Complete Works of Virgil

by Virgil

  But while thus in even battle they fight on the broad plain, the goddess, her promise fulfilled, when she hath dyed the war in blood, and mingled death in the first encounter, quits Hesperia, and, glancing through the sky, addresses Juno in exultant tone:

  ‘Lo, discord is ripened at thy desire into baleful war: tell them now to mix in amity and join alliance. Insomuch as I have imbued the Trojans in Ausonian blood, this likewise will I add, if I have assurance of thy will. With my rumours I will sweep the bordering towns into war, and kindle their spirit with furious desire for battle, that from all quarters help may come; I will sow the land with arms.’

  Then Juno answering: ‘Terror and harm is wrought abundantly. The springs of war are aflow: they fight with arms in their grasp, the arms that chance first supplied, that fresh blood stains. Let this be the union, this the bridal that Venus’ illustrious progeny and Latinus the King shall celebrate. Our Lord who reigns on Olympus’ summit would not have thee stray too freely in heaven’s upper air. Withdraw thy presence. Whatsoever future remains in the struggle, that I myself will sway.’

  Such accents uttered the daughter of Saturn; and the [561-594] other raises her rustling snaky wings and darts away from the high upper air to Cocytus her home. There is a place midmost of Italy, deep in the hills, notable and famed of rumour in many a country, the Vale of Amsanctus; on either hand a wooded ridge, dark with thick foliage, hems it in, and midway a torrent in swirling eddies shivers and echoes over the rocks. Here is shewn a ghastly pool, a breathing-hole of the grim lord of hell, and a vast chasm breaking into Acheron yawns with pestilential throat. In it the Fury sank, and relieved earth and heaven of her hateful influence.

  But therewithal the queenly daughter of Saturn puts the last touch to war. The shepherds pour in full tale from the battlefield into the town, bearing back their slain, the boy Almo and Galaesus’ disfigured face, and cry on the gods and call on Latinus. Turnus is there, and amid the heat and outcry at the slaughter redoubles his terrors, crying that Teucrians are bidden to the kingdom, that a Phrygian race is mingling its taint with theirs, and he is thrust out of their gates. They too, the matrons of whose kin, struck by Bacchus, trample in choirs down the pathless woods — nor is Amata’s name a little thing — they too gather together from all sides and weary themselves with the battle-cry. Omens and oracles of gods go down before them, and all under malign influence clamour for awful war. Emulously they surround Latinus’ royal house. He withstands, even as a rock in ocean unremoved, as a rock in ocean when the great crash comes down, firm in its own mass among many waves slapping all about: in vain the crags and boulders hiss round it in foam, and the seaweed on its side is flung up and sucked away. But when he may in nowise overbear their blind counsel, and all goes at fierce Juno’s beck, with many an appeal to gods and void sky, ‘Alas!’ he cries, ‘we are broken of fate and driven helpless in the [595-626] storm. With your very blood will you pay the price of this, O wretched men! Thee, O Turnus, thy crime, thee thine awful punishment shall await; too late wilt thou address to heaven thy prayers and supplication. For my rest was won, and my haven full at hand; I am robbed but of a happy death.’ And without further speech he shut himself in the palace, and dropped the reins of state.

  There was a use in Hesperian Latium, which the Alban towns kept in holy observance, now Rome keeps, the mistress of the world, when they stir the War-God to enter battle; whether their hands prepare to carry war and weeping among Getae or Hyrcanians or Arabs, or to reach to India and pursue the Dawn, and reclaim their standards from the Parthian. There are twain gates of War, so runs their name, consecrate in grim Mars’ sanctity and terror. An hundred bolts of brass and masses of everlasting iron shut them fast, and Janus the guardian never sets foot from their threshold. There, when the sentence of the Fathers stands fixed for battle, the Consul, arrayed in the robe of Quirinus and the Gabine cincture, with his own hand unbars the grating doors, with his own lips calls battles forth; then all the rest follow on, and the brazen trumpets blare harsh with consenting breath. With this use then likewise they bade Latinus proclaim war on the Aeneadae, and unclose the baleful gates. He withheld his hand, and shrank away averse from the abhorred service, and hid himself blindly in the dark. Then the Saturnian queen of heaven glided from the sky, with her own hand thrust open the lingering gates, and swung sharply back on their hinges the iron-bound doors of war. Ausonia is ablaze, till then unstirred and immoveable. Some make ready to march afoot over the plains; some, mounted on tall horses, ride amain in clouds of dust. All seek out arms; and now they rub their shields smooth and make their spearheads glitter with [627-659] fat lard, and grind their axes on the whetstone: rejoicingly they advance under their standards and hear the trumpet note. Five great cities set up the anvil and sharpen the sword, strong Atina and proud Tibur, Ardea and Crustumeri, and turreted Antemnae. They hollow out head-gear to guard them, and plait wickerwork round shield-bosses; others forge breastplates of brass or smooth greaves of flexible silver. To this is come the honour of share and pruning-hook, to this all the love of the plough: they re-temper their fathers’ swords in the furnace. And now the trumpets blare; the watchword for war passes along. One snatches a helmet hurriedly from his house, another backs his neighing horses into the yoke; and arrays himself in shield and mail-coat triple-linked with gold, and girds on his trusty sword.

  Open now the gates of Helicon, goddesses, and stir the song of the kings that rose for war, the array that followed each and filled the plains, the men that even then blossomed, the arms that blazed in Italy the bountiful land: for you remember, divine ones, and you can recall; to us but a breath of rumour, scant and slight, is wafted down.

  First from the Tyrrhene coast savage Mezentius, scorner of the gods, opens the war and arrays his columns. By him is Lausus, his son, unexcelled in bodily beauty by any save Laurentine Turnus, Lausus tamer of horses and destroyer of wild beasts; he leads a thousand men who followed him in vain from Agylla town; worthy to be happier in ancestral rule, and to have other than Mezentius for father.

  After them beautiful Aventinus, born of beautiful Hercules, displays on the sward his palm-crowned chariot and victorious horses, and carries on his shield his father’s device, the hundred snakes of the Hydra’s serpent-wreath. Him, in the wood of the hill Aventine, Rhea the priestess [660-693] bore by stealth into the borders of light, a woman mingled with a god, after the Tirynthian Conqueror had slain Geryon and set foot on the fields of Laurentum, and bathed his Iberian oxen in the Tuscan river. These carry for war javelins and grim stabbing weapons, and fight with the round shaft and sharp point of the Sabellian pike. Himself he went on foot swathed in a vast lion skin, shaggy with bristling terrors, whose white teeth encircled his head; in such wild dress, the garb of Hercules clasped over his shoulders, he entered the royal house.

  Next twin brothers leave Tibur town, and the people called by their brother Tiburtus’ name, Catillus and valiant Coras, the Argives, and advance in the forefront of battle among the throng of spears: as when two cloud-born Centaurs descend from a lofty mountain peak, leaving Homole or snowy Othrys in rapid race; the mighty forest yields before them as they go, and the crashing thickets give them way.

  Nor was the founder of Praeneste city absent, the king who, as every age hath believed, was born of Vulcan among the pasturing herds, and found beside the hearth, Caeculus. On him a rustic battalion attends in loose order, they who dwell in steep Praeneste and the fields of Juno of Gabii, on the cool Anio and the Hernican rocks dewy with streams; they whom rich Anagnia, and whom thou, lord Amasenus, pasturest. Not all of them have armour, nor shields and clattering chariots. The most part shower bullets of dull lead; some wield in their hand two darts, and have for head-covering caps of tawny wolfskin; their left foot is bare wherewith to plant their steps; the other is covered with a boot of raw hide.

  But Messapus, tamer of horses, the seed of Neptune, whom none might ever strike down with steel or fire, calls quickly to arms his long unstirred
peoples and bands [694-727] disused to war, and again handles the sword. These are of the Fescennine ranks and of Aequi Falisci, these of Soracte’s fortresses and the fields of Flavina, and Ciminus’ lake and hill, and the groves of Capena. They marched in even time, singing their King; as whilome snowy swans among the thin clouds, when they return from pasturage, and utter resonant notes through their long necks; far off echoes the river and the smitten Asian fen. . . . Nor would one think these vast streaming masses were ranks clad in brass; rather that, high in air, a cloud of hoarse birds from the deep gulf was pressing to the shore.

  Lo, Clausus of the ancient Sabine blood, leading a great host, a great host himself; from whom now the Claudian tribe and family is spread abroad since Rome was shared with the Sabines. Alongside is the broad battalion of Amiternum, and the Old Latins, and all the force of Eretum and the Mutuscan oliveyards; they who dwell in Nomentum town, and the Rosean country by Velinus, who keep the crags of rough Tetrica and Mount Severus, Casperia and Foruli, and the river of Himella; they who drink of Tiber and Fabaris, they whom cold Nursia hath sent, and the squadrons of Horta and the tribes of Latinium; and they whom Allia, the ill-ominous name, severs with its current; as many as the waves that roll on the Libyan sea-floor when fierce Orion sets in the wintry surge; as thick as the ears that ripen in the morning sunlight on the plain of the Hermus or the yellowing Lycian tilth. Their shields clatter, and earth is amazed under the trampling of their feet.

  Here Agamemnonian Halaesus, foe of the Trojan name, yokes his chariot horses, and draws a thousand warlike peoples to Turnus; those who turn with spades the Massic soil that is glad with wine; whom the elders of Aurunca sent from their high hills, and the Sidicine low country [728-761] hard by; and those who leave Cales, and the dweller by the shallows of Volturnus river, and side by side the rough Saticulan and the Oscan bands. Polished maces are their weapons, and these it is their wont to fit with a tough thong; a target covers their left side, and for close fighting they have crooked swords.

  Nor shalt thou, Oebalus, depart untold of in our verses, who wast borne, men say, by the nymph Sebethis to Telon, when he grew old in rule over Capreae the Teleboïc realm: but not so content with his ancestral fields, his son even then held down in wide sway the Sarrastian peoples and the meadows watered by Sarnus, and the dwellers in Rufrae and Batulum, and the fields of Celemnae, and they on whom from her apple orchards Abella city looks down. Their wont was to hurl lances in Teutonic fashion; their head covering was stripped bark of the cork tree, their shield-plates glittering brass, glittering brass their sword.

  Thee too, Ufens, mountainous Nersae sent forth to battle, of noble fame and prosperous arms, whose race on the stiff Aequiculan clods is rough beyond all other, and bred to continual hunting in the woodland; they till the soil in arms, and it is ever their delight to drive in fresh spoils and live on plunder.

  Furthermore there came, sent by King Archippus, the priest of the Marruvian people, dressed with prosperous olive leaves over his helmet, Umbro excellent in valour, who was wont with charm and touch to sprinkle slumberous dew on the viper’s brood and water-snakes of noisome breath. Yet he availed not to heal the stroke of the Dardanian spear-point, nor was the wound of him helped by his sleepy charms and herbs culled on the Massic hills. Thee the woodland of Angitia, thee Fucinus’ glassy wave, thee the clear pools wept. . . .

  Likewise the seed of Hippolytus marched to war, Virbius [762-796] most excellent in beauty, sent by his mother Aricia. The groves of Egeria nursed him round the spongy shore where Diana’s altar stands rich and gracious. For they say in story that Hippolytus, after he fell by his stepmother’s treachery, torn asunder by his frightened horses to fulfil a father’s revenge, came again to the daylight and heaven’s upper air, recalled by Diana’s love and the drugs of the Healer. Then the Lord omnipotent, indignant that any mortal should rise from the nether shades to the light of life, launched his thunder and hurled down to the Stygian water the Phoebus-born, the discoverer of such craft and cure. But Trivia the bountiful hides Hippolytus in a secret habitation, and sends him away to the nymph Egeria and the woodland’s keeping, where, solitary in Italian forests, he should spend an inglorious life, and have Virbius for his altered name. Whence also hoofed horses are kept away from Trivia’s temple and consecrated groves, because, affrighted at the portents of the sea, they overset the chariot and flung him out upon the shore. Notwithstanding did his son train his ruddy steeds on the level plain, and sped charioted to war.

  Himself too among the foremost, splendid in beauty of body, Turnus moves armed and towers a whole head over all. His lofty helmet, triple-tressed with horse-hair, holds high a Chimaera breathing from her throat Aetnean fires, raging the more and exasperate with baleful flames, as the battle and bloodshed grow fiercer. But on his polished shield was emblazoned in gold Io with uplifted horns, already a heifer and overgrown with hair, a lofty design, and Argus the maiden’s warder, and lord Inachus pouring his stream from his embossed urn. Behind comes a cloud of infantry, and shielded columns thicken over all the plains; the Argive men and Auruncan forces, the Rutulians and old Sicanians, the Sacranian ranks and Labicians with [797-817] painted shields; they who till thy dells, O Tiber, and Numicus’ sacred shore, and whose ploughshare goes up and down on the Rutulian hills and the Circaean headland, over whose fields Jupiter of Anxur watches, and Feronia glad in her greenwood: and where the marsh of Satura lies black, and cold Ufens winds his way along the valley-bottoms and sinks into the sea.

  Therewithal came Camilla the Volscian, leading a train of cavalry, squadrons splendid with brass: a warrior maiden who had never used her woman’s hands to Minerva’s distaff or wool-baskets, but hardened to endure the battle shock and outstrip the winds with racing feet. She might have flown across the topmost blades of unmown corn and left the tender ears unhurt as she ran; or sped her way over mid sea upborne by the swelling flood, nor dipt her swift feet in the water. All the people pour from house and field, and mothers crowd to wonder and gaze at her as she goes, in rapturous astonishment at the royal lustre of purple that drapes her smooth shoulders, at the clasp of gold that intertwines her tresses, at the Lycian quiver she carries, and the pastoral myrtle shaft topped with steel.

  BOOK EIGHTH

  THE EMBASSAGE TO EVANDER

  When Turnus ran up the flag of war on the towers of Laurentum, and the trumpets blared with harsh music, when he spurred his fiery steeds and clashed his armour, straightway men’s hearts are in tumult; all Latium at once flutters in banded uprisal, and her warriors rage furiously. Their chiefs, Messapus, and Ufens, and Mezentius, scorner of the gods, begin to enrol forces on all sides, and dispeople the wide fields of husbandmen. Venulus too is sent to the town of mighty Diomede to seek succour, to instruct him that Teucrians set foot in Latium; that Aeneas in his fleet invades them with the vanquished gods of his home, and proclaims himself the King summoned of fate; that many tribes join the Dardanian, and his name swells high in Latium. What he will rear on these foundations, what issue of battle he desires, if Fortune attend him, lies clearer to his own sight than to King Turnus or King Latinus.

  Thus was it in Latium. And the hero of Laomedon’s blood, seeing it all, tosses on a heavy surge of care, and throws his mind rapidly this way and that, and turns it on all hands in swift change of thought: even as when the quivering light of water brimming in brass, struck back from the sunlight or the moon’s glittering reflection, flickers abroad over all the room, and now mounts aloft and strikes the high panelled roof. Night fell, and over all lands weary creatures were fast in deep slumber, the race of fowl and of cattle; when lord Aeneas, sick at heart of the dismal warfare, stretched him on the river bank under the cope of the cold sky, and let sleep, though late, overspread his limbs. To him the very god of the ground, the pleasant Tiber stream, seemed to raise his aged form among the poplar boughs; thin lawn veiled him with its gray covering, and shadowy reeds hid his hair. Thereon he addressed him thus, and with these words allayed his dist
resses:

  ‘O born of the family of the gods, thou who bearest back our Trojan city from hostile hands, and keepest Troy towers in eternal life; O long looked for on Laurentine ground and Latin fields! here is thine assured home, thine home’s assured gods. Draw not thou back, nor be alarmed by menace of war. All the anger and wrath of the gods is passed away . . . And even now for thine assurance, that thou think not this the idle fashioning of sleep, a great sow shall be found lying under the oaks on the shore, with her new-born litter of thirty head: white she couches on the ground, and the brood about her teats is white. By this token in thirty revolving years shall Ascanius found a city, Alba of bright name. My prophecy is sure. Now hearken, and I will briefly instruct thee how thou mayest unravel and overcome thy present task. An Arcadian people sprung of Pallas, following in their king Evander’s company beneath his banners, have chosen a place in these coasts, and set a city on the hills, called Pallanteum after Pallas their forefather. These wage perpetual war with the Latin race; these do thou take to thy camp’s alliance, and join with them in league. Myself I will lead thee by my banks and straight along my stream, that thou mayest oar thy way upward against the river. Up and arise, goddess-born, and even with the setting stars address thy prayers to Juno as is meet, and vanquish her wrath and menaces with humble vows. To me thou shalt pay a conqueror’s sacrifice. I am he whom thou seest washing the banks with full flood and severing the rich tilth, glassy Tiber, best beloved by heaven of rivers. Here is my stately home; my fountain-head is among high cities.’

  Thus spoke the River, and sank in the depth of the pool: night and sleep left Aeneas. He arises, and, looking towards the radiant sky of the sunrising, holds up water from the river in fitly-hollowed palms, and pours to heaven these accents: