No More Learning

Nay,
even such a birth hath Venus of her own, a second Paris, another
balefire for Troy towers reborn. '

These words uttered, she descends to earth in all her terrors, and calls
dolorous Allecto from the home of the Fatal Sisters in nether gloom,
whose delight is in woeful wars, in wrath and treachery and evil feuds:
hateful to [327-360]lord Pluto himself, hateful and horrible to her
hell-born sisters; into so many faces does she turn, so savage the guise
of each, so thick and black bristles she with vipers. And her Juno spurs
on with words, saying thus:

'Grant me, virgin born of Night, this thy proper task and service, that
the rumour of our renown may not crumble away, nor the Aeneadae have
power to win Latinus by marriage or beset the borders of Italy. Thou
canst set brothers once united in armed conflict, and overturn families
with hatreds; thou canst launch into houses thy whips and deadly brands;
thine are a thousand names, a thousand devices of injury. Stir up thy
teeming breast, sunder the peace they have joined, and sow seeds of
quarrel; let all at once desire and demand and seize on arms. '

Thereon Allecto, steeped in Gorgonian venom, first seeks Latium and the
high house of the Laurentine monarch, and silently sits down before
Amata's doors, whom a woman's distress and anger heated to frenzy over
the Teucrians' coming and the marriage of Turnus. At her the goddess
flings a snake out of her dusky tresses, and slips it into her bosom to
her very inmost heart, that she may embroil all her house under its
maddening magic. Sliding between her raiment and smooth breasts, it
coils without touch, and instils its viperous breath unseen; the great
serpent turns into the twisted gold about her neck, turns into the long
ribbon of her chaplet, inweaves her hair, and winds slippery over her
body. And while the gliding infection of the clammy poison begins to
penetrate her sense and run in fire through her frame, nor as yet hath
all her breast caught fire, softly she spoke and in mothers' wonted
wise, with many a tear over her daughter and the Phrygian bridal:

'Is it to exiles, to Teucrians, that Lavinia is proffered in marriage, O
father? and hast thou no compassion on [361-392]thy daughter and on
thyself? no compassion on her mother, whom with the first northern wind
the treacherous rover will abandon, steering to sea with his maiden
prize? Is it not thus the Phrygian herdsman wound his way to Lacedaemon,
and carried Leda's Helen to the Trojan towns? Where is thy plighted
faith? Where thine ancient care for thy people, and the hand Turnus thy
kinsman hath so often clasped? If one of alien race from the Latins is
sought for our son, if this stands fixed, and thy father Faunus'
commands are heavy upon thee, all the land whose freedom severs it from
our sway is to my mind alien, and of this is the divine word. And
Turnus, if one retrace the earliest source of his line, is born of
Inachus and Acrisius, and of the midmost of Mycenae. '

When in this vain essay of words she sees Latinus fixed against her, and
the serpent's maddening poison is sunk deep in her vitals and runs
through and through her, then indeed, stung by infinite horrors, hapless
and frenzied, she rages wildly through the endless city. As whilome a
top flying under the twisted whipcord, which boys busy at their play
drive circling wide round an empty hall, runs before the lash and spins
in wide gyrations; the witless ungrown band hang wondering over it and
admire the whirling boxwood; the strokes lend it life: with pace no
slacker is she borne midway through towns and valiant nations. Nay, she
flies into the woodland under feigned Bacchic influence, assumes a
greater guilt, arouses a greater frenzy, and hides her daughter in the
mountain coverts to rob the Teucrians of their bridal and stay the
marriage torches. 'Hail, Bacchus! ' she shrieks and clamours; 'thou only
art worthy of the maiden; for to thee she takes up the lissom wands,
thee she circles in the dance, to thee she trains and consecrates her
tresses. ' Rumour flies abroad; and the matrons, their breasts kindled by
the furies, run all at once [393-426]with a single ardour to seek out
strange dwellings. They have left their homes empty, they throw neck and
hair free to the winds; while others fill the air with ringing cries,
girt about with fawnskins, and carrying spears of vine. Amid them the
infuriate queen holds her blazing pine-torch on high, and chants the
wedding of Turnus and her daughter; and rolling her bloodshot gaze,
cries sudden and harsh: 'Hear, O mothers of Latium, wheresoever you be;
if unhappy Amata hath yet any favour in your affection, if care for a
mother's right pierces you, untie the chaplets from your hair, begin the
orgies with me. ' Thus, amid woods and wild beasts' solitary places, does
Allecto goad the queen with the encircling Bacchic madness.

