much of Dryden as of Virgil, has justly been praised as very noble:--
“O goddess-born, and ye Dardanian host,
Mark with attention, and forgive my boast;
Learn what I was by what remains, and know
From what impending fate you saved my foe!
Sternly he spoke, and then confronts the bull;
And on his ample forehead aiming full,
The deadly stroke descending pierced the skull.
Down drops the beast, nor needs a second wound,
But sprawls in pangs of death, and spurns the ground.
‘Then thus, in Dares’ stead, I offer this:
Eryx, accept a nobler sacrifice;
Take the last gift my withered arms can yield--
Thy gauntlets I resign, and here renounce the field.’”
Mr Conington has well remarked that here we have, no doubt, “the veteran
combatant’s feelings as conceived by the veteran poet.” He wrote the
lines in his sixty-second year, and they harmonise pathetically with the
words in his dedication: “What I now offer to your lordship is the
wretched remainder of a sickly age.” We are not obliged to take this
self-depreciation too literally: whatever may be the shortcomings of
Dryden’s translation, the hand of the old poet had no more lost its
vigour than that of Entellus.
The archers are next to try their skill. In this contest Acestes himself
takes part. The other competitors are Mnestheus, whose crew were just
now second in the race; Eurytion, a brother of Pandarus, the great
archer of the Iliad, whose treacherous arrow, launched against Menelaus
during the truce, had wellnigh turned the fate of Troy; and Hippocoon,
of whom we know nothing more. He draws the first lot, and his arrow
strikes the mast on which the mark, a live dove, is perched. Mnestheus
shoots next, and cuts the cord which fetters her; and as she flies away
a shaft from Eurytion’s bow follows and kills her. There is nothing left
for Acestes to do, but to shoot an arrow high in the air to show the
strength of his hand and his bow. To the astonishment of the gazers, the
arrow takes fire, and, leaving a trail of light on its path like a
shooting-star, vanishes in the sky. It is an omen, as Æneas declares; it
must be that the gods, in spite of facts, will him to be the real
victor. So the prize--an embossed bowl, a present from the father of
Hecuba to Anchises--is awarded to the Sicilian prince, even Eurytion,
the actual winner, acquiescing heartily in the arrangement. Yet the
omen, as the poet tells us, really boded disaster; though whether to
Sicily or to the Trojans, or how it was afterwards fulfilled, he does
not stop to explain. Commentators have, as a matter of duty, done so for
him; but it is hardly worth while to vex ourselves with their
conjectures on a point on which Æneas himself was mistaken.
The games are over--at least, so far as the public programme seems to
have gone. But Æneas has a surprise in store for his hosts. He whispers
privately to the governor or tutor of his son Iulus, while he requests
the company once more to clear the amphitheatre. Soon there sweeps into
the ring the young chivalry of Troy--a goodly company of mounted youths,
all of noble blood, who are to play out their play before their
assembled seniors.
“They enter, glittering side by side,
And rein their steeds with youthful pride,
As ’neath their fathers’ eyes they ride,
While all Trinacria’s host and Troy’s
With plaudits greet the princely boys.
Each has his hair by rule confined
With stripped-off leaves in garland twined:
Some ride with shapely bows equipped:
Two cornel spears they bear, steel-tipped:
And wreaths of twisted gold invest
The neck, and sparkle on the breast.
Three are the companies of horse,
And three the chiefs that scour the course:
Twelve gallant boys each chief obey,
And shine in tripartite array.
Young Priam first, Polites’ heir,
Well pleased his grandsire’s name to bear,
Leads his gay troop, himself decreed
To raise up an Italian seed:
He prances forth, all dazzling bright,
On Thracian steed with spots of white:
White on its fetlock’s front is seen,
And white the space its brows between.
Then Atys, next in place, from whom
The Atian family descend:
Young Atys, fresh with life’s first bloom,
The boy Iulus’ sweet boy-friend:
Iulus last, in form and face
Pre-eminent his peers above,
A courser rides of Tyrian race,
Memorial gift of Dido’s love.
Sicilian steeds the rest bestride
From old Acestes’ stalls supplied.
The Dardanids with mingling cheers
Relieve the young aspirants’ fears,
And gaze delighted, as they trace
A parent’s mien in each fair face.
“And now, when all from first to last
Beneath their kinsfolk’s eyes had past,
Before the assembled crowd,
Epytides shrills forth from far
His signal-shout, as if for war,
And cracks his whip aloud.
