Complete Works of Virgil

by Virgil

  ‘O Trojan, great in renown, yet greater in arms, with what praises may I extol thy divine goodness? Shall thy righteousness first wake my wonder, or thy toils in war? We indeed will gratefully carry these words to our fathers’ city, and, if fortune grant a way, will make thee at one with King Latinus. Let Turnus seek his own alliances. Nay, [130-163] it will be our delight to rear the massy walls of destiny and stoop our shoulders under the stones of Troy.’

  He ended thus, and all with one voice murmured assent. Twelve days’ truce is struck, and in mediation of the peace Teucrians and Latins stray mingling unharmed on the forest heights. The tall ash echoes to the axe’s strokes; they overturn pines that soar into the sky, and busily cleave oaken logs and scented cedar with wedges, and drag mountain-ashes on their groaning waggons.

  And now flying Rumour, harbinger of the heavy woe, fills Evander and Evander’s house and city with the same voice that but now told of Pallas victorious over Latium. The Arcadians stream to the gates, snatching funeral torches after their ancient use; the road gleams with the long line of flame, and parts the fields with a broad pathway of light; the arriving crowd of Phrygians meets them and mingles in mourning array. When the matrons saw all the train approach their dwellings they kindle the town with loud wailing. But no force may withhold Evander; he comes amid them; the bier is set down; he flings himself on Pallas, and clasps him with tears and sighs, and scarcely at last does grief leave his voice’s utterance free. ‘Other than this, O Pallas! was thy promise to thy father, that thou wouldst not plunge recklessly into the fury of battle. I knew well how strong was the fresh pride of arms and the sweetness of honour in a first battle. Ah, unhappy first-fruits of his youth and bitter prelude of the war upon our borders! ah, vows and prayers of mine that no god heard! and thou, pure crown of wifehood, happy that thou art dead and not spared for this sorrow! But I have outgone my destiny in living, to stay here the survivor of my child. Would I had followed the allied arms of Troy, to be overwhelmed by Rutulian weapons! Would my life had been given, and I and not my Pallas were borne home in this [164-198] procession! I would not blame you, O Teucrians, nor our treaty and the friendly hands we clasped: our old age had that appointed debt to pay. Yet if untimely death awaited my son, it will be good to think he fell leading the Teucrians into Latium, and slew his Volscian thousands before he fell. Nay, no other funeral than this would I deem thy due, my Pallas, than good Aeneas does, than the mighty Phrygians, than the Tyrrhene captains and all the army of Tyrrhenia. Great are the trophies they bring on whom thine hand deals death; thou also, Turnus, wert standing now a great trunk dressed in arms, had his age and his strength of years equalled thine. But why, unhappy, do I delay the Trojan arms? Go, and forget not to carry this message to your king: Thine hand it is that keeps me lingering in a life that is hateful since Pallas fell, and Turnus is the debt thou seest son and father claim: for thy virtue and thy fortune this scope alone is left. I ask not joy in life; I may not; but to carry this to my son deep in the under world.’

  Meanwhile Dawn had raised her gracious light on weary men, bringing back task and toil: now lord Aeneas, how Tarchon, have built the pyres on the winding shore. Hither in ancestral fashion hath each borne the bodies of his kin; the dark fire is lit beneath, and the vapour hides high heaven in gloom. Thrice, girt in glittering arms, they have marched about the blazing piles, thrice compassed on horseback the sad fire of death, and uttered their wail. Tears fall fast upon earth and armour; cries of men and blare of trumpets roll skyward. Then some fling on the fire Latin spoils stripped from the slain, helmets and shapely swords, bridles and glowing chariot wheels; others familiar gifts, the very shields and luckless weapons of the dead. Around are slain in sacrifice oxen many in number, and bristly swine and cattle gathered out of all the country [199-234] are slaughtered over the flames. Then, crowding the shore, they gaze on their burning comrades, and guard the embers of the pyres, and cannot tear themselves away till dewy Night wheels on the star-spangled glittering sky.

  Therewithal the unhappy Latins far apart build countless pyres and bury many bodies of men in the ground; and many more they lift and bear away to the neighbouring country, or send them back to the city; the rest, a vast heap of undistinguishable slaughter, they burn uncounted and unhonoured; on all sides the broad fields gleam with crowded rivalry of fires. The third Dawn had rolled away the chill shadow from the sky; mournfully they piled high the ashes and mingled bones from the embers, and heaped a load of warm earth above them. Now in the dwellings of rich Latinus’ city the noise is loudest and most the long wail. Here mothers and their sons’ unhappy brides, here beloved sisters sad-hearted and orphaned boys curse the disastrous war and Turnus’ bridal, and bid him his own self arm and decide the issue with the sword, since he claims for himself the first rank and the lordship of Italy. Drances fiercely embitters their cry, and vouches that Turnus alone is called, alone is claimed for battle. Yet therewith many a diverse-worded counsel is for Turnus, and the great name of the queen overshadows him, and he rises high in renown of trophies fitly won.

  Among their stir, and while confusion is fiercest, lo! to crown all, the envoys from great Diomede’s city bring their gloomy message: nothing is come of all the toil and labour spent; gifts and gold and strong entreaties have been of no avail; Latium must seek other arms, or sue for peace to the Trojan king. For heavy grief King Latinus himself swoons away. The wrath of heaven and the fresh graves before his eyes warn him that Aeneas is borne on by fate’s evident will. So he sends imperial summons to [235-269] his high council, the foremost of his people, and gathers them within his lofty courts. They assemble, and stream up the crowded streets to the royal dwelling. Latinus, eldest in years and first in royalty, sits amid them with cheerless brow, and bids the envoys sent back from the Aetolian city tell the news they bring, and demands a full and ordered reply. Then tongues are hushed; and Venulus, obeying his word, thus begins to speak:

  ‘We have seen, O citizens, Diomede in his Argive camp, and outsped our way and passed all its dangers, and touched the hand whereunder the land of Ilium fell. He was founding a town, named Argyripa after his ancestral people, on the conquered fields of Iapygian Garganus. After we entered in, and licence of open speech was given, we lay forth our gifts, we instruct him of our name and country, who are its invaders, and why we are drawn to Arpi. He heard us, and replied thus with face unstirred:

  ‘“O fortunate races, realm of Saturn, Ausonians of old, how doth fortune vex your quiet and woo you to tempt wars you know not? We that have drawn sword on the fields of Ilium — I forbear to tell the drains of war beneath her high walls, the men sunken in yonder Simoïs — have all over the world paid to the full our punishment and the reward of guilt, a crew Priam’s self might pity; as Minerva’s baleful star knows, and the Euboïc reefs and Caphereus’ revenge. From that warfaring driven to alien shores, Menelaus son of Atreus is in exile far as Proteus’ Pillars, Ulysses hath seen the Cyclopes of Aetna. Shall I make mention of the realm of Neoptolemus, and Idomeneus’ household gods overthrown? or of the Locrians who dwell on the Libyan beach? Even the lord of Mycenae, the mighty Achaeans’ general, sank on his own threshold edge under his accursed wife’s hand, where the adulterer crouched over conquered Asia. Aye, or that the gods grudged it me to return to [270-301] my ancestral altars, to see the bride of my desire, and lovely Calydon! Now likewise sights of appalling presage pursue me; my comrades, lost to me, have soared winging into the sky, and flit birds about the rivers — ah me, dread punishment of my people! — and fill the cliffs with their melancholy cries. This it was I had to look for even from the time when I madly assailed celestial limbs with steel, and sullied the hand of Venus with a wound. Do not, ah, do not urge me to such battles. Neither have I any war with Troy since her towers are overthrown, nor do I remember with delight the woes of old. Turn to Aeneas with the gifts you bear to me from your ancestral borders. We have stood to face his grim weapons, and met him hand to hand; believe one who hath proved it
, how mightily he rises over his shield, in what a whirlwind he hurls his spear. Had the land of Ida borne two more like him, Dardanus had marched to attack the towns of Inachus, and Greece were mourning fate’s reverse. In all our delay before that obstinate Trojan city, it was Hector and Aeneas whose hand stayed the Grecian victory and bore back its advance to the tenth year. Both were splendid in courage, both eminent in arms; Aeneas was first in duty. Let your hands join in treaty as they may; but beware that your weapons close not with his.”

  ‘Thou hast heard, most gracious king, at once what is the king’s answer, and what his counsel for our great struggle.’

  Scarcely thus the envoys, when a diverse murmur ran through the troubled lips of the Ausonians; even as, when rocks delay some running river, it plashes in the barred pool, and the banks murmur nigh to the babbling wave. So soon as their minds were quieted, and their hurrying lips hushed, the king, first calling on the gods, begins from his lofty throne:

  [302-336]’Ere now could I wish, O Latins, we had determined our course of state, and it had been better thus; not to meet in council at such a time as now, with the enemy seated before our walls. We wage an ill-timed war, fellow-citizens, with a divine race, invincible, unbroken in battle, who brook not even when conquered to drop the sword. If you had hope in appeal to Aetolian arms, abandon it; though each man’s hope is his own, you discern how narrow a path it is. Beyond that you see with your eyes and handle with your hands the total ruin of our fortunes. I blame no one; what valour’s utmost could do is done; we have fought with our whole kingdom’s strength. Now I will unfold what I doubtfully advise and purpose, and with your attention instruct you of it in brief. There is an ancient land of mine bordering the Tuscan river, stretching far westward beyond the Sicanian borders. Auruncans and Rutulians sow on it, work the stiff hills with the ploughshare, and pasture them where they are roughest. Let all this tract, with a pine-clad belt of mountain height, pass to the Teucrians in friendship; let us name fair terms of treaty, and invite them as allies to our realm; let them settle, if they desire it so, and found a city. But if they have a mind to try other coasts and another people, and can abide to leave our soil, let us build twice ten ships of Italian oak, or as many more as they can man; timber lies at the water’s edge for all; let them assign the number and fashion of the vessels, and we will supply brass, labour, dockyards. Further, it is our will that an hundred ambassadors of the highest rank in Latium shall go to bear our words and ratify the treaty, holding forth in their hands the boughs of peace, and carrying for gifts weight of gold and ivory, and the chair and striped robe, our royal array. Give counsel openly, and succour our exhausted state.’

  Then Drances again, he whose jealous ill-will was [337-370] wrought to anger and stung with bitterness by Turnus’ fame, lavish of wealth and quick of tongue though his hand was cold in war, held no empty counsellor and potent in faction — his mother’s rank ennobled a lineage whose paternal source was obscure — rises, and with these words heaps and heightens their passion:

  ‘Dark to no man and needing no voice of ours, O gracious king, is that whereon thou takest counsel. All confess they know how our nation’s fortune sways; but their words are choked. Let him grant freedom of speech and abate his breath, he by whose disastrous government and perverse way (I will speak out, though he menace me with arms and death) we see so many stars of battle gone down and all our city sunk in mourning; while he, confident in flight, assails the Trojan camp and makes heaven quail before his arms. Add yet one to those gifts of thine, to all the riches thou bidst us send or promise to the Dardanians, most gracious of kings, but one; let no man’s passion overbear thee from giving thine own daughter to an illustrious son and a worthy marriage, and binding this peace by perpetual treaty. Yet if we are thus terror-stricken heart and soul, let us implore him in person, in person plead him of his grace to give way, to restore king and country their proper right. Why again and again hurlest thou these unhappy citizens on peril so evident, O source and spring of Latium’s woes? In war is no safety; peace we all implore of thee, O Turnus, and the one pledge that makes peace inviolable. I the first, I whom thou picturest thine enemy, as I care not if I am, see, I bow at thy feet. Pity thine allies; relent, and retire before thy conqueror. Enough have we seen of rout and death, and desolation over our broad lands. Or if glory stir thee, if such strength kindle in thy breast, and if a palace so delight thee for thy dower, be bold, and advance stout-hearted upon the foe. We verily, that Turnus [371-406] may have his royal bride, must lie scattered on the plains, worthless lives, a crowd unburied and unwept. Do thou also, if thou hast aught of might, if the War-god be in thee as in thy fathers, look him in the face who challenges. . . .’

  At these words Turnus’ passion blazed out. He utters a groan, and breaks forth thus in deep accents:

  ‘Copious indeed, Drances, and fluent is ever thy speech at the moment war calls for action; and when the fathers are summoned thou art there the first. But we need no words to fill our senate-house, safely as thou wingest them while the mounded walls keep off the enemy, and the trenches swim not yet with blood. Thunder on in rhetoric, thy wonted way: accuse thou me of fear, Drances, since thine hand hath heaped so many Teucrians in slaughter, and thy glorious trophies dot the fields. Trial is open of what live valour can do; nor indeed is our foe far to seek; on all sides they surround our walls. Are we going to meet them? Why linger? Will thy bravery ever be in that windy tongue and those timorous feet of thine? . . . My conqueror? Shall any justly flout me as conquered, who sees Tiber swoln fuller with Ilian blood, and all the house and people of Evander laid low, and the Arcadians stripped of their armour? Not such did Bitias and huge Pandarus prove me, and the thousand men whom on one day my conquering hand sent down to hell, shut as I was in their walls and closed in the enemy’s ramparts. In war is no safety. Fool! be thy boding on the Dardanian’s head and thine own fortunes. Go on; cease not to throw all into confusion with thy terrors, to exalt the strength of a twice vanquished race, and abase the arms of Latinus before it. Now the princes of the Myrmidons tremble before Phrygian arms, now Tydeus’ son and Achilles of Larissa, and Aufidus river recoils from the Adriatic wave. Or when the scheming villain [407-443] pretends to shrink at my abuse, and sharpens calumny by terror! never shall this hand — keep quiet! — rob thee of such a soul; with thee let it abide, and dwell in that breast of thine. Now I return to thee, my lord, and thy weighty resolves. If thou dost repose no further hope in our arms, if all hath indeed left us, and one repulse been our utter ruin, and our fortune is beyond recovery, let us plead for peace and stretch forth unarmed hands. Yet ah! had we aught of our wonted manhood, his toil beyond all other is blessed and his spirit eminent, who rather than see it thus, hath fallen prone in death and once bitten the ground. But if we have yet resources and an army still unbroken, and cities and peoples of Italy remain for our aid; but if even the Trojans have won their glory at great cost of blood (they too have their deaths, and the storm fell equally on all), why do we shamefully faint even on the threshold? Why does a shudder seize our limbs before the trumpet sound? Often do the Days and the varying change of toiling Time restore prosperity; often Fortune in broken visits makes man her sport and again establishes him. The Aetolian of Arpi will not help us; but Messapus will, and Tolumnius the fortunate, and the captains sent by many a nation; nor will fame be scant to follow the flower of Latium and the Laurentine land. Camilla the Volscian too is with us, leading her train of cavalry, squadrons splendid in brass. But if I only am claimed by the Teucrians for combat, if that is your pleasure, and I am the barrier to the public good, Victory does not so hate and shun my hands that I should renounce any enterprise for so great a hope. I shall meet him in courage, did he outmatch great Achilles and wear arms like his forged by Vulcan’s hands. To you and to my father Latinus I Turnus, unexcelled in bravery by any of old, consecrate my life. Aeneas calls on him alone: let him, I implore: let not Drances rather appease with his [444-480] life this wrath of h
eaven, if such it be, or win the renown of valour.’

  Thus they one with another strove together in uncertainty; Aeneas moved from his camp to battle. Lo, a messenger rushes spreading confusion through the royal house, and fills the town with great alarms: the Teucrians, ranged in battle-line with the Tyrrhene forces, are marching down by the Tiber river and filling the plain. Immediately spirits are stirred and hearts shaken and wrath roused in fierce excitement among the crowd. Hurrying hands grasp at arms; for arms their young men clamour; the fathers shed tears and mutter gloomily. With that a great noise rises aloft in diverse contention, even as when flocks of birds haply settle on a lofty grove, or swans utter their hoarse cry among the vocal pools on the fish-filled river of Padusa. ‘Yes, citizens!’ cries Turnus, seizing his time: ‘gather in council and sit praising peace, while they rush on dominion in arms!’ Without more words he sprung up and issued swiftly from the high halls. ‘Thou, Volusus,’ he cries, ‘bid the Volscian battalions arm, and lead out the Rutulians. Messapus, and Coras with thy brother, spread your armed cavalry widely over the plain. Let a division entrench the city gates and man the towers: the rest of our array attack with me where I command.’ The whole town goes rushing to the walls; lord Latinus himself, dismayed by the woeful emergency, quits the council and puts off his high designs, and chides himself sorely for not having given Aeneas unasked welcome, and made him son and bulwark of the city. Some entrench the gates, or bring up supply of stones and poles. The hoarse clarion utters the ensanguined note of war. A motley ring of boys and matrons girdle the walls. Therewithal the queen with a crowd of mothers ascends bearing gifts to Pallas’ towered temple, and by her side goes maiden Lavinia, source of all that woe, [481-514] her beautiful eyes cast down. The mothers enter in, and while the temple steams with their incense, pour from the high doorway their mournful cry: ‘Maiden armipotent, Tritonian, sovereign of war, break with thine hand the spear of the Phrygian plunderer, hurl him prone to earth and dash him down beneath our lofty gates.’ Turnus arrays himself in hot haste for battle, and even now hath done on his sparkling breastplate with its flickering scales of brass, and clasped his golden greaves, his brows yet bare and his sword buckled to his side; he runs down from the fortress height glittering in gold, and exultantly anticipates the foe. Thus when a horse snaps his tether, and, free at last, rushes from the stalls and gains the open plain, he either darts towards the pastures of the herded mares, or bathing, as is his wont, in the familiar river waters, dashes out and neighs with neck stretched high, glorying, and his mane tosses over collar and shoulder. Camilla with her Volscian array meets him face to face in the gateway; the princess leaps from her horse, and all her squadron at her example slide from horseback to the ground. Then she speaks thus: