Likewise there was within the house a
marble temple of her ancient lord, kept of her in marvellous honour, and
fastened with snowy fleeces and festal boughs.
marble temple of her ancient lord, kept of her in marvellous honour, and
fastened with snowy fleeces and festal boughs.
Virgil - Aeneid
rescued in vain from peril and doom.
Not Helenus the
prophet, though he counselled of many a terror, not boding Celaeno
foretold me of this grief. This was the last agony, this the goal of the
long ways; thence it was I had departed when God landed me on your
coasts. '
Thus lord Aeneas with all attent retold alone the divine doom and the
history of his goings. At last he was hushed, and here in silence made
an end.
BOOK FOURTH
THE LOVE OF DIDO, AND HER END
But the Queen, long ere now pierced with sore distress, feeds the wound
with her life-blood, and catches the fire unseen. Again and again his
own valiance and his line's renown flood back upon her spirit; look and
accent cling fast in her bosom, and the pain allows not rest or calm to
her limbs. The morrow's dawn bore the torch of Phoebus across the earth,
and had rolled away the dewy darkness from the sky, when, scarce
herself, she thus opens her confidence to her sister:
'Anna, my sister, such dreams of terror thrill me through! What guest
unknown is this who hath entered our dwelling? How high his mien! how
brave in heart as in arms! I believe it well, with no vain assurance,
his blood is divine. Fear proves the vulgar spirit. Alas, by what
destinies is he driven! what wars outgone he chronicled! Were my mind
not planted, fixed and immoveable, to ally myself to none in wedlock
since my love of old was false to me in the treachery of death; were I
not sick to the heart of bridal torch and chamber, to this temptation
alone I might haply yield. Anna, I will confess it; since Sychaeus mine
husband met his piteous doom, and our household was shattered by a
brother's murder, he only hath [22-55]touched mine heart and stirred
the balance of my soul. I know the prints of the ancient flame. But
rather, I pray, may earth first yawn deep for me, or the Lord omnipotent
hurl me with his thunderbolt into gloom, the pallid gloom and profound
night of Erebus, ere I soil thee, mine honour, or unloose thy laws. He
took my love away who made me one with him long ago; he shall keep it
with him, and guard it in the tomb. ' She spoke, and welling tears filled
the bosom of her gown.
Anna replies: 'O dearer than the daylight to thy sister, wilt thou
waste, sad and alone, all thy length of youth, and know not the
sweetness of motherhood, nor love's bounty? Deemest thou the ashes care
for that, or the ghost within the tomb? Be it so: in days gone by no
wooers bent thy sorrow, not in Libya, not ere then in Tyre; Iarbas was
slighted, and other princes nurtured by the triumphal land of Africa;
wilt thou contend so with a love to thy liking? nor does it cross thy
mind whose are these fields about thy dwelling? On this side are the
Gaetulian towns, a race unconquerable in war; the reinless Numidian
riders and the grim Syrtis hem thee in; on this lies a thirsty tract of
desert, swept by the raiders of Barca. Why speak of the war gathering
from Tyre, and thy brother's menaces? . . . With gods' auspices to my
thinking, and with Juno's favour, hath the Ilian fleet held on hither
before the gale. What a city wilt thou discern here, O sister! what a
realm will rise on such a union! the arms of Troy ranged with ours, what
glory will exalt the Punic state! Do thou only, asking divine favour
with peace-offerings, be bounteous in welcome and draw out reasons for
delay, while the storm rages at sea and Orion is wet, and his ships are
shattered and the sky unvoyageable. ' With these words she made the fire
of love flame up in her spirit, put hope in her wavering soul, and let
honour slip away.
[56-90]First they visit the shrines, and desire grace from altar to
altar; they sacrifice sheep fitly chosen to Ceres the Lawgiver, to
Phoebus and lord Lyaeus, to Juno before all, guardian of the marriage
bond. Dido herself, excellent in beauty, holds the cup in her hand, and
pours libation between the horns of a milk-white cow, or moves in state
to the rich altars before the gods' presences, day by day renewing her
gifts, and gazing athirst into the breasts of cattle laid open to take
counsel from the throbbing entrails. Ah, witless souls of soothsayers!
how may vows or shrines help her madness? all the while the subtle flame
consumes her inly, and deep in her breast the wound is silent and alive.
Stung to misery, Dido wanders in frenzy all down the city, even as an
arrow-stricken deer, whom, far and heedless amid the Cretan woodland, a
shepherd archer hath pierced and left the flying steel in her unaware;
she ranges in flight the Dictaean forest lawns; fast in her side clings
the deadly reed. Now she leads Aeneas with her through the town, and
displays her Sidonian treasure and ordered city; she essays to speak,
and breaks off half-way in utterance. Now, as day wanes, she seeks the
repeated banquet, and again madly pleads to hear the agonies of Ilium,
and again hangs on the teller's lips. Thereafter, when all are gone
their ways, and the dim moon in turn quenches her light, and the setting
stars counsel to sleep, alone in the empty house she mourns, and flings
herself on the couch he left: distant she hears and sees him in the
distance; or enthralled by the look he has of his father, she holds
Ascanius on her lap, if so she may steal the love she may not utter. No
more do the unfinished towers rise, no more do the people exercise in
arms, nor work for safety in war on harbour or bastion; the works hang
broken off, vast looming walls and engines towering into the sky.
So soon as she perceives her thus fast in the toils, and [91-124]madly
careless of her name, Jove's beloved wife, daughter of Saturn, accosts
Venus thus:
'Noble indeed is the fame and splendid the spoils you win, thou and that
boy of thine, and mighty the renown of deity, if two gods have
vanquished one woman by treachery. Nor am I so blind to thy terror of
our town, thine old suspicion of the high house of Carthage. But what
shall be the end? or why all this contest now? Nay, rather let us work
an enduring peace and a bridal compact. Thou hast what all thy soul
desired; Dido is on fire with love, and hath caught the madness through
and through. Then rule we this people jointly in equal lordship; allow
her to be a Phrygian husband's slave, and to lay her Tyrians for dowry
in thine hand. '
To her--for she knew the dissembled purpose of her words, to turn the
Teucrian kingdom away to the coasts of Libya--Venus thus began in
answer: 'Who so mad as to reject these terms, or choose rather to try
the fortune of war with thee? if only when done, as thou sayest, fortune
follow. But I move in uncertainty of Jove's ordinance, whether he will
that Tyrians and wanderers from Troy be one city, or approve the
mingling of peoples and the treaty of union. Thou art his wife, and thy
prayers may essay his soul. Go on; I will follow. '
Then Queen Juno thus rejoined: 'That task shall be mine. Now, by what
means the present need may be fulfilled, attend and I will explain in
brief. Aeneas and Dido (alas and woe for her! ) are to go hunting
together in the woodland when to-morrow's rising sun goes forth and his
rays unveil the world. On them, while the beaters run up and down, and
the lawns are girt with toils, will I pour down a blackening rain-cloud
mingled with hail, and startle all the sky in thunder. Their company
will scatter for shelter in the dim darkness; Dido and the Trojan
captain [125-159]shall take refuge in the same cavern. I will be there,
and if thy goodwill is assured me, I will unite them in wedlock, and
make her wholly his; here shall Hymen be present. ' The Cytherean gave
ready assent to her request, and laughed at the wily invention.
Meanwhile Dawn rises forth of ocean. A chosen company issue from the
gates while the morning star is high; they pour forth with meshed nets,
toils, broad-headed hunting spears, Massylian horsemen and sinewy
sleuth-hounds. At her doorway the chief of Carthage await their queen,
who yet lingers in her chamber, and her horse stands splendid in gold
and purple with clattering feet and jaws champing on the foamy bit. At
last she comes forth amid a great thronging train, girt in a Sidonian
mantle, broidered with needlework; her quiver is of gold, her tresses
knotted into gold, a golden buckle clasps up her crimson gown.
Therewithal the Phrygian train advances with joyous Iulus. Himself first
and foremost of all, Aeneas joins her company and unites his party to
hers: even as Apollo, when he leaves wintry Lycia and the streams of
Xanthus to visit his mother's Delos, and renews the dance, while Cretans
and Dryopes and painted Agathyrsians mingle clamorous about his altars:
himself he treads the Cynthian ridges, and plaits his flowing hair with
soft heavy sprays and entwines it with gold; the arrows rattle on his
shoulder: as lightly as he went Aeneas; such glow and beauty is on his
princely face. When they are come to the mountain heights and pathless
coverts, lo, wild goats driven from the cliff-tops run down the ridge;
in another quarter stags speed over the open plain and gather their
flying column in a cloud of dust as they leave the hills. But the boy
Ascanius is in the valleys, exultant on his fiery horse, and gallops
past one and another, praying that among the unwarlike herds a foaming
boar may issue or a tawny lion descend the hill.
[160-194]Meanwhile the sky begins to thicken and roar aloud. A
rain-cloud comes down mingled with hail; the Tyrian train and the men of
Troy, and the Dardanian boy of Venus' son scatter in fear, and seek
shelter far over the fields. Streams pour from the hills. Dido and the
Trojan captain take refuge in the same cavern. Primeval Earth and Juno
the bridesmaid give the sign; fires flash out high in air, witnessing
the union, and Nymphs cry aloud on the mountain-top. That day opened the
gate of death and the springs of ill. For now Dido recks not of eye or
tongue, nor sets her heart on love in secret: she calls it marriage, and
with this name veils her fall.
Straightway Rumour runs through the great cities of Libya,--Rumour, than
whom none other is more swift to mischief; she thrives on restlessness
and gains strength by going: at first small and timorous; soon she lifts
herself on high and paces the ground with head hidden among the clouds.
Her, one saith, Mother Earth, when stung by wrath against the gods, bore
last sister to Coeus and Enceladus, fleet-footed and swift of wing,
ominous, awful, vast; for every feather on her body is a waking eye
beneath, wonderful to tell, and a tongue, and as many loud lips and
straining ears. By night she flits between sky and land, shrilling
through the dusk, and droops not her lids in sweet slumber; in daylight
she sits on guard upon tall towers or the ridge of the house-roof, and
makes great cities afraid; obstinate in perverseness and forgery no less
than messenger of truth. She then exultingly filled the countries with
manifold talk, and blazoned alike what was done and undone: one Aeneas
is come, born of Trojan blood; on him beautiful Dido thinks no shame to
fling herself; now they hold their winter, long-drawn through mutual
caresses, regardless of their realms and enthralled by passionate
dishonour. This the pestilent goddess [195-227]spreads abroad in the
mouths of men, and bends her course right on to King Iarbas, and with
her words fires his spirit and swells his wrath.
He, the seed of Ammon by a ravished Garamantian Nymph, had built to Jove
in his wide realms an hundred great temples, an hundred altars, and
consecrated the wakeful fire that keeps watch by night before the gods
perpetually, where the soil is fat with blood of beasts and the courts
blossom with pied garlands. And he, distracted and on fire at the bitter
tidings, before his altars, amid the divine presences, often, it is
said, bowed in prayer to Jove with uplifted hands:
'Jupiter omnipotent, to whom from the broidered cushions of their
banqueting halls the Maurusian people now pour Lenaean offering, lookest
thou on this? or do we shudder vainly when our father hurls the
thunderbolt, and do blind fires in the clouds and idle rumblings appal
our soul? The woman who, wandering in our coasts, planted a small town
on purchased ground, to whom we gave fields by the shore and laws of
settlement, she hath spurned our alliance and taken Aeneas for lord of
her realm. And now that Paris, with his effeminate crew, his chin and
oozy hair swathed in the turban of Maeonia, takes and keeps her; since
to thy temples we bear oblation, and hallow an empty name. '
In such words he pleaded, clasping the altars; the Lord omnipotent
heard, and cast his eye on the royal city and the lovers forgetful of
their fairer fame. Then he addresses this charge to Mercury:
'Up and away, O son! call the breezes and slide down them on thy wings:
accost the Dardanian captain who now loiters in Tyrian Carthage and
casts not a look on destined cities; carry down my words through the
fleet air. Not such an one did his mother most beautiful vouch him to
[228-264]us, nor for this twice rescue him from Grecian arms; but he
was to rule an Italy teeming with empire and loud with war, to transmit
the line of Teucer's royal blood, and lay all the world beneath his law.
If such glories kindle him in nowise, and he take no trouble for his own
honour, does a father grudge his Ascanius the towers of Rome? with what
device or in what hope loiters he among a hostile race, and casts not a
glance on his Ausonian children and the fields of Lavinium? Let him set
sail: this is the sum: thereof be thou our messenger. '
He ended: his son made ready to obey his high command. And first he
laces to his feet the shoes of gold that bear him high winging over seas
or land as fleet as the gale; then takes the rod wherewith he calls wan
souls forth of Orcus, or sends them again to the sad depth of hell,
gives sleep and takes it away and unseals dead eyes; in whose strength
he courses the winds and swims across the tossing clouds. And now in
flight he descries the peak and steep sides of toiling Atlas, whose
crest sustains the sky; Atlas, whose pine-clad head is girt alway with
black clouds and beaten by wind and rain; snow is shed over his
shoulders for covering; rivers tumble over his aged chin; and his rough
beard is stiff with ice. Here the Cyllenian, poised evenly on his wings,
made a first stay; hence he shot himself sheer to the water. Like a bird
that flies low, skirting the sea about the craggy shores of its fishery,
even thus the brood of Cyllene left his mother's father, and flew,
cutting the winds between sky and land, along the sandy Libyan shore. So
soon as his winged feet reached the settlement, he espies Aeneas
founding towers and ordering new dwellings; his sword twinkled with
yellow jasper, and a cloak hung from his shoulders ablaze with Tyrian
sea-purple, a gift that Dido had made costly and shot the warp with thin
gold. Straightway [265-299]he breaks in: 'Layest thou now the
foundations of tall Carthage, and buildest up a fair city in dalliance?
ah, forgetful of thine own kingdom and state! From bright Olympus I
descend to thee at express command of heaven's sovereign, whose deity
sways sky and earth; expressly he bids me carry this charge through the
fleet air: with what device or in what hope dost thou loiter idly on
Libyan lands? if such glories kindle thee in nowise, yet cast an eye on
growing Ascanius, on Iulus thine hope and heir, to whom the kingdom of
Italy and the Roman land are due. ' As these words left his lips the
Cyllenian, yet speaking, quitted mortal sight and vanished into thin air
away out of his eyes.
But Aeneas in truth gazed in dumb amazement, his hair thrilled up, and
the accents faltered on his tongue. He burns to flee away and leave the
pleasant land, aghast at the high warning and divine ordinance. Alas,
what shall he do? how venture to smooth the tale to the frenzied queen?
what prologue shall he find? and this way and that he rapidly throws his
mind, and turns it on all hands in swift change of thought. In his
perplexity this seemed the better counsel; he calls Mnestheus and
Sergestus, and brave Serestus, and bids them silently equip the fleet,
gather their crews on shore, and order their armament, keeping the cause
of the commotion hid; himself meanwhile, since Dido the gracious knows
not nor looks for severance to so strong a love, will essay to approach
her when she may be told most gently, and the way for it be fair. All at
once gladly do as bidden, and obey his command.
But the Queen--who may delude a lover? --foreknew his devices, and at
once caught the presaging stir. Safety's self was fear; to her likewise
had evil Rumour borne the maddening news that they equip the fleet and
prepare [300-334]for passage. Helpless at heart, she reels aflame with
rage throughout the city, even as the startled Thyiad in her frenzied
triennial orgies, when the holy vessels move forth and the cry of
Bacchus re-echoes, and Cithaeron calls her with nightlong din. Thus at
last she opens out upon Aeneas:
'And thou didst hope, traitor, to mask the crime, and slip away in
silence from my land? Our love holds thee not, nor the hand thou once
gavest, nor the bitter death that is left for Dido's portion? Nay, under
the wintry star thou labourest on thy fleet, and hastenest to launch
into the deep amid northern gales; ah, cruel! Why, were thy quest not of
alien fields and unknown dwellings, did thine ancient Troy remain,
should Troy be sought in voyages over tossing seas? Fliest thou from me?
me who by these tears and thine own hand beseech thee, since naught
else, alas! have I kept mine own--by our union and the marriage rites
preparing; if I have done thee any grace, or aught of mine hath once
been sweet in thy sight,--pity our sinking house, and if there yet be
room for prayers, put off this purpose of thine. For thy sake Libyan
tribes and Nomad kings are hostile; my Tyrians are estranged; for thy
sake, thine, is mine honour perished, and the former fame, my one title
to the skies. How leavest thou me to die, O my guest? since to this the
name of husband is dwindled down. For what do I wait? till Pygmalion
overthrow his sister's city, or Gaetulian Iarbas lead me to captivity?
At least if before thy flight a child of thine had been clasped in my
arms,--if a tiny Aeneas were playing in my hall, whose face might yet
image thine,--I would not think myself ensnared and deserted utterly. '
She ended; he by counsel of Jove held his gaze unstirred, and kept his
distress hard down in his heart. At last he briefly answers:
'Never, O Queen, will I deny that thy goodness hath [335-368]gone high
as thy words can swell the reckoning; nor will my memory of Elissa be
ungracious while I remember myself, and breath sways this body. Little
will I say in this. I never hoped to slip away in stealthy flight; fancy
not that; nor did I ever hold out the marriage torch or enter thus into
alliance. Did fate allow me to guide my life by mine own government, and
calm my sorrows as I would, my first duty were to the Trojan city and
the dear remnant of my kindred; the high house of Priam should abide,
and my hand had set up Troy towers anew for a conquered people. But now
for broad Italy hath Apollo of Grynos bidden me steer, for Italy the
oracles of Lycia. Here is my desire; this is my native country. If thy
Phoenician eyes are stayed on Carthage towers and thy Libyan city, what
wrong is it, I pray, that we Trojans find our rest on Ausonian land? We
too may seek a foreign realm unforbidden. In my sleep, often as the dank
shades of night veil the earth, often as the stars lift their fires, the
troubled phantom of my father Anchises comes in warning and dread; my
boy Ascanius, how I wrong one so dear in cheating him of an Hesperian
kingdom and destined fields. Now even the gods' interpreter, sent
straight from Jove--I call both to witness--hath borne down his commands
through the fleet air. Myself in broad daylight I saw the deity passing
within the walls, and these ears drank his utterance. Cease to madden me
and thyself alike with plaints. Not of my will do I follow Italy. . . . '
Long ere he ended she gazes on him askance, turning her eyes from side
to side and perusing him with silent glances; then thus wrathfully
speaks:
'No goddess was thy mother, nor Dardanus founder of thy line, traitor!
but rough Caucasus bore thee on his iron crags, and Hyrcanian tigresses
gave thee suck. For why do I conceal it? For what further outrage do I
wait? [369-400]Hath our weeping cost him a sigh, or a lowered glance?
Hath he broken into tears, or had pity on his lover? Where, where shall
I begin? Now neither doth Queen Juno nor our Saturnian lord regard us
with righteous eyes. Nowhere is trust safe. Cast ashore and destitute I
welcomed him, and madly gave him place and portion in my kingdom; I
found him his lost fleet and drew his crews from death. Alas, the fire
of madness speeds me on. Now prophetic Apollo, now oracles of Lycia, now
the very gods' interpreter sent straight from Jove through the air
carries these rude commands! Truly that is work for the gods, that a
care to vex their peace! I detain thee not, nor gainsay thy words: go,
follow thine Italy down the wind; seek thy realm overseas. Yet midway my
hope is, if righteous gods can do aught at all, thou wilt drain the cup
of vengeance on the rocks, and re-echo calls on Dido's name. In murky
fires I will follow far away, and when chill death hath severed body
from soul, my ghost will haunt thee in every region. Wretch, thou shalt
repay! I will hear; and the rumour of it shall reach me deep in the
under world. '
Even on these words she breaks off her speech unfinished, and, sick at
heart, escapes out of the air and sweeps round and away out of sight,
leaving him in fear and much hesitance, and with much on his mind to
say. Her women catch her in their arms, and carry her swooning to her
marble chamber and lay her on her bed.
But good Aeneas, though he would fain soothe and comfort her grief, and
talk away her distress, with many a sigh, and melted in soul by his
great love, yet fulfils the divine commands and returns to his fleet.
Then indeed the Teucrians set to work, and haul down their tall ships
all along the shore. The hulls are oiled and afloat; they carry from the
woodland green boughs for oars and massy logs unhewn, in hot haste to
go. . . . One might descry them shifting [401-433]their quarters and
pouring out of all the town: even as ants, mindful of winter, plunder a
great heap of wheat and store it in their house; a black column advances
on the plain as they carry home their spoil on a narrow track through
the grass. Some shove and strain with their shoulders at big grains,
some marshal the ranks and chastise delay; all the path is aswarm with
work. What then were thy thoughts, O Dido, as thou sawest it? What sighs
didst thou utter, viewing from the fortress roof the broad beach aswarm,
and seeing before thine eyes the whole sea stirred with their noisy din?
Injurious Love, to what dost thou not compel mortal hearts! Again, she
must needs break into tears, again essay entreaty, and bow her spirit
down to love, not to leave aught untried and go to death in vain.
'Anna, thou seest the bustle that fills the shore. They have gathered
round from every quarter; already their canvas woos the breezes, and the
merry sailors have garlanded the sterns. This great pain, my sister, I
shall have strength to bear, as I have had strength to foresee. Yet this
one thing, Anna, for love and pity's sake--for of thee alone was the
traitor fain, to thee even his secret thoughts were confided, alone thou
knewest his moods and tender fits--go, my sister, and humbly accost the
haughty stranger: I did not take the Grecian oath in Aulis to root out
the race of Troy; I sent no fleet against her fortresses; neither have I
disentombed his father Anchises' ashes and ghost, that he should refuse
my words entrance to his stubborn ears. Whither does he run? let him
grant this grace--alas, the last! --to his lover, and await fair winds
and an easy passage. No more do I pray for the old delusive marriage,
nor that he give up fair Latium and abandon a kingdom. A breathing-space
I ask, to give my madness rest and room, till my very [434-469]fortune
teach my grief submission. This last favour I implore: sister, be
pitiful; grant this to me, and I will restore it in full measure when I
die. '
So she pleaded, and so her sister carries and recarries the piteous tale
of weeping. But by no weeping is he stirred, inflexible to all the words
he hears. Fate withstands, and lays divine bars on unmoved mortal ears.
Even as when the eddying blasts of northern Alpine winds are emulous to
uproot the secular strength of a mighty oak, it wails on, and the trunk
quivers and the high foliage strews the ground; the tree clings fast on
the rocks, and high as her top soars into heaven, so deep strike her
roots to hell; even thus is the hero buffeted with changeful perpetual
accents, and distress thrills his mighty breast, while his purpose stays
unstirred, and tears fall in vain.
Then indeed, hapless and dismayed by doom, Dido prays for death, and is
weary of gazing on the arch of heaven. The more to make her fulfil her
purpose and quit the light, she saw, when she laid her gifts on the
altars alight with incense, awful to tell, the holy streams blacken, and
the wine turn as it poured into ghastly blood. Of this sight she spoke
to none--no, not to her sister.
Likewise there was within the house a
marble temple of her ancient lord, kept of her in marvellous honour, and
fastened with snowy fleeces and festal boughs. Forth of it she seemed to
hear her husband's voice crying and calling when night was dim upon
earth, and alone on the house-tops the screech-owl often made moan with
funeral note and long-drawn sobbing cry. Therewithal many a warning of
wizards of old terrifies her with appalling presage. In her sleep fierce
Aeneas drives her wildly, and ever she seems being left by herself
alone, ever going uncompanioned on a weary way, and seeking her Tyrians
in a solitary land: even as frantic Pentheus sees the [470-503]arrayed
Furies and a double sun, and Thebes shows herself twofold to his eyes:
or Agamemnonian Orestes, renowned in tragedy, when his mother pursues
him armed with torches and dark serpents, and the Fatal Sisters crouch
avenging in the doorway.
So when, overcome by her pangs, she caught the madness and resolved to
die, she works out secretly the time and fashion, and accosts her
sorrowing sister with mien hiding her design and hope calm on her brow.
'I have found a way, mine own--wish me joy, sisterlike--to restore him
to me or release me of my love for him. Hard by the ocean limit and the
set of sun is the extreme Aethiopian land, where ancient Atlas turns on
his shoulders the starred burning axletree of heaven. Out of it hath
been shown to me a priestess of Massylian race, warder of the temple of
the Hesperides, even she who gave the dragon his food, and kept the holy
boughs on the tree, sprinkling clammy honey and slumberous poppy-seed.
She professes with her spells to relax the purposes of whom she will,
but on others to bring passion and pain; to stay the river-waters and
turn the stars backward: she calls up ghosts by night; thou shalt see
earth moaning under foot and mountain-ashes descending from the hills. I
take heaven, sweet, to witness, and thee, mine own darling sister, I do
not willingly arm myself with the arts of magic. Do thou secretly raise
a pyre in the inner court, and let them lay on it the arms that the
accursed one left hanging in our chamber, and all the dress he wore, and
the bridal bed where I fell. It is good to wipe out all the wretch's
traces, and the priestess orders thus. ' So speaks she, and is silent,
while pallor overruns her face. Yet Anna deems not her sister veils
death behind these strange rites, and grasps not her wild purpose, nor
fears aught deeper than at Sychaeus' death. So she makes ready as
bidden. . . .
[504-538]But the Queen, the pyre being built up of piled faggots and
sawn ilex in the inmost of her dwelling, hangs the room with chaplets
and garlands it with funeral boughs: on the pillow she lays the dress he
wore, the sword he left, and an image of him, knowing what was to come.
Altars are reared around, and the priestess, with hair undone, thrice
peals from her lips the hundred gods of Erebus and Chaos, and the
triform Hecate, the triple-faced maidenhood of Diana. Likewise she had
sprinkled pretended waters of Avernus' spring, and rank herbs are sought
mown by moonlight with brazen sickles, dark with milky venom, and sought
is the talisman torn from a horse's forehead at birth ere the dam could
snatch it. . . . Herself, the holy cake in her pure hands, hard by the
altars, with one foot unshod and garments flowing loose, she invokes the
gods ere she die, and the stars that know of doom; then prays to
whatsoever deity looks in righteousness and remembrance on lovers ill
allied.
Night fell; weary creatures took quiet slumber all over earth, and
woodland and wild waters had sunk to rest; now the stars wheel midway on
their gliding path, now all the country is silent, and beasts and gay
birds that haunt liquid levels of lake or thorny rustic thicket lay
couched asleep under the still night. But not so the distressed
Phoenician, nor does she ever sink asleep or take the night upon eyes or
breast; her pain redoubles, and her love swells to renewed madness, as
she tosses on the strong tide of wrath. Even so she begins, and thus
revolves with her heart alone:
'See, what do I? Shall I again make trial of mine old wooers that will
scorn me? and stoop to sue for a Numidian marriage among those whom
already over and over I have disdained for husbands? Then shall I follow
the Ilian fleets and the uttermost bidding of the Teucrians? because it
is good to think they were once raised up by my [539-570]succour, or
the grace of mine old kindness is fresh in their remembrance? And how
should they let me, if I would? or take the odious woman on their
haughty ships? art thou ignorant, ah me, even in ruin, and knowest not
yet the forsworn race of Laomedon? And then? shall I accompany the
triumphant sailors, a lonely fugitive? or plunge forth girt with all my
Tyrian train? so hardly severed from Sidon city, shall I again drive
them seaward, and bid them spread their sails to the tempest? Nay die
thou, as thou deservest, and let the steel end thy pain. With thee it
began; overborne by my tears, thou, O my sister, dost load me with this
madness and agony, and layest me open to the enemy. I could not spend a
wild life without stain, far from a bridal chamber, and free from touch
of distress like this! O faith ill kept, that was plighted to Sychaeus'
ashes! ' Thus her heart broke in long lamentation.
Now Aeneas was fixed to go, and now, with all set duly in order, was
taking hasty sleep on his high stern. To him as he slept the god
appeared once again in the same fashion of countenance, and thus seemed
to renew his warning, in all points like to Mercury, voice and hue and
golden hair and limbs gracious in youth. 'Goddess-born, canst thou sleep
on in such danger? and seest not the coming perils that hem thee in,
madman! nor hearest the breezes blowing fair? She, fixed on death, is
revolving craft and crime grimly in her bosom, and swells the changing
surge of wrath. Fliest thou not hence headlong, while headlong flight is
yet possible? Even now wilt thou see ocean weltering with broken
timbers, see the fierce glare of torches and the beach in a riot of
flame, if dawn break on thee yet dallying in this land. Up ho! linger no
more! Woman is ever a fickle and changing thing. ' So spoke he, and
melted in the black night.
[571-603]Then indeed Aeneas, startled by the sudden phantom, leaps out
of slumber and bestirs his crew. 'Haste and awake, O men, and sit down
to the thwarts; shake out sail speedily. A god sent from high heaven,
lo! again spurs us to speed our flight and cut the twisted cables. We
follow thee, holy one of heaven, whoso thou art, and again joyfully obey
thy command. O be favourable; give gracious aid and bring fair sky and
weather. ' He spoke, and snatching his sword like lightning from the
sheath, strikes at the hawser with the drawn steel. The same zeal
catches all at once; rushing and tearing they quit the shore; the sea is
hidden under their fleets; strongly they toss up the foam and sweep the
blue water.
And now Dawn broke, and, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, shed her
radiance anew over the world; when the Queen saw from her watch-tower
the first light whitening, and the fleet standing out under squared
sail, and discerned shore and haven empty of all their oarsmen. Thrice
and four times she struck her hand on her lovely breast and rent her
yellow hair: 'God! ' she cries, 'shall he go? shall an alien make mock of
our realm? Will they not issue in armed pursuit from all the city, and
some launch ships from the dockyards? Go; bring fire in haste, serve
weapons, swing out the oars! What do I talk? or where am I? what mad
change is on my purpose? Alas, Dido! now thou dost feel thy wickedness;
that had graced thee once, when thou gavest away thy crown. Behold the
faith and hand of him! who, they say, carries his household's ancestral
gods about with him! who stooped his shoulders to a father outworn with
age! Could I not have riven his body in sunder and strewn it on the
waves? and slain with the sword his comrades and his dear Ascanius, and
served him for the banquet at his father's table? But the chance of
battle had been dubious. If it had! whom did I fear [604-635]with my
death upon me? I should have borne firebrands into his camp and filled
his decks with flame, blotted out father and son and race together, and
flung myself atop of all. Sun, whose fires lighten all the works of the
world, and thou, Juno, mediatress and witness of these my distresses,
and Hecate, cried on by night in crossways of cities, and you, fatal
avenging sisters and gods of dying Elissa, hear me now; bend your just
deity to my woes, and listen to our prayers. If it must needs be that
the accursed one touch his haven and float up to land, if thus Jove's
decrees demand, and this is the appointed term,--yet, distressed in war
by an armed and gallant nation, driven homeless from his borders, rent
from Iulus' embrace, let him sue for succour and see death on death
untimely on his people; nor when he hath yielded him to the terms of a
harsh peace, may he have joy of his kingdom or the pleasant light; but
let him fall before his day and without burial on a waste of sand. This
I pray; this and my blood with it I pour for the last utterance. And
you, O Tyrians, hunt his seed with your hatred for all ages to come;
send this guerdon to our ashes. Let no kindness nor truce be between the
nations. Arise out of our dust, O unnamed avenger, to pursue the
Dardanian settlement with firebrand and steel. Now, then, whensoever
strength shall be given, I invoke the enmity of shore to shore, wave to
water, sword to sword; let their battles go down to their children's
children. '
So speaks she as she kept turning her mind round about, seeking how
soonest to break away from the hateful light. Thereon she speaks briefly
to Barce, nurse of Sychaeus; for a heap of dusky ashes held her own, in
her country of long ago:
'Sweet nurse, bring Anna my sister hither to me. Bid her haste and
sprinkle river water over her body, and bring [636-667]with her the
beasts ordained for expiation: so let her come: and thou likewise veil
thy brows with a pure chaplet. I would fulfil the rites of Stygian Jove
that I have fitly ordered and begun, so to set the limit to my
distresses and give over to the flames the funeral pyre of the
Dardanian. '
So speaks she; the old woman went eagerly with quickened pace. But Dido,
fluttered and fierce in her awful purpose, with bloodshot restless gaze,
and spots on her quivering cheeks burning through the pallor of imminent
death, bursts into the inner courts of the house, and mounts in madness
the high funeral pyre, and unsheathes the sword of Dardania, a gift
asked for no use like this. Then after her eyes fell on the Ilian
raiment and the bed she knew, dallying a little with her purpose through
her tears, she sank on the pillow and spoke the last words of all:
'Dress he wore, sweet while doom and deity allowed! receive my spirit
now, and release me from my distresses. I have lived and fulfilled
Fortune's allotted course; and now shall I go a queenly phantom under
the earth. I have built a renowned city; I have seen my ramparts rise;
by my brother's punishment I have avenged my husband of his enemy;
happy, ah me! and over happy, had but the keels of Dardania never
touched our shores! ' She spoke; and burying her face in the pillow,
'Death it will be,' she cries, 'and unavenged; but death be it. Thus,
thus is it good to pass into the dark. Let the pitiless Dardanian's gaze
drink in this fire out at sea, and my death be the omen he carries on
his way. '
She ceased; and even as she spoke her people see her sunk on the steel,
and blood reeking on the sword and spattered on her hands. A cry rises
in the high halls; Rumour riots down the quaking city. The house
resounds with lamentation and sobbing and bitter crying of women;
[668-700]heaven echoes their loud wails; even as though all Carthage or
ancient Tyre went down as the foe poured in, and the flames rolled
furious over the roofs of house and temple. Swooning at the sound, her
sister runs in a flutter of dismay, with torn face and smitten bosom,
and darts through them all, and calls the dying woman by her name. 'Was
it this, mine own? Was my summons a snare? Was it this thy pyre, ah me,
this thine altar fires meant? How shall I begin my desolate moan? Didst
thou disdain a sister's company in death? Thou shouldst have called me
to share thy doom; in the self-same hour, the self-same pang of steel
had been our portion. Did these very hands build it, did my voice call
on our father's gods, that with thee lying thus I should be away as one
without pity? Thou hast destroyed thyself and me together, O my sister,
and the Sidonian lords and people, and this thy city. Give her wounds
water: I will bathe them and catch on my lips the last breath that haply
yet lingers. ' So speaking she had climbed the high steps, and, wailing,
clasped and caressed her half-lifeless sister in her bosom, and stanched
the dark streams of blood with her gown. She, essaying to lift her heavy
eyes, swoons back; the deep-driven wound gurgles in her breast. Thrice
she rose, and strained to lift herself on her elbow; thrice she rolled
back on the pillow, and with wandering eyes sought the light of high
heaven, and moaned as she found it.
Then Juno omnipotent, pitying her long pain and difficult decease, sent
Iris down from heaven to unloose the struggling life from the body where
it clung. For since neither by fate did she perish, nor as one who had
earned her death, but woefully before her day, and fired by sudden
madness, not yet had Proserpine taken her lock from the golden head, nor
sentenced her to the Stygian under world. So Iris on dewy saffron
pinions flits down through the sky [701-705]athwart the sun in a trail
of a thousand changing dyes, and stopping over her head: 'This hair,
sacred to Dis, I take as bidden, and release thee from that body of
thine. ' So speaks she, and cuts it with her hand. And therewith all the
warmth ebbed forth from her, and the life passed away upon the winds.
BOOK FIFTH
THE GAMES OF THE FLEET
Meanwhile Aeneas and his fleet in unwavering track now held mid passage,
and cleft the waves that blackened under the North, looking back on the
city that even now gleams with hapless Elissa's funeral flame. Why the
broad blaze is lit lies unknown; but the bitter pain of a great love
trampled, and the knowledge of what woman can do in madness, draw the
Teucrians' hearts to gloomy guesses.
When their ships held the deep, nor any land farther appears, the seas
all round, and all round the sky, a dusky shower drew up overhead,
carrying night and storm, and the wave shuddered and gloomed. Palinurus,
master of the fleet, cries from the high stern: 'Alas, why have these
heavy storm-clouds girt the sky? lord Neptune, what wilt thou? ' Then he
bids clear the rigging and bend strongly to the oars, and brings the
sails across the wind, saying thus:
'Noble Aeneas, not did Jupiter give word and warrant would I hope to
reach Italy under such a sky. The shifting winds roar athwart our
course, and blow stronger out of the black west, and the air thickens
into mist: nor are we fit to force our way on and across. Fortune is the
stronger; let us follow her, and turn our course whither she calls.
[23-55]Not far away, I think, are the faithful shores of thy brother
Eryx, and the Sicilian haven, if only my memory retraces rightly the
stars I watched before. '
Then good Aeneas: 'Even I ere now discern the winds will have it so, and
thou urgest against them in vain. Turn thou the course of our sailing.
Could any land be welcomer to me, or where I would sooner choose to put
in my weary ships, than this that hath Dardanian Acestes to greet me,
and laps in its embrace lord Anchises' dust? ' This said, they steer for
harbour, while the following west wind stretches their sails; the fleet
runs fast down the flood, and at last they land joyfully on the familiar
beach. But Acestes high on a hill-top, amazed at the friendly squadron
approaching from afar, hastens towards them, weaponed and clad in the
shaggy skin of a Libyan she-bear. Him a Trojan mother conceived and bore
to Crimisus river; not forgetful of his parentage, he wishes them joy of
their return, and gladly entertains them on his rustic treasure and
comforts their weariness with his friendly store. So soon as the
morrow's clear daylight had chased the stars out of the east, Aeneas
calls his comrades along the beach together, and from a mounded hillock
speaks:
'Great people of Dardanus, born of the high blood of gods, the yearly
circle of the months is measured out to fulfilment since we laid the
dust in earth, all that was left of my divine father, and sadly
consecrated our altars. And now the day is at hand (this, O gods, was
your will), which I will ever keep in grief, ever in honour. Did I spend
it an exile on Gaetulian quicksands, did it surprise me on the Argolic
sea or in Mycenae town, yet would I fulfil the yearly vows and annual
ordinance of festival, and pile the altars with their due gifts. Now we
are led hither, to the very dust and ashes of our father, not as I deem
without [56-90]divine purpose and influence, and borne home into the
friendly haven. Up then and let us all gather joyfully to the sacrifice:
pray we for winds, and may he deign that I pay these rites to him year
by year in an established city and consecrated temple. Two head of oxen
Acestes, the seed of Troy, gives to each of your ships by tale: invite
to the feast your own ancestral gods of the household, and those whom
our host Acestes worships. Further, so the ninth Dawn uplift the
gracious day upon men, and her shafts unveil the world, I will ordain
contests for my Trojans; first for swift ships; then whoso excels in the
foot-race, and whoso, confident in strength and skill, comes to shoot
light arrows, or adventures to join battle with gloves of raw hide; let
all be here, and let merit look for the prize and palm. Now all be
hushed, and twine your temples with boughs. '
So speaks he, and shrouds his brows with his mother's myrtle. So Helymus
does, so Aletes ripe of years, so the boy Ascanius, and the rest of the
people follow. He advances from the assembly to the tomb among a throng
of many thousands that crowd about him; here he pours on the ground in
fit libation two goblets of pure wine, two of new milk, two of
consecrated blood, and flings bright blossoms, saying thus: 'Hail, holy
father, once again; hail, ashes of him I saved in vain, and soul and
shade of my sire! Thou wert not to share the search for Italian borders
and destined fields, nor the dim Ausonian Tiber. ' Thus had he spoken;
when from beneath the sanctuary a snake slid out in seven vast coils and
sevenfold slippery spires, quietly circling the grave and gliding from
altar to altar, his green chequered body and the spotted lustre of his
scales ablaze with gold, as the bow in the cloud darts a thousand
changing dyes athwart the sun: Aeneas stood amazed at the sight. At last
he wound [91-126]his long train among the vessels and polished cups,
and tasted the feast, and again leaving the altars where he had fed,
crept harmlessly back beneath the tomb. Doubtful if he shall think it
the Genius of the ground or his father's ministrant, he slays, as is
fit, two sheep of two years old, as many swine and dark-backed steers,
pouring the while cups of wine, and calling on the soul of great
Anchises and the ghost rearisen from Acheron. Therewithal his comrades,
as each hath store, bring gifts to heap joyfully on the altars, and slay
steers in sacrifice: others set cauldrons arow, and, lying along the
grass, heap live embers under spits and roast the flesh.
The desired day came, and now the ninth Dawn rode up clear and bright
behind Phaethon's coursers; and the name and renown of illustrious
Acestes had stirred up all the bordering people; their holiday throng
filled the shore, to see Aeneas' men, and some ready to join in contest.
First of all the prizes are laid out to view in the middle of the
racecourse; tripods of sacrifice, green garlands and palms, the reward
of the conquerors, armour and garments dipped in purple, talents of
silver and gold: and from a hillock in the midst the trumpet sounds the
games begun. First is the contest of rowing, and four ships matched in
weight enter, the choice of all the fleet. Mnestheus' keen oarsmen drive
the swift Dragon, Mnestheus the Italian to be, from whose name is the
Memmian family; Gyas the huge bulk of the huge Chimaera, a floating
town, whom her triple-tiered Dardanian crew urge on with oars rising in
threefold rank; Sergestus, from whom the Sergian house holds her name,
sails in the tall Centaur; and in the sea-coloured Scylla Cloanthus,
whence is thy family, Cluentius of Rome.
Apart in the sea and over against the foaming beach, lies a rock that
the swoln waves beat and drown what time the [127-159]north-western
gales of winter blot out the stars; in calm it rises silent out of the
placid water, flat-topped, and a haunt where cormorants love best to
take the sun. Here lord Aeneas set up a goal of leafy ilex, a mark for
the sailors to know whence to return, where to wheel their long course
round. Then they choose stations by lot, and on the sterns their
captains glitter afar, beautiful in gold and purple; the rest of the
crews are crowned with poplar sprays, and their naked shoulders glisten
wet with oil. They sit down at the thwarts, and their arms are tense on
the oars; at full strain they wait the signal, while throbbing fear and
heightened ambition drain their riotous blood. Then, when the clear
trumpet-note rang, all in a moment leap forward from their line; the
shouts of the sailors strike up to heaven, and the channels are swept
into foam by the arms as they swing backward. They cleave their furrows
together, and all the sea is torn asunder by oars and triple-pointed
prows. Not with speed so headlong do racing pairs whirl the chariots
over the plain, as they rush streaming from the barriers; not so do
their charioteers shake the wavy reins loose over their team, and hang
forward on the whip. All the woodland rings with clapping and shouts of
men that cheer their favourites, and the sheltered beach eddies back
their cries; the noise buffets and re-echoes from the hills. Gyas shoots
out in front of the noisy crowd, and glides foremost along the water;
whom Cloanthus follows next, rowing better, but held back by his
dragging weight of pine. After them, at equal distance, the Dragon and
the Centaur strive to win the foremost room; and now the Dragon has it,
now the vast Centaur outstrips and passes her; now they dart on both
together, their stems in a line, and their keels driving long furrows
through the salt water-ways. And now they drew nigh the rock, and were
hard [160-193]on the goal; when Gyas as he led, winner over half the
flood, cries aloud to Menoetes, the ship's steersman: 'Whither away so
far to the right? This way direct her path; kiss the shore, and let the
oarblade graze the leftward reefs. Others may keep to deep water. ' He
spoke; but Menoetes, fearing blind rocks, turns the bow away towards the
open sea. 'Whither wanderest thou away? to the rocks, Menoetes! ' again
shouts Gyas to bring him back; and lo! glancing round he sees Cloanthus
passing up behind and keeping nearer. Between Gyas' ship and the echoing
crags he scrapes through inside on his left, flashes past his leader,
and leaving the goal behind is in safe water. Then indeed grief burned
fierce through his strong frame, and tears sprung out on his cheeks;
heedless of his own dignity and his crew's safety, he flings the too
cautious Menoetes sheer into the sea from the high stern, himself
succeeds as guide and master of the helm, and cheers on his men, and
turns his tiller in to shore. But Menoetes, when at last he rose
struggling from the bottom, heavy with advancing years and wet in his
dripping clothes, makes for the top of the crag, and sits down on a dry
rock. The Teucrians laughed out as he fell and as he swam, and laugh to
see him spitting the salt water from his chest. At this a joyful hope
kindled in the two behind, Sergestus and Mnestheus, of catching up Gyas'
wavering course. Sergestus slips forward as he nears the rock, yet not
all in front, nor leading with his length of keel; part is in front,
part pressed by the Dragon's jealous prow. But striding amidships
between his comrades, Mnestheus cheers them on: 'Now, now swing back,
oarsmen who were Hector's comrades, whom I chose to follow me in Troy's
extremity; now put forth the might and courage you showed in Gaetulian
quicksands, amid Ionian seas and Malea's chasing waves. Not the first
[194-227]place do I now seek for Mnestheus, nor strive for victory;
though ah! --yet let them win, O Neptune, to whom thou givest it. But the
shame of coming in last! Win but this, fellow-citizens, and avert that
disaster! ' His men bend forward, straining every muscle; the brasswork
of the ship quivers to their mighty strokes, and the ground runs from
under her; limbs and parched lips shake with their rapid panting, and
sweat flows in streams all over them. Mere chance brought the crew the
glory they desired. For while Sergestus drives his prow furiously in
towards the rocks and comes up with too scanty room, alas! he caught on
a rock that ran out; the reef ground, the oars struck and shivered on
the jagged teeth, and the bows crashed and hung. The sailors leap up and
hold her with loud cries, and get out iron-shod poles and sharp-pointed
boathooks, and pick up their broken oars out of the eddies. But
Mnestheus, rejoicing and flushed by his triumph, with oars fast-dipping
and winds at his call, issues into the shelving water and runs down the
open sea. As a pigeon whose house and sweet nestlings are in the rock's
recesses, if suddenly startled from her cavern, wings her flight over
the fields and rushes frightened from her house with loud clapping
pinions; then gliding noiselessly through the air, slides on her liquid
way and moves not her rapid wings; so Mnestheus, so the Dragon under him
swiftly cleaves the last space of sea, so her own speed carries her
flying on. And first Sergestus is left behind, struggling on the steep
rock and shoal water, and shouting in vain for help and learning to race
with broken oars. Next he catches up Gyas and the vast bulk of the
Chimaera; she gives way, without her steersman. And now on the very goal
Cloanthus alone is left; him he pursues and presses hard, straining all
his strength. Then indeed the shouts redouble, as all together eagerly
cheer on the pursuer, and [228-264]the sky echoes their din.
prophet, though he counselled of many a terror, not boding Celaeno
foretold me of this grief. This was the last agony, this the goal of the
long ways; thence it was I had departed when God landed me on your
coasts. '
Thus lord Aeneas with all attent retold alone the divine doom and the
history of his goings. At last he was hushed, and here in silence made
an end.
