BOOK VII

And thou, too, in thy death, Caieta,[238] nurse of Æneas, hast left to our coast the heritage of an ever-living fame; still in this later day thy glory hovers over thy resting-place, and a name on Hesperia’s mighty seaboard is thy monument, if that be renown. So when good Æneas had paid the last 5 dues and raised a funeral mound, and had waited for the calming of the deep, he spreads sail and leaves the harbour. Nightward the breezes blow, nor does the fair Moon scorn to show the way: her rippling light makes the sea shine again. The next land they skirt is the coast of Circe’s 10 realm, where in queenly state the daughter of the Sun thrills her forest fastness with never-ending song, and in her haughty mansion burns fragrant cedar to give light by night, as she draws her shrill comb over the delicate warp. From the shore they heard the growling noise of lions in 15 wrath, disdaining their bonds and roaring in midnight hour, bristly boars and caged bears venting their rage, and shapes of huge wolves fiercely howling: things which Circe, fell goddess, had transformed by her magic drugs from the mien of man to a beast’s visage and a beast’s hide. 20 So, lest the pious race of Troy should suffer such monstrous change, were they to seek harbour there or approach the perilous shore, Neptune filled their sails with favouring breezes, sped their flight along, and wafted them past the seething waters. 25

The sea was just reddening in the dawn, and Aurora was shining down from heaven’s height in saffron robe and rosy car, when all at once the winds were laid, and every breath sank in sudden sleep, and the oars pull slowly against the smooth unmoving wave. In the same moment Æneas, 30 looking out from the sea, beholds a mighty forest. Among the trees Tiber, that beauteous river, with his gulfy rapids and the burden of his yellow sand, breaks into the main. Around and above, birds of all plumes, the constant tenants of bank and stream, were lulling the air with their notes and flying among the woods. He bids his comrades turn aside 5 and set their prows landward, and enters with joy the river’s shadowed bed.

Now be with me Erato,[239] and I will unfold who were the kings, what the stage of circumstance, what the condition of ancient Latium, when the stranger host first landed on 10 Ausonian shores, and will recall how the first blood was drawn. Thou, goddess, thou prompt thy poet’s memory. Mine is a tale of grisly war, of battle array, and princes in their fury rushing on carnage—of Tyrrhenian[240] ranks, and all Hesperia mustered in arms. Grander is the pile of 15 events that rises on my view, grander the task I essay. It was the time when king Latinus, now stricken in age, was ruling country and city in the calm of years of peace. He, as story tells us, was the son of Faunus and a Laurentine nymph, Marica. Faunus’ father was Picus, who owes his 20 birth to thee, great Saturn: thou art the first founder of the line. No son, no male progeny, so Heaven willed, had Latinus now; just as it was budding into youth, the branch was cut off. The sole maintainer of the race, the sole guardian of that princely house, was a daughter, already 25 ripe for wedlock, already arrived at full-blown womanhood. Many were her wooers from mighty Latium, nay, from all Ausonia. One wooer there was in beauty passing others, Turnus,[241] strong in the glory of sires and grandsires: his alliance the queen with intense yearning was seeking to compass; 30 but heavenly portents bar the way with manifold alarm. There was a laurel in the middle of the palace, in the very heart of royal privacy, sacred in its every leaf, cherished by the awful observance of many years; men said that father Latinus himself found it there when he first laid the 35 foundation of the tower, dedicated it to Phœbus, and thence gave his new people the name of Laurentines. On the top of this tree lodged a dense swarm of bees, marvellous to tell, sailing thither with loud humming noise across the liquid air, and twining their legs together, the cluster in a moment was seen to hang from the leafy bough. At once spoke a prophet: “There is a stranger approaching: I see him now; along this self-same path a troop is moving 5 hitherward, and commanding the height of the citadel.” Moreover, while Lavinia is applying the hallowed torch to the altars, as she stands in maiden purity at her father’s side, she was seen, oh, monstrous sight! to catch the fire with her long tresses, all her headgear consuming in the 10 crackling flame, her queenly hair, her jewelled coronal all ablaze, till at last she was wrapt in smoke and yellow glare, and scattered the fire-god’s sparks the whole palace through. There indeed was a tale of horror, a marvel and a portent; for, said the wise men, she will herself be illustrious 15 in fame and fortune, but to the nation she bodes tremendous war. Troubled by these prodigies, the king repairs to the oracle of Faunus, his prophetic sire, to question at the groves beneath Albunea’s shade—that queen of forests, ever vocal with the sacred waters, ever 20 breathing from its dark heart deadly vaporous steam. It is here that the tribes of Italy and all Œnotrian land seek answers in their perplexity; hither the priestess brings the inquirer’s offering, lies in the still of night on a couch of slaughtered sheep’s skins, and turns to sleep, when 25 she sees many phantoms flitting in marvellous fashion, and hears divers voices, and enjoys communion with the gods, and holds converse with Acheron down in Avernus’ deep. Here also king Latinus, in quest of an answer, was sacrificing duly a hundred sheep of the second year, and 30 was lying on their skins, a fleecy bed, when sudden from the depth of the grove an utterance was heard: “Look not to ally your daughter in wedlock of Latium, O my son; put not faith in marriage chambers dressed and ready; there are sons-in-law from a far country now on their way, 35 men destined by mixing their blood with ours to exalt our name to the spheres—men whose lineal posterity shall one day look down and see under their feet the whole world, far as the two oceans which the sun surveys in his daily round, revolving beneath them and wielded by their control.” Such was the response of father Faunus, the counsel given at still of night: nor does Latinus hold it shut in the prison of his own lips; but Fame had flown 5 with the rumour through Ausonia far and wide from city to city, when the young chivalry of old Laomedon anchored their ships on the river’s grassy bank.

