THE LAST COMBAT.
The spirit of the Latins is wellnigh broken--they feel that their cause
is a failing one. And Turnus sees angry eyes bent upon him, as the cause
of this ill-fated war. He will take all hazards, then, upon himself:
there shall be no more blood shed of Latin or Rutulian--unless it be his
own. He declares his intention to Latinus--he will meet Æneas in single
combat. The old king is reluctant to allow it: Queen Amata, with tears
and prayers, begs him to forego his resolution. Lavinia herself--such is
the entire reticence of the maiden nature in epic story--speaks no word
throughout the whole. But, as modern critics have long discovered, there
is no question but that she has a sentiment for Turnus. She hardly could
have a thought of Æneas, whom she had never seen. When she hears her
mother’s appeal to the Rutulian prince, she does almost more than
speak--she blushes, through her tears.
“Deep crimson glows the sudden flame,
And dyes her tingling cheek with shame.
So blushes ivory’s Indian grain,
When sullied with vermilion stain:
So lilies set in roseate bed
Enkindle with contagious red.”
These last four lines, in Mr Conington’s version, read like a bit of
Waller or Lovelace--and yet they are a fairly close translation of the
original.
The challenge is sent to Æneas, and by him joyfully accepted. There
shall be solemn truce between Trojan and Rutulian, while the rival
champions do battle for the princess and the kingdom. Turnus, too, has
one weapon of Vulcan’s forging--his father’s sword. But now, in his
haste for the combat, he snatches up and girds on a blade of less divine
temper. The lists are set between the two lines, and the oaths duly
sworn. Æneas calls the gods to witness, that if the victory falls to
Turnus, the Trojans on their part shall retire at once to Evander’s
colony, and make war no more on Latium. Or even if he himself be the
conqueror, he will not treat the Latins as a conquered race:--
“I will not force Italia’s land
To Teucrian rule to bow;
I seek no sceptre for my hand,
No diadem for my brow:
Let race and race, unquelled and free,
Join hands in deathless amity.”
But at once, before the rivals meet, by the instigation of Juno the
truce is broken on the part of the Rutulians. They have a strong fear
that their own champion, young and gallant as he is, is no equal match
in arms for the great Æneas: he is but moving to his death. So speaks
the seer Tolumnius, and points to an omen on the river-bank: an eagle
swooping down upon a flock of swans, and bearing one off in his talons,
but put to flight when they turn in a body and pursue him. Æneas is the
bird of prey--they are the unwarlike swans; let them but turn on him,
and he too will fly. The seer is not content with the mere exposition of
auguries; at once he hurls his own javelin into the Trojan ranks, and
brings down his man. The fight speedily becomes general. Æneas, unarmed
and bareheaded, rushes between the ranks, and is wounded by an arrow
while he calls loudly on his own men to keep the truce. None knew, or
cared to know, from whose hand the arrow came: for no man, says the
poet, was ever heard to boast of such a coward’s shot.
Then, while Æneas is led to the camp, faint and bleeding, by his son
lulus and his faithful Achates,--while the aged leech, Iapis, vainly
tries all his skill upon the wound--for the barb will not quit the
flesh,--Turnus spreads slaughter among the Trojan ranks. But only for a
while. Venus drops a healing balsam into the water with which her son’s
wound is being bathed; at once the arrow-head drops out, and the hero
stands up sound and whole. Again he dons the Vulcanian armour, and
re-enters the battle. The Rutulians give way before him, but he scorns
to smite the fugitives, and seeks out only Turnus. And Turnus, pale and
unnerved--for the presage of his fate lies heavy upon his soul--has no
longer any mind to meet him. It is very strange, to our modern notions
of heroism, to see this infirmity of resolution in a tried soldier and
captain like Turnus. But the heroes of these elder days lose heart at
once when they feel their star is no longer in the ascendant. Turnus,
like Hector in the Iliad, shrinks from the fate which he foresees.
Turnus has a sister, Juturna, a river-nymph and demi-goddess, a
favourite of Juno, who has warned her if possible to save her brother.
She now takes the place of his charioteer, and, while she drives rapidly
over the field, takes care to keep him far from Æneas, who is calling
loudly on him to halt and keep his compact of personal duel. At last the
Trojan leader, baffled in this object, throws all his forces suddenly on
the town, which lies almost at his mercy, stripped of its defenders, and
bids his captains bring torches and scaling-ladders. A horseman, sorely
wounded in the face, brings word of this new danger to Turnus as he is
wheeling madly over the battle-field, and implores him to come to the
rescue. He looks round towards the walls, and sees the flames already
mounting. Then he rallies once more the old courage which had so
strangely failed him. He sees his fate as clearly as before, but he will
meet it. He knows his sister now, too late, in his charioteer; but he
will fly no longer--“Is death such great wretchedness, after all?” He
leaps from his chariot, as he knows, to meet it, lifts his hand, and
shouts to his Rutulians to stay their hands, and the ranks of both
armies divide before him as he makes towards the part of the wall where
Æneas is leading the attack.
“But great Æneas, when he hears
The challenge of his foe,
The leaguer of the town forbears,
Lets town and rampart go,
Steps high with exultation proud,
And thunders on his arms aloud;
Vast as majestic Athos, vast
As Eryx the divine,
Or he that roaring with the blast
Heaves his huge bulk in snow-drifts massed,
The father Apennine.”
Trojans, Latins, and Rutulians look on in awe and admiration as the two
chiefs advance to try this last ordeal of battle. Each hurl their
spears--without effect; then Turnus draws his sword, and they fight on
hand to hand--
“Giving and taking wounds alike,
With furious impact home they strike;
Shoulder and neck are bathed in gore:
The forest depths return the roar.
So, shield on shield, together dash
Æneas and his Daunian foe;
The echo of that deafening crash
Mounts heavenward from below.”
But the faithless sword which Turnus had so carelessly girded on instead
of his father’s good weapon, though it has done him fair service on the
crowd of meaner enemies, breaks in his grasp when he essays it on the
armour of Æneas, and thus helpless, he takes to flight, Æneas hotly
pursuing.
“Five times they circle round the place,
Five times the winding course retrace;
No trivial game is here: the strife
Is waged for Turnus’ own dear life.”
A dark-plumaged bird is seen to hover round the devoted head of the
Rutulian chief, half blinding him with its flapping wings. It is a Fury
whom the king of the gods has sent in that shape to harass him. At
length, in his flight, he finds a huge stone, which not twelve men of
“to-day’s degenerate sons” could lift.
“He caught it up, and at his foe
Discharged it, rising to the throw,
And straining as he runs.
But ’wildering fears his mind unman;
Running, he knew not that he ran,
Nor throwing that he threw;
Heavily move his sinking knees;
The streams of life wax dull and freeze:
The stone, as through the void it past,
Failed of the measure of its cast,
Nor held its purpose true.
E’en as in dreams, when on the eyes
The drowsy weight of slumber lies,
In vain to ply our limbs we think,
And in the helpless effort sink;
Tongue, sinews, all, their powers bely,
And voice and speech our call defy:
So, labour Turnus as he will,
The Fury mocks the endeavour still.
Dim shapes before his senses reel:
On host and town he turns his sight:
He quails, he trembles at the steel,
Nor knows to fly, nor knows to fight:
Nor to his pleading eyes appear
The car, the sister charioteer.
“The deadly dart Æneas shakes:
His aim with stern precision takes,
Then hurls with all his frame;
Less loud from battering-engine cast
Roars the fierce stone, less loud the blast
Follows the lightning’s flame.
On rushes as with whirlwind wings
The spear that dire destruction brings,
Makes passage through the corselet’s marge,
And enters the seven-plated targe
Where the last ring runs round.
The keen point pierces through the thigh,
Down on his bent knee heavily
Comes Turnus to the ground.”
The Rutulian prince confesses his defeat, and asks his life, in no
craven spirit, for the sake of his aged father--bidding Æneas think of
old Anchises. The conqueror half relents, when his eyes fall upon
something which makes that appeal worse than useless.
“Rolling his eyes, Æneas stood,
And checked his sword, athirst for blood.
Now faltering more and more he felt
The human heart within him melt,
When round the shoulder wreathed in pride
The belt of Pallas he espied,
And sudden flashed upon his view
Those golden studs so well he knew,
Which Turnus in his hour of joy
Stripped from the newly-slaughtered boy,
And on his bosom bore, to show
The triumph of a satiate foe.
Soon as his eyes at one fell draught
Remembrance and revenge had quaffed,
Live fury kindling every vein,
He cries with terrible disdain:
‘What! in my friend’s dear spoils arrayed,
To me for mercy sue?
’Tis Pallas, Pallas guides the blade;
From your cursed blood his injured shade
Thus takes the atonement due.’
Thus as he spoke, his sword he drave
With fierce and fiery blow
Through the broad breast before him spread;
The stalwart limbs grow cold and dead;
One groan the indignant spirit gave,
Then sought the shades below.”
* * * * *
So closes the Æneid. Does any reader complain that the poet has not
carried the story further? With the death of Turnus the catastrophe is
complete. The princess of Latium is the prize of the victor; and the
loves of Æneas and Lavinia are certainly not of that romantic character
that we need care to follow them. The Trojans are settled in Italy--two
races under one name. For so has Jupiter promised, as some indulgence to
the feelings of his queen, that the old Latin name shall at least not be
merged in the detested name of Trojan, and on such terms has the goddess
reluctantly acquiesced in the settlement of the wanderers on Italian
ground. Latins, not Trojans, are to rule the world. Thus has the poet
combined the indigenous glories of his country with the grand descent of
its rulers from the old mythical heroes of Troy.
Yet there is a singular vein of melancholy to be traced in the words of
Æneas, when he parts with his son before he goes to his last victory.
They are perhaps the noblest words which the poet has put into his
mouth, and they have something of the sadness which more or less affects
all true nobility:--
“In his mailed arms his child he pressed,
Kissed through his helm, and thus addressed:
‘Learn of your father to be great,
Of others to be fortunate.’”
The old tradition--well known, no doubt, to Virgil’s audience and first
readers--was that the son, not the father, lived to enjoy the
sovereignty of Latium. The hero of many vicissitudes was not held to
have settled down into the peaceful rest which he looks forward to,
throughout the poet’s story, as the end of all his campaigns and
wanderings. The Rutulians, so said the legends, would not yet bow to the
foreign usurper; and Æneas fought his last battle with them on the banks
of the river Numicius, and then, like so many of the favourite heroes of
a people--disappeared; either carried, living or dead, by some divine
agency, to heaven, or caught away in the arms of the river-god.