BOOK VIII

Soon as Turnus set high on Laurentum’s tower the ensign of war, and the horns clanged forth their harsh music, soon as he shook the reins in the mouth of his fiery steeds, and clashed his armour, at once came a stirring of men’s souls: all Latium conspires in tumultuous rising, 5 and the warrior bands are inflamed to madness. The generals, Messapus and Ufens and Mezentius, scorner of the gods, assume the lead, mustering succour from all sides and unpeopling the fields of their tillers far and wide. Venulus too is sent to the town of mighty Diomede 10 to entreat help, and set forth that the Teucrians are planting foot in Latium: that Æneas is arrived by sea and intruding his vanquished home-gods, and announcing himself as the Latians’ destined king; that many tribes are flocking to the standard of the Dardan chief, and the 15 contagion of his name is spreading over Latium’s length and breadth. What is to be the end of such a beginning, what, should fortune favour him, he promises to himself as the issue of the battle, Diomede will know better than king Turnus or king Latinus. 20

So go things in Latium. The chief of Laomedon’s line sees it all, and is tossed on a sea of cares; now on this point, now on that, he throws in a moment the forces of his mind, hurrying it into all quarters and sweeping the whole range of thought: as in water a flickering beam 25 on a brazen vat, darted back by the sun or the bright moon’s image, flits far and wide over the whole place, now at last mounting to the sky and striking the ceiling of the roof. Night came, and tired life the earth over, bird and beast alike, were lapped deep in slumber, when 30 Æneas, good king, troubled at heart by the anxious war, stretched himself on the bank under heaven’s chilly cope, and let repose at last steal over his frame. Before him appeared in person the god of the place, old Tiber of the pleasant stream, rising among the poplar foliage: a gray mantle of transparent linen floated about him, and his 5 hair was shaded with bushy reeds: and thus he began to address the chief and relieve his care: “O offspring of heaven’s stock, who are bringing back to us safe from the foe the city of Troy, and preserving Pergamus in enduring life, yourself looked for long on the Laurentian 10 soil and in the fields of Latium, here is your abiding place of rest, here, distrust it not, permanence for your home-gods: let not war’s threatenings make you afraid, the swellings of the anger of heaven have all given way. Even now, that you may not think this the idle coinage 15 of sleep, under the oaks on the bank you shall find an enormous swine lying with a litter of thirty head just born, white herself throughout her lazy length, her children round her breasts as white as she: a sign that when thirty years have made their circuit, Ascanius shall found 20 that city known by the illustrious name of the White. Of no doubtful issue are these words of mine. Now for the way in which you may triumphantly unravel the present knot, grant me your attention, and I will show you in brief. On this my coast, Arcadians, a race sprung 25 from Pallas, who have followed king Evander and his banner, have chosen themselves a site and built a city on the hills, called from the name of their ancestor Pallas, Pallanteum. These are forever engaged in war with the Latian nation: let them join your camp as allies, and 30 make league with them. I myself will lead you between the banks, straight along my stream, that as you journey up your oars may surmount the adverse current. Up then, goddess-born, and ere the stars have well set, offer prayer in due course to Juno, and overbear with suppliant 35 vows her anger and her menace. Once triumphant, you shall pay your worship to me. I am he whom you see here with brimming flood grazing the banks and threading rich cultured lands, sea-green Tiber, the river whom gods love best. Here rises my royal palace, the crown of lofty cities.” The river-god said, and plunged into his deep pool, down to the bottom; night and sleep at once fled from Æneas. He rises, and with his eyes 5 fixed on the sun’s rays just dawning on the sky, he lifts up in due form water from the river in the hollow of his hands, and pours forth to heaven words like these: “Nymphs, Laurentian nymphs, whence rivers derive their birth, and thou, father Tiber, with thy hallowed flood, 10 take Æneas to your bosom, and at last relieve him from perils. Whatever the spring of the pool where thou dwellest in thy pity for our troubles, whatever the soil whence thy goodly stream arises, ever shalt thou be honoured by me with sacrifice, ever with offerings, the 15 river with the crescent horn, the monarch of Hesperian waters. Be but thou present, and confirm by thy deed thy heavenly tokens.” So saying, he chooses two biremes from the fleet and fits them with rowers, while he gives his comrades arms to wear. 20

When lo, a sudden portent marvellous to view—stretched in milk-white length along the sward, herself of one hue with her white litter, conspicuous on the verdant bank is seen a sow, whom pious Æneas to thee, even to thee, mightiest Juno, immolates in sacrifice, and sets her 25 with all her brood before the altar. That whole night long Tiber smoothed his brimming stream, and so stood with hushed waves, half recoiling, as to lay down a watery floor as of some gentle lake or peaceful pool, that the oar might have nought to struggle with. So they begin their 30 voyage and speed with auspicious cheers. Smooth along the surface floats the anointed pine: marvelling stand the waters, marvelling the unwonted wood, to see the warriors’ shields gleaming far along the stream, and the painted vessels gliding between the banks. The rowers 35 give no rest to night or day, as they surmount the long meanders, sweep under the fringe of diverse trees, and cut through the woods that look green in the still expanse. The sun had climbed in full blaze the central cope of heaven, when from afar they see walls, and a citadel, and the roofs of straggling habitations—the place which the power of Rome has now made to mate the skies: then it was but Evander’s poor domain. At once they 5 turn their prows to land and approach the town.

It happened that on that day the Arcadian monarch was performing a yearly sacrifice to Amphitryon’s mighty child[250] and the heavenly brotherhood in a grove before the city. With him his son Pallas, with him all the prime of 10 his warriors and his unambitious senate were offering incense, and the new-shed blood was steaming warm on the altar. Soon as they saw tall ships gliding toward them through the shadowy trees, and plying the oar in silence, alarmed by the sudden apparition, each and all start up 15 from the sacrificial board. Pallas, bolder than the rest, bids them not break the sacred observance, and snatching up a weapon flies himself to meet the strangers, and from a height at distance, “Warriors,” he cries, “what cause has led you to venture on a path you know not? 20 whither are you bound? what is your nation, your family? is it peace you bring us or war?” Then father Æneas bespeaks him thus from the lofty stern, stretching forth in his hand a branch of peaceful olive: “These are Trojans you see. These weapons mean hostility to the 25 Latins, who have driven us from their land by a tyrannous war. Our errand is to Evander. Take back our message, and say that chosen chiefs of Dardany are at his gate, praying for an armed alliance.” That mighty name struck awe into Pallas. “Disembark,” he cries, “whoever 30 you be, and speak to my sire in person, and come beneath our home-gods’ hospitable shelter,” and gave his hand in welcome, and clung to the hand he clasped. They advance under the shade of the grove, and leave the river behind. 35

Then Æneas addresses the king with friendly courtesy: “Best of the sons of Greece, to whom it has pleased Fortune that I should make my prayer and stretch out boughs wreathed with fillets, I felt no fear for that you were a Danaan leader, an Arcadian, allied by lineage with the two sons of Atreus: I felt that my own worth, and the gods’ hallowed oracles, and the old connection of our ancestry, and your world-wide fame, had linked me to 5 you, and brought me before you at once by destiny and of my own will. Dardanus, first father and founder of the town of Ilion, born, as Greeks tell, of Electra, daughter of Atlas, came among Teucer’s people: Electra’s father was mighty Atlas, he that bears up on his shoulders the 10 spheres of heaven. Your progenitor is Mercury, whom beauteous Maia[251] conceived and brought forth on Cyllene’s chill summit; but Maia, if tradition be credited, is the child of Atlas, the same Atlas who lifts up the stars of the firmament. Thus our two races part off from one 15 and the same stock. Trusting to this, I sent no embassy, nor contrived the first approaches to you by rule and method: in myself, in my own person, I have made the experiment, and come to your gate as a suppliant. The same tribe which persecutes you, the Daunians, is 20 now persecuting us with cruel war: should they drive us away, they foresee nought to hinder their subduing all Hesperia utterly to their yoke, and mastering either sea, that washes it above or below. Take our friendship and give us yours. On our side are hearts valiant in war, 25 and a gallant youth approved by adventure.”

Æneas ended. Long ere this the other’s eye was scanning the speaker’s countenance and eyes, and surveying his whole frame. Then he returns in brief: “With what joy, bravest of the Teucrians, do I welcome and acknowledge 30 ye! how well I call to mind the words, the voice, the look of your sire, the great Anchises! For I remember how Priam, son of Laomedon, journeying to Salamis, to see the kingdom of his sister Hesione, went on to visit the chill frontier of Arcadia. In those days the first 35 bloom of youth was clothing my cheeks. I admired the Teucrian leaders, I admired Laomedon’s royal son; but Anchises’ port was nobler than all. My mind kindled with a youth’s ardour to accost one so great, and exchange the grasp of the hand. I made my approach, and eagerly conducted him to the walls of Pheneus.[252] On leaving he gave me a beauteous quiver with Lycian arrows, and a scarf embroidered with gold, and two bridles which my 5 Pallas has now, all golden. So now I both plight you here with the hand you ask, and soon as to-morrow’s light shall restore to the earth its blessing, I will send you back rejoicing in an armed succour, and reënforced with stores. Meanwhile, since you are arrived here as my friends, join 10 in gladly solemnizing with us this our yearly celebration, which it were sin to postpone, and accustom yourselves thus early to the hospitalities of your new allies.”

This said, he bids set on again the viands and the cups, erewhile removed, and himself places the warriors on a 15 seat of turf, welcoming Æneas in especial grace with the heaped cushion of a shaggy lion’s hide, and bidding him occupy a throne of maple wood. Then chosen youths and the priest of the altar with emulous zeal bring in the roasted carcases of bulls, pile up in baskets the gifts of 20 the corn-goddess prepared by art, and serve the wine-god round. Æneas and the warriors of Troy with him regale themselves on a bull’s long chine[o] and on sacrificial entrails.

When hunger had been quenched and appetite allayed, 25 king Evander begins: “Think not that these solemnities of ours, these ritual feastings, this altar so blest in divine presence, have been riveted on us by idle superstition, unknowing of the gods of old; no, guest of Troy, it is deliverance from cruel dangers that makes us sacrifice 30 and pay again and again worship where worship is due. First of all cast your eyes on this rock-hung crag: observe how the masses of stone are flung here and there, how desolate and exposed stands the mountain’s recess, and how the rocks have left the trail of a giant downfall. 35 Here once was a cave, retiring in enormous depth, tenanted by a terrible shape, Cacus, half man, half brute: the sun’s rays could never pierce it; the ground was always steaming with fresh carnage; fixed to its imperious portals were hanging human countenances ghastly with hideous gore. This monster’s father was Vulcan: Vulcan’s were the murky fires that he disgorged from his mouth as he towered along in enormous bulk. To us also at length 5 in our yearning need time brought the arrival of a divine helper. For the mightiest of avengers, Alcides, triumphing in the slaughter and the spoils of the triple Geryon,[253] was in our land, and was driving by this road as a conqueror those giant oxen, and the cattle were filling valley 10 and river-side. But Cacus, infatuated by fiendish frenzy, not to leave aught of crime or craft undared or unessayed, carries off from the stalls four bulls of goodly form, and heifers no fewer of surpassing beauty. And these, that they might leave no traces by their forward motion, he 15 dragged by the tail to his cave, haled them with reversed footprints to tell the story, and so concealed them in the dark rocky den. Thus the seeker found no traces to lead him to the cavern. Meantime, when Amphitryon’s son was at last removing from their stalls his feasted herds 20 and preparing to quit the country, the oxen gave a farewell low, filling the whole woodland with their plainings, and taking clamorous leave of the hills. One of the heifers returned the sound, lowing from the depth of the vast cavern, and thus baffled the hopes of her jealous 25 guardian. Now, if ever, Alcides’ wrath blazed up from the black choler of his heart: he snatches up his weapons and his club with all its weight of knots, and makes at full speed for the skyey mountain’s height. Then first the men of our country saw Cacus’ limbs tremble and his 30 eyes quail: away he flies swifter than the wind, and seeks his den; fear has winged his feet. Scarce had he shut himself in, and let down from its burst fastenings the huge stone, suspended there by his father’s workmanship in iron, and with that barrier fortified his straining doorway, 35 when lo! the hero of Tiryns[254] was there in the fury of his soul: scanning every inlet he turns his face hither and thither, gnashing with his teeth. Thrice in white heat of wrath he surveys the whole mass of Aventine; thrice he attempts in vain the stony portal; thrice, staggering from the effort, he sits down in the hollow. Before him stood a pointed crag with abrupt rocky sides rising over the cave behind, high as the eye can reach, a 5 fitting home for the nests of unclean and hateful birds. This, as sloping down it inclined towards the river on the left, pushing it full on the right he upheaved and tore it loose from its seat, then suddenly sent it down, with a shock at which high heaven thunders, the banks start 10 apart, and the river runs back in terror. Then the cave and the vast halls of Cacus were seen unroofed, and the dark recesses lay open to their depths—even as if earth, by some mighty force laid open to her depths, should burst the doors of the mansions below, and expose the 15 realms of ghastly gloom which the gods hate, and from above the vast abyss were to be seen, and the spectres dazzled by the influx of day. So as Cacus stares surprised by the sudden burst of light, pent by the walls of his cave, and roars in strange and hideous sort, Alcides 20 from above showers down his darts, and calls every weapon to his aid, and rains a tempest of boughs and huge millstones. But he, seeing that no hope of flight remains, vomits from his throat huge volumes of smoke, marvellous to tell, and wraps the whole place in pitchy 25 darkness, blotting out all prospect from the eyes, and in the depth of the cave masses a smothering night of blended blackness and fire. The rage of Alcides brooked not this: headlong he dashed through the flame, where the smoke surges thickest and the vast cavern seethes with billows 30 of black vapour. Here while Cacus in the heart of the gloom is vomiting his helpless fires he seizes him, twines his limbs with his own, and in fierce embrace compresses his strangled eyeballs and his throat now bloodless and dry. At once the doors are burst and the black den laid 35 bare, and the plundered oxen, the spoil that his oath had disclaimed, are exposed to light, and the hideous carcase is dragged out by the heels. The gazers look unsatisfied on those dreadful eyes, those grim features, the shaggy breast of the half bestial monster, and the extinguished furnace of his throat. Since then grateful acknowledgments have been paid, and the men of younger time have joyfully observed the day: foremost among them Potitius, 5 founder of the ceremony, and the Pinarian house, custodian of the worship of Hercules. He himself set up in the grove this altar, which shall ever be named by us the greatest, and shall ever be the greatest in truth. Come then, warriors, and in honour of worth so glorious 10 wreathe your locks with leaves, and present in your hands brimming cups, and invoke our common deity, and pour libations with gladness of heart.” As he ended, the white-green poplar cast its Herculean shade over his locks and hung down with a festoon of leaves, and the sacred goblet 15 charged his hand. At once all with glad hearts pour libations on the board and make prayers to heaven.

Meantime evening is approaching nearer the slope of heaven, and already the priests and their chief Potitius were in procession, clad in skins in ritual sort, and bearing 20 fire in their hands. They renew the solemn feast, and bring delicious offerings for a fresh repast, and pile the altars with loaded chargers. Then come the Salii to sing round about the blazing altars, their temples wreathed with boughs of poplar, a company of youths and another 25 of old men; and these extol in song the glories and deeds of Hercules: how in his cradle, by the pressure of his young hand he strangled his stepmother’s monstrous messengers, the two serpents; how in war that same hand dashed to pieces mighty cities, Troy and Œchalia; 30 how he endured those thousand heavy labours, a slave to king Eurystheus, by ungentle Juno’s fateful will. “Yes, thou, unconquered hero, thou slayest the two-formed children of the cloud, Hylæus and Pholus, thou slayest the portent of Crete, and the enormous lion that dwelt 35 ’neath Nemea’s rock. Thou never quailedst at aught in bodily shape, no, nor at Typhœus himself, towering high, weapons in hand; thy reason failed thee not when Lerna’s serpent stood round thee with all her throng of heads. Hail to thee, authentic offspring of Jove, fresh ornament of the sky! come to us, come to these thine own rites with favouring smile and auspicious gait.” Such things their songs commemorate; and they crown all with Cacus’ 5 cave and the fiend himself, the fire panting from his lungs. The entire grove echoes with their voices, and the hills rebound.

The sacrifice over, the whole concourse returns to the city. There walked the king, mossed over with years, 10 keeping at his side Æneas and his son as he moved along, and lightening the way with various speech. Æneas admires, and turns his quick glance from sight to sight: each scene enthralls him; and with eager zest he inquires and learns one by one the records of men of old. Then 15 spoke king Evander, the builder of Rome’s tower-crowned hill: “These woodlands were first inhabited by native Fauns and Nymphs, and by a race of men that sprung from trunks of trees and hard oaken core; no rule of life, no culture had they: they never learnt to yoke the ox, 20 nor to hive their stores, nor to husband what they got; the boughs and the chase supplied their savage sustenance. The first change came from Saturn, who arrived from skyey Olympus, flying from the arms of Jove, a realmless exile. He brought together the race, untamed as they 25 were and scattered over mountain heights, and gave them laws, and chose for the country the name of Latium, because he had found it a safe hiding-place. The golden age of story was when he was king, so calm and peaceful his rule over his people; till gradually there crept in a 30 race of worse grain and duller hue, and the frenzy of war, and the greed of having. Then came the host of Ausonia and the Sicanian tribes, and again and again Saturn’s land changed its name; then came king after king, savage Thybris with his giant bulk, from whom in after days we 35 Italians called the river Tiber: the authentic name of ancient Albula was lost. Myself, an exile from my country, while voyaging to the ends of the sea, all-powerful Fortune and inevitable Destiny planted here; at my back were the awful hests[255] of my mother, the nymph Carmentis, and the divine sanction of Apollo.” Scarce had he finished, when moving on he points out the altar and the Carmental gate, as the Romans call it, their ancient 5 tribute to the nymph Carmentis, the soothsaying seer, who first told of the future greatness of Æneas’ sons and of the glories of Pallanteum. Next he points out a mighty grove, which fiery Romulus made the Asylum of a later day, and embowered by the chill dank rock, the Lupercal, 10 bearing after Arcadian wont the name of Lycæan Pan. He shows, moreover, the forest of hallowed Argiletum, and appeals to the spot, and recounts the death of Argus, once his guest. Thence he leads the way to the Tarpeian temple, even the Capitol, now gay with gold, then rough 15 with untrimmed brushwood. Even in that day the sacred terrors of the spot awed the trembling rustics; even then they shuddered at the forest and the rock. “This wood,” he says, “this hill with the shaggy brow, is the home of a god of whom we know not; my Arcadians believe that 20 they have seen there great Jove himself, oft and oft, shaking with his right hand the shadowy Ægis[256] and calling up the storm. Here, too, in these two towns, with their ramparts overthrown, you see the relics and the chronicles of bygone ages. This tower was built by father 25 Janus, that by Saturn; the one’s name Janiculum, the other’s Saturnia.” So talking together they came nigh the palace where Evander dwells in poverty, and saw cattle all about lowing in the Roman forum and Carinæ’s luxurious precinct. When they reached the gate, “This 30 door,” said the host, “Alcides in his triumph stooped to enter; this mansion contained his presence. Nerve yourself, my guest, to look down on riches, and make your own soul, like his, such as a god would not disdain, and take in no churlish sort the welcome of poverty.” He 35 said, and beneath the slope of his narrow roof ushered in the great Æneas, and laid him to rest on a couch of leaves and the skin of a Libyan bear.

Down comes the night, and flaps her sable wings over the earth. But Venus, distracted, and not idly, with a mother’s cares, disturbed by the menaces of the Laurentines and the violence of the gathering storm, addresses Vulcan, and in the nuptial privacy of their golden chamber 5 begins her speech, breathing in every tone the love that gods feel: “In old days of war, while the Argive kings were desolating Pergamus, their destined prey, and ravaging the towers which were doomed to hostile fire, no help for the sufferers, no arms of thy resourceful workmanship 10 did I ask; no, my dearest lord, I chose not to task thee and thy efforts to no end, large as was my debt to the sons of Priam, and many the tears that I shed for Æneas’ cruel agony. Now, by Jove’s commands, he has set his foot on Rutulian soil; so, with the past in my 15 mind, I appear as a suppliant, to ask of his power whom I honour most, as a mother may, armour for my son. Thee the daughter of Nereus, thee the spouse of Tithonus, found accessible to tears. See but what nations are mustering, what cities are closing the gate and pointing 20 the steel against me and the lives I love.” The speech was ended, and the goddess is fondling her undecided lord on all sides in the soft embrace of her snowy arms. Suddenly he caught the wonted fire, the well-known heat shot to his vitals and threaded his melting frame, even as 25 on a day when the fiery rent burst by the thunderclaps runs with gleaming flash along the veil of cloud. His spouse saw the triumph of her art and felt what beauty can do. Then spoke the stern old god, subdued by everlasting love: “Why fetch your excuses from so far? 30 whither, my queen, has fled your old affiance in me? had you then been as anxious, even in those old days it had been allowed to give arms to the Trojans; nor was the almighty sire nor the destinies unwilling that Troy should stand and Priam remain in life for ten years more. And 35 now, if war is your object and so your purpose holds, all the care that it lies within my art to promise, what can be wrought out of iron and molten electrum, as far as fire can burn and wind blow—cease to show by entreaty that you mistrust your power.” This said, he gave the embrace she longed for, and falling on the bosom of his spouse wooed the calm of slumber in every limb.

Then, soon as rest, first indulged, had driven sleep 5 away, when flying night had run half her course; just when a woman, compelled to support life by spinning, even by Pallas’ slender craft, wakes to light the fire that slumbered in the embers, adding night to her day’s work, and keeps her handmaids labouring long by the blaze, all 10 that she may preserve her husband’s bed unsullied, and bring up his infant sons; even so the lord of fire, at an hour not less slothful, rises from his couch of down to the toils of the artisan. There rises an island hard by the Sicanian coast and Æolian Lipari, towering with fiery 15 mountains; beneath it thunders a cavern, the den of Ætna, blasted out by Cyclop forges; the sound of mighty blows echoes on anvils: the smeltings of the Chalybes hiss through its depths, and the fire pants from the jaws of the furnace; it is the abode of Vulcan, and the land 20 bears Vulcan’s name. Hither, then, the lord of fire descends from heaven’s height. There, in the enormous den, the Cyclops were forging the iron, Brontes, and Steropes, and Pyracmon, the naked giant. In their hands was the rough cast of the thunder-bolt, one of those many 25 which the great Father showers down on earth from all quarters of heaven—part was polished for use, part still incomplete. Three spokes of frozen rain, three of watery cloud had they put together, three of ruddy flame and winged southern wind; and now they were blending with 30 what they had done the fearful flash, and the noise, and the terror, and the fury of untiring fire. In another part they were hurrying on for Mars the car and the flying wheels, with which he rouses warriors to madness, aye, and whole cities; and with emulous zeal were making 35 bright with golden serpent scales the terrible Ægis, the armour of angry Pallas, snakes wreathed together, and full on the breast of the goddess the Gorgon herself, her neck severed and her eyes rolling. “Away with all this,” cries the god; “take your unfinished tasks elsewhere, you Cyclops of Ætna, and give your attention here. Arms are wanted for a fiery warrior. Now is the call for power, now for swiftness of hand, now for all that art can teach. 5 Turn delay into despatch.” No more he said; but they with speed put their shoulder to the work, sharing it in equal parts. Copper flows in streams and golden ore, and steel, that knows how to wound, is molten in the huge furnace. They set up in outline a mighty shield, itself 10 singly matched against all the Latian weapons, and tangle together seven plates, circle and circle. Some with their gasping bellows are taking in and giving out the wind; others are dipping the hissing copper in the lake. The cave groans under the anvil’s weight. They, one with 15 another, with all a giant’s strength, are lifting their arms in measured cadence, and turning with their griping tongs the ore on this side and on that.

While the father of Lemnos[257] makes this despatch on the Æolian shores, Evander is roused from his lowly 20 dwelling by the genial light and the morning songs of birds under the eaves. Up rises the old man, and draws a tunic over his frame, and puts Tyrrhenian sandals round his feet; next he fastens from below to side and shoulder a sword from Tegea, flinging back over him a 25 panther’s hide that drooped from the left. Moreover, two guardian dogs go before him from his palace door, and attend their master’s steps. So he made his way to the lodging of his guest, and sought Æneas’ privacy, their discourse of yesterday and the gift then promised fresh 30 in his heroic soul. Æneas likewise was astir not less early. This had his son Pallas, that had Achates walking by his side. They meet, and join hand in hand, and sit them down in the midst of the mansion, and at last enjoy the privilege of mutual talk. The king begins as follows:— 35

“Mightiest leader of the Teucrians, whom while heaven preserves I shall never own that Troy’s powers are vanquished or her realm overturned, we ourselves have but small means of martial aid to back our great name; on this side we are bounded by the Tuscan river: on that our Rutulian foe beleaguers us, and thunders in arms around our walls. But I have a mighty nation, a host with an imperial heritage, which I am ready to unite with 5 you—a gleam of safety revealed by unexpected chance. It is at the summons of destiny that you bend your steps thither. Not far hence, built of ancient stone, is the inhabited city of Agylla, where of old the Lydian nation, renowned in war, took its seat on Etruscan mountains. 10 This city, after long and prosperous years, was held by king Mezentius, by stress of tyrant rule and the terror of the sword. Why should I recount the despot’s dreadful murders and all his savage crimes? may the gods preserve 15 them in mind, and bring them on his own head and his family’s! Nay, he would even link together the dead and the living, coupling hand with hand and face with face—so inventive is the lust of torture—and in the slime and poison of that sickening embrace would destroy them thus by a lingering dissolution. At last, wearied 20 by oppression, his subjects in arms besiege the frantic monster himself and his palace, slay his retainers, shower firebrands on his roof. He, mid the carnage, escapes to Rutulian territory, and shelters himself under Turnus’ friendly power. So all Etruria has risen in righteous 25 wrath; at once, at the sword’s point, they demand that the king be surrendered to their vengeance. Of these thousands, Æneas, I will make you general. For along the seaboard’s length their ships are swarming and panting for the fray, and calling on the trumpet to sound, 30 while an aged soothsayer is holding them back by his fateful utterance: ‘Chosen warriors of Mæonian land, the power and soul of an ancient nation, whom just resentment launches against the foe and Mezentius inflames with righteous fury, no Italian may take the reins of a race so 35 proud: choose foreigners to lead you.’ At this the Etruscan army settled down on yonder plain, awed by the heavenly warning. Tarchon[o] himself has sent me ambassadors with the royal crown and sceptre, and given to my hands the ensigns of power, bidding me join the camp, and assume the Tyrrhene throne. But age, with its enfeebling chill and the exhaustion of its long term of years, grudges me the honour of command; my day of martial 5 prowess is past. Fain would I encourage my son to the task, but that the blood of a Sabine mother blending with mine makes his race half Italian. You, in years and in race alike the object of Fate’s indulgence—you, the chosen one of Heaven—assume the place that waits 10 you, gallant general of Teucrians and Italians both. Nay, I will give you, too, Pallas here, the hope and solace of my age; under your tutelage let him learn to endure military service and the war-god’s strenuous labours; let your actions be his pattern, and his young admiration be 15 centred on you. To him I will give two hundred Arcadian horsemen, the flower of my chivalry, and Pallas in his own name shall give you as many more.”

Scarce had his words been uttered—and the twain were holding their eyes in downcast thought, Æneas 20 Anchises’ son and true Achates, brooding each with his own sad heart on many a peril, had not Cythera’s goddess sent a sign from the clear sky. For unforeseen, flashed from the heaven, comes a glare and a peal, and all around seemed crashing down at once, and the clang of the 25 Tyrrhene trumpet appeared to blare through ether. They look up: a second and a third time cracks the enormous sound. Armour enveloped in a cloud in a clear quarter of the firmament is seen to flash redly in the sunlight and to ring as clashed together. The rest were all amazement; 30 but the Trojan hero recognized the sound, and in it the promise of his goddess mother. Then he cries: “Nay, my host, nay, ask not in sooth what chance these wonders portend; it is I that have a call from on high. This was the sign that the goddess who gave me birth 35 foreshowed me that she would send, should the attack of war come, while she would bring through the air armour from Vulcan for my help. Alas! how vast the carnage ready to burst on Laurentum’s wretched sons! what vengeance, Turnus, shall be mine from thee! how many a warrior’s shield and helm and stalwart frame shalt thou toss beneath thy waters, father Tiber! Aye, clamour for battle, and break your plighted word!” 5

Thus having said, he rises from his lofty seat, and first of all quickens the altars where the Herculean fires were smouldering, and with glad heart approaches the hearth-god of yesterday, and the small household powers; duly they sacrifice chosen sheep, Evander for his part and the 10 Trojan youth for theirs. Next he moves on to the ships and revisits his crew: from whose number he chooses men to follow him to the war, eminent in valour: the rest are wafted down the stream and float lazily along with the current at their back, to bring Ascanius news of his father 15 and his fortunes. Horses are given to the Teucrians who are seeking the Tyrrhene territory, and one is led along, reserved for Æneas; a tawny lion’s hide covers it wholly, gleaming forth with talons of gold.

At once flies rumour, blazed through the little city, 20 that the horsemen are marching with speed to the gates of the Tyrrhene king. In alarm the matrons redouble their vows; fear treads on the heels of danger, and the features of the war-god loom larger on the view. Then Evander, clasping the hand of his departing son, hangs 25 about him with tears that never have their fill, and speaks like this: “Ah! would but Jupiter bring back my bygone years, and make me what I was when under Præneste’s very walls I struck down the first rank and set a conqueror’s torch to piles of shields, and with this my 30 hand sent down to Tartarus king Erulus, whom at his birth his mother Feronia endowed with three lives—fearful to tell—and a frame that could thrice bear arms: thrice had he to be struck down in death: yet from him on that day this hand took all those three lives, and 35 thrice stripped that armour—never should I, as now, be torn, my son, from your loved embrace. Never would Mezentius have laid dishonour on a neighbour’s crest, dealt with his sword that repeated havoc, and bereaved my city of so many of her sons. But you, great powers above, and thou, Jupiter, mightiest ruler of the gods, have pity, I implore you, on an Arcadian monarch, and give ear to a father’s prayer; if your august will, if destiny 5 has in store for me the safe return of my Pallas, if life will make me see him and meet him once more, then I pray that I may live; there is no trial I cannot bear to outlast. But if thou, dark Fortune, threatenest any unnamed calamity, now, oh, now, be it granted me to snap 10 life’s ruthless thread, while care wears a double face, while hope cannot spell the future, while you, darling boy, my love and late delight, are still in my arms: nor let my ears be pierced by tidings more terrible.” So was the father heard to speak at their last parting; his servants 15 were seen carrying within doors their fallen lord.

And now the cavalry had passed the city’s open gates, Æneas among the first and true Achates, and after them the other Trojan nobles; Pallas himself the centre of the column, conspicuous with gay scarf and figured armour; 20 even as the morning-star just bathed in the waves of the ocean, Venus’ favourite above all the stellar fires, sets in a moment on the sky his heavenly countenance, and melts the darkness. There are the trembling matrons standing on the walls, following with their eyes the cloud 25 of dust and the gleam of the brass-clad companies. They in their armour are moving through the underwood, their eye on the nearest path: hark! a shout mounts up, a column is formed, and the four-foot beat of the hoof shakes the crumbling plain. Near the cool stream of Cære stands 30 a vast grove, clothed by hereditary reverence with wide-spread sanctity; on all sides it is shut in by the hollows of hills, which encompass its dark pine-wood shades. Rumour says that the old Pelasgians dedicated it to Silvanus, god of the country and the cattle, a grove with a 35 holiday—the people who once in early times dwelt on the Latian frontier. Not far from this Tarchon and the Tyrrhenians were encamped in a sheltered place, and from the height of the hill their whole army spread already to the view, as they pitched at large over the plain. Hither come father Æneas and the chosen company of warriors, and refresh the weariness of themselves and their steeds.

But Venus had come in her divine beauty through the 5 dark clouds of heaven with the gifts in her hand, and soon as she saw her son far retired in the vale in the privacy of the cool stream, she thus accosted him, appearing suddenly before him: “See, here is the present completed by my lord’s promised skill: now you will not need to hesitate 10 to-morrow about daring to the combat the haughty Laurentians or fiery Turnus’ self.” So said the lady of Cythera, and sought her son’s embrace: the arms she set up to glitter under an oak that faced his view. He, exulting in the goddess’ gifts, and charmed with their 15 dazzling beauty, cannot feast his eyes enough as he rolls them from point to point, admiring and turning over in his hands and arms the helmet with its dread crest, vomiting flame, the fateful sword, the stiff brazen corslet, blood-red and huge, in hue as when a dark cloud kindles with 20 sunlight and gleams afar; the polished cuishes,[258] too, of electrum and gold smelted oft and oft, and the spear, and the shield’s ineffable frame-work. On this was the story of Italy and the triumphs of the Romans wrought by the Lord of the fire; no stranger he to prophecy nor 25 ignorant of the time to come: on it was the whole royal line of the future from Ascanius onward, and their foughten fields in long succession. There, too, he had portrayed the mother-wolf stretched in Mars’ green cavern; around her teats were the twin boys in play climbing and clinging, 30 and licking their dam without dread; while she, her lithe neck bent back, was caressing them by turns and with her tongue shaping their young limbs. Near this he had inserted Rome and the lawless rape of the Sabine maidens amid the crowded circus, while the great games were in 35 course, and the sudden rise of a new war between the sons of Romulus and ancient Tatius with his austere Cures. Afterwards were seen the two kings, the conflict set at rest, standing in arms before the altar of Jove with goblets in their hands and cementing a treaty with swine’s blood. Not far off Mettus had already been torn asunder by the chariots driven apart—ah! false Alban, were you but a keeper of your word!—and Tullus was dragging the 5 traitor’s flesh through the woodland, while the bushes were sprinkled with the bloody rain. There, too, was Porsenna insisting that exiled Tarquin should be taken back and leaguering the city with a mighty siege: Æneas’ sons were flinging themselves on the sword in freedom’s cause. In 10 his face might be seen the likeness of wrath, and the likeness of menace, that Cocles[259] should have the courage to tear down the bridge, that Cloelia should break her prison and swim the river. There was Manlius standing sentinel on the summit of the Tarpeian fortress in the 15 temple’s front, holding the height of the Capitol, while the Romulean thatch looked fresh and sharp on the palace-roof. And there was the silver goose fluttering its wings in the gilded cloister, and shrieking that the Gauls were at the door. The Gauls were at hand marching among 20 the brushwood, and had gained the summit sheltered by the darkness and the kindly grace of dusky night. Golden is their hair and golden their raiment; striped cloaks gleam on their shoulders; their milk-white necks are twined with gold; each brandishes two Alpine javelins, 25 his body guarded by the long oval of his shield. There he had shown in relief the Salii in their dances and the naked Luperci, and the woolly peaks of their caps, and the sacred shields which fell from heaven: chaste matrons were making solemn progress through the city in their 30 soft-cushioned cars. At distance from these he introduces too the mansions of Tartarus, Pluto’s yawning portals, and the torments of crime, and thee, Catiline, poised on the beetling rock and quailing at grim Fury-faces: and the good in their privacy, with Cato as their lawgiver. 35 Stretching in its breadth among these swept the semblance of the swelling sea, all of gold, but the blue was made to foam with whitening billows; and all about it dolphins of bright silver in joyous circles were lashing the surface with their tails and cutting the tide. In the midst might be seen fleets of brazen ships, the naval war of Actium; you might remark the whole of Leucate aglow with the war-god’s array, and the waves one blaze of gold. On this 5 side is Augustus Cæsar leading the Italians to conflict, with the senate and the people, the home-gods and their mighty brethren, standing aloft on the stern: his auspicious brows emit twin-born flames, and his ancestral star dawns over his head. Elsewhere is Agrippa with the 10 winds and the gods at his back, towering high as he leads his column; his brows gleam with the beaked circle of a naval crown, the glorious ornament of war. On that side is Antonius with his barbaric powers and the arms of divers lands, triumphant from the nations of the dawn-goddess 15 and the red ocean’s coast, carrying with him Egypt and the strength of the East and the utmost parts of Bactria, and at his side—shame on the profanation!—his Egyptian spouse.[260] All are seen at once in fierce onward motion: the whole sea-floor foams up, torn by the backward 20 pull of the oars and by the three-fanged beaks. On to the deep! you would deem that uprooted Cyclades were swimming the sea, or that tall hills were meeting hills in battle; such the giant effort, with which the warriors urge on their tower-crowned ships. From the hand is 25 scattered a shower of flaming tow and flying steel: the plains of Neptune redden with unwonted carnage. In the midst of them the queen is cheering on her forces with the timbrel of her native land; casting as yet no glance on the twin-born snakes that threaten her rear. There are 30 the portentous gods of all the nations, and Anubis[261] the barking monster, brandishing their weapons in the face of Neptune and Venus and in the face of Pallas. Midmost in the fray storms Mavors,[262] relieved in iron, and fell Fury-fiends swooping from the sky; and Discord sweeps 35 along in the glory of her rent mantle, and at her back Bellona with blood-dropping scourge. There was Actium’s Apollo, with his eye on the fray, bending his bow from above; at whose terror all Egypt and Ind, all Arabia, all the sons of Saba[263] were turning the back in flight. The queen herself was shown spreading her sails to friendly breezes, and just loosing the sheets. On her face the Lord of the Fire had written the paleness of foreshadowed 5 death, as she drove on among corpses before the tide and the zephyr; over against her was Nile, his vast body writhing in woe, throwing open his bosom, and with his whole flowing raiment inviting the vanquished to his green lap and his sheltering flood. But Cæsar, entering the walls 10 of Rome in threefold triumph, was consecrating to the gods of Italy a votive tribute of deathless gratitude, three hundred mighty fanes the whole city through. The ways were ringing with gladness and with games and with plausive peal; in every temple thronged a matron company, 15 in every temple an altar blazed; in front of the altars slaughtered bullocks strewed the floor. The hero himself, throned on dazzling Phœbus’ snow-white threshold, is telling over the offerings of all the nations and hanging them up on the proud temple gates; there in long procession 20 move the conquered peoples, diverse in tongue, diverse no less in garb and in armour. Here had Mulciber portrayed the Nomad race and the zoneless sons of Afric: here, too, Leleges and Carians and quivered Gelonians: Euphrates was flowing with waves subdued already; and 25 the Morini, furthest of mankind, and Rhine with his crescent horn, and tameless Dahæ, and Araxes chafing to be bridged. Such sights Æneas scans with wonder on Vulcan’s shield, his mother’s gift, and joys in the portraiture of things he knows not, as he heaves on his shoulder the 30 fame and the fate of grandsons yet to be.