Æneas and his chief captains, and Iulus young and fair, lay their limbs to rest under the boughs of a lofty tree; 10 there they spread the banquet, putting cakes of flour along the sward to support the food—such was Jove’s high inspiration—and rearing on the wheaten foundation a pile of wilding fruits. It chanced that when the rest was eaten, the want of meat forced them to ply their tooth on those 15 scanty gifts of Ceres—to profane with venturous hand and mouth the sanctity of the cake’s fated circle, nor respect the square impressed on its surface. “What! eating our tables[242] as well?” cries Iulus, in his merry vein; that and no more. That utterance first told the hearers that their 20 toils were over: even as it fell from the boy’s mouth his father caught it up and broke it short, wondering in himself at the power of Heaven. Then anon: “Hail to thee, promised land of my destiny! hail to you,” he cries, “Troy’s faithful gods! Yes, here is our home—this our country. 25 It was my father—these, I remember, were the mystic words of fate he left me: ‘My son, whenever you are wafted to an unknown coast, and hunger drives you, failing food, to eat your tables, then remember my saying, there look for a home of rest, set up your first roof-tree and strengthen 30 it with mound and rampart.’ This was the hunger he meant. This was the last strait in store for us, not the beginning but the end of death. Come then, take heart, and with the morrow’s earliest light explore we what is the place, who its dwellers, where the city of the nation, 35 making from the haven in different ways. Meanwhile pour libations to Jove, invoke in prayer my sire Anchises, and set again the wine on the board.” So having said, he wreathes his brow with the leafy spray, and offers prayer to the genius of the spot; to Earth the eldest of the gods; to the nymphs and the streams yet unknown by name: after that, to Night and Night’s new-born stars and Ida’s Jove, and Phrygia’s mighty mother, invoking each 5 in turn, and his own two parents in the upper and the nether world. Just then the Almighty Father thundered thrice aloft in a clear sky, and with his own right hand flashed in open view from on high a cloud ablaze with rays of golden light. At once the news spreads among the Trojan 10 ranks that the day has arrived when they are to build their promised city. With emulous haste they celebrate the banquet, and in the power of the august presage set on the bowls exultingly, and wreathe the wine.

Soon as on the morrow the risen day began to illumine 15 the earth with the first sparkle of her torch, some here, some there, they set about exploring the city, the frontiers, the seaboard of the country. This, they learn, is the spring of Numicius, this the river Tiber, this the home of the brave Latian race. Thereupon Anchises’ son commands an 20 embassy of a hundred, chosen from all classes alike, to go to the monarch’s royal city, all of them with wreathed boughs from Pallas’ tree, to carry presents for his honoured hand, and entreat his friendship for the Teucrians. They delay not, but hasten at his bidding, moving with rapid pace, 25 while he is marking out the city with a shallow trench, preparing the ground, and surrounding this their first settlement on the coast, camp-fashion, with battlements and earthworks. Meanwhile the missioned band had performed their journey, and were in sight of the towers and 30 stately homes of Latium, and passing under the city wall. In a space before the town, boys and youths in their prime are exercising on horseback, and breaking in their harnessed cars among clouds of dust, or bending the sharp-springing bow, or hurling from the arm the quivering javelin, 35 or vying on foot or with the gloves, when galloping up, a messenger announces, in the aged monarch’s ears, that mighty men have arrived in strange attire. The king bids him summon them into the presence-hall, and takes his seat in the midst on his ancestral throne. It was a reverend pile, of vast proportions, raised high upon a hundred pillars, on the city’s topmost ground, the palace of Picus the Laurentine, clothed in the terror of waving woods and 5 hereditary awe. Here it was held to be of auspicious presage that kings should first take in hand the sceptre, and lift up the fasces: this temple was their senate-house, the hall for their sacrificial feasts: here, when a ram was slain, the seniors were wont to banquet down long lines 10 of tables. Here, too, in succession were the effigies of past generations, carved from ancient cedar—Italus and father Sabinus, planter of the vine, preserving in that mimic form his curved hook, and hoary Saturn, and the image of two-faced Janus, all standing in the vestibule, 15 and other kings from the earliest days, and heroes who had sustained the war-god’s wounds in fighting for their country. Moreover, there was hanging on the sacred doors abundance of armour, captive chariots, crooked axe-heads, helmet-crests, ponderous gates, javelins, and 20 shields, and beaks torn from vessels. There, as in life, was sitting, decked with Quirinal staff and robe of scanty border, in his left hand the sacred shield, Picus, tamer of the steed, he whom, in her bridal jealousy, Circe, by a stroke of her golden rod and the witchery of her drugs, transformed 25 to a bird, and scattered spots over his wings. Such was the temple where Latinus, seated on his ancestral throne, summoned the Teucrians to his presence within, and on their entry with placid mien bespoke them thus:—

“Tell me, sons of Dardanus—for we know your city and 30 your race, and your coming over the deep has reached our ears—what is your errand? what cause or what necessity has wafted your ships to our Ausonian coast through those many leagues of blue water? Be it from ignorance of the way or stress of weather, or any of the thousand chances 35 that happen to seamen on the main, that you have passed between our river’s banks, and are resting in the haven, shrink not from our welcome, but know in the Latian race the true people of Saturn, kept in righteousness by no band of law, but by our own instinct and the rule of our parent-god. And now I remember, though years have dulled the freshness of the tale, that aged Auruncans used to tell how in this land Dardanus saw the light, and hence 5 he won his way to the towns of Phrygian Ida and Thracian Samos, which men now call Samothrace. Ay, it was from the house of Tuscan Corythus he went, and now the golden palace of starry heaven seats him on a throne, and among the altars of the gods makes room for him.” 10

He ended; and Ilioneus followed thus: “Great king, illustrious son of Faunus, no stress of gloomy storm has made us the sport of the waves and driven us on your coast, no sky or land misread has beguiled us of our track: of set purpose, with full intent, we are arrived one 15 and all at your city, driven from a realm once the greatest which the sun surveyed in his course from end to end of heaven. From Jove is the origin of our race; in Jove, as their ancestor, the sons of Dardanus glory; our monarch himself, sprung of Jove’s own pure blood, Æneas of Troy, 20 has sent us to your doors. How dire a hurricane, launched from fell Mycenæ, swept over Ida’s plains—how the two worlds of Europe and Asia, fate driving each, met and crashed together—has reached the ears of the man, if such there be, whom earth’s last corner withdraws from 25 the wash of ocean, and his too who is parted from his fellows by the zone that lies midmost among the four, the zone of the tyrannous sun. From the jaws of that deluge flying over many and mighty waters, we ask of you for our country’s gods a narrow resting-place—the harmless 30 privilege of the coast, and the common liberty of water and air. We shall be no disgrace to your kingdom, nor light shall be the fame that men will blaze of you, nor shall gratitude for your great bounty grow old, nor shall Ausonia mourn the day when she welcomed Troy to her 35 heart. I swear by Æneas’ star, by his strong right hand, known as such by all who have proved it in friendship or in war, many have been the peoples, many the nations—nay, scorn us not for that we accost you with fillets of suppliance and words of prayer—who have sued for our company and wished to make us one with them. But the oracles of heaven, speaking as they only can, have driven us to search out your realms. Hence sprang Dardanus; 5 hither Apollo bids us return, with the instance of high command, even to Tuscan Tiber and the sacred waters of Numicius’ spring. Moreover, here are presents from Æneas, the scanty offerings of past prosperity, relics snatched from the flames of Troy. From this gold his father, Anchises, 10 poured libations at the altar; this was Priam’s royal accoutrement, when he gave laws in kingly fashion to the assembled people; this sceptre, this sacred diadem, these robes, the work of Trojan dames.”

Thus, as Ilioneus is speaking, Latinus holds his countenance 15 in set downcast gaze, and sits rooted to his throne, turning his eyes in intense thought. Nor does the broidered purple stir his princely mind; no, nor the sceptre of Priam, so deeply as he ponders on the wedlock, the bridal bed of his daughter, revolving in his breast old 20 Faunus’ oracle. This must be that predicted son-in-law, arrived from a foreign home, destined to reign in joint sovereignty with himself; thence must be born that glorious progeny, whose prowess is to master the world. At length he breaks out in glad tones: “May the gods prosper 25 our intent and ratify their own presage! Yes, Trojan, you shall have your prayer, nor do I reject your presents. Long as Latinus shall reign, you shall not lack the bounty of a fruitful soil, nor miss the wealth of Troy. Let but Æneas himself, if his desire of us is so great, if he covets the tie of 30 hospitality and the style of alliance, come to our presence, nor shrink from eyes that will view him kindly. Peace will be incomplete till I have touched your monarch’s hand. And now do you take back to your king this my message: I have a daughter, whose marriage with a husband 35 of our nation is forbidden by voices from my father’s shrine, by countless prodigies from heaven; sons-in-law are to arrive from foreign climes—such, they say, is Fate’s will for Latium—who by mixing their blood with ours are to exalt our name to the spheres. That he is this chosen one of destiny is my belief, and, if my mind reads the future true, my award.” With these words the old king makes choice of horses from the multitude he possessed. 5 Three hundred there were, sleek-coated, standing in their lofty stalls. At once he bids his servants bring for each of the Teucrians a fleet-foot with housings of embroidered purple; golden poitrels hang down to the chest of each; there is gold on their coverings; yellow 10 gold under their champing teeth. For the absent Æneas he orders a car and two coursers of ethereal seed, snorting fire from their nostrils, sprung of that brood which artful Circe raised up fraudfully to her father the Sun, a spurious race, from the womb of a mortal dam. Thus graced with 15 gifts and kind speeches, the children of Æneas journey homeward on their tall steeds, and carry tidings of peace.

Meanwhile, there was Jove’s relentless spouse travelling back from her own Argos, city of Inachus, and already launched on mid air; looking from the sky over Sicilian 20 Pachynus, she beheld in distant prospect Æneas in his hour of joy and the Dardan fleet. Already she sees him building his home; already he has made the soil his friend, and has parted from his ships. Pierced with bitter grief, she stayed her course, and then, shaking her head, pours 25 from her heart words like these: “Ah, that hated stock! those destinies of Phrygia that hold my destinies in check! Did the dead really fall on the plains of Sigeum? were the captives captured in truth? did the flames of Troy burn the men of Troy? Through the heart of the battle, 30 through the heart of the fire they have found a way. Ay, belike, my power at last lies gasping and spent; my hatred is slaked and I am at peace. I, who followed them with a foe’s zeal over the water even when tossed from their country’s arms, and met the exiles front to front on 35 every sea! Spent on these Teucrians is all that sky and surge can do. Have Syrtes, has Scylla, has Charybdis’ yawning gulf stood me aught in stead? They have gained the channel of Tiber, the haven of their wishes, and may laugh at ocean and at me. Mars had strength to destroy the Lapithan nation, huge as they were; the father of the gods gave up the honoured land of Calydon to Diana’s vengeance; and what had Lapithans or Calydon done 5 to earn such penal ruin? But I, Jove’s great consort, who have stooped, miserably stooped, to leave nothing untried, who have assumed every form by turns, am vanquished by Æneas. Well, if my power be not august enough, I would not shrink from suing for other aid, be it 10 found where it may; if I cannot prevail above, I will stir up the fiends of the deep. It will not be mine to keep him from the crown of Latium—be it so; fixed for him by fate unalterably is his bride Lavinia; but delays and impediments may well be where the matter is so great; but to 15 cut off the subjects of our two monarchs—this may be done. So let father and son-in-law embrace, at the cost of their people’s lives. The blood of Trojan and Rutulian shall be your dower, fair lady; Bellona[243] is waiting to lead you to your chamber. Nor is Hecuba the only mother that 20 has teemed with a fire-brand and given birth to a nuptial blaze; Venus sees the tale repeated in her own offspring—a second Paris—a funeral torch rekindled for reviving Troy.”

Having vented words like these, she flew down in black 25 rage to the earth; and now she summons Allecto[244] the baleful from the dwelling of the dread goddesses and the darkness of the pit—Allecto, whom bitter wars, and strifes, and stratagems, and injurious crimes cheer like a cordial. Hateful even to Pluto her sire is the fiend, hateful to her 30 Tartarean sisters, so many the forms she puts on, so terrible the mien of each, so countless the vipers that burgeon blackly from her head. Her, thus dreadful, Juno lashes to fiercer fury, speaking on this wise: “Grant me, maiden daughter of Night, a boon all my own—thine undivided 35 aid, that my praise and renown may not be dashed from their pedestal—that the children of Æneas may not be able to ensnare Latinus in a bridal alliance or beset the Italian frontier. Thou canst make brothers of one soul take arms and fight; canst make peaceful homes dens of strife; thou canst gain entrance for the scourge and the funeral torch: thou hast a thousand names, a thousand means of ill. Stir up that prolific bosom, snap the formed 5 bands of peace, scatter the incentives of war, let the nation in the same moment desire, demand, and seize the sword.”

So then Allecto, empoisoned with Gorgon venom, first repairs to Latium and the lofty halls of the Laurentine monarch, and sits down before the hushed chamber of 10 queen Amata,[245] who, as she mused on the arrival of the Trojans and Turnus’ bridal hopes, was glowing and seething with all a woman’s passion, a woman’s spleen. Snatching a snake from her dark venomed locks, she hurls it at her, and lodges it in the bosom close to the very heart, that, 15 maddened by the pest, she may drive the whole house wild. In glides the reptile unfelt, winding between the robe and the marble breast, and beguiles her into frenzy, breathing into her lungs its viperous breath; the linked gold round her neck turns to the monstrous serpent; so does the festoon 20 of her long fillet; it twines her hair, it slides smoothly from limb to limb. And while the first access of contagion, stealing in with clammy poison, is pervading her senses and threading her bones with flame, ere yet the soul has caught fire through the whole compass of the bosom, she 25 speaks with gentle plaint, as mothers wont, shedding many tears over her child and the Phrygian alliance: “And are fugitives from Troy to take Lavinia in marriage, good father? have you no compassion for your daughter and yourself? none for her mother, whom with the first fair 30 gale the faithless pirate will leave and make for the deep, carrying off his maiden prey? Ay, things were not so when the Phrygian shepherd stole into Lacedæmon, and bore away Leda’s Helen to Troy town. Where is your pledged faith? where your old tenderness for your own 35 blood, and your hand plighted so oft to your kinsman Turnus? If Latian folk must have a son-in-law fetched from a foreign stock, and this is unalterably fixed, and your father Faunus’ command sits heavy on your soul, I hold that every nation is foreign whose independence severs it from our rule, and that such is Heaven’s intent. Turnus, too, if you go back to the first foundation of his house, has Inachus and Acrisius for his ancestors, and the 5 heart of Mycenæ for his home.” But when, having tried in vain what these words can do, she sees Latinus obstinately bent, and meantime the serpent’s fiendish mischief has sunk deep into her vitals, and is thrilling every vein, then at last the miserable queen, unsexed by the 10 portentous enormity, raves in ungoverned frenzy through the city’s length and breadth; as oft you may see a top spinning under the lash, which boys are flogging round and round in a great ring in an empty courtyard, with every thought on their game: driven by the whip it 15 keeps making circle after circle: the beardless faces hang over it in puzzled wonder, marvelling how the box-wood can fly, as though the blows made it a living thing. With motion as furious she courses through crowded streets and unruly peoples. Nay, more than this, she 20 feigns the inspiration of Bacchus, nerving herself to more atrocious deeds, and climbing new heights of madness—flies into the woods, and hides her daughter among the leafy hills, all to snatch from the Teucrians the bridal bed and delay the kindling of Hymen’s torch. “Evoe 25 Bacchus!” is her cry; “thou, and none but thou art fit mate for a maid like this. See! for thee she takes up the sacred wand, for thee she leads the dance, for thee she grows her dedicated hair.” Fame flies abroad; other mothers are instinct with frenzy, and all have the same 30 mad passion driving them to seek a new home. They have left their houses, and are spreading hair and shoulders to the wind; while some are filling the sky with quivering shrieks, clad in fawn-skins, and carrying vine-branch spears. There in the middle is the queen all aglow, lifting 35 high a blazing pine, and singing the bridal song of Turnus and her daughter, her eye red and glaring; and sudden she shouts like a savage: “Ho! mothers of Latium all, where’er ye be, if ye have human hearts and kindness left there for poor Amata, if ye are stung to think of a mother’s rights, off with the fillets from your hair, and join the orgie with me.” Such is the queen, driven among the woods, among the wild beasts’ lairs far and wide, by Bacchus’ goad in 5 Allecto’s hand.

And now, judging that she had barbed enough the young fangs of frenzy, upheaving from their bases the royal purpose and the royal house, the grim goddess next soars in air on her murky wings on to the walls of the bold 10 Rutulian, the city which they say Danae built for her Argive settlers, landing there under stress of wind. Ardea was the name which past generations gave the place, and Ardea still keeps her august title; but her star is set, Here, in his lofty palace, Turnus at deep of night was in 15 the midst of his sleep. Allecto puts off her hideous features and her fiendish shape, transforms herself to an old woman’s countenance and furrows her loathly brow with wrinkles, assumes hoary locks and woollen fillet, lastly twines them with an olive spray, and so becomes 20 Calybe, the aged priestess of Juno’s temple; and presents herself to the young warrior’s eyes with such words as these: “And can Turnus calmly see all his toils poured out in vain, and the crown that is his own transferred to settlers from Dardania? See, the king is refusing you your bride 25 and your blood-bought dowry, and search is being made for a foreign heir to fill the throne. Go on now, confront ungracious perils, and earn derision; go, mow down the Tuscan ranks, and spread over Latium the shield of peace. These very words Saturn’s almighty daughter with her 30 own lips bade me say to you when you should be slumbering in the still of night. Rise, then, bid your soldiery arm and move from city to camp, set fire to the Phrygian chiefs who have anchored in our fair river and to their painted ships. The dread voice of heaven speaks by me, 35 Nay, let king Latinus, unless he consent to give you your bride and respect his promise, feel at last and find what it is to have Turnus for a foe.”

Laughing scornfully at the old seer, the youth thus spoke in reply: “The news that a fleet has arrived in the Tiber has not, as you imagine, escaped my ear. Conjure me no such mighty terrors, nor think that queen Juno has forgotten me. No, it is you, good mother, whom mouldering 5 dotage, drained dry of truth, is vexing to no end, mocking your prophetic soul with false alarms in an atmosphere of royal armaments. You are in your place watching over statues and temples; but war and peace must be wielded by men, whose work war is.” 10

At these words Allecto kindled into wrath. Even in the act of speaking a shudder seized the youth’s frame and his eyes grew stiff and stony, so fierce the hissing of the Fury’s thousand snakes, so monstrous the features that rose on his view. Instant with a roll of her fiery orbs she 15 thrust him back as he faltered and tried to speak further; on either brow she upreared a serpent lock, and cracked her whip, and with infuriate lips followed thus: “Here is the mouldering mother, whom dotage, drained dry of truth, is mocking with false alarms in an atmosphere of royal armaments. 20 Turn your eyes hither; I am come from the dwelling of the Dread Sisters: war and death are wielded by this hand.”

Saying thus, she hurled a torch full at the youth, and lodged in his breast the pine-wood with its lurid smoke and 25 glare. The bonds of sleep are broken by the giant terror, and a burst of sweat all over bathes the whole man, bone and limb. “My sword!” he screams in frenzy; for his sword he searches pillow and palace: the fever of the steel, the guilty madness of bloodshed rage within him, and angry 30 pride tops all: even as when loud-crackling a fire of sticks is heaped round the sides of a waving caldron, and the heat makes the water start; there within is the flood, steaming and storming, and bubbling high in froth, till at last the wave cannot contain itself, and the black vapour 35 flies up into the air. So then, trampling on treaties, he gives the word to the chiefs of his soldiery for a march upon King Latinus, and bids arms be got ready. Italy must be protected, the foe must be driven from the frontier; he and his men will be enough for both, Teucrians and Latians. So he says and appeals to Heaven: and the Rutulians with emulous zeal encourage each other to the fight. This one is fired by his leader’s peerless beauty 5 and youth; this by the kings in his pedigree; this by the glorious deeds of his hand.

While Turnus is filling the Rutulians with the spirit of daring, Allecto is putting her infernal wings in motion against the Teucrians. A new device working in her 10 mind, she fixed her eye on the spot where on the winding coast Iulus was hunting game with the snare and the course. Hereon the maiden of Cocytus suddenly presents to the hounds a maddening lure, and touches their nostrils with the scent they know so well, making them chase a 15 stag in full cry; which was the first origin of the trouble, and put the spark of war to the spirit of the countryside. There was a stag of beauteous form and lofty horns, taken by the sons of Tyrrheus from its mother’s breast, and brought up by them and their father Tyrrheus, 20 who had the control of the royal herds and the charge of the whole range of lawn. Trained to obey, it was the chief care of their sister Silvia; she would deck and wreathe its horns with delicate festoons, and comb its rough coat, and wash it in the clear stream. Grown tame 25 to the hand, and accustomed to its master’s table, it would run free in the forest and take itself back home to the well-known door, however late the night. Now, in one of its wanderings the maddened hounds of Iulus started it in the hunt, as it happened to be floating down the 30 stream or allaying its heat on the verdant bank. Ascanius himself, fired with a proud ambition, bent his bow and levelled a shaft: nor did his hand err for want of heavenly aid: the reed sped with a loud hurtling sound and pierced the belly and the flank. The wounded creature took refuge 35 under the roof it knew, and moaning crept into its stall, and bleeding all over filled, like a human suppliant, the house with its piteous plaints. Sister Silvia first, smiting on her arms with her flat hands, calls for help and summons the rough country folk. They—for the fell fiend is lurking in the silence of the forest—are at her side ere she looks for them, armed one with a seared brand, one with a heavy knotted stock: what each first finds as he 5 gropes about, anger makes do weapon’s service. Tyrrheus musters the company, just as the news found him, splitting an oak in four with convergent wedges, catching up an axe and breathing savage rage. But the cruel goddess, seizing from her watch-tower the moment of mischief, 10 makes for the stall’s lofty roof, and from its summit shrills forth the shepherd’s clarion, pitching high on the wreathen horn her Tartarean note; at the sound the whole line of forest was convulsed, and the woods echoed to their depths: it was heard far off by Trivia’s[246] lake, 15 heard by river Nar[246] with his whitening sulphurous waters, and by the springs of the Veline[246]: and terror-stricken mothers clasped their children to their breasts.

At once running to the sound with which the dread clarion gave the signal, the untamed rustics snatch up 20 their weapons and gather from all sides; while the forces of Troy, on their part, pour through the camp’s open gates their succour for Ascanius. It is no longer a woodman’s quarrel waged with heavy clubs or seared stakes; they try the issue with two-edged steel; a dark harvest of drawn 25 swords bristles over the field; the brass shines responsive to the sun’s challenge, and flings its radiance skyward; as when the wave has begun to whiten under the rising wind, the ocean gradually upheaves itself, and raises its billows higher and higher, till at last, from its lowest depths, it 30 mounts up to heaven. See! as the arrow whizzes, a young warrior in the first rank, once Tyrrheus’ eldest born, Almo, is laid low in death; for the wound has lodged in his throat, and has cut off, with the rush of blood, the passage of the liquid voice and the vital breath. Round him lie 35 many gallant frames, and among them old Galæsus, while throwing himself between the armies and pleading for peace; none so just as he, none so wealthy before to-day in Ausonian land; five flocks of sheep had he, five herds of oxen went to and fro from his stalls, and his land was furrowed by a hundred ploughs.

While thus on the plains the impartial war-god deals out fortune, the goddess, having achieved her promise, soon 5 as she had inaugurated the war with blood, and brought the battle to its first murderous shock, flies from Hesperia, and rounding the cope of heaven, addresses Juno in the haughty tones of triumph: “See here the work of discord complete in the horrors of war! Now bid them come together 10 in friendship and strike truce. Thou hast seen that I can sprinkle the Trojans with Ausonian blood; let me but be assured of thy wish, I will give thee a further boon: I will sew rumours and bring the neighbouring cities into the war, and inflame their souls with mad martial passion 15 to crowd from all sides with succour; I will scatter arms broadcast.” Juno returns: “There is panic and treachery enough; the seeds of war are sown deep; men are fighting hand to hand; the weapons which chance first supplied are being seasoned with new-spilt blood. Such be the 20 alliance, such the nuptial rites solemnized by Venus’ virtuous son and good king Latinus. For thee to walk the upper air with larger freedom would displease the great Father, the monarch of high Olympus. Give place; should any chance emerge in the struggle, myself will deal with it.” 25 So spoke Saturn’s daughter: the Fury lifts her wings that hurtle with serpent plumage, and seeks her home in Cocytus, leaving the altitudes above. There is a place in the bosom of Italy, under the shadow of lofty hills, known to fame and celebrated in far-off lands, the vale of Amsanctus; 30 pent between two woody slopes, dark with dense foliage, while at the bottom a broken torrent makes a roaring among the rocks along its winding bed. Here men show an awful cavern, the very gorge of the fell infernal god, and a deep gulf through which Acheron breaks open its baleful 35 mouth: there dived the Fury, and relieved of her loathed presence earth and heaven.

Meanwhile, for her part, Saturn’s royal daughter gives the last touch that brings down the war. From the battle-field there pours into the city the whole company of shepherds, with their slain in their arms, young Almo and Galæsus’ disfigured countenance, calling on the gods and adjuring Latinus. Turnus is on the spot, and, in the fury 5 and fire of the blood-cry, sounds again and again the note of terror: “The Teucrians are invited to reign in Latium; a Phrygian shoot is to be grafted on the royal tree; the palace-gate is closed on himself.” Moreover, the kinsmen of the matrons, who in Bacchic madness are footing the 10 pathless woods—for Amata’s name weighs not lightly—muster from all sides, and strain the throat of Mars to hoarseness. All at once, defying omens and oracles, under the spell of a cursed deity, they clamour for an atrocious war. With emulous zeal they swarm round 15 Latinus’ palace; he, like a rock in the sea, stands unshaken; like a rock in the sea before the rush and crash of waters, which, amid, thousands of barking waves, is fixed by its own weight; the crags and the spray-foamed stones roar about it in vain, and the lashed seaweed falls idly 20 from its side. But when he finds no power given him to counterwork the secret agency, and all is moving at relentless Juno’s beck, then with many an appeal to the gods and the soulless skies, “Alas!” exclaims the good sire, “shattered are we by destiny and whirled before the storm! 25 On you will come the reckoning, and your impious blood will pay it, my wretched children! You, Turnus, you will be met by your crime and its fearful vengeance, in a day when it will be too late to pray to Heaven. For me, my rest is assured; my ship is just dropping into port; it is 30 but of a happy departure that I am robbed.” No more he spoke, but shut himself in an inner chamber, and let the reins of empire go.

A custom there was in the Hesperian days of Latium, observed as sacred in succession by the Alban cities, and 35 now honoured by the observance of Rome, the greatest power on earth, when men first stir up the war-god to battle, whether their purpose be to carry piteous war among the Getæ, the Hyrcanians, or the Arabs, or to march as far as India, track the Morning-star to its home, and wrest the standards from the grasp of Parthia. There are two folding-gates of War—such the title they bear—clothed with religious awe and with the terrors of 5 Mars the cruel: they are closed by a hundred brazen bars and by the everlasting strength of iron, and Janus[247] never quits his guard on the threshold. When the fathers finally conclude for battle, the consul himself, in the pride of Quirinus’ striped robe and the Gabine[248] cincture, unbars the 10 grating portals, and with his own voice invokes battle; the rest of the warriors take up the cry, and brazen horns blare out in unison their hoarse assent. Thus it was that then, too, Latinus was urged to declare war against the family of Æneas and to unclose the grim gates. The good 15 old king recoiled from the touch, turned with averted eyes from the service he loathed, and shrouded himself in impenetrable gloom. Then darted down from the sky the queen of heaven, smote with her own royal hand the unwilling portals, and from their bursten fastenings, as Saturn’s 20 daughter might, flung back the valves on their hinges. All Ausonia, sluggish and moveless till then, blazes into fury; some commence their footmarch over the plain, some from the height of their steeds storm through the dust; one and all cry out for arms. Some are rubbing their 25 shields smooth and their javelins bright with unctuous lard, and putting their axes under the grindstone; there is joy in the carrying of the standard, joy in the hearing of the trumpet’s sound. And now there are five great cities with anvils everywhere set up, giving a new edge to 30 their weapons: Atina the mighty and Tibur the proud, Ardea, and they of Crustumium, and tower-crowned Antemnæ. Helmets are hollowed to guard the head; willows are twisted into wicker frames for shields; others are beating out brass into breastplates, or stretching ductile 35 silver into polished greaves. All the pride of sickle and share, all the passion for the plough are swallowed up in this; they bring out their father’s swords, and smelt them anew in the furnace. Here, in wild haste, is one snatching his helm from the chamber-wall; there is another bringing his snorting steeds to the yoke, clothing himself with shield and corslet of three-plied gold, and girding to his side his trusty sword. 5

[F][249]Now, Muses, ope your Helicon, The gates of song unfold, What chiefs, what tribes to war came on In those dim days of old, What sons were then Italia’s pride, 10 And what the arms that blazed so wide: For ye are goddesses: full well Your mind takes note, your tongue can tell: The far-off whisper of the years Scarce reaches our bewildered ears. 15 Mezentius first from Tyrrhene coast, Who mocks at heaven, arrays his host, And braves the battle’s storm: His son, young Lausus, at his side, Excelled by none in beauty’s pride, 20 Save Turnus’ comely form: Lausus, the tamer of the steed, The conqueror of the silvan breed, Leads from Agylla’s towers in vain A thousand youths, a valiant train: 25 Ah happy, had the son been blest In harkening to his sire’s behest, Or had the sire from whom he came Had other nature, other name!

Next drives along the grassy meads 30 His palm-crowned car and conquering steeds Fair Aventinus, princely heir Of Hercules the brave and fair, And for his proud escutcheon takes His father’s Hydra and her snakes. 35 ’Twas he that priestess Rhea bare, A stealthy birth, to upper air, ’Mid shades of woody Aventine Mingling her own with heavenly blood, When triumph-flushed from Geryon slain Aleides touched the Latian plain, And bathed Iberia’s distant kine In Tuscan Tiber’s flood. 5 Long pikes and poles his bands uprear, The shapely blade, the Sabine spear. Himself on foot, with lion’s skin, Whose long white teeth with ghastly grin Clasp like a helmet brow and chin, 10 Joins the proud chiefs in rude attire, And flaunts the emblem of his sire. From Tiber’s walls twin brothers came, The town that bears Tiburtus’ name, Bold Coras and Catillus strong: 15 Through the thick-rained darts they storm along, And foremost in the fray: As when two cloud-born Centaurs leap Down Homole or Othrys’ steep, The forest parts before their sweep, 20 And crashing trees give way.

Nor lacked there to the embattled power The founder of Præneste’s tower, Brave Cæculus, by all renowned As Vulcan’s son, ’mid embers found 25 And monarch of the rustics crowned. Beneath him march his rural train, Whom high Præneste’s walls contain, Who dwell in Gabian Juno’s plain, Whose haunt is Anio’s chilly flood 30 And Hernic rocks, by streams bedewed, Who till Anagnia’s bosom green Or drink of father Amasene. Not all are furnished for the war With ample shield or sounding car. 35 Some sling lead bullets o’er the field, Some javelins twain in combat wield. A cap of fur protects their head By spoil of tawny wolf supplied; Their left foot bare, on earth they tread, 40 The right is cased in raw bull-hide. Messapus, tamer of the steed, The Ocean-monarch’s mighty seed, Whom none might harm, so willed his sire, With force of iron or of fire, Awakes his people’s slumbering zeal 5 Long time unused to war’s appeal, And from the scabbard bares the steel. With him Fescennia’s armed train, The dwellers in Falerii’s plain, Who hold Soracte’s lofty hill 10 Or fair Flavinia’s cornland till, Capena’s woods their dwelling make Or Ciminus, its mount and lake. With measured pace they march along, And make their monarch’s deeds their song; 15 Like snow-white swans in liquid air, When homeward from their food they fare, And far and wide melodious notes Come rippling from their slender throats, While the broad stream and Asia’s fen 20 Reverberate to the sound again. Sure none had thought that countless crowd A mail-clad company; It rather seemed a dusky cloud Of migrant fowl, that, hoarse and loud, 25 Press landward from the sea.

Lo! Clausus there, the Sabines’ boast, Leads a great host, himself a host; Whence spreads the Claudian race, since Rome With Sabine burghers shared her home. 30 With him the Amiternians came And Cures’ sons of ancient name, The squadron that Eretum guards And green Mutusca’s olive-yards. Those whom Nomentum’s city yields, 35 Who till Velinus’ Rosean fields, Who Tetrica’s rude summit climb Or on Severus sits sublime, Or dwell where runs Hemella by Casperia’s walls and Foruli, 40 Who Tiber haunt and Fabaris’ banks, Whom Nursia sends to battle down From her cold home, Hortinian ranks And Latian tribes of old renown, With those whom Allia’s stream ill-starred Flows through, dividing sward from sward: 5 Thick as the Libyan billows swarm When fell Orion sets in storm, Or as the sun-baked ears of grain In Hæmus’ field or Lycia’s plain; Their bucklers rattle, and the ground 10 Quakes, startled by their footfall’s sound.

Halæsus, Agamemnon’s mate, Who hates all Troy with liegeman’s hate, Yokes his swift horses to the car, And brings his hosts to Turnus’ war, 15 The rustic tribes whose ploughshare tills The vine-clad slopes of Massic hills, Sent from Auruncan heights, or bound From Sidicinian champaign-ground, Who fertile Cales leave behind 20 Or where Vulturnian waters wind, Saticule’s tenants, rough and rude, And all the hardy Oscan brood. Spiked truncheons they are wont to fling, But fit them with a leathern string: 25 A target shields the good left hand, And curved like primer’s hook the brand They wield when foot to foot they stand.

Nor, Œbalus, shalt thou pass by Unnamed in this our minstrelsy, 30 Born to old Telon, Capreæ’s king, By Naiad of Sebethus’ spring; The son contemned his sire’s domain, And stretched o’er neighbouring lands his reign. Sarrastes’ tribes his rule obey, 35 And fields where Sarnus’ waters play, Who Batulum and Rufræ hold Or till Celennæ’s fruitful mould, Or those whom fair Abella sees Down-looking through her apple-trees, 40 All wont in Teuton sort to throw Nail-studded maces ’gainst the foe; Their helm of bark from cork-tree peeled, Of brass their sword, of brass their shield.

Thee too steep Nersæ sends to war 5 Brave Ufens, born ’neath happy star: Hard as their clods the Æquian race, Inured to labour in the chase; In armour sheathed, they till their soil, Heap foray up, and live by spoil. 10

Came too from old Marruvia’s realm, An olive-garland round his helm, Bold Umbro, priest at once and knight, By king Archippus sent to fight; Who baleful serpents knew to steep 15 By hand and voice in charmed sleep, Soothed their fierce wrath with subtlest skill, And from their bite drew off the ill. But ah! his medicines could not heal The death-wound dealt by Dardan steel; 20 His slumberous charms availed him nought, Nor herbs on Marsian mountains sought And cropped with magic shears; For thee Anguitia’s woody cave, For thee the glassy Fucine wave, 25 For thee the lake shed tears.

From green Aricia, bent on fame, Hippolytus’ fair offspring came, In lone Egeria’s forest reared, Where Dian’s shrine is loved and feared. 30 For lost Hippolytus,’tis said, By cruel stepdame’s cunning dead, Dragged by his frightened steeds, to sate His angry sire’s vindictive hate, Was called once more to realms above, 35 By Pæon’s skill and Dian’s love. Then Jove incensed that man should rise From darkness to the upper skies, The leech that wrought such healing hurled With lightening down to Pluto’s world. 40 But Trivia kind her favourite hides And to Egeria’s care confides, To live in woods obscure and lone, And lose in Virbius’ name his own. ’Tis thence e’en now from Trivia’s shrine 5 The horn-hoofed steeds are chased, Since, scared by monsters of the brine, The chariot and the youth divine They tumbled on the waste, Yet ne’ertheless with horse and car 10 His dauntless son essays the war.

In foremost rank see Turnus move, His comely head the rest above: On his tall helm the triple cone Chimæra in relief is shown; 15 The monster’s gaping jaws expire Hot volumes of Ætnæan fire: And still she flames and raves the more The deeper floats the field with gore. With bristling hide and lifted horns 20 So, all gold, his shield adorns, E’en as in life she stood; There too is Argus, warder stern, And Inachus from graven urn, Her father, pours his flood. 25 A cloud of footmen at his back And shielded hosts the plain made black; Auruncans, Argives, brave and bold, Rutulians and Sicanians old, Sacranians thirsting for the field, 30 Labici with enamelled shield; Who Tiber’s lawns with furrow score And pure Numicius’ sacred shore, Subdue Rutulian slopes, and plough Circeius’ steep reluctant brow: 35 Where Anxur boasts her guardian Jove And greenly blooms Feronia’s grove; Where Satura’s unlovely mere In sullen quiet sleeps, And Ufens gropes through marshland drear 40 And hides him in the deeps. Last marches forth for Latium’s sake Camilla fair, the Volscian maid, A troop of horsemen in her wake In pomp of gleaming steel arrayed; Stern warrior queen! those tender hands 5 Ne’er plied Minerva’s ministries: A virgin in the fight she stands, Or winged winds in speed outvies. Nay, she might fly o’er fields of grain Nor crush in flight the tapering wheat, 10 Or skim the surface of the main, Nor let the billows touch her feet. Where’er she moves, from house and land The youths and ancient matrons throng, And fixed in greedy wonder stand 15 Beholding as she speeds along: In kingly dye that scarf was dipped: ’Tis gold confines those tresses’ flow: Her pastoral wand with steel is tipped, And Lycian are her shafts and bow. 20