BOOK FOURTH
THE LOVE OF DIDO, AND HER END
But the Queen, long ere now pierced with sore distress, feeds the wound
with her life-blood, and catches the fire unseen. Again and again his
own valiance and his line's renown flood back upon her spirit; look and
accent cling fast in her bosom, and the pain allows not rest or calm to
her limbs. The morrow's dawn bore the torch of Phoebus across the earth,
and had rolled away the dewy darkness from the sky, when, scarce
herself, she thus opens her confidence to her sister:
'Anna, my sister, such dreams of terror thrill me through! What guest
unknown is this who hath entered our dwelling? How high his mien! how
brave in heart as in arms! I believe it well, with no vain assurance,
his blood is divine. Fear proves the vulgar spirit. Alas, by what
destinies is he driven! what wars outgone he chronicled! Were my mind
not planted, fixed and immoveable, to ally myself to none in wedlock
since my love of old was false to me in the treachery of death; were I
not sick to the heart of bridal torch and chamber, to this temptation
alone I might haply yield. Anna, I will confess it; since Sychaeus mine
husband met his piteous doom, and our household was shattered by a
brother's murder, he only hath [22-55]touched mine heart and stirred
the balance of my soul. I know the prints of the ancient flame. But
rather, I pray, may earth first yawn deep for me, or the Lord omnipotent
hurl me with his thunderbolt into gloom, the pallid gloom and profound
night of Erebus, ere I soil thee, mine honour, or unloose thy laws. He
took my love away who made me one with him long ago; he shall keep it
with him, and guard it in the tomb. ' She spoke, and welling tears filled
the bosom of her gown.
Anna replies: 'O dearer than the daylight to thy sister, wilt thou
waste, sad and alone, all thy length of youth, and know not the
sweetness of motherhood, nor love's bounty? Deemest thou the ashes care
for that, or the ghost within the tomb? Be it so: in days gone by no
wooers bent thy sorrow, not in Libya, not ere then in Tyre; Iarbas was
slighted, and other princes nurtured by the triumphal land of Africa;
wilt thou contend so with a love to thy liking? nor does it cross thy
mind whose are these fields about thy dwelling? On this side are the
Gaetulian towns, a race unconquerable in war; the reinless Numidian
riders and the grim Syrtis hem thee in; on this lies a thirsty tract of
desert, swept by the raiders of Barca. Why speak of the war gathering
from Tyre, and thy brother's menaces? . . . With gods' auspices to my
thinking, and with Juno's favour, hath the Ilian fleet held on hither
before the gale. What a city wilt thou discern here, O sister! what a
realm will rise on such a union! the arms of Troy ranged with ours, what
glory will exalt the Punic state! Do thou only, asking divine favour
with peace-offerings, be bounteous in welcome and draw out reasons for
delay, while the storm rages at sea and Orion is wet, and his ships are
shattered and the sky unvoyageable. ' With these words she made the fire
of love flame up in her spirit, put hope in her wavering soul, and let
honour slip away.
[56-90]First they visit the shrines, and desire grace from altar to
altar; they sacrifice sheep fitly chosen to Ceres the Lawgiver, to
Phoebus and lord Lyaeus, to Juno before all, guardian of the marriage
bond. Dido herself, excellent in beauty, holds the cup in her hand, and
pours libation between the horns of a milk-white cow, or moves in state
to the rich altars before the gods' presences, day by day renewing her
gifts, and gazing athirst into the breasts of cattle laid open to take
counsel from the throbbing entrails. Ah, witless souls of soothsayers!
how may vows or shrines help her madness? all the while the subtle flame
consumes her inly, and deep in her breast the wound is silent and alive.
Stung to misery, Dido wanders in frenzy all down the city, even as an
arrow-stricken deer, whom, far and heedless amid the Cretan woodland, a
shepherd archer hath pierced and left the flying steel in her unaware;
she ranges in flight the Dictaean forest lawns; fast in her side clings
the deadly reed. Now she leads Aeneas with her through the town, and
displays her Sidonian treasure and ordered city; she essays to speak,
and breaks off half-way in utterance. Now, as day wanes, she seeks the
repeated banquet, and again madly pleads to hear the agonies of Ilium,
and again hangs on the teller's lips. Thereafter, when all are gone
their ways, and the dim moon in turn quenches her light, and the setting
stars counsel to sleep, alone in the empty house she mourns, and flings
herself on the couch he left: distant she hears and sees him in the
distance; or enthralled by the look he has of his father, she holds
Ascanius on her lap, if so she may steal the love she may not utter. No
more do the unfinished towers rise, no more do the people exercise in
arms, nor work for safety in war on harbour or bastion; the works hang
broken off, vast looming walls and engines towering into the sky.
So soon as she perceives her thus fast in the toils, and [91-124]madly
careless of her name, Jove's beloved wife, daughter of Saturn, accosts
Venus thus:
'Noble indeed is the fame and splendid the spoils you win, thou and that
boy of thine, and mighty the renown of deity, if two gods have
vanquished one woman by treachery. Nor am I so blind to thy terror of
our town, thine old suspicion of the high house of Carthage. But what
shall be the end? or why all this contest now? Nay, rather let us work
an enduring peace and a bridal compact. Thou hast what all thy soul
desired; Dido is on fire with love, and hath caught the madness through
and through. Then rule we this people jointly in equal lordship; allow
her to be a Phrygian husband's slave, and to lay her Tyrians for dowry
in thine hand. '
To her--for she knew the dissembled purpose of her words, to turn the
Teucrian kingdom away to the coasts of Libya--Venus thus began in
answer: 'Who so mad as to reject these terms, or choose rather to try
the fortune of war with thee? if only when done, as thou sayest, fortune
follow. But I move in uncertainty of Jove's ordinance, whether he will
that Tyrians and wanderers from Troy be one city, or approve the
mingling of peoples and the treaty of union. Thou art his wife, and thy
prayers may essay his soul. Go on; I will follow. '
Then Queen Juno thus rejoined: 'That task shall be mine. Now, by what
means the present need may be fulfilled, attend and I will explain in
brief. Aeneas and Dido (alas and woe for her! ) are to go hunting
together in the woodland when to-morrow's rising sun goes forth and his
rays unveil the world. On them, while the beaters run up and down, and
the lawns are girt with toils, will I pour down a blackening rain-cloud
mingled with hail, and startle all the sky in thunder. Their company
will scatter for shelter in the dim darkness; Dido and the Trojan
captain [125-159]shall take refuge in the same cavern. I will be there,
and if thy goodwill is assured me, I will unite them in wedlock, and
make her wholly his; here shall Hymen be present. ' The Cytherean gave
ready assent to her request, and laughed at the wily invention.
Meanwhile Dawn rises forth of ocean. A chosen company issue from the
gates while the morning star is high; they pour forth with meshed nets,
toils, broad-headed hunting spears, Massylian horsemen and sinewy
sleuth-hounds. At her doorway the chief of Carthage await their queen,
who yet lingers in her chamber, and her horse stands splendid in gold
and purple with clattering feet and jaws champing on the foamy bit. At
last she comes forth amid a great thronging train, girt in a Sidonian
mantle, broidered with needlework; her quiver is of gold, her tresses
knotted into gold, a golden buckle clasps up her crimson gown.
Therewithal the Phrygian train advances with joyous Iulus. Himself first
and foremost of all, Aeneas joins her company and unites his party to
hers: even as Apollo, when he leaves wintry Lycia and the streams of
Xanthus to visit his mother's Delos, and renews the dance, while Cretans
and Dryopes and painted Agathyrsians mingle clamorous about his altars:
himself he treads the Cynthian ridges, and plaits his flowing hair with
soft heavy sprays and entwines it with gold; the arrows rattle on his
shoulder: as lightly as he went Aeneas; such glow and beauty is on his
princely face. When they are come to the mountain heights and pathless
coverts, lo, wild goats driven from the cliff-tops run down the ridge;
in another quarter stags speed over the open plain and gather their
flying column in a cloud of dust as they leave the hills. But the boy
Ascanius is in the valleys, exultant on his fiery horse, and gallops
past one and another, praying that among the unwarlike herds a foaming
boar may issue or a tawny lion descend the hill.
[160-194]Meanwhile the sky begins to thicken and roar aloud. A
rain-cloud comes down mingled with hail; the Tyrian train and the men of
Troy, and the Dardanian boy of Venus' son scatter in fear, and seek
shelter far over the fields. Streams pour from the hills. Dido and the
Trojan captain take refuge in the same cavern. Primeval Earth and Juno
the bridesmaid give the sign; fires flash out high in air, witnessing
the union, and Nymphs cry aloud on the mountain-top. That day opened the
gate of death and the springs of ill. For now Dido recks not of eye or
tongue, nor sets her heart on love in secret: she calls it marriage, and
with this name veils her fall.
Straightway Rumour runs through the great cities of Libya,--Rumour, than
whom none other is more swift to mischief; she thrives on restlessness
and gains strength by going: at first small and timorous; soon she lifts
herself on high and paces the ground with head hidden among the clouds.
Her, one saith, Mother Earth, when stung by wrath against the gods, bore
last sister to Coeus and Enceladus, fleet-footed and swift of wing,
ominous, awful, vast; for every feather on her body is a waking eye
beneath, wonderful to tell, and a tongue, and as many loud lips and
straining ears. By night she flits between sky and land, shrilling
through the dusk, and droops not her lids in sweet slumber; in daylight
she sits on guard upon tall towers or the ridge of the house-roof, and
makes great cities afraid; obstinate in perverseness and forgery no less
than messenger of truth. She then exultingly filled the countries with
manifold talk, and blazoned alike what was done and undone: one Aeneas
is come, born of Trojan blood; on him beautiful Dido thinks no shame to
fling herself; now they hold their winter, long-drawn through mutual
caresses, regardless of their realms and enthralled by passionate
dishonour. This the pestilent goddess [195-227]spreads abroad in the
mouths of men, and bends her course right on to King Iarbas, and with
her words fires his spirit and swells his wrath.
He, the seed of Ammon by a ravished Garamantian Nymph, had built to Jove
in his wide realms an hundred great temples, an hundred altars, and
consecrated the wakeful fire that keeps watch by night before the gods
perpetually, where the soil is fat with blood of beasts and the courts
blossom with pied garlands. And he, distracted and on fire at the bitter
tidings, before his altars, amid the divine presences, often, it is
said, bowed in prayer to Jove with uplifted hands:
'Jupiter omnipotent, to whom from the broidered cushions of their
banqueting halls the Maurusian people now pour Lenaean offering, lookest
thou on this? or do we shudder vainly when our father hurls the
thunderbolt, and do blind fires in the clouds and idle rumblings appal
our soul? The woman who, wandering in our coasts, planted a small town
on purchased ground, to whom we gave fields by the shore and laws of
settlement, she hath spurned our alliance and taken Aeneas for lord of
her realm. And now that Paris, with his effeminate crew, his chin and
oozy hair swathed in the turban of Maeonia, takes and keeps her; since
to thy temples we bear oblation, and hallow an empty name. '
In such words he pleaded, clasping the altars; the Lord omnipotent
heard, and cast his eye on the royal city and the lovers forgetful of
their fairer fame. Then he addresses this charge to Mercury:
'Up and away, O son! call the breezes and slide down them on thy wings:
accost the Dardanian captain who now loiters in Tyrian Carthage and
casts not a look on destined cities; carry down my words through the
fleet air. Not such an one did his mother most beautiful vouch him to
[228-264]us, nor for this twice rescue him from Grecian arms; but he
was to rule an Italy teeming with empire and loud with war, to transmit
the line of Teucer's royal blood, and lay all the world beneath his law.
If such glories kindle him in nowise, and he take no trouble for his own
honour, does a father grudge his Ascanius the towers of Rome? with what
device or in what hope loiters he among a hostile race, and casts not a
glance on his Ausonian children and the fields of Lavinium? Let him set
sail: this is the sum: thereof be thou our messenger. '
He ended: his son made ready to obey his high command. And first he
laces to his feet the shoes of gold that bear him high winging over seas
or land as fleet as the gale; then takes the rod wherewith he calls wan
souls forth of Orcus, or sends them again to the sad depth of hell,
gives sleep and takes it away and unseals dead eyes; in whose strength
he courses the winds and swims across the tossing clouds. And now in
flight he descries the peak and steep sides of toiling Atlas, whose
crest sustains the sky; Atlas, whose pine-clad head is girt alway with
black clouds and beaten by wind and rain; snow is shed over his
shoulders for covering; rivers tumble over his aged chin; and his rough
beard is stiff with ice. Here the Cyllenian, poised evenly on his wings,
made a first stay; hence he shot himself sheer to the water. Like a bird
that flies low, skirting the sea about the craggy shores of its fishery,
even thus the brood of Cyllene left his mother's father, and flew,
cutting the winds between sky and land, along the sandy Libyan shore. So
soon as his winged feet reached the settlement, he espies Aeneas
founding towers and ordering new dwellings; his sword twinkled with
yellow jasper, and a cloak hung from his shoulders ablaze with Tyrian
sea-purple, a gift that Dido had made costly and shot the warp with thin
gold. Straightway [265-299]he breaks in: 'Layest thou now the
foundations of tall Carthage, and buildest up a fair city in dalliance?
ah, forgetful of thine own kingdom and state! From bright Olympus I
descend to thee at express command of heaven's sovereign, whose deity
sways sky and earth; expressly he bids me carry this charge through the
fleet air: with what device or in what hope dost thou loiter idly on
Libyan lands? if such glories kindle thee in nowise, yet cast an eye on
growing Ascanius, on Iulus thine hope and heir, to whom the kingdom of
Italy and the Roman land are due. ' As these words left his lips the
Cyllenian, yet speaking, quitted mortal sight and vanished into thin air
away out of his eyes.
But Aeneas in truth gazed in dumb amazement, his hair thrilled up, and
the accents faltered on his tongue. He burns to flee away and leave the
pleasant land, aghast at the high warning and divine ordinance. Alas,
what shall he do? how venture to smooth the tale to the frenzied queen?
what prologue shall he find? and this way and that he rapidly throws his
mind, and turns it on all hands in swift change of thought. In his
perplexity this seemed the better counsel; he calls Mnestheus and
Sergestus, and brave Serestus, and bids them silently equip the fleet,
gather their crews on shore, and order their armament, keeping the cause
of the commotion hid; himself meanwhile, since Dido the gracious knows
not nor looks for severance to so strong a love, will essay to approach
her when she may be told most gently, and the way for it be fair. All at
once gladly do as bidden, and obey his command.
But the Queen--who may delude a lover? --foreknew his devices, and at
once caught the presaging stir. Safety's self was fear; to her likewise
had evil Rumour borne the maddening news that they equip the fleet and
prepare [300-334]for passage. Helpless at heart, she reels aflame with
rage throughout the city, even as the startled Thyiad in her frenzied
triennial orgies, when the holy vessels move forth and the cry of
Bacchus re-echoes, and Cithaeron calls her with nightlong din. Thus at
last she opens out upon Aeneas:
'And thou didst hope, traitor, to mask the crime, and slip away in
silence from my land? Our love holds thee not, nor the hand thou once
gavest, nor the bitter death that is left for Dido's portion? Nay, under
the wintry star thou labourest on thy fleet, and hastenest to launch
into the deep amid northern gales; ah, cruel! Why, were thy quest not of
alien fields and unknown dwellings, did thine ancient Troy remain,
should Troy be sought in voyages over tossing seas? Fliest thou from me?
me who by these tears and thine own hand beseech thee, since naught
else, alas! have I kept mine own--by our union and the marriage rites
preparing; if I have done thee any grace, or aught of mine hath once
been sweet in thy sight,--pity our sinking house, and if there yet be
room for prayers, put off this purpose of thine. For thy sake Libyan
tribes and Nomad kings are hostile; my Tyrians are estranged; for thy
sake, thine, is mine honour perished, and the former fame, my one title
to the skies. How leavest thou me to die, O my guest? since to this the
name of husband is dwindled down. For what do I wait? till Pygmalion
overthrow his sister's city, or Gaetulian Iarbas lead me to captivity?
At least if before thy flight a child of thine had been clasped in my
arms,--if a tiny Aeneas were playing in my hall, whose face might yet
image thine,--I would not think myself ensnared and deserted utterly. '
She ended; he by counsel of Jove held his gaze unstirred, and kept his
distress hard down in his heart. At last he briefly answers:
'Never, O Queen, will I deny that thy goodness hath [335-368]gone high
as thy words can swell the reckoning; nor will my memory of Elissa be
ungracious while I remember myself, and breath sways this body. Little
will I say in this. I never hoped to slip away in stealthy flight; fancy
not that; nor did I ever hold out the marriage torch or enter thus into
alliance. Did fate allow me to guide my life by mine own government, and
calm my sorrows as I would, my first duty were to the Trojan city and
the dear remnant of my kindred; the high house of Priam should abide,
and my hand had set up Troy towers anew for a conquered people. But now
for broad Italy hath Apollo of Grynos bidden me steer, for Italy the
oracles of Lycia. Here is my desire; this is my native country. If thy
Phoenician eyes are stayed on Carthage towers and thy Libyan city, what
wrong is it, I pray, that we Trojans find our rest on Ausonian land? We
too may seek a foreign realm unforbidden. In my sleep, often as the dank
shades of night veil the earth, often as the stars lift their fires, the
troubled phantom of my father Anchises comes in warning and dread; my
boy Ascanius, how I wrong one so dear in cheating him of an Hesperian
kingdom and destined fields. Now even the gods' interpreter, sent
straight from Jove--I call both to witness--hath borne down his commands
through the fleet air. Myself in broad daylight I saw the deity passing
within the walls, and these ears drank his utterance. Cease to madden me
and thyself alike with plaints. Not of my will do I follow Italy. . . . '
Long ere he ended she gazes on him askance, turning her eyes from side
to side and perusing him with silent glances; then thus wrathfully
speaks:
'No goddess was thy mother, nor Dardanus founder of thy line, traitor!
but rough Caucasus bore thee on his iron crags, and Hyrcanian tigresses
gave thee suck. For why do I conceal it? For what further outrage do I
wait? [369-400]Hath our weeping cost him a sigh, or a lowered glance?
Hath he broken into tears, or had pity on his lover? Where, where shall
I begin? Now neither doth Queen Juno nor our Saturnian lord regard us
with righteous eyes. Nowhere is trust safe. Cast ashore and destitute I
welcomed him, and madly gave him place and portion in my kingdom; I
found him his lost fleet and drew his crews from death. Alas, the fire
of madness speeds me on. Now prophetic Apollo, now oracles of Lycia, now
the very gods' interpreter sent straight from Jove through the air
carries these rude commands! Truly that is work for the gods, that a
care to vex their peace! I detain thee not, nor gainsay thy words: go,
follow thine Italy down the wind; seek thy realm overseas. Yet midway my
hope is, if righteous gods can do aught at all, thou wilt drain the cup
of vengeance on the rocks, and re-echo calls on Dido's name. In murky
fires I will follow far away, and when chill death hath severed body
from soul, my ghost will haunt thee in every region. Wretch, thou shalt
repay! I will hear; and the rumour of it shall reach me deep in the
under world. '
Even on these words she breaks off her speech unfinished, and, sick at
heart, escapes out of the air and sweeps round and away out of sight,
leaving him in fear and much hesitance, and with much on his mind to
say. Her women catch her in their arms, and carry her swooning to her
marble chamber and lay her on her bed.
But good Aeneas, though he would fain soothe and comfort her grief, and
talk away her distress, with many a sigh, and melted in soul by his
great love, yet fulfils the divine commands and returns to his fleet.
Then indeed the Teucrians set to work, and haul down their tall ships
all along the shore. The hulls are oiled and afloat; they carry from the
woodland green boughs for oars and massy logs unhewn, in hot haste to
go. . . . One might descry them shifting [401-433]their quarters and
pouring out of all the town: even as ants, mindful of winter, plunder a
great heap of wheat and store it in their house; a black column advances
on the plain as they carry home their spoil on a narrow track through
the grass. Some shove and strain with their shoulders at big grains,
some marshal the ranks and chastise delay; all the path is aswarm with
work. What then were thy thoughts, O Dido, as thou sawest it? What sighs
didst thou utter, viewing from the fortress roof the broad beach aswarm,
and seeing before thine eyes the whole sea stirred with their noisy din?
Injurious Love, to what dost thou not compel mortal hearts! Again, she
must needs break into tears, again essay entreaty, and bow her spirit
down to love, not to leave aught untried and go to death in vain.
'Anna, thou seest the bustle that fills the shore. They have gathered
round from every quarter; already their canvas woos the breezes, and the
merry sailors have garlanded the sterns. This great pain, my sister, I
shall have strength to bear, as I have had strength to foresee. Yet this
one thing, Anna, for love and pity's sake--for of thee alone was the
traitor fain, to thee even his secret thoughts were confided, alone thou
knewest his moods and tender fits--go, my sister, and humbly accost the
haughty stranger: I did not take the Grecian oath in Aulis to root out
the race of Troy; I sent no fleet against her fortresses; neither have I
disentombed his father Anchises' ashes and ghost, that he should refuse
my words entrance to his stubborn ears. Whither does he run? let him
grant this grace--alas, the last! --to his lover, and await fair winds
and an easy passage. No more do I pray for the old delusive marriage,
nor that he give up fair Latium and abandon a kingdom. A breathing-space
I ask, to give my madness rest and room, till my very [434-469]fortune
teach my grief submission. This last favour I implore: sister, be
pitiful; grant this to me, and I will restore it in full measure when I
die. '
So she pleaded, and so her sister carries and recarries the piteous tale
of weeping. But by no weeping is he stirred, inflexible to all the words
he hears. Fate withstands, and lays divine bars on unmoved mortal ears.
Even as when the eddying blasts of northern Alpine winds are emulous to
uproot the secular strength of a mighty oak, it wails on, and the trunk
quivers and the high foliage strews the ground; the tree clings fast on
the rocks, and high as her top soars into heaven, so deep strike her
roots to hell; even thus is the hero buffeted with changeful perpetual
accents, and distress thrills his mighty breast, while his purpose stays
unstirred, and tears fall in vain.
Then indeed, hapless and dismayed by doom, Dido prays for death, and is
weary of gazing on the arch of heaven. The more to make her fulfil her
purpose and quit the light, she saw, when she laid her gifts on the
altars alight with incense, awful to tell, the holy streams blacken, and
the wine turn as it poured into ghastly blood. Of this sight she spoke
to none--no, not to her sister.
Likewise there was within the house a
marble temple of her ancient lord, kept of her in marvellous honour, and
fastened with snowy fleeces and festal boughs. Forth of it she seemed to
hear her husband's voice crying and calling when night was dim upon
earth, and alone on the house-tops the screech-owl often made moan with
funeral note and long-drawn sobbing cry. Therewithal many a warning of
wizards of old terrifies her with appalling presage. In her sleep fierce
Aeneas drives her wildly, and ever she seems being left by herself
alone, ever going uncompanioned on a weary way, and seeking her Tyrians
in a solitary land: even as frantic Pentheus sees the [470-503]arrayed
Furies and a double sun, and Thebes shows herself twofold to his eyes:
or Agamemnonian Orestes, renowned in tragedy, when his mother pursues
him armed with torches and dark serpents, and the Fatal Sisters crouch
avenging in the doorway.
So when, overcome by her pangs, she caught the madness and resolved to
die, she works out secretly the time and fashion, and accosts her
sorrowing sister with mien hiding her design and hope calm on her brow.
'I have found a way, mine own--wish me joy, sisterlike--to restore him
to me or release me of my love for him. Hard by the ocean limit and the
set of sun is the extreme Aethiopian land, where ancient Atlas turns on
his shoulders the starred burning axletree of heaven. Out of it hath
been shown to me a priestess of Massylian race, warder of the temple of
the Hesperides, even she who gave the dragon his food, and kept the holy
boughs on the tree, sprinkling clammy honey and slumberous poppy-seed.
She professes with her spells to relax the purposes of whom she will,
but on others to bring passion and pain; to stay the river-waters and
turn the stars backward: she calls up ghosts by night; thou shalt see
earth moaning under foot and mountain-ashes descending from the hills. I
take heaven, sweet, to witness, and thee, mine own darling sister, I do
not willingly arm myself with the arts of magic. Do thou secretly raise
a pyre in the inner court, and let them lay on it the arms that the
accursed one left hanging in our chamber, and all the dress he wore, and
the bridal bed where I fell. It is good to wipe out all the wretch's
traces, and the priestess orders thus. ' So speaks she, and is silent,
while pallor overruns her face. Yet Anna deems not her sister veils
death behind these strange rites, and grasps not her wild purpose, nor
fears aught deeper than at Sychaeus' death. So she makes ready as
bidden. . . .
[504-538]But the Queen, the pyre being built up of piled faggots and
sawn ilex in the inmost of her dwelling, hangs the room with chaplets
and garlands it with funeral boughs: on the pillow she lays the dress he
wore, the sword he left, and an image of him, knowing what was to come.
Altars are reared around, and the priestess, with hair undone, thrice
peals from her lips the hundred gods of Erebus and Chaos, and the
triform Hecate, the triple-faced maidenhood of Diana. Likewise she had
sprinkled pretended waters of Avernus' spring, and rank herbs are sought
mown by moonlight with brazen sickles, dark with milky venom, and sought
is the talisman torn from a horse's forehead at birth ere the dam could
snatch it. . . . Herself, the holy cake in her pure hands, hard by the
altars, with one foot unshod and garments flowing loose, she invokes the
gods ere she die, and the stars that know of doom; then prays to
whatsoever deity looks in righteousness and remembrance on lovers ill
allied.
Night fell; weary creatures took quiet slumber all over earth, and
woodland and wild waters had sunk to rest; now the stars wheel midway on
their gliding path, now all the country is silent, and beasts and gay
birds that haunt liquid levels of lake or thorny rustic thicket lay
couched asleep under the still night. But not so the distressed
Phoenician, nor does she ever sink asleep or take the night upon eyes or
breast; her pain redoubles, and her love swells to renewed madness, as
she tosses on the strong tide of wrath. Even so she begins, and thus
revolves with her heart alone:
'See, what do I? Shall I again make trial of mine old wooers that will
scorn me? and stoop to sue for a Numidian marriage among those whom
already over and over I have disdained for husbands? Then shall I follow
the Ilian fleets and the uttermost bidding of the Teucrians? because it
is good to think they were once raised up by my [539-570]succour, or
the grace of mine old kindness is fresh in their remembrance? And how
should they let me, if I would? or take the odious woman on their
haughty ships? art thou ignorant, ah me, even in ruin, and knowest not
yet the forsworn race of Laomedon? And then? shall I accompany the
triumphant sailors, a lonely fugitive? or plunge forth girt with all my
Tyrian train? so hardly severed from Sidon city, shall I again drive
them seaward, and bid them spread their sails to the tempest? Nay die
thou, as thou deservest, and let the steel end thy pain. With thee it
began; overborne by my tears, thou, O my sister, dost load me with this
madness and agony, and layest me open to the enemy. I could not spend a
wild life without stain, far from a bridal chamber, and free from touch
of distress like this! O faith ill kept, that was plighted to Sychaeus'
ashes! ' Thus her heart broke in long lamentation.
Now Aeneas was fixed to go, and now, with all set duly in order, was
taking hasty sleep on his high stern. To him as he slept the god
appeared once again in the same fashion of countenance, and thus seemed
to renew his warning, in all points like to Mercury, voice and hue and
golden hair and limbs gracious in youth. 'Goddess-born, canst thou sleep
on in such danger? and seest not the coming perils that hem thee in,
madman! nor hearest the breezes blowing fair? She, fixed on death, is
revolving craft and crime grimly in her bosom, and swells the changing
surge of wrath. Fliest thou not hence headlong, while headlong flight is
yet possible? Even now wilt thou see ocean weltering with broken
timbers, see the fierce glare of torches and the beach in a riot of
flame, if dawn break on thee yet dallying in this land. Up ho! linger no
more! Woman is ever a fickle and changing thing. ' So spoke he, and
melted in the black night.
[571-603]Then indeed Aeneas, startled by the sudden phantom, leaps out
of slumber and bestirs his crew. 'Haste and awake, O men, and sit down
to the thwarts; shake out sail speedily. A god sent from high heaven,
lo! again spurs us to speed our flight and cut the twisted cables. We
follow thee, holy one of heaven, whoso thou art, and again joyfully obey
thy command. O be favourable; give gracious aid and bring fair sky and
weather. ' He spoke, and snatching his sword like lightning from the
sheath, strikes at the hawser with the drawn steel. The same zeal
catches all at once; rushing and tearing they quit the shore; the sea is
hidden under their fleets; strongly they toss up the foam and sweep the
blue water.
And now Dawn broke, and, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, shed her
radiance anew over the world; when the Queen saw from her watch-tower
the first light whitening, and the fleet standing out under squared
sail, and discerned shore and haven empty of all their oarsmen. Thrice
and four times she struck her hand on her lovely breast and rent her
yellow hair: 'God! ' she cries, 'shall he go? shall an alien make mock of
our realm? Will they not issue in armed pursuit from all the city, and
some launch ships from the dockyards? Go; bring fire in haste, serve
weapons, swing out the oars! What do I talk? or where am I? what mad
change is on my purpose? Alas, Dido! now thou dost feel thy wickedness;
that had graced thee once, when thou gavest away thy crown. Behold the
faith and hand of him! who, they say, carries his household's ancestral
gods about with him! who stooped his shoulders to a father outworn with
age! Could I not have riven his body in sunder and strewn it on the
waves? and slain with the sword his comrades and his dear Ascanius, and
served him for the banquet at his father's table? But the chance of
battle had been dubious. If it had! whom did I fear [604-635]with my
death upon me? I should have borne firebrands into his camp and filled
his decks with flame, blotted out father and son and race together, and
flung myself atop of all. Sun, whose fires lighten all the works of the
world, and thou, Juno, mediatress and witness of these my distresses,
and Hecate, cried on by night in crossways of cities, and you, fatal
avenging sisters and gods of dying Elissa, hear me now; bend your just
deity to my woes, and listen to our prayers. If it must needs be that
the accursed one touch his haven and float up to land, if thus Jove's
decrees demand, and this is the appointed term,--yet, distressed in war
by an armed and gallant nation, driven homeless from his borders, rent
from Iulus' embrace, let him sue for succour and see death on death
untimely on his people; nor when he hath yielded him to the terms of a
harsh peace, may he have joy of his kingdom or the pleasant light; but
let him fall before his day and without burial on a waste of sand. This
I pray; this and my blood with it I pour for the last utterance. And
you, O Tyrians, hunt his seed with your hatred for all ages to come;
send this guerdon to our ashes. Let no kindness nor truce be between the
nations. Arise out of our dust, O unnamed avenger, to pursue the
Dardanian settlement with firebrand and steel. Now, then, whensoever
strength shall be given, I invoke the enmity of shore to shore, wave to
water, sword to sword; let their battles go down to their children's
children. '
So speaks she as she kept turning her mind round about, seeking how
soonest to break away from the hateful light. Thereon she speaks briefly
to Barce, nurse of Sychaeus; for a heap of dusky ashes held her own, in
her country of long ago:
'Sweet nurse, bring Anna my sister hither to me. Bid her haste and
sprinkle river water over her body, and bring [636-667]with her the
beasts ordained for expiation: so let her come: and thou likewise veil
thy brows with a pure chaplet. I would fulfil the rites of Stygian Jove
that I have fitly ordered and begun, so to set the limit to my
distresses and give over to the flames the funeral pyre of the
Dardanian. '
So speaks she; the old woman went eagerly with quickened pace. But Dido,
fluttered and fierce in her awful purpose, with bloodshot restless gaze,
and spots on her quivering cheeks burning through the pallor of imminent
death, bursts into the inner courts of the house, and mounts in madness
the high funeral pyre, and unsheathes the sword of Dardania, a gift
asked for no use like this. Then after her eyes fell on the Ilian
raiment and the bed she knew, dallying a little with her purpose through
her tears, she sank on the pillow and spoke the last words of all:
'Dress he wore, sweet while doom and deity allowed! receive my spirit
now, and release me from my distresses. I have lived and fulfilled
Fortune's allotted course; and now shall I go a queenly phantom under
the earth. I have built a renowned city; I have seen my ramparts rise;
by my brother's punishment I have avenged my husband of his enemy;
happy, ah me! and over happy, had but the keels of Dardania never
touched our shores! ' She spoke; and burying her face in the pillow,
'Death it will be,' she cries, 'and unavenged; but death be it. Thus,
thus is it good to pass into the dark. Let the pitiless Dardanian's gaze
drink in this fire out at sea, and my death be the omen he carries on
his way. '
She ceased; and even as she spoke her people see her sunk on the steel,
and blood reeking on the sword and spattered on her hands. A cry rises
in the high halls; Rumour riots down the quaking city. The house
resounds with lamentation and sobbing and bitter crying of women;
[668-700]heaven echoes their loud wails; even as though all Carthage or
ancient Tyre went down as the foe poured in, and the flames rolled
furious over the roofs of house and temple. Swooning at the sound, her
sister runs in a flutter of dismay, with torn face and smitten bosom,
and darts through them all, and calls the dying woman by her name. 'Was
it this, mine own? Was my summons a snare? Was it this thy pyre, ah me,
this thine altar fires meant? How shall I begin my desolate moan? Didst
thou disdain a sister's company in death? Thou shouldst have called me
to share thy doom; in the self-same hour, the self-same pang of steel
had been our portion. Did these very hands build it, did my voice call
on our father's gods, that with thee lying thus I should be away as one
without pity? Thou hast destroyed thyself and me together, O my sister,
and the Sidonian lords and people, and this thy city. Give her wounds
water: I will bathe them and catch on my lips the last breath that haply
yet lingers. ' So speaking she had climbed the high steps, and, wailing,
clasped and caressed her half-lifeless sister in her bosom, and stanched
the dark streams of blood with her gown. She, essaying to lift her heavy
eyes, swoons back; the deep-driven wound gurgles in her breast. Thrice
she rose, and strained to lift herself on her elbow; thrice she rolled
back on the pillow, and with wandering eyes sought the light of high
heaven, and moaned as she found it.
Then Juno omnipotent, pitying her long pain and difficult decease, sent
Iris down from heaven to unloose the struggling life from the body where
it clung. For since neither by fate did she perish, nor as one who had
earned her death, but woefully before her day, and fired by sudden
madness, not yet had Proserpine taken her lock from the golden head, nor
sentenced her to the Stygian under world. So Iris on dewy saffron
pinions flits down through the sky [701-705]athwart the sun in a trail
of a thousand changing dyes, and stopping over her head: 'This hair,
sacred to Dis, I take as bidden, and release thee from that body of
thine. ' So speaks she, and cuts it with her hand. And therewith all the
warmth ebbed forth from her, and the life passed away upon the winds.
BOOK FIFTH
THE GAMES OF THE FLEET
Meanwhile Aeneas and his fleet in unwavering track now held mid passage,
and cleft the waves that blackened under the North, looking back on the
city that even now gleams with hapless Elissa's funeral flame. Why the
broad blaze is lit lies unknown; but the bitter pain of a great love
trampled, and the knowledge of what woman can do in madness, draw the
Teucrians' hearts to gloomy guesses.
When their ships held the deep, nor any land farther appears, the seas
all round, and all round the sky, a dusky shower drew up overhead,
carrying night and storm, and the wave shuddered and gloomed. Palinurus,
master of the fleet, cries from the high stern: 'Alas, why have these
heavy storm-clouds girt the sky? lord Neptune, what wilt thou? ' Then he
bids clear the rigging and bend strongly to the oars, and brings the
sails across the wind, saying thus:
'Noble Aeneas, not did Jupiter give word and warrant would I hope to
reach Italy under such a sky. The shifting winds roar athwart our
course, and blow stronger out of the black west, and the air thickens
into mist: nor are we fit to force our way on and across. Fortune is the
stronger; let us follow her, and turn our course whither she calls.
[23-55]Not far away, I think, are the faithful shores of thy brother
Eryx, and the Sicilian haven, if only my memory retraces rightly the
stars I watched before. '
Then good Aeneas: 'Even I ere now discern the winds will have it so, and
thou urgest against them in vain. Turn thou the course of our sailing.
Could any land be welcomer to me, or where I would sooner choose to put
in my weary ships, than this that hath Dardanian Acestes to greet me,
and laps in its embrace lord Anchises' dust? ' This said, they steer for
harbour, while the following west wind stretches their sails; the fleet
runs fast down the flood, and at last they land joyfully on the familiar
beach. But Acestes high on a hill-top, amazed at the friendly squadron
approaching from afar, hastens towards them, weaponed and clad in the
shaggy skin of a Libyan she-bear. Him a Trojan mother conceived and bore
to Crimisus river; not forgetful of his parentage, he wishes them joy of
their return, and gladly entertains them on his rustic treasure and
comforts their weariness with his friendly store. So soon as the
morrow's clear daylight had chased the stars out of the east, Aeneas
calls his comrades along the beach together, and from a mounded hillock
speaks:
'Great people of Dardanus, born of the high blood of gods, the yearly
circle of the months is measured out to fulfilment since we laid the
dust in earth, all that was left of my divine father, and sadly
consecrated our altars. And now the day is at hand (this, O gods, was
your will), which I will ever keep in grief, ever in honour. Did I spend
it an exile on Gaetulian quicksands, did it surprise me on the Argolic
sea or in Mycenae town, yet would I fulfil the yearly vows and annual
ordinance of festival, and pile the altars with their due gifts. Now we
are led hither, to the very dust and ashes of our father, not as I deem
without [56-90]divine purpose and influence, and borne home into the
friendly haven. Up then and let us all gather joyfully to the sacrifice:
pray we for winds, and may he deign that I pay these rites to him year
by year in an established city and consecrated temple. Two head of oxen
Acestes, the seed of Troy, gives to each of your ships by tale: invite
to the feast your own ancestral gods of the household, and those whom
our host Acestes worships. Further, so the ninth Dawn uplift the
gracious day upon men, and her shafts unveil the world, I will ordain
contests for my Trojans; first for swift ships; then whoso excels in the
foot-race, and whoso, confident in strength and skill, comes to shoot
light arrows, or adventures to join battle with gloves of raw hide; let
all be here, and let merit look for the prize and palm. Now all be
hushed, and twine your temples with boughs. '
So speaks he, and shrouds his brows with his mother's myrtle. So Helymus
does, so Aletes ripe of years, so the boy Ascanius, and the rest of the
people follow. He advances from the assembly to the tomb among a throng
of many thousands that crowd about him; here he pours on the ground in
fit libation two goblets of pure wine, two of new milk, two of
consecrated blood, and flings bright blossoms, saying thus: 'Hail, holy
father, once again; hail, ashes of him I saved in vain, and soul and
shade of my sire! Thou wert not to share the search for Italian borders
and destined fields, nor the dim Ausonian Tiber. ' Thus had he spoken;
when from beneath the sanctuary a snake slid out in seven vast coils and
sevenfold slippery spires, quietly circling the grave and gliding from
altar to altar, his green chequered body and the spotted lustre of his
scales ablaze with gold, as the bow in the cloud darts a thousand
changing dyes athwart the sun: Aeneas stood amazed at the sight. At last
he wound [91-126]his long train among the vessels and polished cups,
and tasted the feast, and again leaving the altars where he had fed,
crept harmlessly back beneath the tomb. Doubtful if he shall think it
the Genius of the ground or his father's ministrant, he slays, as is
fit, two sheep of two years old, as many swine and dark-backed steers,
pouring the while cups of wine, and calling on the soul of great
Anchises and the ghost rearisen from Acheron. Therewithal his comrades,
as each hath store, bring gifts to heap joyfully on the altars, and slay
steers in sacrifice: others set cauldrons arow, and, lying along the
grass, heap live embers under spits and roast the flesh.
The desired day came, and now the ninth Dawn rode up clear and bright
behind Phaethon's coursers; and the name and renown of illustrious
Acestes had stirred up all the bordering people; their holiday throng
filled the shore, to see Aeneas' men, and some ready to join in contest.
First of all the prizes are laid out to view in the middle of the
racecourse; tripods of sacrifice, green garlands and palms, the reward
of the conquerors, armour and garments dipped in purple, talents of
silver and gold: and from a hillock in the midst the trumpet sounds the
games begun. First is the contest of rowing, and four ships matched in
weight enter, the choice of all the fleet. Mnestheus' keen oarsmen drive
the swift Dragon, Mnestheus the Italian to be, from whose name is the
Memmian family; Gyas the huge bulk of the huge Chimaera, a floating
town, whom her triple-tiered Dardanian crew urge on with oars rising in
threefold rank; Sergestus, from whom the Sergian house holds her name,
sails in the tall Centaur; and in the sea-coloured Scylla Cloanthus,
whence is thy family, Cluentius of Rome.
Apart in the sea and over against the foaming beach, lies a rock that
the swoln waves beat and drown what time the [127-159]north-western
gales of winter blot out the stars; in calm it rises silent out of the
placid water, flat-topped, and a haunt where cormorants love best to
take the sun. Here lord Aeneas set up a goal of leafy ilex, a mark for
the sailors to know whence to return, where to wheel their long course
round. Then they choose stations by lot, and on the sterns their
captains glitter afar, beautiful in gold and purple; the rest of the
crews are crowned with poplar sprays, and their naked shoulders glisten
wet with oil. They sit down at the thwarts, and their arms are tense on
the oars; at full strain they wait the signal, while throbbing fear and
heightened ambition drain their riotous blood. Then, when the clear
trumpet-note rang, all in a moment leap forward from their line; the
shouts of the sailors strike up to heaven, and the channels are swept
into foam by the arms as they swing backward. They cleave their furrows
together, and all the sea is torn asunder by oars and triple-pointed
prows. Not with speed so headlong do racing pairs whirl the chariots
over the plain, as they rush streaming from the barriers; not so do
their charioteers shake the wavy reins loose over their team, and hang
forward on the whip. All the woodland rings with clapping and shouts of
men that cheer their favourites, and the sheltered beach eddies back
their cries; the noise buffets and re-echoes from the hills. Gyas shoots
out in front of the noisy crowd, and glides foremost along the water;
whom Cloanthus follows next, rowing better, but held back by his
dragging weight of pine. After them, at equal distance, the Dragon and
the Centaur strive to win the foremost room; and now the Dragon has it,
now the vast Centaur outstrips and passes her; now they dart on both
together, their stems in a line, and their keels driving long furrows
through the salt water-ways. And now they drew nigh the rock, and were
hard [160-193]on the goal; when Gyas as he led, winner over half the
flood, cries aloud to Menoetes, the ship's steersman: 'Whither away so
far to the right? This way direct her path; kiss the shore, and let the
oarblade graze the leftward reefs. Others may keep to deep water. ' He
spoke; but Menoetes, fearing blind rocks, turns the bow away towards the
open sea. 'Whither wanderest thou away? to the rocks, Menoetes! ' again
shouts Gyas to bring him back; and lo! glancing round he sees Cloanthus
passing up behind and keeping nearer. Between Gyas' ship and the echoing
crags he scrapes through inside on his left, flashes past his leader,
and leaving the goal behind is in safe water. Then indeed grief burned
fierce through his strong frame, and tears sprung out on his cheeks;
heedless of his own dignity and his crew's safety, he flings the too
cautious Menoetes sheer into the sea from the high stern, himself
succeeds as guide and master of the helm, and cheers on his men, and
turns his tiller in to shore. But Menoetes, when at last he rose
struggling from the bottom, heavy with advancing years and wet in his
dripping clothes, makes for the top of the crag, and sits down on a dry
rock. The Teucrians laughed out as he fell and as he swam, and laugh to
see him spitting the salt water from his chest. At this a joyful hope
kindled in the two behind, Sergestus and Mnestheus, of catching up Gyas'
wavering course. Sergestus slips forward as he nears the rock, yet not
all in front, nor leading with his length of keel; part is in front,
part pressed by the Dragon's jealous prow. But striding amidships
between his comrades, Mnestheus cheers them on: 'Now, now swing back,
oarsmen who were Hector's comrades, whom I chose to follow me in Troy's
extremity; now put forth the might and courage you showed in Gaetulian
quicksands, amid Ionian seas and Malea's chasing waves. Not the first
[194-227]place do I now seek for Mnestheus, nor strive for victory;
though ah! --yet let them win, O Neptune, to whom thou givest it. But the
shame of coming in last! Win but this, fellow-citizens, and avert that
disaster! ' His men bend forward, straining every muscle; the brasswork
of the ship quivers to their mighty strokes, and the ground runs from
under her; limbs and parched lips shake with their rapid panting, and
sweat flows in streams all over them. Mere chance brought the crew the
glory they desired. For while Sergestus drives his prow furiously in
towards the rocks and comes up with too scanty room, alas! he caught on
a rock that ran out; the reef ground, the oars struck and shivered on
the jagged teeth, and the bows crashed and hung. The sailors leap up and
hold her with loud cries, and get out iron-shod poles and sharp-pointed
boathooks, and pick up their broken oars out of the eddies. But
Mnestheus, rejoicing and flushed by his triumph, with oars fast-dipping
and winds at his call, issues into the shelving water and runs down the
open sea. As a pigeon whose house and sweet nestlings are in the rock's
recesses, if suddenly startled from her cavern, wings her flight over
the fields and rushes frightened from her house with loud clapping
pinions; then gliding noiselessly through the air, slides on her liquid
way and moves not her rapid wings; so Mnestheus, so the Dragon under him
swiftly cleaves the last space of sea, so her own speed carries her
flying on. And first Sergestus is left behind, struggling on the steep
rock and shoal water, and shouting in vain for help and learning to race
with broken oars. Next he catches up Gyas and the vast bulk of the
Chimaera; she gives way, without her steersman. And now on the very goal
Cloanthus alone is left; him he pursues and presses hard, straining all
his strength. Then indeed the shouts redouble, as all together eagerly
cheer on the pursuer, and [228-264]the sky echoes their din.