When their frenzy seemed heightened and her first task complete, the
purpose and all the house of Latinus turned upside down, the dolorous
goddess flies on thence, soaring on dusky wing, to the walls of the
gallant Rutulian, the city which Danae, they say, borne down on the
boisterous south wind, built and planted with Acrision's people. The
place was called Ardea once of old; and still Ardea remains a mighty
name; but its fortune is no more. Here in his high house Turnus now took
rest in the black midnight. Allecto puts off her grim feature and the
body of a Fury; she transforms her face to an aged woman's, and furrows
her brow with ugly wrinkles; she puts on white tresses chaplet-bound,
and entwines them with an olive spray; she becomes aged Calybe,
priestess of Juno's temple, and presents herself before his eyes,
uttering thus:

'Turnus, wilt thou brook all these toils poured out in vain, and the
conveyance of thy crown to Dardanian settlers? The King denies thee thy
bride and the dower thy blood had earned; and a foreigner is sought for
heir to the kingdom. Forth now, dupe, and face thankless perils; forth,
cut down the Tyrrhenian lines; give the [427-458]Latins peace in thy
protection. This Saturn's omnipotent daughter in very presence commanded
me to pronounce to thee, as thou wert lying in the still night.
Wherefore arise, and make ready with good cheer to arm thy people and
march through thy gates to battle; consume those Phrygian captains that
lie with their painted hulls in the beautiful river. All the force of
heaven orders thee on. Let King Latinus himself know of it, unless he
consents to give thee thy bridal, and abide by his words, when he shall
at last make proof of Turnus' arms. '

But he, deriding her inspiration, with the words of his mouth thus
answers her again:

'The fleets ride on the Tiber wave; that news hath not, as thou deemest,
escaped mine ears. Frame not such terrors before me. Neither is Queen
Juno forgetful of us. . . . But thee, O mother, overworn old age,
exhausted and untrue, frets with vain distress, and amid embattled kings
mocks thy presage with false dismay. Thy charge it is to keep the divine
image and temple; war and peace shall be in the hands of men and
warriors. '

At such words Allecto's wrath blazed out. But amid his utterance a quick
shudder overruns his limbs; his eyes are fixed in horror; so thickly
hiss the snakes of the Fury, so vast her form expands. Then rolling her
fiery eyes, she thrust him back as he would stammer out more, raised two
serpents in her hair, and, sounding her whip, resumed with furious tone:

'Behold me the overworn! me whom old age, exhausted and untrue, mocks
with false dismay amid embattled kings! Look on this! I am come from the
home of the Dread Sisters: war and death are in my hand. . . . '

So speaking, she hurled her torch at him, and pierced his breast with
the lurid smoking brand. He breaks from sleep in overpowering fear, his
limbs and body bathed in [459-494]sweat that breaks out all over him;
he shrieks madly for arms, searches for arms on his bed and in his
palace. The passion of the sword rages high, the accursed fury of war,
and wrath over all: even as when flaming sticks are heaped roaring loud
under the sides of a seething cauldron, and the boiling water leaps up;
the river of water within smokes furiously and swells high in
overflowing foam, and now the wave contains itself no longer; the dark
steam flies aloft. So, for the stain of the broken peace, he orders his
chief warriors to march on King Latinus, and bids prepare for battle, to
defend Italy and drive the foe from their borders; himself will suffice
for Trojans and Latins together. When he uttered these words and called
the gods to hear his vows, the Rutulians stir one another up to arms.
One is moved by the splendour of his youthful beauty, one by his royal
ancestry, another by the noble deeds of his hand.

While Turnus fills the Rutulian minds with valour, Allecto on Stygian
wing hastens towards the Trojans. With fresh wiles she marked the spot
where beautiful Iulus was trapping and coursing game on the bank; here
the infernal maiden suddenly crosses his hounds with the maddening touch
of a familiar scent, and drives them hotly on the stag-hunt. This was
the source and spring of ill, and kindled the country-folk to war. The
stag, beautiful and high-antlered, was stolen from his mother's udder
and bred by Tyrrheus' boys and their father Tyrrheus, master of the
royal herds, and ranger of the plain. Their sister Silvia tamed him to
her rule, and lavished her care on his adornment, twining his antlers
with delicate garlands, and combed his wild coat and washed him in the
clear spring. Tame to her hand, and familiar to his master's table, he
would wander the woods, and, however late the night, return home to the
door he knew. Far astray, he floated idly down the stream, and allayed
his heat on the green bank, when Iulus' [495-528]mad hounds started him
in their hunting; and Ascanius himself, kindled with desire of the chief
honour, aimed a shaft from his bended bow. A present deity suffered not
his hand to stray, and the loud whistling reed came driven through his
belly and flanks. But the wounded beast fled within the familiar roof
and crept moaning to the courtyard, dabbled with blood, and filling all
the house with moans as of one beseeching. Sister Silvia, smiting her
arms with open hands, begins to call for aid, and gathers the hardy
rustics with her cries. They, for a fell destroyer is hidden in the
silent woodland, are there before her expectation, one armed with a
stake hardened in the fire, one with a heavy knotted trunk; what each
one searches and finds, wrath turns into a weapon. Tyrrheus cheers on
his array, panting hard, with his axe caught up in his hand, as he was
haply splitting an oaken log in four clefts with cross-driven wedges.

But the grim goddess, seizing from her watch-tower the moment of
mischief, seeks the steep farm-roof and sounds the pastoral war-note
from the ridge, straining the infernal cry on her twisted horn; it
spread shuddering over all the woodland, and echoed through the deep
forests: the lake of Trivia heard it afar; Nar river heard it with white
sulphurous water, and the springs of Velinus; and fluttered mothers
clasped their children to their breast. Then, hurrying to the voice of
the terrible trumpet-note, on all sides the wild rustics snatch their
arms and stream in: therewithal the men of Troy pour out from their
camp's open gates to succour Ascanius. The lines are ranged; not now in
rustic strife do they fight with hard trunks or burned stakes; the
two-edged steel sways the fight, the broad cornfields bristle dark with
drawn swords, and brass flashes smitten by the sunlight, and casts a
gleam high into the cloudy air: as when the wind begins to blow and the
flood [529-560]to whiten, gradually the sea lifts his waves higher and
yet higher, then rises from the bottom right into the air. Here in the
front rank young Almo, once Tyrrheus' eldest son, is struck down by a
whistling arrow; for the wound, staying in his throat, cut off in blood
the moist voice's passage and the thin life. Around many a one lies
dead, aged Galaesus among them, slain as he throws himself between them
for a peacemaker, once incomparable in justice and wealth of Ausonian
fields; for him five flocks bleated, a five-fold herd returned from
pasture, and an hundred ploughs upturned the soil.

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 Teleboic 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
[23-56]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 distresses:

'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 [57-89]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:

'Nymphs, Laurentine Nymphs, from whom is the generation of rivers, and
thou, O father Tiber, with thine holy flood, receive Aeneas and deign to
save him out of danger. What pool soever holds thy source, who pitiest
our discomforts, from whatsoever soil thou dost spring excellent in
beauty, ever shall my worship, ever my gifts frequent thee, the horned
river lord of Hesperian waters. Ah, be thou only by me, and graciously
confirm thy will. ' So speaks he, and chooses two galleys from his fleet,
and mans them with rowers, and withal equips a crew with arms.

And lo! suddenly, ominous and wonderful to tell, the milk-white sow, of
one colour with her white brood, is espied through the forest couched on
the green brink; whom to thee, yes to thee, queenly Juno, good Aeneas
offers in sacrifice, and sets with her offspring before thine altar. All
that night long Tiber assuaged his swelling stream, and silently stayed
his refluent wave, smoothing the surface of his waters to the fashion of
still pool and quiet mere, to spare [90-121]labour to the oar. So they
set out and speed on their way with prosperous cries; the painted fir
slides along the waterway; the waves and unwonted woods marvel at their
far-gleaming shields, and the gay hulls afloat on the river. They
outwear a night and a day in rowing, ascend the long reaches, and pass
under the chequered shadows of the trees, and cut through the green
woodland in the calm water. The fiery sun had climbed midway in the
circle of the sky when they see afar fortress walls and scattered house
roofs, where now the might of Rome hath risen high as heaven; then
Evander held a slender state. Quickly they turn their prows to land and
draw near the town.
It chanced on that day the Arcadian king paid his accustomed sacrifice
to the great son of Amphitryon and all the gods in a grove before the
city. With him his son Pallas, with him all the chief of his people and
his poor senate were offering incense, and the blood steamed warm at
their altars. When they saw the high ships, saw them glide up between
the shady woodlands and rest on their silent oars, the sudden sight
appals them, and all at once they rise and stop the banquet. Pallas
courageously forbids them to break off the rites; snatching up a spear,
he flies forward, and from a hillock cries afar: 'O men, what cause hath
driven you to explore these unknown ways? or whither do you steer? What
is your kin, whence your habitation? Is it peace or arms you carry
hither? ' Then from the lofty stern lord Aeneas thus speaks, stretching
forth in his hand an olive bough of peace-bearing:

'Thou seest men born of Troy and arms hostile to the Latins, who have
driven us to flight in insolent warfare. We seek Evander; carry this
message, and tell him that chosen men of the Dardanian captains are come
pleading for an armed alliance. '

Pallas stood amazed at the august name. 'Descend,' [122-154]he cries,
'whoso thou art, and speak with my father face to face, and enter our
home and hospitality. ' And giving him the grasp of welcome, he caught
and clung to his hand. Advancing, they enter the grove and leave the
river. Then Aeneas in courteous words addresses the King:

'Best of the Grecian race, thou whom fortune hath willed that I
supplicate, holding before me boughs dressed in fillets, no fear stayed
me because thou wert a Grecian chief and an Arcadian, or allied by
descent to the twin sons of Atreus. Nay, mine own prowess and the
sanctity of divine oracles, our ancestral kinship, and the fame of thee
that is spread abroad over the earth, have allied me to thee and led me
willingly on the path of fate. Dardanus, who sailed to the Teucrian
land, the first father and founder of the Ilian city, was born, as
Greeks relate, of Electra the Atlantid; Electra's sire is ancient Atlas,
whose shoulder sustains the heavenly spheres. Your father is Mercury,
whom white Maia conceived and bore on the cold summit of Cyllene; but
Maia, if we give any credence to report, is daughter of Atlas, that same
Atlas who bears up the starry heavens; so both our families branch from
a single blood. In this confidence I sent no embassy, I framed no crafty
overtures; myself I have presented mine own person, and come a suppliant
to thy courts. The same Daunian race pursues us and thee in merciless
warfare; we once expelled, they trust nothing will withhold them from
laying all Hesperia wholly beneath their yoke, and holding the seas that
wash it above and below. Accept and return our friendship. We can give
brave hearts in war, high souls and men approved in deeds. '

Aeneas ended. The other ere now scanned in a long gaze the face and eyes
and all the form of the speaker; then thus briefly returns:

'How gladly, bravest of the Teucrians, do I hail and [155-188]own thee!
how I recall thy father's words and the very tone and glance of great
Anchises! For I remember how Priam son of Laomedon, when he sought
Salamis on his way to the realm of his sister Hesione, went on to visit
the cold borders of Arcadia. Then early youth clad my cheeks with bloom.
I admired the Teucrian captains, admired their lord, the son of
Laomedon; but Anchises moved high above them all. My heart burned with
youthful passion to accost him and clasp hand in hand; I made my way to
him, and led him eagerly to Pheneus' high town. Departing he gave me an
adorned quiver and Lycian arrows, a scarf inwoven with gold, and a pair
of golden bits that now my Pallas possesses. Therefore my hand is
already joined in the alliance you seek, and soon as to-morrow's dawn
rises again over earth, I will send you away rejoicing in mine aid, and
supply you from my store. Meanwhile, since you are come hither in
friendship, solemnise with us these yearly rites which we may not defer,
and even now learn to be familiar at your comrades' board. '

This said, he commands the feast and the wine-cups to be replaced whence
they were taken, and with his own hand ranges them on the grassy seat,
and welcomes Aeneas to the place of honour, with a lion's shaggy fell
for cushion and a hospitable chair of maple. Then chosen men with the
priest of the altar in emulous haste bring roasted flesh of bulls, and
pile baskets with the gift of ground corn, and serve the wine. Aeneas
and the men of Troy with him feed on the long chines of oxen and the
entrails of the sacrifice.

After hunger is driven away and the desire of food stayed, King Evander
speaks: 'No idle superstition that knows not the gods of old hath
ordered these our solemn rites, this customary feast, this altar of
august sanctity; saved from bitter perils, O Trojan guest, do we
worship, and [189-225]most due are the rites we inaugurate. Look now
first on this overhanging cliff of stone, where shattered masses lie
strewn, and the mountain dwelling stands desolate, and rocks are rent
away in vast ruin. Here was a cavern, awful and deep-withdrawn,
impenetrable to the sunbeams, where the monstrous half-human shape of
Cacus had his hold: the ground was ever wet with fresh slaughter, and
pallid faces of men, ghastly with gore, hung nailed on the haughty
doors. This monster was the son of Vulcan, and spouted his black fires
from his mouth as he moved in giant bulk. To us also in our desire time
bore a god's aid and arrival. For princely Alcides the avenger came
glorious in the spoils of triple Geryon slain; this way the Conqueror
drove the huge bulls, and his oxen filled the river valley. But savage
Cacus, infatuate to leave nothing undared or unhandled in craft or
crime, drives four bulls of choice shape away from their pasturage, and
as many heifers of excellent beauty. And these, that there should be no
straightforward footprints, he dragged by the tail into his cavern, the
track of their compelled path reversed, and hid them behind the screen
of rock. No marks were there to lead a seeker to the cavern. Meanwhile
the son of Amphitryon, his herds filled with food, was now breaking up
his pasturage and making ready to go. The oxen low as they depart; all
the woodland is filled with their complaint as they clamorously quit the
hills. One heifer returned the cry, and, lowing from the depth of the
dreary cave, baffled the hope of Cacus from her imprisonment. At this
the grief and choler of Alcides blazed forth dark and infuriate. Seizing
in his hand his club of heavy knotted oak, he seeks with swift pace the
aery mountain steep. Then, as never before, did we see Cacus afraid and
his countenance troubled; he goes flying swifter than the wind and seeks
his cavern; fear wings his feet. As he shut himself in, and, bursting
the [226-260]chains, dropped the vast rock slung in iron by his
father's craft, and blocked the doorway with its pressure, lo! the
Tirynthian came in furious wrath, and, scanning all the entry, turned
his face this way and that and ground his teeth. Thrice, hot with rage,
he circles all Mount Aventine; thrice he assails the rocky portals in
vain; thrice he sinks down outwearied in the valley. There stood a sharp
rock of flint with sides cut sheer away, rising over the cavern's ridge
a vast height to see, fit haunt for foul birds to build on. This--for,
sloping from the ridge, it leaned on the left towards the river--he
loosened, urging it from the right till he tore it loose from its deep
foundations; then suddenly shook it free; with the shock the vast sky
thunders, the banks leap apart, and the amazed river recoils. But the
den, Cacus' huge palace, lay open and revealed, and the depths of gloomy
cavern were made manifest; even as though some force tearing earth apart
should unlock the infernal house, and disclose the pallid realms
abhorred of heaven, and deep down the monstrous gulf be descried where
the ghosts flutter in the streaming daylight. On him then, surprised in
unexpected light, shut in the rock's recesses and howling in strange
fashion, Alcides from above hurls missiles and calls all his arms to
aid, and presses hard on him with boughs and enormous millstones. And
he, for none other escape from peril is left, vomits from his throat
vast jets of smoke, wonderful to tell, and enwreathes his dwelling in
blind gloom, blotting view from the eyes, while in the cave's depth
night thickens with smoke-bursts in a darkness shot with fire. Alcides
broke forth in anger, and with a bound hurled himself sheer amid the
flames, where the smoke rolls billowing and voluminous, and the cloud
surges black through the enormous den. Here, as Cacus in the darkness
spouts forth his idle fires, he grasps and twines tight round him, till
his eyes start out and his throat [261-295]is drained of blood under
the strangling pressure. Straightway the doors are torn open and the
dark house laid plain; the stolen oxen and forsworn plunder are shewn
forth to heaven, and the misshapen carcase dragged forward by the feet.
Men cannot satisfy their soul with gazing on the terrible eyes, the
monstrous face and shaggy bristling chest, and the throat with its
quenched fires. Thenceforth this sacrifice is solemnised, and a younger
race have gladly kept the day; Potitius the inaugurator, and the
Pinarian family, guardians of the rites of Hercules, have set in the
grove this altar, which shall ever be called of us Most Mighty, and
shall be our mightiest evermore. Wherefore arise, O men, and enwreathe
your hair with leafy sprays, and stretch forth the cups in your hands;
call on our common god and pour the glad wine. ' He ended; when the
twy-coloured poplar of Hercules hid his shaded hair with pendulous
plaited leaf, and the sacred goblet filled his hand. Speedily all pour
glad libation on the board, and supplicate the gods.

Meanwhile the evening star draws nigher down the slope of heaven, and
now the priests went forth, Potitius at their head, girt with skins
after their fashion, and bore torches aflame. They renew the banquet,
and bring the grateful gift of a second repast, and heap the altars with
loaded platters. Then the Salii stand round the lit altar-fires to sing,
their brows bound with poplar boughs, one chorus of young men, one of
elders, and extol in song the praises and deeds of Hercules; how first
he strangled in his gripe the twin terrors, the snakes of his
stepmother; how he likewise shattered in war famous cities, Troy and
Oechalia; how under Eurystheus the King he bore the toil of a thousand
labours by Juno's malign decrees. Thine hand, unconquered, slays the
cloud-born double-bodied race, Hylaeus and Pholus, the Cretan monster,
and the huge lion in the hollow Nemean rock. Before thee the Stygian
pools [296-329]shook for fear, before thee the warder of hell, couched
on half-gnawn bones in his blood-stained cavern; to thee not any form
was terrible, not Typhoeus' self towering in arms; thou wast not bereft
of counsel when the snake of Lerna encompassed thee with thronging
heads. Hail, true seed of Jove, deified glory! graciously visit us and
these thy rites with favourable feet. Such are their songs of praise;
they crown all with the cavern of Cacus and its fire-breathing lord. All
the woodland echoes with their clamour, and the hills resound.

Thence all at once, the sacred rites accomplished, retrace their way to
the city. The age-worn King walked holding Aeneas and his son by his
side for companions on his way, and lightened the road with changing
talk. Aeneas admires and turns his eyes lightly round about, pleased
with the country; and gladly on spot after spot inquires and hears of
the memorials of earlier men. Then King Evander, founder of the fortress
of Rome:

'In these woodlands dwelt Fauns and Nymphs sprung of the soil, and a
tribe of men born of stocks and hard oak; who had neither law nor grace
of life, nor did they know to yoke bulls or lay up stores or save their
gains, but were nurtured by the forest boughs and the hard living of the
huntsman. Long ago Saturn came from heaven on high in flight before
Jove's arms, an exile from his lost realm. He gathered together the
unruly race scattered on the mountain heights, and gave them statutes,
and chose Latium to be their name, since in these borders he had found a
safe hiding-place. Beneath his reign were the ages named of gold; thus,
in peace and quietness, did he rule the nations; till gradually there
crept in a sunken and stained time, the rage of war, and the lust of
possession. Then came the Ausonian clan and the tribes of Sicania, and
many a time the land of Saturn put away her name. Then were kings,
[330-364]and fierce Thybris with his giant bulk, from whose name we of
Italy afterwards called the Tiber river, when it lost the true name of
old, Albula. Me, cast out from my country and following the utmost
limits of the sea, Fortune the omnipotent and irreversible doom settled
in this region; and my mother the Nymph Carmentis' awful warnings and
Apollo's divine counsel drove me hither. '

Scarce was this said; next advancing he points out the altar and the
Carmental Gate, which the Romans call anciently by that name in honour
of the Nymph Carmentis, seer and soothsayer, who sang of old the coming
greatness of the Aeneadae and the glory of Pallanteum. Next he points
out the wide grove where valiant Romulus set his sanctuary, and the
Lupercal in the cool hollow of the rock, dedicate to Lycean Pan after
the manner of Parrhasia. Therewithal he shows the holy wood of
Argiletum, and calls the spot to witness as he tells the slaying of his
guest Argus. Hence he leads him to the Tarpeian house, and the Capitol
golden now, of old rough with forest thickets. Even then men trembled
before the wood and rock. 'This grove,' he cries, 'this hill with its
leafy crown, is a god's dwelling, though whose we know not; the
Arcadians believe Jove himself hath been visible, when often he shook
the darkening aegis in his hand and gathered the storm-clouds. Thou
seest these two towns likewise with walls overthrown, relics and
memorials of men of old. This fortress lord Janus built, this Saturn;
the name of this was once Janiculum, of that Saturnia. '

With such mutual words they drew nigh the house of poor Evander, and saw
scattered herds lowing on the Roman Forum and down the gay Carinae. When
they reached his dwelling, 'This threshold,' he cries, 'Alcides the
Conqueror stooped to cross; in this palace he rested. Dare thou, my
guest, to despise riches; mould thyself to [365-396]like dignity of
godhead, and come not exacting to our poverty. ' He spoke, and led tall
Aeneas under the low roof of his narrow dwelling, and laid him on a
couch of stuffed leaves and the skin of a Libyan she-bear. Night falls
and clasps the earth in her dusky wings.

But Venus, stirred in spirit by no vain mother's alarms, and moved by
the threats and stern uprisal of the Laurentines, addresses herself to
Vulcan, and in her golden bridal chamber begins thus, breathing divine
passion in her speech:

'While Argolic kings wasted in war the doomed towers of Troy, the
fortress fated to fall in hostile fires, no succour did I require for
her wretched people, no weapons of thine art and aid: nor would I task,
dear my lord, thee or thy toils for naught, though I owed many and many
a debt to the children of Priam, and had often wept the sore labour of
Aeneas. Now by Jove's commands he hath set foot in the Rutulian borders;
I now therefore come with entreaty, and ask armour of the god I worship.
For the son she bore, the tears of Nereus' daughter, of Tithonus'
consort, could melt thine heart. Look what nations are gathering, what
cities bar their gates and sharpen the sword against me for the
desolation of my children. '

The goddess ended, and, as he hesitates, clasps him round in the soft
embrace of her snowy arms. He suddenly caught the wonted flame, and the
heat known of old pierced him to the heart and overran his melting
frame: even as when, bursting from the thunder peal, a sparkling cleft
of fire shoots through the storm-clouds with dazzling light. His consort
knew, rejoiced in her wiles, and felt her beauty. Then her lord speaks,
enchained by Love the immortal:

'Why these far-fetched pleas? Whither, O goddess, is thy trust in me
gone? Had like distress been thine, [397-431]even then we might
unblamed have armed thy Trojans, nor did doom nor the Lord omnipotent
forbid Troy to stand, and Priam to survive yet ten other years. And now,
if thou purposest war, and this is thy counsel, whatever charge I can
undertake in my craft, in aught that may be made of iron or molten
electrum, whatever fire and air can do, cease thou to entreat as
doubtful of thy strength. ' These words spoken, he clasped his wife in
the desired embrace, and, sinking in her lap, wooed quiet slumber to
overspread his limbs.

Thereon, so soon as sleep, now in mid-career of waning night, had given
rest and gone; soon as a woman, whose task is to sustain life with her
distaff and the slender labours of the loom, kindles the ashes of her
slumbering fire, her toil encroaching on the night, and sets a long task
of fire-lit spinning to her maidens, that so she may keep her husband's
bed unsullied and nourish her little children,--even so the Lord of
Fire, nor slacker in his hours than she, rises from his soft couch to
the work of his smithy. An island rises by the side of Sicily and
Aeolian Lipare, steep with smoking cliffs, whereunder the vaulted and
thunderous Aetnean caverns are hollowed out for Cyclopean forges, the
strong strokes on the anvils echo in groans, ore of steel hisses in the
vaults, and the fire pants in the furnaces: the house of Vulcan, and
Vulcania the land's name. Hither now the Lord of Fire descends from
heaven's height. In the vast cavern the Cyclopes were forging iron,
Brontes and Steropes and Pyracmon with bared limbs. Shaped in their
hands was a thunderbolt, in part already polished, such as the Father of
Heaven hurls down on earth in multitudes, part yet unfinished. Three
coils of frozen rain, three of watery mist they had enwrought in it,
three of ruddy fire and winged south wind; now they were mingling in
their work the awful splendours, the sound and terror, and the
[432-469]angry pursuing flames. Elsewhere they hurried on a chariot for
Mars with flying wheels, wherewith he stirs up men and cities; and
burnished the golden serpent-scales of the awful aegis, the armour of
wrathful Pallas, and the entwined snakes on the breast of the goddess,
the Gorgon head with severed neck and rolling eyes. 'Away with all! ' he
cries: 'stop your tasks unfinished, Cyclopes of Aetna, and attend to
this; a warrior's armour must be made. Now must strength, now quickness
of hand be tried, now all our art lend her guidance. Fling off delay. '
He spoke no more; but they all bent rapidly to the work, allotting their
labours equally. Brass and ore of gold flow in streams, and wounding
steel is molten in the vast furnace. They shape a mighty shield, to
receive singly all the weapons of the Latins, and weld it sevenfold,
circle on circle. Some fill and empty the windy bellows of their blast,
some dip the hissing brass in the trough. They raise their arms mightily
in responsive time, and turn the mass of metal about in the grasp of
their tongs.

While the lord of Lemnos is busied thus in the borders of Aeolia,
Evander is roused from his low dwelling by the gracious daylight and the
matin songs of birds from the eaves. The old man arises, and draws on
his body raiment, and ties the Tyrrhene shoe latchets about his feet;
then buckles to his side and shoulder his Tegeaean sword, and swathes
himself in a panther skin that droops upon his left. Therewithal two
watch-dogs go before him from the high threshold, and accompany their
master's steps. The hero sought his guest Aeneas in the privacy of his
dwelling, mindful of their talk and his promised bounty. Nor did Aeneas
fail to be astir with the dawn. With the one went his son Pallas,
with the other Achates. They meet and clasp hands, and, sitting down
within the house, at length enjoy unchecked converse. The King begins
thus: . . .

[470-505]'Princely chief of the Teucrians, in whose lifetime I will
never allow the state or realm of Troy vanquished, our strength is scant
to succour in war for so great a name. On this side the Tuscan river
shuts us in; on that the Rutulian drives us hard, and thunders in arms
about our walls. But I purpose to unite to thee mighty peoples and the
camp of a wealthy realm; an unforeseen chance offers this for thy
salvation. Fate summons thy approach. Not far from here stands fast
Agylla city, an ancient pile of stone, where of old the Lydian race,
eminent in war, settled on the Etruscan ridges. For many years it
flourished, till King Mezentius ruled it with insolent sway and armed
terror. Why should I relate the horrible murders, the savage deeds of
the monarch? May the gods keep them in store for himself and his line!
Nay, he would even link dead bodies to living, fitting hand to hand and
face to face (the torture! ), and in the oozy foulness and corruption of
the dreadful embrace so slay them by a lingering death. But at last his
citizens, outwearied by his mad excesses, surround him and his house in
arms, cut down his comrades, and hurl fire on his roof. Amid the
massacre he escaped to the refuge of Rutulian land and the armed defence
of Turnus' friendship. So all Etruria hath risen in righteous fury, and
in immediate battle claim their king for punishment. Over these
thousands will I make thee chief, O Aeneas; for their noisy ships crowd
all the shore, and they bid the standards advance, while the aged
diviner stays them with prophecies: "O chosen men of Maeonia, flower and
strength of them, of old time, whom righteous anger urges on the enemy,
and Mezentius inflames with deserved wrath, to no Italian is it
permitted to hold this great nation in control: choose foreigners to
lead you. " At that, terrified by the divine warning, the Etruscan lines
have encamped on the plain; Tarchon himself hath sent ambassadors to me
with the crown [506-539]and sceptre of the kingdom, and offers the
royal attire will I but enter their camp and take the Tyrrhene realm.
But old age, frozen to dulness, and exhausted with length of life,
denies me the load of empire, and my prowess is past its day. I would
urge it on my son, did not the mixture of blood by his Sabellian mother
make this half his native land. Thou, to whose years and race alike the
fates extend their favour, on whom fortune calls, enter thou in, a
leader supreme in bravery over Teucrians and Italians. Mine own Pallas
likewise, our hope and comfort, I will send with thee; let him grow used
to endure warfare and the stern work of battle under thy teaching, to
regard thine actions, and from his earliest years look up to thee. To
him will I give two hundred Arcadian cavalry, the choice of our warlike
strength, and Pallas as many more to thee in his own name. '

Scarce had he ended; Aeneas, son of Anchises, and trusty Achates gazed
with steadfast face, and, sad at heart, were revolving inly many a
labour, had not the Cytherean sent a sign from the clear sky. For
suddenly a flash and peal comes quivering from heaven, and all seemed in
a moment to totter, and the Tyrrhene trumpet-blast to roar along the
sky. They look up; again and yet again the heavy crash re-echoes. They
see in the serene space of sky armour gleam red through a cloud in the
clear air, and ring clashing out. The others stood in amaze; but the
Trojan hero knew the sound for the promise of his goddess mother; then
he speaks: 'Ask not, O friend, ask not in any wise what fortune this
presage announces; it is I who am summoned of heaven. This sign the
goddess who bore me foretold she would send if war assailed, and would
bring through the air to my succour armour from Vulcan's hands. . . .
Ah, what slaughter awaits the wretched Laurentines! what a price, O
Turnus, wilt thou pay me! how many shields and helmets and brave bodies
of men shalt thou, [540-573]Lord Tiber, roll under thy waves! Let them
call for armed array and break the league! '

These words uttered, he rises from the high seat, and first wakes with
fresh fire the slumbering altars of Hercules, and gladly draws nigh his
tutelar god of yesternight and the small deities of the household. Alike
Evander, and alike the men of Troy, offer up, as is right, choice sheep
of two years old. Thereafter he goes to the ships and revisits his crew,
of whose company he chooses the foremost in valour to attend him to war;
the rest glide down the water and float idly with the descending stream,
to come with news to Ascanius of his father's state. They give horses to
the Teucrians who seek the fields of Tyrrhenia; a chosen one is brought
for Aeneas, housed in a tawny lion skin that glitters with claws of
gold. Rumour flies suddenly, spreading over the little town, that they
ride in haste to the courts of the Tyrrhene king. Mothers redouble their
prayers in terror, as fear treads closer on peril and the likeness of
the War God looms larger in sight. Then Evander, clasping the hand of
his departing son, clings to him weeping inconsolably, and speaks thus:

'Oh, if Jupiter would restore me the years that are past, as I was when,
close under Praeneste, I cut down their foremost ranks and burned the
piled shields of the conquered! Then this right hand sent King Erulus
down to hell, though to him at his birth his mother Feronia (awful to
tell) had given three lives and triple arms to wield; thrice must he be
laid low in death; yet then this hand took all his lives and as often
stripped him of his arms. Never should I now, O son, be severed from thy
dear embrace; never had the insolent sword of Mezentius on my borders
dealt so many cruel deaths, widowed the city of so many citizens. But
you, O heavenly powers, and thou, Jupiter, Lord and Governor of Heaven,
have compassion, I pray, on [574-609]the Arcadian king, and hear a
father's prayers. If your deity and decrees keep my Pallas safe for me,
if I live that I may see him and meet him yet, I pray for life; any toil
soever I have patience to endure. But if, O Fortune, thou threatenest
some dread calamity, now, ah now, may I break off a cruel life, while
anxiety still wavers and expectation is in doubt, while thou, dear boy,
my one last delight, art yet clasped in my embrace; let no bitterer
message wound mine ear. ' These words the father poured forth at the
final parting; his servants bore him swooning within.

And now the cavalry had issued from the open gates, Aeneas and trusty
Achates among the foremost, then other of the Trojan princes, Pallas
conspicuous amid the column in scarf and inlaid armour; like the Morning
Star, when, newly washed in the ocean wave, he shews his holy face in
heaven, and melts the darkness away. Fearful mothers stand on the walls
and follow with their eyes the cloud of dust and the squadrons gleaming
in brass. They, where the goal of their way lies nearest, bear through
the brushwood in armed array. Forming in column, they advance noisily,
and the horse hoof shakes the crumbling plain with four-footed
trampling. There is a high grove by the cold river of Caere, widely
revered in ancestral awe; sheltering hills shut it in all about and
girdle the woodland with their dark firs. Rumour is that the old
Pelasgians, who once long ago held the Latin borders, consecrated the
grove and its festal day to Silvanus, god of the tilth and flock. Not
far from it Tarchon and his Tyrrhenians were encamped in a protected
place; and now from the hill-top the tents of all their army might be
seen outspread on the fields. Lord Aeneas and his chosen warriors draw
hither and refresh their weary horses and limbs.

But Venus the white goddess drew nigh, bearing her gifts through the
clouds of heaven; and when she saw her [610-646]son withdrawn far apart
in the valley's recess by the cold river, cast herself in his way, and
addressed him thus: 'Behold perfected the presents of my husband's
promised craftsmanship: so shalt thou not shun, O my child, soon to
challenge the haughty Laurentines or fiery Turnus to battle. ' The
Cytherean spoke, and sought her son's embrace, and laid the armour
glittering under an oak over against him. He, rejoicing in the
magnificence of the goddess' gift, cannot have his fill of turning his
eyes over it piece by piece, and admires and handles between his arms
the helmet, dread with plumes and spouting flame, as when a blue cloud
takes fire in the sunbeams and gleams afar; then the smooth greaves of
electrum and refined gold, the spear, and the shield's ineffable design.
There the Lord of Fire had fashioned the story of Italy and the triumphs
of the Romans, not witless of prophecy or ignorant of the age to be;
there all the race of Ascanius' future seed, and their wars fought one
by one. Likewise had he fashioned the she-wolf couched after the birth
in the green cave of Mars; round her teats the twin boys hung playing,
and fearlessly mouthed their foster-mother; she, with round neck bent
back, stroked them by turns and shaped their bodies with her tongue.
Thereto not far from this he had set Rome and the lawless rape of the
Sabines in the concourse of the theatre when the great Circensian games
were celebrated, and a fresh war suddenly arising between the people of
Romulus and aged Tatius and austere Cures. Next these same kings laid
down their mutual strife and stood armed before Jove's altar with cup in
hand, and joined treaty over a slain sow. Not far from there four-horse
chariots driven apart had torn Mettus asunder (but thou, O Alban,
shouldst have kept by thy words! ), and Tullus tore the flesh of the liar
through the forest, his splashed blood dripping from the briars.
Therewithal Porsena commanded [647-681]to admit the exiled Tarquin, and
held the city in the grasp of a strong blockade; the Aeneadae rushed on
the sword for liberty. Him thou couldst espy like one who chafes and
like one who threatens, because Cocles dared to tear down the bridge,
and Cloelia broke her bonds and swam the river. Highest of all Manlius,
warder of the Tarpeian fortress, stood with the temple behind him and
held the high Capitoline; and the thatch of Romulus' palace stood rough
and fresh.