In equal parts the bands divide,
And gallop off on either side:
Then wheeling round in full career
Charge at a call with levelled spear
Again, again they come and go,
Through adverse spaces to and fro;
Circles in circles interlock,
And, sheathed in arms, the gazers mock
With mimicry of battle-shock.
And now they turn their backs in flight,
Now put their spears in rest,
And now in amity unite,
And ride the field abreast.”
Such was the Ludus Trojæ--“The Game of Troy”--introduced, according to
the poet, by Iulus in after-days into his new-built town of Alba, and
borrowed from Alba by the Romans. Whatever its origin may have been, it
was revived at Rome by Augustus, in his zeal for restorations of all
kinds, as “an ancient and honourable institution.” Princes of the
imperial house--young Marcellus, and Tiberius the future emperor--rode,
like Iulus, in the show; the emperor himself took a warm interest in it;
and the eagerness of the young patricians to distinguish themselves in
the various manœuvres before his eyes and those of their friends led to
serious accidents. To one young horseman who was crippled by his fall
Augustus gave a golden torque, and granted to him and his family
permission to bear the name of “Torquatus”--renowned in the early annals
of Rome. But other accidents happened, and led to such loud complaints
that the sport was discontinued.
But while the eyes of Trojans and Sicilians are engaged with this
spectacle, a terrible proceeding has taken place down on the shore. The
ships, as usual, are drawn up there hard and fast upon the sand. The
Trojan matrons are gathered near them, making moan for the good
Anchises--for the games are a spectacle for men. They are looking
wistfully, too, across the sea, thinking how far they have sailed
already, and how far they may yet have to sail. The watchful hate of
Juno sees her opportunity. She despatches Iris down to them in the shape
of one of their number--Beroe. She harangues them eloquently. How long
will they be content to live this wandering life, in search of a distant
home--which possibly has no existence but in deceitful prophecies?
The disguised Iris seizes a brand and rushes towards the ships. While
the rest hesitate, one of their number detects the star-like eyes and
celestial gait. It is not old Beroe--nay, she, to the witness’s own
knowledge, lies at this very moment sick in bed. It is no less than a
visitor from heaven. They hesitate no longer: they snatch the embers
from the altars, and in a moment the deed is done, and the galleys are
in flames. The news is brought to Æneas just as the gay parade of youths
is ending; and Ascanius gallops at once down to the shore, dashes his
helmet on the ground that all may know him, and implores the furious
women to stay their hands. Do they fancy they are burning the war-ships
of the Greeks? His voice recalls them to themselves, and in guilty fear
and shame they fly to hide themselves among the rocks and woods. Æneas
rends his clothes, and appeals to Jupiter. The ruler of the sky hears,
and sends down a thunder-shower which drenches everything on sea and
shore, so that all but four galleys escape with little damage.
But Æneas is troubled at heart. May not this mad instinct of the women
be right, after all? Were it not better to rest here in Sicily, than
wander on again over the weary ocean in quest of this Western Land? He
takes counsel with the Nestor of the fleet--the aged Nautes--to whom the
goddess of wisdom has given an understanding spirit beyond his fellows.
The old seaman’s motto is one of the poet’s noblest utterances[30]--
“Whate’er betides, he only cures
The stroke of fortune who endures.”
He bids his chief take counsel, too, with Acestes. In the visions of the
night the shade of his father Anchises once more appears to him, and
gives the same advice as Nautes. It is settled that the women and the
old men, and all that are weary and faint-hearted, shall be left behind
in Sicily, while the picked band of good men and true sail on with their
leader into the west; thus their reduced number of ships will yet
suffice them.[31] The damaged galleys are hastily repaired, and the
foundations of a new town are marked out for the Trojan settlers: it is
to be called Acesta, in honour of their kind host. The parting of the
wanderers from their friends is a fine passage, finely rendered:--
“With kindliness of gentle speech
The good Æneas comforts each,
And to their kinsman prince commends
With tears his subjects and his friends.
Three calves to Eryx next he kills;
A lambkin’s blood to Tempest spills,
And bids them loose from land:
With olive-leaves he binds his brow,
Then takes his station on the prow,
A charger in his hand,
Flings out the entrails on the brine,
And pours a sacred stream of wine.
Fair winds escort them o’er the deep:
With emulous stroke the waves they sweep.”