Virgil: The Complete Works of Virgil
The Plainspoken Classics - Scriptorium Press (First Edition, 2026)
An original AI translation made directly from the source language.
https://openscriptorium.com

Translated from the Latin of the Latin Library text, with standard line numbering, by Scriptorium Press, 2026. Claude Sonnet 5.5 translation fleet (152 batches); Claude Opus 5.5 referee audit on every batch (111 findings, all fixed); Claude Opus 5.5 arbitration, and translation of the opening and closing of every book and the most-read passages (48 batches). Zero shared 8-word runs with prior public-domain translations (Dryden, Conington, Mackail, Morris, Taylor, Rhoades, Humphries). The number before each paragraph is Virgil’s line number; Aeneid 5.778 is printed before 5.777, and lines editors suspect are later additions stand in [square brackets].


======== Aeneid — Book I ========

1| Arms and the man I sing: driven by fate, he was the first to leave the coasts of Troy for Italy and the shores of Lavinium. Hard was the battering he took on land and on the deep from the power of the gods above, because of cruel Juno's unforgetting anger; much too he endured in war, until he could found his city and bring his gods into Latium — the source of the Latin race, the Alban fathers, and the walls of towering Rome.
8| Muse, tell me the causes: what offense to her divine will, what grievance made the queen of the gods drive a man so marked by duty to roll through so many disasters and face so many hardships. Can heavenly minds hold such anger?
12| There was an ancient city, held by settlers from Tyre: Carthage, facing Italy and the mouths of the Tiber far away, rich in wealth and fiercest in the pursuits of war. Juno, they say, loved this one land above all others, even above Samos; here were her arms, here her chariot. Even then the goddess was striving and nursing the hope that this should be the ruling power among nations, if only the Fates allowed. But she had heard that a line was being drawn from Trojan blood that would one day overturn the Tyrian towers; that from it a people ruling far and wide and proud in war would come to bring ruin on Libya: so the Fates were spinning. Fearing this, and remembering the old war she had waged at Troy at the head of all, for her beloved Argos — nor had the causes of her anger and her bitter grief yet faded from her heart: deep in her mind lay stored the judgment of Paris, the insult to her scorned beauty, the hated race, and the honors given to stolen Ganymede — inflamed by all this besides, she kept the Trojans, tossed over the whole sea, the remnant left by the Greeks and pitiless Achilles, far away from Latium; and for many years they wandered, driven by the Fates, around every sea. So great a labor it was to found the Roman people.
34| They were barely out of sight of Sicily, setting sail for the open sea in high spirits and churning the salt foam with their bronze prows, when Juno, nursing the everlasting wound beneath her breast, said to herself: "Am I to give up what I began, defeated, and be unable to turn the king of the Trojans away from Italy? Of course — the Fates forbid me. Could Pallas burn the Argive fleet and drown the men themselves in the sea for the offense and madness of one man, Ajax son of Oileus? She herself hurled Jupiter's swift fire from the clouds, scattered the ships, and churned the waters with winds; and him, as he breathed out flames from his pierced chest, she caught up in a whirlwind and impaled on a sharp rock. Yet I, who walk as queen of the gods, both sister and wife of Jupiter, wage war for so many years with a single nation! Will anyone after this worship Juno's divine power, or lay an offering on her altars as a suppliant?"
50| Turning such thoughts over in her burning heart, the goddess came to Aeolia, homeland of storm clouds, a place teeming with raging winds. Here in a vast cave King Aeolus holds down the struggling winds and roaring gales under his rule and bridles them with chains and a prison. They chafe in fury around their barriers, and the mountain rumbles loudly; Aeolus sits on his high citadel holding his scepter, soothing their spirits and tempering their rage. If he did not, they would surely sweep sea and lands and the depths of the sky along with them in their rush and whirl them through the air. But the all-powerful father, fearing this, hid them in dark caverns, piled a mass of high mountains on top, and gave them a king who would know, under fixed terms and by command, when to rein them in and when to let the reins go slack. It was to him that Juno now spoke as a suppliant, in these words:
65| "Aeolus — for the father of the gods, the king of men, has granted you power to calm the waves and to raise them with the wind — a race I hate is sailing the Tyrrhenian sea, carrying Ilium and its defeated household gods into Italy. Put force into your winds, sink and overwhelm their ships, or drive them apart and scatter their bodies over the sea. I have twice seven nymphs of outstanding beauty; the loveliest of them, Deiopea, I will join to you in lasting marriage and make her yours, so that for such a service she may spend all her years with you and make you the father of beautiful children."
76| Aeolus answered: "Your task, my queen, is to work out what you desire; mine is the duty to carry out your orders. You win me whatever realm I have, you win me my scepter and Jupiter's favor, you grant me a place at the banquets of the gods, and you make me master of clouds and storms."
81| With these words he turned his spear and struck the hollow mountain in its flank; and the winds, as though drawn up in a column, rush out where a gate has been given them and blast across the lands in a whirlwind. They have fallen on the sea, and from its lowest depths East Wind and South Wind together churn it all up, with the Southwester thick with squalls, and roll huge waves toward the shore. Then come the shouting of men and the shrieking of the rigging. Suddenly clouds snatch the sky and the day from the eyes of the Trojans; black night lies brooding over the sea. The heavens thunder, the upper air flashes with fire after fire, and everything threatens the men with instant death.
92| At once Aeneas's limbs go slack with cold terror. He groans, and stretching both palms to the stars he says aloud: "Three and four times blessed are those who had the luck to die before their fathers' eyes beneath the high walls of Troy! O Diomedes, bravest of the Greek race! Why could I not fall on the plains of Ilium and pour out this life under your right hand, where fierce Hector lies beneath the spear of Achilles, where huge Sarpedon lies, where the Simois sweeps along under its waters so many shields and helmets of men, and strong bodies?"
102| As he cries out such words, a screaming gust from the north strikes the sail head-on and lifts the waves to the stars. The oars break; then the prow swings away and gives its side to the waves; a steep mountain of water follows in a heap. Some ships hang on the crest of a wave; for others the water gapes and shows the ground between the waves; the surge rages with sand. The South Wind catches three ships and whirls them onto hidden rocks, rocks in mid-sea which the Italians call the Altars, an immense ridge on the surface of the water; the East Wind drives three from the deep into shallows and quicksands, a pitiable sight, dashes them on the shoals and walls them in with a bank of sand. One ship, which carried the Lycians and loyal Orontes, a huge wave strikes from above on the stern before Aeneas's own eyes. The helmsman is flung out and rolls headlong; the ship the water spins three times on the spot as it drives around, and a swift whirlpool swallows it in the sea. Swimmers appear here and there in the vast gulf, with men's weapons, planks, and Trojan treasure across the waves. By now the storm has overcome the sturdy ship of Ilioneus, then that of brave Achates, then the one that carried Abas and the one that carried aged Aletes; with the joints of their sides loosened, all of them take in the hostile water and gape with cracks.
124| Meanwhile Neptune sensed that the sea was being churned with a great roar, that a storm had been let loose, and that the still waters had been stirred up from the lowest depths. Deeply disturbed, and looking out over the deep, he raised his calm head above the surface of the water. He sees Aeneas's fleet scattered over the whole sea, the Trojans crushed by the waves and the falling sky; and Juno's brother did not miss her tricks and her anger. He calls East Wind and West Wind to him and then says:
132| "Has such confidence in your birth taken hold of you? Do you now dare, winds, to mix sky and earth without my divine will, and to raise such masses of water? You I will—but it is better to calm the stirred-up waves first. Afterward you will pay me for your offenses with a different penalty. Hurry your flight, and tell your king this: the rule of the sea and the savage trident were given by lot to me, not to him. He holds the huge rocks, your homes, East Wind; let Aeolus show off in that hall, and reign in the closed prison of the winds."
142| So he speaks, and faster than his words he calms the swollen seas, scatters the gathered clouds, and brings back the sun. Cymothoe and Triton, straining together, push the ships off the sharp reef; he himself lifts them with his trident, opens the great sandbanks, steadies the water, and glides over the surface of the waves on light wheels. And just as in a great crowd, when a riot has often broken out and the common mob rages in its anger, and torches and stones are already flying, for fury supplies weapons; then, if by chance they catch sight of a man weighty with devotion and service, they fall silent and stand with ears pricked up; he steers their passions with his words and soothes their hearts: so all the roaring of the sea subsided, as soon as the Father, looking out over the waters and carried along under a clear sky, turns his horses and, flying in his favoring chariot, gives them free rein.
157| Worn out, Aeneas's men strive to make for the nearest shore on their course, and turn toward the coast of Libya. There is a place in a deep inlet: an island forms a harbor with the barrier of its sides, against which every wave from the open sea is broken and divides itself into receding bays. On this side and that rise vast cliffs and twin crags that threaten the sky; beneath their peak the waters far and wide lie sheltered and still. Above them a backdrop of shimmering woods, and a dark grove looming with bristling shade. Facing the harbor, under overhanging rocks, is a cave, inside it fresh water and seats of natural rock, the home of nymphs. Here no cables hold weary ships, no anchor fastens them with its curved bite. Here Aeneas puts in with seven ships gathered from his whole fleet; and the Trojans, landing with great longing for dry ground, take possession of the sand they wished for, and lay their limbs, soaked with brine, on the shore. First Achates strikes a spark from flint, catches the fire in leaves, puts dry kindling around it, and fans a flame in the tinder. Then, exhausted by their ordeal, they bring out the grain spoiled by the water and the tools of Ceres, and prepare to roast the salvaged grain over the flames and grind it on stone.
180| Meanwhile Aeneas climbs a crag and looks out over the whole sea far and wide, in case he can see any trace of Antheus tossed by the wind and his Phrygian two-banked ships, or of Capys, or the arms of Caicus on a high stern. No ship is in sight, but he sees three stags wandering on the shore; whole herds follow them from behind, and a long column grazes through the valleys. He stops here and seizes a bow and swift arrows, which loyal Achates was carrying; and first he brings down the leaders themselves, carrying their lofty heads with branching antlers, then the common herd, and he drives the whole crowd in confusion with his shafts among the leafy woods; he does not stop until he has victoriously laid seven huge bodies on the ground, matching the number of his ships. From there he makes for the harbor and shares the game among all his companions. Then he divides the wine that good Acestes had loaded into jars on the Sicilian shore and, generous hero, had given them as they departed, and soothes their grieving hearts with words:
198| "Comrades, for we are no strangers to hardship before this, you who have suffered worse, god will give an end to these troubles too. You have come close to Scylla's rage and the crags that echo from deep within, and you have known the Cyclopes' rocks. Call back your courage and put aside sorrowful fear; perhaps one day it will even be a pleasure to remember this. Through all kinds of misfortune, through so many crises, we are heading for Latium, where the Fates show us a peaceful home. There it is right that the kingdom of Troy rise again. Hold on, and keep yourselves for better times."
208| So he speaks aloud, and though sick with enormous anxieties he feigns hope in his face and keeps his deep sorrow pressed down in his heart. The men gird themselves for the game and the coming feast; they strip the hides from the ribs and lay the flesh bare; some cut it into pieces and spit it still quivering; others set bronze cauldrons on the shore and tend the fires. Then they restore their strength with food, and stretched out on the grass they fill themselves with old wine and rich venison. When hunger has been banished by the feast and the tables cleared, in long conversation they ask after their lost companions, wavering between hope and fear, whether to believe them alive or suffering the final end and no longer hearing when called. Above all dutiful Aeneas mourns for fierce Orontes, then for the fate of Amycus, and in his own heart the cruel fate of Lycus, and brave Gyas, and brave Cloanthus.
223| And now it was ending, when Jupiter, looking down from the height of heaven on the sea alive with sails, the lands spread out, the shores and the wide peoples, took his stand on the summit of the sky and fixed his eyes on the kingdoms of Libya. And as he turned such cares over in his heart, Venus, sadder and her bright eyes full of tears, addresses him: "You who rule the affairs of men and gods with eternal commands and terrify with your thunderbolt, what great offense could my Aeneas have committed against you, what could the Trojans, who after suffering so many deaths find the whole world closed to them because of Italy? You certainly promised that from them, as the years rolled by, the Romans would one day arise, leaders descended from the revived blood of Teucer, who would hold sea and lands under their complete control. What reasoning has changed your mind, Father? That promise, at least, was how I used to console myself for the fall of Troy and its sad ruin, balancing one fate against another. Now the same ill fortune pursues men driven through so many disasters. What end do you grant to their hardships, great king? Antenor was able to slip through the midst of the Greeks and penetrate the Illyrian gulfs and the inner kingdom of the Liburnians in safety, and to get beyond the source of the Timavus, from which the sea bursts out through nine mouths with a vast roar from the mountain and floods the fields with a resounding surge.
247| Yet he founded the city of Patavium there and a home for the Trojans, gave his people a name, and hung up the arms of Troy; now he rests, settled in calm peace. We, your own offspring, to whom you grant the citadel of heaven, have lost our ships (shameful to say!) and are betrayed because of one goddess's anger and kept far away from the coasts of Italy. Is this the prize for devotion? Is this how you restore us to power?"
254| Smiling at her, the creator of men and gods, with the expression with which he calms sky and storms, kissed his daughter lightly and then said: "Put aside your fear, Cytherea: the fates of your people remain unchanged for you; you will see the city and the promised walls of Lavinium, and you will carry high-souled Aeneas up to the stars of heaven; no reasoning has changed my mind. He, for I will speak, since this worry gnaws at you, and I will unroll further and stir the secrets of the Fates, will wage a great war in Italy, crush fierce peoples, and set up customs and walls for his men, until the third summer has seen him reigning in Latium and three winters have passed after the Rutulians are subdued. But the boy Ascanius, who is now given the added name Iulus, he was Ilus while the Trojan state stood in its kingdom, will fill thirty great circles of rolling months with his rule; he will transfer the kingdom from the seat of Lavinium and fortify Alba Longa with great strength. Here for a full three hundred years the kingdom will be ruled under Hector's line, until a priestess queen, Ilia, pregnant by Mars, bears twin sons.
275| "After that, Romulus, proud in the tawny hide of the wolf who nursed him, will take over the people and found the walls of Mars and call the Romans by his own name. For them I set no limits of power or time; I have given them rule without end. Indeed, harsh Juno, who now wears out sea, land and sky with fear, will change her counsel for the better, and together with me will favor the Romans, masters of the world, the people in the toga. Such is my decision. In the course of the passing years a time will come when the house of Assaracus will bring Phthia and famous Mycenae under its servitude, and rule over conquered Argos. A Trojan Caesar will be born of noble descent, to bound his empire with Ocean and his fame with the stars: Julius, a name handed down from great Iulus. Him you will one day receive in heaven, laden with the spoils of the East, without anxiety; he too will be invoked in prayers. Then the rough ages will grow gentle when wars are laid aside; white-haired Faith, and Vesta, and Quirinus with his brother Remus, will give laws; the grim gates of War, with their iron and tightly fitted bars, will be shut; inside, impious Fury, sitting on savage weapons, his hands bound behind him with a hundred bronze knots, will roar, terrible, with bloody mouth."
297| So he speaks, and sends down Maia's son from on high, so that the land and the new citadel of Carthage may open to the Trojans in welcome, and Dido, ignorant of fate, may not keep them from her territory. He flies through the vast air on the oarage of his wings and quickly stands on the shores of Libya. And at once he does as ordered, and the Carthaginians lay aside their fierce hearts, since the god wills it; above all the queen takes up a peaceful spirit and a kindly mind toward the Trojans.
305| But dutiful Aeneas, turning over many thoughts through the night, as soon as kindly daylight was given, resolved to go out and explore the new places, to find out what shores he had reached by the wind, who held them, for he sees they are uncultivated, whether men or wild beasts, and to report his findings to his companions. He hides the fleet in a hollow under an overhanging rock, closed in all around by trees and bristling shadows; he himself walks on accompanied by Achates alone, brandishing in his hand two spears with broad iron heads.
314| In the middle of the wood his mother came to meet him, with the face and bearing of a girl, and the weapons of a girl, a Spartan girl, or like Harpalyce of Thrace, who tires out horses and outstrips swift Hebrus in her flight. For over her shoulders, as huntresses do, she had slung a handy bow, and had let her hair stream loose in the wind, bare to the knee, with her flowing folds gathered in a knot. And she spoke first: "Hey, young men, tell me, have you seen one of my sisters wandering here, by chance, with her quiver at her belt and the hide of a spotted lynx, or pressing with her shouts the course of a foaming boar?"
325| So spoke Venus; and Venus's son began in reply: "I have neither heard nor seen any of your sisters. Oh, what shall I call you, maiden? For your face is not mortal, and your voice does not sound human. Surely you are a goddess. Are you Phoebus's sister? Or one of the nymphs' blood? Whoever you are, be kind and ease our trouble, and tell us beneath what sky and on what shores of the world we are at last being tossed. We wander, ignorant of the people and the places, driven here by the wind and the vast waves. Many a sacrificial victim will fall before your altar by my right hand."
335| Then Venus: "I do not count myself worthy of such an honor; it is the custom for Tyrian girls to carry a quiver and to bind their calves high with purple hunting boots. You see the Punic kingdom, Tyrians and the city of Agenor; but the territory around is Libyan, a people unmanageable in war. Dido rules the realm, having set out from the Tyrian city to escape her brother. The wrong is long, and long its windings; but I will follow only the main points of the story.
343| "She had a husband, Sychaeus, the richest in land of the Phoenicians, and loved with great passion by the unhappy woman; her father had given her to him as a virgin, and joined her to him with the first marriage omens. But her brother Pygmalion held the throne of Tyre, a man more monstrous in crime than all others. Between them came madness. He, impious, and blind with love of gold, killed Sychaeus in secret with the sword in front of the altar, taking him unawares, careless of his sister's love; and he hid the deed for a long time, and, wicked man, with many pretenses mocked the grieving lover with empty hope. But in her sleep there came the actual ghost of her unburied husband, raising a face strangely pale; he laid bare the cruel altars and his chest pierced by the sword, and unveiled the whole hidden crime of the house. Then he urges her to hasten her flight and leave her homeland, and as help for the journey he uncovers an ancient treasure buried in the earth, an unknown weight of silver and gold. Moved by this, Dido prepared her escape and her companions. They gather, those who felt either bitter hatred of the tyrant or sharp fear; they seize ships that happened to be ready and load them with the gold: the wealth of greedy Pygmalion is carried over the sea; a woman leads the enterprise. They came to the place where you now see the huge walls and the rising citadel of new Carthage, and bought ground, called Byrsa from the name of the deal, as much as a bull's hide could enclose. But who are you, in the end, from what shores have you come, or where are you heading?" To her questions he, sighing and drawing his words from deep in his chest, replied:
372| "Goddess, if I were to go back to the very beginning and tell the story, and you had leisure to hear the record of our hardships, the Evening Star would close Olympus and end the day before I finished. A storm brought us, driven over strange seas away from old Troy, if perhaps the name of Troy has come to your ears, to the shores of Libya by its own chance. I am dutiful Aeneas, who carry with me in my fleet the household gods snatched from the enemy, known by reputation above the heavens. I am looking for Italy, my homeland; my race descends from Jupiter on high. With twice ten ships I set out on the Phrygian sea, my goddess mother showing the way, following the fates given me; scarcely seven are left, battered by the waves and the East Wind. I myself, unknown and in want, wander the deserts of Libya, driven from Europe and Asia." Venus would not allow him to complain further, and broke in on his grief with these words:
387| "Whoever you are, you are not, I think, hated by the heavenly powers as you breathe the air of life, since you have reached a Tyrian city. Only go on, and from here make your way to the queen's threshold. For I report to you that your companions are back and your fleet recovered, driven to safety by the shifting north winds, unless my parents taught me augury in vain. Look at those twelve swans, rejoicing in their formation, which Jupiter's bird, swooping from the region of the sky, was harrying in the open air; now they seem either to be settling on land in a long line or already looking down on land they have reached: just as they, returned, play with whirring wings, circle the sky in a flock and give out their song, in just the same way your ships and your young men either hold the harbor or enter its mouth under full sail. Only go on, and where the road leads you, direct your steps."
402| She spoke, and as she turned away her neck gleamed rosy, her ambrosial hair breathed a divine fragrance from her head, her robe fell to her feet, and in her walk she was revealed as a true goddess. When he recognized his mother, he followed her as she fled with these words: "Why do you, too, cruel, mock your son so often with false appearances? Why am I not allowed to join hand to hand, and hear and answer true words?"
410| With such words he reproaches her, and heads for the walls. But Venus screened them as they walked with dark air, and the goddess poured around them a thick cloak of mist, so that no one could see them or touch them, or cause delay, or ask their reasons for coming. She herself goes off high up to Paphos, and glad returns to her own home, where her temple stands, and a hundred altars glow with Sabaean incense and breathe fragrance with fresh garlands.
418| Meanwhile they hastened along the way where the path leads. And now they were climbing the hill which looms largest over the city and looks down on the citadel opposite. Aeneas marvels at the mass of it, once only huts; he marvels at the gates, the noise, and the paved streets. The Tyrians press on eagerly, some raising walls and building the citadel and rolling up stones by hand, others choosing a site for a house and enclosing it with a furrow. [They choose laws and magistrates and a revered senate;] here some dig out harbors; here others lay deep foundations for theaters, and cut huge columns from the cliffs, tall ornaments for future stages. Like the work that keeps bees busy in the sunshine through flowering fields in early summer, when they lead out the grown young of their race, or when they pack liquid honey and swell the cells with sweet nectar, or take the loads of those coming in, or in a body drive the drones, an idle herd, from the hives: the work boils, and the fragrant honey smells of thyme. "How fortunate are those whose walls are already rising!" says Aeneas, and looks up at the rooftops of the city. He enters, wonderful to tell, hidden in the mist, among them all, and mingles with the men, and is seen by no one.
441| In the middle of the city there was a grove, richly shaded, where the Carthaginians, first tossed by wave and whirlwind, dug up the sign that royal Juno had shown them, the head of a spirited horse; for this, she said, would make the nation outstanding in war and easy in living through the ages. Here Sidonian Dido was building a huge temple to Juno, rich with gifts and the goddess's power, its bronze thresholds rising on steps, its beams fastened with bronze, its hinges creaking on bronze doors. In this grove, a novel sight first eased his fear; here Aeneas first dared to hope for safety and to trust more in his battered fortunes. For while, waiting for the queen beneath the great temple, he looks over each detail, and marvels at the city's good fortune and the skill of the craftsmen's hands and the labor of their work, he sees the battles of Ilium in sequence, the wars already known across the whole world by report, the Atreidae, Priam, and Achilles, fierce to both. He stopped, and in tears said: "What place is there now, Achates, what region on earth, is not filled with our sufferings? Look, Priam! Here too there are rewards for honor; here are tears for what happens, and mortal things touch the heart. Put away your fear; this fame will bring you some safety." So he speaks, and feeds his mind on the empty picture, with many groans, and wets his face with a copious stream.
466| For he saw how, as they fought around Pergamum, the Greeks fled on one side while the Trojan youth pressed them, and on the other the Phrygians fled while plumed Achilles pressed on in his chariot. Not far from there, weeping, he recognizes the tents of Rhesus with their snow-white canvas, betrayed in their first sleep, which the son of Tydeus, bloody with great slaughter, was laying waste, and he drove the fiery horses off to the camp before they could taste Trojan pasture or drink from the Xanthus. In another part Troilus, who has fled and lost his weapons, an unlucky boy who met Achilles unequally, is carried along by his horses and clings, flat on his back, to the empty chariot, still holding the reins; his neck and his hair trail along the ground, and the dust is scored by his reversed spear. Meanwhile the Trojan women, with their hair loose, were going to the temple of unfriendly Pallas, carrying a robe, sad and humble, beating their breasts with their palms; the goddess, turned away, kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Achilles had dragged Hector three times around the walls of Ilium, and was selling the lifeless corpse for gold. Then indeed he gives a great groan from deep in his chest, as he sees the spoils, the chariot, the actual corpse of his friend, and Priam reaching out unarmed hands. He recognizes himself too, mingled with the Greek leaders, and the eastern ranks and the arms of dark Memnon. Penthesilea leads the columns of the Amazons with their crescent shields, raging, and blazes in the midst of thousands, fastening a golden belt beneath her bared breast, a warrior woman, a maiden who dares to clash with men.
494| While these sights seem wonderful to Trojan Aeneas, while he stands amazed and rooted in one gaze, the queen, Dido, most beautiful in form, came to the temple with a great crowd of young men thronging round. As on the banks of the Eurotas or along the ridges of Cynthus Diana leads her dances, and a thousand mountain nymphs follow and gather around her on this side and that; she carries a quiver on her shoulder, and as she walks she stands taller than all the goddesses; joy touches Latona's silent heart: such was Dido, so she carried herself joyfully among them, urging on the work and her future kingdom. Then, at the goddess's doors, beneath the temple's central vault, ringed with weapons, she sat down on a high-set throne. She gave laws and judgments to her men, and shared out the burden of the work in fair portions or assigned it by lot. At that moment Aeneas suddenly sees Antheus, Sergestus, brave Cloanthus and other Trojans approaching in a great crowd, whom a black whirlwind had scattered over the sea and carried far away to other shores. He himself was stunned, and Achates too was struck with joy and fear alike; they burned with eagerness to join hands; but the unknown situation troubled their minds. They hide their feelings, and wrapped in the hollow cloud they watch to see what has happened to the men, where they leave the fleet on shore, why they have come; for chosen men from all the ships were coming, asking for favor, and they made for the temple with a shout.
520| When they had gone in and the chance to speak before her was granted, eldest Ilioneus began calmly: "O queen, to whom Jupiter has granted to found a new city and by justice to curb proud nations, we unhappy Trojans, carried over every sea by the winds, beg you: keep dreadful fires from our ships, spare a dutiful people, and look more closely on our situation. We have not come to ravage Libyan household gods with the sword, or to carry plunder seized from your shores back to the sea; there is no such violence in our minds, and the defeated have no such arrogance. There is a land the Greeks call Hesperia, ancient, strong in arms and in rich soil; the Oenotrian people lived there; now report says that their descendants have called the nation Italy, after the name of a leader. That was our course: when suddenly stormy Orion, rising with the waves, drove us onto hidden shoals, and the wanton south winds scattered us far and wide over the waters, with the sea overwhelming us, and over trackless rocks; a few of us have swum to your shore. What kind of people is this? What country is so barbarous as to allow such a custom? We are refused the hospitality of the sand; they stir up war and will not let us step onto the nearest land. If you despise the human race and mortal weapons, at least hope for gods who remember right and wrong.
544| "We had a king, Aeneas, than whom no one was more just, or greater in devotion, or in war and arms. If the Fates preserve that man, if he still feeds on the upper air and does not yet lie in the cruel shades, then there is nothing to fear; and you will not regret having been the first to compete with him in kindness. In the regions of Sicily too we have cities and weapons, and Acestes, famous and of Trojan blood. Allow us to haul up our fleet, battered by the winds, to fit timbers from the woods and shape oars; if we are allowed to head for Italy, with our companions and our king recovered, we can happily seek Italy and Latium; but if safety is gone, and the sea of Libya holds you, best father of the Trojans, and the hope of Iulus no longer remains, then at least let us seek the straits of Sicily and the homes prepared for us, from which we came here, and King Acestes."
559| So spoke Ilioneus; all the Trojans murmured together in assent.
561| Then Dido, her face lowered, speaks briefly: "Free your hearts of fear, Trojans, put aside your worries. Hard circumstances and the newness of my kingdom force me to take such measures and to guard my borders far and wide with sentries. Who would not know the race of Aeneas's people, who would not know the city of Troy, its valor and its heroes, or the blaze of so great a war? We Carthaginians do not carry such dull hearts, nor does the Sun yoke his horses so far from the Tyrian city. Whether you choose great Hesperia and the fields of Saturn, or the land of Eryx and King Acestes, I will send you off protected by my help, and assist you with my resources. Or if you wish to settle with me in this kingdom on equal terms, the city I am founding is yours; haul your ships ashore; Trojan and Tyrian will be treated by me without any distinction. And I wish that King Aeneas himself, driven by the same south wind, were here! I will send out trusted men along the coast and order them to search the farthest parts of Libya, in case he is wandering, cast ashore in some forests or cities."
579| Stirred in spirit by these words, brave Achates and father Aeneas had long been burning to break out of the cloud. Achates is the first to address Aeneas: "Goddess-born, what plan is now rising in your mind? You see everything safe, the fleet and companions recovered. Only one is missing, whom we ourselves saw drowned in the midst of the waves; everything else matches your mother's words."
586| He had hardly spoken when the cloud around them suddenly parts and clears into the open air. Aeneas stood and shone in the bright light, in face and shoulders like a god; for his mother herself had breathed beauty on her son's hair, the glow of youth, and cheerful grace in his eyes, as hands lend beauty to ivory, or as silver or Parian marble is set in yellow gold.
594| Then he addresses the queen and, suddenly unexpected by all, says: "Here before you stands the man you are looking for, Trojan Aeneas, rescued from the Libyan waves. You alone have pitied the unspeakable sufferings of Troy; you offer us, the remnant left by the Greeks, worn out by every disaster of land and sea, and lacking everything, a share in your city and your home. To repay you with fitting thanks is beyond our power, Dido, and beyond whatever is left of the Trojan race anywhere, scattered over the great world. May the gods, if any divine powers look on the dutiful, if justice exists anywhere and a mind aware of its own righteousness, bring you worthy rewards. What happy age bore you? What parents brought forth such a woman? While rivers run into the sea, while shadows pass over the mountain slopes, while the heavens feed the stars, your honor, your name and your praises will always remain, whatever lands call me." Having spoken, he reaches with his right hand for his friend Ilioneus and with his left for Serestus, then the others, brave Gyas and brave Cloanthus.
613| Sidonian Dido was stunned, at the sight of him first, and then at the man's great misfortune, and she spoke: "What chance, goddess-born, pursues you through such great dangers? What force brings you to these savage shores? Are you that Aeneas, whom kindly Venus bore to Trojan Anchises beside the waters of the Phrygian Simois? Indeed I remember that Teucer came to Sidon, driven from his native land, seeking a new kingdom with the help of Belus; my father Belus was then ravaging rich Cyprus and held it in his power as a conqueror. From that time I have known the fall of the Trojan city, your name and the Greek kings. The enemy himself used to praise the Trojans highly, and claimed descent from the ancient stock of the Teucrians. So come, young men, enter our home. Fortune like yours has also driven me through many hardships and wished me to settle at last in this land. Not unacquainted with misfortune, I learn to help the wretched."
631| So she speaks; at the same time she leads Aeneas into the royal palace, at the same time she proclaims offerings in the temples of the gods. And no less she sends to his companions on the shore twenty bulls, a hundred bristling backs of huge pigs, a hundred fat lambs with their mothers, gifts and gladness from the god.
637| But the inner palace is furnished with the splendor of royal luxury, and they prepare a banquet in the middle of the halls: coverlets worked with skill and proud purple, great quantities of silver on the tables, and, engraved in gold, the brave deeds of her ancestors, a very long series of events led down through so many heroes from the ancient origin of the people.
643| Aeneas (for his fatherly love would not let his mind rest) sends swift Achates ahead to the ships, to carry word of this to Ascanius and bring him to the walls; all the care of the loving father centers on Ascanius. He orders him also to bring gifts snatched from the ruins of Ilium: a robe stiff with figures and gold, and a veil edged with yellow acanthus, the adornment of Argive Helen, which she had brought from Mycenae when she headed for Pergamum and an unlawful marriage, a wonderful gift from her mother Leda; also the scepter that Ilione, the eldest of Priam's daughters, once carried, a necklace of pearls, and a double crown of gems and gold. Hurrying to carry out this order, Achates headed for the ships.
657| But the goddess of Cythera turns new schemes and new plans over in her heart: that Cupid, changed in face and features, should come in place of sweet Ascanius, set the queen raging with the gifts, and wind fire through her bones. She fears the treacherous house and the double-tongued Tyrians; cruel Juno burns her, and as night comes on her anxiety returns. So she addresses winged Love with these words:
664| "My son, my strength, you alone my great power, my son who scorn the father on high's Typhoean thunderbolts, I take refuge with you and come as a suppliant to ask for your divine aid. How your brother Aeneas is tossed over the sea around every shore by the hatred of unjust Juno you know well, and you have often grieved with my grief. Now Phoenician Dido holds him and delays him with coaxing words; and I fear where Juno's hospitality may turn: she will not sit idle at such a turning point of events. So I mean to catch the queen first by trickery and ring her round with flame, so that no divine power may change her, but she may be held with me by a great love for Aeneas. Hear now my thinking on how you can do this. The royal boy, my greatest care, is preparing, at his beloved father's call, to go to the Sidonian city with gifts saved from the sea and from the flames of Troy. I will lull him to sleep and hide him away in my sacred dwelling on high Cythera or on Idalium, so that he cannot learn of the trick or turn up in the middle of it. For no more than a single night, counterfeit his appearance by craft, and, a boy yourself, put on the boy's familiar face, so that when Dido, overjoyed, takes you into her lap amid the royal tables and the flowing wine, when she embraces you and presses sweet kisses on you, you may breathe hidden fire into her and deceive her with your poison."
689| Love obeys his dear mother's words, takes off his wings, and walks with delight in the gait of Iulus. But Venus pours peaceful rest through the limbs of Ascanius, and, holding him warm in her lap, the goddess lifts him to the high groves of Idalia, where soft marjoram wraps him in its flowers and its sweet-breathing shade.
695| And now Cupid, obeying her words, was on his way, carrying the royal gifts to the Tyrians, happy to have Achates as his guide. When he arrives, the queen has already settled herself on a golden couch amid proud tapestries and taken her place in the center. Now father Aeneas and now the Trojan young men gather, and they recline on spread purple. Servants pour water over their hands, bring out bread in baskets, and hand them napkins of close-shorn wool. Inside are fifty maidservants, whose task is to lay out the long store of food in order and to tend the hearth gods with fire; a hundred others, and as many pages of the same age, load the tables with food and set out the cups. The Tyrians too have gathered in crowds through the festive doorways, bidden to recline on embroidered couches. They admire Aeneas' gifts, they admire Iulus, the god's glowing face and his pretended words, [the robe, and the veil embroidered with yellow acanthus.] Above all the unhappy Phoenician, doomed to the ruin to come, cannot satisfy her heart; she burns as she gazes, and is moved by the boy and the gifts alike. He, after hanging in Aeneas' embrace and around his neck and satisfying the great love of his pretended father, goes to the queen. She clings to him with her eyes, with all her heart, and now and then cuddles him in her lap — Dido, not knowing how great a god is settling on her, poor woman. But he, remembering his Acidalian mother, begins little by little to erase Sychaeus, and tries to take by surprise, with a living love, her spirit long at rest and her heart long unused to it.
723| When the first lull came in the feasting and the tables were cleared, they set out great mixing bowls and crown the wine with garlands. Noise fills the palace, and voices roll through the spacious halls; lit lamps hang from the gilded ceilings, and torches defeat the night with their flames. Here the queen called for a bowl weighed down with gems and gold, and filled it with neat wine — the bowl Belus and all of Belus' line used to use. Then silence fell on the hall: "Jupiter — for they say you give the laws of hospitality — may it be your will that this day be a happy one for the Tyrians and for those who set out from Troy, and that our descendants remember it. May Bacchus, giver of joy, be with us, and kindly Juno; and you, Tyrians, honor this gathering with goodwill." She spoke, and poured an offering of wine on the table, and after the libation she was first to touch the bowl, just to the edge of her lips; then she handed it to Bitias with a challenge. He briskly drained the foaming bowl and drenched himself in the brimming gold; then the other lords drank after him. Long-haired Iopas, whom great Atlas taught, makes the hall ring with his golden lyre. He sings of the moon's wanderings and the sun's labors;
743| where the race of men and the beasts came from, where rain and lightning; of Arcturus, the rainy Hyades, and the two Bears; why the winter suns hasten so to dip themselves in Ocean, and what delay holds back the slow nights. The Tyrians redouble their applause, and the Trojans follow. Unhappy Dido too was drawing out the night with talk of every kind and drinking long draughts of love, asking question after question about Priam, question after question about Hector: now in what armor the son of Dawn had come, now what Diomedes' horses were like, now how great Achilles was. "No, come," she said, "tell us from the very beginning, my guest, the treachery of the Greeks, the misfortunes of your people, and your own wanderings; for already the seventh summer is carrying you as you wander over every land and sea."

======== Aeneid — Book II ========

1| All fell silent and held their faces intent upon him. Then from his high couch father Aeneas began:
3| "Unspeakable, my queen, is the grief you bid me renew: how the Greeks tore down the wealth of Troy and its kingdom, now a thing for weeping — the most pitiful sights I saw myself, events in which I played a great part. Which of the Myrmidons or Dolopians, which soldier of hard Ulysses, could hold back his tears while telling such things? And already the dewy night is rushing down from the sky, and the setting stars urge sleep. But if you have such a longing to learn of our misfortunes and to hear briefly of the final agony of Troy, though my mind shudders to remember and has recoiled in grief, I will begin. Broken by war and thrust back by the Fates, with so many years now slipping by, the leaders of the Greeks build a horse the size of a mountain by the divine art of Pallas, and weave its ribs with planks of cut fir. They pretend it is a vow for their safe return; that is the story that spreads. Into it they secretly shut picked men chosen by lot, hiding them in its dark flank, and they fill the huge caverns deep inside its belly with armed soldiers. Within sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an island well known to fame, rich in wealth while Priam's kingdom stood, now only a bay and an unsafe anchorage for ships.
24| There they sailed and hid on the empty shore; we thought they had left and were running before the wind to Mycenae. So all the land of Troy shook off its long grief. The gates are thrown open; it is a joy to go out and see the Greek camp, the deserted places and the abandoned shore. Here the Dolopian band camped, here savage Achilles pitched his tent; here was the place for the ships, here they used to fight in battle line. Some stand amazed at the deadly gift to the virgin Minerva and marvel at the horse's bulk. Thymoetes is the first to urge that it be brought inside the walls and placed on the citadel — whether by treachery or because the fate of Troy was already tending that way. But Capys, and those whose minds held better judgment, tell us either to hurl the Greeks' trap, this suspect gift, into the sea, or to set fire beneath it and burn it, or else to bore into the hollow belly and probe its hiding places. The wavering crowd is split into opposing camps.
40| Then, first of all, with a great crowd following him, Laocoön runs blazing down from the top of the citadel and shouts from far off: 'Wretched citizens, what is this madness? Do you believe the enemy has sailed away? Or do you think any gift of the Greeks is free of tricks? Is this how you know Ulysses? Either Achaeans are shut up hiding in this wood, or this machine has been built against our walls, to spy on our homes and descend upon the city from above, or some other deceit lies hidden in it. Trojans, put no faith in the horse. Whatever this thing may be, I fear Greeks even when they come with gifts.' With these words he hurled a huge spear with all his strength into the beast's side and its belly curved with joints. It stuck there quivering; the womb was jolted, and the hollow caverns boomed and gave out a groan. And if the gods' decree, if our own minds had not been set against us, he would have driven us to tear open the Greek hiding place with steel, and Troy would be standing now, and you, high citadel of Priam, would still remain.
57| Meanwhile, look: Trojan shepherds were dragging to the king, with loud shouting, a young man with his hands bound behind his back. He had deliberately put himself, a stranger, in the way of those coming, to bring about this very thing and open Troy to the Greeks — confident in his nerve and ready for either outcome, to work his tricks or to meet certain death. From all sides the young Trojans pour around him, eager to see him, and vie in mocking the captive. Listen now to how the Greeks lay their snares, and from a single crime learn what they all are. For when he stood in full view, distraught and unarmed, and looked around at the Phrygian ranks, he cried: 'Alas, what land, what seas can take me in now? What is left at last for wretched me, who have no place anywhere among the Greeks, while the Trojans themselves, my enemies, demand my punishment in blood?' At that lament our mood changed and all violence was checked. We urge him to tell us what blood he was born from, what news he brings; to say what he is relying on, a captive.
77| "I will tell you everything, king, whatever comes of it," he said, "and truthfully; and I will not deny that I am of Greek stock. That first. And if Fortune has made Sinon wretched, she in her cruelty will not make him false and a liar as well. If by chance the name of Palamedes, son of Belus, and the glory of his famous reputation ever reached your ears in talk: the Greeks sent him to his death on a false charge of treason, on monstrous evidence, though he was innocent, because he opposed the war; now that he is lost to the light they mourn him. My father, who was poor, sent me here to the war from my earliest years as a companion to Palamedes, since I was his close kinsman. While he stood unharmed in his position and had weight in the councils of kings, I too held some name and distinction. After he left this world of the living through the jealousy of crafty Ulysses (I am telling nothing unknown), I dragged out my life in darkness and grief, crushed, and I raged to myself at the fate of my innocent friend. In my madness I did not keep quiet; if chance should ever bring me home as victor to my native Argos, I promised to avenge him, and my words stirred bitter hatred. That was the first stain of my ruin; from then on Ulysses was always frightening me with new accusations, from then on scattering ambiguous rumors among the crowd, and, conscious of his guilt, looking for weapons against me. Nor did he rest until, with Calchas as his instrument— but why do I go over these things again, to no purpose and to no thanks? Why do I delay? If you hold all Greeks as one and the same, and it is enough to hear that I am one, then punish me at once: the man from Ithaca would want that, and the sons of Atreus would pay a great price for it."
105| Then indeed we burn to question him and ask the reasons, knowing nothing of such great crimes or of Greek cunning. He goes on, trembling, speaking from a false heart:
108| "Often the Greeks wanted to leave Troy behind and plan their escape, and to depart, worn out by the long war; if only they had done it! Often a harsh winter storm on the sea shut them in, and the South Wind frightened them as they set out. Above all, when this horse, made of maple beams, was already standing, storm clouds roared across the whole sky. In suspense we send Eurypylus to consult the oracles of Phoebus, and he brings back these grim words from the sanctuary: 'You appeased the winds with blood and the sacrifice of a maiden, Greeks, when you first came to the shores of Ilium; with blood must your return be sought, and you must win favor with a Greek life.' When these words reached the crowd's ears, their minds were stunned and a cold shudder ran through their deepest bones, wondering for whom the Fates were preparing this, whom Apollo demanded. Then the man from Ithaca, in great uproar, drags the seer Calchas into the middle of the crowd and demands to know what the gods' will is. And already many were predicting for me the cruel scheme of that plotter, and in silence they saw what was coming. For ten days Calchas stays silent, and, keeping himself hidden, refuses to name anyone with his voice or to expose anyone to death.
128| "At last, barely, driven by the loud shouts of the man from Ithaca, as they had agreed, he breaks his silence and marks me out for the altar. All assented, and what each had feared for himself they bore, turned into the destruction of one poor wretch. And now the terrible day had come; the rites were made ready for me, the salted meal and the ribbons around my temples. I tore myself from death, I admit, and broke my bonds, and through the night I lay hidden, in darkness, among the sedge of a muddy lake, waiting for them to set sail, if by chance they should. I now have no hope of ever seeing my ancient homeland again, or my sweet children and the father I long for, from whom they will perhaps demand a penalty for my escape, and they will atone for this offense of mine with the deaths of those poor people. So I beg you, by the gods above and by the powers that know the truth, by whatever trust is left anywhere among mortals still unstained: pity such great sufferings, pity a spirit that endures what it does not deserve."
145| At these tears we spare his life and even feel pity for him. Priam himself is the first to order the shackles and tight bonds taken off the man, and he speaks to him with kind words: "Whoever you are, forget from now on the Greeks you have lost (you will be ours), and answer my questions truthfully: why did they set up this huge mass of a horse? Who was behind it? What do they want? What religious purpose, or what engine of war, is it?" He had finished. The other, trained in deceit and Greek craft, lifted his freed hands, released from their chains, to the stars: "You, eternal fires, and your inviolable divine power I call to witness," he said, "you altars and accursed swords that I escaped, and you ribbons of the gods that I wore as a victim: it is right for me to break the sacred bonds that tie me to the Greeks, it is right for me to hate them and bring into the open everything they conceal; I am held by no laws of my country. Only you, Troy, stay true to your promises, and if I tell the truth and repay you richly, keep faith in return for being saved. All the hope of the Greeks, and their confidence in the war they began, always rested on the help of Pallas. But from the moment when the impious son of Tydeus and Ulysses, the inventor of crimes, set about tearing the fateful Palladium out of its holy temple, after cutting down the guards of the high citadel, and seized the sacred image and dared to touch the virgin goddess's ribbons with bloodstained hands, from that moment the hope of the Greeks began to ebb and slide backward, their strength was shattered, and the goddess's mind turned against them.
171| "Nor did Tritonia give these signs with doubtful portents. The statue was barely set down in the camp when blazing flames flashed from its raised eyes, salty sweat ran down its limbs, and three times the goddess herself (marvelous to tell) leapt up from the ground, carrying shield and quivering spear. At once Calchas declares that the seas must be tried in flight, and that Troy cannot be destroyed by Greek weapons unless they seek fresh omens at Argos and bring back the divine power they carried off with them over the sea in their curved ships. And now that they have made for their native Mycenae on the wind, they are preparing arms and gods to accompany them, and when they have crossed the sea again they will be here unexpected; so Calchas interprets the omens. Warned by them, they set up this image in place of the Palladium, in place of the divine power they had wronged, to atone for the terrible sacrilege. Yet Calchas ordered them to raise it to this immense size with interlaced oak timbers and lift it toward the sky, so that it could not be taken in through the gates or drawn within the walls, nor protect the people under the old religion. For if your hand violated the gift to Minerva, then great destruction would fall on Priam's empire and on the Phrygians (may the gods turn that omen on him first!); but if it climbed by your hands into your city, Asia would of her own accord march in great war to the walls of Pelops' land, and that fate awaits our descendants."
195| By such treachery and the craft of perjured Sinon the story was believed, and we were caught by deceit and forced tears, we whom neither Diomedes son of Tydeus nor Achilles of Larisa, nor ten years, nor a thousand ships had conquered.
199| Here another, greater portent, far more terrible, is thrown in the way of us poor wretches and throws our unsuspecting hearts into confusion. Laocoön, chosen by lot as priest of Neptune, was sacrificing a huge bull at the customary altars. But look — from Tenedos, over the calm deep — I shudder as I tell it — two snakes with immense coils lean on the sea and side by side make for the shore. Their breasts rise among the waves, and their blood-red crests rise high above the water; the rest of them skims the sea behind and winds their huge backs in folds. There is a roar as the salt water foams; and now they were reaching the fields, their blazing eyes shot with blood and fire, licking their hissing mouths with flickering tongues. We scatter, drained of blood at the sight. They go straight for Laocoön in a fixed course. First each snake embraces the small bodies of his two sons, wraps around them, and feeds on their pitiful limbs with its bite; next they seize the father himself as he comes to help with weapons in his hand, and bind him in their giant coils; and now, twice wound around his waist, twice wrapping their scaly backs around his neck, they tower over him with their heads and high necks.
220| He at the same time strains with his hands to wrench the knots apart, his priestly ribbons soaked with gore and black venom, and at the same time raises horrifying cries to the stars: like the bellowing when a wounded bull has fled from the altar and shaken the ill-aimed axe from its neck. But the twin serpents glide away to the high shrine and make for the citadel of cruel Tritonian Minerva, and are covered up under the goddess's feet, below the circle of her shield. Then, in truth, a new terror creeps into all our trembling hearts, and they say Laocoön has paid the penalty he deserved for his crime, for wounding the sacred wood with his spear point and hurling his wicked lance into its flank. They shout that the image must be taken to its home and the goddess' divine power entreated. We breach the walls and lay open the defenses of the city. All set to work; they put sliding rollers under its feet and stretch hempen ropes around its neck. The fatal machine climbs the walls, pregnant with arms. Around it boys and unmarried girls sing hymns and are glad to touch the rope with their hands.
240| It climbs up and, threatening, slides into the middle of the city. O fatherland, O Ilium, house of the gods, and you walls of the Dardans, famous in war! Four times it halted on the very threshold of the gate, and four times the arms clanged in its belly; yet we press on, heedless and blind with frenzy, and set the ill-omened monster in our sacred citadel. Even then Cassandra opens her mouth to tell of the fate to come — a mouth the Trojans, by a god's command, never believed. We, poor wretches, for whom that day was to be the last, deck the shrines of the gods throughout the city with festive leaves.
250| Meanwhile the sky wheels round and night rushes up from Ocean, wrapping earth and heaven and the schemes of the Myrmidons in her great shadow; the Trojans, scattered through the city, fell silent; sleep embraces their weary limbs. And now the Greek battle line was coming in its ships, drawn up in order, from Tenedos, through the friendly silence of the quiet moon, making for the familiar shores, when the royal ship raised its signal flames; and Sinon, protected by the unjust fates of the gods, stealthily unbars the pine panels that shut the Greeks inside the belly. The horse, opened, gives them back to the air, and joyfully the leaders come out of the hollow wood: Thessandrus and Sthenelus, and dread Ulysses, sliding down a lowered rope, and Acamas and Thoas, and Neoptolemus the son of Peleus, and Machaon first among them, and Menelaus, and Epeos himself, the maker of the trick. They fall on the city buried in sleep and wine; the watchmen are cut down, the gates thrown wide, and they welcome all their comrades and join up with the forces that knew the plan.
268| It was the hour when the first rest begins for weary mortals and creeps over them, the sweetest gift of the gods. In my sleep, look, before my eyes Hector seemed to stand beside me, deeply sorrowful and shedding floods of tears, as once when he was dragged behind the chariot, black with bloody dust, his swollen feet pierced by the thongs. Ah me, what a sight he was, how changed from that Hector who came back wearing the spoils of Achilles, or who hurled Phrygian fire at the Greek ships! He wore a filthy beard, his hair matted with blood, and those wounds, so many of them, that he took around his native walls. I seemed to speak to him first, weeping myself, and to utter sorrowful words: "O light of Dardania, most trusted hope of the Trojans, what has held you back so long? From what shores, Hector, do you come, so long awaited? How wearily we look on you, after the deaths of so many of your people, after the many trials of men and city! What cause has disfigured your calm face so unworthily? Or why do I see these wounds?" He answers nothing and does not linger over my empty questions, but drawing a heavy groan from the depths of his chest, he says: "Alas, flee, son of a goddess, and tear yourself from these flames. The enemy holds the walls; Troy is crashing down from her high summit. Enough has been given to your country and to Priam: if Pergama could have been defended by any right hand, it would have been defended by this one. Troy entrusts to you her sacred things and her household gods; take them as companions of your fates, and seek for them the great walls that you will found at last, after wandering over the sea." So he speaks, and with his hands he brings out from the inner shrine the sacred ribbons and mighty Vesta and the undying fire.
298| Meanwhile the city is thrown into confusion with grief of every kind, and increasingly, though the house of my father Anchises stood apart, set back and screened by trees, the sounds grow clearer and the terror of weapons bears down. I am shaken from sleep, and climb to the top of the roof and stand there with ears pricked: as when fire falls on a cornfield with the South Winds raging, or a rushing torrent from a mountain stream flattens the fields, flattens the happy crops and the labor of the oxen, and drags forests headlong; the shepherd, not knowing what it is, stands stunned as he hears the sound from the top of a high rock. Then indeed the truth was plain, and the Greeks' treachery lay open. Already the great house of Deiphobus has collapsed in ruin as Vulcan overcomes it; already Ucalegon next door is ablaze; the wide waters of Sigeum glow with the fire. Men's shouts and the blare of trumpets rise. Out of my mind I seize my weapons; there is not much sense in weapons, but my spirit burns to gather a band for fighting and to rush with my comrades to the citadel; fury and anger drive my mind headlong, and the thought comes that it is a fine thing to die in arms.
318| But look, Panthus, escaped from the Greek spears, Panthus son of Othrys, priest of the citadel and of Phoebus, himself drags along the sacred objects, the conquered gods, and his little grandson, and runs wildly toward my doorstep. "What is the state of things, Panthus? What stronghold are we to hold?" I had hardly said this when he answered with a groan: "The last day has come, and the unavoidable hour of Dardania. We Trojans have been, Ilium has been, and the great glory of the Teucrians; savage Jupiter has carried everything over to Argos; the Greeks are masters in a burning city. The towering horse, standing in the middle of the walls, pours out armed men, and Sinon, victorious, stirs up the fires, gloating. Others are at the gates, both sides open, as many thousands as ever came from great Mycenae; others have blocked the narrow streets, setting their weapons across them; a line of steel stands with flashing point drawn, ready for slaughter; scarcely the first guards of the gates try to fight and resist in blind combat." By these words of Othrys' son and by the will of the gods I am swept into flames and into arms, wherever the grim Fury calls, wherever the din and the clamor raised to the sky.
339| Rhipeus joins us as comrades, and Epytus, greatest in arms, caught sight of in the moonlight, and Hypanis and Dymas, and they gather at my side, and Coroebus, young son of Mygdon— in those days he had happened to come to Troy, inflamed with mad love for Cassandra, and as a son-in-law was bringing help to Priam and the Phrygians, unlucky man, who did not listen to the warnings of his frenzied bride! When I saw them massed together and eager for the fight, I began to speak to them further: "Young men, hearts brave to no purpose, if your desire to follow one who dares the utmost is fixed, you see what the state of affairs is: all the gods on whom this empire stood have gone, leaving their shrines and altars; you are rushing to help a burning city. Let us die, and charge into the middle of the fight. The one safety for the defeated is to hope for no safety." So fury was added to the young men's spirits. Then, like ravening wolves in a black mist, whom the cruel rage of hunger has driven out blind and whose cubs left behind wait with dry throats, we go through weapons, through enemies, to certain death, and keep to the path through the middle of the city; black night flies around us with her hollow shadow.
361| Who could tell of the disaster of that night, who could tell of the deaths, or match the sufferings with tears? An ancient city is falling, that ruled for many years; countless lifeless bodies are strewn everywhere through the streets and through the houses and through the sacred thresholds of the gods. Nor are the Trojans alone in paying with their blood; at times courage returns even to the hearts of the defeated, and the Greek victors fall. Everywhere is cruel grief, everywhere terror, and death in countless forms.
370| The first of the Greeks to present himself to us, with a large band following, is Androgeos, who in his ignorance takes us for a friendly column and calls out to us in a friendly way: "Hurry, men! What late laziness holds you back? Others are plundering and carrying off burning Pergama; are you only now coming from the high ships?" He spoke, and at once (for the replies he was given did not sound trustworthy enough) he realized that he had fallen into the midst of enemies. He froze, and stopped his foot, and his voice with it. Like a man who, pressing his way through rough brambles, has trodden on a snake on the ground without seeing it, and suddenly shrinks back in terror from it as it rears up in anger and swells its bluish neck: no differently Androgeos, shaken at the sight, was drawing away. We rush in and surround them with massed arms, and we cut them down all over the place, ignorant of the ground and seized with fear; Fortune smiles on our first effort. And here Coroebus, exulting in our success and in his courage, says: "Comrades, let us follow where Fortune first shows the road to safety, and where she shows herself favorable. Let us exchange shields and fit ourselves with Greek insignia. Deceit or courage, who asks which against an enemy?
391| They themselves will give us arms." With these words he puts on Androgeos' plumed helmet and the handsome emblem of his shield and fits the Argive sword at his side. Rhipeus does the same, Dymas himself does it, and all the young men gladly do it: each arms himself with the fresh spoils. We go on, mingled with the Greeks, with the gods no friends of ours, and fighting many encounters in the blind night we close with them and send many of the Greeks down to Orcus. Some scatter and run to the ships and head for the shelter of the shore; some, in shameful terror, climb once more into the huge horse and hide in its familiar belly.
402| Alas, it is not right for anyone to trust in anything when the gods are unwilling! Look, the maiden daughter of Priam, Cassandra, was being dragged by her loosened hair from the temple and shrine of Minerva, lifting her blazing eyes toward heaven in vain, her eyes, for chains held back her tender hands. Coroebus, his mind maddened, could not bear that sight and threw himself into the midst of the column, ready to die; we all follow and rush on in close order. Here for the first time we are overwhelmed by weapons from our own men on the high roof of the temple, and a most pitiful slaughter begins, caused by the look of our arms and the mistaking of our Greek crests. Then the Greeks, gathering from every side at the cry and in anger at the maiden torn from them, attack: fierce Ajax, both sons of Atreus, and the whole army of the Dolopians; as when once a whirlwind bursts and opposing winds clash together, West Wind and South Wind and East Wind exulting on his dawn horses; the forests shriek, and foaming Nereus rages with his trident and stirs up the waters from the lowest depths. Those too whom we had routed by stealth in the dark night through the shadows and chased through the whole city appear; they are the first to recognize our shields and deceptive weapons, and they mark our voices as out of tune with our faces.
424| At once we are overwhelmed by numbers, and Coroebus is the first to fall, by the hand of Peneleus, at the altar of the warrior goddess; Rhipeus falls too, the one man most just among the Trojans and most observant of what is right (the gods saw it otherwise); Hypanis and Dymas die, struck down by their own comrades; nor did your great devotion, Panthus, as you fell, nor the headband of Apollo, protect you. Ashes of Ilium and last flames of my people, I call you to witness that at your fall I avoided neither weapons nor any chance of battle with the Greeks, and that, if fate had decreed that I should fall, I earned it by my hand. We are torn away from there, Iphitus and Pelias with me (Iphitus already weighed down by age, Pelias slowed by a wound from Ulysses), called at once by the shouting to the palace of Priam. Here we see a huge battle, as if there were no other fighting anywhere and no one were dying in the whole city: so unchecked is Mars, and so many Greeks rushing at the roof, and the threshold besieged with a tortoise formation driven up against it. Ladders cling to the walls, and men climb on the rungs right beside the doorposts, covering themselves with shields held in their left hands against the missiles, while they grasp the battlements with their right.
445| On the other side the Trojans tear down towers and the whole roofs of the houses; with these, since they see the end, they prepare to defend themselves in their last moment of death, and they hurl down the gilded beams, the proud ornaments of their ancestors of old; others, with drawn swords, have blocked the lowest doors and guard them in a dense column. Our spirits were renewed to come to the aid of the king's house, to relieve its men with help, and to add strength to the defeated.
453| There was a threshold, a hidden door, and a passage connecting Priam's buildings with one another, and a postern gate left at the back, by which, while the kingdom still stood, unhappy Andromache used to go, quite often and without attendants, to her husband's parents, and she would lead the boy Astyanax to his grandfather. I make my way up to the top of the roof, from where the wretched Trojans were hurling spears with their hands to no effect. A tower stood on a sheer edge, its roof raised up toward the stars, from which the whole of Troy used to be seen, along with the Greek ships and the Achaean camp. We attacked it all around with iron, where the upper floors gave loose joints, and tore it from its high base and pushed it over; it fell suddenly, dragging ruin with a crash, and came down far and wide on the Greek ranks. But others come up, and meanwhile neither stones nor any kind of missile stops.
469| Right in front of the forecourt, on the very threshold, Pyrrhus leaps about, gleaming with weapons and bronze light: like a snake that has fed on poisonous plants and that cold winter had kept hidden, swollen, underground; now, with its old skin shed, new and bright with youth, it rolls its slippery back, chest raised, rearing up toward the sun, and flickers with its triple tongue in its mouth. With him huge Periphas, and Automedon, driver of Achilles' horses and bearer of his arms, and with him all the young men of Scyros come up to the building and hurl flames at the roof. Pyrrhus himself, among the first, seizes a two-edged axe, breaks through the hard threshold, and tears the bronze-clad doorposts from their hinges; and now, having cut away a beam, he has hollowed out the solid oak and made a huge window with a wide opening. The house within appears, and the long halls lie open; the inner rooms of Priam and the kings of old appear, and they see armed men standing on the very threshold. But the interior of the house is in confusion with groaning and pitiful uproar, and deep inside the hollow rooms echo with women's wailing; the cry strikes the golden stars.
489| Then frightened mothers wander through the huge halls and cling to the doorposts, embracing them and pressing kisses on them. Pyrrhus presses on with his father's force; neither bars nor the guards themselves can withstand him; the door gives way under the repeated ram, and the doorposts, torn from their hinges, fall forward. Force makes a way; the Greeks break in, kill the first men they meet, and fill the place far and wide with soldiers. Not so violently, when a foaming river has burst its banks and overcome the barriers set against it with its flood, does it rush raging in a heap over the fields and carry flocks along with their pens over all the plains. I saw with my own eyes Neoptolemus raging in the slaughter and the two sons of Atreus on the threshold; I saw Hecuba with her hundred daughters-in-law, and Priam polluting with his blood the fires he himself had consecrated at the altars. Those fifty bridal chambers, so great a hope of descendants, the doorposts proud with barbarian gold and spoils, lay fallen; the Greeks hold what the fire leaves.
506| Perhaps you may also ask what Priam's fate was. When he saw the fall of the captured city, the doorways of his house torn apart, and the enemy in the middle of the inner rooms, the old man put on weapons long disused around his shoulders, which trembled with age, to no purpose, and girded himself with a useless sword, and rushed, ready to die, against the thick ranks of enemies. In the middle of the palace, under the bare vault of the sky, there was a huge altar, and beside it a very old laurel leaning over the altar and embracing the household gods with its shade. Here Hecuba and her daughters sat in vain around the altars, huddled together like doves driven headlong by a black storm, clasping the images of the gods. But when she saw Priam himself in the armor of his youth, she said: "What terrible idea, my poor husband, has driven you to put on these weapons? Or where are you rushing? This hour does not need such help, nor such defenders; not even if my own Hector were here now. Come to this spot at last; this altar will protect us all, or you will die along with us." With these words she drew him to herself and set the old man in the holy place.
526| But look, Polites, one of Priam's sons, having escaped from the slaughter by Pyrrhus, flees through weapons and through enemies along the long colonnades and, wounded, passes through the empty halls. Pyrrhus, burning with hostile intent, pursues him with his spear, now, now holding him with his hand and pressing him with the shaft. When at last he came out before the eyes and faces of his parents, he collapsed and poured out his life with a great flow of blood. At this Priam, although he was already in the grip of death, did not hold back or spare his voice and his anger: "For this crime," he cries out, "for such daring, may the gods, if there is any duty in heaven that cares about such things, repay you with fitting thanks and give you the rewards you deserve, you who made me see my son's death before my eyes and defiled a father's face with death. But that Achilles, from whom you falsely claim to be born, was not like this to Priam his enemy; he respected the rights and trust of a suppliant, gave back the bloodless body of Hector for burial, and sent me back to my kingdom." With these words the old man hurled a feeble spear that struck no blow; it was at once repelled by the ringing bronze and hung uselessly from the top boss of the shield.
547| Pyrrhus said to him: "Then you shall report this and go as messenger to my father, the son of Peleus. Be sure to tell him of my sad deeds and that Neoptolemus is a degenerate. Now die." As he said this he dragged him, trembling and slipping in his son's abundant blood, to the very altar, and twined his left hand into his hair, while his right raised the flashing sword and buried it in his side up to the hilt. This was the end of Priam's fortunes, this the death that fate carried him to, seeing Troy burned and Pergama fallen, he who had once been the proud ruler of Asia, with so many peoples and lands. He lies a huge trunk on the shore, a head wrenched from the shoulders, a corpse without a name.
559| Then for the first time a savage horror surrounded me. I was stunned; the image of my dear father came to me, when I saw the king, of the same age, breathing out his life from a cruel wound; there came to me abandoned Creusa, and the plundered house, and the danger to little Iulus. I look back and survey what force there is around me. All, worn out, had deserted me, and had leapt to the ground or dropped their exhausted bodies into the flames.
567| [And now I was the only one left, when I catch sight of Tyndareus' daughter guarding the threshold of Vesta and hiding silently in a secluded place; the fires give a bright light to me as I wander and cast my eyes everywhere over everything. Dreading the Trojans' hostility over the overthrow of Pergama, the Greeks' punishment, and the anger of the husband she had abandoned, that common curse of Troy and of her own country had hidden herself and sat hated at the altars. Fire blazed up in my heart; anger rose in me to avenge my falling country and exact a criminal's punishment. "So she will see Sparta and her native Mycenae unharmed, and go as a queen in a triumph she has won? She will see her husband and her home, her father and her children, with a crowd of Trojan women and Phrygian attendants? Priam will have died by the sword? Troy will have burned with fire? The Dardan shore will so many times have run with blood? Not so. Although there is no memorable name in punishing a woman, this victory has praise of its own; I will be praised for wiping out a crime and exacting the penalty she deserves, and it will please me to have filled my heart with the fame of vengeance and satisfied the ashes of my people."
588| Such things I was crying out, and I was carried on with a maddened mind,] when my kind mother appeared to me, never before so clear to my eyes, and shone in pure light through the night, revealed as a goddess, of the kind and size in which she appears to the heavenly gods, and, holding me by the right hand, she restrained me and added these words besides from her rosy lips: "Son, what great pain stirs up this unchecked anger? Why this rage? Or where has your care for us gone? Will you not first look to see where you left your father Anchises, worn out with age, and whether your wife Creusa and the boy Ascanius survive? Greek forces are roaming all around them on every side, and, if my care did not stand in the way, flames would already have carried them off and the enemy's sword would have drunk their blood. It is not the hateful face of the Spartan woman, Tyndareus' daughter, nor Paris who is to blame, but the harshness of the gods, the gods, which overturns this wealth and brings Troy down from her summit. Look (for I will remove every cloud that now hangs over you as you look, dulling your mortal sight and spreading damp darkness around; and you, do not fear any commands of your mother, nor refuse to obey her instructions):
608| here, where you see tumbled masses of stone and rocks torn from rocks, and smoke billowing mixed with dust, Neptune shakes the walls and foundations, driven out by his great trident, and tears the whole city from its base. Here Juno, most savage, holds the Scaean gates in front, and, raging, girt with a sword, calls her allied host from the ships. Now, look back, Tritonian Pallas has settled on the highest citadels, shining out of a storm cloud and the savage Gorgon. The Father himself gives the Greeks courage and favoring strength; he himself stirs up the gods against Dardan arms. Flee, my son, and put an end to your toil; I will never be absent, and I will set you safe on your father's threshold." She had spoken, and hid herself in the thick shadows of the night. Dreadful shapes appear, and the great powers of the gods, hostile to Troy.
624| Then indeed it seemed to me that all Ilium was sinking into the flames and Neptune's Troy was being overturned from its foundations: just as when farmers on the high mountains compete eagerly to uproot an ancient ash tree, cut with iron and with frequent blows of the double axe, and it keeps threatening, trembling in its foliage and nodding with shaken crown, until, gradually overcome by its wounds, it gives one last groan and, torn from the ridge, drags ruin after it. I go down and, with a god leading me, I am set free between flames and enemies: the weapons give way and the flames retreat.
634| And when I had now reached the threshold of my father's house and our ancient home, my father, whom I wished first to carry up into the high mountains and whom I sought first, refuses to prolong his life, or to endure exile, now that Troy is destroyed. "You, whose blood is unimpaired by age," he says, "and whose strength stands firm in its own vigor, you should plan your flight. If the heavenly gods had wanted me to live, they would have kept this home for me. It is enough, and more than enough, that we have seen one destruction and survived a captured city. Say farewell to this body of mine, laid out like this, and go. I will find death by my own hand; the enemy will pity me and seek my spoils. The loss of a tomb is easy. I have long been hated by the gods and useless, delaying my years, ever since the father of the gods and king of men breathed on me with the blasts of his thunderbolt and touched me with its fire."
650| So he went on speaking and stayed rooted in place. We, on the other side, were pouring out tears, my wife Creusa and Ascanius and the whole household, begging that father not want to overturn everything with him and add his weight to the pressing fate. He refuses, and clings to his purpose and to the same home. Again I am borne off to arms, and in my misery I long for death. For what plan or what chance was now offered? "Did you hope, father, that I could move my foot and leave you behind, and did such an abomination fall from your father's lips? If it pleases the gods that nothing be left of so great a city, and this is settled in your mind, and it is your wish to add yourself and your family to doomed Troy, the door is open to that death, and soon Pyrrhus will be here, from the abundant blood of Priam, who kills the son before the father's eyes and the father at the altars. Was this the reason, kind mother, that you snatch me through weapons, through fires, so that in the midst of my home I may see the enemy, and see Ascanius and my father and Creusa beside them slaughtered, one in the blood of the other? Arms, men, bring arms; the last light calls the defeated. Give me back to the Greeks; let me go back to renew the fighting. Never shall we all die today unavenged."
671| Then I gird myself again with the sword and was fitting my left arm into the shield strap, and was heading out of the house. But look, my wife clung to my feet at the threshold and held little Iulus out to his father: "If you go to die, take us too with you into everything; but if from experience you place some hope in the arms you have taken up, protect this house first. To whom is little Iulus left, to whom your father, and I, once called your wife?"
679| Crying such things, she filled the whole house with her groaning, when a sudden portent arises, marvelous to tell. For between the hands and the faces of his grieving parents, look, a light tuft of flame seemed to pour out light from the top of Iulus' head, and a flame, harmless to the touch, licked his soft hair and played around his temples. In our fear we trembled with dread, and shook out the blazing hair and put out the holy fire with water. But my father Anchises joyfully raised his eyes to the stars and stretched his hands to heaven with his voice: "Almighty Jupiter, if you are moved by any prayers, look on us, only this, and if we deserve it by our devotion, then grant help, Father, and confirm these omens."
692| The old man had hardly said this when it thundered suddenly with a crash on the left, and a star slid from the sky through the shadows, drawing a torch behind it, and ran with great light. We watch it glide over the top of the house roof and hide, bright, in the forest of Ida, marking out the ways; then the furrow gives light along a long track, and all around the places smoke with sulphur. Then indeed my father, won over, lifts himself up to the air and addresses the gods and worships the holy star. "Now, now there is no delay; I follow, and where you lead I am there, gods of my fathers; protect my house, protect my grandson. This omen is yours, and Troy is in your divine care. I yield, and, my son, I do not refuse to go with you as your companion." He had spoken, and now the fire was heard more clearly through the walls, and the flames rolled their heat closer. "Come then, dear father, put yourself on my neck; I will take you on my shoulders, and this burden will not weigh me down; however things fall out, there will be one danger for us both and one safety. Let little Iulus be my companion, and let my wife follow our footsteps at a distance.
712| You, servants, pay attention to what I say. For those leaving the city there is a mound and an old temple of deserted Ceres, and beside it an ancient cypress preserved for many years by our fathers' religious care; we will come to this one place by different routes. You, father, take the sacred objects and the household gods in your hand; it would be a sacrilege for me, who have just come from such a war and from fresh slaughter, to touch them, until I have washed in running water." Having said this, I spread a cloak and the skin of a tawny lion over my broad shoulders and my bent neck, and take up the load; little Iulus links his hand in my right and follows his father with steps not matching mine; my wife comes behind. We move through the shadowy places, and I, whom no weapon thrown at me had moved a moment ago, nor the Greeks massed in a hostile swarm, am now frightened by every breeze, and every sound alarms me, anxious alike for the one beside me and for the load I carry. And now I was drawing near the gates and seemed to have got through the whole way, when suddenly the sound of many feet seemed to come to my ears, and my father, peering through the darkness, cries out: "Son, run, son; they are close.
734| I can see their blazing shields and flashing bronze!" At this point some hostile power — I do not know what — snatched away my confused wits in my panic. For while I was running down trackless ways and leaving the familiar line of the streets, alas — my wife Creusa: whether she was torn from wretched me by fate and halted, or strayed from the road, or sank down exhausted, no one knows; but she was never restored to our sight again. Nor did I look back for her, lost as she was, or turn my thoughts to her, until we reached the mound and the hallowed shrine of ancient Ceres. Here at last, when all were gathered, she alone was missing, and she had slipped away from her companions, her son, and her husband. Whom, out of my mind, did I not blame, of men and gods? What crueler sight did I see in the overthrown city? I entrust Ascanius, my father Anchises, and the Trojan household gods to my companions, and hide them in a winding valley. I myself go back to the city and buckle on my gleaming armor. I am resolved to face every danger again, to go back through all of Troy, and once more to put my life in the way of peril. First I go back to the walls and the dark doorway of the gate by which I had come out, and I retrace my footsteps through the night, scanning them with my eyes.
755| Everywhere dread fills my heart; the very silence terrifies me. Then I go back to the house, in case she had made her way there, just in case: the Greeks had burst in and held the whole building. At once devouring fire rolls on the wind to the top of the roof; the flames tower above, and the blast rages into the sky. I go on and revisit Priam's palace and the citadel. And there in the empty colonnades of Juno's sanctuary, Phoenix and dread Ulysses, the chosen guards, were watching over the plunder. Here the treasure of Troy, snatched from burning shrines on every side — tables of the gods, mixing bowls of solid gold, and captured garments — is piled in a heap. Boys and terrified mothers stand around in a long line. I even dared to hurl my voice into the dark; I filled the streets with shouting, and in grief I called Creusa, again and again, in vain. As I searched and rushed endlessly through the houses of the city, a mournful phantom, the ghost of Creusa herself, appeared before my eyes, an image larger than the one I knew. I froze; my hair stood on end, and my voice stuck in my throat.
775| Then she spoke to me and took away my cares with these words: "What good does it do to give way so much to frantic grief, my sweet husband? These things do not happen without the will of the gods. It is not permitted for you to take Creusa with you from here as your companion, nor does the ruler of high Olympus allow it. Long exile lies before you, and a vast expanse of sea to plough, and you will come to the land of Hesperia, where the Lydian Tiber flows with gentle current among fields rich in men. There good fortune, a kingdom, and a royal wife are in store for you. Banish your tears for your beloved Creusa. I will not see the proud houses of the Myrmidons or Dolopians, nor become a slave to Greek women — I, a Dardan woman and daughter-in-law of divine Venus. No, the great mother of the gods keeps me on these shores. And now farewell, and keep your love for the son we share." When she had spoken these words, she left me weeping and wanting to say so much, and withdrew into thin air. Three times there I tried to put my arms around her neck; three times the image, grasped in vain, escaped my hands, like the light winds, most like a fleeting dream. So at last, when the night was spent, I go back to my companions.
796| And here, to my astonishment, I find that a huge number of new companions have streamed in, mothers and men, a people assembled for exile, a pitiful crowd. They had come from every side, ready in heart and goods to follow me to whatever lands I might choose to lead them across the sea. And now the Morning Star was climbing above the ridges of highest Ida and bringing on the day; the Greeks held the gates under guard, and no hope of help was offered. I gave way, lifted my father, and made for the mountain.

======== Aeneid — Book III ========

1| After it had pleased the gods above to overthrow the power of Asia and Priam's undeserving people, after proud Ilium fell and all of Neptune's Troy lay smoking on the ground, we are driven by omens from the gods to seek exile far apart and lands left empty. We build a fleet directly beneath Antandros and the mountains of Phrygian Ida, unsure where the Fates will carry us or where we will be allowed to settle, and we gather our men. Summer had scarcely begun, and father Anchises was urging us to give our sails to the Fates, when in tears I leave the shores of my homeland, its harbors, and the plains where Troy once stood. I am carried out to sea, an exile, with my companions, my son, the household gods, and the great gods.
13| Far off lies a land of Mars, cultivated over wide plains — Thracians plough it — once ruled by fierce Lycurgus, an old friend and host to Troy, its household gods allied with ours while fortune lasted. I am carried here, and on the curving shore I lay out my first walls, setting foot there under hostile fates, and from my own name I coin the name Aeneadae for its people. I was offering sacrifice to my mother, Dione's daughter, and to the gods who watch over new undertakings, and on the shore I was slaughtering a gleaming bull to the high king of the heaven-dwellers. Close by, as it happened, there was a mound, on top of which grew cornel bushes and a myrtle bristling with dense shafts. I went up to it and tried to tear the green growth from the ground, to cover the altars with leafy branches, when I see a portent dreadful and wondrous to tell. For from the first tree that is torn from the soil, its roots broken, drops of black blood trickle and stain the earth with gore. A cold shudder shakes my limbs, and my chilled blood curdles with fear. Again I go on to pull up the pliant shoot of a second, and to probe deep for the hidden causes;
33| and black blood flows from the bark of the second too. Turning many things over in my mind, I prayed to the Nymphs of the countryside and to father Gradivus, who presides over the Getic fields, to make the vision favorable as was right and to lighten the omen. But when I attack a third set of shafts with greater effort, struggling with my knees against the sand — should I speak or keep silent? — a piteous groan is heard from deep in the mound, and a voice rises and reaches my ears: "Why do you tear a wretched man, Aeneas? Spare me now that I am buried; spare your dutiful hands from crime. I am no stranger to you; Troy bore me, and this blood does not flow from a mere stem. Ah, flee this cruel land, flee this greedy shore! For I am Polydorus. Here an iron harvest of spears covered my pierced body and grew up into sharp javelins." Then indeed, my mind weighed down by a double fear, I froze; my hair stood on end, and my voice stuck in my throat.
49| This Polydorus unhappy Priam had once secretly sent, with a great weight of gold, to be raised by the Thracian king, when he was already losing faith in the arms of Dardania and saw the city ringed by siege. When the power of the Trojans was broken and Fortune withdrew, the king took the side of Agamemnon and his victorious arms, broke every sacred law, murdered Polydorus, and took possession of the gold by force. To what do you not drive mortal hearts, accursed hunger for gold! When the fear left my bones, I reported the gods' portents to the chosen leaders of the people, and first of all to my father, and asked their opinion. All were of one mind: to leave the criminal land, abandon the polluted guest-friendship, and give the south winds to our fleet. So we perform a funeral for Polydorus afresh; earth is heaped high on the mound; altars to his shade stand mourning with dark-blue ribbons and black cypress, and around them the women of Ilium, their hair loosened as custom requires. We bring bowls foaming with warm milk and dishes of sacrificial blood, lay his spirit to rest in the tomb, and call to him with a loud voice for the last time.
69| Then, as soon as we can trust the sea, and the winds give us calm waters, and the softly rustling south wind calls us to the deep, my companions launch the ships and throng the beach. We sail out of the harbor, and lands and cities fall away behind us. In the middle of the sea lies a sacred land, dearest to the mother of the Nereids and to Aegean Neptune. Once it drifted around coasts and shores, until the dutiful archer god bound it fast to lofty Myconos and Gyaros and granted that it be inhabited unmoving and scorn the winds. Here I am carried; this most peaceful island takes us in, weary, in its safe harbor. We disembark and pay reverence to Apollo's city. King Anius, king of men and priest of Phoebus as well, his temples wreathed with ribbons and sacred laurel, comes to meet us; he recognized Anchises, his old friend. We join right hands in friendship and go under his roof.
84| I worshiped the god's temple, built of ancient stone: "Grant us a home of our own, god of Thymbra; grant walls to the weary, and a people and a city that will last. Preserve this second Troy, the remnant left by the Greeks and by pitiless Achilles. Whom are we to follow? Where do you bid us go? Where are we to make our home? Give us an omen, father, and enter our hearts." I had scarcely said this when suddenly everything seemed to tremble, the thresholds and the god's laurel, and the whole mountain around seemed to shake, and the tripod bellowed as the shrine opened. We bowed to the ground, and a voice came to our ears: "Hardy sons of Dardanus, the land that first bore you from the stock of your ancestors will take you back to its fertile breast on your return. Seek out your ancient mother. There the house of Aeneas will rule over every shore, and his children's children and those who will be born from them." So Phoebus spoke. A great joy rose, mixed with commotion, and all asked what these walls were, and where Phoebus was calling the wanderers and ordering them to return. Then my father, turning over the records of men of old, said: "Listen, leaders, and learn what to hope for.
104| In the middle of the sea lies Crete, island of great Jupiter, where Mount Ida stands and where our people's cradle is. They inhabit a hundred great cities, the richest of realms. From there our greatest ancestor, Teucer, if I remember rightly what I heard, first sailed to the Rhoetean shores and chose a place for his kingdom. Ilium and the towers of Pergamum had not yet been built; they lived in the lowest valleys. From there came the Mother who dwells on Mount Cybelus, the bronze cymbals of the Corybantes, the grove of Ida, from there the faithful silence of the rites, and the lions yoked to the chariot of the Lady. So come, let us follow where the commands of the gods lead. Let us appease the winds and make for the kingdom of Cnossos. It is not far by sea: if only Jupiter is with us, the third dawn will set our fleet on the shores of Crete." Having said this, he sacrificed the due offerings on the altars: a bull for Neptune, a bull for you, handsome Apollo, a black sheep for Winter and a white one for the favorable Zephyrs.
121| A rumor flies that the leader Idomeneus has been driven out and has left his father's kingdom, that the shores of Crete are deserted, that the houses are free of the enemy and the abandoned homes stand ready. We leave the harbors of Ortygia and fly over the sea past Naxos, where Bacchic revelers rave on the ridges, green Donusa, Olearos, snowy Paros, and the Cyclades scattered over the water; we sail through straits crowded with many lands. A sailors' shout rises in rivalry of many voices: my comrades urge each other to make for Crete and our forefathers. A wind rises behind the stern and follows us as we go, and at last we glide up to the ancient shores of the Curetes. So I eagerly set about building the walls of the city I had longed for, and I call it Pergamum, and I urge the people, glad of the name, to love their hearths and raise a citadel over their roofs.
135| And now the ships were almost all drawn up onto the dry shore, the young men were busy with marriages and new fields, and I was giving laws and homes, when suddenly there came, from a corrupted tract of sky, a wasting plague on our bodies, a pitiable one, on trees and crops too, and a deadly year. People gave up their sweet lives or dragged their sick bodies along; then Sirius scorched the barren fields, the grass withered and the sickly grain denied us food. My father urges us to go back across the sea to the oracle of Ortygia and to Phoebus, to pray for pardon, to ask what end he will bring to our weary fortunes, where he bids us seek help for our hardships, and where to turn our course.
147| It was night, and sleep held living creatures on the earth. The holy images of the gods, the Phrygian household gods I had brought with me out of Troy from the heart of the burning city, appeared to stand in front of my eyes as I lay asleep, clearly visible in a stream of light where the full moon poured in through the windows set in the wall. Then they spoke to me like this and took away my cares with these words: "What Apollo will tell you when you have been carried to Ortygia, he sings here, and look, he sends us of his own accord to your door. We followed you and your arms after Dardania was burned; we crossed the swelling sea in ships under your command; we will likewise raise your future descendants to the stars and give your city empire. You, prepare great walls for a great people, and do not abandon the long toil of your flight. You must change your home. Not these shores did the Delian Apollo urge on you, nor did he order you to settle in Crete. There is a place the Greeks call Hesperia, an ancient land, strong in arms and in the richness of its soil. Oenotrian men settled it; now the report is that their descendants have called the nation Italy, after the name of a leader.
167| This is our own proper home; from here Dardanus came, and father Iasius, from whom our race takes its origin. Come, rise, and joyfully take these words to your aged father, words not to be doubted: let him seek Corythus and the Ausonian lands; Jupiter denies you the fields of Dicte." Stunned by such sights and by the gods' voice (it was not sleep: I seemed to recognize their faces face to face, and their veiled hair, and their living features; then a cold sweat poured down my whole body), I snatch my body from the bed, stretch my hands palm upward to the sky with a prayer, and pour pure offerings on the hearth. The ritual done, I joyfully tell Anchises and set out the matter in order. He recognized our double line and our two ancestral stocks, and that he had been misled by a fresh mistake about the ancient places. Then he says: "My son, worn down by the fates of Ilium, only Cassandra used to prophesy such events to me. Now I recall that she foretold these things as owed to our race, and often named Hesperia, often the Italian kingdoms. But who would have believed that Trojans would come to the shores of Hesperia? Or whom would the prophetess Cassandra have moved then? Let us yield to Phoebus and, warned, follow the better course." So he says, and we all obey his word with rejoicing. We leave this home too, and, with a few left behind, we set sail and run over the vast sea in our hollow ships.
192| After the ships reached the deep and no more land appeared, only sky on every side and sea on every side, then a dark-blue storm cloud stood over my head, bringing night and winter, and the water shivered in the darkness. At once the winds roll the sea over and great waves rise; scattered, we are tossed about on the vast flood. Storm clouds wrapped the day, wet night took the sky away, lightning flashes repeatedly from bursting clouds, we are thrown off our course and wander in the blind waves. Palinurus himself says he cannot tell day from night in the sky, nor remember his way in the midst of the water. For three uncertain days, in blind darkness, we wander on the sea, and as many nights without a star. On the fourth day land at last appeared to rise at first, to show mountains far off and send up smoke. The sails drop, we bend to the oars; without delay the sailors strain and churn the foam and sweep the dark-blue water. Saved from the waves, the shores of the Strophades are the first to receive me. The Strophades are islands called by a Greek name, standing in the great Ionian sea, where dread Celaeno lives, and the other Harpies, since Phineus' house was shut against them and they left their former tables in fear.
214| No monster is more grim than these, and no more savage plague or wrath of the gods ever raised itself from the waters of the Styx. They have maidens' faces on birds' bodies, the foulest discharge from the belly, hooked hands, and faces always pale with hunger. When we were carried here and entered the harbor, look, we see rich herds of cattle scattered over the plains, and a flock of goats on the grass with no keeper. We charge at them with our swords and call on the gods, and on Jupiter himself, to share the spoil. Then on the curving shore we set up couches and feast on a rich banquet. But suddenly the Harpies are on us, swooping horribly down from the mountains, beating their wings with loud clanging; they tear at the feast and defile everything by their filthy touch; and amid a foul stench a dreadful cry goes up. Again, in a far retreat under a hollow rock [shut in all around by trees and bristling shadows], we set up the tables and put fire back on the altars; again from a different part of the sky, from hidden lairs, the shrieking crowd flies around the prey with hooked talons and fouls the feast with their mouths. I then tell my comrades to take up arms, and that war must be waged against the dreadful race.
236| They do just as ordered, and they place their swords hidden in the grass and conceal their shields out of sight. Then when the Harpies swoop down and make a noise along the curving shore, Misenus gives the signal from a high lookout with his hollow bronze trumpet. My comrades charge and try a strange kind of fight, to defile the sea's filthy birds with the sword. But they take no force on their feathers and no wounds on their backs, and in swift flight they glide up under the stars, leaving behind their half-eaten prey and their foul traces. Celaeno alone settled on a towering rock, an ill-omened prophetess, and she bursts out with this speech: "Descendants of Laomedon, are you also preparing to make war for the slaughter of oxen and the killing of bullocks, and to drive the innocent Harpies out of their ancestral realm? Then take this to heart and fix these words of mine in your minds, which the almighty Father foretold to Phoebus, and Phoebus Apollo to me, and I, greatest of the Furies, now reveal to you. You are seeking Italy, and you have called the winds to take you there: you will go to Italy and be allowed to enter its harbors. But you will not ring your promised city with walls before dreadful hunger and the wrong of our slaughter force you to gnaw your tables with your jaws and eat them up."
258| she said, and on her wings she flew back into the wood. But my comrades' blood ran cold and stiff with sudden fear. Their courage fell, and they bid me ask for peace no longer with weapons but with vows and prayers, whether these creatures are goddesses or dreadful, filthy birds. And my father Anchises, with palms held out from the shore, calls on the great divine powers and proclaims the offerings they are due: "Gods, ward off these threats; gods, turn aside such a fate, and in your kindness protect the dutiful." Then he orders us to tear the cable from the shore and shake out and loosen the ropes. The south winds fill the sails; we flee over the foaming waves, where wind and helmsman called our course. Now in the midst of the surge wooded Zacynthos appears, with Dulichium, Same, and Neritos steep with crags. We escape the rocks of Ithaca, the kingdom of Laertes, and curse the land that nursed savage Ulysses. Soon the cloudy peaks of Mount Leucata come into view, and Apollo, feared by sailors. Weary, we make for it and approach the little town. The anchor is thrown from the bow, and the sterns stand along the shore.
278| So, having gained land at last, beyond our hopes, we purify ourselves to Jupiter, kindle the altars with our vows, and celebrate the Actian shores with Trojan games. My comrades, stripped, exercise in their ancestral wrestling with slippery oil: it is a joy to have slipped past so many Greek cities and to have held our flight through the midst of enemies. Meanwhile the sun rolls around the great year, and icy winter roughens the waves with north winds. I fix to the facing doorposts a shield of hollow bronze, the weapon once carried by great Abas, and mark the deed with a verse: "AENEAS FROM THE VICTORIOUS GREEKS, THESE ARMS." Then I order the men to leave the harbors and sit at the rowing benches. My comrades strike the sea in rivalry and sweep the water. Soon we have hidden the airy citadels of the Phaeacians, skirted the shores of Epirus, entered the Chaonian harbor and approached the high city of Buthrotum.
294| Here an incredible report of events reaches our ears: that Helenus, son of Priam, rules over Greek cities, having come into possession of the wife and the scepter of Pyrrhus, grandson of Aeacus, and that Andromache has once more been given to a husband from her own people. I was amazed. My heart burned with a strange longing to speak to the man and learn of such great events. I leave the harbor and the fleet and the shore and go forward, just when Andromache happened to be offering, before the city in a grove beside the water of a false Simois, the solemn funeral meal and sad gifts to the ashes, and calling up the spirits at the tomb of Hector, an empty tomb, which she had consecrated with green turf and two altars, a cause for tears. When she saw me coming and in a daze saw Trojan arms around me, terrified by the great portent, she froze in the middle of her gaze, the warmth left her bones, she faints, and only after a long time does she speak: "Is it a true shape that you bring me, a true messenger, son of a goddess? Are you alive? Or, if the kindly light has gone, where is Hector?" She spoke, shed tears, and filled the whole place with her cry. As she raged, I could scarcely say a few words in reply, and, shaken, gasped out broken words:
315| "I am alive, truly, and I drag out my life through every extremity. Do not doubt, for what you see is real. Ah! What fortune receives you, cast down from so great a husband, or what fortune worthy enough has come to you again, Andromache, wife of Hector? Do you keep marriage with Pyrrhus?" She lowered her face and spoke in a low voice: "O happy beyond all others was the maiden daughter of Priam, ordered to die at an enemy's tomb beneath the high walls of Troy, who endured no casting of lots and did not, as a captive, touch the bed of a victorious master! We were carried over strange seas after our homeland was burned, and I endured the arrogance of Achilles' line and a proud youth, bearing a child in slavery. Then he went after Hermione, Leda's granddaughter, and a Spartan marriage, and passed me, a slave, to be held as a slave by Helenus, another slave. But Orestes, inflamed with great love for the wife who had been taken from him and driven by the furies of his crimes, catches Pyrrhus off guard and kills him at his ancestral altars. With the death of Neoptolemus a part of the kingdom passed to Helenus, who named the plains Chaonian and the whole land Chaonia after the Trojan Chaon, and built on the ridges a Pergamum and this Trojan citadel.
337| But what winds, what fates gave you your course? Or what god brought you to our shores, unknowing? What of the boy Ascanius? Does he survive and breathe the air? Whom Troy now to you... But does the boy have any care for his lost mother? Do his father Aeneas and his uncle Hector stir him at all to the old valor and manly spirit?" She poured out such words in tears and kept up her long weeping in vain, when the hero Helenus, son of Priam, comes from the walls with many companions, recognizes his own people, and gladly leads them to his threshold, shedding many tears between each word. I walk on and recognize a little Troy, a Pergamum made to look like the great one, and a dry stream with the name of Xanthus, and I embrace the threshold of the Scaean gate. The Trojans too enjoy the allied city together with me. The king welcomed them in broad colonnades: in the middle of the hall they poured libations of wine, with food served on gold, and held out the cups.
356| And now one day and a second day had passed, and the breezes call the sails and the canvas swells with the rising south wind. I approach the prophet with these words and ask him this: "Trojan-born, interpreter of the gods, you who understand the divine will of Phoebus, the tripods and laurels of Clarus, the stars, the tongues of birds and the omens of the flying wing, speak, I beg you (for every religious sign has foretold a favorable voyage for me, and all the gods by their divine will have urged me to head for Italy and try the lands set far away; only the Harpy Celaeno sings of a strange portent, terrible to tell, and announces grim wrath and a foul hunger): what dangers should I avoid first? Or by following what course could I overcome such great hardships?" Here Helenus first sacrifices bullocks according to custom, begs for the peace of the gods, and unties the ribbons from his consecrated head. Then he himself leads me by the hand to your threshold, Phoebus, shaken by the strength of the divine presence, and then the priest sings these words from his inspired mouth:
374| "Son of a goddess (for there is clear proof that you travel the deep under higher auspices; thus the king of the gods allots the fates and turns their changes; this is the order they follow), I will set out for you a few things out of many, so that you may cross the foreign seas more safely and be able to settle in an Ausonian harbor. The Fates forbid Helenus to know the rest, and Juno, daughter of Saturn, forbids me to speak. First, Italy, which you already think is near, and whose neighboring harbors you, unknowing, are preparing to enter: a long road, trackless over long stretches of land, divides it far from you. First the oar must be bent in Sicilian water, the sea of Ausonian salt must be crossed by your ships, as well as the lakes of the underworld and the island of Aeaean Circe, before you can found a city on safe ground. I will tell you the signs; keep them stored in your mind. When, in your anxiety, beside the water of a secluded river, under the holm oaks on the shore, you find a huge sow lying, which has given birth to a litter of thirty young, white, lying on the ground, and white offspring around her udders, that will be the place of your city, that the sure rest from your toils.
394| Nor should you shrink from the gnawing of your tables that is to come: the Fates will open a path, and Apollo will be present when called. But these lands, and this nearest stretch of Italy's coast, which is washed by the tide of our own sea, avoid: all its walls are inhabited by hostile Greeks. Here the Locrians of Narycia have set up walls, and Idomeneus of Lyctus has occupied the Sallentine plains with his soldiers; here is Petelia, that small town of the leader Philoctetes of Meliboea, propped up by its wall. Moreover, when your fleets have crossed the water and stand at anchor, and you are setting up altars and paying your vows on the shore, cover your hair with a purple mantle drawn over it, so that no hostile face may meet you among the holy fires in honor of the gods and disturb the omens. Let your comrades keep this custom of the rites, and keep it yourself; in this form of worship may your descendants stay pure. But when, after you have departed, the wind brings you close to the Sicilian shore, and the narrows of the strait of Pelorus begin to open up, seek the land on your left and the waters on your left in a long circuit; avoid the shore and waves on the right.
414| These places, they say, were once torn apart by force and by a vast cataclysm (so great is the power of the long passage of time to change things) and broke apart, when each land was joined as one: the sea came in between with violence and with its waves cut the Hesperian side from the Sicilian, and with a narrow tide it flows between fields and cities pulled apart on the shore. Scylla occupies the right side, and implacable Charybdis the left; three times Charybdis sucks the vast waves down into the sheer depth of her whirlpool's lowest gulf, and three times throws them back up in turn into the air, lashing the stars with the water. But a cave holds Scylla in its hidden recesses, as she thrusts out her mouths and drags ships onto the rocks. Her upper part has a human face, and a lovely maiden's breast down to the waist; the lower part is a monstrous sea beast with a huge body, with dolphin tails joined to a belly of wolves. It is better to go around the turning-post of Sicilian Pachynus, slowly, and to make a long loop in your course, than to see once, in her vast cave, misshapen Scylla and the rocks echoing with her dark-blue dogs. Furthermore, if Helenus the prophet has any wisdom, any credibility, if Apollo fills his mind with truth, I will tell you this one thing, son of a goddess, this one thing in place of all the rest, and I will warn you again and again: first of all worship the power of great Juno with prayer, gladly sing vows to Juno, and overcome the mighty queen with suppliant gifts. In this way, in the end, you will leave Sicily behind and be sent victorious to the borders of Italy.
441| When you are carried to this place and come to the city of Cumae, the sacred lakes and Avernus with its rustling woods, you will see the inspired prophetess, who beneath a deep rock sings the fates and entrusts signs and names to leaves. Whatever verses the maiden has written on the leaves, she arranges in order and leaves shut away in her cave; they stay where they are, unmoved, and do not leave their order. But when the hinge turns and a light wind stirs them, and the door disturbs the delicate leaves, she never afterward bothers to catch them as they flit around the hollow rock, or to restore their positions or join the verses together: people leave without an answer and hate the Sibyl's seat. Here, so that you do not count the cost of delay as anything too great, although your comrades complain and the course forcefully calls your sails to the deep, and you could fill the favoring sails, go to the prophetess and with prayers ask her to give the oracles herself, and willingly loosen her voice and lips. She will unfold to you the peoples of Italy, the wars to come, and how you may avoid or bear each hardship, and, if you honor her, she will grant you a favorable voyage. This is what I am permitted to warn you of with my own voice. Go now, and by your deeds raise Troy to the heavens."
463| After the prophet had spoken these words in a friendly voice, he then orders gifts heavy with gold and cut ivory to be carried to the ships, and stows in the hulls a great quantity of silver and Dodonaean cauldrons, a corslet of interlocked hooks and triple gold, and the cone of a splendid helmet with its flowing crests, the arms of Neoptolemus. There are gifts for my father too. He adds horses, adds guides, makes up the oarsmen, and at the same time equips the comrades with arms.
472| Meanwhile Anchises was ordering the fleet to be fitted with sails, so that there would be no delay when the wind was fair. The interpreter of Phoebus addresses him with great honor: "Anchises, thought worthy of Venus' proud marriage, the care of the gods, twice rescued from the ruins of Pergamum, look, Ausonia's land lies before you: seize it with your sails. And yet you must glide past it by sea: that part of Ausonia which Apollo opens up is far away. Go," he says, "fortunate in your son's devotion. Why do I go further and hold back the rising south winds with talk?" No less, Andromache, sad at the last parting, brings robes embroidered with golden thread, and a Phrygian cloak for Ascanius (she does not fall short in honor), and loads him with woven gifts, and says: "Take these too, as reminders of my handiwork, boy, and let them bear witness to the lasting love of Andromache, Hector's wife. Receive these final gifts from your family, you who are the only image left to me of my Astyanax. He had your eyes, your hands, your face; and now he would be coming of age with you, the same age."
492| As I left, with tears welling up, I said to them: "Live happily, you whose fortune is already completed: we are called from one fate to another. You have won rest: no stretch of sea to plow, no fields of Ausonia, always retreating, to seek. You see an image of the Xanthus and a Troy that your own hands made, I hope under better auspices, and one that will be less exposed to the Greeks. If ever I enter the Tiber and the fields near the Tiber and see the walls granted to my people, we will make the two peoples, related cities and neighboring nations, Epirus and Hesperia, who have the same founder in Dardanus and the same misfortunes, one Troy in spirit: let that be a care for our descendants."
506| We sail out over the sea, past the nearby Ceraunian mountains, from where is the route to Italy and the shortest passage across the waves. Meanwhile the sun sets and the mountains are shadowed in darkness. Having drawn lots for the oars, we stretch out in the lap of the longed-for land beside the water, and here and there on the dry shore we refresh our bodies, and sleep floods our weary limbs. Night, driven on by the Hours, had not yet reached the middle of her circuit, when Palinurus, not idle, rises from his bed and tests all the winds and catches the air with his ears. He notes all the stars gliding in the silent sky, Arcturus, the rainy Hyades, the two Bears, and looks around at Orion armed with gold. When he sees everything steady in the clear sky, from the stern he sounds a clear signal; we break camp, test our course and spread our sails like wings.
521| And now Dawn was reddening as the stars fled, when far off we see dim hills and low-lying Italy. Achates is the first to shout "Italy!"; my comrades greet Italy with a joyful cry. Then my father Anchises wreathed a great mixing bowl, filled it with wine, and, standing on the high stern, called on the gods: "Gods of sea and land and power over storms, give us an easy passage with the wind and blow in our favor." The longed-for breezes strengthen, and a harbor opens up, now nearer, and a temple of Minerva appears on the citadel. My comrades furl the sails and turn the prows toward the shore. The harbor is curved into an arch by the eastern surge; rocks thrown out before it foam with salt spray, and the harbor itself is hidden: turreted cliffs let down their arms in a double wall, and the temple lies back from the shore. Here I saw four horses, a first omen, grazing the plain far and wide on the grass, snow-white. And my father Anchises said: "O hospitable land, you bring war: horses are armed for war, these herds threaten war. And yet these same four-footed creatures are sometimes used to pull a chariot and to bear the reins in harmony under the yoke: there is hope of peace too." Then we pray to the holy power of Pallas of the clashing arms, who first welcomed us in our joy, and before the altars we cover our heads with a Phrygian mantle, and, following Helenus' instructions, the most important he had given, we duly burn the ordered offerings to Argive Juno.
548| Without delay, when our vows had been fulfilled in order, we turn the veiled ends of our sail-yards and leave the dwellings of the Greek-born and the fields we distrust. From there the gulf of Tarentum, Hercules' city (if the story is true), comes into view, with the goddess of Lacinium rising opposite, and the citadels of Caulon and ship-wrecking Scylaceum. Then, far off across the waves, Sicilian Etna is seen, and from a distance we hear the vast groaning of the sea, the pounding of the rocks, and voices broken on the shores, and the shallows leap, and sand is mixed with the surge. And my father Anchises said: "Surely this is the famous Charybdis: these are the cliffs, these the dreadful rocks Helenus spoke of. Snatch us away, comrades, and rise together to the oars." They do just as they are ordered, and first Palinurus swung the creaking prow to the waves on the left; the whole company made for the left with oars and winds. We are lifted to the sky on the curved wave, and, as the water draws away, sink down again to the lowest shades. Three times the cliffs gave a cry among their hollow rocks; three times we saw the spray thrown up and the stars dripping. Meanwhile the wind left us, weary, along with the sun, and, ignorant of the way, we glide to the shores of the Cyclopes.
570| The harbor itself is vast and undisturbed by the approach of the winds; but nearby Etna thunders with horrifying collapses, and at times sends a black cloud up into the sky, smoking with pitchy whirlwind and white-hot ash, and lifts balls of flame and licks the stars; at times it throws up cliffs and the torn-out entrails of the mountain, belching them out, and with a groan heaps molten rocks into the air and boils over from its lowest depth. The story is that the body of Enceladus, half burned by lightning, is pinned down by this mass, and that huge Etna, set on top of him, breathes out flame from its burst furnaces, and that whenever he shifts his weary side, all Sicily trembles with a rumble and covers the sky with smoke. That night, sheltered in the woods, we endure the monstrous sounds and do not see what cause gives the noise. For there were no fires of stars, nor was the heaven bright with starry sky, but there were clouds in a dark sky, and the dead of night held the moon in a storm cloud.
588| And now the next day was rising with the first light of the east, and Dawn had swept the damp shadow from the heavens, when suddenly there comes forward from the woods the strange figure of an unknown man, worn to the last degree of thinness and pitiable in his appearance, and he stretches out suppliant hands to the shore. We look back. A dreadful squalor, a long beard, a garment fastened with thorns; but in all else a Greek, and once sent to Troy in his country's arms. And when he saw the Dardanian dress and Trojan arms from far off, terrified by the sight he stopped for a moment and held back his step; then he threw himself headlong toward the shore, with weeping and prayers: "I call the stars to witness, the gods above and this breathable light of heaven: take me, Trojans. Carry me away to any land: that will be enough. I know that I am one of the Greek fleet, and I admit that I attacked the Trojan household gods in war. For this, if the wrong of my crime is so great, scatter me on the waves and plunge me into the vast sea; if I die, it will be a comfort to have died at the hands of men." He had spoken, and clasping our knees and rolling at our feet, he clung to them. We urge him to say who he is, from what blood he was born, and then to confess what fortune is hounding him.
610| Father Anchises himself, after only a brief hesitation, gave the young man his right hand and steadied his spirit with that pledge. Putting aside his fear at last, the man said: "I am from Ithaca, my homeland, a companion of unlucky Ulysses, and my name is Achaemenides. I set out for Troy because my father Adamastus was poor (I wish that fortune had held!). Here my comrades, forgetful of me, abandoned me in the Cyclops' vast cave as they fled in panic from that cruel threshold. The house is huge and dark inside, filthy with gore and bloody feasts. The Cyclops himself is tall and strikes the high stars (gods, keep such a plague away from the earth!); he is not easy to look at, and no one can speak to him. He feeds on the flesh and black blood of wretched men. I saw it myself, when he lay on his back in the middle of the cave, seized two of our men in his huge hand and smashed them against a rock, so that the threshold swam, spattered with gore. I saw him chew limbs dripping with dark blood, and the warm flesh quivering under his teeth. But he did not get away unpunished, for Ulysses did not endure such things, nor did the man of Ithaca forget himself in so great a crisis.
630| For as soon as the Cyclops, gorged with food and buried in wine, laid down his drooping neck and lay stretched out huge across the cave, belching out gore and scraps of flesh mixed with bloody wine in his sleep, we prayed to the great gods, cast lots for our turns, and all together poured around him from every side. With a sharpened stake we bored out the one enormous eye that lay hidden under his grim brow, like an Argive shield or the lamp of Phoebus, and so at last we gladly avenged our comrades' shades. But flee, you wretched men, flee, and cut the cable from the shore! For as huge and as great as Polyphemus is, shutting his woolly flocks in his hollow cave and pressing their udders, a hundred other Cyclopes, monstrous creatures, live all along these curving shores and roam the high mountains. The moon's horns have now filled with light for the third time since I began dragging out my life in the woods, among the wild beasts' deserted lairs and dens, and since I began watching the huge Cyclopes from a cliff and trembling at the sound of their feet and their voices. The branches give me wretched food, berries and stony cornel cherries, and the plants feed me with their uprooted roots. Looking all around, I first caught sight of this fleet coming to the shore. I gave myself over to it, whatever it might be: it is enough to have escaped that accursed race. You may rather take this life of mine by whatever death you choose."
655| He had hardly finished speaking when we saw on the mountaintop the shepherd Polyphemus himself, moving his vast bulk among his flocks and heading for the familiar shore, a dreadful monster, shapeless and huge, whose eye had been taken from him. A trimmed pine guides his hand and steadies his steps; his woolly sheep go with him, his only pleasure and the comfort of his misery. After he reached the deep water and came to the sea, he washed there the blood flowing from his gouged eye, grinding his teeth and groaning, and he strode on through the sea until it was already deep, and the waves had not yet wet his towering flanks. In panic we hurried to flee from the spot, having taken on board the suppliant who so deserved it, and silently cut the cable, and bent forward to sweep the sea with competing oars. He sensed us and turned his steps toward the sound of our voices. But when he had no power to lay his hand on us, and could not match the Ionian waves in pursuit, he let out an immense roar, at which the sea and all the waters trembled, and the land of Italy, shaken to its depths, and Etna with her winding caverns bellowed back.
675| But the race of the Cyclopes, roused from the woods and high mountains, rushes to the harbor and fills the shore. We see them standing there in vain, with fierce eyes, the brothers of Etna, their tall heads lifted to the sky, a dreadful assembly: like tall oaks or cone-bearing cypresses that have taken their stand on a lofty summit, Jupiter's high forest or Diana's grove. Sharp fear drives us headlong to shake out the ropes wherever we can and to spread our sails to the favoring winds. On the other hand, Helenus's instructions warn us that the way between Scylla and Charybdis lies close to death on either side, with only a narrow margin, unless I hold my course: I am determined to give the sails back to the wind and turn around. But look, Boreas comes from the narrow seat of Pelorus, sent to us. I sail past the mouth of the Pantagias with its living rock, the Megarian bay, and low-lying Thapsus. Achaemenides, the companion of unlucky Ulysses, pointed out such places as he retraced in reverse the shores he had wandered.
692| Stretched across the mouth of a Sicilian bay, facing wave-washed Plemyrium, lies an island; those who came before called it Ortygia. The story is that Alpheus, the river of Elis, forced secret passages here beneath the sea, and now, Arethusa, mingles with the Sicilian waters at your spring. As instructed, we pay reverence to the great gods of the place, and from there I pass the rich soil of the marshy Helorus. Next we skim past the high cliffs and jutting rocks of Pachynus, and Camerina, which the Fates never allowed to be moved, appears in the distance, and the Geloan plains, and huge Gela, named after its river. Then steep Acragas, once the breeder of high-spirited horses, displays its mighty walls far off; and with the winds granted me I leave you behind, palm-rich Selinus, and thread the shallows of Lilybaeum, treacherous with hidden rocks. Next the harbor of Drepanum and its joyless shore receive me. Here, after being driven by so many storms at sea, I lose — alas — my father, the comfort of every care and misfortune: Anchises. Here, best of fathers, you abandon me in my weariness, you who were snatched in vain, alas, from such great dangers! Not even the seer Helenus, though he warned of many horrors, foretold this grief to me, nor dread Celaeno. This was my last hardship, this the goal of my long journeys. It was on leaving there that a god drove me to your shores."
716| So father Aeneas, alone, with all of them intent on him, retold the fates decreed by the gods and recounted his voyages. At last he fell silent, made an end here, and rested.

======== Aeneid — Book IV ========

1| But the queen, long since wounded by a heavy care, feeds the wound with her lifeblood and is consumed by a hidden fire. The man's great courage and the great glory of his race keep coming back to her mind; his face and his words cling fixed in her heart, and her care gives her limbs no peaceful rest. The next Dawn was lighting the earth with the lamp of Phoebus and had driven the damp shadow from the sky, when, scarcely in her right mind, she speaks to the sister who shares her heart: "Anna, my sister, what dreams terrify me and leave me hanging in doubt! Who is this stranger who has come to our home? How he carries himself, how brave his heart, what a warrior! I truly believe — and it is no empty belief — that he is born of the gods. Fear exposes low-born souls. Ah, by what destinies he has been battered! What wars, fought to the end, he told of! If it were not fixed in my mind, settled and immovable, never to join myself to any man in the bond of marriage, since my first love cheated me and deceived me by death; if I were not utterly weary of the bridal bed and the wedding torch, to this one fault, perhaps, I might have yielded. Anna — for I will confess it — since the death of my poor husband Sychaeus, since our household gods were spattered by my brother's murder, he alone has swayed my feelings and shaken my wavering heart. I know the marks of the old flame. But I would rather the earth gape open for me to its depths, or the all-powerful father drive me with his thunderbolt down to the shades — the pale shades of Erebus and the deep night — before I violate you, my sense of honor, or break your laws. He who first joined me to himself took my love away; let him take it with him and keep it safe in the grave." So she spoke, and filled the fold of her robe with welling tears.
31| Anna replies: "You who are dearer to your sister than the light, will you waste away alone and grieving all your youth, and never know sweet children or the rewards of Venus? Do you think ashes or buried spirits care about that? Granted: no suitors have moved you in your grief before now, not in Libya, nor earlier in Tyre; Iarbas was scorned, and the other leaders whom Africa, rich in triumphs, breeds. Will you fight even against a love that pleases you? Does it not cross your mind in whose lands you have settled? On one side the Gaetulian cities, a race unbeatable in war, and the unbridled Numidians and the inhospitable Syrtis hem you in; on the other a region deserted by drought and the Barcaeans raging far and wide. Why speak of the wars rising from Tyre, and our brother's threats? I truly believe it was under the gods' guidance and with Juno's favor that the Trojan ships held their course here on the wind. What a city you will see rise here, sister, what a kingdom, from such a marriage! With the arms of the Trojans at its side, to what heights will the glory of Carthage raise itself! Only ask the gods' favor, and once the sacrifices are accepted, give yourself to hospitality and weave reasons for delay, while winter and rainy Orion rage themselves out on the sea, while the ships are battered and the sky cannot be dealt with."
54| With these words she set her sister's heart ablaze with boundless love, gave hope to her doubting mind, and loosened her sense of shame. First they go to the shrines and seek peace from altar to altar. They sacrifice chosen two-year-old sheep, as custom requires, to Ceres the lawgiver, to Phoebus and to father Lyaeus, and above all to Juno, who cares for the bonds of marriage. Dido herself, in all her beauty, holding a bowl in her right hand, pours it between the horns of a gleaming white heifer, or paces before the faces of the gods to the altars rich with offerings; she renews the day with gifts, and, poring over the opened chests of the victims, consults the still-breathing entrails. Ah, the ignorant minds of seers! What use are vows, what use are shrines, to a woman raging with love? All the while a flame eats at the soft marrow of her bones, and a silent wound lives beneath her breast. Unhappy Dido burns and wanders raging through the whole city, like a doe struck by an arrow, which a shepherd hunting with his weapons has hit from far off, catching her off guard among the Cretan woods, leaving the flying steel in her without knowing it: she ranges in flight through the forests and glades of Dicte; the deadly shaft clings to her side.
74| Now she takes Aeneas with her through the heart of the city, shows him the wealth of Sidon and the city ready for him; she begins to speak and stops in mid-sentence. Now, as the day wanes, she looks for the same banquet, and in her madness begs to hear the hardships of Troy once more, and once more hangs on the lips of the speaker. Then, when they have parted, and the dim moon in her turn puts out her light, and the setting stars urge sleep, she grieves alone in the empty house and lies down on the couch he has left. Absent, she hears him and sees him, absent; or, captivated by his likeness to his father, she holds Ascanius in her lap, in case she can cheat a love she cannot speak. The towers she began no longer rise, the young men no longer practice arms or work on harbors and ramparts to make them safe in war; the works stand idle, broken off, the huge threatening walls and the cranes that reach the sky.
90| As soon as Jupiter's dear wife saw that she was gripped by such a plague, and that reputation was no obstacle to her madness, Saturn's daughter approached Venus with these words: "Truly you and your boy have won splendid praise and ample spoils (a great and memorable divine power), if one woman has been conquered by the trickery of two gods. Nor does it escape me that you were afraid of my walls and looked with suspicion on the houses of high Carthage. But what limit will there be, or what is the purpose now of so great a struggle? Why do we not rather work for eternal peace and a marriage agreement? You have what you sought with all your heart: Dido is in love and burns, and has drawn madness through her bones. So let us rule this people jointly and with equal authority; let her be allowed to serve a Phrygian husband and to hand over her Tyrians to your right hand as a dowry."
105| To her (for Venus sensed that she had spoken with feigned intent, to turn the kingdom of Italy away to Libyan shores) Venus began to answer in this way: "Who would be so mad as to reject such a proposal, or to prefer to contend with you in war? If only fortune would follow through on what you propose. But I am carried along uncertain of the fates, whether Jupiter would wish there to be one city for the Tyrians and for those who left Troy, or would approve a mixing of the peoples or the joining of treaties. You are his wife; it is right for you to test his mind by entreaty. Go ahead, and I will follow." Then royal Juno took it up: "That task will be mine. Now I will explain to you in a few words (listen) how what is pressing can be accomplished. Aeneas and wretched Dido together are preparing to go hunting in the forest, as soon as tomorrow's Titan has raised the first dawn and uncovered the world with his rays. While the horsemen rush about and ring the glades with nets, I will pour over them from above a dark cloud mixed with hail, and I will stir the whole sky with thunder. Their companions will scatter and be covered by dark night: Dido and the Trojan leader will arrive at the same cave. I shall be present, and, if I have your firm consent, I will join them in a lasting marriage and declare her his own. This will be their wedding." Not opposing the request, Venus agreed, and laughed at the trick she had discovered.
129| Meanwhile Aurora rose and left the Ocean. At sunrise the picked young men go out through the gates, with wide-meshed nets, snares, and hunting spears with broad iron blades, and Massylian horsemen rush forward, and a keen-scented pack of hounds. The leading Carthaginians wait at the threshold for the queen, who lingers in her chamber, and her horse, splendid in purple and gold, stands there, and champs fiercely at its foaming bit. At last she comes forth, surrounded by a great crowd, wearing a Sidonian cloak with an embroidered border; she has a quiver of gold, her hair is knotted up in gold, and a golden brooch fastens her purple dress. The Trojan companions also come along, and happy Iulus. Aeneas himself, more handsome than all the others, joins them as a companion and unites the columns. As when Apollo leaves wintry Lycia and the streams of the Xanthus and visits his mother's Delos and renews the dances, and Cretans and Dryopes and painted Agathyrsi mingle and shout around the altars; he himself walks on the ridges of Cynthus and shapes his flowing hair, pressing it with soft foliage and binding it with gold, and his arrows ring on his shoulders: no less lively than he went Aeneas, so much beauty shone from his noble face.
151| After they came to the high mountains and the pathless lairs, look, wild goats, driven from the rocky summit, ran down the ridges; from another side deer cross the open plains at a run and gather their dust-raising herds in flight, leaving the mountains behind. But the boy Ascanius in the middle of the valleys delights in his spirited horse, and now outstrips these, now those, in his course; and among the sluggish herds he prays that a foaming boar be given to his wishes, or that a tawny lion come down from the mountain.
160| Meanwhile the sky begins to be stirred with a great rumbling, a cloud mixed with hail follows, and the Tyrian companions, the Trojan young men, and Venus's Dardan grandson scattered here and there through the fields, seeking shelter in fear; torrents rush down from the mountains. Dido and the Trojan leader come to the same cave. Earth first, and Juno who presides over marriage, give the signal; fires flashed, and the sky was witness to the union, and on the highest peak the Nymphs wailed. That day was the first of death and the first cause of evils; for Dido is no longer moved by appearance or reputation, and no longer plans a secret love: she calls it marriage, and under that name hides her fault.
173| At once Rumor goes through the great cities of Libya, Rumor, than which no other evil is faster: she thrives on movement and gains strength as she goes, small at first from fear, soon lifting herself into the air, her feet tread the earth while her head is buried in the clouds. Mother Earth, stirred to anger against the gods, bore her last, as they say, as a sister to Coeus and Enceladus, swift of foot and quick of wing, a dreadful monster, huge, with as many watchful eyes beneath her body as she has feathers (wonderful to tell), as many tongues, as many mouths that speak, as many ears that prick up. By night she flies between heaven and earth through the shadows, screeching, and she never closes her eyes in sweet sleep; by day she sits as a watcher on the roof peak of a high house or on lofty towers, and she terrifies great cities, as ready to cling to falsehood and wickedness as to report the truth. Then she was filling the peoples with her many kinds of talk, delighting in it, and sang alike of what was done and what was not: that Aeneas, born of Trojan blood, had come, and that beautiful Dido deigned to join herself to him as husband; that now they spent the whole winter, however long, in luxury together, forgetting their kingdoms, held captive by shameful desire. The foul goddess spreads this everywhere into men's mouths. She turns her course straight to King Iarbas, and kindles his heart with her words and heaps up his anger.
198| He was the son of Hammon and a Garamantian nymph he had raped, and he had set up a hundred huge temples to Jupiter throughout his broad kingdoms, and a hundred altars, and he had consecrated a watchful fire, an everlasting guard of the gods, and a floor rich with the blood of animals and thresholds in bloom with garlands of every kind. Out of his mind and inflamed by the bitter rumor, he is said to have prayed to Jupiter at length as a suppliant, in front of the altars, among the divine powers, with his palms turned up: "Almighty Jupiter, to whom the Moorish people, feasting now on embroidered couches, pour a libation of wine, do you see this? Or do we shudder at you in vain, Father, when you hurl your thunderbolts, and are those blind fires in the clouds only terrifying our minds and stirring empty rumbling? A woman who wandered into our territory and paid for a small city, to whom we gave a shore to plow and laws for the place, rejected marriage with me and took Aeneas into her kingdom as her lord. And now that Paris, with his retinue of half-men, his chin and dripping hair bound up in a Maeonian cap, enjoys what he has seized; meanwhile we bring offerings to your temples, and nurture an empty reputation."
219| As he prayed in such words, holding the altars, the Almighty heard him, and turned his gaze to the royal walls and to the lovers who had forgotten their better reputation. Then he spoke to Mercury and gave him this command: "Go now, son, call the Zephyrs and glide on your wings, and speak to the Trojan leader, who now waits in Tyrian Carthage and pays no attention to the cities granted by fate, and carry my words through the swift air. His most beautiful mother did not promise us that he would be such a man, nor was it for this that she twice rescued him from Greek arms; he was to be the one who would rule an Italy pregnant with empire and roaring with war, who would bring forth a race from Teucer's noble blood and put the whole world under law. If no glory from such great things inspires him, and he himself takes no trouble for his own fame, does he, a father, begrudge Ascanius the Roman citadels? What is he doing? With what hope does he linger among a hostile people, and give no thought to his Ausonian offspring and the Lavinian fields? Let him sail! This is the sum of it; let this be my message."
238| He had spoken. Mercury prepared to obey the command of his great father; and first he fastened to his feet the golden sandals, which carry him on wings, high above the seas or the land, as swiftly as the wind. Then he takes up his staff: with it he calls the pale souls out of Orcus, sends others down to gloomy Tartarus, gives sleep and takes it away, and opens eyes closed in death. Relying on it, he drives the winds and swims through the turbulent clouds. And now as he flies he sees the summit and steep flanks of tough Atlas, who props up the sky with his head, Atlas, whose pine-covered head is constantly ringed with dark clouds and lashed by wind and rain; snow lies over his shoulders, then rivers pour from the old man's chin, and his rough beard bristles with ice. Here the god of Cyllene first came to rest on balanced wings; from here he threw himself headlong with his whole body toward the waves, like a bird that flies low around the shores, around the fish-filled rocks, close to the water. Not otherwise did the offspring of Cyllene fly between earth and sky toward the sandy shore of Libya, cutting through the winds, as he came from his maternal grandfather.
259| As soon as he touched the huts with his winged feet, he sees Aeneas laying the foundations of citadels and renovating buildings. He had a sword studded with tawny jasper, and a cloak hanging from his shoulders, glowing with Tyrian purple, a rich gift Dido had made, and she had interwoven the web with thin gold. At once Mercury attacks: "Are you now laying the foundations of high Carthage, and, a devoted husband, building a beautiful city? Alas, you who forget your kingdom and your own affairs! The ruler of the gods himself sends me down to you from bright Olympus, he who governs heaven and earth by his divine power; he himself orders me to carry these commands through the swift air: what are you doing? With what hope do you waste your leisure in Libyan lands? If no glory from such great things moves you, [and you yourself take no trouble for your own fame,] consider the growing Ascanius and the hopes of your heir Iulus, to whom the realm of Italy and the Roman land are owed." Having spoken thus, the god of Cyllene left mortal sight in the middle of his speech, and vanished far away from his eyes into thin air.
279| But Aeneas, truly stunned at the sight, was struck dumb; his hair stood on end with horror and his voice stuck in his throat. He burns to flee and to leave the sweet land, astonished by so great a warning and command from the gods. Alas, what is he to do? With what speech can he now dare to approach the raging queen? What opening should he take first? And he divides his quick mind now this way, now that, drives it in various directions, and turns it over through every possibility. As he went back and forth, this plan seemed better: he calls Mnestheus, Sergestus, and brave Serestus, telling them to ready the fleet quietly, gather their companions at the shore, prepare their arms, and conceal the reason for the change of plans; meanwhile he himself, since excellent Dido did not know and did not expect so great a love to be broken, would try the approaches and the gentlest times for speaking, and the right way to handle matters. All gladly obey his command more quickly and carry out the orders.
296| But the queen sensed the tricks (who could deceive a woman in love?) and was the first to catch the coming movements, afraid even when everything was safe. That same wicked Rumor reported to her, in her frenzy, that the fleet was being armed and the voyage prepared. Out of her mind, she rages and, inflamed, runs wild through the whole city, like a Thyiad roused when the sacred rites are set in motion, when the biennial orgies goad her at the cry of Bacchus, and night-time Cithaeron calls her with shouting. At last she addresses Aeneas first with these words: "Did you even hope, faithless man, that you could hide so great a crime and leave my land in silence? Does neither our love hold you, nor the right hand you once gave, nor Dido, who will die a cruel death? Why do you even work on your fleet under a winter star, and hurry to go over the open sea in the midst of the north winds, cruel one? What if you were not seeking foreign fields and unknown homes, and ancient Troy still stood, would Troy be sought by fleets over the wave-tossed sea? Are you fleeing me? By these tears and by your right hand (since I have left myself, wretched as I am, nothing else), by our marriage, by the wedding begun, if I have deserved anything good from you, or if anything of mine ever pleased you, pity a falling house, and, I beg, if there is still any room for prayers, give up that intention.
320| Because of you the peoples of Libya and the tyrants of the Nomads hate me, and the Tyrians are hostile; because of you my sense of shame has been destroyed, and my former reputation, by which alone I was approaching the stars. To whom do you leave me as I die, my guest (since this is the only name left of husband)? Why do I linger? Until my brother Pygmalion destroys my walls, or the Gaetulian Iarbas takes me captive? If only, before your flight, I had conceived some child by you, if some little Aeneas were playing in my hall who would nevertheless recall you by his face, I would not feel so completely captured and abandoned."
331| She had spoken. He, because of Jupiter's warnings, held his eyes unmoving and struggled to press his distress down in his heart. At last he answers briefly: "I will never deny, queen, that you have deserved the most, all that you can list in speech, nor will it displease me to remember Elissa as long as I remember myself, as long as breath governs these limbs. I will speak briefly on the matter. I did not hope to hide this flight by stealth (do not imagine it), nor did I ever carry a marriage torch before you or enter into such an agreement. If the fates allowed me to live my life under my own auspices and settle my cares as I wished, I would first look after the city of Troy and the dear remains of my people; Priam's high house would stand, and with my own hand I would have set up a restored Pergamum for the defeated. But now Grynean Apollo, now the Lycian oracles have ordered me to seize great Italy; that is my love, that is my homeland. If the citadels of Carthage and the sight of a Libyan city hold you, a Phoenician, what grudge is it at last that Trojans settle in the land of Ausonia? We too have a right to seek a foreign kingdom.
351| Whenever night covers the lands with damp shadows, whenever the fiery stars rise, the troubled image of my father Anchises warns me in my sleep and frightens me; the boy Ascanius moves me, and the wrong done to his dear person, whom I cheat of the kingdom of Hesperia and his destined fields. Now even the messenger of the gods, sent by Jupiter himself (I swear it by both our lives), has carried his commands through the swift air: I saw the god myself in clear light entering the walls, and I drank in his voice with these ears. Stop inflaming both me and yourself with your complaints; it is not by my own choice that I head for Italy."
362| As he speaks, she has been watching him for some time with a look turned away, her eyes rolling now here, now there, and she scans him all over with silent glances, and then, inflamed, she speaks: "No goddess was your mother, and Dardanus was not the founder of your line, faithless man, but the bristling Caucasus bore you on its hard cliffs, and Hyrcanian tigers offered you their teats. For why do I hide it, or for what greater wrongs do I hold myself back? Did he groan at my weeping? Did he turn his eyes? Did he give way and shed tears, or pity the woman who loved him? What shall I set before what? Now, now neither great Juno nor Saturn's son looks on this with fair eyes. Nowhere is faith safe. When he was cast up on the shore and in need, I took him in, and in my madness I gave him a share of my kingdom. I brought back his lost fleet and his comrades from death (alas, I am carried along inflamed by furies!): now the augur Apollo, now the Lycian oracles, now even the messenger of the gods sent by Jupiter himself carries dreadful orders through the air. Of course, that is the labor of the gods above; that is the concern that disturbs their peace. I do not hold you, nor do I refute your words: go, make for Italy on the winds, seek your kingdoms over the waves.
382| I do hope, if the righteous powers above can do anything, that you will drink your punishment among the rocks in the middle of the sea and will often call out the name of Dido. Though absent, I will follow you with black fires, and when cold death has separated my limbs from my breath, I will be present everywhere as a shade. You will pay the penalty, wicked man. I will hear of it, and the news will reach me among the Shades far below." With these words she breaks off her speech in the middle and, sick at heart, flees the light, turns away from his eyes and removes herself, leaving him hesitating in fear and ready to say much more. Her servants take her up and carry her collapsed limbs back to her marble bedchamber and lay her upon her bed.
393| But dutiful Aeneas, although he longs to soothe her grief by comforting her and to turn away her cares with words, groaning deeply and shaken in heart by his great love, nonetheless carries out the gods' commands and goes back to his fleet. Then indeed the Trojans bend to the work and drag the tall ships down the whole shore. The oiled keels float, and they bring leafy oars and rough-hewn timber from the forests, in their eagerness to flee. You could see them leaving and rushing out of the whole city: just as when ants, mindful of winter, plunder a huge heap of grain and store it in their nest, a black column moves across the fields and they carry their booty through the grass along a narrow track; some strain against the big kernels with their shoulders, some marshal the column and punish stragglers, and the whole path boils with work. What feelings were yours then, Dido, as you saw such things, or what groans did you give, when from the top of the citadel you looked out and saw the shores seething far and wide, and the whole sea before your eyes churned with such great shouting! Cruel Love, what do you not force on mortal hearts! She is driven to go into tears again, again to try him by entreaty, and, a suppliant, to lower her pride before love, so that she may not leave anything untried, about to die in vain.
416| "Anna, you see the hurry all around the whole shore: they have gathered from every side; the canvas is already calling for the breeze, and the happy sailors have put garlands on the sterns. If I was able to expect this great sorrow, I will be able to bear it too, sister. Yet carry out this one thing for me in my misery, Anna; for that faithless man used to honor you alone, and even confided his secret feelings to you; you alone knew the man's gentle approaches and moments. Go, sister, and speak as a suppliant to my proud enemy: I did not swear at Aulis with the Greeks to destroy the Trojan people, nor did I send a fleet to Pergamum, nor did I disturb the ashes or the spirit of his father Anchises: why does he refuse to let my words into his hard ears? Where is he rushing? Let him give this last gift to the wretched woman who loved him: let him wait for an easy flight and favoring winds. I no longer ask for the old marriage, which he betrayed, nor that he give up beautiful Latium and leave his kingdom: I ask for empty time, a rest and a pause for my madness, until my fortune teaches me, defeated as I am, to grieve. I beg this last favor (pity your sister), and when he has granted it to me, I will repay it to him in full with my death."
437| With such words she pleaded, and such tears her unhappy sister carries to him and brings back. But he is moved by no tears and hears no words with a yielding heart; the fates stand in the way, and a god blocks the man's gentle ears. And just as, when northern gusts from the Alps strive among themselves to uproot a sturdy oak of ancient strength, blowing now from this side, now from that, a creaking goes up, and the high leaves strew the ground as the trunk is shaken; the oak itself clings to the rocks, and as far as it reaches with its crown to the airy heights, so far its roots reach down toward Tartarus: not otherwise is the hero battered by constant appeals from this side and that, and he feels the pain deeply in his great heart; his mind stays unmoved, and his tears roll down in vain.
450| Then indeed unhappy Dido, terrified by her fate, prays for death; she is weary of looking at the vault of heaven. To make her carry out her plan more surely and leave the light, she saw, as she placed gifts on the incense-burning altars, (horrible to tell) the holy water turn black and the poured wine change into foul blood; she told no one of this vision, not even her sister. Besides, in the palace there was a marble shrine to her former husband, which she honored with wonderful reverence, bound with snow-white fleeces and festive foliage: from there she seemed to hear the voices and words of her husband calling her, when dark night held the earth, and a lone owl on the roof peaks seemed often to complain in a funereal song and draw its long cries out into weeping; and many predictions of former seers besides terrify her with their dreadful warnings. Savage Aeneas himself drives her, in her frenzy, through her dreams, and she always seems to be left alone, always to walk a long road unaccompanied and to look for her Tyrians in a deserted land, as mad Pentheus sees the ranks of the Furies, and a double sun and two Thebes appearing, or as Orestes, son of Agamemnon, is driven across the stage when he flees from his mother armed with torches and black snakes, and the avenging Dirae sit on the threshold.
474| So when, overcome by grief, she had conceived madness and decided to die, she herself works out the time and the method, and, approaching her sorrowing sister with words, she hides her plan in her expression and brightens her hope on her face: "I have found a way, sister (congratulate your sister), that will either bring him back to me or release me from loving him. At the edge of Ocean, toward the setting sun, lies the farthest place of the Ethiopians, where great Atlas turns on his shoulder the heavens fitted with burning stars: from there a priestess of the Massylian people has been pointed out to me, the keeper of the Hesperides' temple, who used to give the dragon its food and kept the sacred branches on the tree, sprinkling moist honey and sleep-bringing poppy. She promises with her spells to free the minds she wishes, but to send harsh cares to others, to stop water in rivers and turn the stars backward, and she stirs up the shades of the night: you will see the earth bellow under your feet and ash trees descend from the mountains. I swear, dear one, by the gods and by you, sister, and your sweet head, that I take up magic arts unwillingly. In secret, build a pyre under the open sky in the inner part of the house, and place on top the weapons the faithless man left fixed in my chamber, and all his clothes and the marriage bed where I was ruined: it pleases me to wipe out every reminder of that wicked man, and the priestess directs it." Having said this, she falls silent, and at the same time pallor covers her face. Yet Anna does not believe that her sister is covering up a funeral with these new rites, nor does she conceive in her mind such great madness or fear anything worse than at the death of Sychaeus. So she prepares what she was told.
504| But the queen, when the pyre had been erected under the open sky in the innermost part of the house, huge, of cut pine torches and oak, festoons the spot with wreaths and crowns it in mournful greenery; on top she places his clothes, the sword he left, and his likeness on the couch, not unaware of what is to come. Altars stand around and the priestess, her hair unbound, calls with thundering voice on three hundred gods, Erebus and Chaos and three-fold Hecate, the three faces of the virgin Diana. She had also sprinkled water counterfeiting the spring of Avernus, and herbs in full bloom, cut by moonlight with bronze sickles, are sought, with the milk of black poison; and the love-token wrenched from the brow of a newborn colt and snatched from its mother is also sought. Dido herself, near the altar with the sacred meal and pure hands, with one foot unshod, her dress ungirdled, as she is about to die calls the gods to witness, and the stars that know her fate; then she prays to any divine power that is just and mindful, if there is one, for lovers joined in an unequal bond.
522| It was night, and weary bodies across the lands were enjoying peaceful sleep. The woods and the savage seas had settled, it was the hour when the stars roll on in mid-course, when every field is silent, and the cattle and the bright-colored birds, those that haunt the wide clear lakes and those that live in the countryside rough with thickets, lay stilled in sleep beneath the quiet night. But not the Phoenician woman, ill-fated in spirit. She never dissolves into sleep or lets the night into her eyes or heart. Her cares redouble; her love rises again and rages, and she is tossed on a great tide of anger. So she persists, and turns it over in her heart like this: "Look, what am I doing? Shall I put myself to the test again, mocked, with my earlier suitors? Shall I go begging for marriage with the Nomads, men I have already scorned so many times as husbands? Then shall I follow the Trojan fleet and the Teucrians' most humiliating commands? Is it because I am glad I once relieved them with my help, and because gratitude for an old kindness stands firm among people who remember? But who will allow me, even if I wanted it, or take a woman they hate aboard their proud ships? Ah, you lost woman, do you not know yet, do you not yet feel the perjuries of Laomedon's race? What then? Shall I go alone, in flight, with the exultant sailors? Or shall I set out surrounded by the Tyrians and my whole band of followers, and drive out to sea again those whom I barely tore away from the city of Sidon, and order them to spread their sails to the winds? No, die as you deserve, and turn away your pain with the sword. You, my sister, overcome by my tears, you were the first to load this madness of mine with these troubles and throw me in the enemy's path. I was not allowed to live my life apart from marriage, without reproach, like a wild animal, and not to touch such cares as these. The faith I promised to the ashes of Sychaeus has not been kept."
553| Such complaints she was bursting from her heart. Aeneas, high on his stern, already resolved on going, was taking sleep, since everything was now properly prepared. In his dream the form of the god appeared to him again, returning with the same face, and again seemed to warn him. He was like Mercury in every way, in voice and coloring, in his golden hair and in the limbs of his youthful beauty. "Son of a goddess, can you sleep through a moment like this, and do you not see, madman, what dangers now stand around you, or hear the favorable west winds blowing? She is turning treachery and dreadful crime over in her heart, determined to die, and stirring up shifting tides of anger. Will you not flee from here headlong, while you still have the chance to rush away? Soon you will see the sea churned up with timbers, savage torches blazing, the shores seething with flames, if Dawn finds you lingering on these lands. Come now, break off the delay. A woman is always a fickle and changeable thing." With these words he mingled with the black night.
571| Then Aeneas, terrified by the sudden shadows, snatched his body from sleep and roused his comrades in haste: "Wake up, men, and take your seats at the benches. Loose the sails quickly. A god sent down from high heaven is spurring us again to speed our flight and slash the twisted ropes. We follow you, holy one among the gods, whoever you are, and again we obey your command with joy. Be with us, and kindly help us, and bring favorable stars to the sky." He spoke, and snatched his flashing sword from its sheath, and struck the mooring ropes with the drawn blade. The same eagerness seizes everyone at once; they snatch and rush. They have left the shores; the sea is hidden beneath the fleets; straining, they churn the foam and sweep the dark blue water.
584| Already Dawn, quitting Tithonus' saffron bed, was first scattering the earth with new light. When the queen from her watchtower saw the first light whitening and the fleet moving off with sails in line, and realized the shore and harbor were empty, without an oarsman, she struck her lovely breast three and four times with her hand, tore her golden hair, and cried: "Jupiter! Is he to go, this foreigner, and make a mockery of my kingdom? Will they not get out their arms and follow from all over the city, and others tear the ships from the docks? Go, quickly, bring fire, hand out weapons, ply the oars! What am I saying? In what place am I? What madness twists my mind? Unhappy Dido, do your impious deeds touch you now? They should have then, when you were giving him the scepter. So this is the pledge and faith of the man who, they say, carries his ancestral household gods with him, who carried on his shoulders his father worn out with age! Could I not have seized him, torn his body apart, and scattered it on the waves? Not killed his companions with the sword, killed Ascanius himself and served him up as a feast at his father's table? But the outcome of a fight would have been uncertain. Suppose it had been:
604| Whom did I fear, when I was going to die anyway? I should have carried torches into their camp, filled their decks with flames, wiped out son and father along with the whole race, and flung myself on top of them. Sun, you who survey all the works of the earth with your flames; and you, Juno, go-between and witness of these sorrows; and Hecate, whose name is howled at night at crossroads through the cities; and you avenging Furies, and you gods of dying Elissa: hear this, turn your divine power to the wrongs I have suffered, as is my due, and listen to my prayers. If that unspeakable man must reach harbor and float to land, if Jupiter's decrees demand it, and this outcome is fixed: then let him be harassed in war by the arms of a bold people, driven from his territory, torn from the embrace of Iulus; let him beg for help and see his people die undeserved deaths; and when he has surrendered himself to the terms of an unfair peace, let him not enjoy his kingdom or the light he longs for, but let him die before his day and lie unburied in the middle of the sand. This is my prayer; these last words I pour out with my blood. Then you, my Tyrians, harass his stock and all his race to come with hatred, and send this as an offering to my ashes. Let there be no love between the peoples, no treaties. Rise up from my bones, some avenger, to pursue the Dardan settlers with fire and sword, now, hereafter, at whatever time the strength is supplied: shore set against shore, wave against water, arms against arms — this is my curse: let them fight, they themselves and their children's children."
630| So she spoke, and turned her mind every way, seeking to break off the hateful light as soon as she could. Then she spoke briefly to Barce, Sychaeus' nurse — for her own lay in black ashes in their old homeland: "Dear nurse, bring my sister Anna here. Tell her to hurry and sprinkle her body with river water, and bring the animals with her and the offerings for atonement as she was shown. Let her come like that; and you yourself cover your temples with the holy ribbon. I mean to finish the rites to Stygian Jupiter that I have duly begun and prepared, to put an end to my sorrows, and to give the pyre of the Dardan to the flames." So she spoke. The nurse hurried her steps with an old woman's eagerness. But Dido, trembling and made savage by her monstrous undertaking, rolling her bloodshot eyes, her quivering cheeks flecked with spots and pale with approaching death, bursts through the doors into the inner courtyard of the house, climbs the high pyre in frenzy, and unsheathes the Dardan sword, a gift not sought for such a use as this. Here, when she saw the Trojan clothes and the familiar bed, she paused a little in tears and thought, then lay down on the couch and spoke her last words:
651| "Relics that were sweet to me while fate and the god allowed, receive this spirit of mine and free me from these sorrows. I have lived, and I have finished the journey that Fortune allotted me, and now a great image of me will go beneath the earth. I founded a glorious city; I have seen my own walls; I avenged my husband and made my brother, my enemy, pay the penalty — happy, ah, too happy, if only the Dardan ships had never touched our shores." She spoke, and pressing her face into the couch, she said: "We will die unavenged — yet let us die. Thus, thus I am glad to go down to the shades. Let the cruel Dardan drink in this fire with his eyes from out at sea, and carry with him the omen of my death." She had spoken, and in the midst of such words her women see her collapsed upon the sword, the steel foaming with blood and her hands spattered. A scream rises to the high halls; Rumor runs wild through the shaken city. The houses roar with lamentation, groaning and the wailing of women; the sky echoes with loud cries of mourning, just as if the enemy had broken in and all Carthage or ancient Tyre were falling, and raging flames were rolling over the roofs of men and of gods.
672| Her sister heard it and, half dead and terrified, rushes in frantic haste through the middle of the crowd, tearing her face with her nails and beating her breast with her fists, and calls the dying woman by name: "Was this what it meant, sister? Were you deceiving me? Was this what that pyre, these fires and altars were preparing for me? What shall I lament first, now that you have abandoned me? Did you scorn your sister as a companion in death? You ought to have called me to the same fate: the same pain, the same hour, should have taken us both by the sword. Did I build this pyre with these very hands and call aloud on our fathers' gods only to be absent, cruel one, while you lay here like this? You have destroyed yourself and me, sister, the commons and the senate of Sidon, and your city. Let me wash her wounds with water and catch with my lips any last breath still hovering over her." With these words she had climbed the high steps, and was holding her half-dead sister to her breast and cradling her, groaning, and drying the dark blood with her dress. Dido tried to lift her heavy eyes but failed again; the wound fixed deep beneath her breast hisses. Three times she raised herself, propping herself on her elbow; three times she rolled back on the couch, and with wandering eyes she searched for the light in the high sky, and when she found it, groaned.
693| Then all-powerful Juno, pitying her long suffering and her hard death, sent Iris down from Olympus to release the struggling spirit from the limbs that held it fast. For since she was dying neither by fate nor by a death she had earned, but wretchedly, before her day, set ablaze by sudden madness, Proserpina had not yet taken a golden lock from her head and condemned her life to Stygian Orcus. So Iris, dewy, on saffron wings, trailing a thousand changing colors across the sky against the sun, flies down and stands above her head. "As I am bidden, I take this lock as an offering sacred to Dis, and release you from that body." So she speaks, and cuts the lock with her right hand; and at once all the warmth ebbed away, and the life withdrew into the winds.

======== Aeneid — Book V ========

1| Meanwhile Aeneas, resolute, was already well out to sea with his fleet and cutting through waves darkened by the north wind, looking back at the walls that now glow with poor Elissa's flames. What cause has lit so great a fire is unknown; but the knowledge of the bitter pain when a great love is defiled, and of what a woman in her frenzy can do, lead the Trojans' hearts into grim foreboding. When the ships reached the open sea and no land met the eye any longer, only sea on every side and sky on every side, a dark-blue rain cloud came and stood over his head, bringing night and storm, and the water bristled in the darkness. The helmsman Palinurus himself cried from the high stern: "Ah, why have such clouds encircled the sky? Father Neptune, what are you preparing?" After these words he orders them to take in the tackle and bend to their strong oars, and he slants the sails into the wind and says: "Great-hearted Aeneas, not even if Jupiter gave me his word would I hope to reach Italy under this sky. The winds have shifted and roar across our path, rising up from the dark west, and the sky is massing into cloud.
21| We are not strong enough to struggle against it or even to hold our course. Since Fortune is winning, let us go where she leads and shift our course where she calls. I believe the faithful shores of your brother Eryx are not far off, and the harbors of Sicily, if only I remember rightly and am retracing the stars I observed." Then dutiful Aeneas: "I have seen for a long time that the winds demand this and that you strain against them in vain. Change course under sail. Could any land be more welcome to me, or where would I rather bring my weary ships to rest, than the one that keeps Dardan Acestes for me and holds my father Anchises' bones in its embrace?" When this was said, they make for the harbor, and the following west winds fill their sails; the fleet is carried swiftly over the deep, and at last, rejoicing, they turn in to the familiar sands.
35| But Acestes, who from a high mountaintop far off had wondered at the arrival of friendly ships, hurries to meet them, bristling with javelins and the hide of a Libyan bear. A Trojan mother bore him, conceived by the river Crinisus. Not forgetting his ancestry, he welcomes them back, receives them gladly with his rustic riches, and comforts the weary men with friendly abundance.
42| The next day, when its bright dawn had put the stars to flight in the east, Aeneas calls his companions together from all along the shore and speaks from a raised mound: "Great Dardans, a race from the high blood of the gods, the circle of the year is complete with the months run out since we laid in the earth the remains and the bones of my divine father and consecrated altars of mourning. And now the day is here, if I am not mistaken, which I will always keep as a day of grief, always as a day of honor — so you gods have willed. If I were spending it in exile among the Gaetulian Syrtes, or caught on the Argive sea or in the city of Mycenae, I would still carry out the yearly vows and the solemn processions in order, and pile the altars with their proper gifts. Now, unasked, we find ourselves at the very ashes and bones of my father — not, I think, without the purpose and will of the gods — carried here and entering a friendly harbor. So come, let us all celebrate the rite with gladness: let us ask him for winds, and may he be willing for me to offer these rites every year in temples dedicated to him, once my city is founded. Acestes, born of Troy, gives you two head of cattle for each ship; bring to the feast the household gods of our fathers and those that our host Acestes worships. Besides, if the ninth Dawn brings out the kindly day for mortals and unveils the world with her rays, I will set up contests for the Trojans: first for swift ships; then whoever is strong in running, whoever steps forward bold in strength, or better with the javelin and light arrows, or trusts himself to fight with the rawhide gauntlet — let them all come and look forward to the prizes of a well-earned palm. Keep holy silence, all of you, and wreathe your temples with branches."
72| So he spoke, and veiled his temples with his mother's myrtle. Helymus does the same, and Acestes, ripe in years, and the boy Ascanius, and all of the other young men follow them. Aeneas went from the assembly with many thousands to the tomb, in the middle of a great escorting crowd. Here, as the rite requires, he pours on the ground a libation of two cups of unmixed wine, two of fresh milk, two of sacrificial blood, scatters purple flowers, and speaks: "Hail, holy father, once again; hail, ashes I rescued in vain, and spirit and ghost of my father. I was not permitted to seek with you the borders of Italy, the fields promised by fate, or the Ausonian Tiber, whatever it may be." He had just said this when from the depths of the shrine a slippery snake, huge, drew out seven coils, seven folds, gently encircling the tomb and gliding between the altars. Its back was flecked with blue markings, and a sheen spotted with gold set its scales ablaze, as a rainbow in the clouds casts a thousand changing colors against the sun. Aeneas was stunned at the sight. At last, winding its long column between the bowls and polished cups, it tasted the food, and then, harmless, it slid back into the bottom of the tomb and left the altars where it had fed.
94| All the more for this he renews the rites he had begun for his father, unsure whether to think it the spirit of the place or a servant of his father. As custom requires, he slaughters two sheep, as many pigs, and as many black-backed young bulls; he poured wine from the bowls and called on the soul of great Anchises and his shade, sent back from Acheron. His comrades too bring gifts gladly, each as much as he has, load the altars and slaughter bullocks; others set out bronze cauldrons in rows and, stretched out on the grass, put coals under the spits and roast the entrails.
104| The awaited day had come, and the horses of Phaethon were already bringing the ninth Dawn, in clear light. The news and the name of famous Acestes had called out the neighbors; they had filled the shore with a happy crowd, come to see Aeneas' men, and some of them ready to compete. First, the prizes are set out in sight of all in the middle of the arena: sacred tripods, green wreaths, and palms as the reward for victors, weapons, garments steeped in purple, talents of silver and gold, while a trumpet sounds from the middle of the mound to announce that the games have begun.
114| The first contest is between four matched ships with heavy oars, chosen from the whole fleet. Mnestheus drives the swift Pristis with eager rowers, soon to be Italian Mnestheus, from whom the Memmian family takes its name; Gyas drives the huge Chimaera, huge in bulk, the size of a city, which the Dardan youths propel with three banks of oars, the oars rising in tiers of three; Sergestus, from whom the house of Sergius has its name, is carried in the great Centaur, and Cloanthus, from whom you come, Roman Cluentius, in the sea-blue Scylla.
124| There is a rock far out in the sea, facing the foaming shore, which at times is submerged and battered by swelling waves, when the winter northwest winds hide the stars; in calm weather it is silent and rises from the unmoving water as a flat surface, and a very welcome resting place for sunning gulls. Here father Aeneas set up a green marker of leafy holm oak as a signal for the sailors, so they would know where to turn back and where to bend their long course around. Then they choose their places by lot, and the captains themselves, on their sterns, shine from afar in gold and purple finery; the rest of the crew are wreathed in poplar leaves and gleam, their bare shoulders soaked in oil. They sit at the benches, arms stretched to the oars; tensely they wait for the signal, and pounding fear and eager desire for praise drain their leaping hearts. Then, when the clear trumpet gave its blast, all of them without delay shot out from their lines; the sailors' shout strikes the sky, and the churned waters foam as their arms pull back. Together they split the furrows, and the whole sea is torn open by oars and three-pronged beaks. Chariots racing in a two-horse contest do not tear across the plain so headlong and burst from the starting gate, nor do charioteers shake the rippling reins so hard over their loosed teams and hang forward over the whip. Then the whole grove rings with the applause and shouting of men and the eager cheers of supporters, the enclosing shores roll back the sound, and the struck hills echo the cry.
151| Gyas slips ahead of the others and glides out first on the waves, amid the crowd and the roar; Cloanthus follows him, better with the oars, but held back by the weight of his slow pine hull. After these, Pristis and Centaur strive on equal terms to take the lead; now Pristis has it, now the huge Centaur passes her, beaten, now both run together, bows level, and plow the salt water with their long keels. And now they were approaching the rock and nearing the marker, when Gyas, leader and winner in the middle of the swell, calls to the steersman of his ship, Menoetes: "Why are you going so far to starboard? Steer this way. Hug the shore and let the oar blade graze the rocks on the left; let the others stay in deep water." So he spoke; but Menoetes, afraid of hidden rocks, turns the prow away toward the open sea. "Why are you going off course? Make for the rocks, Menoetes!" Gyas shouted again, calling him back, and look, he sees Cloanthus behind him, pressing close and holding the nearer line. Cloanthus scrapes through on the inside, between Gyas' ship and the roaring rocks, keeping to the left; suddenly he passes the leader and, leaving the marker behind, holds safe water.
172| Then truly a huge grief blazed in the young man's bones, and tears were on his cheeks; forgetting his own dignity and the safety of his comrades, he hurls the sluggish Menoetes headlong from the high stern into the sea. He himself takes the helm as steersman, and as captain urges the men on and turns the tiller toward the shore. But when Menoetes, heavy, now older, finally got back up from the bottom of the sea, dripping in his soaked clothes, he made for the top of the rock and sat down on the dry crag. The Trojans laughed at him as he fell, laughed as he swam, and laugh as he vomits the salt water from his chest.
183| Here happy hope is kindled in the last two, Sergestus and Mnestheus, of overtaking the lagging Gyas. Sergestus takes the place ahead and nears the rock, though he is not wholly in front with his whole ship; he leads by part, and rival Pristis presses on him with her beak. But Mnestheus, walking amid his comrades in the middle of the ship, urges them on: "Now, now rise to the oars, comrades of Hector, whom I chose as companions at Troy's last fate; now bring out the strength and the spirit you showed in the Gaetulian Syrtes and the Ionian Sea and on the pursuing waves of Malea. I, Mnestheus, no longer seek first place or aim to win (though, ah! but let those win to whom you gave this, Neptune); let us be ashamed to come back last: win this much, fellow citizens, and prevent that disgrace." They throw themselves forward in the final effort; the bronze-beaked stern shakes with the mighty strokes and the ground slips away beneath them; then thick panting shakes their limbs and parched mouths, and sweat runs everywhere in streams. Chance itself brought the men the honor they wanted: for while Sergestus, wild with excitement, forces his prow in toward the rocks on the inside and enters a narrow passage, the unlucky man stuck on the projecting rocks.
205| The crags shook, the oars strained against the sharp rock and snapped, and the prow, jammed, hung there. The sailors leap up and, with a great shout, bring the ship to a halt; they bring out iron-shod poles and spiked boathooks and gather up the broken oars from the water. But Mnestheus, happy and keener for his success, with the swift motion of his oars and calling up the winds, makes for the sea sloping before him and runs down the open water. Like a dove suddenly startled from a cave, whose home and sweet nest are in the hidden pumice, and which flies out into the fields and, frightened, makes a great clap of wings in the roof, then gliding in the quiet air skims her clear path without moving her wings, so Mnestheus, so Pristis herself cuts the last stretch of the sea, so her own momentum carries her flying along. First he leaves Sergestus behind, struggling on the high rock and in the shallows, calling uselessly for help, and learning to race with shattered oars. Then he catches up with Gyas and the Chimaera herself, huge in bulk; she gives way, since she has lost her steersman. And now only Cloanthus remains, right at the finish, and Mnestheus goes after him and presses him with all his strength.
227| Then truly the shouting redoubles, and all urge on the pursuer with their cheers, and the sky resounds with the din. Some are indignant if they do not keep their own distinction and the honor they have won, and want to trade their lives for glory; others are fed by success: they can, because they seem able. And perhaps they would have taken the prize with their prows level, if Cloanthus, stretching both palms toward the sea, had not poured out prayers and called on the gods with vows: "Gods, who hold power over the sea, whose waters I run over, I will gladly set before your altars on this shore a gleaming white bull, bound by my vow, and I will throw its entrails into the salt waves and pour out clear wine." He spoke, and beneath the depths of the waves the whole chorus of Nereids and Phorcus heard him, and Panopea the virgin, and father Portunus in person with his great hand pushed him as he went: faster than the south wind or a flying arrow the ship fled to land and hid in the deep harbor. Then the son of Anchises, calling everyone together as custom required, declares Cloanthus the winner in the loud voice of a herald, and covers his brow with green laurel; and he gives to each ship a choice of three young bulls, wine, and a big talent of silver to carry off.
249| To the captains themselves he adds special honors: to the winner a gold-embroidered cloak, around which plentiful purple from Meliboea ran in a double meander, and woven into it the royal boy on leafy Ida wearing out swift stags with his javelin and in the chase, eager, like one panting, whom Jupiter's armor-bearer, the swift bird, snatched up high from Ida in his hooked talons; his aged guardians stretch their hands toward the stars in vain, and the barking of dogs rages into the air. To the man who took second place by his merit he gives a coat of mail, triple-woven with gold and linked with smooth hooks, which he himself as victor had stripped from Demoleos by the swift Simois under high Ilium, to keep, an ornament for the man and protection in battle. His servants Phegeus and Sagaris could scarcely carry it, straining with their shoulders, so many layers; yet Demoleos once wore it and drove scattering Trojans before him as he ran. For the third prize he makes two bronze cauldrons and bowls finished in silver and rough with embossed figures. And now all had been given their prizes and, proud of their riches, went with brows bound in crimson ribbons, when Sergestus, torn with great difficulty by skill from the cruel rock, having lost his oars and crippled on one bank, was bringing in his mocked ship without honor.
273| Like a snake caught on the crown of a road, which a bronze-rimmed wheel has crossed at an angle, or which a traveler has struck with a heavy stone and left half dead and mangled; in its vain flight it makes long twisting movements, fierce in one part and blazing in the eyes, rearing up high with a hissing neck, while the other part, crippled by the wound, holds it back as it knots itself in coils and folds back on its own limbs: with such rowing the ship moved slowly. Yet she hoists sail, and with full sails enters the harbor mouth. Aeneas gives Sergestus the gift he promised, glad that the ship was saved and his comrades brought back. A slave woman is given to him, not unskilled in the works of Minerva, Pholoe, Cretan by birth, with twin sons at her breast.
286| When this contest was over, dutiful Aeneas makes for a grassy plain, which woods surrounded on every side with curving hills, and in the middle of the valley lay a ring like a theater; the hero went there with many thousands and took his seat in the middle on a raised platform. Here he invites any who might want to compete in a swift footrace, tempting their spirits with prizes, and sets out the rewards. They gather from all sides, Trojans and Sicilians mixed, Nisus and Euryalus first, Euryalus outstanding in beauty and fresh youth, Nisus in his devoted love for the boy; then following them the royal Diores, of Priam's outstanding line; after him Salius and Patron together, one of whom was an Acarnanian, the other of Arcadian blood from the Tegean people; then two Sicilian youths, Helymus and Panopes, used to the woods, companions of old Acestes; and many others besides, whom obscure fame hides away. Aeneas then spoke to them in their midst: "Listen to this with your minds, and turn glad hearts to it. No one of this number will leave me without a gift. I shall give two Cretan spears with bright polished iron and an engraved double ax of silver to carry; this one honor will be for all. The first three will receive prizes and bind their heads with pale olive. The first, as winner, is to have a horse decked with ornaments; the second an Amazon quiver full of Thracian arrows, which a belt encircles with broad gold and a clasp fastens with a rounded gem; the third is to go away content with this Greek helmet."
315| When this was said, they take their places and at the signal, as soon as they hear it, suddenly seize the track and leave the line, pouring out like a rainstorm. At once they mark the far end; Nisus goes off first and darts far ahead of all the bodies, quicker than the winds and the wings of lightning; following him, though following at a long interval, comes Salius; then, after a gap, Euryalus is third; and Helymus follows Euryalus; and right behind him, look, Diores flies, treading heel on heel, leaning with his shoulder, and if more track remained he would slip ahead and pass him and leave the outcome unclear. And now, nearly at the end of the course, weary, they were coming up to the very finish, when unlucky Nisus slips on slick blood, spilled on the ground where bullocks had happened to be slaughtered and which had soaked the green grass. Here the young man, already a winner and exulting, could not keep his footing as it faltered on the trodden ground, but fell face down in the filth itself and the sacred blood. Yet he was not forgetful of Euryalus, not forgetful of his love:
335| for as he rose on the slippery ground he put himself in Salius' way; Salius went sprawling, rolled over on the thick sand, and Euryalus darts out and, victor thanks to his friend's service, takes first place, flying along amid the applause and favoring shouts. After him comes Helymus, and now Diores has the third palm. At this Salius fills the whole crowd seated in the vast stands and the front faces of the elders with loud shouts, and demands that the honor torn from him by trickery be given back to him. Favor protects Euryalus, and his becoming tears, and manly excellence is more welcome when it comes in a handsome body. Diores helps him and shouts in a loud voice, since he has come in for a palm and has come in vain for the last prizes if the first honors are to be given back to Salius. Then father Aeneas said: "Your prizes remain secure for you, boys, and no one changes the order of the palm; let me be allowed to pity the misfortune of a blameless friend." So he spoke and gives Salius the huge hide of a Gaetulian lion, heavy with shaggy hair and golden claws. At this Nisus said: "If such prizes are for the defeated, and you pity those who fell, what gift will you give to Nisus that is worthy, I who earned the first crown by my merit, had not hostile fortune swept me away as it did Salius?" And as he said this he displayed his face and his limbs fouled with wet filth. The best of fathers laughed at him and ordered a shield brought out, the craftsmanship of Didymaon, which the Greeks had taken down from Neptune's sacred doorpost. With this outstanding gift he presents the excellent young man.
362| Afterward, when the race was finished and he had given out the gifts: "Now, if anyone has courage and a spirit ready in his chest, let him come forward and raise his arms with gloves bound on." So he speaks, and sets a double prize for the fight: for the winner a bullock draped in gold and ribbons, for the loser, as comfort, a sword and a handsome helmet. Without delay Dares at once brings forward his face with huge strength and rises amid great murmuring from the men, he who alone used to fight against Paris, and who at the tomb where mighty Hector lies struck down the champion Butes of enormous body, who came from the Bebrycian people of Amycus and boasted of it, and stretched him dying on the tawny sand. Such was Dares as he first raised his lofty head for battle, and he shows his broad shoulders, throws his arms out one after the other and lashes the air with his blows. Another opponent is sought for him; and no one in that great company dares approach the man and fit the gloves to his hands. So, eager, and thinking that all had given up the prize, he stood before Aeneas' feet, and without more delay took the bull with his left hand by the horn and said: "Son of a goddess, if no one dares to trust himself to the fight, what end is there to my standing here? How long is it right to keep me waiting? Tell me to lead off my prize." All the Dardans together shouted in agreement and demanded that what was promised be given to the man.
387| Here Acestes severely scolds Entellus with his words, since he happened to be sitting next to him on the green bank of grass: "Entellus, once the bravest of heroes, in vain, will you let so great a prize be carried off so patiently without any contest? Where is that god of ours now, Eryx, your teacher, so often named in vain? Where is the fame throughout all Sicily, and those spoils hanging in your house?" He answered: "It is not that love of praise or glory has gone, driven out by fear; but my blood is cold and sluggish with slowing old age, and strength is chilled and spent in my body. If I had now that youth I once had, and in which that bold fellow exults with such confidence, if that youth were here, I would not have come lured by a prize or a fine bullock, and I do not care about the gifts." Having so spoken, he threw into the middle a pair of gloves of huge weight, with which fierce Eryx used to carry his fists into battle and stretch his arms with the hard hide. Their minds were stunned: the huge hides of seven great oxen stood stiff with lead and iron sewn into them. Above all Dares himself is astonished and shrinks far back, and the great-hearted son of Anchises turns the weight and the immense coils of the straps themselves this way and that.
409| Then the old man spoke from his heart with these words: "What if someone had seen the gloves of Hercules himself, and the grim fight on this very shore? Your brother Eryx once wore these arms (you see them still stained with blood and spattered brains); with these he stood against great Alcides; with these I was familiar, while better blood gave me strength, and old age, jealous of my youth, had not yet scattered gray over both my temples. But if Trojan Dares refuses these arms of ours and dutiful Aeneas is set on it, and Acestes, who sponsors the fight, approves, let us make the fight equal. I give up the hides of Eryx for you (put aside your fear), and you take off your Trojan gloves." After saying this he threw his double cloak from his shoulders and stripped off the great joints of his limbs, the great bones and muscles, and stood huge in the middle of the sand. Then the son of Anchises, the father, brought out matched gloves and strapped the hands of both with matching arms. At once each stood up on his toes and fearlessly raised his arms to the upper air. They drew their lofty heads far back from the blow and mix hand with hand and provoke the fight, the one better in the movement of his feet and relying on youth, the other strong in limbs and bulk; but his slow knees tremble and totter, and a sickly panting shakes his huge frame.
433| The men throw many blows at each other in vain, many they redouble on the hollow flank and make huge thuds from the chest, and a hand wanders constantly around ears and temples, and the jaws crack under the hard blows. Heavy Entellus stands unmoved in the same stance, and avoids the blows only by a movement of his body and watchful eyes. The other, like a man who attacks a high city with siege works or sits under arms around a mountain fort, tries now these approaches, now those, ranges over the whole place with skill and presses on in vain with varied assaults. Entellus rose up, showed his right hand and lifted it high; the other saw the blow coming from above and, quick, slipped away with a swift movement of his body and gave way; Entellus spent his strength on the wind and, heavy of his own accord, fell heavily to the ground with his vast weight, as a hollow pine, torn up by the roots, once fell on Erymanthus or great Ida. The Trojans and the Sicilian youth rise eagerly; a shout goes up to the sky, and Acestes runs up first and, pitying him, lifts his friend of the same age from the ground.
453| Entellus, undelayed by his fall and not frightened by it, goes back into the fight more fiercely, and anger rouses his strength. Shame and a conscious pride in his courage fire him too, and in a blaze of rage he drives Dares headlong across the whole field, now pounding him with his right hand, now with his left. There is no pause and no rest. As rain clouds rattle down hail on rooftops, so the hero, with blow after thick blow, hammers Dares with both hands in quick succession and sends him reeling.
461| Then father Aeneas would not let Entellus advance his rage any further and rage on with such bitter feeling. Instead he put an end to the fight and rescued the exhausted Dares, soothing him with words, and said: "Poor man, what great madness has seized your mind? Don't you feel that the strength is different now, and that the gods have turned against you? Yield to the god." So he spoke, and with his voice he broke up the fighting. But Dares's loyal companions led him to the ships, dragging his weak knees, his head lolling from side to side, spitting thick blood from his mouth, and teeth mixed in with the blood. They were called back to take his helmet and sword, and they left the palm and the bull to Entellus. Then the victor, exultant in spirit and proud of his bull, said: "Son of a goddess, and all you Trojans, learn this: learn what strength I had in my young body, and from what death you are saving Dares, whom you have called back." He spoke, and he stood facing the bull that was waiting there as the prize of the fight, right in front of its head. Drawing back his right hand, he stood tall and swung the hard gauntlet between the horns, and drove it into the bone, shattering the brain. The ox collapsed and dropped lifeless to the ground, trembling. Over it he poured out these words from his chest: "This better life, Eryx, I pay you in place of the death of Dares. Here, as victor, I lay down the gauntlets and my art."
485| Straightaway Aeneas invites any who might wish to compete with the swift arrow, and announces the prizes. With his huge hand he raises the mast of Serestus's ship and, from a cord passed through it, hangs a fluttering dove from the top of the mast as the target for their arrows. The men gathered, and a bronze helmet received the lots that had been thrown in. First, to a roar of applause, the place of Hyrtacus's son Hippocoon came out ahead of all; Mnestheus follows him, the victor of the recent ship race, Mnestheus crowned with green olive. Third was Eurytion, your brother, famous Pandarus, who once, ordered to break the treaty, was the first to hurl a weapon into the midst of the Greeks. Last, at the bottom of the helmet, was Acestes, who had dared to try the contest with his own hand, young men's work though it was. Then each man, putting his strength into it, bent his flexible bow, and they drew their arrows from their quivers. The first arrow, with the bowstring whirring through the sky, belonged to Hyrtacus's young son and cut through the swift air, and it came and lodged in the wood of the mast facing him.
505| The mast shook, and the terrified bird fluttered its wings, and everything rang out with enormous applause. Then keen Mnestheus took his stand with his bow drawn back, aiming high, and stretched his eyes and his arrow together. But the poor man was unable to hit the bird itself with the iron point; he cut the knots and the linen cords by which it hung, tied by the foot, from the top of the mast. The bird flew off into the dark clouds on the south wind. Then quick Eurytion, who had been holding his arrow ready on his drawn bow for some time, called on his brother in prayer. Now he caught sight of the dove in the clear sky, happily clapping its wings, and he pierced it beneath a dark cloud. It fell lifeless, left its life among the stars of the sky, and as it came down brought back the arrow that had pierced it.
519| Only Acestes was left, with the prize now lost. Even so, the old man shot his arrow up into the air, showing off both his skill and his twanging bow. Here a sudden portent was set before their eyes, one that would prove to be of great significance. Its huge outcome taught them this afterward, and awe-inspiring seers sang of its omens late. For as it flew among the clear clouds, the reed arrow caught fire and marked its path with flames, then thinned away, consumed into the winds, as shooting stars torn from the sky often race across it, trailing their hair of fire. The men of Sicily and the Trojans alike stood rooted in amazement, and they prayed to the gods above. Great Aeneas did not turn the omen away, but embraced the delighted Acestes and heaped great gifts on him, saying: "Take them, father, for the great king of Olympus has wished you, by such signs, to be awarded these honors without having drawn a lot. You will have this gift from aged Anchises himself, a mixing bowl embossed with figures, which Thracian Cisseus once gave to my father Anchises as a splendid present, to carry with him as a memorial of himself and a pledge of his love." With these words he wreathed Acestes's temples with green laurel and proclaimed him, before all the others, the first victor. Good Eurytion did not begrudge him the honor he had been put ahead of, although he alone had brought the bird down from high in the sky. Next in turn came the man who cut the cords, with his gift, and last the one who pinned the mast with his winged arrow.
545| But father Aeneas, with the contest not yet dismissed, summons Epytides, the guardian and companion of the young Iulus, and speaks into his trusty ear: "Go, and tell Ascanius, if he now has his boys' squadron ready with him and has organized the maneuvers of the horses, to lead out his troops in honor of his grandfather and show himself in arms." He himself orders the whole crowd that had flooded the long circus to withdraw, and the field to be left open. The boys ride in, side by side, gleaming on their bridled horses before the eyes of their parents, and as they go all the youth of Sicily and Troy murmur in admiration. All have their hair cut in the customary way and held by a wreath. Each carries two cornel-wood spears tipped with iron; some have light quivers on their shoulders; a flexible circle of twisted gold runs around the neck and down on the upper chest. There are three troops of riders, and three captains ride about; twelve boys follow each, gleaming in divided ranks, with leaders to match. One line of youths is led in triumph by little Priam, who carries his grandfather's name, your famous offspring, Polites, destined to increase the Italian peoples; a two-colored Thracian horse carries him, spotted with white, showing white at the tips of its forefeet and raising a white forehead high.
568| The second was Atys, from whom the Latin Atii trace their family, little Atys, a boy dear to the boy Iulus. Last, and in beauty ahead of them all, Iulus rode in on a Sidonian horse, which radiant Dido had given him as a memorial of herself and a pledge of her love. The rest of the young riders are carried on horses from Sicily, belonging to elderly Acestes. The Trojans welcome the anxious boys with applause and delight in watching them, and they recognize the faces of their own ancestors. When they had happily surveyed the whole gathering and the eyes of their families on horseback, Epytides gave the signal from afar with a shout to the waiting boys and cracked his whip. In matched pairs they raced apart, and the three squadrons split their ranks and broke up their formations; then, called back, they turned their paths and charged with levelled spears. After that they enter other courses and other returns, facing one another across the spaces, and weave circles within circles in turn, and stir up the semblance of a battle under arms. At one moment they show their backs in flight, at another they level their spears in attack, now, peace made, they ride along side by side.
588| As the labyrinth in high Crete is said once to have had a path woven with blind walls and a bewildering trick of a thousand ways, where an error that could not be traced and could not be retraced would break up any sign for following, in just such a course the sons of the Trojans interweave their steps, and weave flights and battles in play, like dolphins that cut through the watery seas by swimming, across the Carpathian and the Libyan waters. This custom of riding and these contests Ascanius was the first to revive, when he was surrounding Alba Longa with walls, and he taught the ancient Latins to celebrate them, in the way he himself had done as a boy, and the Trojan youth with him. The Albans taught their own people; from them mighty Rome in turn received them and kept the ancestral honor; and now the boys are called Troy, and the troop is called the Trojan one. Up to this point the contests were held in honor of his sainted father.
604| From here Fortune first changed her pledge and broke faith. While they were paying tribute at the tomb with various games, Saturn's daughter Juno sent Iris down from heaven to the Trojan fleet and breathed winds to help her on her way, brooding over many things and not yet sated in her ancient grief. Hurrying her journey along her arch of a thousand colors, the maiden ran swiftly down her path, seen by no one. She sees the huge crowd and scans the shore, and she sees the harbors deserted and the fleet abandoned. But far away, on a lonely stretch of beach, the Trojan women were apart, weeping for the lost Anchises, and all of them were gazing out in tears at the deep sea. "Oh, how many shoals still remain for us, exhausted as we are, and how much sea!" was the one cry from them all. They long for a city; they are sick of enduring the hardship of the ocean. So Iris, well versed in doing harm, throws herself into their midst, laying aside the face and clothing of a goddess. She becomes Beroe, elderly wife of Tmarian Doryclus, who once possessed family and a name and sons, and in this way she brings herself into the middle of the Trojan mothers. "Oh, you poor women," she says, "whom no Greek hand dragged to death in war beneath the walls of our homeland! Oh, unlucky people, for what destruction is Fortune keeping you?
626| This is now the seventh summer turning since the fall of Troy, since we began crossing waters, lands of every kind, so many inhospitable rocks and stars, being carried along as we follow a fleeing Italy over the great sea and are tossed by the waves. Here is the territory of Eryx, Aeneas's brother, and Acestes, our host: who stops us from laying down walls and giving our citizens a city? O my country, and household gods snatched from the enemy in vain, will no walls ever again be called Troy? Shall I nowhere see the rivers of Hector, the Xanthus and the Simois? Come on, then, and burn these ill-omened ships with me. For in my sleep the image of the prophetess Cassandra seemed to hand me blazing torches. 'Look for Troy here,' she said; 'this is your home.' The hour has come to act, and there should be no delay with such portents. Look, here are four altars to Neptune; the god himself supplies the torches and the courage." With these words she was the first to seize a fire fiercely, and, raising her right hand high, she strained and brandished it, and hurled it. The minds of the Trojan women were stunned, and their hearts dazed. Then one of the many, the oldest of them, Pyrgo, royal nurse of so many of Priam's children, said:
646| "This is not Beroe, mothers, not the Rhoeteian wife of Doryclus. Notice the marks of divine beauty and her blazing eyes, what breath she has, what a face, the sound of her voice, even her step as she walks. I myself left Beroe not long ago, sick, and angry that she alone should miss out on such a duty and not bring Anchises the honors he deserves." So she spoke. But the women, at first uncertain, looked at the ships with ill-disposed, doubtful eyes, torn between their wretched love for the land before them and the kingdoms that the fates were calling them toward, when the goddess lifted herself through the sky on matching wings and, as she fled, cut a huge arch beneath the clouds. Then indeed, stunned by the portents and driven by madness, they cry out together, and snatch fire from the hearths inside their homes; some strip the altars, throwing on leaves and brushwood and torches. Vulcan runs wild with loosened reins through the benches and oars and the ships' painted fir hulls.
664| Eumelus carries the news that the ships are burning to Anchises's tomb and the tiers of the theater, and the people themselves look back and see black ash flying in a cloud. And the first, Ascanius, just as he was happily leading the cavalry exercise, so he eagerly rode his horse to the disordered camp, and his out-of-breath trainers cannot hold him back. "What new madness is this?" he says. "Where, where are you heading now? Oh, wretched citizens! It is not the enemy or the hostile camp of the Greeks you are burning, but your own hopes. Look, I am your Ascanius!" He threw the empty helmet down before his feet, the one he had put on for the game as he stirred up the image of war. At the same time Aeneas hurries up, and the Trojan columns with him. But the women scatter in fear in different directions along the shore, and make for the woods and any hollow rocks they can find, in secret. They are ashamed of what they began, and sorry to see the light; they change and recognize their own people, and Juno is shaken out of their hearts.
680| But for all that, the flames and the fire did not give up their unconquered strength. Under the damp timber the tow stays alive, belching slow smoke; a smoldering heat eats into the keels, and the plague spreads down through the whole body of each ship, and neither the heroes' strength nor the streams of water poured on do any good. Then dutiful Aeneas tore the cloak from his shoulders, called on the gods for help, and stretched out his hands: "Almighty Jupiter, if you do not yet hate the Trojans to the last man, if your devotion of old still has any regard for human hardships, grant now, Father, that the fleet escape the flames, and snatch the small fortunes of the Trojans from destruction. Or else, as for what is left, send me down to death with your hostile thunderbolt, if I deserve it, and crush me here with your own right hand." He had hardly said this when a black storm broke out with pouring rain and raged beyond all measure, and the high places of the earth and the plains shook with thunder. A turbid rainstorm poured down from the whole sky, black with thick south winds. The ships filled up with water above, the half-burnt timbers were soaked, until all the heat was quenched and all the ships, except four that were lost, were saved from the plague.
700| But father Aeneas, shaken by the bitter blow, turned over huge anxieties in his heart, now this way, now that: should he settle in the Sicilian fields, forgetting the fates, or reach for the shores of Italy? Then old Nautes, the one man whom Tritonian Pallas had taught and made famous for his great skill, he gave answers, whether the great wrath of the gods foretold something or the order of the fates demanded it. He consoled Aeneas and began to speak with these words: "Son of a goddess, let us follow where the fates lead us and lead us back. Whatever happens, every fortune must be overcome by bearing it. You have Acestes, a Trojan of divine descent: take him as a partner in your plans and join him to you, since he is willing, and hand over to him those who are left over now that ships are lost, and those who are tired of your great undertaking and your fortunes. Choose the aged old men, the mothers worn out by the sea, and anyone with you who is weak and afraid of danger, and let the weary have a city in this land. They will call the city Acesta, with the name allowed to them."
719| Fired by these words from his older friend, Aeneas was then truly torn in his mind by all his anxieties. And black Night, carried on her two-horse chariot, held the sky. Then the form of his father Anchises seemed to glide down from heaven and suddenly pour out these words: "Son, once dearer to me than life, while I still had life, son, tried by the fates of Troy, I come here by the command of Jupiter, who drove the fire from your ships and has at last taken pity on you from high heaven. Follow the excellent advice that old Nautes is now giving you: take picked young men, the bravest hearts, to Italy. In Latium you must conquer a hard people, rough in their way of life. But before that, approach the lower dwellings of Dis, and through the deep Avernus come to meet me, my son. For impious Tartarus does not hold me, among the sad shades, but I dwell in the pleasant gatherings of the dutiful and in Elysium. The chaste Sibyl will lead you here with the blood of many black sheep. Then you will learn your whole line and the walls that will be granted you. And now farewell; damp Night is turning in the middle of her course, and the cruel East has breathed on me with its panting horses." He had spoken, and he fled like smoke into thin air. Aeneas said: "Where are you rushing off to? Where are you hurrying? Whom are you fleeing? Or who keeps you from our embrace?" With these words he rouses the ashes and the sleeping fires, and as a suppliant he worships the Trojan household god and the shrine of ancient Vesta with sacred meal and a full censer.
746| At once he summons his comrades, and first of all Acestes, and tells them of Jupiter's command and the instructions of his dear father, and of the decision that is now fixed in his mind. There is no delay in the plan, and Acestes does not refuse the orders. They enroll the mothers for the city and set down those of the people who are willing, hearts that have no need of great glory. The others themselves renew the benches and replace the timbers eaten by the flames on their ships, and fit oars and rigging, few in number, but with a courage alive for war. Meanwhile Aeneas marks out the city with a plow and assigns the houses by lot; he orders this to be Ilium and these places to be Troy. Trojan Acestes rejoices in his kingdom and proclaims a forum and gives laws to the senators he has summoned. Then a seat close to the stars is founded on the summit of Eryx for Idalian Venus, and a priest and a sacred grove, wide in extent, are added to Anchises's tomb.
762| And now the whole people had feasted for nine days, and honor had been paid at the altars: calm winds had smoothed the seas, and a steady south wind, blowing again, calls them out to the deep. A great weeping rises along the curving shores; clasping one another, they linger through night and day. Now the very mothers, and the men themselves, for whom the look of the sea once seemed harsh and its power intolerable, want to go and endure every hardship of the flight. Good Aeneas comforts them with friendly words and, weeping, entrusts them to his kinsman Acestes. Then he orders three calves to be sacrificed to Eryx and a lamb to the Storms, and the cable to be loosed in turn. He himself, his head bound with leaves of trimmed olive, stands at a distance on the prow holding a bowl, and throws the entrails into the salt waves and pours out the flowing wine. The comrades eagerly strike the sea and sweep the waters; a wind rising from the stern follows them as they go.
779| But meanwhile Venus, tormented by anxiety, speaks to Neptune and pours these complaints from her heart: "Juno's heavy anger and her insatiable heart force me, Neptune, to stoop to every kind of prayer. Neither long time nor any devotion softens her, nor does she rest, broken by Jupiter's command or the fates. It does not suffice her to have devoured the city from the midst of the Phrygian people with her unspeakable hatred, nor to have dragged the remnants of Troy through every punishment: she pursues the ashes and bones of a city already destroyed. She may know the reasons for such great madness. You yourself were my witness lately on the Libyan waves, what a storm she suddenly stirred up: she mixed all the seas with the sky, relying in vain on the storms of Aeolus, daring this in your realm. And look, by crime she drove the Trojan mothers to it and foully burned the ships, and, with the fleet lost, forced him to leave his comrades in an unknown land. As for what is left, I beg you, let them give their sails safely to you over the waves, let them reach the Laurentine Tiber, if I am asking what is allowed, if the Fates give those walls."
799| Then the son of Saturn, tamer of the deep sea, answered: "It is entirely right, Venus of Cythera, that you trust my kingdoms, from which you trace your birth. I have also earned it; often I have suppressed the furies and great raging of sky and sea. And my care for your Aeneas has been no less on land, and I call the Xanthus and the Simois to witness. When Achilles, pursuing the Trojans as they fled in terror, drove their columns against the walls, and sent many thousands to their death, and the rivers groaned, choked full, and Xanthus could not find his way or roll himself out into the sea, then I snatched Aeneas, who had met the brave son of Peleus with neither gods nor strength to match, in a hollow cloud, though I was eager to overturn from its foundations the walls of faithless Troy that my own hands had built. Now too my purpose stays the same; put away your fears. He will reach the harbor of Avernus that you wish for, safe. There will be only one whom you will look for, lost in the flood; one life will be given for many." When he had soothed the goddess's happy heart with these words, the father yokes his horses with gold, puts foaming bridles on the wild creatures, and lets all the reins go slack in his hands.
819| On his sea-blue chariot he flies lightly over the surface of the waters; the waves subside, and the swollen sea is laid flat with its waters beneath the thundering axle, and the storm clouds flee the vast sky. Then there are the various forms of his retinue, huge sea monsters, the aged chorus of Glaucus, Palaemon, Ino's son, the swift Tritons, and all the host of Phorcus; to the left are Thetis, Melite and the maiden Panopea, Nisaea and Spio and Thalia and Cymodoce.
827| At this, in turn, gentle joys play upon father Aeneas's anxious mind; he orders all the masts to be raised quickly and the sail-yards to be stretched with sails. All together they worked the sheets, now to the left and now to the right, loosening the sail's folds in unison; together they swing the high yardarms round and back; the winds carry the fleet along. In front of all, Palinurus led the close-packed column; the others were ordered to steer by him. And now damp Night had almost reached the midpoint of her course in the sky, and the sailors, stretched out on the hard benches under their oars, were relaxing their limbs in peaceful rest, when light Sleep, gliding down from the heavenly stars, parted the dark air and scattered the shadows, seeking you, Palinurus, bringing sad dreams to you, an innocent man. The god settled on the high stern, looking like Phorbas, and poured these words from his mouth: "Palinurus, son of Iasus, the sea itself carries the fleet, the breezes blow evenly, the hour is given to rest. Lay down your head and steal your weary eyes from their work. I myself will take over your duties for a little while in your place."
847| Palinurus, barely lifting his eyes, answers him: "Are you telling me to ignore the face of the calm sea and its quiet waves? Me, to trust this monster? Am I to entrust Aeneas — what else would I do? — to treacherous breezes, I who have been deceived so often by the falseness of a clear sky?" Such were the words he spoke, and, gripping the tiller and clinging to it, he never let it go, and kept his eyes on the stars. But look: the god shakes over both his temples a branch dripping with the dew of Lethe and drowsy with the power of Styx, and, as he struggles, unloosens his swimming eyes. Scarcely had this unexpected rest relaxed his limbs when the god, bending over him, flung him headfirst into the clear waves, with part of the stern torn away and the rudder too, calling often to his companions in vain; the god himself rose on wings like a bird into the thin air. The fleet runs its course safely over the sea all the same, and is carried on unafraid under father Neptune's promises. And now, drawn on, it was already nearing the rocks of the Sirens — once dangerous, and white with the bones of many men, where the rocks were then booming far and wide with the ceaseless surf — when the father felt the ship drifting aimlessly, its pilot lost, and he himself steered her through the night waters, groaning deeply, his heart shaken by his friend's fate: "O Palinurus, you trusted too much in a calm sky and sea; you will lie naked on an unknown shore."

======== Aeneid — Book VI ========

1| So he speaks, weeping, and gives his fleet free rein, and at last glides in to the Euboean shores of Cumae. They turn their prows to face the sea; then the anchors with their gripping teeth held the ships fast, and the curved sterns fringe the shore. A band of young men leaps out eagerly onto the Hesperian shore; some look for the seeds of fire hidden in veins of flint, some ravage the woods, the thick haunts of wild beasts, and point out the streams they have found. But dutiful Aeneas makes for the heights over which Apollo presides on high, and for the secret place, far off, of the dread Sibyl, a vast cave, into whom the Delian prophet breathes great mind and spirit and reveals the future. Now they come into the groves of Trivia and under the golden roof.
14| Daedalus, as the story goes, fleeing the kingdom of Minos, dared to trust himself to the sky on swift wings, floated by an unaccustomed path toward the cold North, and at last came lightly to rest above the citadel of Chalcis. Here, first restored to the earth, he dedicated to you, Phoebus, the rowing of his wings and constructed a vast temple. On the doors is the death of Androgeos; then the children of Cecrops, ordered to pay as penalty — a pitiful thing — the bodies of seven sons every year; there stands the urn, the lots drawn. Facing it, the land of Cnossos rises from the sea to match: here is the cruel love of the bull, Pasiphae mated with him by stealth, and the mixed breed, the two-formed offspring, the Minotaur, record of an unspeakable passion; here is that laborious house and its inextricable maze. But Daedalus himself, pitying the great love of the princess, unraveled the tricks and windings of the building, guiding blind footsteps with a thread. You too, Icarus, would have had a large share in so great a work, if grief had allowed. Twice he had tried to shape your fall in gold; twice the father's hands dropped. They would have gone on to scan everything with their eyes, had not Achates, sent ahead, now arrived, accompanied by the priestess serving Phoebus and Trivia, Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus, who says to the king: "This is no time for looking at sights like these. Now it would be better to sacrifice seven bullocks from a herd untouched by the yoke, and as many sheep chosen as custom requires." Having spoken so to Aeneas — and the men do not delay the sacred commands — the priestess calls the Trojans into the high temple.
42| The huge side of the Euboean cliff is hollowed out into a cave, to which a hundred wide approaches lead, a hundred mouths, from which rush as many voices, the answers of the Sibyl. They had come to the threshold, when the maiden cried: "It is time to ask your fate: the god, look, the god!" As she spoke these words before the doors, suddenly her face, her color changed, her hair fell out of its arrangement; her breast heaves, her wild heart swells with frenzy, and she seems taller, her voice no longer mortal, since she is breathed upon by the power of the god, now closer. "Are you slow to make your vows and prayers," she says, "Trojan Aeneas? Are you slow? For not until then will the great mouths of the awestruck house open." So she spoke and fell silent. A chill tremor ran through the hard bones of the Trojans, and the king pours out prayers from the depths of his heart: "Phoebus, who have always pitied the heavy sufferings of Troy, who guided the Dardan arrow and hand of Paris against the body of Achilles, son of Aeacus: under your leadership I have entered so many seas that skirt great lands, the remote tribes of the Massylians and the fields that lie before the Syrtes; now at last we grasp the shores of Italy, that kept fleeing from us.
62| Let this be as far as Troy's fortune follows us. You too may now rightly spare the people of Pergamum, all you gods and goddesses to whom Ilium and the great glory of Dardania were an offense. And you, most holy prophetess, who know the future in advance, grant — I ask for no kingdom not owed me by my fates — that the Trojans may settle in Latium, with their wandering gods and the storm-tossed divine powers of Troy. Then I will found a temple of solid marble to Phoebus and Trivia, and festal days named after Phoebus. A great sanctuary awaits you too in our realm: for here I will place your oracles and the secret fates told to my people, and I will consecrate chosen men, gracious one. Only do not entrust your verses to leaves, or they may fly away in disorder, the playthings of the rushing winds: sing them yourself, I beg you." He ended his speech.
77| But the prophetess, not yet submitting to Phoebus, rages wildly in the cave, as though she might shake the great god from her breast; all the more he wearies her foaming mouth, taming her wild heart, and shapes her by his pressure. And now the hundred huge mouths of the house have opened of their own accord and carry the prophetess's answers through the air: "You who have at last come through the great dangers of the sea — but worse ones await on land — the Dardans will come into the kingdom of Lavinium; put that care from your heart; but they will wish they had not come. Wars, terrible wars, I see, and the Tiber foaming with much blood. You will not lack a Simois or a Xanthus or a Greek camp; another Achilles has already been born in Latium, himself also the son of a goddess. Nor will Juno, fastened upon the Trojans, ever be absent, while you, a suppliant in your need, will beg every Italian people, every city! The cause of so great an evil will again be a foreign bride for the Trojans, again a foreign marriage. Do not yield to misfortunes, but go against them all the more boldly, as far as your Fortune lets you. The first road to safety — what you would least expect — will open from a Greek city."
98| With such words from the inner shrine, the Cumaean Sibyl chants her dreadful riddles and bellows from the cave, wrapping truth in obscurity: Apollo shakes the reins on her as she raves and turns the goad beneath her breast. As soon as the frenzy gave way and her wild mouth fell quiet, the hero Aeneas began: "No kind of hardship, maiden, rises up before me in a new or unexpected form; I have foreseen everything and gone through it in my mind beforehand. I ask for one thing: since this is said to be the gate of the king of the underworld, and the dark marsh formed where Acheron overflows, may it be granted to me to go into the sight and face of my dear father; teach me the way and open the sacred doors. I carried him out through flames and a thousand pursuing weapons on these shoulders and brought him out from the midst of the enemy; he went on my journey with me, and endured with me all the seas and all the threats of sea and sky, weak as he was, beyond his strength and the lot of old age. Indeed, it was he who, in prayer, gave me the instruction to seek you as a suppliant and come to your threshold. Kindly one, I beg you, pity the son and the father (for you have power over everything, and Hecate did not set you in charge of Avernus's groves for nothing), if Orpheus could call up his wife's shade, relying on his lyre of Thrace and its ringing strings, if Pollux ransomed his brother by taking turns at death and travels the road back and forth so many times. Why should I mention Theseus, why great Hercules? I too trace my family to Jupiter the highest."
124| With such words he was praying and holding the altars, when the prophetess began to speak: "Offspring of the blood of the gods, Trojan son of Anchises, the descent to Avernus is easy: night and day the door of black Dis stands open; but to retrace your steps and make your way out to the upper air, this is the task, this is the toil. A few, whom kindly Jupiter has loved or whose blazing courage has lifted to the heavens, sons of gods, have been able to do it. Woods cover all the middle ground, and Cocytus gliding around with its dark windings encircles it. But if your heart has such great love, if you have such a great desire to cross the Stygian lake twice, to see black Tartarus twice, and if it pleases you to indulge in this mad toil, hear what must be done first. In a shady tree hides a golden bough, golden in leaves and in its pliant stem, said to be sacred to Juno of the underworld; the whole grove covers it, and shadows close it in with dark valleys. But no one is allowed to go into the secret places of the earth before he has plucked from the tree this golden-haired fruit. Beautiful Proserpina has established that this be brought to her as her own gift. When the first is torn off, another does not fail, golden too, and the twig puts forth leaves of the same metal.
145| So search for it high up with your eyes, and when you have found it, pluck it with your hand in the proper way; for it will follow of its own accord and easily, if the fates are calling you; otherwise you will not be able to overcome it with any strength or tear it off with hard iron. Besides, the lifeless body of a friend of yours lies there (alas, you do not know it) and pollutes your whole fleet with death, while you seek an oracle and hang about on our threshold. Bring him back to his own place first and bury him in a tomb. Lead black sheep; let those be your first atoning sacrifices. Only then will you look on the groves of the Styx and the kingdoms that are closed to the living." She spoke, and with lips pressed together fell silent.
156| Aeneas sets out, leaving the cave, his eyes fixed, his face sad, and turns over in his mind the hidden outcomes. Faithful Achates goes with him as a companion and plants his steps with equal anxiety. They exchanged many words with one another in different talk, about which lifeless comrade, which body to be buried, the prophetess meant. And as they came, they see Misenus on the dry shore, struck down by an undeserved death, Misenus the son of Aeolus, than whom no other was better at rousing men with bronze and kindling war with song. He had been the companion of great Hector, and around Hector he went into battles, distinguished with trumpet and spear. After victorious Achilles stripped Hector of life, this bravest of heroes had joined himself as a companion to Trojan Aeneas, following a leader no lesser. But on that day, while he was foolishly making the sea resound with a hollow shell and calling the gods to a contest with his song, Triton, a jealous rival, if it is right to believe it, caught the man among the rocks and drowned him in the foaming wave. So all of them were crying out around him in great uproar, above all dutiful Aeneas. Then, without delay, weeping, they hurry to carry out the Sibyl's orders, and compete in heaping up the altar of the tomb with trees and raising it to the sky. They go into an ancient forest, the deep dens of wild beasts; pitch pines fall, the oak rings, struck by axes, and ash logs and splittable oak are split by wedges; they roll huge rowan trees down from the mountains.
183| And Aeneas, in the midst of such work, is the first to urge on his comrades and arms himself with the same tools. And he himself turns these thoughts over in his sad heart as he gazes at the immense forest, and by chance prays like this: "If only that golden bough on its tree would show itself to us now in so great a grove! For truly everything that the prophetess said about you, Misenus, alas, was only too true." He had hardly said this when by chance a pair of doves came flying from the sky right before the man's eyes, and settled on the green ground. Then the great hero recognized his mother's birds and prayed gladly: "Be my guides, oh, if there is any way, and direct your course through the air to the groves where the rich branch shades the fertile ground. And you, goddess mother, do not fail me in this uncertain situation." So he spoke, and he halted his steps, watching what signs they give, where they continue to go. As they fed, they advanced in flight only as far as the eyes of those following could keep them in sight. Then, when they came to the jaws of foul-smelling Avernus, they quickly rose, and gliding through the clear air the pair settled on the longed-for place, on the tree, from which the different-colored gleam of gold shone through the branches. As mistletoe in the woods in the cold of winter is wont to be green with new leaves, a plant its own tree does not sow, and to wrap saffron-colored fruit around smooth trunks, such was the look of the gold in the leafy holm oak, so the gold leaf rustled in the gentle breeze. Aeneas seizes it at once and eagerly breaks it off, though it clings, and carries it under the roof of the prophetess Sibyl.
212| Meanwhile, no less, the Trojans on the shore were weeping for Misenus and paying their last respects to his ungrateful ashes. First they built a huge pyre, rich with pine torches and cut oak, and they weave its sides with dark foliage and set mournful cypresses before it, and adorn the top with gleaming weapons. Some prepare warm water and bronze cauldrons boiling over the fire, and bathe and anoint the body of the cold man. There is lamentation. Then, having wept over his limbs, they lay them on the bier and throw purple robes over them, his familiar garments. Some took up the great bier, a sad service, and with faces turned away, in the manner of their ancestors, held the torch beneath it. Gifts of incense, food, and bowls of poured oil are heaped up and burned. After the ashes had fallen in and the flame had died down, they washed the remains and the thirsty embers with wine, and Corynaeus gathered the bones and covered them in a bronze urn. He also carried pure water three times around his comrades, sprinkling them with light dew from a branch of fruitful olive, and purified the men and spoke the last words. But dutiful Aeneas raises a tomb of huge size for the man, with his own weapons, his oar and trumpet, under a lofty mountain, which is now named Misenus for him and keeps his name forever through the ages.
236| When this was done, he quickly carries out the Sibyl's instructions. There was a deep cave, huge, with a vast gaping mouth, rocky, protected by a black lake and the darkness of the woods, over which no flying creatures could with impunity direct their course on their wings; such a vapor, pouring out from the black jaws, rose to the vault above. [From this the Greeks called the place by the name Aornus.] Here first the priestess stationed four black-backed bullocks and poured wine on their foreheads, and, plucking the topmost bristles from between the horns, placed them on the sacred fire as first offerings, calling aloud on Hecate, powerful in heaven and in Erebus. Others put knives under the throats and catch the warm blood in bowls. Aeneas himself strikes with his sword a lamb with black fleece for the mother of the Furies and her great sister, and a barren cow for you, Proserpina; then he begins nocturnal altars for the king of the Styx and lays whole bulls' entrails on the flames, pouring rich oil over the burning innards. But look, at the threshold of the first sunlight and the sunrise, the ground began to bellow beneath their feet, and the wooded ridges to move, and dogs seemed to howl through the shadow as the goddess approached. "Away, far away, you uninitiated!" cries the prophetess, "and keep away from the whole grove; and you, enter the way and draw your sword from its sheath: now is the time for courage, Aeneas, now for a steady heart." Having said this much, in a frenzy she plunged into the open cave; he keeps pace with his guide as she goes, with steps that are not timid.
264| Gods who hold sway over souls, and silent shades, and Chaos and Phlegethon, places widely silent in night, may it be right for me to speak what I have heard, and by your will to reveal things sunk deep in earth and darkness.
268| They went on, dark, under the lonely night, through the shadow and through the empty halls of Dis and his insubstantial realm, like a journey in the woods under a doubtful moon and grudging light, when Jupiter has buried the sky in shade and black night has stolen the color from everything. Right before the entrance, in the very jaws of Orcus, Grief and vengeful Cares have placed their beds; pale Diseases live there, and grim Old Age, and Fear, and Hunger that urges to crime, and foul Want, forms dreadful to see, and Death and Toil; then Sleep, kin to Death, and the guilty Joys of the mind, and, on the threshold opposite, deadly War, and the iron chambers of the Furies, and mad Discord, her viper hair bound up in bloody ribbons. In the middle a dark elm spreads its boughs and aged arms, huge, the tree where, people say, empty Dreams make their home, clinging under every leaf. And beyond these there are many monstrous creatures of all kinds: Centaurs stable at the doors, and double-formed Scyllas, and hundred-fold Briareus, and the Lernaean beast hissing dreadfully, and the Chimaera armed with flames, Gorgons and Harpies, and the shape of the three-bodied shade. Here, in sudden terror, Aeneas seizes his sword and holds its drawn edge out against them as they come, and if his experienced companion had not warned him that these were thin lives without bodies, flitting about under a hollow semblance of form, he would have rushed in and slashed at the shades with his blade in vain.
295| From here the road leads to the waters of Tartarean Acheron. Here a whirlpool, thick with mud and a vast abyss, seethes and belches all its sand into Cocytus. A ferryman guards these waters and streams, Charon, dreadful in his squalor; a great mass of unkempt white hair lies on his chin, his eyes stand fixed with flame, and a filthy cloak hangs from his shoulders by a knot. He himself drives the boat with a pole and tends the sails, and carries the bodies across in his rust-colored skiff; he is already old, but a god's old age is raw and green. Here the whole crowd came pouring toward the banks: mothers and men, the bodies of great-hearted heroes who had finished with life, boys and unmarried girls, and young men placed on the pyre before their parents' eyes. They were as many as the leaves that fall in the woods at the first frost of autumn, or as the birds that gather in flocks to land from the deep sea, when the cold season drives them across the water and sends them to sunny lands. They stood there begging to be the first to cross, and stretched out their hands in longing for the farther shore.
315| But the grim boatman takes now these, now those, while others he thrusts far back and keeps away from the sand. Aeneas, astonished and stirred by the commotion, said: "Tell me, maiden, what does this crowding at the river mean? What do the souls want? By what distinction do these leave the banks, while those sweep the dark shallows with oars?" The aged priestess answered him briefly: "Son of Anchises, surest offspring of the gods, you are looking at the deep waters of Cocytus and the Stygian swamp, by whose power the gods fear to swear and break their word. All this crowd you see is helpless and unburied; that ferryman is Charon; those the water carries have been buried. It is not allowed to carry anyone across the dreadful banks and hoarse currents until their bones have found rest in a grave. For a hundred years they wander and flit about these shores; only then are they admitted and see again the pools they long for." The son of Anchises halted and held back his steps, thinking over many things and pitying in his heart their unjust lot. There he sees, grieving and lacking the honor of death, Leucaspis and Orontes, leader of the Lycian fleet, whom the South Wind overwhelmed as they sailed together from Troy over stormy seas, wrapping ship and men in water.
337| Look, the helmsman Palinurus was coming toward him, who not long ago on the voyage from Libya, while he was watching the stars, had fallen from the stern and been thrown out into the middle of the waves. When Aeneas could just recognize him, sorrowful in the deep shadow, he spoke to him first: "Which of the gods, Palinurus, snatched you from us and drowned you in the middle of the sea? Tell me. For Apollo, never before found false, deceived my mind with this one answer: he sang that you would be safe on the sea and would reach the shores of Ausonia. Is this the faith of his promise?" But Palinurus said: "Neither did Phoebus' tripod deceive you, leader, son of Anchises, nor did a god drown me in the sea. For the helm, torn off by chance with great force, which I clung to, assigned as its guard and steering our course, I dragged down with me as I fell headlong. I swear by the rough seas that I felt no such fear for myself as I did that your ship, stripped of its gear and robbed of its helmsman, would fail amid such towering waves. For three winter nights the South Wind, violent on the water, carried me over the boundless sea; on the fourth dawn, lifted high on the crest of a wave, I could just make out Italy.
358| "Little by little I was swimming toward land; I was already safe, if a cruel people had not attacked me with their blades as I was weighed down by my soaking clothes and grasping with hooked hands at the rough crags of the mountain, and in their ignorance taken me for plunder. Now the waves hold me, and the winds roll me along the shore. So I beg you, by the pleasant light of heaven and its breezes, by your father, by your hopes for Iulus as he grows, rescue me from these troubles, unconquered one. Either cast earth over me, for you can, and seek again the harbor of Velia; or, if there is any way, if your divine mother shows you one (for I do not think you are preparing to cross such great rivers and sail the Stygian marsh without the will of the gods), give your right hand to a wretched man and take me with you across the waters, so that in death at least I may rest in a peaceful place." He had said these words when the prophetess began: "Where, Palinurus, does this terrible desire of yours come from? Will you, unburied, look upon the Stygian waters and the stern river of the Furies, or come to the bank without being bidden? Stop hoping that the decrees of the gods can be bent by prayer, but take my words and remember them as comfort in your hard lot.
378| For the neighboring peoples, driven far and wide through their cities by signs from heaven, will appease your bones, build a tomb, and send solemn offerings to the tomb, and the place will keep the name of Palinurus forever." With these words his troubles were driven out, and for a short while grief was banished from his sad heart; he is glad that a land bears his name.
384| So they complete the journey they had begun and draw near the river. As soon as the boatman saw them, from the Stygian water, going through the silent wood and turning their steps toward the bank, he spoke first, challenging them on his own initiative: "Whoever you are, who come armed to our river, say at once why you have come, and stop right there, and hold your step. This is the place of shades, of sleep and drowsy night: it is forbidden to ferry living bodies in the Stygian boat; and in truth I was not glad to receive Hercules when he came over the lake, nor Theseus and Pirithous, though they were born of gods and unconquered in strength. One of them reached for the guardian of Tartarus with his hand, to put him in chains, and dragged him trembling from the very throne of the king; the others tried to carry off the queen from Dis's bedchamber." The prophetess of Amphrysus answered briefly: "There are no such plots here (stop being alarmed), and these weapons bring no violence; the huge doorkeeper may bark forever in his cave and terrify the bloodless shades, and chaste Proserpina may keep her uncle's threshold. Trojan Aeneas, outstanding for his devotion and for his arms, is going down to his father, to the lowest shades of Erebus.
405| If the image of such great devotion moves you not at all, then at least you will recognize this branch" (she reveals the branch, which had been hidden under her robe). Then his swollen heart settles from its anger; nothing more is said than this. Marveling at the revered gift, the fated rod, seen after so long a time, he turns his dark-blue boat and draws near to the bank. Then he drives off the other souls who were sitting along the long benches, and clears the gangways; at the same time he takes huge Aeneas into the hull. The stitched skiff groaned under the weight, and, leaking, took in a great deal of marsh water. At last he sets the prophetess and the hero safely across the river, on shapeless mud and gray-green sedge.
417| This realm echoes with the barking of huge Cerberus from his three throats, as he lies monstrous in the cave opposite. Seeing his neck already bristling with snakes, the prophetess throws him a cake drugged with honey and medicinal grain. He, opening his three throats in raging hunger, snatches the thrown morsel, and his huge back relaxes as he sprawls on the ground and stretches out, enormous, across the whole cave. Aeneas, with the guard buried in sleep, takes the entrance and quickly escapes the bank of the water that none cross twice.
426| At once voices are heard, a great wailing, and the weeping souls of infants, whom a black day carried off at the very threshold, cut off from sweet life and torn from the breast, and plunged into bitter death. Next to them are those condemned to death on a false charge. And these places have not been assigned without lot and without judge: Minos the examiner shakes the urn; he summons the council of the silent and learns their lives and their crimes. The next places are held by the sorrowful, who, though innocent, brought death on themselves by their own hand and, hating the light, threw away their lives. How they would now wish to bear poverty and harsh toil in the upper air! Divine law forbids it, and the sad, unlovely marsh with its water binds them, and Styx, poured nine times around, confines them. Not far from here are shown, spreading out on every side, the Fields of Mourning; that is what they call them. Here hidden paths conceal those whom harsh love has consumed with cruel wasting, and a myrtle wood covers them all around; their cares do not leave them even in death. In these places he sees Phaedra and Procris, and sorrowful Eriphyle showing the wounds from her cruel son, and Evadne and Pasiphae; Laodamia goes as their companion, and Caeneus, once a young man, now a woman, and turned back by fate again into her former shape.
450| Among them Phoenician Dido, her wound still fresh, was wandering in a great wood. As soon as the Trojan hero stood near her and recognized her dim figure through the shadows, as one who sees, or thinks he has seen, the moon rise through the clouds in the first days of the month, he shed tears and spoke to her with tender love: "Unhappy Dido, so the news that came to me was true, that you were dead and had followed your end with the sword? Alas, was I the cause of your death? I swear by the stars, by the powers above, and by whatever faith there is deep under the earth: unwillingly, queen, I left your shore. But the commands of the gods, which now force me to go through these shadows, through places overgrown with decay, and through deep night, drove me by their authority; nor could I believe that by leaving I would bring you so great a grief. Stay your step, and do not withdraw from my sight. Whom are you fleeing? This is the last time that fate lets me speak to you." With such words Aeneas tried to soothe her burning, fierce-eyed spirit and brought tears to his own eyes. She kept her eyes fixed on the ground, turned away, and her face was no more moved by the speech he had begun than if she were standing there as hard flint or a crag of Marpesian marble. At last she tore herself away and fled, hostile, into the shady grove, where her former husband Sychaeus answers her cares and matches her love. Aeneas, no less shaken by her unjust fate, follows her far with his tears and pities her as she goes.
477| From there he works his way along the road he has been given. And now they were reaching the farthest fields, which those famous in war frequent, set apart. Here Tydeus meets him, here Parthenopaeus, renowned in arms, and the phantom of pale Adrastus, here the Dardans who fell in war and were much mourned in the world above; seeing them all in a long line, he groaned, Glaucus, Medon and Thersilochus, Antenor's three sons, and Polyboetes, priest of Ceres, and Idaeus, still holding his chariot, still holding his arms. The souls crowd around him on right and left, and it is not enough to have seen him once; they like to linger, to walk beside him, and to learn the reasons for his coming. But the Greek leaders and Agamemnon's battle lines, when they saw the man and his gleaming arms through the shadows, trembled with great fear; some turned their backs, as they once ran for the ships, some raised a thin cry: the shout they began deceives their gaping mouths.
494| And here he sees Deiphobus, son of Priam, mangled over his whole body, his face cruelly torn, his face and both hands, his temples stripped of ears that had been cut off, and his nostrils lopped by a shameful wound. He barely recognized him, trembling and hiding his terrible punishments, and spoke to him first in familiar tones: "Deiphobus, mighty in arms, born of the high blood of Teucer, who wanted to exact such cruel penalties? Who was allowed to do so much to you? A report reached me that on the last night you had fallen, worn out by the great slaughter of the Pelasgians, on top of a heap of tangled dead. Then I myself set up an empty tomb on the Rhoetean shore and called your spirit three times in a loud voice. Your name and arms keep the place; but you, my friend, I was not able to see, nor to lay you in your native earth as I departed." To this the son of Priam replied: "My friend, nothing has been left undone by you; you have paid Deiphobus and his shade every funeral due. But my own fate and the deadly crime of the Spartan woman plunged me into these evils; she left me these memorials. For you know how we spent that last night among false joys; and it is only too necessary to remember it.
515| When the fateful horse came with a leap over the steep heights of Pergamum and brought in its heavy belly armed infantry, she, pretending to lead the Phrygian women in a chorus, crying out in ecstasy around the rites, held a great flame in their midst and called the Greeks from the top of the citadel. Then I, worn out with cares and weighed down with sleep, was held by my unlucky bedroom, and a sweet, deep rest pressed on me as I lay there, most like peaceful death. Meanwhile my excellent wife removes all the weapons from the house, and had taken my trusty sword from under my pillow. She summons Menelaus into the house and throws open the doors, no doubt hoping this would be a great gift to her lover, and that the reputation of her old wrongs could be wiped out in this way. Why do I delay? They burst into the bedroom, and with them, joined as a companion and urger of crimes, the grandson of Aeolus. Gods, repay the Greeks in kind, if I ask for punishment with a righteous mouth. But come, tell me in turn what chances have brought you here alive. Do you come driven by wanderings on the sea, or by the warning of the gods? Or what fortune wearies you, that you should come to these sad houses without sun, these troubled places?"
535| In this exchange of words Dawn, in her rosy four-horse chariot, had already crossed the middle of the sky's axis on her course through the heavens; and perhaps they would have spent all the time granted them on such talk, but his companion warned him, and the Sibyl spoke briefly: "Night is rushing on, Aeneas; we are spending the hours weeping. This is the place where the road splits in two directions: the right, which leads under the walls of great Dis, is our way to Elysium; but the left exacts punishment from the wicked and sends them to wicked Tartarus." Deiphobus answered: "Do not be angry, great priestess; I will go, I will fill out the number and be given back to the darkness. Go, go, our glory; enjoy a better fate." He said only this, and in the middle of the word turned his steps away.
548| Aeneas suddenly looks back and sees, under a cliff on the left, broad walls surrounded by a triple wall, which a swift river encircles with torrents of flame, Tartarean Phlegethon, rolling along booming rocks. In front is a huge gate with columns of solid adamant, so that no strength of men, not even the heavenly gods themselves, could cut it down in war; an iron tower stands high in the air, and Tisiphone, sitting there with her robe girded up and stained with blood, guards the entrance, sleepless, night and day. From here groans can be heard, and the sound of savage lashes, then the grating of iron and the dragging of chains. Aeneas halted and took in the din with terror. "What kinds of crime are these? Maiden, tell me; with what punishments are they pressed? What is this great wailing that rises to the air?" Then the prophetess began to speak: "Famous leader of the Trojans, no pure person is allowed to set foot on the threshold of the wicked; but when Hecate put me in charge of the groves of Avernus, she herself taught me the gods' punishments and led me through them all. Cretan Rhadamanthus holds this harshest of realms; he punishes and hears out deceits, and forces each to confess whatever crime he committed in the world above, taking joy in a pointless theft, and put off atoning for until late death.
570| At once avenging Tisiphone, girt with a whip, leaps at the guilty and lashes them, and, holding out fierce snakes in her left hand, calls the savage troop of her sisters. Only then do the accursed gates open, grating on their horrifying hinge. Do you see what kind of guard sits at the entrance, what shape watches over the threshold? Inside, a Hydra even fiercer, with fifty black gaping mouths, has her seat. Then Tartarus itself opens twice as far down, and stretches into the shadows as far as the view up to heavenly Olympus in the sky. Here the ancient race of Earth, the Titan youth, hurled down by lightning, writhe at the very bottom. Here too I saw the twin sons of Aloeus, enormous bodies, who tried with their hands to tear down the great sky and thrust Jupiter from the realms above. I saw also Salmoneus paying a cruel penalty, for imitating Jupiter's flames and the thunder of Olympus. Borne by four horses and shaking a torch, he went in triumph among the peoples of Greece and through the city in the middle of Elis, and demanded for himself the honor due to the gods, a madman, who imitated storm clouds and inimitable lightning with bronze and the beat of horses' hooves.
592| But the almighty father hurled his weapon from among the thick clouds, not torches nor smoky light from pine brands, and drove him headlong in a huge whirlwind. Tityos too could be seen, foster child of Earth who bears all things; his body stretches over nine whole acres, and a monstrous vulture with hooked beak, gnawing at his immortal liver and entrails fertile for punishment, probes them for its feast and lives beneath his deep chest, and no rest is given to the fibers as they grow back. Why should I tell of the Lapiths, Ixion and Pirithous? Over them hangs a black rock, always about to slip and looking as if it is falling; golden couches gleam on high festal beds, and feasts are laid before their eyes with royal luxury; beside them the eldest of the Furies reclines and keeps them from touching the tables with their hands, and rises, lifting a torch, and thunders in their faces. Here, shut in, those await punishment who hated their brothers while life lasted, or struck a parent, or wove deceit against a client, or who brooded alone over riches they had found and set aside no share for their own (the largest crowd), and those killed for adultery, and those who followed impious arms and did not fear to betray their masters' pledged right hands. Do not ask to be told what punishment, or what shape or fortune has sunk these men.
616| Some roll a huge stone, or hang stretched on the spokes of wheels; unlucky Theseus sits, and will sit forever, and most wretched Phlegyas warns everyone and bears witness in a great voice through the shadows: 'Learn justice, be warned, and do not scorn the gods.' This one sold his country for gold and set a tyrant over it; he made laws and unmade them for a price; this one invaded his daughter's bed and an illicit marriage. All of them dared some monstrous crime, and achieved what they dared. Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths, a voice of iron, could I include all the forms of crime, or run through all the names of punishments."
628| When the aged priestess of Phoebus had said this, she added: "But come now, take the road and finish the task you have undertaken; let us hurry. I see walls built in the forges of the Cyclopes, and the gates under the arch facing us, where our instructions command us to lay down these gifts." She had spoken, and walking side by side through the dark ways they quickly cross the space between and approach the doors. Aeneas takes the entrance, sprinkles his body with fresh water, and fixes the branch on the threshold in front of him.
637| When all this was finished and the goddess's gift duly delivered, they came to the joyful places, the pleasant green lawns of the groves of the fortunate, and the blessed homes. Here a broader sky clothes the fields in radiant light, and they know their own sun and their own stars. Some exercise their limbs on grassy wrestling grounds, compete in games and wrestle on golden sand; some beat out dances with their feet and speak verses. The Thracian priest, too, in his long robe, accompanies their measures with the seven distinct notes, plucking the same melody now with his fingers, now with an ivory plectrum. Here is the ancient family of Teucer, a most beautiful line, great-hearted heroes born in better years: Ilus, Assaracus, and Dardanus, founder of Troy. From a distance he marvels at the men's arms and empty chariots; spears stand fixed in the ground, and horses, unyoked, graze freely over the plain. The delight they took in chariots and arms while alive, the care they took in feeding sleek horses, follows them when they are laid to rest in the earth. Look, he sees others to right and left feasting on the grass and joyfully singing a paean in chorus among a fragrant grove of laurels, from which the river Eridanus flows in abundance up above through the wood.
660| Here is the company of those who suffered wounds fighting for their country, and priests who stayed pure while life lasted, and faithful poets who spoke words worthy of Phoebus, and those who enriched life through discovered arts, and those who made others remember them by their services: the brows of all these are bound with a snow-white headband. As they crowded around, the Sibyl addressed them, Musaeus above all (for the great crowd holds him in its midst and looks up at him, standing out with his shoulders high): "Tell me, blessed souls, and you, best of poets, what region, what place holds Anchises? It is for him that we have come and crossed the great rivers of Erebus." And the hero gave her this brief answer: "No one has a fixed home; we live in shady groves, and inhabit couches by the riverbanks and meadows fresh with streams. But you, if your heart is set on it, cross this ridge, and I will soon set you on an easy path." He spoke, and went before them, and shows them the shining plains from above; then they leave the mountaintop.
679| But father Anchises, deep in a green valley, was reviewing with careful attention the souls shut away there who were destined to go up to the light above, and happened to be counting the whole number of his descendants, his dear grandsons, and their fates and fortunes, their characters and deeds. When he saw Aeneas coming toward him across the grass, he eagerly stretched out both hands, tears poured down his cheeks, and a word fell from his mouth: "You have come at last, and your devotion, which your father waited for, has overcome the hard journey? Am I allowed to look at your face, my son, and to hear and answer familiar voices? So indeed I reckoned in my mind and believed it would be, counting up the days, and my concern did not deceive me. Over what lands, over what great seas have you traveled before I receive you! Tossed by what dangers, my son! How I feared that the realm of Libya might harm you!" But Aeneas said: "Your sad image, father, your image, coming to me again and again, drove me to make my way to this threshold; my ships stand in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Let me clasp your right hand, let me, father, and do not draw yourself away from my embrace." As he said this, he was also drenching his face with a flood of tears. Three times he tried there to throw his arms around his neck; three times the image, grasped in vain, slipped through his hands, like the light winds and most like a winged dream.
703| Meanwhile Aeneas sees in a secluded valley a sheltered grove and the rustling thickets of a wood, and the river Lethe, which flows past the peaceful homes. Around it countless nations and peoples were flying about: just as in the meadows, when in the clear days of summer bees settle on the various flowers and stream around the white lilies, the whole field hums with their murmur. Aeneas shudders at the sudden sight and, not understanding, asks the reasons: what are those rivers there beyond, and who are the men who have filled the banks in such a great throng? Then his father Anchises said: "They are souls to whom fate owes second bodies, and at the water of the river Lethe they drink untroubled draughts and long forgetfulness. I have long wanted to tell you of these and show them to you face to face, to count off this line of my descendants, so that you may rejoice with me all the more that Italy has been found." "Father, must we think that some souls go from here up to the sky and again return to sluggish bodies? What is this terrible desire for light in these poor souls?" "I will tell you, my son, and not keep you in suspense," Anchises replies, and lays out each point in order.
724| "First of all, a spirit within nourishes the sky and the earth and the watery plains, the shining globe of the moon and the Titan stars, and a mind, spread through the limbs, moves the whole mass and mingles with the great body. From it come the races of men and cattle, the lives of winged creatures, and the monsters the sea carries beneath its marble surface. These seeds have a fiery force and a heavenly origin, so far as harmful bodies do not slow them and earthly limbs and dying flesh do not dull them. Because of this they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice, and, shut up in darkness and a blind prison, they do not see the sky. Even when life has left them on their last day, still not every evil, and not every bodily plague, leaves these wretched souls entirely, and it is inevitable that many things that have long grown together in them become deeply ingrained in strange ways. So they are disciplined with punishments and pay the penalty for old wrongs: some are stretched out, hung empty to the winds; for others the guilt that stains them is washed out beneath a vast whirlpool or burned away by fire. Each of us endures his own shade's lot. After that we are sent through broad Elysium, and a few of us hold the happy fields, until the long day, when time's cycle has been completed, takes away the ingrained stain and leaves pure the heavenly sense and the fire of simple air. All of these, when they have rolled the wheel for a thousand years, the god calls out to the river Lethe in a great company, so that, forgetful, they may revisit the vault above and begin to want to return into bodies."
752| Anchises had spoken, and draws his son and with him the Sibyl into the middle of the assembly and the murmuring crowd, and takes a mound from which he could scan them all in a long line as they faced him, and learn the faces of those coming.
756| "Now come, I will set out in words what glory will follow the Dardan line, what descendants await you from the Italian people, illustrious souls who will come to bear our name, and I will teach you your own fate. That young man you see leaning on a headless spear holds the place nearest to the light by lot; he will be the first to rise to the air above, with Italian blood mixed in his: Silvius, an Alban name, your last-born son, whom your wife Lavinia will bring up for you in the woods when you are old and late in life, as a king and father of kings, from whom our family will rule in Alba Longa. Next to him is Procas, glory of the Trojan people, and Capys and Numitor and Silvius Aeneas, who will bring back your name, outstanding alike in devotion and in arms, if he ever receives Alba to rule. What young men! See what strength they display, and how they wear their brows shaded with the civic oak! They will found for you Nomentum, Gabii, and the city of Fidenae; they will set the Collatine fortresses on the hills, Pometia, the Fort of Inuus, Bola, and Cora.
776| These will be names then; now they are nameless lands. And Mars's son Romulus will also join his grandfather as companion, whom his mother Ilia will bring up from the blood of Assaracus. Do you see how the twin crests stand on his head, and how the father of the gods himself already marks him with his own honor? Look, my son: under his auspices that famous Rome will make her empire equal to the earth, and her spirit to Olympus, and will surround seven hills with a single wall, fortunate in her offspring of men, like the Berecyntian mother, crowned with towers, riding in her chariot through the Phrygian cities, happy in her birth of gods, embracing a hundred grandchildren, all dwellers in heaven, all holding the heights above. Turn your eyes now this way; look at this people, your own Romans. Here is Caesar and all the descendants of Iulus who will come beneath the great vault of the sky. This is the man, this is he, whom you so often hear promised to you, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who will found again a golden age in Latium, over the fields once ruled by Saturn, and will extend his rule beyond the Garamantes and the Indians; the land lies beyond the stars, beyond the paths of the year and the sun, where sky-bearing Atlas turns on his shoulder the axis set with blazing stars.
798| Already now, at his coming, the Caspian kingdoms shudder at the oracles of the gods, and the land of Maeotis, and the mouths of the sevenfold Nile are in turmoil with fear. Nor in truth did Hercules cover so much of the earth, though he pierced the bronze-footed deer, or brought peace to the woods of Erymanthus and made Lerna tremble with his bow; nor did Liber, who in triumph guides his chariot with reins of vine, driving tigers down from the high peak of Nysa. And do we still hesitate to extend our valor by deeds, or does fear prevent us from settling in the land of Ausonia? But who is that, far off, distinguished by olive branches, carrying sacred objects? I recognize the hair and white beard of the Roman king who will found the new city on laws, sent from little Cures and a poor land into great power. After him will come Tullus, who will break his country's peace and rouse idle men to arms, and armies now unused to triumphs. Next to him follows Ancus, more boastful, even now delighting too much in the favor of the people. Do you want to see also the Tarquin kings, and the proud spirit of Brutus the avenger, and the rods of office recovered?
819| He will be the first to receive a consul's authority and the cruel axes, and when his sons stir up new wars, the father will summon them to punishment for the sake of noble liberty — unhappy man, however later ages tell of that deed: love of country will prevail, and a boundless hunger for praise. Look, too, at the Decii and the Drusi in the distance, and Torquatus, savage with his axe, and Camillus bringing back the standards. But those two souls whom you see gleaming in matching armor, in harmony now, while the night holds them down — alas, what a war they will wage between them, if they reach the light of life, what battle lines and slaughter they will stir up: the father-in-law coming down from the Alpine ramparts and the citadel of Monoecus, the son-in-law drawn up with the armies of the East to oppose him! No, my sons, do not make your hearts used to such great wars, do not turn your strong might against the vitals of your country; and you first, you who trace your race from Olympus, show mercy, throw the weapons from your hand, my own blood! — That one will drive his chariot in victory to the lofty Capitol, triumphant over Corinth, renowned for the Achaeans he has slain. That one will overthrow Argos and Agamemnon's Mycenae, and the very son of Aeacus, descendant of Achilles mighty in arms, avenging his Trojan forefathers and Minerva's defiled temple.
841| Who would leave you unmentioned, great Cato, or you, Cossus? Who would pass over the family of the Gracchi, or the two Scipios, two thunderbolts of war, the ruin of Libya, or Fabricius, powerful in his poverty, or you, Serranus, sowing seed in your furrow? Where are you hurrying me, weary as I am, you Fabii? You are that Maximus, the one man who restores our state by delaying. Others, I do not doubt, will hammer out bronze that breathes with a softer touch and draw living faces out of marble; they will plead cases better, trace the paths of the sky with the rod, and name the rising stars. You, Roman, remember to govern the peoples with your power — these will be your arts — to set the habit of peace upon them, to spare the conquered and to war down the proud."
854| So spoke father Anchises, and, as they marveled, he added: "See how Marcellus marches on, distinguished by the spoils of honor, and towers in victory over all men. When a great upheaval throws it into turmoil, he will steady the Roman state; a horseman, he will lay low the Carthaginians and the rebel Gaul, and hang up the third set of captured arms to father Quirinus." And here Aeneas — for he saw walking with him a young man outstanding in beauty and in gleaming armor, but his brow was far from glad and his eyes were downcast — asked: "Who, father, is that, walking beside the man as he goes? His son, or one of the great line of his descendants? What a stir among his companions around him! How much presence he has in himself! But black night flies around his head with its gloomy shadow." Then father Anchises began, with tears welling up: "My son, do not ask about the vast grief of your people. The Fates will only show him to the earth and will not let him stay longer. The Roman race would have seemed to you too powerful, gods above, if these gifts had been its own to keep. What groans of men that Field will send up to the great city of Mars! What funeral rites you will see, Tiber, as you glide past his new tomb!
875| No boy from the Trojan race will raise his Latin forefathers so high in hope, nor will the land of Romulus ever take such pride in any son it has reared. Alas for his devotion, alas for his old-fashioned good faith, and his right hand unconquered in war! No one would have met him in arms unharmed, whether he went against the enemy on foot or dug his spurs into the flanks of a foaming horse. Ah, boy to be pitied, if only you could somehow break your harsh fate — you will be Marcellus. Give me lilies by the handful; let me scatter purple flowers, and at least heap these gifts on my descendant's spirit and perform an empty service." So they roam here and there across the whole region, in the wide fields of air, and survey everything. And when Anchises had led his son through each thing and fired his heart with love of the fame to come, he then tells the hero of the wars he must later wage, teaches him about the Laurentine nations and the city of Latinus, and how he is to avoid or endure each hardship.
893| There are two gates of Sleep: one, they say, is of horn, by which true shades find an easy way out; the other shines, wrought of gleaming white ivory, but by that one the spirits below send false dreams up toward the sky. There, with these words, Anchises escorts his son and the Sibyl together and sends them out through the ivory gate. Aeneas makes his way to the ships and rejoins his companions.
900| Then he sails straight along the coast to the harbor of Caieta. The anchor is thrown from the prow; the sterns stand along the shore.

======== Aeneid — Book VII ========

1| You too, Caieta, nurse of Aeneas, gave our shores everlasting fame by your death; and now your honor guards your resting place, and your name marks your bones in great Hesperia, if that is any glory.
5| But dutiful Aeneas, when the funeral rites were duly paid and the mound of the tomb heaped up, once the deep seas had grown quiet, sets his course under sail and leaves the harbor. Breezes blow on into the night, the bright moon does not deny their voyage, and the sea glitters under her trembling light. They skim close past the coasts of Circe's country, where the wealthy daughter of the Sun makes her unvisited groves ring with ceaseless song, and in her proud halls burns fragrant cedar to light the night, running the shrill comb through the fine threads of her loom. From here could be heard the groans and rage of lions, fighting against their chains and roaring late into the night, and bristly boars and bears raging in their pens, and the shapes of huge wolves howling: men whom the cruel goddess Circe, with her potent herbs, had stripped of human form and clothed with the faces and bodies of beasts. So that the dutiful Trojans should not suffer such monstrous things, carried into the harbor, or come near those dreadful shores, Neptune filled their sails with favorable winds, gave them escape, and carried them past the seething shallows.
25| And now the sea was reddening with the sun's rays, and from the high sky saffron Dawn was shining in her rose-colored chariot, when the winds dropped, every breath suddenly died away, and the oar blades labor in the sluggish marble of the sea. And here Aeneas, looking out from the water, sees a vast grove. Through it the Tiber, with its pleasant stream, bursts out into the sea in rapid eddies, yellow with heavy sand. Around and above, birds of many kinds, at home on the banks and the river's bed, were charming the air with their song and flying through the grove. He orders his companions to change direction and turn their prows toward land, and joyfully enters the shady river.
37| Now come, Erato: who were the kings, what were the times, what was the state of affairs in ancient Latium when the foreign army first brought its fleet to Ausonian shores — this I will unfold, and recall the beginnings of the first battle. You, goddess, you instruct your poet. I will tell of terrible wars, I will tell of battle lines, and kings driven by their passions to their deaths, the Etruscan band, and all Hesperia forced under arms. A greater order of events is born for me; I set in motion a greater work.
46| King Latinus, already old, ruled over fields and towns in a long peace. We are told he was born to Faunus and the Laurentine nymph Marica; Faunus' father was Picus, and Picus claims you, Saturn, as his father: you are the first founder of the line. By the will of the gods Latinus had no son, no male descendant; the one he had was snatched away as he was rising into early youth. A daughter alone kept the house and its great estate, now ripe for a husband, now of full marrying age. Many from great Latium and all Ausonia sought her hand; the one who sought it above all the others was the most handsome of all, Turnus, powerful through his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, whom the royal wife was eager, with a wondrous love, to have joined to her as a son-in-law. But portents from the gods, with various terrors, stand in the way. Within the centre of the palace, in the high inner courts, there was a laurel with sacred leaves, preserved in awe for many years. Father Latinus himself was said to have found it when he was founding his first citadel, to have dedicated it to Phoebus, and to have named his settlers Laurentines after it. To the very top of this tree — wondrous to tell — bees, carried in a dense mass through the clear air with a loud humming, swarmed onto the crown, and, with their feet locked to one another, the sudden swarm hung from the leafy branch.
68| At once the seer said: "We see a foreign man approaching, and a column seeking the same parts from the same parts, and ruling from the top of the citadel." Besides this, while she was lighting the altars with pure torches, standing beside her father, the maiden Lavinia seemed — a horror — to catch fire in her long hair and to be burned in all her finery by crackling flame, her royal tresses alight, her crown alight, brilliant with jewels; then, wrapped in smoke and tawny light, to scatter fire through the whole palace. This was spoken of as truly dreadful and wondrous to see: for the seers foretold that she herself would be glorious in fame and in her fate, but that she portended a great war for her people.
81| Troubled by the portents, the king went to the oracle of his father Faunus, the prophet, and consulted it in the groves beneath tall Albunea, the greatest of the forests, which resounds with a sacred spring and breathes out a deadly vapor from its dark shade. From here the peoples of Italy and all the land of Oenotria seek answers in times of doubt. When the priestess has brought offerings here and, at night in the silence, has lain down on the spread fleeces of slaughtered sheep and sought sleep, she sees many phantoms flitting about in strange ways, hears voices of every kind, enjoys the company of the gods, and speaks with Acheron in the depths of Avernus. Here at that time Father Latinus himself, seeking an answer, was duly sacrificing a hundred woolly sheep, and he lay propped on their hides and the fleeces spread beneath him. Suddenly a voice came back from deep in the grove: "Do not seek to ally your daughter with a Latin marriage, my son, and do not trust the wedding chamber you have prepared. Sons-in-law will come from abroad, who will carry our name to the stars by their blood, and whose descendants will see everything turned and ruled beneath their feet, wherever the sun in its return looks on both Oceans." Latinus did not keep to himself these answers of his father Faunus and the warnings given in the silent night. Rumor, flying far and wide, had already carried them through the Ausonian cities, when the young men of Laomedon's line moored their fleet to the grassy bank of the river.
107| Aeneas, the foremost captains, and handsome Iulus lay down their bodies beneath the branches of a tall tree. They prepare a meal and set out cakes of spelt on the grass beneath the food (Jupiter himself had advised this), and they heap the wheaten base with wild fruit. When the rest was eaten, it happened that scarcity of food drove them to turn their teeth to the thin cake of grain, and with hand and bold jaws they broke the round of the fated crust and did not spare its broad quarters. "Look, are we eating our tables too?" said Iulus, and no more, joking. That remark, when heard, first brought an end to their hardships. His father caught that first word from the boy's lips as he spoke and, awed by the divine will, held on to it. At once he said: "Hail, land owed to me by the Fates, and hail to you, faithful household gods of Troy: here is our home, this is our homeland. For my father Anchises left me such secrets of the Fates (now I remember): 'When hunger, my son, drives you to unknown shores and, with your food gone, forces you to eat your tables, then hope for a home, weary as you are, and remember to place your first buildings there with your own hand and raise a rampart round the houses.' This was that hunger, this was what awaited us at the last, to put an end to our ruin. So come, and with the first light of the sun, cheerful, let us find out what places these are and who lives in them, where the town of this people is, and set out in different directions from the harbor. Now pour libations to Jupiter from the bowls, call on my father Anchises with prayers, and set the wine back on the tables."
135| After speaking so, he wreathed his temples with a leafy branch and prayed to the guardian spirit of the place, to Earth, first of the gods, to the Nymphs, and to the rivers still unknown. Then he called in turn on Night and the rising stars of night, on Jupiter of Ida, on the Phrygian Mother, and on his two parents, one in heaven and one in Erebus. At this the almighty Father thundered three times, bright from high in the sky, and shaking it with his own hand, displayed from the heavens a cloud blazing with rays of light and gold. At once a rumor spread through the Trojan ranks that the day had come to found the walls owed to them. They eagerly renew the feast and, glad at the great omen, set out the mixing bowls and crown the wine.
148| When the next day, rising, lit the lands with its first torch, they set out in different directions to explore the town, the borders, and the coasts of the nation. This was the pool of the spring Numicus, this the river Tiber, here the brave Latins lived. Then the son of Anchises ordered a hundred envoys, chosen from every rank, to go to the king's lofty city, all veiled with branches of Pallas, to carry gifts to the man and ask peace for the Trojans. Without delay they hurry at his order and are carried along at rapid pace. He himself marks out walls with a shallow trench, lays out the site, and rings the first settlement on the shore with battlements and a rampart in the manner of a camp. And now the young men, their journey done, were seeing the towers and lofty roofs of the Latins and approaching the wall. Before the city boys and youths in the first flower of their age were training with horses, breaking in chariots in the dust, drawing sharp bows or hurling tough javelins with their arms, and challenging each other in running and boxing, when a messenger rode ahead on horseback to the ears of the aged king and reported that huge men in strange dress had arrived. The king ordered them to be called inside his house and sat down in the middle on his ancestral throne.
170| There was a majestic building, huge, towering on a hundred columns, at the top of the city: the palace of Laurentine Picus, awesome with woods and with the reverence of his forefathers. Here it was an omen for kings to receive the scepter and raise the first rods of office; this temple was their senate house, this the seat of their sacred banquets. Here, after the ram was sacrificed, the elders used to sit down at long tables. In the entrance hall, too, stood images of the ancestors of old, in order, carved in ancient cedar: Italus and father Sabinus, the planter of vines, who kept a curved pruning hook beneath his statue, old Saturn, and the likeness of Janus with his two faces, and the other kings from the beginning, and men who suffered wounds of Mars fighting for their country. Many weapons besides hang on the sacred doorposts: captured chariots, curved axes, helmet crests, huge bars of city gates, javelins, shields, and beaks torn from ships. Picus himself, tamer of horses, sat there with the augur's staff of Quirinus, wrapped in a short striped robe, and held the sacred shield in his left hand. Circe, his wife, seized by desire for him, struck him with her golden wand, and with her drugs turned him into a bird and spattered his wings with color.
192| In such a temple of the gods, seated on his ancestral throne, Latinus summoned the Trojans into his house, and when they had entered he spoke first, with a calm expression: "Tell me, Dardans (for we are not unaware of your city and your race, and we had heard you were steering your course across the sea), what do you seek? What reason, or what need, has brought your ships over so many blue waters to the shore of Ausonia? Whether you have been driven by a mistake in your route or by storms, such as sailors often suffer on the open sea, you have entered the banks of the river and are sitting in harbor. Do not shun our hospitality, and do not fail to recognize the Latins as the people of Saturn, just not by chains or laws but by their own free will and following the custom of their old god. And indeed I remember (the story is dimmer with the years) that the old Auruncans told it this way: that Dardanus, born in these fields, made his way to the Phrygian cities of Ida and to Thracian Samos, which is now called Samothrace. Setting out from here, from his Tyrrhenian home in Corythus, he is now received by the golden palace on the throne of the starry sky and adds to the number of the gods at their altars."
212| He had spoken, and Ilioneus followed his words in turn with this speech: "King, distinguished son of Faunus, neither did dark storm drive us over the waves and force us to your land, nor did a star or the coast lead us astray from our route. We have all come to this city by design and with willing hearts, driven from a kingdom that was once the greatest the sun saw as it came from the farthest edge of Olympus. Our line began from Jupiter; the Dardan youth rejoice in Jupiter as their ancestor, and our king himself is from the highest descent of Jupiter. Trojan Aeneas has sent us to your threshold. What a storm poured out of savage Mycenae and swept across the plains of Ida, driven by what fates the two worlds, Europe and Asia, clashed, has been heard even by anyone whom the farthest land, where Ocean ebbs away, keeps at a distance, and anyone cut off by the zone of the pitiless sun in the middle of the four zones. After that flood, carried over so many empty seas, we ask for a small home for our ancestral gods, a harmless shore, and water and air open to all. We will not bring dishonor to your kingdom, your fame will not be slight, and the gratitude for so great a deed will not fade, nor will Ausonia ever be sorry to have taken Troy to its bosom.
234| I swear by the destiny of Aeneas and his powerful right hand, whether anyone has tested it in faith or in war and arms: many peoples, many nations (do not scorn us because we of our own accord hold out fillets in our hands and words of entreaty) have sought us out for themselves and wished to join us to them. But the decrees of the gods drove us to seek out your lands by their own commands. From here Dardanus came; to here Apollo calls us back, and with mighty commands urges us on to the Tuscan Tiber and the sacred waters of the spring Numicus. Besides, Aeneas gives you these small gifts from his former fortune, relics saved from burning Troy. With this golden bowl father Anchises poured libations at the altars; this was Priam's dress when, as was the custom, he gave laws to the assembled peoples: the scepter, the sacred headdresses, and the robes made by Trojan women."
249| At these words of Ilioneus, Latinus held his gaze fixed, motionless, rooted to the ground, his eyes moving thoughtfully. The embroidered purple does not move the king, nor does the scepter of Priam, as much as the marriage and wedding chamber of his daughter holds his mind, and he turns over in his heart the oracle of old Faunus: this was the man foretold by the Fates, come from a foreign home, to be his son-in-law and be called to rule with equal auspices, and from him would come offspring outstanding in valor, who would take possession of the whole world by their strength. At last he said joyfully: "May the gods favor our undertakings and their own prophecy! What you wish, Trojan, will be granted. Nor do I scorn your gifts: while Latinus is king, you will not lack the richness of fertile land or the wealth of Troy. Let Aeneas himself come, if he is so eager for us, if he is in a hurry to be joined in friendship and be called an ally, and let him not shrink from friendly faces. Part of the peace will be to have touched the hand of the king. Now, in return, carry back my words to your king. A daughter is mine, whom the oracles from my father's shrine and many portents from heaven do not allow me to join to a husband of our own people. They sing that sons-in-law will come from foreign shores, which is what remains for Latium, men who by their blood will carry our name to the stars. I both believe the Fates demand that man, and, if my mind foresees anything true, I wish it."
274| After speaking so, the father picks out horses from the whole herd (three hundred sleek ones stood in the high stalls). He orders one to be led at once for every Trojan in order, winged-footed horses covered in purple and embroidered rugs (golden chains hang down on their chests, and, covered in gold, they chew tawny gold between their teeth), and for the absent Aeneas a chariot and a pair of horses of heavenly seed, breathing fire from their nostrils, from the breed which crafty Circe stole from her father's herd and bred as bastards by slipping a mare of another stock beneath his horse. With such gifts and with the words of Latinus, the Trojans ride back high on their horses and bring back peace.
286| But look, the savage wife of Jupiter was returning from Inachus's city of Argos, borne through the air, and from far off in the sky, from Sicilian Pachynus onward, she caught sight of joyful Aeneas and the Trojan fleet. She sees them already building houses, already trusting the land, and having abandoned their ships. She stood still, pierced by bitter pain. Then, shaking her head, she poured these words from her heart: "Alas, hateful race, and Phrygian fates opposed to our own! Could they not fall on the plains of Sigeum? Could the captured not be captured? Did burning Troy not burn the men? Through the midst of armies and the midst of flames they found a way. But I suppose my power lies exhausted at last, or I have rested, my hatred sated. Why, I even dared to pursue them as exiles, driven from their homeland, across the waves, and to stand against the fugitives on the whole sea. The strength of sky and sea has been spent against the Trojans. What good have the Syrtes or Scylla or vast Charybdis done me? They have made their home in the Tiber's longed-for bed, safe from the sea and from me. Mars was able to destroy the monstrous race of the Lapiths; the father of the gods himself yielded ancient Calydon to the anger of Diana. What crime so great did the Lapiths or Calydon deserve?
308| But I, the great wife of Jupiter, who could leave nothing untried, unhappy as I am, who have turned myself to everything, am beaten by Aeneas. If my divine power is not great enough, I would certainly not hesitate to beg for help wherever it may be found: if I cannot bend the gods above, I will stir up Acheron. So be it, I will not be allowed to keep him from the kingdom of Latium, and Lavinia remains his bride, unmoved, by the Fates' decree. But I can drag things out and add delays to such great matters, I can wipe out the peoples of both kings. Let father-in-law and son-in-law join together at that cost to their people. With Trojan and Rutulian blood will you be dowered, maiden, and Bellona awaits you as your matron of the marriage. Hecuba, daughter of Cisseus, was not the only one to grow pregnant with a torch and give birth to wedding fires; no, Venus has the same in a child of her own, another Paris, and again a deadly wedding torch for a rebuilt Troy."
323| When she had said this, she went down dreadfully to earth. She summons grim Allecto from the home of the dreadful goddesses and from the shades of the underworld, a creature who delights in sorrowful wars, anger, treachery, and harmful accusations. Even her father Pluto hates her, and her Tartarean sisters hate the monster: she changes herself into so many shapes, her faces are so savage, and she bristles so thick with black snakes. Juno sharpened her with these words and spoke to her thus: "Daughter of Night, grant me this as my own task, this work, so that my honor and reputation do not give way or fall, and so that the Trojans cannot win Latinus over by a marriage or besiege the borders of Italy. You can arm brothers of one mind for battle and overturn homes with hatred, you can bring whips and funeral torches into houses, you have a thousand names, a thousand arts of harming. Shake that fertile heart, break up the peace that has been made, sow charges of war. Let the young men want arms, demand them, and seize them all at once."
341| Then Allecto, steeped in Gorgon poisons, went first to Latium and the lofty house of the Laurentine king, and settled at the silent threshold of Amata. The queen was burning, and womanly worries and anger over the arrival of the Trojans and Turnus's marriage were consuming her. The goddess threw a single snake from her dark-blue hair at her and slipped it into her bosom, to the depths of her heart, so that, driven mad by the monster, she would throw her whole house into confusion. It slid between her clothes and her smooth breast, coiling there without her feeling its touch, and, breathing its viper's breath into her, deceived the raging woman. It became a huge twisted collar of gold around her neck, it became the band of her long ribbon, it wound into her hair and wandered slippery over her limbs. And while the first plague, slipping in with its moist venom, was testing her senses and wrapping her bones in fire, and her mind had not yet taken the flame through her whole heart, she spoke more gently than usual, in the manner of mothers, weeping much over her daughter and the Phrygian marriage: "Is Lavinia to be given in marriage to exiled Trojans, father? Do you not pity your daughter or yourself?
361| Do you not pity her mother, whom the treacherous pirate will abandon at the first north wind, taking to the deep sea with the girl carried off? Was it not like this that the Phrygian shepherd entered Lacedaemon and carried Helen, daughter of Leda, to the cities of Troy? What of your sacred word? What of your old concern for your own, and the right hand so often given to Turnus, your kinsman? If a son-in-law from a foreign people is being sought for the Latins, and that is settled, and the commands of your father Faunus press on you, then I think that every land which stands free and apart from our scepters is foreign, and that this is what the gods mean. And Turnus, if his house is traced back to its first origin, has Inachus and Acrisius as fathers, and Mycenae at its heart."
373| When she sees that she has tried these words in vain and that Latinus stands against her, and the snake's maddening evil has slipped deep into her vitals and runs through her whole body, then indeed the unhappy woman, goaded by monstrous visions, rages unrestrained through the vast city, out of her mind. Like a top flying under a twisting lash, which boys spin with great attention to their game in a wide circle around an empty courtyard: driven by the cord, it travels in curving paths, and the childish crowd stands over it, uncomprehending and amazed at the spinning boxwood, and the blows give it spirit; no slower than that she is driven through the midst of the cities and the fierce peoples. Moreover, she even rushes into the woods, pretending to be inspired by Bacchus, having undertaken a greater crime and begun a greater madness, and hides her daughter on the leafy mountains, to snatch the marriage from the Trojans and delay the wedding torches, shrieking "Euhoe, Bacchus!" and crying out that you alone are worthy of the maiden: for it is for you that she takes up the soft thyrsus, for you that she circles in the dance, for you that she grows her sacred hair. Rumor flies, and the same passion drives all the mothers, inflamed with fury in their hearts, to seek new homes.
394| They have left their houses, giving their necks and hair to the winds. Others fill the sky with trembling howls and, belted in animal skins, carry spears wreathed in vine leaves. The queen herself in the midst holds up a blazing pine torch and sings the wedding hymn of her daughter and Turnus, rolling her bloodshot eyes, and suddenly cries out grimly: "Io, mothers, hear me, Latin women, wherever you are: if any affection for unhappy Amata remains in your loyal hearts, if concern for a mother's rights stirs you, loosen the ribbons from your hair and take up the rites with me." Among the woods, among the wilderness of wild beasts, Allecto drives the queen in this way on every side with the goads of Bacchus.
406| When she thought she had sharpened the first madness enough and had overturned Latinus's plan and his whole house, the grim goddess at once rose from there on her dark wings to the walls of the bold Rutulian, a city that Danae is said to have founded with her Argive settlers when she was carried there by the headlong south wind. The place was once called Ardea by our ancestors, and Ardea still keeps the great name, but its fortune is gone. Here Turnus, in his high house, was already taking his rest in the middle of black night. Allecto put off her fierce face and her Fury's limbs, changed herself into the appearance of an old woman, plowed her ugly brow with wrinkles, put on white hair with a ribbon, and then wove an olive branch into it. She became Calybe, the aged servant of Juno and priestess of her temple, and presented herself before the young man's eyes with these words: "Turnus, will you let so many labors be poured out in vain, and your scepter be handed over to Trojan settlers? The king denies you the marriage and the dowry won with your blood, and a foreign heir is being sought for the kingdom. Go now, mocked man, expose yourself to thankless dangers; go, cut down the Tuscan armies, protect the Latins with peace. Almighty Juno herself ordered me to tell you this openly, while you lay in the calm night. So come, and gladly prepare to arm your young men and move them out through the gates into the field, and burn the Phrygian leaders who have settled by the beautiful river, and their painted ships. The great power of the gods commands it. King Latinus himself, unless he admits that he must grant the marriage and keep his word, should feel it, and at last find out what Turnus is like in arms."
435| At this the young man, mocking the prophetess, answered her in turn: "The news that a fleet has entered the Tiber's waters has not escaped my ears, as you suppose; do not invent such great fears for me. Nor is queen Juno forgetful of us. But old age, overcome by neglect and barren of truth, mother, torments you with worries to no purpose, and amid the arms of kings mocks a prophetess with false terror. Your concern is to guard the images and temples of the gods; men will wage war and peace, those whose task it is to wage war."
445| At these words Allecto blazed into anger. But a sudden trembling seized the young man's limbs as he spoke, and his eyes froze: the Fury hisses with so many snakes, and such a face is revealed. Then, rolling her fiery eyes, she pushed him back as he hesitated and sought to say more, raised two snakes from her hair, cracked her whip, and added these words with a raving mouth: "Look at me, overcome by neglect, whom old age barren of truth mocks amid the arms of kings with false terror. Look at this: I have come from the home of the dreadful sisters, and I carry war and death in my hand." So saying, she hurled a torch at the young man and fixed the brands, smoking with dark light, beneath his chest. A huge terror broke his sleep, and sweat burst out over his whole body and drenched his bones and limbs. Out of his mind he cries out for arms, searches for arms in his bed and his house; the love of the sword rages in him, and the wicked madness of war, and anger on top of that. It is as when a fire of brushwood is piled with a great roar under the sides of a bubbling bronze cauldron: the water leaps up with the heat, the river of water seethes inside, smoking, and overflows high with foam, the wave can no longer contain itself, and black steam flies up to the air. So he, with peace violated, announces a march against King Latinus to the leading young men and orders arms to be prepared, Italy defended, and the enemy driven from its borders; he says that he alone is enough to meet both Trojans and Latins. When he had spoken and called on the gods to witness his vows, the Rutulians urge each other on to arms in rivalry. One is moved by his outstanding beauty and youth, another by his royal ancestors, another by his right hand and its famous deeds.
475| While Turnus fills the Rutulians with bold spirit, Allecto speeds on her Stygian wings to the Trojans, with a new trick. She has scouted the place on the shore where handsome Iulus was hunting wild animals with snares and in the chase. Here the maiden of Cocytus threw sudden madness on the dogs and touched their nostrils with a familiar scent, so that they would chase a stag in a frenzy. This was the first cause of the troubles and set the minds of the country people alight for war. There was a stag of outstanding beauty and huge antlers, which the sons of Tyrrhus had taken from its mother's udder and raised, and their father Tyrrhus, to whom the royal herds are subject and to whom the guardianship of the wide plain was entrusted. Their sister Silvia took every care over the stag, which was used to obeying her, and decorated its antlers with soft garlands woven with every care, combed the wild creature, and washed it in a clear spring. It, patient of her hand and used to its master's table, wandered in the woods and came home to the familiar threshold of its own accord, however late the night. As it wandered far from home, the maddened dogs of the hunting Iulus roused it, when by chance it was drifting downstream with the current and cooling itself from the heat on the green bank.
496| Ascanius himself, fired by love of outstanding glory, aimed an arrow from his curved bow; nor was a god absent from his wandering hand, and the shaft, driven with great noise, passed through the belly and the flank. But the wounded animal ran back to the familiar house and, groaning, slipped into the stalls, and, bloodied, with a cry like someone begging, it filled the whole house. Silvia, the sister, was the first to strike her arms with her palms and call for help, and she summoned the hardy country people. They (for the cruel plague lurks in the silent woods) arrived unexpectedly, one armed with a burnt-hardened stake, another with a heavy club with knots; whatever each found as he searched, anger turned into a weapon. Tyrrhus summoned the bands, panting hard as he happened to be splitting an oak into four with wedges driven in, having seized an axe.
511| But the savage goddess, finding from her lookout the moment to do harm, made for the high roof of the stable and from the top of its ridge sounded the shepherds' signal, stretching her Tartarean voice through a curved horn. At once the whole grove shook, and the deep woods rang. The lake of Trivia heard it from far off, the white river Nar with its sulphurous water heard it, and the springs of Velinus, and trembling mothers pressed their children to their breasts. Then indeed the untamed farmers, swift at the call that the dreadful trumpet gave as a signal, rush together from all sides with weapons snatched up, and the Trojan youths too pour out from their open camp to help Ascanius. They drew up their lines. Now it is no longer a rustic brawl fought with hard clubs or fire-hardened stakes, but they fight with two-edged steel, and a black harvest of drawn swords bristles far and wide; bronze flashes, struck by the sun, and throws its light up under the clouds, as when a wave first begins to whiten in the wind, the sea gradually lifts itself and raises its waves higher, then rises up to the sky from the deepest bottom. Here a young man in the front line, Almo, the eldest of the sons of Tyrrhus, is laid low by a whistling arrow; for the wound stuck in his throat and blocked the path of his moist voice and his thin life with blood. Many bodies of men lie around, and old Galaesus, while he was offering himself as a mediator for peace, the most just man there was, and once the richest in the fields of Ausonia: five flocks of bleating sheep came back to him, five herds of cattle, and he turned the soil with a hundred plows.
540| And while this was going on across the fields in an even fight, the goddess, having made good on her promise, once she had steeped the war in blood and joined the deaths of the first battle, left Hesperia and, turning through the airs of heaven, addresses Juno in triumph with a proud voice: "Look, discord is accomplished for you in a grim war; tell them to come together in friendship and make a treaty. Since I have spattered the Trojans with Ausonian blood, I will add this too, if your will is certain: I will carry the neighboring cities into the war with rumors, and kindle their minds with a love of mad war, so that they come from every side to help; I will scatter arms across the fields." Then Juno answered: "There is enough terror and deceit: the causes of war stand, they fight hand to hand with weapons, and fresh blood has stained the weapons that chance first supplied. Let the distinguished son of Venus and King Latinus himself celebrate such a marriage and such a wedding. The Father, ruler of high Olympus, would not wish you to wander more freely in the airs of heaven. Leave this place. If any fortune of troubles remains, I will manage it myself." Such were the words Juno had spoken;
561| and Allecto lifts her wings, which hiss with snakes, and heads for the home of Cocytus, leaving the heights above. In the middle of Italy, beneath high mountains, there is a place, famous and mentioned in many lands: the valleys of Amsanctus. A dark wooded slope presses on it from either side with dense foliage, and in the middle a torrent roars over rocks with a twisting whirlpool. Here a dreadful cave is shown, the breathing-holes of savage Dis, and a huge chasm where Acheron has broken through opens its pestilent jaws, in which the Fury, the hated divinity, hid and eased the earth and the sky of her burden.
572| Meanwhile Saturn's royal daughter puts the finishing touch to the war. The whole number of shepherds rushes from the battle into the city, bringing back the dead, the boy Almo and the disfigured face of Galaesus, and they implore the gods and call Latinus to witness. Turnus is there, and, in the midst of the charge of murder and the fire, redoubles the terror: the Trojans are being called into the kingdom, a Phrygian line is being mixed in, and he is being driven from the threshold. Then those whose mothers, frenzied by Bacchus, dance in bands through the pathless woods (for the name of Amata is no slight one) gather from all sides and exhaust Mars. At once they all demand an unspeakable war, against omens, against the Fates' decrees of the gods, with divine will perverted. In rivalry they surround the palace of King Latinus. He stands unmoved like a rock in the sea, like a rock in the sea when a great roar comes, which holds itself together by its mass with many waves barking around it; the crags and foaming rocks around roar in vain, and the seaweed dashed against its side is thrown back. But when no power is given to overcome their blind counsel, and matters go by the will of savage Juno, the father, calling the gods and the empty air to witness many times, says: "We are broken, alas, by the Fates, and swept away by the storm! You yourselves, wretched people, will pay the penalty for this with your impious blood. You, Turnus, a grim punishment will await, a crime, and you will worship the gods with prayers too late. For my rest is secured, and at the very threshold of harbor I am robbed of a happy death." Saying no more, he shut himself in his house and let go the reins of government.
601| There was a custom in Hesperian Latium, which the Alban cities held sacred from the start, and which Rome, greatest of powers, now observes, when they first set Mars in motion for battle, whether they prepare to bring tearful war by force against the Getae, the Hyrcanians or the Arabs, or to advance to the Indians and follow the dawn and demand back the standards from the Parthians. There are twin Gates of War (that is their name), sacred through reverence and the dread of savage Mars. A hundred bronze bars and the everlasting strength of iron close them, and Janus, their guardian, never leaves the threshold. When the senators' decision for battle is fixed, the consul himself, conspicuous in Quirinus' robe and the Gabine girdle, unlocks the grating doors, and himself calls out the fighting; then the rest of the young men follow, and the bronze horns join in with a hoarse blast. In this way Latinus too was then being ordered to declare war on the Trojans and open the grim gates. The father held back from touching them, turned away, and fled from the foul duty, and hid himself in blind darkness. Then the queen of the gods herself, gliding down from heaven, pushed the lingering gates with her own hand, and, turning the hinge, Saturn's daughter broke open the iron-bound doorposts of War.
623| Ausonia, previously unstirred and motionless, blazes up. Some prepare to go on foot across the fields; others, towering on tall horses, rage covered in dust; all demand weapons. Some polish light shields and bright javelins with rich fat and sharpen axes on the whetstone; they delight to carry standards and hear the blare of trumpets. Indeed five great cities set up anvils and forge weapons anew: mighty Atina, proud Tibur, Ardea, Crustumeri, and tower-crowned Antemnae. They hollow out protective covers for their heads and bend willow frames for shield bosses; others beat bronze breastplates or light greaves from pliant silver. Here the honor of the plowshare and sickle, here all love of the plow has given way; they smelt their fathers' swords again in the furnaces. And now the war trumpets sound, the watchword goes round as the signal for war. One in a panic snatches a helmet from his house, another forces his trembling horses to the yoke, and puts on a shield and a breastplate of triple-woven gold and buckles on his trusty sword.
641| Open Helicon now, goddesses, and set the song in motion: which kings were roused to war, what armies followed each and filled the plains, with what men the land of Italy, the nurturing land, already flourished even then, and with what weapons it blazed. For you remember, goddesses, and are able to recall; only a thin breath of rumor glides down to us.
647| First to enter the war from the Tyrrhenian coasts, harsh Mezentius, scorner of the gods, arms his troops. Beside him is his son Lausus, than whom no one was more handsome except the body of Laurentine Turnus; Lausus, tamer of horses and conqueror of wild beasts, commands a thousand men who trailed after him in vain from the city of Agylla, a young man who deserved to be happier under his father's rule, and not to have Mezentius for a father.
655| After these, over the grass, Aventinus, handsome son of handsome Hercules, shows off his chariot, conspicuous with the victor's palm, and his victorious horses, and bears on his shield his father's emblem, a hundred snakes and a Hydra ringed with serpents. The priestess Rhea bore him in secret on the wooded hill of Aventinus, a woman joined to a god, after the victor of Tiryns, having killed Geryon, reached the Laurentine fields, and washed the Spanish cattle in the Tuscan river. His men carry spears in their hands and savage pikes for battle, and they fight with the smooth point and the Sabine javelin. He himself goes on foot, swinging the huge hide of a lion, shaggy with its terrible bristle, with the white teeth set on his head; so he entered the royal house, rough and with his shoulders wrapped in the cloak of Hercules.
670| Then twin brothers leave the walls of Tibur, a people named for their brother Tiburtus, Catillus and keen Coras, young men of Argos; they advance in front of the first line through thick showers of weapons. They are like two cloud-born Centaurs descending from the top of a high mountain, leaving Homole and snowy Othrys in rapid flight; the great forest gives way to them as they go and the thickets yield with a loud crash.
678| Nor was the founder of the city of Praeneste absent, Caeculus, the king whom every age believed born from Vulcan among the country herds and found on a hearth. A rustic legion accompanies him far and wide: the men who live in lofty Praeneste, in the fields of Gabine Juno, by the cold Anio, and on the dewy rocks of the Hernici with their streams; those you feed, rich Anagnia, and those you feed, father Amasenus. Not all of them have weapons, or shields, or noisy chariots. Most of them sling bullets of livid lead, some carry two javelins in their hands, and they wear tawny caps of wolf skin on their heads. They have fixed their left feet bare in their tracks; a boot of raw hide covers the other.
691| But Messapus, tamer of horses, son of Neptune, whom it is not lawful for anyone to lay low with fire or steel, suddenly calls his long-idle peoples and troops unused to war to arms and takes up the sword again. Some hold the ranks of Fescennium and the Aequi of Falerii, some the heights of Soracte, the fields of Flavina, Lake Ciminus with its mountain, and the groves of Capena. They went in step, equal in number, and sang of their king: just as snow-white swans sometimes among the liquid clouds, when they return from feeding and send their tuneful notes through their long necks, and the river sounds, and the Asian marsh far off is struck by it. Nor would anyone think that bronze-armed ranks in so great a throng were mingling, but rather that a cloud of hoarse birds was being driven from the deep sea toward the shore.
706| Look, Clausus, leading a great column from the ancient blood of the Sabines, himself equal to a great column, from whom the Claudian tribe and clan is now spread through Latium, since the Sabines were given a share in Rome. A huge single cohort from Amiternum and the old Quirites, all the band of Eretum and olive-bearing Mutusca; those who live in the city of Nomentum, in the Rosean fields of Velinus, on the rocks of bristling Tetrica, on Mount Severus, and in Casperia, Foruli, and by the river Himella; those who drink the Tiber and Fabaris, those whom cold Nursia sent, and the Ortine troops and the Latin peoples, and those whom Allia, a name of ill omen, cuts through and flows between. They are as numerous as the waves rolling on the Libyan sea when fierce Orion sets in the winter waves, or as the thick ears of grain scorched by the new sun on the Hermus plain or the yellowing fields of Lycia. Shields clang, and the earth is terrified by the beat of feet.
723| Next, Halaesus, son of Agamemnon, an enemy of the Trojan name, yokes his horses to a chariot and brings a thousand fierce peoples to Turnus's side: those who turn the Massic soil, fertile in wine, with hoes, those whom the Aurunci elders sent from their high hills and the plains near Sidicinum, those who leave Cales, and the neighbor of the shallow river Volturnus, and with them rough Saticulus and a band of Oscans. Their weapons are smooth javelins, which they are accustomed to fit with a pliant thong. A small shield covers the left arm, and for close fighting they have curved swords.
733| You too will not go unmentioned in my songs, Oebalus, whom Telon is said to have fathered by the nymph Sebethis, when he already held the kingdom of the Teleboans on Capreae as an old man; but his son, not content with his father's lands, was already extending his rule far over the peoples of the Sarrasts and the plains the Sarnus waters, and those who hold Rufrae and Batulum and the fields of Celemna, and those whom the walls of apple-bearing Abella look down on, who are accustomed to hurl spears in the Teutonic manner; for helmets they have bark torn from the cork tree, and their bronze-covered light shields gleam, and their bronze swords gleam.
744| And you too, Ufens, the mountainous Nersae sent to battle, famous for your reputation and your successful arms; his people is especially rough, used to much hunting in the woods, the Aequiculi, on hard soil. They farm armed and always delight in bringing in fresh plunder and living on theft.
750| Moreover a priest came from the Marruvian people, his helmet crowned with a leafy sprig of fruitful olive, sent by King Archippus, the very brave Umbro, who used to spread sleep with song and hand on the viper race and on hydras with their deadly breath, soothing their rage and relieving their bites by his skill. But he could not heal the blow of a Trojan spear, nor did his sleep-bringing charms help his wounds, nor the herbs sought on the Marsian mountains. The grove of Angitia wept for you, the glassy water of Fucinus wept for you, the clear lakes wept for you.
761| There also went Hippolytus's son, most handsome in war, Virbius, whom his mother Aricia sent, a distinguished man, raised in the groves of Egeria around the wet shores, where the altar of Diana is rich and easily appeased. For tradition says that Hippolytus, after he died through his stepmother's trick and paid his father's penalty with his blood, torn apart by frightened horses, came again to the stars of heaven and the upper airs of the sky, called back by Paeonian herbs and by Diana's love. Then the almighty Father, indignant that a mortal should rise from the shades below to the light of life, himself struck down with a thunderbolt the son of Phoebus, discoverer of such medicine and art, into the Stygian waves. But kindly Trivia hid Hippolytus in a secret home and sent him away to the nymph Egeria and her grove, where alone in the Italian woods, unknown, he would live out his life, and where, with his name changed, he would be Virbius. For this reason horses with hooves are also kept out of the temple of Trivia and her sacred groves, because, terrified by sea monsters, they threw the chariot and the young man onto the shore. His son, no less, drove his horses on the plain of the open field and rushed to war in a chariot.
783| Turnus himself, outstanding in build, moves among the foremost, weapons in hand, a full head taller than the rest. His high helmet, crested with a triple plume, bears a Chimaera breathing Etna's fires from her jaws; the more the fighting grows savage with spilled blood, the more she roars and rages with her grim flames. But his smooth shield was emblazoned in gold with Io, horns raised, already covered with bristles, already a cow — a mighty theme — and Argus, the maiden's guard, and father Inachus pouring his river from an engraved urn. After him comes a cloud of foot soldiers, and shielded columns crowd together over all the plain: the young men of Argos and the bands of the Aurunci, the Rutulians and the old Sicanians, the Sacranian ranks and the Labici with painted shields; those who till your glades, Tiber, and the sacred shore of the Numicus, and work the Rutulian hills and the Circaean ridge with the ploughshare; fields over which Jupiter of Anxur presides, and Feronia, rejoicing in her green grove; where the black marsh of Satura lies, and the cold Ufens seeks its way through the depths of the valleys and buries itself in the sea.
803| Besides these came Camilla, of the Volscian race, leading a column of horsemen and squadrons bright with bronze — a warrior woman, her hands not trained to Minerva's distaff or wool baskets; a maiden, but hardened to endure battle and to outstrip the winds in speed of foot. She could have flown over the tips of uncut grain without harming the tender ears as she ran, or made her way across the middle of the sea, poised over the swelling wave, without wetting her quick feet in the waves. All the young men pour out of houses and fields, and a crowd of mothers marvels at her and gazes after her as she goes, gaping with astonished hearts at how the royal honor of purple veils her smooth shoulders, how a gold clasp binds her hair, how she herself carries a Lycian quiver and a shepherd's myrtle staff tipped with a spearhead.

======== Aeneid — Book VIII ========

1| When Turnus raised the signal for war from the citadel of Laurentum and the horns blared with their hoarse music, when he roused his spirited horses and clashed his arms, at once hearts were stirred; all Latium together swears allegiance in anxious uproar, and the young men rage wildly. The foremost leaders, Messapus, Ufens and Mezentius, despiser of the gods, muster forces from every side and strip the wide fields of their farmers. Venulus too is sent to the city of great Diomedes to ask for help and to inform him that the Trojans are settling in Latium, that Aeneas has arrived with a fleet, bringing in his defeated household gods and claiming that he is called by the Fates to be king; that many peoples are joining the Dardan hero, and his name is spreading widely through Latium. What he is building with these beginnings, what outcome of the war he desires if fortune follows him, would be clearer to Diomedes himself than to King Turnus or King Latinus.
18| So it went throughout Latium. The hero of Laomedon's line, seeing it all, is tossed on a great tide of cares; he splits his swift mind now this way, now that, snatches it in different directions and turns it through every possibility: as when the trembling light of water in bronze basins, thrown back by the sun or the image of the shining moon, flits far and wide over every place, and now rises into the air and strikes the paneled ceiling high above. It was night, and over all the lands deep sleep held weary creatures, the race of birds and of beasts, when father Aeneas, his heart troubled by grim war, lay down on the riverbank under the cold vault of the sky and at last allowed sleep to spread through his limbs. To him the god of the place himself, Tiberinus of the pleasant river, seemed to rise, an old man, among the poplar leaves — a fine linen garment veiled him in blue-gray, and shady reeds covered his hair — and then to speak to him and take away his cares with these words:
36| "Offspring of the race of gods, you who bring the city of Troy back to us from its enemies and preserve Pergamum for all time, you who have been awaited on Laurentine soil and in the Latin fields: here is your sure home, here are your sure household gods — do not give up. Do not be frightened by threats of war; all the swelling anger of the gods has subsided. And now, so that you do not think that sleep invents these things in vain, you will find beneath the holm oaks on the shore a huge sow, lying there after giving birth to a litter of thirty young, white, stretched on the ground, with white piglets around her teats. [This will be the place for your city, that the sure rest from your toils,] from which, when thrice ten years come round, Ascanius will found a city, Alba, of illustrious name. I foretell no uncertain things. Now, listen, I will teach you in a few words how you may win through victorious in what lies ahead. On these shores Arcadians, a race descended from Pallas, who followed King Evander as companions and followed his standards, chose a place and built a city in the hills, called Pallanteum after their ancestor Pallas. They wage constant war with the Latin people; bring them into your camp as allies and make a treaty with them. I myself will guide you along my banks, straight up the river, so that you may overcome the current with your oars as you are carried upstream. Rise, come, son of the goddess, and when the stars first set, offer prayers to Juno as is fitting, and overcome her anger and threats with suppliant vows. To me you will pay honor when you are victorious. I am the one you see with full stream grazing these banks and cutting through the rich farmland: the blue Tiber, the river most pleasing to heaven. Here is my great home; my source rises among lofty cities."
66| He spoke; then the river plunged into a deep pool, seeking its depths. Night and sleep left Aeneas. He rises, and looking toward the rising light of the sun in the sky, he duly lifts water from the river in his cupped palms and pours out such words as these to the heavens: "Nymphs, Laurentine Nymphs, from whom rivers have their birth, and you, father Tiber, with your sacred stream, receive Aeneas and at last keep him from dangers. In whatever pool your springs hold you, who pity our troubles, from whatever ground you come forth in all your beauty, you will always be honored by me, always celebrated with gifts, horned river, ruler of the waters of Hesperia. Only be with us, and confirm your divine will more closely." So he speaks, and chooses two galleys from the fleet, fits them with oarsmen, and at the same time equips his companions with arms.
81| But look, a sudden portent, marvelous to behold: through the wood a white sow, white as her white litter, was seen lying on the green bank. Dutiful Aeneas sacrifices her to you, to you, greatest Juno, bringing the offerings, and sets her with her brood at the altar. All that night Tiber calmed his swollen river, and flowing back with silent wave he stopped, so that like a gentle pool or quiet marsh he spread a level surface of water, and no struggle remained for the oar. So they hasten the journey they have begun, with favorable murmurs: the tarred fir glides over the shallows; the waves are amazed, the wood is amazed at the unfamiliar sight of men's shields gleaming far off and painted ships floating on the river. They wear out night and day with rowing and get past long bends, and they are covered by trees of every kind, and cut through green woods on the still water. The blazing sun had climbed to the middle of the sky when they see in the distance walls, a citadel, and scattered rooftops of houses, which Roman power has now raised to the sky, but which then Evander held as a poor holding. Quickly they turn their prows and draw near the town.
102| By chance on that day the Arcadian king was offering a yearly solemn honor to Hercules, son of Amphitryon, and the gods, in a wood outside the city. His son Pallas, along with all the foremost young men and the poor senate, were burning incense, and warm blood smoked at the altars. When they saw the tall ships gliding in among the shadowy grove and leaning silently on their oars, they were frightened by the sudden sight, and all rose, leaving the tables. Bold Pallas forbids them to break off the rites, seizes a spear, and flies to meet them himself, and from a mound far off he calls: 'Young men, what reason has driven you to try unknown paths? Where are you heading? Who are your people? Where is your home? Do you bring peace or war?' Then father Aeneas speaks from the high stern, holding out in his hand a branch of peace-bringing olive: 'You see Trojan-born men and weapons hostile to the Latins, whom they have driven out as exiles by a proud war. We seek Evander. Carry this word and tell him that chosen leaders of Dardania have come, asking for allied arms.' Pallas was stunned, struck by so great a name: 'Come ashore, whoever you are,' he says, 'speak to my father face to face, and come under our household gods as a guest.' He took Aeneas by the hand and, clasping his right hand, clung to it; they go forward into the grove and leave the river behind.
126| Then Aeneas addresses the king with friendly words: 'Best of the Greek-born, to whom Fortune has willed that I should pray and stretch out branches bound with fillets: I was not afraid because you were a Greek leader and an Arcadian, or because you were related by descent to the two Atreidae. But my own merit, the sacred oracles of the gods, our kindred ancestors, and your fame spread through the lands have joined me to you and driven me, willingly, by the Fates. Dardanus, first father and founder of the city of Ilium, born, as the Greeks say, of Electra the daughter of Atlas, came to the Trojans; Electra was borne by mighty Atlas, who bears the heavenly spheres on his shoulder. Your father is Mercury, whom shining Maia conceived and bore on the cold peak of Cyllene; and Maia, if we believe anything we have heard, was fathered by Atlas, the same Atlas who lifts the stars of heaven. So the lineage of both of us branches from a single blood. Relying on this, I did not send envoys or make first tentative approaches through diplomacy; I myself, I myself, have put myself and my own life at risk and come as a suppliant to your threshold. The same Daunian people who attack you pursue us in cruel war; if they drive us out, they believe nothing will stop them from putting all Hesperia under their yoke, and the sea above and the sea washing below. Accept and give a pledge. We have hearts strong in war, we have courage, and young men proved in action.'
152| Aeneas had finished. For some time Evander had been scanning the face and eyes of the speaker, and his whole body, with his gaze. Then he replies briefly: 'How gladly I welcome and recognize you, bravest of the Trojans! How I recall the words of your father, and the voice and face of great Anchises! For I remember that Priam, son of Laomedon, when he was going to Salamis to visit the realm of his sister Hesione, continued on to see the cold borders of Arcadia. Then the first bloom of youth was covering my cheeks, and I marveled at the Trojan leaders, and marveled at Laomedon's son himself; but Anchises walked taller than all of them. My heart burned with a young man's longing to speak to him and clasp hand with hand; I approached him and eagerly led him to the walls of Pheneus. As he left, he gave me a splendid quiver and Lycian arrows, and a cloak woven through with gold, and a pair of golden bridles, which my Pallas now has. So the right hand you ask for is already joined to mine in a pact, and as soon as tomorrow's light returns to the earth, I will send you off glad with help and support you with resources. Meanwhile, since you have come here as friends, celebrate with us in good will this yearly rite, which it is wrong to put off, and from now on get used to the tables of your allies.'
175| When this had been said, he orders the feast and the cups that had been cleared away to be set out again, and he himself seats the men on a grassy bench. He receives Aeneas with special honor on a couch spread with the pelt of a shaggy lion and invites him to a maple seat. Then chosen young men and the priest of the altar eagerly bring the roasted flesh of bulls, pile baskets with the gifts of Ceres' labor, and serve wine. Aeneas and the Trojan youth feast together on the unbroken chine of an ox and on the purified entrails.
184| After hunger was removed and the desire for food was satisfied, King Evander said: 'This ceremony, this feast in the traditional manner, this altar of so great a divinity, no empty superstition ignorant of the old gods has laid on us. Saved from cruel dangers, Trojan guest, we perform it and renew the honors deserved. First of all, look at this rock hanging on its crags, how the masses of stone lie scattered far away, and how the mountain dwelling stands deserted and the cliffs have dragged down a huge landslide. Here there was a cave, set back in a vast recess, which the dreadful form of half-human Cacus occupied, inaccessible to the sun's rays; the ground was always warm with fresh slaughter, and on its proud doors the faces of men hung pale with grim decay. Vulcan was the father of this monster: spewing his black fires from his mouth, he moved about in his huge bulk. Time brought even us, as we prayed, help and the arrival of a god. For the greatest avenger, Alcides, proud with the spoils and the death of three-bodied Geryon, was present and was driving his huge bulls here as victor, and the cattle were filling the valley and the river.
205| But the savage mind of Cacus the thief, so that no crime or trick should be left undared or untried, drove away from their pasture four bulls of outstanding build, and as many heifers of surpassing beauty. And so that no hoofprints would point straight to the cave, he dragged them by the tail into the cave, with the signs of their path reversed, and the thief hid them in the dark rock; no tracks led to the cave for anyone searching. Meanwhile, when Amphitryon's son was moving his herd, fed to fullness at their stalls, and preparing to leave, the cattle lowed as they departed and the whole grove was filled with their complaints and the hills left behind with the clamor. One cow gave back a cry and bellowed from under the vast cave, and though guarded she betrayed Cacus's hope. Then indeed the pain flared up in Alcides, with fury and black bile: he seizes his weapons in his hand and his club weighed down with knots, and runs to the heights of the lofty mountain. Then for the first time our people saw Cacus afraid, with his eyes in a panic; he flees at once, faster than the east wind, and heads for his cave, fear adding wings to his feet.
225| As soon as he shut himself in and, breaking the chains, dropped the huge rock that hung there by iron and his father's craft, and fortified the doorposts with this barrier, look, the Tirynthian arrived, raging in spirit, scouring every approach, turning his face this way and that, gnashing his teeth. Three times, burning with anger, he scours the whole Aventine hill; three times he tries the stone threshold in vain; three times he sits down worn out in the valley. A sharp flint stood, with rocks cut away on every side, rising on the back of the cave, very high to look at, a convenient home for the nests of dreadful birds. As it leaned from the ridge toward the river on the left, he pushed against it from the right, bracing himself, and shook it, tore it loose and loosened it from its deepest roots; then suddenly he thrust it over. At the shove the great heaven thunders, the banks spring apart and the river flows back in terror. And the cave, the huge palace of Cacus, was uncovered and appeared, and its shadowy depths lay open far inside, just as if some land, gaping open from deep below by force, were to unlock the infernal abodes and open up the pale kingdoms hated by the gods, and the monstrous abyss were seen from above, and the shades trembled at the light let in.
247| So Alcides, from above, pressed with missiles on him, caught suddenly by the unexpected light, shut up in the hollow rock and roaring in an unfamiliar way, and he calls on every weapon and attacks with branches and huge millstones. But Cacus, since there was now no escape from danger, belches from his throat a huge amount of smoke (wonderful to tell), and wraps his house in blind darkness, snatching the view from the eyes, and gathers a smoky night under the cave, darkness mingled with fire. Alcides could not bear it in his spirit, and threw himself through the fire in a headlong leap, where the smoke is thickest and the great cave surges with black mist. Here he seizes Cacus in the darkness, vomiting fire to no purpose, clasps him in a knot, and clinging on strangles him, his eyes bursting out and his throat drained of blood. At once the dark house is opened, with the doors torn away, and the stolen cattle and the denied plunder are shown to the sky, and the shapeless corpse is dragged out by the feet. Hearts cannot be satisfied with gazing at the terrible eyes, the face, the chest of the half-beast bristling with hair, and the extinguished fires in his throat.
268| From that day the honor has been celebrated, and happy descendants have kept the day, and first Potitius as founder, and the Pinarian house, guardian of Hercules' rite, set up this altar in the grove, which will always be called the greatest by us and will always be the greatest. So come, young men, in honor of such great praises, wreathe your hair with leaves and hold out cups in your right hands, call on the god we share, and pour the wine willingly.' He had spoken, when the two-colored poplar, Hercules' tree, veiled his hair with its shade and hung down, woven with its leaves, and the sacred cup filled his right hand. Quickly all gladly pour libations on the table and pray to the gods.
280| Meanwhile Evening draws nearer, sinking from Olympus. And now the priests were going, with Potitius first, girded in skins in the traditional way, carrying torches. They renew the feast and bring the welcome gifts of a second course, and pile the altars high with laden platters. Then the Salii come to the blazing altars to sing, their temples bound with poplar branches, one chorus of young men, another of old, who in song relate the praises and deeds of Hercules: how he crushed in his hand the first monsters of his stepmother, the twin serpents; how the same hero shattered cities famed in war, Troy and Oechalia; how he endured a thousand harsh labors under King Eurystheus through the fate decreed by hostile Juno. 'You, unconquered, slay the cloud-born double-bodied centaurs, Hylaeus and Pholus, with your hand; you slay the Cretan monster and the huge lion under the rock of Nemea. The Stygian lakes trembled before you, and the doorkeeper of Orcus, lying on gnawed bones in his bloody cave; no shapes terrified you, not even Typhoeus himself towering with weapons in his hands; the Lernaean serpent with its swarm of heads did not surround you when you lacked a plan. Hail, true offspring of Jupiter, glory added to the gods, and come kindly to us and to your rites with favorable step.' Such things they celebrate in their songs; above all they add the cave of Cacus and Cacus himself breathing fire. The whole grove resounds with the noise and the hills echo back.
306| Then, when the divine rites were finished, they all return to the city. The king, laden with years, walked on, and kept Aeneas and his own son close beside him as companions as he went, easing the way with varied conversation. Aeneas looks around at everything in wonder, his eyes easily moving; he is captivated by the places and gladly asks about and hears of each of the monuments of men of former days. Then King Evander, founder of the Roman citadel, says: 'These woods were once held by native Fauns and Nymphs, and a race of men born from tree trunks and hard oak, who had neither custom nor culture, and did not know how to yoke bulls or lay up resources or save what they had gained, but branches fed them, and hard hunting for food. First Saturn came from heavenly Olympus, fleeing the arms of Jupiter, an exile whose kingdoms had been taken from him. He gathered into order that untaught people scattered over the high mountains, and gave them laws, and chose to have the land called Latium, since he had lain hidden safe in these regions. The age that people call golden was under that king: so peacefully did he rule the peoples in calm, until little by little a worse and discolored age succeeded, with the madness of war and the love of possessing.
328| Then the Ausonian bands and Sicanian peoples came, and the land of Saturn often changed its name; then came kings, and Tiber, fierce, with a huge body, from whom we Italians afterward called the river Tiber by name; old Albula lost its true name. Me, driven from my homeland and following the farthest reaches of the sea, all-powerful Fortune and inescapable fate placed in this place, and the awe-inspiring warnings of my mother Carmentis, the nymph, and the god Apollo, who is the author of it, drove me here.'
337| Scarcely had he said this when he went on and pointed out the altar and the gate that the Romans call by the name Carmental, the ancient honor of the nymph Carmentis, the prophetic seer who first sang of the future greatness of Aeneas's descendants and the noble Pallanteum. Then he points out a huge grove, which fierce Romulus made a sanctuary, and under a cold rock the Lupercal, named in the Arcadian fashion after Lycaean Pan. And he also points out the grove of the sacred Argiletum, and calls the place to witness and tells of the death of his guest Argus. From there he leads to the Tarpeian seat and the Capitol, golden now, then bristling with wild thorn bushes. Even then the awe-inspiring religious dread of the place frightened the country people, even then they trembled at the wood and the rock. 'A god,' he said, 'though which god is uncertain, lives in this grove, on this hill with its leafy crown; 'the Arcadians believe that they have seen Jupiter himself, when he often shook the dark aegis in his right hand and stirred up storm clouds. Besides, you see these two towns, with their walls broken down, relics and monuments of men of old.
357| Father Janus founded the one citadel, Saturn the other; the name of the one was Janiculum, of the other Saturnia.' Talking like this together they approached the home of poor Evander, and saw cattle lowing all around in what is now the Roman Forum and the elegant Carinae. When they reached the dwelling, he said: 'Victorious Alcides stepped over this threshold; this palace received him. Dare, my guest, to despise wealth, and make yourself worthy of the god too, and come, not harsh toward a poor man's circumstances.' He spoke, and under the roof of the narrow house he led huge Aeneas and set him on a bed spread with leaves and a hide from a Libyan bear: night rushes down and wraps the earth in dusky wings.
370| But Venus, a mother not frightened without reason, stirred by the threats of the Laurentines and the harsh uproar, addresses Vulcan, and in the golden bedchamber of her husband begins, breathing divine love into her words: 'While the Argive kings were laying waste to Pergamum, doomed to fall, and its citadels to enemy fires, I asked for no help for the wretched, no weapons from your skill and resources, and I did not wish, dearest husband, to set your labors to work in vain, although I owed a great deal to Priam's sons, and often wept over Aeneas's harsh toil. Now, by Jupiter's commands, he has settled on the shores of the Rutulians: so I come as a suppliant, the same woman, and ask your divine power, sacred to me, for weapons, a mother for her son. The daughter of Nereus could move you with tears, and Tithonus's wife could. Look at the peoples gathering, at the cities that sharpen steel behind closed gates against me and the destruction of my own.' She had spoken, and the goddess warmed him as he hesitated, in a soft embrace, with her snowy arms on this side and that. He suddenly took the familiar flame, and the well-known heat entered his marrow and ran through his weakened bones, just as when, split by a flash of thunder, a fiery rift runs gleaming through the clouds with its light;
393| his wife sensed it, glad in her cunning and conscious of her beauty. Then the father, bound by eternal love, says: 'Why do you seek reasons from far off? Where has your trust in me gone, goddess? If you had had a similar concern, then too it would have been right for me to arm the Trojans; neither the almighty Father nor the Fates forbade Troy to stand and Priam to survive ten more years. And now, if you are preparing to make war and that is your intention, whatever care I can promise within my craft, whatever can be made of iron or liquid electrum, as far as fire and bellows are able, stop begging and doubting your own power.' Having spoken these words, he gave the embraces she wished and, sinking into his wife's lap, sought gentle sleep through his limbs.
407| Then, when the first rest, now in the middle course of the fleeing night, had driven out sleep, at the hour when a woman, whose task is to support her life by the distaff and fine wool, first stirs up the ashes and the sleeping fire, adding night to her work, and keeps her maids at the lamp with a long task of spinning, so that she can keep her husband's bed chaste and bring up her small sons: just so, no less active at that hour, the lord of fire rises from his soft bed to his smith's work. An island rises, steep with smoking rocks, near the Sicilian coast and Aeolian Lipare; beneath it a cave, and caverns of Etna hollowed out by the Cyclopes' furnaces, thunder, and the strong blows on anvils are heard and echo with groans, and the ingots of the Chalybes hiss in the caverns and the fire pants in the furnaces; it is Vulcan's home and the land is called Vulcania. To this place the lord of fire then came down from high heaven. In the vast cave the Cyclopes were working iron, Brontes and Steropes and Pyragmon with his bare limbs. They had a thunderbolt shaped by their hands, partly polished already, one of the many that the Father hurls down to the earth from all of the sky, and part of it remained unfinished.
429| They had added three shafts of twisted rain, three of watery cloud, three of ruddy fire and of the winged south wind. Now they were mixing terrifying flashes, noise, fear, and rage with pursuing flames into the work. Elsewhere they were pressing on with a chariot and swift wheels for Mars, with which he rouses men and cities; and they were competing in polishing the terrible aegis, the weapon of enraged Pallas, with golden serpent scales, and the entwined snakes and the Gorgon herself on the goddess's breast, rolling her eyes on her severed neck. 'Take everything away,' he said, 'and set aside the work you have begun, Cyclopes of Etna, and turn your attention here: weapons must be made for a fierce man. Now you need strength, now quick hands, now all your mastering skill. Cast off delay.' He said no more, but they all bent to the work at once and shared the task equally. Bronze flows in streams, and the metal of gold, and wound-dealing steel melts in the vast furnace. They shape a huge shield, one against all the weapons of the Latins, and they join seven layers in circles. Some take in and let out air with wind-filled bellows, others dip the hissing bronze in the water; the cave groans with the anvils set in it; they among themselves raise their arms with great force in rhythm and turn the mass with the gripping tongs.
454| While the Lemnian father hurries on with this work on the Aeolian shores, the kindly light and the songs of morning birds under the eaves rouse Evander from his humble roof. The old man rises, puts a tunic on his limbs, and winds Tyrrhenian sandal straps round his feet. Then he fastens a sword from Tegea to his side and shoulders, throwing back over it a panther's hide hanging from the left. Two guard dogs also go ahead from the lofty threshold and follow their master's step. The hero was heading for the dwelling of his guest Aeneas and a private talk, mindful of the conversation and the gift he had promised. Aeneas was no less active in the morning; his son Pallas went with Evander, and Achates with Aeneas. When they met they joined hands, sat down in the middle of the house, and at last enjoyed the freedom to talk. The king speaks first: 'Greatest leader of the Trojans, while you are safe I will never admit that the Trojan cause or kingdom is defeated; for help in war, in proportion to so great a name, our strength is small. On this side we are hemmed in by the Etruscan river, on this side the Rutulian presses us and surrounds our wall with arms.
475| But I am preparing to join to you great peoples and a camp rich in kingdoms, a safety that chance shows unexpectedly: you have come here as the Fates demand. Not far from here, a city, Agylla, is inhabited, founded on ancient rock, where once the Lydian people, famous in war, had settled on the Etruscan hills. For many years it prospered, and then King Mezentius held it with arrogant rule and savage arms. Why should I recall his unspeakable slaughters, why the savage deeds of the tyrant? May the gods keep them for his own head and for his family! He even used to join dead bodies to living ones, fitting hands to hands and faces to faces, a kind of torture, and in that wretched embrace he put them to death slowly, dripping with decay and gore. But at last the weary citizens, armed, surround him raging unspeakably, and his house; they cut down his companions, and hurl fire at the roof. He slipped away amid the slaughter, fled for refuge to the fields of the Rutulians, and is sheltered by the arms of his host Turnus. So all Etruria has risen up in just fury, and they demand the king for punishment by immediate war.
496| To these thousands, Aeneas, I will add you as leader. For their ships crowd along the whole shore and roar, and they order the standards to be carried forward; the aged seer holds them back, chanting the fates: "O chosen youth of Maeonia, flower and valor of men of old, whom just anger carries against the enemy and Mezentius kindles with deserved wrath, it is not right for any Italian to put so great a people under his command: choose foreign leaders." Then the Etruscan army sat down on this plain, frightened by the warnings of the gods. Tarchon himself sent envoys to me with the crown of the kingdom and the scepter, and entrusts me with the insignia, so that I may take over the camp and assume the Tyrrhenian realms. But old age, slow with cold and exhausted by the years, begrudges me command, and my strength is too late for brave deeds. I would urge my son, were he not mixed by his Sabine mother and drawing part of his native land from there. You, to whom fate is kind in both age and race, whom the divine powers demand, go forward, bravest leader of Trojans and Italians. In addition I will join to you Pallas here, my hope and comfort; under you as teacher let him learn to bear military service and the heavy work of Mars, to watch your deeds, and to admire you from his earliest years. I will give him two hundred Arcadian horsemen, the pick of our youthful strength, and Pallas will give you as many in his own name.'
520| He had scarcely finished speaking when Aeneas, son of Anchises, and faithful Achates held their faces fixed, and in their sad hearts were thinking of many hard things, if Cytherea had not given a sign from the open sky. For suddenly a flash was hurled from the sky with a crash, and everything seemed to collapse at once, and a Tyrrhenian trumpet blast seemed to roar through the air. They look up; again and again a huge crash resounds. They see weapons in a cloud, in a region of the sky that was clear, glowing red through the bright air and thundering as they clashed. The others were stunned in mind, yet the Trojan hero knew the sound and the promise of his divine mother. Then he says: 'Truly, my guest, do not ask what outcome the portents bring: I am summoned by heaven. My divine mother prophesied that she would send this sign if war threatened, and would bring Vulcan's arms through the air to help me. Alas, what great slaughter awaits the wretched Laurentines! What penalties you will pay me, Turnus! How many shields of men, helmets, and brave bodies you will roll beneath your waves, father Tiber! Let them demand battle and break the treaties.'
541| When he had said this, he rises from his high seat and first rouses the altars of Hercules, which were sleeping under the ashes of the fire, and gladly approaches the household god of yesterday and the humble household gods; Evander sacrifices chosen two-year-old sheep in the proper way, and so does the Trojan youth alike. After this he goes to the ships and visits his companions again, and from their number chooses those outstanding in valor to follow him to war; the rest are carried along by the downward current and drift, unhurried, down the favoring river, to be messengers to Ascanius of the situation and of his father. Horses are given to the Trojans heading for the Tyrrhenian lands; they lead out a special one for Aeneas, covered all over with the tawny skin of a lion that shines with golden claws.
554| A rumor flies, suddenly spread through the little town, that horsemen are riding swiftly to the threshold of the Tyrrhenian king. The mothers redouble their vows in fear, and fear comes closer to danger, and the image of war now appears larger. Then father Evander clasps the hand of the departing son and clings to him, unable to get enough, weeping, and speaks such words: 'O if Jupiter would give me back the past years, as I was when I laid low the first line right under Praeneste and, as victor, burned heaps of shields, and sent King Erulus with this right hand down to Tartarus, to whom his mother Feronia (horrible to say) had given three lives at birth, to be dealt with by three sets of arms; he had to be laid low by death three times; yet this right hand then took all those lives from him and stripped him of as many sets of arms: I would not now be torn from your sweet embrace, my son, and never would neighboring Mezentius, insulting this head, have caused so many cruel deaths with the sword, or left the city a widow of so many citizens. But you, gods above, and you, Jupiter, greatest ruler of the gods, take pity, I beg, on an Arcadian king and listen to a father's prayers. If your divine will and the Fates keep Pallas safe for me, if I live to see him and to meet him again, I pray for life and am ready to endure any toil.
578| But if, Fortune, you threaten some unspeakable misfortune, now, now let me break off my cruel life, while my cares are uncertain, while hope for the future is unsure, while I hold you, dear boy, my only and late-come joy, in my embrace, so that no heavier news wounds my ears.' The father poured out these words at the final parting; his servants carried him, collapsed, into the house.
585| And now the cavalry had gone out through the open gates, with Aeneas among the first and faithful Achates, then the other Trojan leaders; Pallas himself goes in the middle of the column, conspicuous in his cloak and painted armor, like the Morning Star when, bathed in the waters of Ocean, whom Venus loves above the other fires of the stars, it lifts its sacred face in the sky and dispels the darkness. The anxious mothers stand upon the walls and follow with their gaze the dust-cloud and the ranks gleaming with bronze. The men in arms make their way through the thickets, where the nearest end of the road is; a shout goes up, and, as the column forms, the hoof of four-footed horses shakes the crumbling plain with its thud. There is a huge grove near the cold river of Caere, sacred far and wide through the religious awe of the fathers; on every side hollow hills enclose it and ring the wood with dark fir. The story is that the ancient Pelasgians, who first held the Latin lands, dedicated the grove and the day to Silvanus, god of fields and flocks. Not far from here Tarcho and the Tyrrhenians held a safe camp, and from a high hill the whole legion could now be seen, camped over wide fields. Here father Aeneas and the youth chosen for war come, and, tired, they tend to their horses and their bodies.
608| But Venus, the shining goddess, came among the clouds of heaven bringing gifts; and when she saw her son far off in a retired valley, apart by the cool river, she spoke to him with these words and offered herself unasked: 'Behold, the gifts completed by my husband's skill, as promised. Do not hesitate, my son, soon to challenge either the proud Laurentines or fierce Turnus to battle.' She spoke, and Cytherea sought her son's embrace, and set the shining weapons down under an oak facing him. He, delighted with the goddess's gifts and so great an honor, cannot be satisfied, and turns his eyes over each piece, and marvels, and turns in his hands and arms the helmet, terrible with crests and spewing flames, the deadly sword, the breastplate stiff with bronze, blood-red, huge, like a dark cloud when it catches fire from the sun's rays and gleams from afar; then the polished greaves of electrum and purified gold, the spear, and the indescribable weaving of the shield. There the lord of fire, not ignorant of prophets, not unaware of the coming age, had made the history of Italy and the Roman triumphs, there the whole line of the future descendants from Ascanius and the wars fought in order.
630| He had made also the she-wolf, newly delivered, lying in the green cave of Mars, and around her teats the twin boys playing as they hung, and fearlessly licking their mother; she with her neck gracefully bent back caresses them in turn and shapes their bodies with her tongue. Not far from there he had added Rome and the Sabine women seized in defiance of custom from the seats of the theater, when the great Circus games were being held, and a new war suddenly rising between the Romulids and old Tatius with his stern men of Cures. Afterward the same kings, the contest laid aside, stood armed before the altar of Jupiter, holding bowls, and joined a treaty with the sacrifice of a sow. Not far from there fast four-horse chariots had torn Mettus apart in different directions (but you, man of Alba, should have kept to your word!), and Tullus dragged the entrails of the faithless man through the wood, and the thorn bushes dripped with the scattered blood. Porsenna also was ordering the exiled Tarquin to be received back and was pressing the city with a huge siege; the descendants of Aeneas rushed on the sword for freedom. You could see him like one indignant and like one threatening, because Cocles ventured to tear down the bridge, and Cloelia swam the river after breaking her bonds.
652| At the top, Manlius, guardian of the Tarpeian citadel, stood before the temple and held the lofty Capitol, and the palace bristled, fresh, with the thatch of Romulus. And here a silver goose, fluttering through the gilded colonnades, was crying out that the Gauls were at the threshold. The Gauls were coming through the thickets and seizing the citadel, protected by the darkness and the gift of the dim night. Their hair is golden and their clothing golden; they gleam in striped cloaks; their milk-white necks are circled with gold; each brandishes two Alpine javelins in his hand, their bodies protected by long shields. Here he had hammered out the leaping Salii and the naked Luperci, the woolly peaked caps and the shields that fell from the sky; chaste mothers in cushioned carriages were leading the sacred processions through the city. Far off from these he adds the seats of Tartarus too, the high doors of Dis, and the punishments of crimes, and you, Catiline, hanging from a threatening cliff and trembling at the faces of the Furies; and, set apart, the righteous, with Cato giving them laws. Between these spread wide the image of the swelling sea, in gold, but the blue foamed with white-capped waves, and all around dolphins bright in silver swept the waters with their tails in a circle and cut through the surge.
675| In the middle you could see bronze-beaked fleets, the battle of Actium; you could see all Leucate seething with war drawn up for battle, and the waves ablaze with gold. On one side Augustus Caesar, leading the Italians into battle with the senators and the people, the household gods and the great gods, stands on the high stern; his joyful temples pour out twin flames, and his father's star appears above his head. Elsewhere Agrippa, with the winds and gods in his favor, towering, leads his column; his temples gleam with the naval crown with its ships' beaks, the proud emblem of the war. On the other side Antony, with barbaric wealth and arms of every kind, victorious over the peoples of the Dawn and the coast of the Red Sea, brings with him Egypt, the strength of the East, and furthest Bactra; and there follows him — shame! — his Egyptian wife. All rush on together, and the whole sea foams, churned up by the pulled-back oars and the three-pronged beaks. They make for the open sea; you would think the Cyclades had been torn loose and were floating on the water, or that high mountains were clashing with mountains, so massive the turreted ships on which the men press their attack. Flaming tow and flying steel are scattered by hand and by weapon; Neptune's fields redden with new slaughter.
696| In the middle the queen calls up her columns with her native sistrum, and does not yet look back at the twin snakes behind her. Monstrous gods of every kind and barking Anubis hold their weapons against Neptune and Venus and against Minerva. In the midst of the struggle Mars rages, engraved in steel, and the grim Furies from the sky, and Discord strides rejoicing in her torn robe, with Bellona following her with a bloody whip. Seeing this, Actian Apollo was bending his bow from above; in terror at it all Egypt and the Indians, every Arab, all the Sabaeans were turning their backs. The queen herself was seen calling on the winds, setting sail, and now, at this very moment, letting the slackened ropes run free. The god of fire had made her among the slaughter, pale with approaching death, carried along by the waves and the west wind; and opposite, the Nile, mourning with his great body, opening the folds of his robe and with all his garment calling the defeated into his blue lap and his sheltering streams. But Caesar, entering the walls of Rome in triple triumph, was dedicating his immortal vow to the gods of Italy: three hundred great shrines throughout the whole city.
717| The streets roared with joy, games and applause; in every temple there was a chorus of mothers, in every temple altars; before the altars slaughtered bullocks covered the ground. He himself, seated on the snow-white threshold of shining Phoebus, reviews the gifts of the peoples and fastens them to the proud doorposts. The conquered nations walk in a long procession, as varied in their languages as in their dress and weapons. Here Mulciber had fashioned the race of Nomads and the loose-robed Africans, here the Leleges and Carians and the Geloni with their arrows; the Euphrates moved now with gentler waves; the Morini, furthest of men, and the two-horned Rhine, and the untamed Dahae, and the Araxes resenting its bridge.
729| Such things he marvels at across Vulcan's shield, his mother's gift, and, knowing nothing of the events, rejoices in their image, lifting onto his shoulder the fame and the fates of his descendants.

======== Aeneid — Book IX ========

1| And while these things were taking place in a far distant quarter, Saturnian Juno dispatched Iris down from heaven to bold Turnus. Turnus, as it happened, was sitting in the grove of his ancestor Pilumnus, in a sacred valley. To him the daughter of Thaumas spoke thus with her rose-colored mouth: "Turnus, what not one god would dare to promise you if you prayed for it, the turning day has brought you of its own accord. Aeneas has left his city, his companions and his fleet and is making for the Palatine kingdom and the home of Evander. Nor is that enough: he has made his way to the furthest cities of Corythus and the band of Lydians, and is arming the country people he has gathered. Why hesitate? Now is the time to call for your horses, now for your chariots. Break off all delay and seize the camp in its confusion." So she spoke and rose skyward on balanced wings, and in her flight cut a huge bow beneath the clouds. The young man recognized her, raised both hands to the stars, and followed her as she fled with these words: "Iris, glory of the sky, who sent you down to me on earth, driven through the clouds? Where does this sudden bright weather come from? I see the sky part in the middle and the stars wandering in the heavens. I follow such great omens, whoever you are who call me to arms." Saying this, he went down to the river, drew water from the surface of the stream, praying much to the gods, and loaded the sky with vows.
25| And now the whole army was advancing over the open plains, rich in horses, rich in embroidered clothing and gold. Messapus controls the front ranks, the young sons of Tyrrhus the rear, and Turnus is the leader in the middle of the column: like the Ganges rising high in silence, fed by seven calm streams, or the Nile with its rich flood when it flows back from the fields and has now settled into its bed. Here the Trojans see a sudden cloud of black dust gathering and darkness rising over the plain. Caicus is the first to shout from the rampart facing it: "What is this mass, citizens, rolling on in black gloom? Quick, bring swords, hand out weapons, climb the walls: the enemy is here — up!" With a great shout the Trojans take cover through every gate and crowd the walls. For so Aeneas, best in arms, had instructed them on leaving: if any chance occurred in the meantime, they were not to dare to draw up a battle line or trust themselves to the open field; they were only to guard the camp and the walls, safe behind their rampart. So, although shame and anger urge them to engage hand to hand, they bar the gates nonetheless, carry out his orders, and wait for the enemy, armed, inside their hollow towers.
47| Turnus, flying ahead, had outstripped his slow column, and with twenty picked horsemen as escort he appears unexpectedly before the city. A Thracian horse dappled with white carries him, and a golden helmet with a red crest covers his head. "Young men, who will be with me, who will be the first against the enemy — ? Look!" he says, and, whirling a javelin, he sends it into the air as the beginning of the fight, and rides out tall onto the plain. His companions take up the shout and follow with a fearful roar. They wonder at the cowardly hearts of the Trojans, that they do not commit themselves to fair ground, do not bring their arms to meet them as men, but huddle in their camp. Wildly, this way and that, he rides around the walls and looks for an entrance where there is no way. And as a wolf, lying in wait by a full sheepfold, howls at the pens in the middle of the night, enduring wind and rain; the lambs, safe beneath their mothers, keep up their bleating; he, savage and ruthless in his anger, rages against what is out of reach; the long-gathered fury of hunger and his jaws, dry of blood, torment him: just so the Rutulian's anger blazes as he looks at the walls and the camp, and resentment burns in his hard bones. By what plan can he try for a way in, and what route can force the Trojans out from their shut rampart and pour them onto the level ground? He attacks the fleet, which lay hidden, joined to the side of the camp, fenced around with earthworks and the waters of the river; he calls on his exultant companions to bring fire, and, burning with eagerness, fills his hand with a blazing pine torch. Then indeed they set to work — Turnus' presence spurs them on — and all the young men arm themselves with black torches. They have plundered the hearths: the smoking pine brands give off a pitchy light, and Vulcan sends up a mingled cloud of ash to the stars.
77| What god, Muses, turned such savage fires away from the Trojans? Who drove such flames from the ships? Tell me: the tale is old in credit, but its fame is everlasting. At the time when Aeneas was first building his fleet on Phrygian Ida and preparing to seek the deep sea, the Berecyntian mother of the gods herself is said to have addressed great Jupiter with these words: 'Grant, my son, what your dear mother asks of you, now that you have conquered Olympus. I had a pine forest, beloved to me for many years, a grove on the highest peak, where offerings were brought, dark with black pitch-pine and maple beams. I gave these gladly to the Dardan youth when he needed a fleet; now anxious fear torments me in my worry. Free me from fear, and let a mother's prayers prevail in this: let them not be broken by any voyage or conquered by any whirlwind; may it help them that they were born on my mountains.' Her son, who turns the stars of the universe, replied: 'Mother, where are you calling the fates? Or what are you asking for these? Should keels made by mortal hands have an immortal right? Should Aeneas travel through uncertain dangers with certainty? To what god has such power been given? No: when, their task done, they reach the end and the harbors of Ausonia, whichever ship has escaped the waves and carried the Dardan leader to the Laurentine fields, I will take away its mortal form and command it to be a goddess of the great sea, like Nereid Doto and Galatea, who cleave the foaming deep with their breasts.' He had spoken, and confirmed it by the stream of his Stygian brother, by the shores seething with pitch and the black abyss, and with a nod he made all Olympus tremble.
107| So the promised day had come, and the Fates had fulfilled the time owed, when Turnus' outrage reminded the Mother to drive the torches from her sacred ships. Here first a strange light flashed before their eyes, and a great cloud seemed to cross the sky from the dawn, with choirs of Ida; then a terrifying voice fell through the air and filled the ranks of the Trojans and Rutulians: 'Do not be afraid, Trojans, to defend my ships, and do not take up arms; sooner will Turnus be allowed to burn up the seas than my sacred pines. You go free, go as goddesses of the sea; your mother commands it.' And at once each ship breaks the cables from the banks, and like dolphins they dive with their beaks down and make for the depths of the sea. Then (an amazing portent) just as many maiden forms appear and are carried over the sea.
123| The Rutulians were stunned; Messapus himself was terrified as his horses panicked, and the river hesitates, roaring hoarsely, and Tiber draws back his foot from the deep. But Turnus' boldness did not give way; he raises their spirits with his words and rebukes them: 'These portents are aimed at the Trojans; from them Jupiter himself has taken away their usual help: they do not wait for Rutulian spears or fire. So the seas are closed to the Trojans, and they have no hope of flight: one half of the world is taken from them, while the land is in our hands, and so many thousands of Italian peoples bear arms. The oracles of the gods that the Phrygians boast of do not frighten me at all. Enough has been granted to the Fates and to Venus, that the Trojans have touched the fields of fertile Ausonia. I too have my own fate against theirs, to destroy with the sword that wicked race that stole my bride; nor does that pain touch the sons of Atreus alone, nor is it only Mycenae that may take up arms. "But it is enough to have perished once": it should have been enough for them to have sinned once before, now that they hate almost the whole female race utterly. The confidence these men have, in the barrier of a rampart in between and the delay of ditches, small obstacles on the way to death, gives them courage; but have they not seen the walls of Troy, built by Neptune's hand, sink into the flames?
146| But you, my chosen men, who is ready to cut through the rampart with iron and rush with me against the panicking camp? I have no need of Vulcan's arms or a thousand ships against the Trojans. Let all the Etruscans join them as allies at once. Let them not fear darkness and cowardly theft of the Palladium with its guards slaughtered far and wide on the citadel, nor shall we be hidden in the blind belly of a horse: it is my resolve to ring their walls with fire openly in the light of day. I will make sure they do not claim they have to do with Greeks and Pelasgian youth, whom Hector put off for ten years. And now, since the greater part of the day has been spent, for what remains, men, take care of your bodies, glad in what has been done well, and expect that battle is being prepared.' Meanwhile the care of besieging the gates with watch-posts of sentries and of ringing the walls with flames is given to Messapus. Fourteen Rutulians are chosen to guard the walls with soldiers, and each is followed by a hundred young men, purple-crested and gleaming with gold. They run to and fro and vary the watches, and stretched out on the grass they indulge in wine and tip up bronze bowls. The fires shine, and the guard passes a sleepless night in play.
168| The Trojans look out on this from the rampart and hold the heights under arms, and, anxious with fear, they inspect the gates, join bridges and bulwarks, and carry weapons. Mnestheus and keen Serestus press the work, whom father Aeneas appointed as leaders of the young men and masters of affairs if ever adversity should call. The whole legion, having drawn lots for the danger, keeps watch along the walls and takes turns at whatever each has to guard.
176| Nisus, son of Hyrtacus, was guardian of the gate, a fierce fighter, whom huntress Ida had sent as a companion to Aeneas, quick with the javelin and light arrows; and beside him stood his comrade Euryalus, than whom no other of Aeneas' followers was more handsome or put on Trojan arms, a boy whose face bore the mark of early youth, not yet shaved. These two shared a single love and rushed into battle side by side; on this night too they held the gate together on a shared watch. Nisus said: 'Euryalus, do the gods put this fire into our minds, or does each man's fierce desire become his god? For some time now my mind has been urging me to attack, whether in battle or in some great enterprise, and it is not content with peaceful rest. You see how the Rutulians are confident in their position: their lights glimmer here and there, they lie slack with sleep and wine, and the ground is silent far and wide. Now listen to what I am wondering about and what plan is rising in my mind. All the people and the elders demand that Aeneas be summoned and that men be sent to bring back sure word. If they promise you what I ask (for the fame of the deed is enough reward for me), I think I can find a way beneath that hill to the walls and the city of Pallas.'
197| Euryalus was stunned, struck by a great love of glory, and at once spoke to his eager friend: 'Do you then shun joining me to the highest enterprise, Nisus? Am I to send you alone into such great danger? That is not how my father Opheltes, schooled in wars, raised me, brought up amid Greek terror and the sufferings of Troy; nor have I behaved like that toward you, following great-hearted Aeneas and his final fortunes. There is in me, there is a spirit that despises life and believes that the honor you are after is well bought at the price of life.' Nisus replied to this: 'For my part I feared nothing of the kind from you, nor could I rightly; so may great Jupiter, or whoever looks on these things with fair eyes, bring me back to you in triumph. But if any chance or god (as you see many in such a danger) sweeps me into the enemy's path, I want you to survive; your life is worthier than mine at your age. Let there be someone to bury me in the earth, snatched from battle or ransomed for a price, or if Fortune forbids that, as she often does, to bring offerings to me in my absence and honor me with a tomb. And let me not be the cause of such grief to my poor mother, who alone of many mothers has dared to follow you, boy, and does not care about the walls of great Acestes.' But Euryalus said: 'You weave empty excuses in vain, and my resolve does not yield or change. Let us hurry,' he said, and woke the sentries at once. They take over and keep the watch in turn; leaving his post, he goes with Nisus as his companion, and they look for the king.
224| All other living things throughout the earth were releasing their cares in sleep, their hearts forgetting their toils; but the leaders of the Trojans, the chosen young men, were holding a council on the supreme affairs of the kingdom, about what to do and who would now be a messenger to Aeneas. They stand leaning on long spears, holding shields, in the middle of the camp and the field. Then Nisus and Euryalus with him, eager, at once ask to be admitted: the matter is great, they say, and worth the delay. Iulus was the first to receive them in their agitation, and told Nisus to speak. Then the son of Hyrtacus said: 'Listen with fair minds, Aeneadae, and do not judge what we bring by our years. The Rutulians, slack with sleep and wine, have fallen silent. We ourselves have spotted a place for an ambush, which opens at the fork of the gate nearest the sea. Their fires are broken up and black smoke rises to the stars. If you allow us to use our chance to seek Aeneas and the city of Pallas, soon you will see us here again with spoils, when great slaughter is done. And the road will not fail us as we go:
244| in our constant hunting we have seen the first part of the city beneath dim valleys and have come to know the whole river.' Then Aletes, heavy with years and mature in judgment, said: 'Gods of our fathers, under whose power Troy always stands, you are not wholly set on destroying the Trojans, since you have brought forth such spirits in our young men and such steadfast hearts.' So speaking, he held both their shoulders and hands, and wet their faces and cheeks with tears. 'What rewards, men, what rewards worthy of such praise can I think could be paid you? The first and fairest the gods and your own character will give you; then dutiful Aeneas will quickly add the rest, and Ascanius, in the prime of life, never forgetful of so great a service.' 'Indeed, I, whose only safety lies in my father's return,' Ascanius took up, 'I beseech you, Nisus, by the great household gods, by the Lar of Assaracus, and by the shrine of grey Vesta: whatever fortune and trust I have, I place in your laps. Bring my father back, give him back to my sight; with him recovered, nothing is sad. I will give you two cups worked in silver and rough with figures, which my father seized when he captured Arisba, and two tripods, a pair of great talents of gold, and an old mixing-bowl which Sidonian Dido gave him.
267| And if it is indeed our lot as victors to take Italy and gain the scepter and to decide the allotment of the spoils, you have seen the horse Turnus rode and the arms in which he went, all golden; that very horse, with the shield and the red crests, I will exclude from the lot, already your reward, Nisus. Besides, my father will give twelve of the choicest women and captives, and for all of them their own arms, and in addition the land that King Latinus himself holds. And you, revered boy, whom my age follows at a closer distance, I already take to my whole heart and embrace as my comrade in every chance. No glory will be sought in my affairs without you: whether I make peace or war, my greatest trust in deeds and words will lie in you.' To him Euryalus replies in these words: 'No day shall show that I am unlike such bold deeds; only let fortune fall favorable, not adverse. But above all gifts I ask you one thing: there is a mother of mine, of Priam's ancient line, whom the land of Troy did not keep, poor woman, when she left with me, nor the walls of King Acestes.
287| Her I now leave unaware of this danger, whatever it may be, and without a farewell (let night and your right hand be witness), because I could not bear a mother's tears. But you, I beg, comfort her in her need and help her in her abandonment. Let me carry this hope of you with me, and I will go the more boldly into every chance.' The Trojans, their hearts struck, shed tears, most of all fair Iulus, and the image of his own love for his father touched his spirit. Then he said: 'Be assured of everything worthy of your great undertaking. For that woman will be my mother, and only the name of Creusa will be lacking; and no small gratitude awaits the woman who bore such a son. Whatever chances follow the deed, I swear by this head, by which my father used to swear: what I promise you on your return and in success will remain the same for your mother and your family.' So he spoke in tears; at the same time he took from his shoulder his gilded sword, which Lycaon of Cnossus had made with marvelous art and fitted with an ivory scabbard. Mnestheus gives Nisus the hide and spoils of a shaggy lion, and faithful Aletes exchanges helmets with him.
308| At once they go forth armed; the whole band of leaders, young and old, escorts them as they go to the gates with prayers. And fair Iulus too, showing a man's spirit and concern beyond his age, gave his father many instructions to deliver; but the breezes tear every one apart and hand them over, fruitless, to the clouds.
314| They go out and cross the ditches and through the night's shadow seek the enemy camp, though first they will be the death of many. Here and there they see bodies stretched on the grass in sleep and wine, chariots standing upright on the shore, men among the reins and wheels, arms lying beside wine. The son of Hyrtacus spoke first: 'Euryalus, my hand must dare: the moment itself calls. This is the way. You keep watch, so that no band can rise at our backs, and look out far ahead; I will lay waste here and lead you along a broad path.' So he speaks and lowers his voice, and at the same moment attacks proud Rhamnes with his sword, who, as it happened, lay on high-piled rugs and was breathing out sleep from his whole chest, a king and also the augur most dear to King Turnus, but he could not drive off ruin with his augury. Nearby he kills three servants lying carelessly among their weapons, and Remus' armor-bearer, and finds his charioteer beneath the very horses and cuts his drooping neck with the blade. Then he takes the head off the master himself and leaves the trunk gasping blood; the ground and couches are wet, warmed with dark gore. And he kills Lamyrus and Lamus, and the young Serranus, who had played much that night, handsome in appearance, and who lay with his limbs overcome by the abundant god--happy, had he made his play last the whole night and carried it on into daylight:
339| like a starving lion raging through a full sheepfold (for mad hunger drives him) who mauls and drags the soft flock, dumb with fear, and growls with bloody mouth. Euryalus' slaughter is no less; he too, inflamed, rages, and attacks a nameless crowd in the middle, and Fadus, Herbesus, Rhoetus and Abaris, who knew nothing of it; Rhoetus was awake and saw everything, but in his fear was hiding behind a great mixing-bowl. As he rose, Euryalus buried the whole sword in his chest, face to face, and drew it out with much death. The man vomits his crimson life, and dying brings back wine mixed with blood; Euryalus, hot with the stealth of it, presses on. And now he was heading toward Messapus' comrades; there he saw the last fire dying and the horses, tethered in the proper manner, cropping grass, when Nisus briefly said to him (for he sensed that he was carried away by too much slaughter and eagerness): 'Let us stop, for the hostile daylight is near. We have taken enough revenge, and a path has been made through the enemy.' They leave behind much that men had made of solid silver, and arms and mixing-bowls and fine rugs as well.
359| Euryalus takes the medallions of Rhamnes and the belt with golden studs, which rich Caedicus once sent as a gift to Remulus of Tibur when, though absent, he bound him in guest-friendship; Remulus as he died gave it to his grandson to keep; after his death the Rutulians gained it in war and battle. This he seizes and fits to his shoulders, strong though to no purpose. Then he puts on Messapus' helmet, well fitting and beautiful with its crests. They leave the camp and make for safety.
367| Meanwhile horsemen sent ahead from the Latin town, and the rest of the legion waited drawn up on the plains, were going to bring answers to King Turnus: three hundred, all with shields, under Volcens as their commander. They were now nearing the camp and approaching the walls when from afar they see these two turning aside on a left-hand path, and the helmet betrayed unmindful Euryalus in the half-light of night's shadows and flashed as it faced the rays. It was not seen without effect. Volcens shouts from the column: 'Halt, men. What is the reason for your journey? Who are you in arms? Where are you heading?' They make no reply, but hurry their flight into the woods and trust the night. The horsemen spread out to the known side-roads on this side and that, and ring every approach with a guard. There was a wood, wide and bristling with thickets and dark holm oak, which dense brambles filled on every side; a faint path gleamed through hidden tracks. The darkness of the branches and the burden of his plunder hold Euryalus back, and fear misleads him about the direction of the paths. Nisus goes on; and unawares he had already escaped the enemy and the places later called Alban from the name of Alba (at that time King Latinus had his high stables there), when he halted, glancing back in vain for his missing friend:
390| 'Unlucky Euryalus, in what region did I leave you? Or where shall I follow?' Again turning over the whole tangled route of the deceptive wood, he retraces the footprints he had noted behind him and wanders through the silent thickets. He hears horses, hears the din and signals of pursuers; and not much time passes before a shout reaches his ears and he sees Euryalus, whom the whole band, with the trick of the place and the night, in a sudden confusion, has overwhelmed and is carrying off, struggling much in vain. What can he do? With what force, with what weapons can he dare to rescue the young man? Or should he throw himself, ready to die, into the midst of the swords and hasten a fair death through wounds? Quickly he draws back his arm and brandishes his spear, looking up to the high Moon, and prays aloud: 'You, goddess, you who are present, help our effort, radiance of the stars and protector of the woods, Latona's daughter. If ever my father Hyrtacus brought any gifts on your altars for me, if I myself have added any from my hunting or hung them from the dome or fixed them to your sacred gable, let me throw this band into confusion and guide my weapons through the air.'
410| He had spoken, and straining with his whole body hurls the iron. The flying spear cuts through the shadows of night and reaches the back of Sulmo, who had turned away, and there it breaks, and the splintered wood passes through his midriff. He rolls over, vomiting a warm stream from his chest, cold, and heaves his sides with long gasps. They look around in different directions. Keener for it, Nisus poised another weapon at the top of his ear. While they were in confusion, the spear goes whistling through both temples of Tagus and sticks, warm, in his pierced brain. Fierce Volcens rages and sees no source of the weapon anywhere, nor where he might hurl himself in his fury. 'Meanwhile you,' he says, 'will pay me with your hot blood for the penalty of both'; and at once, with sword drawn, he went at Euryalus. Then indeed Nisus, terrified, out of his mind, cries out, unable to hide himself in the darkness any longer or to bear so great a pain: 'Me, me, here I am, I did it, turn your iron on me, Rutulians! The whole trick is mine; he neither dared nor could do anything; I call heaven and the stars that know it to witness;
430| he only loved his unlucky friend too much.' He was saying such things, but the sword, driven with force, goes through the ribs and breaks the white chest. Euryalus rolls in death, and blood runs over his fair limbs, and his neck collapses and falls back onto his shoulders: like a purple flower cut by the plough that droops, dying, or poppies whose heads sink on their weary stems when they are heavy with chance rain. But Nisus rushes into their midst and among them all seeks only Volcens, and lingers on Volcens alone. The enemies crowd around him and drive him back from this side and that at close quarters. He presses on no less and whirls his lightning sword, until he buried it in the face of the shouting Rutulian as he cried out, and dying took the life of his enemy. Then, pierced through, he threw himself down on his lifeless friend, and there at last he rested in peaceful death.
446| Fortunate both! If my poems have any power, no day will ever remove you from the memory of time, as long as the house of Aeneas dwells on the immovable rock of the Capitol, and a Roman father holds sovereignty.
450| The victorious Rutulians, in possession of their booty and spoils, carried the lifeless Volcens weeping into the camp. Nor was the grief in the camp any less when Rhamnes was found bloodless, and so many leaders killed in a single slaughter, with Serranus and Numa. A huge crowd gathers around the bodies themselves and the half-dead men, and the spot still warm from fresh slaughter and the streams foaming with abundant blood. They recognize among them the spoils, Messapus' shining helmet and the medallions recovered after much sweat.
459| And now Dawn, rising from Tithonus' saffron bed, was sprinkling the earth with new light. With the sun now poured out and things revealed in daylight, Turnus, himself armed, rouses his men to arms; each leader gathers his own bronze-clad lines for battle, and they sharpen their anger with various rumors. Indeed, they fix the heads of Euryalus and Nisus on raised spears (a pitiful sight) and follow them with loud shouting. The hardy Trojans drew up their line on the left part of the walls (for the right is bounded by a river), and hold the huge ditches and stand mournfully on the high towers; at the same time the faces of the men set on the spears, only too familiar to the wretched watchers and dripping with black gore, moved them.
473| Meanwhile winged Rumor flies through the frightened city as messenger and slips into the ears of Euryalus' mother. But at once the warmth left the poor woman's bones, the shuttles fell from her hands and the wool unrolled. The unhappy woman flies out, and with a woman's wailing, her hair torn, she runs frantic to the walls and the front of the columns, mindless of men, mindless of danger and weapons; then she fills the sky with her laments: 'Is this how I see you, Euryalus? Are you the one who was the late comfort of my old age, and could you leave me alone, cruel boy? And when you were sent into such dangers, was your poor mother not even given the chance to say a last word to you? Alas, you lie in an unknown land, given as prey to Latin dogs and birds! I, your mother, did not lead your funeral, nor close your eyes, nor wash your wounds, covering you with the cloth that I hurried over night and day, comforting an old woman's cares with my weaving. Which way am I to follow? Or what land holds your limbs, your torn-off members, and your mangled corpse? Is this what you bring back to me of yourself, my son? Was it for this that I trailed after you across lands and seas? Run me through, if you have any pity, hurl all your weapons at me, Rutulians, destroy me first with the sword; or you, great father of the gods, have pity, and with your thunderbolt thrust this hated head down to Tartarus, since I cannot otherwise break off this cruel life.' By this weeping their spirits were shaken, a mournful groan ran through all of them, and their strength for battle grew numb and broken. As she kindled their grief, Idaeus and Actor, on Ilioneus' advice and with Iulus weeping much, take hold of her and carry her back indoors between their hands.
503| But from afar the trumpet sounded its dreadful note with ringing bronze, a shout follows, and the sky bellows back. The Volscians hurry, their shields locked in a tortoise formation together, and prepare to fill the ditches and tear down the rampart; some look for an approach and to climb the walls by ladders, where the line is thin and the ring is not so thick with men, and light shows through. The Trojans, accustomed to defending walls in a long war, pour out every kind of weapon against them and thrust them back with hard poles. They also rolled down rocks of menacing weight, in case they could break through the covered line, although the Volscians were glad to endure every blow beneath their dense tortoise. But now this does not suffice. For where the huge mass threatens, the Trojans roll and hurl down an enormous weight, which laid the Rutulians low far and wide and broke up the cover of their shields. The bold Rutulians no longer care to fight in blind combat, but strive to drive them from the rampart with missiles. Elsewhere, terrible to see, Mezentius was shaking an Etruscan pine and bringing smoking fires; but Messapus, tamer of horses, son of Neptune, tears down the rampart and calls for ladders against the walls.
525| I pray, Calliope, breathe on me as I sing what slaughter Turnus dealt there with the sword, what deaths, which man each sent down to Orcus, and unroll with me the vast course of the war.
530| There was a tower of vast height and with high bridges, well placed for the site, which all the Italians strove with their utmost strength to storm and to overthrow with the utmost force of their resources, while the Trojans, in turn, defended it with stones and, crowded together, hurled weapons through its hollow windows. Turnus was the first to throw a blazing torch and fixed the flame to its side; it caught the planks in the wind, and clung to the gnawed doorposts. Inside, they panicked in confusion and vainly wished to flee their troubles. While they crowd together and draw back into the part free of the plague, then the tower collapsed suddenly under its weight, and all the sky thunders at the crash. Half-dead, they fall to the ground, followed by the immense mass, pierced by their own weapons and run through the chest by hard timber. Hardly two escaped, Helenor and Lycus; of whom Helenor, in the first flush of youth, whom the slave Licymnia had secretly borne to the Maeonian king and had sent to Troy with forbidden arms, was lightly armed with a bare sword, inglorious in his plain white shield. And when he saw himself amid Turnus' thousands, with Latin lines standing ranked on this side and that, like a wild beast that, fenced in by a dense ring of hunters, rages against the spears and, well aware, hurls itself on death and is carried by a leap over the hunting spears-- just so the young man, bound to die, rushes into the midst of the enemy and heads where he sees the weapons thickest.
556| But Lycus, far better on his feet, among enemies and among arms, holds to the walls in flight, and strives to seize the high roof with his hand and to reach the hands of his comrades. Turnus, pursuing him equally with running and spear, taunts him as the victor: 'Madman, did you hope you could escape our hands?' and at the same time he seizes him as he hangs, and tears him away with a great part of the wall: as when Jupiter's armor-bearer, seeking the heights, carries off a hare or a swan with gleaming body in his hooked talons, or when a wolf, sacred to Mars, snatches from the folds a lamb, sought by its mother with many bleatings. A shout goes up from every side: they charge and fill the ditches with earth, while others throw burning torches against the rooftops. Ilioneus lays low Lucetius, as he approaches the gate carrying fire, with a rock, a huge fragment of a mountain; Liger kills Emathion, Asilas Corynaeus (one good with the javelin, the other with an arrow that deceives from afar), Caeneus Ortygius, Turnus Caeneus the victor, Turnus Itys, Clonius, Dioxippus, Promolus, Sagaris, and Idas, who stood before the topmost towers, and Capys Privernus. Themilla's light spear had grazed him first, and in his madness he flung down his shield and put his hand to the wound; so an arrow flew on wings and was fixed deep in his left side, and with a deadly wound broke the breathing passages of life hidden within.
581| The son of Arcens stood in splendid arms, with his cloak embroidered with the needle and bright with Iberian dark red, remarkable in beauty, whom his father Arcens had sent, raised in the grove of Mars around the streams of the Symaethus, where stands the rich and gentle altar of Palicus. Mezentius laid down his spears, and himself whirled the whistling sling three times around his head with the thong drawn, and split the middle of the youth's temples, facing him, with melted lead, and stretched him out at full length on the deep sand.
590| Then, they say, Ascanius first aimed a swift arrow in war, he who was accustomed before to frighten fleeing wild beasts, and he laid low strong Numanus, whose surname was Remulus, and who had recently been joined in marriage to Turnus' younger sister. He was going before the front line, shouting words both worthy and unworthy of telling, swollen in heart with his new kingship, and carried himself with great clamor: 'Are you not ashamed to be hemmed in again by siege and rampart, twice-captured Phrygians, and to hold up walls against death? Look at those who demand our brides for themselves in war! What god, what madness drove you to Italy? Here you meet no sons of Atreus, no Ulysses, that fabricator of speeches. We are a hardy race from our origin: we carry our newborn sons to the rivers first and harden them with savage cold and water; our boys keep watch in the hunt and wear out the woods, their game is to bend horses and to stretch arrows from a bow. But our young men, patient of toil and used to little, either tame the earth with hoes or shake towns in war. Our whole life is worn down with iron, and we goad our oxen with the butt end of the spear turned around, and slow old age does not weaken our spirit's strength or change our vigor:
612| we press our white hair under a helmet, and it is our pleasure always to bring in fresh plunder and to live on loot. For you, clothes embroidered with saffron and shining purple, and idleness is dear to your hearts; it pleases you to indulge in dances, and your tunics have sleeves and your caps have ribbons. O truly Phrygian women, not Phrygian men, go over the heights of Dindymus, where the pipe gives its double-voiced song to those accustomed to it. The drums and the Berecyntian boxwood flute of the Idaean Mother call you; leave arms to men and yield to the sword.'
621| Ascanius could not bear Numanus boasting with such words and chanting such grim predictions. He turned and drew his arrow against the horsehair string, and, pulling his arms apart, stood ready; first he prayed to Jupiter as a suppliant, with vows: "Almighty Jupiter, favor my bold beginning. I myself will bring you yearly gifts at your temple, and set before your altars a bull calf with gilded brow, gleaming white, as tall as its mother, already butting with its horn and flinging sand with its hooves." The father of heaven heard, and thundered on the left from a clear part of the sky; at the same moment the deadly bow rang. The drawn arrow flew off with a terrible hiss and passed through Remulus' head, piercing his hollow temples with its iron. "Go, mock brave deeds with your arrogant words! Twice-captured Phrygians send this answer back to the Rutulians." That was all Ascanius said. The Trojans followed with a shout, roared for joy, and lifted their spirits to the stars.
638| By chance, at that moment, long-haired Apollo was sitting on a cloud in the region of the upper air, looking down on the Italian lines and the city, and he addressed victorious Iulus: "Well done for your new courage, boy; this is the way to the stars, son of gods and father of gods to come. All the wars that fate will bring will rightly be settled under the line of Assaracus; Troy cannot contain you." With these words he launched himself from the heights of the sky, parted the breathing winds, and made for Ascanius. Then the shape of his face changed into that of old Butes. He had once been armor-bearer to Dardanian Anchises and the trusty guardian at his door; later his father had made him Ascanius' companion. Apollo went along like the old man in everything: voice, complexion, white hair, and weapons with a grim clash. And he addressed fiery Iulus with these words: "Son of Aeneas, let it be enough that Numanus fell to your arrows without punishment. Great Apollo grants you this first glory and does not begrudge you weapons equal to his own; for the rest, boy, hold back from the war." So Apollo began, and in the middle of his speech he left the sight of mortals and vanished from their eyes into thin air.
659| The Dardan leaders recognized the god and his divine weapons, and they heard the quiver rattling as he fled. So, with Phoebus' words and divine will, they held back Ascanius, who was eager for battle, while they themselves went back into the fight and threw their lives into open danger. A shout ran along all the battlements around the walls. They bent their keen bows and whirled the throwing-straps. The whole ground was strewn with missiles; shields and hollow helmets rang with the clash, and a harsh battle rose, as great as a rainstorm coming from the west under the rainy Kids that lashes the ground, as thick as the hail with which clouds pour down onto the shallows, when bristling Jupiter whips up a watery storm with the south winds and bursts the hollow clouds in the sky.
672| Pandarus and Bitias, sons of Alcanor of Ida, whom woodland Iaera raised in the grove of Jupiter, young men as tall as the firs and mountains of their homeland, throw open the gate that had been entrusted to them by their leader's command. Trusting in their weapons, they even invite the enemy to the walls. They themselves stand inside, on the right and the left before the towers, armed with iron, their lofty heads gleaming with crests. They were like twin oaks that rise high into the air beside flowing rivers, either on the banks of the Po or near the lovely Adige, lifting their unshorn heads to the sky and nodding with their lofty crowns. The Rutulians burst in as soon as they saw the entrance open. At once Quercens, and Aquiculus handsome in his armor, and Tmarus headstrong in spirit, and Haemon, a son of Mars, with all their columns either turned and fled or laid down their lives on the very threshold of the gate. Then the quarrel of their spirits raised their anger higher, and the Trojans, now gathered together, close ranks at that spot and dare to fight hand to hand and to charge out farther.
691| A messenger brings word to their leader Turnus, who was raging in another part of the field and throwing the men into confusion, that the enemy was seething with fresh slaughter and offering the gates open. He abandons what he had begun and, stirred by monstrous rage, rushes to the Dardan gate and the arrogant brothers. First he lays low Antiphates (he was the first to come forward), the illegitimate son of lofty Sarpedon by a Theban mother, with a thrown javelin. The Italian cornel-wood spear flies through the yielding air and, lodged in his throat, passes down deep into his chest. The cavity of the dark wound gives back a foaming stream, and the iron grows warm in the pierced lung. Then Turnus kills Merops and Erymas with his own hand, then Aphidnus, then Bitias, burning in his eyes and roaring with spirit; not with a javelin (he would never have given up his life to a javelin), but a falarica came whirling with a great hiss, driven like a thunderbolt, and neither two bull's-hide layers nor the faithful corselet with its double scales of gold held it back. His huge limbs collapse and fall, the earth groans, and his enormous shield thunders over him. Such was the stone pier that once fell on the Euboean shore of Baiae, built beforehand of massive blocks and flung into the sea: it dragged its ruin forward, headlong, and settled deep, crashing against the shallows. The seas churn together and black sand surges up; then lofty Prochyta trembles at the noise, and so does Inarime, the hard bed laid on Typhoeus by Jupiter's commands.
717| Here Mars, mighty in arms, added courage and strength to the Latins and twisted sharp goads in their hearts, and sent Flight and black Fear against the Trojans. From every side they gather, since the chance to fight was given, and the warrior god falls upon their spirits. Pandarus, when he sees his brother's body stretched out and how fortune stands, what chance is driving events, swings the gate shut on its turning hinge with great force, straining with his broad shoulders, and leaves many of his own people shut out from the walls in the hard struggle; but others he shuts in with him and takes in as they rush back — madman, not to have seen the Rutulian king bursting in among the column, and to have shut him into the city of his own accord, like a monstrous tiger among helpless cattle. At once a new light flashed from his eyes, his armor rang terribly, the blood-red crest quivered on his head, and he sends out flashing lightning from his shield. The Trojans, suddenly thrown into confusion, recognize the hated face and the huge limbs. Then huge Pandarus leaps forward and, burning with anger at his brother's death, cries out: "This is not the palace Amata promised as a dowry, nor is it Ardea that holds Turnus in the middle of his ancestral walls.
739| You are looking at an enemy camp; there is no way out of here." Turnus, smiling at him with a calm heart, replies: "Begin, if you have any courage in your heart, and come to close quarters: you will tell Priam that here too an Achilles was found." He had spoken. Pandarus, straining with all his strength, hurls his spear, rough with knots and raw bark. The breezes caught it; Saturnian Juno turned aside the wound as it came, and the spear stuck fast in the gate. "But you will not escape this weapon that my right hand wields with force; for the man who owns this weapon and makes this wound is not like you." So he speaks, and rises high to the sword he has lifted, and with the steel splits the forehead in the middle, between the two temples, and the beardless cheeks with a monstrous wound. There is a crash; the earth is shaken by the huge weight. Dying, he stretches his collapsed limbs and his armor, bloodied with brains, on the ground, and his head, split in equal halves, hangs this way and that over each shoulder.
756| The Trojans scatter and turn in panic and fear; and if the thought had come at once to the victor to break the bars with his hand and let his companions in through the gates, that would have been the final day for both the war and the nation. But rage and a frenzied lust for slaughter drove him, blazing, against those facing him. First he catches Phaleris and Gyges, hamstrung; then he snatches up spears and hurls them into the backs of the fleeing men: Juno supplies strength and courage. He adds Halys to them as a companion, and Phegeus, pierced through his shield; then, unaware, on the walls and stirring up the fight, Alcander and Halius, Noemon and Prytanis. As Lynceus comes against him calling to his companions, Turnus, from the rampart on his right, gets to him first with a sweep of his flashing sword; struck off at close quarters by a single blow, his head lay far away along with his helmet. Next Amycus, the destroyer of wild beasts — no one was more skilled at anointing weapons by hand and arming steel with poison — and Clytius, son of Aeolus, and Cretheus, friend of the Muses, Cretheus, the Muses' companion, whose heart was always in songs and the lyre and setting rhythms to the strings: always he sang of horses and the arms of men and battles.
778| At last the Trojan leaders, hearing of their men's slaughter, assemble, Mnestheus and fierce Serestus, and see their companions scattering and the enemy let in. And Mnestheus says: "Where next, where are you running? What other walls, what further ramparts do you have? Shall one man, citizens, and he hemmed in on every side by your own earthworks, deal out such slaughter through the city and go unpunished? Shall he send so many of our finest young men to Orcus? Cowards, do you feel no pity and no shame for your unhappy country, your ancient gods, and great Aeneas?" Fired by such words, they stiffen and stand firm in a dense column. Turnus gradually begins to withdraw from the fight and make for the river and the part enclosed by water. All the more fiercely the Trojans press on with a great shout and mass their forces: as when a crowd presses on a savage lion with hostile weapons, and he, frightened but fierce, glaring grimly, gives ground backward; his anger and courage do not allow him to turn his back, nor, though he longs to, can he charge against them through the weapons and the men. Just so Turnus, uncertain, retraces his steps backward without haste, and his mind seethes with anger.
799| Even then he had twice charged into the middle of the enemy, twice turned their columns in disordered flight along the walls; but the whole force from the camp quickly gathers into one, and Saturnian Juno does not dare to supply him with strength against them; for Jupiter sent airy Iris down from the sky, carrying no gentle orders to his sister, should Turnus not withdraw from the high walls of the Trojans. So the young man cannot hold his ground so well with shield or right hand: he is overwhelmed by weapons hurled at him from every side. Around his hollow temples his helmet rings with constant clanging; the solid bronze gives way under the stones; the crest is knocked away; the boss of his shield is not enough against the blows. The Trojans redouble their spear thrusts, and Mnestheus himself, like a thunderbolt. Then sweat streams over his whole body and runs in a pitch-black river — he has no chance to breathe — and a sickly panting shakes his weary limbs. Then at last, with a headlong leap, he threw himself in full armor into the river. The river took him as he came into its yellow flood, lifted him up on its gentle waves, washed off the slaughter, and returned him rejoicing to his companions.

======== Aeneid — Book X ========

1| Meanwhile the dwelling of almighty Olympus swings open, and the father of the gods, who is king of men as well, summons a council to his starry seat, from which on high he looks down on all the lands, the camp of the Dardans and the Latin peoples. They take their seats in the hall with its double doors; he himself begins: "Great dwellers in heaven, why have your judgments turned back, and why do you struggle so with hostile hearts? I had forbidden Italy to clash with the Trojans in war. What is this discord against my prohibition? What fear persuaded these or those to take up arms and provoke the sword? The right time for battle will come — do not hurry it — when one day fierce Carthage will let loose great destruction on the citadels of Rome and open up the Alps: then you may compete in hatred, then you may plunder. Now let it be, and gladly agree to the treaty I have decided on."
16| Jupiter said this in few words; but golden Venus answers in no few: "Father, everlasting power over men and the world — for what else is there that we could now appeal to? — do you see how the Rutulians run riot, and Turnus rides conspicuous through the middle of them on his horses and charges, swollen with success in war? Closed walls no longer protect the Trojans; no, they join battle inside the gates and on the very ramparts of the walls, and the ditches overflow with blood. Aeneas is away and knows nothing. Will you never let them be relieved of siege? Again an enemy threatens the walls of a Troy just being born, and a second army, and again the son of Tydeus rises against the Trojans from Aetolian Arpi. For my part, I believe my wounds are still to come, and I, your offspring, am only delaying a mortal's weapons. If the Trojans have sought Italy without your consent and against your divine will, let them pay for their sins and do not help them; but if they have followed all those oracles that the gods above and the spirits below gave, why can anyone now overturn your orders, or why create new fates?
36| Why should I recall the fleet burned on the shore of Eryx, or the king of storms, or the furious winds stirred up from Aeolia, or Iris driven out of the clouds? She is even rousing the shades now — that region of the world was still untried — and Allecto, suddenly let loose on the upper world, has raged like a Bacchant through the middle of the Italian cities. I am not moved at all by empire. I hoped for that while fortune lasted. Let those win whom you prefer to win. If there is no region your harsh wife will give the Trojans, father, I beg you, by the smouldering ruins of overthrown Troy: let me send Ascanius away from the fighting unharmed; let my grandson survive. Let Aeneas, by all means, be tossed on unknown waves and follow whatever path Fortune gives him: let me be able to shelter this boy and withdraw him from the dreadful battle. I have Amathus, I have high Paphos and Cythera and my home at Idalium: let him lay down his arms and live out his life here without glory. Order Carthage to crush Ausonia under its great dominion; nothing from there will stand in the way of the Tyrian cities. What good was it to escape the plague of war and flee through the midst of the Argive fires, and to exhaust so many dangers of sea and vast land, while the Trojans seek Latium and a Pergamum reborn?
59| Would it not have been better to settle on the last ashes of their homeland and the ground where Troy once stood? Give the poor people back their Xanthus and Simois, I beg you, father, and let the Trojans live through the fortunes of Ilium once more." Then royal Juno, driven by bitter fury: "Why do you force me to break my deep silence and make public a grief I have kept covered? Did any man or god compel Aeneas to pursue war or to march as an enemy against King Latinus? He sought Italy at the bidding of the Fates — granted — driven by Cassandra's ravings. Did we urge him to leave his camp or to trust his life to the winds? To hand over the command of the war and his walls to a boy, to stir up Tyrrhenian loyalty or peaceful peoples? What god, what harsh power of mine drove him into deception? Where is Juno in this, or Iris sent down from the clouds? It is a shameful thing for the Italians to surround a newborn Troy with flames, and for Turnus to stand on his native soil — Turnus, whose grandfather is Pilumnus, whose mother is the goddess Venilia: what of the Trojans bringing violence against the Latins with black firebrands, crushing other men's fields under their yoke and driving off plunder?
79| What of their choosing fathers-in-law and dragging promised brides from their embraces, begging for peace with their hands while fixing weapons on their sterns? You can steal Aeneas from the hands of the Greeks and put a mist and empty winds in place of the man, and you can turn a fleet into as many nymphs: is it a crime for us to have helped the Rutulians a little in return? 'Aeneas is away and knows nothing': away let him be, knowing nothing. You have Paphos and Idalium, you have high Cythera: why meddle with a city pregnant with wars and with harsh hearts? Is it we who are trying to overturn the tottering fortunes of Phrygia from their foundations? We? Or was it the one who threw the wretched Trojans in the way of the Greeks? What was the cause for Europe and Asia to rise up in arms and break their treaties by a theft? Was it under my leadership that the Dardan adulterer stormed Sparta? Did I supply the weapons or foster wars with Cupid? Then was the time for you to fear for your people; now, too late, you rise with unjust complaints and hurl useless quarrels."
96| So Juno pleaded, and all the dwellers in heaven murmured, with differing assent, as when the first breezes, caught in the woods, murmur and roll blind rumblings that warn sailors of winds to come. Then the almighty father, who holds first power over all things, begins to speak (as he speaks, the lofty home of the gods falls silent, the earth trembles to its foundation, the lofty sky is still, then the west winds lie down, and the sea calms its waters): "Take this to heart, then, and fix these words of mine in your minds. Since it was not permitted for Ausonians to join with the Trojans by treaty, and your quarrel finds no end, whatever fortune each man has today, whatever hope each man pursues, whether he is Trojan or Rutulian, I will hold with no distinction, whether the Italian camp is held under siege by fate, or through a bad mistake of Troy and its ill-omened warnings. And I do not release the Rutulians. Each man's undertakings will bring him his own toil and fortune. Jupiter is king for all alike. Fate will find the way." He nodded, by his brother's Stygian waters, by the banks seething with pitch and a black abyss, and with that nod he made all Olympus shake. This was the end of speaking. Then Jupiter rises up from his golden throne, and the denizens of heaven escort him in their midst to the threshold.
118| Meanwhile the Rutulians press at all the gates to cut men down in slaughter and ring the walls with flames. The Trojan force is held shut in its fortifications, and there is no hope of escape. The wretched men stand uselessly on the high towers and have ringed the walls with a thin circle: Asius son of Imbrasus, Thymoetes son of Hicetaon, the two Assaraci, and old Thymbris with Castor, the front line; with them go the two brothers of Sarpedon, Clarus and Thaemon, from high Lycia. Lyrnesian Acmon carries a huge rock, no small part of a mountain, straining with his whole body, no lesser than his father Clytius or his brother Menestheus. Some contend to defend with javelins, others with stones, and to hurl fire and fit arrows to the string. In the midst of them is the most righteous care of Venus, the Dardan boy himself, see, with his handsome head bare, as a jewel gleams that sets off tawny gold, a decoration for the neck or the head, or as ivory shines when set by art in boxwood or Orician terebinth; his milk-white neck takes his flowing hair, and a ring of soft gold fastens it beneath. You too, Ismarus, the great-hearted peoples saw aiming wounds and arming reeds with poison, nobly born from a Maeonian home, where men work rich fields and the Pactolus waters them with gold. Mnestheus was present too, whom the earlier glory of driving Turnus from the rampart of the walls lifts high, and Capys: from him the Campanian city takes its name.
146| They had pitted themselves against each other in the contests of grim war; Aeneas was cutting through the waves in the middle of the night. For when he had left Evander and entered the Etruscan camp, he approached the king and told the king his name and lineage, what he sought and what he himself offered, what forces Mezentius was gathering to himself, and the violent heart of Turnus; he explained what trust one can place in human affairs, and mingled in entreaties. There is no delay: Tarchon joins his resources and strikes a treaty. Then the Lydian people, free of fate, board their fleet at the gods' command, entrusted to a foreign leader. Aeneas' ship goes first, with Phrygian lions yoked beneath its beak and Mount Ida rising above, most welcome to the exiled Trojans. Here great Aeneas sits and turns over in his mind the varied outcomes of the war, and Pallas, clinging to his left side, now asks about the stars, the path of the dark night, and now about what he suffered on land and sea.
163| Open Helicon now, goddesses, and set your songs in motion: tell what force from the Tuscan shores meanwhile accompanies Aeneas, arms the ships, and is carried over the sea.
166| Massicus is first, cutting the waves in the bronze-plated Tiger; under him is a band of a thousand young men who left the ramparts of Clusium and the town of Cosa, who carry arrows, light quivers on their shoulders, and a deadly bow. With him goes grim Abas: his whole company shone with splendid armor, and his ship with a gilded Apollo. Populonia, his mother city, had given him six hundred young men skilled in war, and the island of Ilva, rich in the inexhaustible mines of the Chalybes, three hundred. The third is Asilas, interpreter between men and gods, whom the entrails of beasts obey, and the stars of heaven, and the tongues of birds, and the fires of the foretelling lightning; he hurries a thousand men, close-packed in line, with bristling spears. Pisa, of Alpheus' lineage, an Etruscan city on its soil, commands them to obey him. Handsome Astyr follows, Astyr trusting in his horse and in armor of many colors. Three hundred more join (all with one mind to follow) who are from the home of Caere, from Minio's fields, from ancient Pyrgi, and unhealthy Graviscae.
185| I would not pass over you, Cunarus, boldest in war among the leaders of the Ligurians, and you, Cupavo, with few companions, from whose helmet rise the feathers of a swan (a fault, Love, that is yours), and the badge of his father's shape. For they say that Cycnus, in his grief for his beloved Phaethon, while he sang among the poplar leaves and the shade of the sisters and soothed his sad love with song, drew out an old age that turned white with soft plumage, forsaking the earth and following the stars with his voice. His son, escorting the troops of his age-mates with a fleet, drives forward with oars the huge Centaur: it looms over the water and menaces the waves with an enormous rock, lofty, and furrows the deep sea with its long keel.
198| Ocnus too rouses a column from his native shores, son of prophetic Manto and the Tuscan river, who gave you walls and his mother's name, Mantua, Mantua rich in ancestors, though not of one stock for all: she has a threefold people, and four tribes under each people; she herself is the head of the tribes, her strength drawn from Tuscan blood. From here too Mezentius arms five hundred against himself, whom Mincius, son of father Benacus and veiled in gray-green reeds, led onto the sea in a hostile pine ship. Heavy Aulestes goes, rising and beating the water with a hundred oars; the shallows foam as the marble-smooth surface is overturned. Huge Triton carries him, scaring the seas with his blue shell; as he swims, his shaggy front shows a man down to the flanks, his belly ends in a sea monster's tail, and the foaming water murmurs beneath his half-beast chest.
213| So many chosen leaders went in thirty ships to the aid of Troy, and cut the salt plains with bronze.
215| And now day had left the sky, and kindly Phoebe was striking the middle of Olympus with her night-wandering chariot. Aeneas (for care gives his limbs no rest) sits at the helm himself, steering and tending the sails. And see, in the middle of his course a chorus of his own companions meets him: the nymphs whom kindly Cybele had ordered to hold power over the sea and to become nymphs instead of ships, were swimming along together and cutting the waves, as many as the bronze-beaked prows that had earlier stood on the shore. From far off they recognize their king and circle him in dances; and Cymodocea, the most skilled in speech, following behind, grips the stern in her right hand, her back rising from the water, and rows beneath with her left through the silent waves. Then she speaks to him, who does not know them, in this way: "Are you awake, descendant of gods, Aeneas? Stay awake, and let out the sheets for your sails. We are the pines from the sacred summit of Ida, now nymphs of the sea, your fleet. When the treacherous Rutulian was pressing us headlong with iron and fire, we broke your cables against our will, and we have been looking for you across the sea. Our mother took pity on us and remade us in this shape, and gave us to be goddesses and live our lives beneath the waves.
236| But the boy Ascanius is held by wall and ditches amid flying weapons and Latins bristling with war. Already the Arcadian cavalry, mixed with brave Etruscans, hold the places they were ordered to; Turnus has made up his mind to set squadrons between them and the camp, to stop them joining. Come, rise, and when Dawn comes, be the first to call your comrades to arms, and take the shield which the Lord of Fire himself gave you, unconquerable, and ringed its edge with gold. Tomorrow's light, if you do not think my words in vain, will look on huge heaps of Rutulian dead." She had spoken, and as she left she gave the high stern a push with her right hand, knowing well how hard: the ship fled over the waves faster than a javelin or an arrow that matches the winds. Then the other ships quicken their course. The Trojan son of Anchises is himself astonished, not understanding, yet the omen lifts his spirits. Then, looking briefly at the vault above, he prays: "Kindly Idaean mother of the gods, who love Dindymus, towered cities, and lions harnessed in pairs to the reins, you now lead me in the fight; you, as is right, bring the omen near and be with the Phrygians, goddess, with favorable step." That was all he said, and meanwhile the day, returning in full light, was rushing on and had driven off the night. First he orders his comrades to follow the standards, to brace their spirits for arms, and to prepare themselves for battle.
260| And now, standing on the high stern, he has the Trojans and his own camp in sight, when he lifts up his blazing shield in his left hand. The Dardans raise a shout to the stars from the walls; renewed hope stirs their anger, and they throw weapons by hand, like Strymonian cranes that give signals under dark clouds and cross the sky with a noise, and flee the south winds with a shout that favors them. But to the Rutulian king and the Ausonian leaders this seemed strange, until they look back and see the ships turned toward the shore and the whole sea gliding in with the fleets. The crest on his head blazes, flame pours from the top of his helmet, and the golden shield boss spews huge fires: just as when comets in a clear night glow blood-red and ominous, or when Sirius, that dog-star heat that brings thirst and disease to sick mortals, rises and saddens the sky with its baleful light.
276| Yet bold Turnus did not lose his confidence to seize the shore first and drive the arrivals off the land. [Of his own accord he lifts their spirits with his words and of his own accord rebukes them:] "What you wished for in your vows is here: to break through with your right hands. Mars himself is in the men's hands. Now let each of you remember his wife and home, now recall the great deeds, the glories of your fathers. Let us run to meet them at the water's edge while they are unsteady and their first steps falter as they land. Fortune helps the bold." So he speaks, and turns over with himself whom to lead against them, or to whom he can entrust the besieged walls.
287| Meanwhile Aeneas lands his comrades from the high ships by gangways. Many watch for the ebb of the sluggish sea and trust themselves to the shallows with a leap; others use oars. Tarchon, scanning the shore, where he sees no shallows and no broken wave roaring back, but the sea glides in without obstruction as the tide swells, suddenly turns his prows and appeals to his comrades: "Now, chosen band, lean on your strong oars; lift the ships, carry them on, cleave this hostile land with your beaks, and let the keel itself press its own furrow. I do not refuse to break up my ship at such a landing, if only we once seize the shore." When Tarchon had said this, his comrades rose on their oars and drove their foaming ships onto the Latin fields, until the beaks gripped dry ground and all the keels came to rest unharmed. But not your ship, Tarchon: for, thrown onto the shallows, while it hung on an uneven ridge, balanced and held for a long time, wearing out the waves, it breaks apart and drops the men in the middle of the water. Fragments of oars and floating benches entangle them, and the receding wave drags back their feet at the same time.
308| Nor does idle delay hold Turnus; he sharply hurls his whole army against the Trojans and takes his stand opposite them on the shore. The trumpets sound. Aeneas was the first to attack the country squadrons, an omen for the battle, and he laid the Latins low by killing Theron, a man of the greatest size, who of his own accord sought Aeneas. Through the bronze joints of his armor and the tunic stiff with gold, Aeneas drains his open side with the sword. Then he strikes Lichas, cut out of his mother's womb after she was killed, and consecrated to you, Phoebus: why was he allowed to escape the chances of iron as a baby? Not far away he brought down with death hard Cisseus and huge Gyas, who were laying low whole columns with their clubs; the arms of Hercules did nothing for them, nor their strong hands, nor their father Melampus, who was Hercules' companion as long as the earth gave him heavy labors. See, as Pharus hurls idle words, Aeneas whirls a javelin and plants it in his shouting mouth. You also, unlucky Cydon, while you follow Clytius, whose cheeks are turning golden with their first down, your new delight, struck down by the Dardan's right hand, would lie there, pitiable, heedless of the loves of young men that were always yours, if a close-packed company of brothers, the sons of Phorcus, seven in number, had not blocked the way, hurling seven spears; some glanced off helmet and shield without effect, some kindly Venus turned aside as they grazed the body. Aeneas speaks to faithful Achates:
333| "Hand me spears; my right hand will not throw one in vain against the Rutulians, of those that stood in the bodies of Greeks on the plains of Ilium." Then he seizes a huge spear and hurls it; flying, it pierces the bronze of Maeon's shield and bursts his breastplate and his chest together. His brother Alcanor comes to his aid and supports his falling brother with his right hand; the spear, driven through his arm, flies straight on and, bloodied, keeps its course, and his right arm hung dying from his shoulder by the sinews. Then Numitor, having snatched the spear out of his brother's body, aimed at Aeneas; but he was not allowed to strike back, and he only grazed the thigh of great Achates.
345| Here Clausus of Cures, trusting in his youthful body, arrives, and from a distance strikes Dryops under the chin with a stiff spear driven hard, and snatches voice and life together as the throat is pierced as he is speaking; he strikes the ground with his forehead and vomits thick blood from his mouth. He also lays low three Thracians of the highest line of Boreas, and three whom father Idas and their homeland Ismarus send, by various chances. Halaesus runs up with his Aurunci bands, and Messapus, the offspring of Neptune, famous for his horses, joins in. Now one side, now the other, tries to drive the other out: the struggle is on the very threshold of Ausonia. As, in the great sky, opposing winds raise battle with equal spirit and strength, and neither they themselves nor the clouds nor the sea give way to each other, and the fight is long in the balance, with everything standing locked against the rest: just so the Trojan lines and Latin lines clash, foot sticks to foot, and man to man in dense array.
362| But elsewhere on the field, where a torrent had swept rolling stones far and wide and shrubs torn from the banks, Pallas saw the Arcadians, unaccustomed to fighting as infantry, turning their backs to pursuing Latium, since the rough nature of the ground, with its water, had persuaded them to dismiss their horses. Then, with the one thing left in a desperate situation, now by entreaty, now with bitter words, he kindles their courage: "Where do you flee, comrades? By you and your brave deeds, by the name of our leader Evander, by the wars you have won and my hope, which now rises to rival my father's glory, do not trust to your feet. A path must be broken through the enemy with the sword. Where that dense mass of men presses hardest, that way your high homeland calls you back, and Pallas your leader. No gods weigh upon us; mortals, we are pressed by a mortal enemy; we too have as many lives and hands as they do. See, the sea shuts us in with a great barrier of water; there is no land left for flight. Shall we make for the sea, or for Troy?" So he speaks, and bursts into the midst of the dense enemy.
380| First Lagus, led on by cruel fate, comes in his way. While he is wrenching up a rock of great weight, Pallas pins him with a hurled spear, where the spine gives a gap between the ribs, and pulls back the spear stuck in the bones. Hisbo does not catch him from above, though he hoped to; for Pallas meets him first as he rushes in, raging and off his guard because of his comrade's cruel death, and buries his sword in his swollen lung. Then he goes for Sthenius, and Anchemolus of Rhoetus' ancient line, who dared to defile his stepmother's bed. You too, twins, fell on the Rutulian fields, Larides and Thymber, sons of Daucus, alike to the point that your own family could not tell you apart, a mistake your parents loved; but now Pallas has made a harsh difference between you. For he took off your head, Thymber, with Evander's son's sword; and your severed right hand, Larides, looks for you, and the half-dead fingers twitch and clutch the sword again. A mixture of grief and shame arms the Arcadians, fired by his warning and seeing the man's glorious deeds, against the enemy.
399| Then Pallas pierces Rhoeteus as he flees past in his two-horse chariot. This was all the respite and delay Ilus won; for Pallas had aimed a strong spear at Ilus from afar, but Rhoeteus intercepts it in the middle as he flees you, excellent Teuthras, and your brother Tyres, and rolling from the chariot, half-dead, he beats the Rutulian fields with his heels. And just as, when the winds rise in the longed-for summer, a shepherd sets scattered fires in the woods, and the middle catches suddenly and Vulcan's bristling line stretches as one across the wide plains, while he sits as victor and looks down on the rejoicing flames: just so the courage of your comrades all gathers into one and supports you, Pallas. But Halaesus, keen in war, advances against them and gathers himself behind his arms. Here he kills Ladon, Pheres and Demodocus; he cuts off Strymonius' right hand, raised for his throat, with his flashing sword, he strikes Thoas in the face with a rock and scatters the bones mixed with bloody brains. His father, who foresaw the fates, had hidden Halaesus in the woods; when the old man relaxed his gray eyes in death, the Fates laid a hand on him and dedicated him to Evander's weapons. Pallas attacks him, first praying: "Grant now, father Tiber, to the iron that I balance for the throw, good fortune and a way through the breast of hard Halaesus. Your oak will have this man's arms and spoils." The god heard; while Halaesus was shielding Imaon, he, unlucky, gives his unprotected chest to the Arcadian weapon.
426| But Lausus, a great part of the war, does not let the ranks be terrified by the man's great slaughter: first he kills Abas, who stood in his way, the knot and obstacle of the fight. The sons of Arcadia are laid low, the Etruscans are laid low, and you too, Trojans, bodies not destroyed by the Greeks. The lines clash, equal in leaders and in strength; the rear ranks close up, and the crowd does not allow weapons and hands to move. On this side Pallas presses and urges, on that Lausus; they differ little in age, both outstanding in looks, but Fortune had denied them a return to their homeland. Yet the ruler of great Olympus did not allow them to meet each other; soon their own fates await them under a greater enemy.
439| Meanwhile his kindly sister warns Turnus to go to Lausus' aid, and he cuts through the midst of the column in his swift chariot. When he saw his comrades he said: "It is time to stop fighting; I alone go against Pallas, Pallas is owed to me alone; I wish his father himself were here to watch." So he spoke, and his comrades withdrew from the field as ordered. But at the Rutulians' withdrawal the young man, astonished at the arrogant command, stands amazed at Turnus, rolls his eyes over the huge body, and surveys everything from afar with a grim look, and with such words goes against the tyrant's words: "Either I shall soon be praised for taking rich spoils, or for a distinguished death: my father is equal to either lot. Put away your threats." With that he advances into the middle of the field; the blood runs cold to the Arcadians' hearts. Turnus leapt down from his chariot and prepares to go on foot, hand to hand; and as a lion, when he has seen from a high lookout a bull standing far off on the plain preparing for a fight, flies to the attack, such is the picture of Turnus coming on. When Pallas thought him near enough to be within reach of a thrown spear, he moved first, hoping that chance might help his daring against unequal strength, and spoke to the great sky:
460| "By my father's hospitality and the table to which you came as a stranger, I beg you, Hercules, be with me in this great undertaking. Let him see me strip the bloody armor from the half-dead Turnus, and let Turnus' dying eyes bear the sight of a conqueror." Hercules heard the young man and pressed a great groan down deep in his heart and shed useless tears. Then his father spoke to his son with kind words: "Each man's day stands fixed; the time of life is short and irrecoverable for all; but to extend one's fame by deeds, that is the work of courage. Under the high walls of Troy so many sons of gods fell, and with them died my own son Sarpedon; Turnus too is called by his own fate and has reached the limits of the span given to him." So he speaks, and averts his eyes from the Rutulian fields.
474| But Pallas hurls his spear with great strength and pulls his flashing sword from its hollow scabbard. The spear, flying, lands where the top of the shoulder-armor rises, and, working a path through the rim of the shield, it finally grazed Turnus' great body. Then Turnus, long balancing a shaft tipped with sharp iron, hurls it at Pallas and says: "See whether our weapon is the more piercing." He had spoken; but the spearhead, with a quivering blow, drives right through the middle of the shield, through so many layers of iron, so many of bronze, that the hide of a bull wrapped around it so many times encircles, and through the obstruction of the corselet it pierces his huge chest. Pallas tears the hot weapon from the wound in vain: blood and life follow by one and the same way. He collapses onto the wound (his arms rang above him) and, dying, strikes the enemy ground with a bloody mouth. Standing over him, Turnus says: "Arcadians, remember this and carry my words back to Evander: I send Pallas back as he deserved. Whatever honor there is in a tomb, whatever comfort in burial, I grant freely. His hospitality to Aeneas will cost him dear." With these words he pressed the lifeless body with his left foot, tearing off the enormous weight of the sword-belt, and the crime stamped upon it: a band of young men foully slain on one wedding night, and the bloody bridal chamber, which Clonus, son of Eurytus, had engraved in much gold;
500| in this spoil Turnus now exults and rejoices to possess it. The minds of men do not know fate or future lot, and do not know how to keep measure when lifted up by success! The time will come for Turnus when he will wish he had bought an unharmed Pallas at a great price, and when he will hate those spoils and that day. But his comrades, in great numbers, with much groaning and tears, carry Pallas back laid on a shield. O grief and great glory returning to your father, this first day gave you to war, this same day takes you away, though you leave huge heaps of Rutulian dead!
510| Now no rumor of so great a disaster, but a surer informant, flies to Aeneas: his men are within a slight margin of death, and it is time to help the Trojans, who are turning back. He mows down everything nearest with his sword and drives a broad path through the column, blazing with iron, looking for you, Turnus, proud with new slaughter. Pallas, Evander, all of it is before his very eyes: the table to which he first came as a stranger, and the right hands given. Here he seizes alive four young men born of Sulmo and as many raised by Ufens, to sacrifice as offerings to the shades and to douse the pyre's flames with captives' blood. Then he had aimed a hostile spear at Magus from a distance: Magus slips under it with cunning, and the trembling spear flies over him, and, as a suppliant, clasping his knees, he speaks in these words: "By your father's spirit and the hopes of rising Iulus, I beg you to save this life for my son and my father. I have a tall house; deep underground lie talents of engraved silver, and I have weights of gold, worked and unworked. The Trojan victory does not turn on this, and one life will not make so great a difference."
530| He had spoken. Aeneas answered him in these words: "The many talents of silver and gold you mention, spare for your sons. Turnus did away with those dealings of war earlier, when he killed Pallas. So Anchises' shade feels, and so does Iulus." With these words he grips the helmet with his left hand, bends back the suppliant's neck, and drives the sword in to the hilt. Not far off was Haemon's son, priest of Phoebus and Trivia, whose temples a sacred fillet bound with a band, all gleaming in his robe and white insignia. Aeneas meets him, drives him across the field, and, standing over him as he slips, sacrifices him and covers him in vast shadow; Serestus carries back the gathered arms on his shoulders as a trophy for you, King Gradivus.
543| Caeculus, born of the stock of Vulcan, and Umbro, coming from the mountains of the Marsi, renew the lines. The Dardan rages against them: with his sword he had cut off Anxur's left hand and the whole rim of his shield (Anxur had spoken some boastful word and believed that power would attend his speech, and perhaps lifted his spirit to heaven and had promised himself gray hair and long years); Tarquitus, exulting in his shining armor, whom the nymph Dryope bore to woodland Faunus, offered himself in Aeneas' way as he blazed. Aeneas, drawing back his spear, pins corselet and the huge weight of the shield, then strikes his head to the ground as he begs in vain and is preparing to say much, and, rolling the warm trunk, says over it with hostile heart: "Lie there now, fearsome man. Your excellent mother will not bury you in the ground or load your limbs with a family tomb: you will be left to birds of prey, or the current will carry you off, sunk in the flood, and hungry fish will lick your wounds." Straight away he chases Antaeus and Lucas, the front rank of Turnus, and brave Numa and tawny Camers, son of great-hearted Volcens, who was the richest in land of the Ausonians and was king in silent Amyclae.
565| Like Aegaeon, who they say had a hundred arms, a hundred hands, and fire blazing from fifty mouths and chests, when against Jupiter's thunderbolts he clashed with as many matching shields and drew as many swords: so Aeneas rages the length of the whole plain as victor, once his blade has grown warm. And see, he heads for the four-horse team of Niphaeus and for their breasts as they face him. When they saw him striding from afar and roaring dreadfully, they turned in terror and rushed backward, throwing their driver out and dragging the chariot to the shore.
575| Meanwhile Lucagus drives into the middle of the fighting in his two-horse chariot with its white team, and his brother Liger with him; but the brother steers the horses with the reins while fierce Lucagus whirls his drawn sword. Aeneas could not bear their frenzied rage. He rushed at them and loomed huge, his spear leveled against them. Liger said to him: "These are not the horses of Diomedes you see, nor the chariot of Achilles, nor the plains of Phrygia. Here, in this land, the end of the war and of your life will be given to you." Such words flew far from the raving Liger. But the Trojan hero did not prepare words in answer; he hurled a javelin at his enemies. As Lucagus leaned forward over the lash, urging on his pair of horses with his spear, and stretched out his left foot to ready himself for the fight, the spear passed under the lowest rim of his gleaming shield and then pierced his left groin. Thrown from the chariot, he rolled dying on the ground. Dutiful Aeneas addressed him with bitter words: "Lucagus, no slow flight of your horses betrayed your chariot, nor did empty shadows turn it away from the enemy; you yourself are leaping down from the wheels and abandoning your team." So he spoke, and seized the horses. His brother, who had slipped down from the same chariot, stretched out his helpless hands, unlucky man:
597| "By yourself, by the parents who bore you to be such a man, Trojan, spare this life and pity one who begs you." As he went on pleading, Aeneas answered: "You were not speaking like this a moment ago. Die, and as a brother do not abandon your brother." Then with his blade he opened the chest, the hiding place of the life within. The Dardan leader dealt out such deaths across the plain, raging like a torrent of water or a black whirlwind. At last Ascanius, the boy, and the young men who had been besieged in vain burst out and left the camp.
606| Meanwhile Jupiter, unprompted, addressed Juno: "O my sister and also my dearest wife, it is Venus, as you supposed (and your judgment does not deceive you), who sustains the Trojan cause, not the vigorous right hands of its men in war, nor their fierce spirit and endurance of danger." Juno replied submissively: "Why, most beautiful husband, do you trouble me, when I am sick at heart and fear your harsh words? If I had the power in your love that I once had, and that I ought to have, you would not deny me this, almighty one: that I could take Turnus out of the fight and keep him safe for his father Daunus. As it is, let him die and pay the Teucrians the penalty with his own dutiful blood. Yet his name derives from our line, and Pilumnus is his great-great-grandfather, and often with a generous hand and many gifts he has loaded your threshold." The king of heavenly Olympus answered her briefly: "If you are asking for a delay of imminent death and some time for a doomed young man, and you understand that I am settling it so, then carry Turnus off in flight and snatch him from the fates that press on him: that much I have room to grant. But if some deeper favor lies hidden under these prayers, and you think the whole war can be shifted or changed, you are feeding empty hopes." And Juno said through her tears: "What if you were to grant in your heart what you begrudge in words, and this life were to remain secure for Turnus? As things stand, a heavy end awaits an innocent man, or else I am being misled by a false picture of the truth. But how I wish I were being mocked by groundless fear, and that you, who can, would turn your designs toward something better!"
633| When she had spoken, she at once launched herself from high heaven, driving a storm before her, wrapped in a rain cloud, through the air, and made for the Trojan line and the Laurentine camp. Then the goddess took a thin, powerless shadow out of hollow cloud and shaped it into the likeness of Aeneas (a marvel to see), adorning it with Trojan weapons. She copied the shield and the plumes of his godlike head, gave it empty words, gave it a voice without thought, and imitated his stride as he walked, like the forms that are said to flit about after death, or the dreams that mock the senses of sleepers. The phantom exulted gladly in front of the first ranks, provoking the man with its weapons and taunting him with its voice. Turnus pressed upon it and hurled a whistling spear from a distance; the phantom turned and retreated. Then indeed, when Turnus believed that Aeneas had turned his back and was giving way, and in his confusion drank in an empty hope, he cried: "Where are you running, Aeneas? Do not abandon the marriage you were promised; this right hand will give you the land you have sought across the waves." Shouting such words, he followed and brandished his drawn blade, not seeing that the winds were carrying off his joy.
653| By chance a ship was moored at the edge of a high rock, with its ladders set out and a gangway ready, the ship in which King Osinius had come from the shores of Clusium. Into its hiding places the frightened phantom of fleeing Aeneas threw itself, and Turnus pressed after it no more slowly, overcoming every delay and leaping over the high gangway. He had barely reached the prow when Juno, Saturn's daughter, broke the rope and swept the torn-loose ship back over the waters. Then the light phantom no longer sought hiding places but flew up high and mingled with a dark cloud, while Aeneas demanded in battle the man who was not there; he sent many bodies of men who met him down to death. Meanwhile a whirlwind carried Turnus out over the open sea. He looked back, knowing nothing of what had happened and ungrateful for his rescue, and stretched both hands to the stars, crying aloud: "Almighty Father, did you judge me deserving of so great a crime, and did you want me to pay such a penalty? Where am I being carried? From where have I come away? What flight is this? What kind of man will it bring me back as? Shall I see the walls of Laurentum or the camp again? What of that band of men who followed me and my arms?
673| All of them, a sin, I have left to an unspeakable death, and now I see them scattered and hear the groans of the falling. What am I to do? What earth could gape deep enough for me now? You winds, take pity on me instead; carry the ship onto the cliffs, onto the rocks (I, Turnus, beg you willingly), and drive it into the cruel shoals of the quicksands, where neither the Rutulians nor any rumor that knows my shame may follow me." As he said this, his mind swung now this way, now that: whether in his madness he should drive his sword through himself because of such disgrace, and thrust the cruel blade through his ribs, or throw himself into the middle of the waves, swim for the curving shore, and return again to the Trojan weapons. Three times he tried each way, and three times mighty Juno held him back, pitying the young man in her heart, and checked him. The ship glides on, cutting through deep water with the current and a favoring tide, and is carried to the ancient city of his father Daunus.
689| But meanwhile, at Jupiter's urging, Mezentius, blazing, enters the fight and attacks the exulting Trojans. The Etruscan ranks run together, and all of them press upon him alone, alone, with hatred and a thick storm of missiles. He (like a cliff that juts out into the vast sea, exposed to the furies of the winds and facing the deep, and bears all the force and threats of sky and sea while itself staying unmoved) lays low Hebrus, Dolichaon's son, and with him Latagus and fleeing Palmus. Latagus he strikes in the mouth and full face with a stone, a huge fragment of a mountain; Palmus he leaves to roll helpless on the ground with his hamstrings cut, and he gives his armor to Lausus to wear on his shoulders and to fix the crests on his head. He also strikes down Euanthes the Phrygian and Mimas, the friend and companion of Paris, born on the same night as Paris: Theano brought him into the light, with Amycus as his father, and the queen, Cisseus' daughter, pregnant with a firebrand, bore Paris. Paris lies dead in his father's city, while the Laurentine shore holds Mimas, who knew nothing of it. And just as a boar driven down from the high mountains by the bite of hounds, one that pine-bearing Vesulus has sheltered for many years and the Laurentine marsh has fed for many years in its forest of reeds, when it comes into the nets stops, snorts fiercely and bristles along its shoulders, and no one has the courage to rage at it or to come close, but they press on from a safe distance with javelins and shouts; he, however, unafraid, hesitates on every side, gnashing his teeth and shaking the spears off his back: in just the same way, none of those who have good reason to be angry with Mezentius has the heart to meet him with drawn sword, and they harass him from far off with missiles and a vast clamor.
719| Acron had come from the ancient territory of Corythus, a Greek, an exile who left his marriage unfinished. When Mezentius saw him from far off, throwing the ranks into confusion, splendid in the plumes and the purple of his promised bride, he was like a lion that often roams the high sheepfolds unfed (for mad hunger drives him), and if by chance he sights a fleeing she-goat or a stag with antlers rising, he opens his jaws wide in joy, bristles his mane, and clings, crouched over the flesh; foul blood washes his shameless mouth. So Mezentius rushed eagerly into the dense enemy. Unlucky Acron is laid low and, dying, drums the dark ground with his heels and stains his broken spears with blood. And the same man did not think Orodes worth striking down as he fled, nor worth giving a blind wound with a thrown spear; he ran to meet him face to face, and set himself man against man, better not by stealth but in brave arms. Then, planting his foot and leaning on his spear above the fallen man, he said: "Men, no small part of the war lies here, tall Orodes." His comrades shouted together, following him in a joyful paean. But Orodes, dying, said: "Whoever you are, victor, you will not rejoice over me unavenged, nor for long; the same fate watches you too, and soon you will hold the same ground." Mezentius smiled at him, anger mixed in: "Now die. But as for me, let the father of the gods, who is king of men as well, look to that." Saying this, he pulled the weapon from the body. A hard rest and iron sleep weigh on Orodes' eyes, and his eyes are closed in everlasting night.
747| Caedicus cuts down Alcathous, Sacrator Hydaspes, Rapo Parthenius and Orses, hard and strong; Messapus kills Clonius and Lycaon's son Erichaetes, the first lying on the ground after falling from his unbridled horse, the second on foot. Agis the Lycian had also come forward on foot, but Valerus, not lacking his ancestors' courage, brings him down; Salius kills Thronius, and Nealces, by stealth, with his javelin and an arrow that deceives from afar, kills Salius.
755| Now Mars was making the grief and the deaths on both sides equal and heavy; victors and vanquished alike cut down and were cut down, and neither side knew flight. In Jupiter's house the gods pity the pointless anger of both sides, and that mortals have such hardships to bear; on one side Venus looks on, on the other Juno, daughter of Saturn. Pale Tisiphone rages among the thousands.
762| But now Mezentius, brandishing a huge spear, strides across the field in a turbulent rush. As huge as Orion when he walks on foot through the deepest pools of mid-ocean, cutting a path, and stands out above the waves with his shoulder, or when he carries an ancient ash down from the mountaintops and walks on the ground with his head hidden among the clouds: so Mezentius advances in his vast armor. Aeneas, who had caught sight of him in the long column, prepares to go to meet him. Mezentius stays undaunted, waiting for his great-hearted enemy, standing firm in his own bulk. Measuring with his eyes the distance sufficient for a spear, he says: "May my right hand, my god, and the missile I am balancing now be with me! I vow that you yourself, Lausus, will be a trophy of Aeneas, clothed in spoils taken from the pirate's body." He spoke, and hurled his whistling spear from a distance. But it glanced off the shield as it flew, and from far off it pierced noble Antores between flank and groin, Antores, Hercules' companion, who had been sent from Argos and had attached himself to Evander and settled in an Italian city. Unlucky man, he is laid low by a wound meant for another; he looks up at the sky and, dying, remembers sweet Argos.
783| Then dutiful Aeneas hurls his spear. It passed through the round shield hollow with its triple bronze, through the linen lining, and through the work woven of three bulls' hides, and lodged low in the groin, but its force did not carry through. Aeneas, glad at the sight of Etruscan blood, quickly draws his sword from his thigh and presses hard upon his trembling foe. When Lausus saw it, he groaned deeply out of love for his dear father, and tears rolled down his face. Here I will not be silent, I at least, about the fate of your harsh death and your finest deeds, if future ages will lend any credence to so great a deed, nor about you, young man worth remembering. Mezentius, giving ground, crippled and entangled, was withdrawing and dragging the enemy's spear along on his shield. The young man dashed forward and threw himself into the fight, and as Aeneas's right hand was already rising to deliver the blow, he got under the point of the blade and held Aeneas himself back by delaying him. His comrades follow with a great shout while the father, sheltered by his son's small shield, makes his way off, and they hurl spears and harass the enemy from a distance with missiles. Aeneas rages, but keeps himself under cover.
803| As when clouds burst and pour down hail, and every plowman and every farmer scatters from the fields, and the traveler hides in a safe refuge, on a riverbank or under the arch of a high rock, while it rains on the earth, so that when the sun returns they can get on with the day: so Aeneas, buried under missiles from every side, endures the cloud of war until all its thunder is spent, and he rebukes Lausus and threatens him: "Where are you rushing to your death, daring more than your strength allows? Your sense of duty deceives you, unwary boy." Yet Lausus exults, madly, no less than before, and now a fiercer rage rises in the Dardan leader, and the Fates gather up the last threads for Lausus. For Aeneas drives his strong sword right through the middle of the young man and buries it entirely; the point went through the small shield, the light armor of a threatening boy, and through the tunic his mother had spun with soft gold, and blood filled its folds; then his life left through the air, grieving, to the shades, and abandoned the body.
821| But when Anchises' son saw the dying boy's face, and that face pale in a strange way, he groaned deeply in pity and stretched out his hand, and the image of his own devotion to his father came to his mind. "What now, pitiable boy, will dutiful Aeneas give you for such praiseworthy deeds, what gift worthy of so fine a nature? Keep the weapons you rejoiced in; and I send you back to the shades and ashes of your ancestors, if you care about that. Yet, poor boy, you will find this consolation for your wretched death: you fall by the hand of great Aeneas." He rebukes the hesitating comrades and lifts Lausus himself from the ground, as he soils with blood the hair he had combed in the usual way.
833| Meanwhile the father was staunching his wounds with water by the stream of the Tiber and resting his body, leaning against the trunk of a tree. Nearby his bronze helmet hangs from the branches, and his heavy armor lies at rest on the grass. Chosen young men stand around him; he himself, sick and panting, eases his neck, his combed beard spread over his chest. Again and again he asks about Lausus, and keeps sending men to call him back and carry him the orders of his anxious father. But Lausus' companions were carrying him lifeless on his shield, weeping — a great man, laid low by a great wound. From far off his mind, foreseeing evil, recognized the lament. He defiles his gray hair with heaps of dust, stretches both hands to the sky, and clings to the body. "Son, did such a desire to live take hold of me that I let you, whom I fathered, go under the enemy's hand in my place? Am I, your father, saved by these wounds of yours, living by your death? Alas, now at last ruin has come home to me in my misery, now that the wound has been driven deep! And I, my son, also stained your name with my crime, driven by hatred from the throne and scepter of my fathers.
853| I owed my country punishment and my people's hatred: I should have given up my guilty life myself, by any death! Now I live, and do not yet leave men and the light. But I will leave them." As he says this he raises himself on his injured thigh, and although his strength is slowed by the deep wound, undaunted, he orders his horse to be brought. This was his pride, this his comfort; on this he had come back victorious from all his wars. He speaks to the grieving animal and begins with such words: "Rhaebus, we have lived a long time, if anything lasts long for mortals. Today either you will bring back victorious those bloody spoils and the head of Aeneas and with me avenge the sufferings of Lausus, or, if no force opens a way, you will fall together with me; for I do not believe, bravest one, that you will deign to bear another's orders and have Trojans as your masters." He spoke, and, taken onto its back, settled his limbs in their accustomed place and loaded both hands with sharp javelins, his head gleaming with bronze and bristling with a horsehair crest. So he galloped swiftly into the midst. In his one heart surge huge shame and madness mixed with grief. And here he called Aeneas three times in a loud voice.
874| Aeneas knew it, and prays joyfully: "So may the father of the gods grant it, so may Apollo on high! Begin the fight." He said only this, and went to meet him with leveled spear. But Mezentius answered: "Why try to frighten me, savage, now that you have taken my son? In no other way could you have destroyed me. We do not shudder at death, nor do we spare any of the gods. Stop: I come to die, and first I bring you these gifts." He spoke, and hurled a spear at his enemy; then he plants another and another, flying around in a huge circle, but the golden boss holds. Three times he rode around Aeneas as he stood, wheeling to the left, hurling weapons by hand; three times the Trojan hero carries around with him a monstrous forest on his bronze-covered shield. Then, tired of so much delay, of pulling out so many spearheads, and hard pressed in an unequal fight, turning many things over in his mind, he at last breaks out and hurls his spear between the hollow temples of the warhorse. The four-footed beast rears up and beats the air with its hooves, throws its rider, falls on him and pins him, and collapses headlong on him with its shoulder dislocated.
895| Trojans and Latins set the sky ablaze with their shouting. Aeneas runs up, snatches his sword from its sheath, and stands over him: "Where now is fierce Mezentius and that savage force of spirit?" The Etruscan answered, when he had looked up at the sky, drunk in the air, and recovered his senses: "Bitter enemy, why do you taunt me and threaten me with death? There is no sin in killing; I did not come to battle on such terms, and my Lausus made no such pact with you for me. One thing I ask, by whatever mercy is owed to defeated enemies: allow my body to be covered with earth. I know my people's bitter hatred surrounds me: protect me, I beg you, from their fury, and let me share my son's tomb." So he speaks, and, knowing what he does, receives the sword in his throat and pours out his life over his armor in a stream of blood.

======== Aeneid — Book XI ========

1| Meanwhile Dawn rose and left the Ocean. Aeneas, although his cares urge him to give time to burying his companions and his mind is troubled by death, was paying his vows to the gods as victor at first light. He set up on a mound a huge oak with its branches cut away on every side and dressed it in gleaming armor, the spoils of the leader Mezentius, a trophy to you, great lord of war. He fastens on it the crests dripping with blood, the man's broken spears, and the breastplate struck and pierced in twice six places; he ties the bronze shield to its left side and hangs the ivory-hilted sword from its neck. Then, since the whole crowd of leaders gathered close around him, he begins thus to encourage his exultant companions: "Men, the greatest thing has been achieved; let all fear for what remains be gone. Here are the spoils, the first fruits taken from a proud king, and this is Mezentius at my hands. Now our road leads to the king and the Latin walls. Prepare your arms, look forward to the war with courage and hope, so that no delay holds us back unprepared, when the gods first give the sign to pull up the standards and lead the young men out of the camp, and no faint-hearted plan slows us through fear. Meanwhile let us commit to the earth our companions and their unburied bodies, the only honor there is down in Acheron. Go," he said, "honor with the last gifts those noble souls who have won this homeland for us with their blood; and let Pallas first be sent to the grieving city of Evander, Pallas, who did not lack courage, whom the black day carried off and plunged into bitter death."
29| So he speaks, weeping, and goes back to the doorway where old Acoetes was guarding the lifeless body of Pallas laid out. Once he had been armor-bearer to Parrhasian Evander, but then he had gone as companion to his dear foster son under less happy auspices. Around him stood the whole band of servants, a crowd of Trojans, and the women of Ilium with their hair let down in mourning, as custom requires. But when Aeneas came in through the high doors, they raise a huge lament to the stars, beating their breasts, and the palace resounds with grieving cries. When he saw the propped-up head and face of Pallas, white as snow, and the open wound of the Ausonian spear in his smooth chest, he speaks with welling tears: "Pitiable boy, did Fortune, when she came in joy, begrudge me you, so that you should not see our kingdom or ride back in victory to your father's home? This is not what I had promised your father Evander about you when I left, when he embraced me as I went, sent me off to a great command, and warned me in his fear that the men were fierce, that we would fight a hard race. And now he, perhaps much deceived by empty hope, is making vows and heaping the altars with gifts, while we in sorrow escort with useless honor a young man who is dead and owes nothing more to any god above. Unhappy man, you will see the cruel funeral of your son! Is this our return, our long-awaited triumph? Is this my great pledge? But you will not see him, Evander, driven off with shameful wounds, nor will you as a father pray for a dreadful death because your son survived in disgrace. Ah me, what a great protector you are losing, Ausonia, and you, Iulus!"
59| When he had wept over these things, he orders the pitiful body to be lifted, and sends a thousand men chosen from the whole army to escort him with the last honors and to be present at the father's tears — small comfort for so great a grief, but owed to the unhappy father. Others quickly weave a wicker frame and a soft bier from arbutus shoots and oak twigs, and shade the raised couch with a covering of leaves. Here they lay the young man, high on his rustic bed: like a flower picked by a girl's thumb, a soft violet or a drooping hyacinth, whose brightness and beauty have not yet faded, but whom mother earth no longer feeds or gives strength. Then Aeneas brought out two robes, stiff with gold and purple, which Sidonian Dido herself, delighting in the work, had once made for him with her own hands, threading the weave with fine gold. Sadly he dressed the young man in one of these as a last honor and veiled with it the hair that was to burn; and besides he heaps up many prizes from the Laurentine fight and orders the plunder to be led out in a long procession;
80| he adds the horses and weapons he had stripped from the enemy. He had also bound behind their backs the hands of those he would send to the shades as funeral offerings, to sprinkle the flames with the blood of the slain; and he orders the leaders themselves to carry tree trunks dressed in the enemy's armor, with the enemies' names fastened on them. Unhappy Acoetes, worn out with age, is led along, now defiling his breast with his fists, now his face with his nails, and he throws himself full length on the ground. They lead chariots, too, drenched with Rutulian blood. Behind them goes the warhorse Aethon, his trappings laid aside, weeping and wetting his face with large tears. Others carry the spear and the helmet, for Turnus as victor holds the rest. Then follows a mourning column, the Trojans and all the Etruscans and the Arcadians with their arms reversed. When the whole procession of companions had gone far ahead, Aeneas stopped and added these words with a deep groan: "Those same harsh fates of war summon us hence to other tears. Hail forever, greatest Pallas, and forever farewell." Saying nothing more, he made for the high walls and went back into the camp.
100| And now envoys had arrived from the Latin city, covered with olive branches and asking for a favor: that he should return the bodies lying scattered across the plain from the sword, and let them go to a mound of earth; that there is no contest with the conquered and those deprived of the air; that he should spare those who were once called guests and fathers-in-law. Good Aeneas treats their prayer, which was not to be scorned, with kindness, and adds these further words: "What undeserved fortune, Latins, has entangled you in so great a war, so that you flee us as friends? Do you ask me for peace for the lifeless, for those struck down by the lot of war? I would willingly grant that to the living as well. I would not have come had the Fates not given me a place and a home, and I do not wage war against your people; your king abandoned our friendship and put his trust instead in the arms of Turnus. It would have been fairer for Turnus to face this death himself. If he is preparing to end the war by force, if to drive the Trojans out, it was right for him to meet me with these weapons: whichever of us the god or his own right hand granted life would live. Now go, and put the fire beneath your wretched fellow citizens." Aeneas had spoken. They fell silent in astonishment, and turned, and held their eyes and faces fixed on each other.
122| Then Drances, an old man, always hostile to young Turnus through hatred and accusation, replies in turn with these words: "O hero of great fame, greater still in arms, Trojan, with what praises shall I raise you to the sky? Shall I admire you first for your justice or for the toils of war? We, for our part, will thankfully take these words home to our own city and, if Fortune gives a way, will join you to King Latinus. Let Turnus seek treaties for himself. Indeed, it will be a pleasure even to raise the massive fated walls and to carry Trojan stones on our shoulders." He had said this, and all murmured the same with one voice. They agreed on twelve days, and with peace as an intermediary Trojans and Latins mingled and wandered unharmed through the forests and along the ridges. The tall ash rings under the two-edged ax; they overturn pines that reach to the stars, and do not stop splitting oak with wedges and fragrant cedar, or hauling ash trees on groaning wagons.
139| And now Rumor, flying, the herald of so great a grief, fills Evander and Evander's house and walls, she who a moment before was reporting Pallas as victor in Latium. The Arcadians rushed to the gates and, following their ancient custom, snatched up funeral torches; the road gleams with a long line of flames and marks out the fields far and wide. Coming to meet them, the Phrygian crowd joins the mourning column. When the mothers saw them approaching the houses, they set the sorrowing city ablaze with their cries. But no force can hold Evander back; he comes into the midst of them. When the bier with Pallas has been set down, he falls on it and clings to it, weeping and groaning, and at last, with difficulty, a way is opened for his voice through his grief: "This is not what you promised your father, Pallas, that you would trust yourself to savage Mars more carefully. I was not unaware how much new glory in arms and the very sweet honor of a first fight could do. The first fruits of a young man, wretched, and the hard apprenticeship of a war so close, and my vows and prayers, heard by none of the gods! And you, most holy wife, happy in your death and not kept for this grief!
160| But I, by living on, have defeated my own fate, to remain as a father who outlived his son. The Rutulians should have overwhelmed me with their spears as I followed the Trojans' allied arms! I myself should have given up my life, and this procession should be bringing me home, not Pallas! I would not blame you, Trojans, nor the treaty nor the hands we joined in hospitality: that lot was owed to my old age. But if a premature death awaited my son, then it will be a comfort that he fell while leading the Trojans into Latium, after killing thousands of Volscians. Indeed, Pallas, I would not honor you with any other funeral than that which dutiful Aeneas, the great Phrygians, the Etruscan leaders and the whole Etruscan army have given. They carry great trophies, those whom your right hand sent to death; and you too would now be standing as a huge trunk in the fields, Turnus, if your age were equal and the strength that comes with years the same. But why, unhappy man, do I keep the Trojans from their arms? Go, and remember to carry this message to your king: that I prolong a hateful life now that Pallas is dead is because of your right hand; you see that Turnus owes it to son and father alike. This is the one place open for you, for your merits and your fortune. I do not seek joy in life, that would not be right, but to bring this news to my son among the deepest shades."
182| Meanwhile Dawn had raised the kindly light for wretched mortals, bringing back their tasks and toils. Now father Aeneas and Tarchon on the curving shore built the pyres. Each man carried the bodies of his own people there, according to the custom of their fathers, and when the black fires were set beneath them, the high sky is buried in darkness and smoke. Three times, girded in gleaming armor, they ran around the blazing pyres; three times on horseback they circled the mournful funeral fire and raised a wail with their voices. The earth is sprinkled with tears, and the arms are sprinkled too; the shouting of men and the blare of trumpets go up to the sky. Then some throw into the fire the spoils stripped from the slain Latins, helmets and fine swords and bridles and glowing wheels; others, the familiar gifts, the dead men's own shields and their unlucky spears. Many bodies of oxen are slaughtered around to Death, and bristly pigs and sheep seized from all the fields are slaughtered over the flames. Then along the whole shore they watch their comrades burning and guard the half-burnt pyres, and cannot be dragged away, until damp night turns the sky, set with burning stars.
203| No less, the wretched Latins in another part built countless pyres, and some buried many bodies of men in the earth, while others they carried off to the neighboring fields or sent back to the city. The rest, a huge heap of confused slaughter, they burn without count and without honor; then on every side the vast fields vie in shining with many fires. The third dawn had driven the chill shadow from the sky: grieving, they raked the deep ash and the bones mixed together from the hearths, and piled a warm mound of earth over them. But now in the houses of the city of rich Latinus, the loudest uproar and the greatest part of the long mourning is heard. Here mothers and wretched daughters-in-law, here the dear hearts of grieving sisters, and boys orphaned of their parents, curse the dreadful war and Turnus's marriage; they demand that he himself decide it with arms, he himself with the sword, since he claims the kingdom of Italy and the first honors for himself. Savage Drances adds weight to this and declares that Turnus alone is called for, that Turnus alone is summoned to the contest. At the same time many opinions in varied words speak against this on Turnus's behalf; the great name of the queen shields him, and his fame supports him with the trophies he has earned.
225| Amid this turmoil, in the middle of the blazing uproar, behold, sad envoys come back from the great city of Diomedes with his reply: that nothing had been achieved by all the expense of so much effort, that gifts and gold and great entreaties had availed nothing, that the Latins must seek other arms or ask peace from the Trojan king. King Latinus himself sinks under immense grief: the anger of the gods and the new graves in front of his eyes warn him that Aeneas is carried along by fate and by the clear will of heaven. So he summons a great council, the foremost of his people called by command, within his high threshold. They gather and stream to the royal house along crowded streets. Latinus sits in the middle, the oldest in years and first in scepter, with no happy face. And here he orders the envoys returned from the Aetolian city to tell what they report, and demands the answers, all of them in their order. Then silence fell on every tongue, and Venulus, obeying the command, begins to speak thus:
243| "We have seen Diomedes, citizens, and the Argive camp, and having traveled the whole road we overcame every danger, and we touched the hand by which the land of Ilium fell. He, as victor, was founding the city of Argyripa, named for his native people, in the fields of Iapygian Garganus. When we had entered and been given the chance to speak in his presence, we offered our gifts, told him our name and country, who had brought war on us, and what reason had drawn us to Arpi. When he had heard, he replied in these words, with a calm face: 'O fortunate peoples, kingdom of Saturn, ancient Ausonians, what fortune is disturbing your peace and persuading you to provoke a war you know nothing of? All of us who violated the fields of Ilium with the sword (I pass over what was endured in fighting beneath the high walls, the men that the famous Simois covers) have paid, through the whole world, unspeakable punishments and all the penalties for our crimes, a band pitiable even to Priam. The grim star of Minerva knows it, and the Euboean rocks and Caphereus the avenger. After that campaign we were driven to different shores: Menelaus, son of Atreus, is an exile as far as the pillars of Proteus, and Ulysses has seen the Cyclopes of Etna.
264| Shall I tell of the kingdom of Neoptolemus and the overturned household gods of Idomeneus? Of the Locrians living on the Libyan shore? The Mycenaean himself, leader of the great Achaeans, was killed on his own threshold by the hand of his shameless wife, and an adulterer lay in wait for conquered Asia. Did the gods begrudge me that, restored to my country's altars, I should see my longed-for wife and beautiful Calydon? Even now portents of horrible aspect pursue me, and my lost comrades have sought the sky on wings and wander the rivers as birds (alas, the dreadful punishment of my own men!) and fill the rocks with tearful cries. All this I should indeed have been expecting from the time when, in my madness, I attacked heavenly bodies with the sword and violated Venus's right hand with a wound. No, do not, do not urge me into such battles. I have no war with the Teucrians after Pergamum was destroyed, and I do not remember the old woes with joy. The gifts you carry to me from your native shores, take them to Aeneas. We stood against his savage weapons and joined battle hand to hand: believe one who has tested it, how he rises over his shield, with what whirl he hurls his spear.
285| If the land of Mount Ida had borne two more such men, Dardanus would have come of his own accord to the cities of Inachus, and Greece would be mourning a reversed fate. Whatever delay there was at the walls of hard Troy, the Greeks' victory stuck fast at the hand of Hector and Aeneas, and carried its footsteps back to the tenth year. Both were outstanding in courage, both in outstanding arms; Aeneas was the superior in devotion. Join hands in a treaty, wherever you can; but take care that weapon does not meet weapon.' You have heard, best of kings, both what the king's answer is and what his opinion is about the great war."
296| Scarcely had the envoys spoken when a confused murmur ran through the faces of the Ausonians, as when rocks hold back rushing rivers, a roar rises from the blocked whirlpool, and the nearby banks resound with crackling waves. As soon as their minds were calmed and their anxious voices quiet, the king, after first invoking the gods, began from his high throne:
302| "I could wish, Latins, and it would have been better, that we had decided the main question earlier, and not called a council at a time like this, when the enemy is camped before our walls. We are waging an ill-timed war, citizens, against a race of gods and unconquered men, whom no battles wear down, and who cannot stop fighting even when beaten. If you had any hope in the Aetolians' arms you called in, put it aside. Each man is his own hope; but you see how narrow it is. As for the rest, how everything lies shattered in ruin, it is all before your eyes and in your hands. I blame no one: whatever the greatest courage could do has been done; the struggle has been fought with the whole body of the kingdom. Now, then, I will lay out what my wavering mind has decided and explain it in a few words (give me your attention). I have an old tract of land near the Tuscan river, stretching west and as far as the Sicanian borders; the Aurunci and Rutulians sow it, work the hard hills with the plow, and pasture the roughest parts of them. Let this whole region and the pine-covered slope of the high mountain be given up to friendship with the Trojans, and let us propose fair terms of treaty and call them as allies into our kingdom:
323| let them settle, if their desire is so great, and build their walls. But if they have in mind to seek other lands and another people, and can leave our soil, let us construct twenty ships out of Italian oak; or if they can fill more, all the timber lies by the water. Let them themselves lay down the number and design of the hulls, and we shall provide bronze, labor, and shipyards. Besides, I propose that a hundred Latin envoys from the leading families go to carry my words and confirm the treaty, holding out in their hands the branches of peace, bringing gifts: talents of gold and ivory, and the curule chair and the striped robe, the symbols of our rule. Deliberate in common and help our exhausted state."
336| Then Drances, the same man, hostile, whom Turnus's glory goaded with sidelong envy and bitter spurs, generous with wealth and better with his tongue, but with a hand cold in war, regarded as no worthless adviser in counsel, powerful in factional strife (his mother's nobility gave him a proud ancestry; on his father's side he was of uncertain stock), stands up and heaps and piles on anger with these words: "The matter you consult us on, good king, is obscure to no one and needs no voice of ours: all admit they know what the people's fortune brings, but they hesitate to say it. Let him give freedom of speech and ease his arrogance, the man because of whose ill-omened leadership and sinister ways (I will say it, though he threaten me with arms and death), we see that so many shining leaders have fallen and the whole city has sunk into mourning, while he attacks the Trojan camp, trusting in flight, and frightens the sky with his weapons. One thing further, best of kings, add to those gifts, which you order to be sent in great number and promised to the Dardans, one thing: do not let anyone's violence prevent you from giving your daughter, father that you are, to an outstanding son-in-law in a worthy marriage, and from sealing this peace with an eternal treaty.
357| But if such terror holds our minds and hearts, let us entreat Turnus himself and beg his permission from him: let him yield, and give up his private right to the king and to his country. Why do you so often throw your wretched fellow citizens into open danger, Turnus, you who are the source of these troubles for Latium and their cause? There is no safety in war; we all ask you for peace, Turnus, and at the same time for the one inviolable pledge of peace. I first, whom you imagine to be your enemy (and I do not mind being so), look, I come as a suppliant. Pity your own people, set aside your pride, and go away beaten. We have seen enough deaths, enough of the routed, and we have laid waste vast fields. Or if glory moves you, if you feel such strength in your heart, and if the palace that comes with the dowry is so dear to you, dare, and with confidence bring your chest against the enemy. Of course, so that a royal bride may fall to Turnus, we, worthless lives, an unburied and unmourned crowd, are to be cut down on the plains. You too, if you have any strength, if you have anything of your father's war-spirit, look in the face of him who challenges you."
376| Turnus's violence flared up at these words. He groaned and broke out with these cries from deep in his chest: "You always have plenty to say, Drances, just when war demands action, and when the senators are summoned you are the first to arrive. But the senate house should not be filled with words, which fly from you so grandly while you are safe while the rampart of the walls holds the enemy off and the ditches are not yet flooded with blood. So thunder away with your eloquence (as you always do) and accuse me of cowardice, Drances, since your right hand has piled up so many heaps of slaughtered Trojans and you have made the fields everywhere conspicuous with your trophies. You are welcome to find out what living courage can do; and surely we do not have to look far for enemies. They stand all around the walls. Shall we go against them? Why do you hold back? Or will your Mars live forever in your windy tongue and those fleeing feet of yours? I, driven back? Or will anyone, you foulest of men, rightly call me driven back, anyone who will see the Tiber swollen with Trojan blood, and Evander's whole house, with his line, laid low, while the Arcadians are stripped of their weapons?
396| That is not how Bitias and mighty Pandarus found me, nor the thousand men I sent down to Tartarus in a single day as victor, though I was shut in behind walls and fenced round by the enemy's rampart. Is there no safety in war? Sing such things to the head of the Dardan and to your own cause, madman. So do not stop throwing everything into confusion with great fear and exalting the strength of a twice-conquered people, while you run down the arms of Latinus. Now the chieftains of the Myrmidons shake at Phrygian arms, now too the son of Tydeus and Achilles of Larisa, and the river Aufidus flees backward from the Adriatic waves. Or when he pretends to be afraid at my abuse, the schemer's crime, and sharpens the charge with feigned dread. You will never lose a soul like yours by this right hand (stop being stirred up): let it live with you and be in that breast of yours. Now I return to you, father, and to your great deliberation. If you place no further hope in our arms, if we are so abandoned and, with our army routed once, have been utterly destroyed, and Fortune has no way back, let us pray for peace and stretch out unarmed hands. And yet, oh, if only some of our usual courage were still here!
416| In my eyes he is fortunate above others in his hardships and outstanding in spirit, who, so as not to see anything like this, fell dying and bit the ground once and for all with his mouth. But if we still have resources and young men not yet touched, and the cities and peoples of Italy remain to help us, if glory has also come to the Trojans at the price of much blood (they have their own deaths, and the storm is the same for all), why do we falter ignobly on the very threshold? Why does trembling seize our limbs before the trumpet sounds? Time and the changing toil of shifting ages have turned many things for the better; Fortune, visiting now one man, now another, has toyed with many and set them on solid ground again. The Aetolian and Arpi will give us no help. Messapus will be with us, and fortunate Tolumnius, and the leaders so many peoples have sent; and no small glory will follow the chosen men of Latium and the Laurentine fields. There is also Camilla, from the distinguished people of the Volscians, leading a column of horsemen and squadrons gleaming with bronze. But if the Trojans call me alone to the contest, and that is your wish, and I am so much in the way of the common good, Victory does not hate these hands so much and has not fled from them so far that I would refuse to attempt anything for so great a hope.
438| I will go against him with courage, even if he were to show himself a great Achilles and put on arms like his, made by Vulcan's hands. To you, and also to my father-in-law Latinus I, Turnus, second in courage to none of the men of old, have devoted this life. Does Aeneas call me alone? Let him call, I pray; and let Drances not pay with his death instead, if this is the anger of the gods, or carry off the courage and glory, if it is that."
445| They were arguing among themselves in this way over their uncertain situation, each side contending, while Aeneas was moving his camp and his battle line. Suddenly a messenger rushed through the royal halls with great uproar and filled the city with great terror: the Trojans, drawn up in battle formation, and the Etruscan force were coming down from the river Tiber across all the plains. At once minds were thrown into confusion, the hearts of the people were shaken, and their anger was aroused by sharp goads. In alarm they demanded weapons; the young men roared for weapons; the fathers wept and muttered in distress. Then from every side a great clamor of conflicting opinion rose into the air, just as when flocks of birds happen to settle in a tall grove, or hoarse swans make their noise along the fish-filled river Padusa through its chattering pools. "Yes," said Turnus, seizing the moment, "citizens, call your council and sit and praise peace; they are rushing into your kingdom with arms." Saying no more, he leapt up and hurried out of the high halls. "You, Volusus, give the order for the Volscian companies to arm," he said, "and lead out the Rutulians. Messapus, and you, Coras, with your brother, spread the cavalry out over the broad plains in arms. Let some men secure the approaches to the city and garrison the towers; the rest of the force will attack with me where I order."
468| At once they rushed to the walls from every part of the city. Father Latinus himself abandons the council and his great undertakings, and, troubled by the grim moment, puts them off; he blames himself bitterly for not having freely welcomed Dardan Aeneas and taken him as son-in-law for the city. Some dig trenches before the gates, or haul up stones and stakes. The hoarse trumpet gives the bloody signal for war. Then mothers and boys ring the walls in a mixed circle; the last hardship calls them all. The queen too is borne up to the temple and the high citadel of Pallas with a great band of mothers, bringing gifts, and beside her goes the maiden Lavinia, cause of so great a disaster, her lovely eyes lowered. The mothers follow, fill the temple with incense, and pour out sorrowful cries from the high threshold: "Powerful in arms, guardian of war, Tritonian maiden, break with your hand the spear of the Phrygian pirate, throw him headlong to the ground, and lay him low beneath our high gates." Turnus himself, in a frenzy, arms for battle, hurrying. Already he had put on his gleaming breastplate, bristling with bronze scales, and had enclosed his calves in gold, his head still bare, and had belted his sword at his side; he ran down from the high citadel, shining with gold, exulting in spirit and already anticipating the enemy in hope: like a horse that has at last broken its tether and fled the stall, free, and, master of the open plain, either heads for the pastures and the herds of mares, or, used to bathing in a familiar river, bounds out, and neighs with head thrown high, exuberant, and his mane plays over his neck and shoulders.
498| Camilla met him with her Volscian column following, and the queen leapt from her horse right at the gates; her whole troop copied her, left their horses, and slid down to the ground. Then she says: "Turnus, if a brave man has any right to trust in himself, I dare, and I promise, to meet the squadron of the Aeneadae, and to ride alone against the Etruscan cavalry. Let me be the first to try the dangers of war with my force; you stay on foot by the walls and guard the ramparts." Turnus, his eyes fixed on the awe-inspiring maiden, replied: "Maiden, glory of Italy, what thanks can I find to speak, or to repay? But now, since your spirit is above everything, share the burden with me. Aeneas, as rumor and the scouts I sent report, has recklessly sent ahead light cavalry to shake the plains; he himself is crossing the steep heights of the mountain by the deserted ridge and is approaching the city. I am preparing a trap for him on a winding path in the forest, to block the fork of the pass with armed men. You take on the Etruscan cavalry in a clash of standards; with you will be fierce Messapus, the Latin squadrons, and Tiburtus's band; and you too take on a leader's responsibility." So he speaks, and with similar words he urges Messapus and the allied leaders into battle, and advances against the enemy.
522| There is a valley with a curving bend, suited to ambush and the tricks of war, which on both sides a dark flank presses in with dense foliage; a narrow path leads into it, and the pass is tight and the approach treacherous. Above it, on the lookout points and on the very summit of the mountain, lies a plateau unknown to the enemy, with safe places of retreat, whether you wish to meet the fight on the right or the left, or to press down from the ridges and roll great rocks. The young man went there, knowing the lie of the roads; he seized the place and settled in the dangerous woods.
532| Meanwhile in the dwellings of the gods Latona's daughter spoke to swift Opis, one of the maidens of her sacred company, and with a sorrowful voice she spoke these words: "Camilla goes to a cruel war, maiden, and arms herself in our weapons in vain, she who is dear to me above others. For this love of Diana is not new, nor did it move my heart with sudden sweetness. When Metabus, driven from his kingdom by hatred of his overbearing power, was leaving the ancient city of Privernum, he took his infant daughter as a companion in his exile as he fled amid the battle's midst, and called her Camilla, from her mother's name Casmilla, with part of it changed. Carrying her in his bosom before him, he was making for the long ridges of lonely woods; fierce weapons pressed on him from every side, and Volscian soldiers spread out around him. Look, in the middle of his flight the Amasenus, swollen, was foaming at its brimming banks, so great a rainstorm had burst from the clouds. He prepared to swim, but was held back by love for his infant, and feared for his dear burden. As he turned everything over in his mind, this decision suddenly and barely settled on him:
552| The warrior happened to be carrying a huge spear in his strong hand, solid with knots and seasoned oak. To this he ties his daughter, wrapped in bark and wild cork, and binds her securely around the middle of the shaft. Balancing it in his huge right hand, he cries to the sky: "Gracious one, dweller in the woods, Latona's daughter, maiden: I myself, her father, dedicate this child to you as your servant; this is the first weapon of yours she holds as she flees the enemy through the air, a suppliant. Receive, goddess, I call you to witness, your own child, who is now entrusted to the uncertain breezes." He spoke, drew back his arm, and hurled the twisting spear; the waters roared, and over the rushing river unlucky Camilla fled on the whirring javelin. But Metabus, with the great column now pressing close, threw himself into the river and, victorious, pulled the spear with the girl from the grassy turf, a gift for Diana. No cities received him under their roofs or within their walls (nor would he himself, in his wildness, have yielded), and he spent his life among the lonely mountains of the shepherds. Here, in thickets and among bristling wild beasts' lairs, he fed his daughter on the milk of a wild mare from a herd, milking the udder into her tender lips.
573| And as soon as the infant had set the first steps of her feet on the ground, he put a sharp javelin in her hands and hung a little spear and bow from her shoulder. Instead of a gold hairpin, instead of a trailing robe's covering, a tiger's pelt hangs down her back from her head. Even then she hurled child-sized weapons with her tender hand, and whirled a sling on its smooth cord around her head, and brought down a Strymonian crane or a white swan. Many mothers throughout the Etruscan towns longed for her as a daughter-in-law in vain; she is content with Diana alone and keeps an unstained, lasting devotion to weapons and virginity. I wish she had not been caught up in such soldiering and tried to provoke the Trojans: she would be dear to me now and one of my companions. But come, since she is driven by a bitter fate, glide down from heaven, nymph, and visit the Latin borders, where a grim battle is joined under an ill omen. Take these things, and draw an avenging arrow from the quiver: with it, whoever violates her sacred body with a wound, Trojan or Italian, let him pay me the penalty equally in blood. Afterward I will carry the body and weapons of the pitiable girl, unstripped, in a hollow cloud and lay them to rest in a tomb in her homeland." She spoke, and the other, gliding lightly down through the air of heaven, sounded, her body wrapped in a dark whirlwind.
597| Meanwhile the Trojan force draws near the walls, with the Etruscan leaders and the whole cavalry army, drawn up by number in squadrons. The warhorse roars all over the plain, prancing, fighting the tight reins, turning this way and that; then far and wide the field bristles iron with spears, and the plains blaze with raised weapons. Messapus too, and the swift Latins, and Coras with his brother, and the wing of the maiden Camilla appear opposite on the field, and with drawn-back right arms they hold their spears far out and brandish their javelins, and the approach of the men and the neighing of the horses grows hot. Already both sides, having advanced to within a spear's throw, had halted; suddenly they burst out with a shout, urge on their maddened horses, and pour out their missiles from every side, thick as snow, and the sky is covered with shade. At once Tyrrhenus and fierce Aconteus charge straight at each other with their spears, and are the first to crash down with a great noise, and horses' chests burst against horses' chests; Aconteus, flung off, plunges far like a thunderbolt or a weight shot from an engine, and scatters his life into the air.
618| At once the lines were thrown into confusion, and the Latins turned, flung their shields behind them, and wheeled their horses toward the walls; the Trojans drive them on, and Asilas leads the squadrons at their head. And now they were drawing near the gates when the Latins again raised a shout and turned their supple necks about; the Trojans flee and are carried far back with loosened reins. Like the sea, when it rushes forward in alternating tides, and now rolls toward the land and the wave foams over the rocks and drenches the edge of the sand in its curve, now sweeps rapidly back, drawing in the rocks rolled by the surge, and flees, leaving the shore as the water slips away: twice the Etruscans drove the Rutulians, turned back, toward the walls, twice, thrown back, they looked behind them, covering their backs with their shields. But when they met a third time in battle and tangled their whole lines together, and man picked out man, then truly there were the groans of the dying, and weapons and bodies and half-dead horses rolled in deep blood mixed with the slaughter of men, and a harsh fight arose. Orsilochus, since he shrank from approaching Remulus himself, hurled a spear at his horse and left the iron under its ear; the tall warhorse, frantic from the blow, raised its chest and flung up its legs, unable to bear the wound, while Remulus rolled to the ground, thrown off. Catillus strikes down Iollas, and Herminius, huge in spirit, huge in body and weapons, whose tawny hair grew on a bare head, with bare shoulders, and who did not fear wounds: so exposed was he to arms. A spear driven through his broad shoulders quivers in him and, piercing him through, doubles him over in pain. Dark blood flows everywhere; they deal death with the sword, contending, and seek a beautiful death through wounds.
648| But amid the slaughter the Amazon Camilla exults, one side bared for battle, quiver at her back, and now she thickly showers pliant spears from her hand, now seizes her strong double-axe with an untiring right hand; the golden bow and Diana's weapons ring from her shoulder. Even when she has been driven back and retreats, she turns her bow and shoots her darts as she flees. Around her are her chosen companions, the maiden Larina, and Tulla, and Tarpeia brandishing her bronze axe, Italian girls, whom divine Camilla herself chose as her glory, good servants in peace and in war: like the Amazons of Thrace when they beat the waters of the river Thermodon and fight in painted arms, whether around Hippolyte or when Penthesilea, daughter of Mars, returns in her chariot, and with great shrieking and uproar the women's columns exult with their crescent shields.
664| Whom first, whom last, fierce maiden, do you strike down with your spear? Or how many dying bodies do you lay on the ground? First Eunaeus, son of Clytius, whose open chest she pierces with a long fir spear as he faces her. He falls, vomiting streams of blood, and bites the bloody ground, and in death writhes on his wound. Then Liris and Pagasus besides, one of whom, thrown from his stricken horse, was gathering the reins, the other while he came up and stretched out his unarmed hand to the falling man; they fall headlong together. To these she adds Amastrus, son of Hippotes, and, leaning in from a distance with her spear, she pursues Tereus, Harpalycus, Demophoon and Chromis; and as many javelins as the maiden hurled with her hand, so many Phrygian men fell. Far off, Ornytus, a hunter in strange arms and on an Iapygian horse, comes riding; a hide torn from a bull covers the broad shoulders of the fighter, the great gaping mouth of a wolf and its jaws with white teeth cover his head, and a rustic hunting spear arms his hand; he himself moves among the troops, and stands a full head above them all. She catches him (for there is no effort in a routed column) and pierces him, and over him says with hostile heart: "Did you think, Tyrrhenian, that you were hunting wild animals in the woods? The day is here that refutes your words with a woman's arms. Yet no small name you will take to the shades of your fathers: that you fell to the spear of Camilla."
690| Straight away she attacks Orsilochus and Butes, two of the biggest bodies among the Trojans; Butes she pinned from behind with her spear point between the breastplate and helmet, where the neck of the seated rider shows and the shield hangs from the left arm; Orsilochus runs, and she, driven around a huge circle, outwits him by wheeling on the inside and pursues her pursuer; then, rising higher, she doubles her strong axe through the man's arms and through his bones as he begs and pleads at length; the wound wets his face with warm brain. The warrior son of Aunus, from the Apennines, ran into her and, terrified at the sudden sight, froze: not the least of the Ligurians, while the fates allowed him to deceive. And when he sees that he cannot escape the fight by any flight nor turn aside the queen who presses on him, he sets about contriving tricks by plan and cunning, and begins: "What is so remarkable, if you, a woman, trust a strong horse? Give up flight, and trust yourself to level ground, in close combat with me, and gird yourself for fighting on foot: soon you will learn whose windy glory carries deceit." He spoke, but she, furious and inflamed with sharp anger, hands her horse to a companion and stands against him in equal arms on foot, with bare sword and a plain unblazoned shield, unafraid.
712| But the young man, thinking he had won by trickery, flies off himself (no delay), and, turning his reins, escapes in flight and wears out his swift horse with iron-shod heel. "Empty Ligurian, puffed up in vain with proud spirit, you have tried your fathers' tricks in vain, slippery as you are, and deceit will not bring you back safe to deceitful Aunus." So the maiden speaks, and fiery on her swift feet she passes the horse in her run, faces it, seizing the reins, and joins battle and takes her vengeance from the enemy's blood: as easily as the hawk, the sacred bird, from a high rock overtakes in flight a dove high in a cloud, and, having caught it, holds it and tears out its entrails with its hooked talons; then blood and plucked feathers drift down from the sky.
725| But the father of men and gods, seated high on topmost Olympus, does not watch this with unseeing eyes. He rouses the Etruscan Tarchon to savage battle and drives his anger with sharp goads. So Tarchon rides among the slaughter and the retreating lines, and spurs on the cavalry wings with varied cries, calling each man by name, and rallies the beaten to the fight. "What fear is this, you Etruscans who never feel shame, always sluggish? What great cowardice has come over your spirits? A woman drives you scattering and turns these columns! Why do we carry the sword, or these useless weapons in our hands? But you are not slow to love or to night-time battles, or when the curved flute calls the dances of Bacchus. Wait for the feasts and the cups of the full table (this is your love, this your passion) until the favorable seer announces the sacrifice and the fat victim summons you into the high groves!" With these words, ready to die himself, he drives his horse into the midst, and, wild, bears down on Venulus face to face; seizing his enemy, torn from his horse, with his right arm, and with great force and speed he carries him off before his own chest.
745| A shout goes up to the sky, and the whole Latin host turns its eyes. Tarchon flies fiery across the plain, carrying off both weapons and man; then he breaks the iron head from the tip of the shaft and probes for the exposed places where he can deliver a fatal wound. Opposite, Venulus, resisting, holds Tarchon's right hand away from his throat and meets force with force. As a tawny eagle, flying high, carries off a seized snake, entwines it in its feet and fastens in its talons, while the wounded serpent twists its coiling folds, bristles with raised scales, and hisses, rearing up with its mouth, yet the eagle presses its struggling prey no less with its hooked beak, beating the air with its wings at the same time: in just that way Tarchon carries his prize in triumph out of the Tiburtine column. Following their leader's example and success, the Maeonians charge in. Then Arruns, owed to the fates, circles swift Camilla with his javelin, ahead of her in much skill, and tests which chance is easiest. Wherever the maiden rode furiously through the midst of the column, there Arruns approaches and silently marks her tracks; wherever she returns victorious and brings her foot back from the enemy, there the young man stealthily turns his swift reins. He tries these approaches and those, and prowls the whole circuit on every side, relentless, and shakes his sure spear.
768| By chance Chloreus, once a priest sacred to Cybele, was shining from far off, conspicuous in Phrygian arms, and driving a foaming horse, which a hide covered, fitted with bronze scales in the shape of feathers and clasped with gold. He himself, bright in foreign purple and scarlet, was shooting Gortynian arrows from a Lycian bow; a golden bow hung from his shoulders and the priest wore a golden helmet; he had gathered his saffron cloak and the rustling linen folds of it into a knot with tawny gold, and wore embroidered tunics and barbarian leggings for his legs. The maiden followed him alone out of the whole battle, blind to danger, either to hang Trojan arms in the temples, or to show herself off in captured gold as a huntress; heedless, she was burning through the whole column with a woman's love of prey and spoils, when at last Arruns, having seized his moment, hurled his spear from ambush and prayed to the gods above in these words: "Highest of the gods, Apollo, guardian of holy Soracte, whom we worship first, for whom a pine-wood blaze is fed on a heap of logs, and we, your worshipers, trusting in devotion, press our steps through the midst of the fire on burning coals, grant, father, almighty, that this disgrace be wiped out by our weapons. I seek no spoils or trophy from the maiden I have beaten, or any plunder; my other deeds will bring me praise. Only let this dreadful plague fall, driven back by my wound, and I will return to my native city without glory."
794| Phoebus heard, and in his mind granted part of the prayer to succeed, and part he scattered to the flying winds: that he should strike down Camilla, thrown into confusion by sudden death, he granted to the one praying; that he should see his high homeland again on his return he did not grant, and the gales turned his words into the south winds. So when the spear, sent from his hand, sounded through the air, all the Volscians turned their attention keenly and carried their eyes to the queen. She herself remembered nothing, neither the breezes nor the sound nor the weapon coming from the sky, until the spear, carried through, lodged under her bare breast and, driven deep, drank the maiden's blood. Her frightened companions run together and catch their falling mistress. Arruns flees before them all, terrified, in a mix of joy and fear, and no longer has the courage to rely on his spear or to face the maiden's weapons. And just as a wolf, before the enemy weapons can follow, at once hides itself far off in the high mountains by pathless ways, having killed a shepherd or a great bull, aware of its bold deed, and, drawing in its tail, tucks it trembling under its belly and makes for the woods:
814| in just the same way Arruns, in confusion, took himself out of sight, and, content with flight, mingled with the armed men in the middle. She, dying, tugs at the weapon with her hand, yet between her ribs the iron point stands fixed in the deep wound. She sinks down, bloodless; her cold eyes sink in death; the color that was once purple has left her face. Then, breathing her last, she speaks to Acca, one of her peers, who alone was faithful to Camilla above the others, with whom she shared her cares, and says this: "Thus far, sister Acca, I was able; now the bitter wound finishes me, and everything around me darkens in shadow. Flee, and carry these last orders to Turnus: let him take over the battle and keep the Trojans from the city. And now, farewell." With these words she let the reins slip from her hand, falling unwillingly to the ground. Then, cold, little by little she freed herself from her whole body, and let her drooping neck and her head, seized by death, fall, leaving her weapons, and her life fled with a groan, resentful, down to the shades. Then a huge shout rose and struck the golden stars; with Camilla down, the fighting grows fiercer; the whole mass of Trojans, the Etruscan leaders, and Evander's Arcadian squadrons charge in together, packed close.
836| But Opis, Trivia's sentinel, has long been sitting high on the mountaintops, watching the battle unafraid. And when far off, amid the shouting of the raging young men, she saw Camilla struck down by a grim death, she groaned and spoke these words from the depths of her heart: "Alas, maiden, too cruel, too cruel the price you have paid for trying to provoke the Trojans to war! It did you no good to have worshipped Diana alone in the thickets, or to have carried our quiver on your shoulder. Yet your queen has not left you without honor now at the very end, nor will this death be without renown among the nations, nor will you suffer the name of one left unavenged. For whoever has violated your body with a wound will pay with the death he deserves." Under a high mountain there was a huge tomb of earth heaped up for Dercennus, an ancient king of Laurentum, covered by a shady holm oak. Here the beautiful goddess first sets herself down in a swift swoop and looks out for Arruns from the high mound. When she saw him gleaming in his armor and swelling with vain pride, she said: "Why do you go off the other way? Turn your steps here, come here to die, so that you may receive the reward Camilla deserves. Shall even you die by Diana's weapons?"
858| She spoke, and the Thracian nymph drew a swift arrow from her golden quiver, bent her bow with hostile intent, and drew it far back, until the curved tips met and her hands touched evenly, the left the point of the steel, the right, with the string, her breast. At once, at the same moment, Arruns heard the whir of the weapon and the rushing air, and the steel lodged in his body. As he breathes his last and groans his final groans, his companions forget him and leave him in the unknown dust of the plain; Opis is carried away on her wings to airy Olympus.
868| First to flee, their mistress lost, is Camilla's light-armed squadron; the Rutulians flee in confusion, fierce Atinas flees, and the scattered leaders and abandoned companies seek safety and turn their horses toward the walls. No one can hold off the pressing Trojans as they bring death, or stand against them with weapons; instead they carry their unstrung bows on drooping shoulders, and the four-footed hooves shake the crumbling plain at the gallop. Dust rolls toward the walls in a black, swirling cloud, and from the watchtowers the mothers beat their breasts and raise a women's cry to the stars of heaven. Those who were first to burst at a run through the open gates are crushed by an enemy crowd mixed with their own column, and do not escape a pitiful death, but on the very threshold, within their native walls and in the safety of their homes, they are pierced and breathe out their lives. Some bar the gates, not daring to open a way to their comrades or take them into the walls though they beg; and a most pitiful slaughter begins, of those defending the entrances with arms and those rushing onto their arms. Shut out before the eyes and faces of their weeping parents, some roll into the steep ditches under the weight of the rout; some, blind and frantic, with loosened reins, ram the gates and the doorposts made fast with their bars. The mothers themselves on the walls, in the utmost struggle — true love of country shows them the way, now that they have seen Camilla — hurl weapons in fear with their hands, and in their haste imitate steel with hard oak stakes and fire-hardened poles, burning to be the first to die for the walls.
896| Meanwhile the cruelest news fills Turnus' ears in the woods, and Acca brings the young man word of the great uproar: the Volscian ranks shattered, Camilla fallen, the enemy pressing on in hostility and sweeping everything before them with the war on their side, the panic already reaching the walls. Raging — and so the cruel will of Jupiter demands — he abandons the hills he was blockading and leaves the rough woods. He had scarcely gone out of sight and reached the plain when father Aeneas, entering the open pass, crosses the ridge and comes out of the dark forest. So both are carried swiftly toward the walls with their whole columns, not many paces apart; and at the same moment Aeneas saw far off the plains smoking with dust and beheld the Laurentine columns, and Turnus recognized savage Aeneas in arms and heard the approach of feet and the snorting of horses. And at once they would join battle and try the fight, did not rosy Phoebus now bathe his weary horses in the Iberian flood and bring back night as the day slips away. They encamp before the city and fortify the walls.

======== Aeneid — Book XII ========

1| When Turnus sees the Latins broken by the war going against them and losing heart, his own promise now being called in, himself marked out by every eye, he blazes up, implacable, of his own accord and raises his courage. Like the lion in the fields of Carthage, wounded in the chest by hunters with a heavy wound, which only then rouses itself to fight, delighting in shaking the shaggy mane on its neck, fearlessly snaps the spear the hunter has fixed in it and roars with bloody jaws: just so violence swells in Turnus once he is fired. Then he addresses the king and begins in turmoil: "There is no delay on Turnus' part; there is no reason for the cowardly followers of Aeneas to take back their words or refuse what they agreed. I will meet him. Bring the sacred offerings, father, and draw up the treaty. Either with this right hand I will send the Dardan, the deserter of Asia, down to Tartarus — let the Latins sit and watch — and alone with my sword refute the charge against us all, or let him have us as his conquered, and let Lavinia go to him as his wife."
18| Latinus answered him with a calm heart: "Young man of outstanding spirit, the more you excel in fierce courage, the more it is right for me to deliberate carefully and weigh every chance in fear. Your father Daunus' realms are yours, and many towns taken by your hand; Latinus too has gold and goodwill. There are other unmarried girls in Latium and the Laurentine fields, and not of low birth. Let me tell you this, hard as it is to say, without pretense, and at the same time take it into your heart: I was not permitted to give my daughter to any of the suitors she had before; all gods and men foretold this. Overcome by love for you, overcome by the blood we share and the tears of my grieving wife, I broke every bond: I snatched the promised bride from my son-in-law, I took up unholy arms. Since then you see, Turnus, what misfortunes, what wars pursue me, what hardships you above all are suffering. Twice beaten in a great battle, we scarcely protect the hopes of Italy within our city; the streams of the Tiber are still warm with our blood, and the vast plains are white with bones. Why do I keep drifting back? What madness changes my mind?
38| If I am ready to take the Trojans as allies once Turnus is dead, why not rather end the conflict while he is unharmed? What will our kinsmen the Rutulians say, what will the rest of Italy say, if I betray you to death — may fortune prove my words wrong! — while you seek my daughter in marriage? Consider the shifting fortunes of war; pity your aged father, whom his native Ardea now keeps far from you in his grief." Turnus' violence is not bent at all by these words; it grows worse and becomes sicker for the cure. As soon as he could speak, he began: "The concern you feel for me, best of men, I beg you, put it aside for my sake, and let me bargain death for glory. I too, father, scatter weapons and steel with no weak right hand, and blood flows from the wounds I give too. His goddess mother will be far away, to cover him with a woman's cloud as he runs and hide herself in empty shadows."
54| But the queen, terrified by the new terms of combat, was weeping and, ready to die, held back her fiery son-in-law: "Turnus, by these tears, by any regard for Amata that touches your heart — you are now my only hope, you are the rest of my unhappy old age; the honor and power of Latinus are in your hands, the whole house leans and rests on you — one thing I beg: do not engage the Trojans hand to hand. Whatever fate awaits you in that combat, Turnus, awaits me too; I will leave this hateful light with you, and never as a captive see Aeneas as my son-in-law." Lavinia heard her mother's words, her burning cheeks bathed in tears; a deep blush set fire to her and ran across her heated face. As when someone stains Indian ivory with blood-red purple, or when white lilies blush mixed with many roses: such colors the maiden showed on her face. Love throws him into turmoil, and he fixes his eyes on the girl; he burns all the more for battle and speaks briefly to Amata: "Do not, I beg you, mother, do not send me off with tears or such an ill omen as I go to the contests of harsh war; for Turnus is not free to delay his death. Idmon, take my message as herald to the Phrygian tyrant; he will not like it. As soon as tomorrow's Dawn, riding her crimson wheels, grows red in the sky, let him not lead the Trojans against the Rutulians; let the arms of Trojans and Rutulians rest; let us settle the war with our own blood. On that field let Lavinia be sought as a bride."
81| When he had said this and quickly gone back into the house, he calls for his horses and takes delight in seeing them neigh before his face, those that Orithyia herself gave to Pilumnus as an ornament, which would outstrip snow in whiteness and the winds in speed. Eager charioteers stand around and with hollowed palms slap their chests and comb their manes. Then he puts on his shoulders his breastplate, stiff with gold and pale orichalc, and at the same time fits to himself his sword and shield and the horns of his red crest, the sword which the fire-lord, the god himself, made for his father Daunus and plunged, glowing, into the water of the Styx. Next, the mighty spear that stood in the middle of the hall, braced against a huge pillar, he seizes with force, the spoil taken from Actor the Auruncan, and brandishes it as it quivers, shouting: "Now, spear that has never failed me when I called you, now the time is here: great Actor carried you, now the right hand of Turnus carries you; grant that I lay low the body of the half-man Phrygian and tear away his breastplate with my strong hand, and defile in the dust his hair, curled with hot iron and dripping with myrrh." He is driven by these furies, and sparks fly off from his whole blazing face, and fire flashes from his keen eyes, as when a bull bellows terribly before its first battle, or tries to vent its anger on a tree trunk with its horns, pushing against it, and provokes the winds with blows, or practices for the fight by scattering sand.
107| No less meanwhile, Aeneas, fierce in the arms his mother gave him, sharpens his war-spirit and rouses himself with anger, glad that the war is being settled by the treaty offered. Then he comforts his comrades and the fear of sorrowing Iulus, teaching them the fates, and orders men to carry back to King Latinus a sure reply and to state the terms of peace.
113| The next day had barely started to strew light across the mountain tops, when the horses of the Sun first lift themselves from the deep water and breathe out light from raised nostrils: the Rutulian and Trojan men, having measured out a field for the contest beneath the walls of the great city, were making preparations, and in the middle hearths and grass altars to the gods they shared. Others carried spring water and fire, wearing aprons and with their temples bound with sacred verbena. The legion of the Ausonians marches out, and columns armed with javelins pour from the crowded gates. From the other side the whole Trojan and Etruscan army rushes up, in varied arms, equipped with iron just as though the harsh fighting of Mars were calling. And amid the thousands the leaders themselves dart about, proud in gold and purple, both Mnestheus of Assaracus's line, and brave Asilas, and Messapus the horse-tamer, Neptune's offspring; and when the signal was given each withdrew into his own space, they fix their spears in the ground and lean their shields. Then mothers, pouring out in eagerness, and the unarmed crowd and feeble old men, occupied the towers and the roofs of houses, and others stand at the high gates.
134| But Juno, looking out from a summit (which is now called Alban; at that time the mountain had neither name nor honor nor glory), was gazing from the hill over the plain and both the lines of the Laurentines and the Trojans, and the city of Latinus. At once the goddess addressed the sister of Turnus, herself a goddess, who presides over pools and noisy rivers (high Jupiter, king of the sky, consecrated this office to her in return for her stolen virginity): "Nymph, glory of rivers, most pleasing to my heart, you know that I have preferred you alone above all the Latin women who ever climbed into the thankless bed of great-hearted Jupiter, and gladly placed you in a part of heaven: learn your grief, Juturna, so that you do not blame me. As long as Fortune seemed to allow it and the Fates permitted things to go well for Latium, I protected Turnus and your walls; now I see the young man meeting with unequal fates, and the day of the Fates and a hostile force draw near. I cannot look on this battle, or this treaty, with my eyes. If you dare anything more effective on behalf of your brother, go on; it is fitting. Perhaps better things will follow the wretched." She had hardly spoken when Juturna poured out tears from her eyes and three and four times struck her fair breast with her hand. "This is no time for tears," says Juno, daughter of Saturn: "hurry, and snatch your brother from death, if there is any way; or stir up war yourself and shake loose the treaty they have made. I am the one who urges you to dare." With this encouragement she left her, uncertain and troubled by the grievous wound in her heart.
161| Meanwhile the kings come forth: Latinus, borne in a four-horse chariot of great size (around whose temples twelve gilded rays encircle the gleaming head, a token of the Sun, his ancestor); Turnus goes in a white pair of horses, brandishing in his hand two spears with broad iron heads. From the other side father Aeneas, source of the Roman line, blazing in his starry shield and heavenly arms, and beside him Ascanius, the second hope of great Rome, advance from the camp, and a priest in pure garments brought the young of a bristly pig and a two-year-old sheep unshorn, and brought the animals up to the blazing altars. They, with their eyes turned toward the rising sun, put salted grain in their hands and mark the tops of the victims' foreheads with iron, and pour libations from bowls onto the altars.
175| Then dutiful Aeneas, sword drawn, prayed in these words: "Let the Sun be my witness now as I call on him, and this earth, for whose sake I have been able to bear such great hardships; and the almighty Father, and you, Juno, his wife (now more kindly disposed, now, goddess, I pray); and you, renowned Mars, father, who turn all wars under your divine will. I call on the springs and the rivers, and whatever sanctity the high heavens hold, and whatever powers are in the deep blue sea. If victory should chance to fall to the Ausonian Turnus, it is agreed that the defeated will withdraw to Evander's city; Iulus will yield the fields, and the Aeneadae will never again come back in rebellion after this war or attack this kingdom with the sword. But if victory grants our side the war (as I think more likely, and may the gods confirm it more readily by their will), I will not order the Italians to obey the Trojans, nor do I seek the kingdom for myself: let both peoples, unconquered, enter into an eternal treaty on equal terms. I will give the sacred rites and the gods; let Latinus, my father-in-law, hold the arms, let my father-in-law hold the traditional sovereignty; the Trojans will build walls for me, and Lavinia will give her name to the city."
195| So Aeneas spoke first; then Latinus followed, looking up to the sky and stretching his right hand toward the stars: "By these same things, Aeneas, I swear: earth, sea, stars; the twofold offspring of Latona and two-faced Janus; the power of the gods below and the shrines of harsh Dis. Let the Father hear this, he who ratifies treaties with his thunderbolt. I lay my hand on the altars, I call the fires between us and the gods to witness: no day will break this peace and this treaty with the Italians, however things may fall out; and no force will turn me from it against my will, not even if it should pour the earth out into the waves in a flood, mixing everything, and dissolve the sky into Tartarus; just as this scepter" (for by chance he was holding a scepter in his right hand) "will never again put out shoots with light foliage or give shade, now that it was once cut from the deepest part of the stock in the woods and lacks its mother, and has laid down its leaves and branches under the iron. Once a tree, it has now been enclosed in fine bronze by the hand of a craftsman, who gave it to the Latin elders to carry." With such words they confirmed the treaty between them, in full view of the leaders. Then, according to the rite, they slaughtered the consecrated animals over the flames, tore out their entrails while still alive, and heaped the altars with loaded platters.
216| But to the Rutulians the contest had for some time seemed unequal, and their hearts were stirred by shifting feelings, all the more now that they saw at closer range how poorly matched the men were in strength. Turnus added to this as he advanced with silent step and, with lowered gaze, worshiped at the altar like a suppliant, with his youthful cheeks and the pallor on his young body. As soon as his sister Juturna saw this talk spreading and the wavering hearts of the crowd shifting, she took on the form of Camers, whose family descended from great ancestors and whose father's name was famous for valor, and who was himself a most fierce fighter in arms; and, well versed in such matters, she threw herself into the middle of the ranks, sowing various rumors, and spoke as follows: "Are you not ashamed, Rutulians, to put one life at risk for all of us? Are we not their equals in numbers or in strength? Look, these are all of them, the Trojans and the Arcadians, and the fate-led band, and Etruria, hostile to Turnus: if we fought them man against man, we would scarcely have an enemy each. He will indeed rise to the gods above, to whose altars he devotes himself, and will live on in fame and be carried on men's lips; but we, with our homeland lost, will be forced to obey arrogant masters, we who now sit idle in the fields."
238| By such words the resolve of the young men was inflamed more and more, and a murmur crept through the ranks: even the Laurentines and the Latins themselves had changed. Those who had just been hoping for rest from the fighting and safety for their affairs now wanted arms, and prayed for the treaty to be undone, and pitied the unfair lot of Turnus. To this Juturna added something greater still, and gave a sign in the high sky, than which none did more to confuse the minds of the Italians, deceiving them with a portent. For flying across the red sky, the tawny bird of Jupiter was chasing the birds of the shore and the noisy crowd of the winged flock, when suddenly it swooped down to the water and, ruthless, seized in its hooked talons a magnificent swan. The Italians' spirits were raised, and all the birds wheeled around in flight with a cry (a marvel to see), darkened the sky with their wings, and, forming a cloud, pressed their enemy through the air, until, overcome by their force and by the very weight, it gave out and the bird dropped its prey from its talons into the river, and fled far off into the clouds.
257| Then indeed the Rutulians hailed the omen with a shout and drew their weapons, and the augur Tolumnius was the first to speak: "This is it, this is what I have so often asked for in my prayers! I accept it and recognize the gods. Follow me, me as your leader, seize your swords, poor men, whom the shameless foreigner frightens with war like weak birds, and ravages your shores by force. He will seek flight and set his sails far out to the deep sea. You, close up your ranks with one mind, and defend in battle the king who has been taken from you." He spoke, and ran forward and hurled his spear at the enemy facing him; the whistling cornel wood gave a sound and cut the air true to its mark. At the same moment there was a huge shout, and all the ranks were thrown into disorder, and hearts were fired by the uproar. As the spear flew, nine splendid brothers happened to be standing opposite, all of whom a single faithful Tyrrhenian wife had borne to the Arcadian Gylippus; at one of these, at the middle, where the stitched belt rubs against the stomach and the buckle bites into the joins of the sides, a young man outstanding in beauty and in gleaming armor, the spear pierced through the ribs and laid him out on the tawny sand.
277| But his brothers, a spirited phalanx fired by grief, some drew their swords in their hands, some seized javelins of iron and rushed on blindly. The ranks of the Laurentines ran out against them; from the other side the Trojans and Agyllines and the Arcadians in their painted armor flooded in again in dense masses: so a single desire possessed them all, to settle it with the sword. They tore down the altars; a storm of missiles went swirling across the whole sky and an iron rain came pouring down; they carried off mixing bowls and braziers. Latinus himself fled, carrying away his gods, which had been struck, now that the treaty was undone. Others bridled their chariots, or vaulted onto their horses, and stood ready with drawn swords. Messapus, eager to throw the treaty into confusion, charged his horse at the king, the Etruscan Aulestes, who was wearing the insignia of a king, and drove him back; as he retreated, the poor man fell backward over the altars behind him, tangled in them, head and shoulders first. Then Messapus flew up, fiery, with his spear, and from above, tall on his horse, struck him hard with the beam-like weapon as he begged for much, and said: "He has it, this better victim given to the great gods."
297| The Italians ran together and stripped the still-warm limbs. Corynaeus, meeting him, snatched a charred brand from the altar and, as Ebysus came at him and was about to strike, he caught his face with the flames: his huge beard blazed up, and the singeing gave off a stench. Then he followed up, seized the hair of his bewildered enemy with his left hand, and, pressing with his knee and bearing down, pinned him to the ground; with his stiff sword he struck him in the side. Podalirius, following with drawn sword, loomed over the shepherd Alsus as he charged through the weapons in the front line; Alsus swung back his axe and split open the forehead and chin of the man facing him, and drenched his armor far and wide with scattered blood. A hard rest and an iron sleep weighed on Podalirius's eyes, and his eyes were buried in eternal night.
311| But dutiful Aeneas was holding out his unarmed right hand, his head bare, and calling to his men with a shout: "Where are you rushing? What is this sudden quarrel that is rising up? Oh, hold back your anger! The treaty has already been struck, and all the terms have been settled. The right to fight is mine alone; let me do it, and take away your fears. I will make the treaty firm with my own hand; these rites already owe Turnus to me." In the middle of these words, in the middle of such speech, look, an arrow whirring on its wings glided to the man, uncertain by what hand it was driven or by what whirlwind it was sped, who brought the Rutulians such great glory, whether chance or a god; the renown of the deed was suppressed, and no one boasted of having wounded Aeneas. When Turnus saw Aeneas withdrawing from the ranks and the leaders in confusion, he blazed up, fired by sudden hope; he called for his horses and his arms together, and with a proud leap sprang into his chariot and worked the reins with his hands. Flying along, he gave many brave bodies to death. He rolled over many half-dead: either he crushed the ranks under his chariot, or he seized spears and hurled them at the fleeing.
331| As when, beside the streams of cold Hebrus, bloody Mars, roused, clashes on his shield and, stirring up wars, lets loose his raging horses, and they fly over the open plain faster than the south wind and the west wind, and farthest Thrace groans with the beat of their feet, and around him are driven the faces of black Dread, and Wrath, and Treachery, the god's retinue: just so Turnus, eager, drove his horses steaming with sweat through the middle of the fighting, pitifully insulting the slain enemies; their swift hoof scattered bloody dew, and blood was trodden in with the sand. And now he gave to death Sthenelus, and Thamyrus, and Pholus, the one at close quarters, another at close quarters, and the third from a distance; from a distance both of them sons of Imbrasus, Glaucus and Lades, brought up in Lycia by Imbrasus himself and furnished with matching arms, whether to fight hand to hand or to outrun the winds on horseback.
346| In another part of the field Eumedes was carried into the thick of the fighting, a famous son of old Dolon in war, recalling his grandfather by his name, and his father by his courage and strength; Dolon, who once dared to ask for the chariot of the son of Peleus as his reward for going to the Greek camp as a spy. For such daring the son of Tydeus paid him a different price, and Dolon no longer aspires to the horses of Achilles. When Turnus caught sight of Eumedes far off on the open plain, he first pursued him across the long space with a light javelin; then he stopped his pair of horses, jumped down from the chariot, and came upon the fallen, half-dead man; planting his foot on his neck, he wrenched the sword from his hand, dipped its gleaming blade in his throat, and added these words: "Look, Trojan, measure out the fields and the Hesperia you sought by war, lying there: this is the prize for those who dared to challenge me with the sword; this is how they found their walls." With a thrown spear he sent Asbytes to join him, then Chloreus, Sybaris, Dares, Thersilochus, and Thymoetes, thrown from the neck of his unruly horse. And just as, when Thracian Boreas blasts and howls over the deep Aegean and drives the waves toward the shore, the clouds scatter in flight across the sky wherever the winds have bent down upon them,
368| so, wherever Turnus cuts a path, the ranks give way, and the battalions turn and rush off; his own momentum carries him on, and the breeze shakes his crest as it streams out, as his chariot faces the enemy. Phegeus could not bear him bearing down, raging in spirit; he threw himself in front of the chariot and with his right hand wrenched aside the foaming mouths of the galloping horses. While he was dragged along, hanging from the yoke, a broad lance caught him unprotected, and, driven in, broke through his double-linked corselet and grazed the surface of his body with a wound. Yet he turned toward the enemy with his shield held out and went forward, seeking help with his sword drawn, when the wheel and the axle, spun by the rush, struck him headlong and flung him on the ground; and Turnus, following, struck off his head with the sword between the lowest edge of the helmet and the top of the corselet, and left the trunk on the sand.
383| And while victorious Turnus was dealing out death on the plains, meanwhile Mnestheus and faithful Achates and Ascanius, his companion, took Aeneas, bleeding, to the camp, supporting his steps alternately on a long spear. He raged and struggled to pull out the weapon from its broken shaft, and demanded the nearest way to relief: that they cut open the wound with a broad blade, tear out the hiding place of the weapon deep down, and send him back to the war. And now Iapyx was there, son of Iasus, loved above others by Phoebus; once, seized by keen love for him, Apollo himself gladly offered him his own arts and gifts, augury, the lyre, and swift arrows. In order to prolong the life of his father, who lay at death's door, he chose instead to know the powers of herbs and the craft of healing, and to ply his silent arts without glory. Aeneas stood, bitterly fuming, leaning on his huge spear, amid a great gathering of young men and the grieving Iulus, unmoved by tears. The old man, his robe tucked up and pulled back in the manner of Paeon, labored with his healer's hand and Phoebus's powerful herbs, in vain; in vain he stirred up the barbed point with his right hand and gripped the iron with his tenacious forceps. No fortune guided his way, Apollo, the author of his art, gave no help at all, and the savage terror grew more and more on the plains, and the danger was closer. Already they saw the sky stand thick with dust: horsemen approached, and thick missiles fell in the middle of the camp. A grim shout rose to the sky from the young men fighting and the men falling in hard war.
411| Then Venus, his mother, shaken by her son's undeserved pain, plucked dittany from Cretan Ida, a stalk with downy leaves, flowering with purple blossoms; the wild goats know this plant well when winged arrows have lodged in their backs. Venus, her face wrapped in a dark cloud, brought it down; with it she secretly infused the water poured into a shining basin, healing it, and sprinkled in the juices of healing ambrosia and fragrant panacea. Old Iapyx, not knowing, bathed the wound with this water, and suddenly all pain left the body, and all the blood stopped deep in the wound. And now the arrow, following his hand with no one forcing it, fell out, and his strength returned and was as it had been before. "Quickly, bring arms for the man! Why are you standing?" Iapyx shouted, and was the first to fire their spirits against the enemy. "This does not come from human resources, nor from the teaching of my art, and it is not my hand that saves you, Aeneas: a greater god is at work and sends you back to greater deeds." Eager for battle, Aeneas had encased his shins in gold on both sides, hated delay and brandished his spear. When the shield was fitted to his side and the corselet to his back, he threw his armored arms around Ascanius and, kissing him lightly through the helmet's rim, said: "Learn courage from me, boy, and true toil; fortune from others. Now my right hand will protect you in war and lead you among great rewards. See that you remember, when your age has matured, and as you recall the examples of your own, let your father Aeneas and your uncle Hector rouse you."
441| When he had said this, he strode out through the gates, huge, brandishing an enormous spear in his hand; at the same moment Antheus and Mnestheus rushed out in dense formation, and the whole crowd streamed out of the abandoned camp. Then the plain was churned up in blinding dust, and the stirred earth shook with the beat of feet. Turnus saw them coming from the rampart opposite, the Ausonians saw them, and a cold shudder ran through the depths of their bones; Juturna, first before all the Latins, heard and recognized the sound, and shrank back trembling. Aeneas flew on, driving his dark column across the open plain. As when a storm cloud, once the constellation has broken, goes across the middle of the sea toward the land (ah, the hearts of the poor farmers, foreseeing it from afar, shudder: it will bring destruction to the trees and ruin the crops, everything will fall far and wide), and the winds fly ahead and carry the sound to the shores: so the Trojan leader drove his column at the enemy, and they pressed together, each man drawing close with his ranks packed. Thymbraeus struck down the heavy Osiris with his sword, Mnestheus cut down Arcetius, Achates killed Epulo, and Gyas Ufens; Tolumnius the augur himself fell, who had been the first to hurl a spear at the enemy. A shout rose to the sky, and the Rutulians, in turn routed, turned their backs in dusty flight across the fields. Aeneas himself did not deign to strike down those who turned away, nor those who met him on equal footing, nor to pursue those who brought weapons: in the thick darkness he searched only for Turnus, tracking him, and called only him to battle.
468| Shaken in her mind by this fear, the warrior maiden Juturna knocked Turnus's charioteer Metiscus out from between the reins and left him far off, fallen from the chariot pole; she herself took his place and, with her hands, guided the flowing reins, taking on everything of Metiscus, his voice, his body, and his arms. Just as a black swallow flies through the great house of a rich master and with its wings skims the high halls, gathering tiny scraps and food for its chattering nestlings, and now sounds in the empty colonnades, now around the damp pools: so Juturna was carried by her horses through the midst of the enemy and, flying, went all around in her swift chariot, and now here, now there, showed off her rejoicing brother and did not let him engage in combat, flying off far away from the path. No less did Aeneas, coming to meet him, follow his winding circles, tracked the man and, through the scattered ranks, called him with a loud voice. As often as he cast his eyes on his enemy and tried by running to match the flight of the winged-footed horses, so often Juturna turned the chariot away. Alas, what can he do? He swayed to and fro in vain with his shifting tide, and different cares called his mind in opposite directions.
488| Messapus, who happened to be carrying two supple spears tipped with iron in his left hand, light on his feet, hurled one of them at him and aimed it with a sure throw. Aeneas stopped and gathered himself behind his armor, crouching down on one knee; yet the speeding spear took the very tip of the helmet and knocked the topmost crest from his head. Then indeed his anger rose, and, driven by treachery, when he saw the horses drawn off in another direction and the chariot being carried away, calling Jupiter and the altars of the broken treaty to witness again and again, he at last plunged into the middle of the fray and, terrible with Mars favoring him, stirred up a savage slaughter without distinction, and let loose all the reins of his anger.
500| What god can now relate to me in song so many bitter deaths, the different ends of leaders, whom now Turnus, now the Trojan hero drives in turn across the whole plain? Was it your pleasure, Jupiter, that peoples who would live in eternal peace should clash in so great a turmoil? Aeneas caught the Rutulian Sucro (this was the first fight that checked the Trojans' charge) in the side as he lingered not long, and, where fate is swiftest, drove his cruel sword through the ribs and the lattice of the chest. Turnus, meeting on foot Amycus, thrown from his horse, and his brother Diores, struck the one as he came with his long spear, the other with his sword, and hung their two severed heads from his chariot and carried them dripping with blood. Aeneas sent Talon and Tanais and brave Cethegus to death, three in a single encounter, and sad Oniter, whose name was Echionian and whose mother was Peridia; Turnus sent the brothers sent from Lycia and the fields of Apollo, and the young Menoetes, who hated war in vain, an Arcadian, whose craft had been fishing around the streams of fish-rich Lerna, and whose home was poor, who did not know the gifts of the powerful, and whose father sowed leased land. And as fires let loose from different directions into dry woodland and crackling thickets of laurel, or when foaming rivers rushing down from high mountains make a roar and run down to the sea, each ravaging its own path: no less eagerly do Aeneas and Turnus both rush through the battle; now, now their anger surges within, their hearts that know no defeat burst, now they go at the wounds with all their strength.
529| Here Aeneas knocked Murranus, who boasted of ancestors and the ancient names of his forefathers, and whose whole line was traced through Latin kings, headlong from a rock with a whirling mass of huge stone, and sent him sprawling on the ground; the wheels rolled him forward under the reins and the yoke, and the hooves of the horses, forgetful of their master, trampled over him with frequent, hurrying blows. Turnus met Hyllus as he charged and raged immensely in spirit, and hurled his spear at his gilded temples: the spear passed through the helmet and stayed fixed in his brain. Nor did your right hand save you from Turnus, Cretheus, the bravest of the Greeks, nor did his own gods shelter Cupencus when Aeneas came: he offered his chest to the blade, and the delay of his bronze shield did not help the poor man. You too, Aeolus, the Laurentine fields saw fall and cover the ground with your back far and wide. You die, whom the Argive phalanxes could not strike down, nor Achilles, destroyer of Priam's kingdom; here was the limit of your life, your high home beneath Ida, your high home at Lyrnesus, your tomb in Laurentine soil. And so the whole armies were turned to the fight, all the Latins, all the Trojans, Mnestheus and fierce Serestus, and Messapus the horse-tamer, and brave Asilas, and the phalanx of the Etruscans and the Arcadian squadrons of Evander, each man for himself straining with the utmost force of his strength; there is no delay and no rest, and they struggle in a vast contest.
554| Here Aeneas's most beautiful mother put it into his mind to go to the walls and quickly turn his column against the city and throw the Latins into confusion by a sudden disaster. As he searched for Turnus through the scattered ranks and turned his gaze this way and that over the lines, he saw the city unharmed by so great a war and quiet without penalty. At once the vision of a greater battle fired him: he called the leaders Mnestheus, Sergestus, and brave Serestus, and took a mound where the rest of the Trojan legion was gathering, and they did not lay down their shields or spears, standing packed together. Standing in the middle on the high rampart, he said: "Let there be no delay to my words, Jupiter is on our side; and let no one go more slowly because of this sudden undertaking. Today I will tear down the city, the cause of the war, the kingdom of Latinus himself, unless they admit they accept the bridle and obey as the defeated, and I will lay its smoking roofs level with the ground. Am I to wait, I suppose, until it pleases Turnus to endure our fighting, and the defeated man wants to fight again? This, citizens, is the head of the matter, this is the sum of this abominable war. Bring torches quickly, and demand the treaty back with fire."
574| He had spoken, and all with equally eager spirits formed a wedge and were carried in a dense mass toward the walls; ladders and sudden fire appeared without warning. Some ran off to the gates and slaughtered the first men there, others hurled iron and darkened the sky with missiles. Aeneas himself, among the first, stretched his right hand toward the walls, loudly accused Latinus, and called the gods to witness that he was being forced into battle a second time, that the Italians were now enemies for the second time, that this was a second treaty broken. Discord broke out among the frightened citizens: some ordered the city to be opened and the gates thrown wide to the Trojans, and dragged the king himself to the walls; others brought arms and went on to defend the walls, just as when a shepherd has tracked bees shut in a hollow of pumice rock and filled it with bitter smoke; inside they run back and forth in panic through their waxen camp and sharpen their anger with loud buzzing; a black smell rolls through the dwelling, then inside the rocks echo with a dim murmur, and the smoke goes out to the empty air.
593| This further misfortune also befell the weary Latins, which shook the whole city to its foundations with grief. When the queen saw from her roof the enemy coming, the walls attacked, fire flying to the houses, and nowhere any Rutulian battle line to oppose them, no ranks of Turnus, unhappy woman, she believed the young man had been killed in the fight, and, her mind thrown into confusion by sudden grief, she cried out that she was the cause, the guilt, and the source of the evils; and after saying much in her mad frenzy of sorrow, as she was about to die, she tore her purple robes with her own hand, and tied the noose of a hideous death to a high beam. When the unhappy Latin women learned of this disaster, her daughter Lavinia first tore her golden hair and rosy cheeks with her hand; then the rest of the crowd around her raged, and the house rang far and wide with wailing. From there the report spread, a sad one, through the whole city: hearts sank, Latinus went with torn clothes, stunned by his wife's fate and the ruin of his city, defiling his white hair, soaked in filthy dust.
614| Meanwhile Turnus the warrior, at the far edge of the plain, was chasing a few scattered men, by now slower, and less and less glad of the success of his horses. The breeze brought to him a mingled cry, filled with dim terrors, and the sound of the confused city and an unhappy murmur struck his straining ears. "Alas for me! Why are the walls disturbed by such great grief? What is this loud shout rushing from the other side of the city?" So he said, and in his madness he stopped, drawing in the reins. And his sister, who had taken the form of the charioteer Metiscus and was guiding the chariot, the horses, and the reins, met him with these words: "This way, Turnus, let us pursue the Trojan-born, where the first victory opens a way; there are others who can defend the houses with their hands. Aeneas is pressing hard on the Italians and mixing the fighting; let us too deal savage death to the Trojans with our hands. You will not leave the fight behind in number of kills or in honor." Turnus answered: "O sister, I recognized you long ago, when you first threw the treaty into confusion by your craft and threw yourself into this war, and now you deceive me in vain, goddess. But who wanted you sent down from Olympus to bear such hardships?
636| Was it to see your poor brother's cruel death? For what am I to do? Or what Fortune now promises safety? I saw with my own eyes Murranus, than whom no other is dearer to me, calling on me by name, fall, huge, overcome by a huge wound. Unhappy Ufens fell so as not to see my disgrace; the Trojans hold his body and his arms. Shall I allow our homes to be destroyed (this alone was missing from our affairs), and not refute the words of Drances with my right hand? Shall I turn my back, and will this land see Turnus fleeing? Is it really so wretched to die? You, spirits of the dead, be kind to me, since the will of the gods above has turned away. I will go down to you with a pure soul, ignorant of that guilt, never unworthy of my great ancestors."
650| He had scarcely said this: look, Saces came flying through the midst of the enemy on a foaming horse, wounded by an arrow in the face, and rushed up, calling on Turnus by name: "Turnus, our last hope of safety is in you; take pity on your own people. Aeneas is thundering with his arms and threatens to throw down the highest citadels of the Italians and give them to destruction, and already torches are flying toward the houses. The Latins turn their faces to you, their eyes to you; King Latinus himself hesitates, wondering whom to call his sons-in-law, or to which treaty he should bend. And the queen too, your most faithful supporter, has died by her own hand and fled the light in terror. In front of the gates Messapus and fierce Atinas alone hold the battle lines. Around them, on both sides, dense phalanxes are standing, and an iron harvest bristles with drawn blades; you are turning your chariot in the empty grass." Turnus was stunned, bewildered by the varied picture of events, and stood in silent gaze; a huge shame seethed in his one heart, and madness mixed with grief, and love driven by furies, and the consciousness of his courage. As soon as the shadows were dispelled and light was given back to his mind, he turned his blazing eyes in confusion toward the walls and, from his chariot, looked back at the great city.
672| But look, a column of flame, rolling among the floors, billowed up to the sky and gripped the tower, the tower that he himself had raised of joined beams, and had set on wheels and laid with high bridges. "Now, now fate prevails, sister; stop delaying; let us follow where god and hard Fortune call. I am resolved to meet Aeneas in combat, resolved to suffer, in death, whatever is bitter, and you will not see me dishonored any longer, sister. Let me, I beg, rage this rage before the end." He spoke, and quickly leapt from the chariot to the ground and rushed through the enemy, through the missiles, and left his sorrowing sister, and broke through the middle of the ranks in a swift run. And just as when a rock tears loose from a mountaintop and rushes headlong, wrenched away by wind, or a storm of rain has washed it free or the years have loosened it as they undermined it; the mountain mass, merciless, is carried down the cliff with a great rush and bounds over the ground, rolling forests, herds, and men along with it: so Turnus rushed through the scattered ranks toward the walls of the city, where the earth is wet with much spilled blood and the air whistles with spears, and he signals with his hand and at the same time begins in a loud voice: "Stop now, Rutulians, and you, Latins, hold back your weapons. Whatever the outcome, it is mine; it is more just that I alone should pay for the treaty on your behalf and decide it with the sword." They all withdrew from the middle and gave him space.
697| But father Aeneas, hearing the name of Turnus, left the walls and left the high citadel, cut off every delay, broke off all his work, exulting with joy, and thundered terribly with his arms: as great as Athos, or as great as Eryx, or as great as father Apennine himself, when he roars through his shimmering oaks and rejoices, raising his snowy peak toward the sky. Now indeed the Rutulians, the Trojans, and all the Italians turned their eyes in eager rivalry, both those who held the high walls and those who were battering the base of the walls with a ram, and they laid their arms down from their shoulders. Latinus himself was stunned that two huge men, born in different parts of the world, had come together and were to decide it with the sword. And as soon as the plains lay open on the clear ground, they charged forward at speed, hurled their spears from a distance, and attacked the fight with shields and ringing bronze. The earth groaned; then they redoubled their frequent blows with their swords, and chance and courage were mixed in one. And as on huge Sila or on high Taburnus, when two bulls charge into hostile combat with their foreheads turned against each other, the herdsmen draw back in fear, the whole herd stands silent with terror, and the heifers murmur about who will rule the grove, whom all the cattle will follow;
720| they exchange many wounds with great force, and, thrusting, drive in their horns and bathe their necks and shoulders in plentiful blood, and the whole wood bellows back with their groans: not otherwise the Trojan Aeneas and the Daunian hero clash with their shields, and a huge crash fills the sky. Jupiter himself lifts two scales in even balance and puts on them the different fates of the two men, to judge whom the struggle condemns and toward whom death sinks with its weight.
728| Here Turnus darted forward, thinking he would not be punished, and rising to his full height, lifting his sword high, he struck; the Trojans and the frightened Latins cried out, and the lines of both armies were tense. But the treacherous sword broke and left the blazing man in the middle of the stroke, had flight not come to his aid. He fled faster than the east wind when he saw the unfamiliar hilt and his unarmed right hand. The story is that, in his haste, when he was mounting his yoked horses for the first fight, he left his father's sword behind in his panic and snatched up the blade of his charioteer Metiscus; and this was enough for a long time, while the Trojans were turning their backs in scattered flight; but when it came to the divine arms of Vulcan, the mortal blade shattered at the blow like brittle ice, and the pieces shone on the tawny sand. And so Turnus, out of his mind, sought the far plains in flight, and now here, now there, wove uncertain circles; for on every side the Trojans enclosed him in a dense ring, and on one side a vast marsh, on the other high walls hemmed him in.
746| No less did Aeneas, although at times the arrow slowed him and his knees hindered him and refused to run, pursue him, and in his fury pressed foot to foot against his frightened enemy: as when a hunting dog, finding a stag shut in by a river or hemmed in by the terror of a crimson feather line, presses it with his running and barking; but the stag, frightened by the snares and the high bank, flees and doubles back along a thousand ways, while the keen Umbrian hound hangs on, jaws open, now, now he has him, and, as if he held him, snaps his jaws, and is cheated by an empty bite; then indeed a shout arose, and the banks and lakes echoed all around, and the whole sky thundered with the uproar. As Turnus fled, he at the same time rebuked all the Rutulians, calling each by name, and demanded his familiar sword. Aeneas, in turn, threatened death and immediate destruction if anyone came near, and terrified them as they trembled by threatening that he would raze the city, and, though wounded, pressed on. They completed five circuits at a run and retraced the same number this way and that; for it is no slight or playful prize they seek, but they contend for the life and blood of Turnus.
766| By chance there had stood here a wild olive tree with bitter leaves, sacred to Faunus, once a timber revered by sailors, where those saved from the waves used to fix gifts to the Laurentine god and hang up their vowed clothes; but the Trojans had removed the sacred trunk without distinction, so that they could fight on a clear field. Here Aeneas's spear stood; the force of its flight had carried it here and held it fixed with its tough root. The son of Dardanus bent over it and tried to wrench out the iron with his hand, to follow with the weapon the man he could not catch by running. Then Turnus, truly mad with terror, said: "Faunus, I pray, take pity, and you, kind Earth, hold the iron fast, if I have always honored your rites, which the Aeneadae have profaned by war." He spoke, and called on the help of the god with prayers that were not in vain. For after struggling for a long time and lingering at the tough stump, Aeneas could not by any strength loosen the grip of the wood. While he strained fiercely and pressed on, again the Daunian goddess, changed into the form of the charioteer Metiscus, ran forward and gave her brother back his sword. Venus, indignant that this was allowed to the bold nymph, approached and wrenched the weapon from the deep root. Raised up, with their arms and spirits restored, one trusting in his sword, the other fierce and tall with his spear, they stood against each other, panting, for the contest of Mars.
791| Meanwhile the king of almighty Olympus spoke to Juno, who was watching the fighting from a tawny cloud: "What will the end be now, wife? What, finally, is left? You yourself know, and admit that you know, that Aeneas is owed to heaven as a native god, and is raised by the fates to the stars. What are you plotting? Or with what hope do you cling in the cold clouds? Was it fitting for a god to be violated by a mortal wound? Or for the sword (for what could Juturna do without you?) to be taken away and returned to Turnus, and for strength to increase for the defeated? Stop now at last, and bend to our entreaties, and do not let such great grief eat at you in silence, or your bitter cares come back to me so often from your sweet lips. We have come to the end. You were able to harass the Trojans over lands and waves, to kindle an unspeakable war, to disfigure a house and mingle grief with a wedding: I forbid you to try further." So Jupiter began; so the goddess, daughter of Saturn, answered with lowered face: "Because your will, great Jupiter, was known to me, I left Turnus and the earth against my wishes; and you would not now see me alone in my airy seat, enduring things deserved and undeserved alike, but I would stand girded with flames on the very battle line and draw the Trojans into hostile fighting.
813| I confess I persuaded Juturna to help her unhappy brother, and I approved of her daring greater things for his life, though not that she should hurl spears or draw a bow; I swear by the implacable head of the Stygian spring, the one oath that is rendered to the gods above. And now indeed I yield, and hating the fighting, I leave it. I ask you this, for Latium, for the majesty of your own people, a thing not bound by any law of fate: when they now bring about peace with happy marriages (so be it), when they now join laws and treaties, do not order the native Latins to change their ancient name, or become Trojans and be called Teucrians, or change their speech or alter their dress. Let Latium be, let there be Alban kings through the ages, let the Roman line be powerful with Italian courage: Troy has fallen, and let it be allowed that it has fallen, with its name." Smiling at her, the originator of men and of things said: "You are the sister of Jupiter and the second child of Saturn; such great waves of anger you hold in your heart. But come, put aside the fury you began in vain:
833| I give what you wish, and I yield, both beaten and willing. The Ausonians will keep their ancestral speech and customs, and their name will be as it is; the Trojans will only settle among them, mingled in blood. I will add the custom and rites of sacred worship and make them all Latins with one language. From this the race that will arise, mixed with Ausonian blood, you will see go beyond men, beyond the gods in devotion, and no people will celebrate your honors equally." Juno agreed to this and, glad, turned her mind; meanwhile she left the sky and abandoned the cloud.
843| After this the Father considers another thing within himself and prepares to remove Juturna from her brother's arms. They say there are twin plagues called the Furies, whom Night, in the dead of night, bore with the infernal Megaera in one and the same birth, and wound them with equal coils of serpents and added wings swift as the wind. They appear at the throne of Jupiter and on the threshold of the cruel king, and sharpen the terror of sick mortals, whenever the king of the gods brings about horrifying death and diseases, or terrifies guilty cities with war. Jupiter sent one of these swiftly down from the height of heaven and ordered her to meet Juturna as an omen: she flew and was carried to earth in a swift whirlwind. No differently than an arrow driven from the bowstring through a cloud, which a Parthian, a Parthian or a Cretan, has shot, armed with the venom of a cruel poison, an incurable weapon, and it passes whistling through the swift shadows unseen: so the child of Night went and sought the earth. When she saw the Trojan lines and the ranks of Turnus, she gathered herself suddenly into the shape of a small bird, one which, sitting at night on tombs or deserted roofs, sings its late, ill-omened song through the darkness; changed into this form, the plague flew before Turnus's face, back and forth, calling, and beat his shield with her wings. A strange numbness loosened his limbs with fear, his hair stood on end with horror, and his voice stuck in his throat.
869| But when Juturna recognized the shrill cry of the Fury and her wings from afar, the unhappy sister tore her loosened hair, disfiguring her face with her nails and her breast with her fists: "What can your sister do for you now, Turnus? Or what is left for me, hard as I am? By what art can I prolong your life? Can I set myself against such a monster? Now, now I leave the battle line. Do not terrify me, who am already afraid, foul birds: I know the beating of your wings and its deadly sound, and the proud commands of great-hearted Jupiter do not escape me. Is this what he repays me for my virginity? Why did he give me eternal life? Why was the condition of death taken from me? Surely I could end such great sorrows now, and go with my poor brother through the shades! Am I immortal? Or will anything of mine be sweet to me without you, brother? Oh, what earth could open deep enough for me, and send a goddess down to the lowest Shades?" Having said only this, she covered her head with a gray-blue cloak, groaning much, and the goddess hid herself in the deep river.
887| Aeneas presses on against him, brandishing his huge spear, thick as a tree, and speaks from his savage heart: "What delay is there now? Why, Turnus, do you still hang back? This is not a race; we must fight hand to hand with cruel weapons. Turn yourself into every shape, summon whatever you can do by courage or by skill; pray to fly on wings to the high stars, or to hide yourself shut away in the hollow earth." Turnus shakes his head: "Your hot words do not frighten me, fierce one; it is the gods who frighten me, and Jupiter as my enemy." Saying no more, he looks around and sees a huge stone, an ancient, huge stone that happened to lie on the plain, set there as a boundary marker to settle disputes over the fields. Twice six chosen men could scarcely lift it onto their necks, men of such bodies as the earth produces now; the hero snatched it up in a trembling hand and hurled it at his enemy, rising to his full height and running at speed. But he does not know himself as he runs or as he goes, as he lifts the huge stone in his hand or moves it; his knees give way, his blood is frozen and congealed with cold. And the man's stone itself, whirled through the empty void, neither covered the whole distance nor carried home its blow.
908| And as in dreams, when at night languid sleep has weighed down our eyes, we seem to want in vain to run on eagerly, and in the middle of our efforts we sink down helpless; our tongue has no power, the strength we know fails our body, and no voice or words follow: so, wherever Turnus sought a way by courage, the dread goddess denies him success. Then shifting feelings turn in his heart; he looks at the Rutulians and the city, hesitates in fear, and trembles at the death that looms over him; he sees nowhere to escape, no force with which to go against his enemy, nowhere his chariot or his sister who drove it.
919| As he hesitates, Aeneas brandishes the fatal spear, choosing his chance with his eyes, and hurls it from a distance with his whole body. Stones flung by a siege engine never roar like this, nor do such crashes burst from a thunderbolt. The spear flies like a black whirlwind, carrying dread destruction, and lays open the edge of the breastplate and the outermost circle of the sevenfold shield; hissing, it passes through the middle of the thigh. Struck, huge Turnus falls to the ground, his knee bent under him. The Rutulians rise up with a groan, the whole mountain around bellows back, and the high woods return the cry far and wide. Humbled, a suppliant, he stretches out his eyes and his pleading right hand. "I have deserved it," he says, "and I do not beg to be spared. Use your fortune. If concern for an unhappy parent can move you at all (Anchises was just such a father to you), I beg you, have pity on Daunus in his old age, and give me back to my people, or, if you prefer, my body stripped of the light. You have won, and the Ausonians have seen me, defeated, stretch out my hands. Lavinia is your wife. Do not carry your hatred further." Fierce in his armor, Aeneas stood still, his eyes rolling, and held back his right hand.
940| And now, more and more, the words had begun to sway him as he hesitated, when high on Turnus' shoulder the unlucky belt came into view, and the strap gleamed with its familiar studs — the belt of young Pallas, the boy whom Turnus had defeated, wounded, and laid low, and whose hostile emblem he wore on his shoulders. When Aeneas had drunk in with his eyes this reminder of savage grief, these spoils, set ablaze with fury and terrible in his anger: "Are you, wearing the spoils of my own, to be snatched from me here? With this wound it is Pallas, Pallas himself, who slaughters you as a victim and takes his payment from your criminal blood." Saying this, he buries the steel full in his chest, burning with rage. And Turnus' limbs go slack with cold, and his life, with a groan, flees resentful down to the shades.

======== Georgics — Book I ========

1| What makes the crops glad; under what star, Maecenas, it is right to turn the soil and to wed vines to elms; what care cattle need, what tending the keeping of flocks requires, how much experience the thrifty bees: from here I will begin my song. You, brightest lights of the universe, who lead the year as it glides across the sky; Liber and kindly Ceres, if by your gift the earth exchanged the Chaonian acorn for the rich ear of grain and mixed draughts of Achelous' water with the newly found grape; and you, Fauns, divine powers present to country people — come, Fauns and Dryad girls, come dancing together: it is your gifts I sing; and you, Neptune, for whom the earth, struck by your great trident, first poured out the snorting horse; and you, dweller in the groves, to whom three hundred snow-white bullocks crop the rich thickets of Cea; you yourself, Pan, guardian of sheep, leaving your native grove and the glades of Lycaeus, if your own Maenalus is dear to you, be with me and be kind, god of Tegea; and Minerva, discoverer of the olive; and the boy who showed the curved plough; and Silvanus, carrying a young cypress torn up by the root:
21| and all you gods and goddesses whose care it is to watch over the fields, you who nourish new crops that spring up without seed, and you who send down plentiful rain from the sky upon what has been sown. And you above all, Caesar, though it is uncertain which councils of the gods will soon hold you: whether you will choose to watch over cities and care for lands, and the great world will receive you as author of its harvests and lord of the seasons, wreathing your temples with your mother's myrtle; or whether you will come as god of the boundless sea, and sailors will worship your divine power alone, furthest Thule will serve you, and Tethys will buy you as her son-in-law with all her waves; or whether you will add yourself as a new star to the slow months, where a space opens between Erigone and the Claws that follow her — the blazing Scorpion is already drawing in his arms for you and has left you more than your fair share of the sky; whatever you will be — for Tartarus does not hope for you as its king, and may so dreadful a lust for rule never come upon you, though Greece admires the Elysian fields and Proserpina, called back, does not care to follow her mother — grant me an easy course, nod your assent to my bold beginnings, and, pitying with me the country people who do not know the way, set out, and grow used even now to being called on in prayer.
43| In early spring, when the cold water melts on the white mountains and the crumbling clod loosens under the west wind, then let my bull begin to groan over the deep-driven plough and the ploughshare to shine, rubbed bright by the furrow. That field at last answers the prayers of the greedy farmer which has felt the sun twice and the cold twice; its immense harvests have burst the barns. But before we cut into an unknown expanse with iron, let us take care first to learn the winds and the changing ways of the sky, the traditional cultivation and character of the place, what each region bears and what each refuses. Here crops come up more happily, there grapes; elsewhere young trees and grasses turn green unbidden. Do you not see how Tmolus sends us saffron scents, India ivory, the soft Sabaeans their incense, while the naked Chalybes send iron, Pontus pungent beaver musk, and Epirus the palms won by the mares of Elis? Nature laid these laws and everlasting covenants on particular places from the first, from the time when Deucalion first threw stones into the empty world, from which men were born, a hard race. So come: let strong bulls turn over the rich soil right from the first months of the year, and let dusty summer bake the clods as they lie, with its ripening suns;
67| but if the land is not fertile, it will be enough to turn it up with a shallow furrow just before Arcturus rises: in the one case, so that weeds do not choke the glad crops; in the other, so that the scanty moisture does not leave the barren sand. You will also let your fields lie fallow in alternate years after reaping, and let the idle plain harden with neglect; or, under a changed star, you will sow golden spelt where before you took up the glad pulse with its rattling pod, or the slender crop of vetch, or the brittle stalks and rustling forest of bitter lupine. For a crop of flax burns up a field, oats burn it, poppies steeped in the sleep of Lethe burn it; yet with alternation the work is easy — only do not be ashamed to soak the dry soil with rich dung, or to scatter grimy ashes over exhausted fields. So too the fields rest when the crops are changed, and meanwhile there is some gain from the unploughed land. It has often helped, too, to set fire to barren fields and burn the light stubble in crackling flames: whether the earth thereby gains hidden strength and rich nourishment, or whether every fault is cooked out of it by the fire and the useless moisture sweats out, or whether that heat opens more passages and hidden pores through which the sap may reach the new grass, or whether it hardens the soil more and binds its gaping veins, so that fine rains, or the fiercer power of the scorching sun, or the piercing cold of the north wind cannot blight it.
94| Much, then, he helps his fields who breaks the sluggish clods with hoes and drags wicker hurdles over them, and golden Ceres does not look down on him in vain from high Olympus; and so does the man who, turning his plow crosswise, breaks again through the ridges he raised when he first cut the plain, and who works the earth constantly and gives orders to his fields. Pray for wet midsummers and clear winters, farmers; grain thrives in winter dust, and the field thrives: Mysia boasts of no cultivation so much, and Gargara itself marvels at its own harvests. What shall I say of the man who, once he has sown his seed, goes after the field at close quarters and levels the mounds of poor sand, and then leads a stream and its following rivulets onto the crops, and, when the scorched field is seething with dying grass, look, draws water out of the brow of a sloping channel? Falling, it makes a hoarse murmur over the smooth stones and cools the parched fields with its spurts. What of the man who, so that the stalk does not bow under its heavy ears, grazes down the luxuriance of the crops while they are still tender grass, as soon as the sown fields rise level with the furrows, and the man who drains off the moisture collected from a marsh into thirsty sand?
115| Especially if in uncertain months a river overflows, spills out, and covers everything far and wide with a layer of silt, so that the hollow ditches sweat warm moisture. Yet although all this has been tried by the labors of people and oxen turning the earth, still the greedy goose and the Strymonian cranes and the chicory with its bitter fibers do harm, or shade does. The father of farming himself did not want the way of cultivation to be easy, and he was the first to stir the fields by skill, sharpening mortal hearts with cares and not allowing his realm to grow numb in heavy sloth. Before Jupiter no farmers brought the fields under the plow; it was not even right to mark out or divide the land with a boundary; people sought for the common store, and the earth itself bore everything more freely, with no one asking. He put baneful poison into the black snakes, ordered the wolves to prey and the sea to heave, shook the honey from the leaves, took fire away, and stopped the wine that ran everywhere in streams, so that practice, by thinking, might hammer out the various arts little by little, and look for the blade of grain in the furrows, and strike out the fire hidden in the veins of flint.
136| Then rivers first felt the hollowed alder boats; then the sailor gave numbers and names to the stars, the Pleiades, the Hyades, and the bright Bear of Lycaon's daughter. Then it was discovered how to catch wild beasts in snares and deceive them with birdlime, and to surround great glades with hounds; and one man already lashes a broad river with his sling-net, seeking the depths, and another drags his dripping lines through the sea. Then came the hardness of iron and the blade of the shrill saw (for the first men split wood along the grain with wedges), then the various arts came. Toil conquered everything, relentless toil, and need pressing in hard times. Ceres was the first to teach mortals to turn the earth with iron, when the acorns and arbutus berries of the sacred wood were already failing and Dodona was denying food. Soon toil was added to the grain as well, so that wicked rust ate the stalks and the lazy thistle bristled in the fields; the crops perish, a rough forest of burrs and caltrops springs up, and among the gleaming cultivated fields unlucky darnel and barren oats take over. So unless you attack the weeds with constant hoeing, scare off the birds with noise, check the shade of the dark field with the pruning hook, and call down rain with your prayers, alas, you will look in vain at another man's great heap of grain, and console your hunger by shaking oaks in the woods.
160| I must also tell what weapons hard-working farmers have, without which the crops could neither be sown nor spring up: first the plowshare and the heavy wood of the curved plow, and the slow-rolling wagons of the Eleusinian mother, and threshing sledges and drags and hoes of awkward weight; then the wickerwork of Celeus and humble furnishings, arbutus hurdles and the mystic winnowing fan of Iacchus; all of which you should remember to provide long beforehand and store away, if the glory of divine country life awaits you. At once, in the woods, an elm is bent with great force and tamed into a plow-beam, and takes the shape of the curved plow. To this, from the base, a pole is extended eight feet, with two earboards, and share-beams are fitted onto a double back. A light linden is also cut beforehand for the yoke, and a tall beech, and the handle to steer the chariot from behind at its lowest point, and smoke over the hearth tests the seasoning of the timber. I can recall many precepts of the ancients for you, if you do not shrink from it and are not put off by learning small matters of care. The threshing floor must first be leveled with a huge roller, turned by hand, and made solid with tenacious clay, so that weeds do not come up and it does not crack and give way when overcome by dust; then all sorts of pests make a mockery of it: often a tiny mouse has set up house under the ground and made its granaries, or moles, blind, have dug their burrows, and the toad is found in holes, and all the many monsters the earth produces; and the weevil plunders a great heap of grain, and the ant, fearing a needy old age.
187| Observe also when the walnut tree puts on a great mass of blossom in the woods and bends its fragrant branches: if the fruit prevails, the grain will follow in equal measure, and a great threshing will come with great heat; but if the tree overflows with a luxuriance of leafy shade, the threshing floor, rich in chaff, will vainly grind stalks. I have myself seen many people treat their seed as they sow, steeping it first in soda and black olive-lees, so that the yield in the deceptive pods would be larger and the seed would swell quickly even over a small fire. I have seen seed chosen long before and examined with great labor degenerate nonetheless, unless human effort picked out the biggest by hand every year: so everything is fated to rush toward the worse and, slipping back, to be carried backward, just as a man who with his oars barely forces a boat upstream against the current, if his arms chance to slacken, is swept headlong down the river by the current. Besides, we must watch the stars of Arcturus, the days of the Kids, and the shining Snake, just as much as those who are carried home over windy seas and test the Pontus and the straits of oyster-bearing Abydos.
208| When the Balance has made the hours of day and sleep equal and now divides the circle of the world half into light and half into darkness, work your bulls, men, and sow barley in the fields, right up to the last rain of harsh midwinter; and it is also time to cover the flax crop and the poppy sacred to Ceres with earth, and to bend to the plows without delay, while the ground is dry and the clouds hang up. In spring is the sowing of beans; then you too, alfalfa, are welcomed by the crumbling furrows, and the yearly care of millet comes, when the shining white Bull opens the year with golden horns and the Dog sets, yielding to the opposing star. But if you are working the soil for a crop of wheat and sturdy spelt and bearing down only on the grain, let the Pleiades of the dawn be hidden from you, and let the Cnossian star of the burning Crown withdraw, before you entrust the due seed to the furrows and before you hurry to trust the year's hope to an unwilling earth. Many began before the setting of Maia; but the harvest they waited for cheated them with empty oats. But if you will sow vetch and the humble kidney bean, and will not scorn the care of Egyptian lentils, Bootes as he sets will send you clear signs:
230| begin, and extend your sowing to the middle of the frosts. For this reason the golden sun rules the circle of the world, divided into fixed parts, through the twelve constellations. Five zones hold the sky: one is always glowing red with the blazing sun and always scorched by its fire; around it, to right and left, are drawn the outermost two, dark blue, stiff with ice and black rains; between these and the middle zone two have been granted to wretched mortals by the gift of the gods, and a road is cut through both, along which the slanting order of the signs might turn. The world rises steeply toward Scythia and the Riphaean heights, and slopes down toward the south winds of Libya. This pole is always high above us; but black Styx sees the other beneath its feet, and the deep Shades. Here the huge Snake glides out in a winding curve around and between the two Bears, like a river, the Bears that fear to be dipped in the waters of the Ocean. There, as they say, either deep night is always silent and darkness thickens as night spreads over it; or Dawn returns from us and brings back the day, and when the rising sun first breathes on us with its panting horses, there glowing Vesper kindles his late lights.
252| From this we can predict storms when the sky is uncertain, from this the day of harvest and the time for sowing, and when it is suitable to drive the faithless sea with oars, when to launch armed fleets, or when to fell a pine in the woods at the right season; nor is it in vain that we watch the settings and risings of the constellations and the year, equal in its four different seasons. If ever cold rain keeps the farmer indoors, he can get ready ahead of time many things that would soon have to be hurried under a clear sky: the plowman hammers out the blunted tooth of his plowshare, hollows out boats from a tree trunk, or stamps a mark on his cattle or numbers on his heaps of grain. Others sharpen stakes and two-pronged forks and prepare Amerian ties for the pliant vine. Now let a light basket be woven from bramble twigs, now parch the grain by fire, now crush it with a stone. For even on feast days certain tasks are permitted by divine and human law: no religious scruple has forbidden channeling streams, fencing in a crop, setting snares for birds, burning thorn thickets, and dipping the bleating flock in a healthy river.
273| Often the driver of a slow donkey loads its flanks with oil or cheap apples, and on his return brings back from the town a cut millstone or a lump of black pitch. The moon herself has given different days in different order as lucky for work. Avoid the fifth: pale Orcus and the Furies were born then; then Earth, in monstrous birth, brought forth Coeus and Iapetus and fierce Typhoeus and the brothers sworn to tear down the sky. Three times they tried to pile Ossa on Pelion, and to roll leafy Olympus onto Ossa; three times the father scattered the heaped-up mountains with his thunderbolt. The seventeenth is lucky for planting a vine, for breaking in captured oxen, and for adding the threads to the loom. The ninth is better for flight and bad for thefts. Many things go better in the cold night, or when, at the new sun's rising, the Morning Star sprinkles the earth with dew. At night light stubble, at night dry meadows are mown better; at night the supple moisture does not fail. And some stay awake late into the night by the firelight of winter, and shape torches to a point with a sharp iron.
293| Meanwhile his wife, easing the long labor with song, runs her shuttle through the web, or boils down the sweetness of the new wine over the fire and skims the foam from the cauldron's trembling water with leaves. But red-gold Ceres is cut down in the midday heat, and in the midday heat the threshing floor grinds the parched grain. Plow naked, sow naked. Winter is a time of idleness for the farmer: in the cold, farmers mostly enjoy what they have gathered and gladly arrange feasts for one another. Genial winter invites and releases cares, as when loaded ships have at last reached harbor and the glad sailors have put garlands on the sterns. Yet even then it is the time to gather oak acorns and laurel berries and olives and bloody myrtle, then to set snares for cranes and nets for deer and to chase long-eared hares, then to pierce does as you whirl the hempen thongs of the Balearic sling, when deep snow lies and rivers push along the ice. Why should I speak of the storms of autumn and its stars, and of what men must watch for when the day is already shorter and the summer milder? Or when rain-bearing spring comes rushing, when the crop is already bristling with ears in the fields, and when the grain swells with milk in the green stalk?
316| Often, when the farmer was bringing the reaper into the golden fields and was already cutting the barley on its brittle stalk, I have seen all the battles of the winds clash together, tearing the heavy crop up from its lowest roots and flinging it into the air: so the storm in a black whirlwind carried away the light stalk and the flying straw. Often too a huge column of waters comes up the sky, and clouds gathered from the deep roll up a foul storm with black rains; the high heaven comes crashing down and with a mighty downpour washes away the happy crops and the labors of the oxen; ditches fill and hollow rivers swell with a roar, and the sea seethes in its panting straits. The Father himself, in the middle of the night of storm clouds, hurls his flashing thunderbolts with his right hand, and at his stroke the great earth trembles, wild beasts flee, and fear lays low mortal hearts throughout the nations; with his blazing weapon he strikes down Athos or Rhodope or the high Ceraunian peaks; the south winds redouble, and the densest rain; now the woods, now the shores are beaten by the huge wind. Fearing this, observe the months and the stars of the sky, where the cold star of Saturn withdraws, and through what circles of the sky the Cyllenian fire wanders.
338| Above all, worship the gods, and offer the yearly rites to great Ceres, working the sacrifice on the glad grass at the end of winter, when spring is already clear. Then the lambs are fat and the wine is mellowest, then sleep is sweet and shade is thick on the mountains. Let all the country folk worship Ceres for your sake: for her mix honeycombs with milk and gentle wine, and let the lucky victim go three times around the new crops, and let the whole chorus and companions follow it rejoicing and call Ceres into their homes with shouting; and let no one put the sickle to the ripe ears before, with brows wreathed in oak, he dances artless steps and sings songs to Ceres. And so that we could learn all this from sure signs, the heat and rain and the winds that bring the cold, the Father himself ordained what the monthly moon should warn, what sign should make the south winds drop, and what farmers should notice that would make them keep their herds closer to the stalls. At once, when the winds are rising, either the straits of the sea begin to swell and toss, and a dry crash is heard from the high mountains, or shores resound from afar in confusion and the murmur of the woods grows louder.
360| Then the waves can scarcely hold back from the curved hulls, when the swift gulls fly back from the open sea and bring their cry to the shore, and when sea coots play on dry land, and the heron leaves its familiar marshes and flies above the high cloud. Often too, when wind is coming, you will see stars shoot headlong down the sky, and through the shadow of night long white trails of flame behind them; often light chaff and falling leaves flutter about, or feathers play together on the water's surface. But when lightning flashes from the quarter of the fierce North Wind and the home of the East and West Winds thunders, all the fields float with brimming ditches and every sailor on the sea furls his wet sails. A storm has never harmed people unwarned: either the high-flying cranes fled it as it rose from the deepest valleys, or the heifer, looking up at the sky, caught the breeze with wide nostrils, or the shrill swallow flitted around the lake, and frogs in the mud sang their old complaint. More often too the ant, wearing down her narrow path, has carried her eggs out of the inner chambers, and the great rainbow has drunk, and a huge army of crows leaving their feeding has clamored with beating wings in a dense mass.
383| Now the various sea birds, and those that search the meadows around Asian Caystrus in its sweet pools, you may see eagerly pouring plentiful drops over their shoulders, now offering their heads to the waves, now running into the water and in their eagerness fruitlessly longing to bathe. Then the crow calls the rain, shameless, with full voice, and walks alone on the dry sand. Even the girls carding their night's wool have not been unaware of winter, when they saw the oil sparking in the burning lamp and mushrooms of soot gathering. And no less after rain you will be able to look out for sun and clear skies and recognize them by sure signs: for then the stars' sharpness does not seem dulled, nor does the Moon rise dependent on her brother's rays, nor do thin fleeces of wool drift across the sky; the kingfishers, dear to Thetis, do not spread their wings on the shore to the warm sun, and filthy swine do not remember to toss loose bundles of straw with their snouts. But the mists settle lower and lie on the plain, and the owl, watching the sun's setting from the top of the roof, practices her late songs in vain.
404| Nisus appears high in the clear air, and Scylla pays the penalty for the purple lock: wherever she, fleeing, cuts the light air with her wings, look, her cruel enemy Nisus pursues her through the air with a great whirr; wherever Nisus is borne to the air, she, fleeing, swiftly cuts the light air with her wings. Then the ravens, with throat compressed, repeat their clear cries three or four times, and often in their high nests, glad with some unusual sweetness I know not what, they chatter among themselves in the leaves; when the rains are over, they love to revisit their small brood and dear nests. I do not at all believe that they have a divinely given intelligence or a greater foresight of events by fate; but when the weather and the changeable moisture of the sky have shifted course, and moist Jupiter thickens with south winds what was just now rare and loosens what was dense, the shapes of their minds change, and their breasts take on different impulses than they felt while the wind was driving the clouds: hence that chorus of birds in the fields, the cheerful cattle, and the ravens rejoicing in their throats.
424| But if you watch the swift sun and the moons that follow in order, tomorrow's hour will never deceive you, and you will not be caught by the traps of a clear night. When the moon first gathers her returning fires, if she encloses dark air with a dim horn, a very great rain will be in store for farmers and the sea; but if she suffuses her face with a maidenly blush, there will be wind: for wind always reddens golden Phoebe. But if on the fourth day (for that is the most reliable authority) she goes through the sky pure and with horns undimmed, then that whole day and those born from it until the month is over will be free of rain and winds, and the saved sailors will pay their vows on the shore to Glaucus and Panopea and Ino's son Melicertes. The sun too will give signs, both as he rises and when he hides himself in the waves; the surest signs attend the sun, both those he brings in the morning and those he brings when the stars rise. When he has dappled his rising at birth with spots, hidden in a cloud and withdrawing at the center of his disk, let showers be suspect to you: for the south wind presses from the deep, harmful to trees and crops and herds.
445| or when at daybreak the sun's rays break out scattered among thick clouds, or when Dawn rises pale, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, then, alas, the vine leaf will do a poor job of protecting the ripening grapes: so thick is the bristling hail that leaps rattling on the roofs. This too it will help you even more to remember when he is already leaving the sky, his course run: for often we see various colors wandering over his face. Dark blue warns of rain, fiery red of east winds; but if spots begin to mingle with his ruddy fire, then you will see everything seething alike with wind and storm clouds. On such a night no one should urge me to go out on the deep, or to pull my mooring rope from the land. But if, when he brings back the day and when he buries the day he brought, his disk is bright, you will be frightened of storm clouds for nothing and will see the woods swaying under a clear north wind. In short, what late evening brings, from where the wind drives the clear clouds, what the damp south wind is planning, the sun will give you signs. Who would dare call the sun false? He often warns, too, that hidden uprisings are near, that treachery and secret wars are swelling.
466| He too pitied Rome when Caesar died, when he covered his shining head in dark rust and an impious age feared everlasting night. Though at that time the earth too, and the expanses of the sea, ill-omened dogs and birds of evil portent, gave signs. How often we saw Etna boil over onto the fields of the Cyclopes, flooding from its burst furnaces, and roll down balls of flame and molten rocks! Germany heard the clash of arms across the whole sky; the Alps shook with unaccustomed tremors. A huge voice, too, was heard everywhere through the silent groves, and pale phantoms in wondrous forms were seen in the dark of night, and cattle spoke — unspeakable! Rivers stand still, the earth gapes open, ivory statues weep in sorrow in the temples, and bronzes sweat. The Eridanus, king of rivers, swept away forests, whirling them in its mad eddies, and carried off herds with their stalls across all the plains. And at that same time the entrails never ceased to show threatening fibers, or blood to flow from wells, or high cities to echo through the night with howling wolves.
487| At no other time did more lightning fall from a clear sky, or dread comets blaze so often. So Philippi saw Roman battle lines clash with each other a second time, with matching weapons; nor did the gods above think it unfitting that Emathia and the wide plains of Haemus should twice grow fat with our blood. Surely a time will come too when in those lands the farmer, working the earth with his curved plough, will find javelins eaten by rough rust, or strike empty helmets with his heavy hoe, and marvel at the huge bones in the graves he has dug up. Gods of our fathers, native gods, and Romulus, and mother Vesta, who guard the Etruscan Tiber and the Palatine of Rome, at least do not prevent this young man from coming to the rescue of a world turned upside down. Long enough already have we paid with our blood for the perjury of Laomedon's Troy; long already, Caesar, has the palace of heaven begrudged you to us, and complained that you care for the triumphs of men — here, where right and wrong are reversed: so many wars throughout the world, so many shapes of crime, no proper honor for the plough; the fields lie filthy, their farmers taken away, and the curved sickles are forged into unbending swords.
509| On one side the Euphrates stirs up war, on the other Germany; neighboring cities break the laws between them and take up arms; impious Mars rages through the whole world: as when four-horse chariots have burst from the starting gates, they gather speed lap by lap, and the charioteer, pulling vainly at the reins, is carried along by his horses, and the chariot does not heed the reins.

======== Georgics — Book II ========

1| So far the tilling of the fields and the stars of the sky; now I will sing of you, Bacchus, and with you the shrubs of the woods and the offspring of the slow-growing olive. Come here, father of the winepress: here everything is full of your gifts; for you the field blooms, heavy with the autumn of the vine, and the vintage foams in brimming vats. Come here, father of the winepress, pull off your boots and with me dip your bare legs in the new must. To begin with, nature is various in the making of trees. For some come up of their own accord, with no human compelling them, and spread widely over the plains and winding rivers, like the soft osier and the pliant broom, the poplar, and willow beds whitening with gray-green leaves; but some rise from seed that has been sown, like the tall chestnuts, and the oak that spreads its leaves greatest in the groves of Jupiter, and the oaks the Greeks held to be oracles. Others put out a dense forest of suckers from the root, like cherries and elms; the Parnassian laurel too, when small, sets itself under the huge shade of its mother. These are the ways nature first provided; by these the whole race of forest trees, of shrubs, and of sacred groves grows green.
22| There are others that experience itself has found for itself along the way. One man cuts suckers from the tender body of the mother and sets them in trenches; another buries stocks in the field, split stakes cut four ways and poles with sharpened wood. Other forest trees wait for the bent arches of a pressed-down layer, and for nurseries living in their own soil. Others need no root at all, and the pruner does not hesitate to entrust the topmost shoot to the earth, giving it back. Indeed, even when the trunks are cut up — wondrous to tell — an olive root pushes out from the dry wood; and often we see the branches of one tree turn without harm into those of another: the pear, transformed, bear grafted apples, and stony cornels blush red with plums. So come, farmers, learn the cultivation proper to each kind, tame wild fruits by tending them, and do not let your lands lie idle. It is a joy to plant Ismarus with Bacchus' vines and clothe great Taburnus with olives. And you, Maecenas, be with me and run with me through the task I have begun, my glory, rightly the greatest part of my fame, and spread your sails to fly over the open sea.
42| I do not hope to embrace everything in my verses, not if I possessed a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, and a voice of iron. Be with me and skirt the edge of the near shore; the land is close at hand. I will not hold you here with fabricated song, with digressions and long preambles. Trees that raise themselves of their own accord into the regions of light are unfruitful, it is true, but they spring up glad and strong, for natural vigor lies in the soil. Yet these too, if one grafts them or transplants them into well-worked trenches, will put off their wild spirit, and with constant cultivation will follow without delay into whatever arts you wish. So too will the sucker that grows barren from the bottom of the stock, if it is set out in open fields; as it is, the high leaves and branches of the mother shade it, rob it of fruit as it grows, and scorch it as it bears. Again, the tree that has grown up from scattered seed comes slowly, to make shade for late descendants, and its fruits degenerate, forgetting their former flavor, and the vine bears shabby clusters, plunder for the birds. Clearly, toil must be spent on them all; all must be forced into the trench and tamed at great cost.
63| But olives answer best from truncheons, vines from layers, Paphian myrtles from the solid wood; from suckers come hard hazels, the huge ash, the shady tree of Hercules' crown, and the acorns of the Chaonian father; so too the lofty palm grows, and the fir that will see the perils of the sea. But the rough arbutus is grafted with a walnut shoot, and barren planes have borne healthy apples, chestnuts beeches; the manna ash has whitened with the white blossom of the pear, and swine have crunched acorns beneath elms. Nor is there a single way to graft and to bud. For where buds push out from the middle of the bark and break through its thin coverings, a narrow slit is made in the very knot; here they enclose a bud from another tree and teach it to grow into the moist inner bark. Or again, knotless trunks are cut back, and a way is split deep into the solid wood with wedges; then fruitful slips are put in: before long a huge tree has shot up to the sky with fruitful branches and marvels at its new leaves and fruit not its own.
83| Moreover, the kinds are not all one: they do not come into being in a single form, neither the sturdy elms, nor the willow and the lotus, nor the cypresses of Ida. Olives do not grow in one shape either: there are the orchades, the radii, and the bitter-berried pausia. The same goes for fruit trees and the orchards of Alcinous, and a cutting from the Crustumian pear is not the same as one from the Syrian pear or the heavy volema. The vintage that hangs on our vines is not the one Lesbos gathers from its Methymnaean shoots. There are Thasian vines and white Mareotic vines; the latter suit rich soils, the former lighter ones. There is the psithian vine, better for raisin wine, and the slender lageos, which will one day trip the feet and tie the tongue. There are the purple grapes and the early ripeners, and the Rhaetic grape, in what song should I name you? Yet do not for that reason compete with the Falernian cellars. There are also the Aminnean vines, which give the soundest wines, before which even Tmolus rises in deference, and the royal Phanaean too, and the smaller argitis, which no other vine could rival in yield or in lasting as many years. Nor would I pass you over, Rhodian grape, welcome to the gods and at the second course of the table, or you, bumastus, with your swollen clusters.
103| But there is no counting how many kinds there are or what their names are; nor is it worth the effort to include them in a number. Anyone who wanted to know it would want to say how many grains of sand are tossed by the west wind on the Libyan sea, or, when the East Wind falls with unusual violence on ships, to learn how many waves come to the shores of the Ionian sea. Nor, indeed, can all lands bear all things. Willows grow along rivers, and alders in thick marshes; barren mountain ash grows on stony hills; shores are happiest with myrtle groves; and finally Bacchus loves open hillsides, while yews love the North Wind and the cold. Look also at the world tamed by its farthest peoples, the eastern homes of the Arabs and the tattooed Geloni: lands are divided up by their trees. India alone bears black ebony, and only the Sabaeans have the incense-bearing twig. Why should I tell you of the balsam that sweats from fragrant wood, or the berries of the ever-leafy acanthus? Why of the groves of the Ethiopians, white with soft wool, or how the Chinese comb fine fleeces from leaves? Or the woods that India, closer to Ocean, bears, at the world's farthest bend, where no arrow shot could clear the top of the highest tree in the air?—and that people is not slow, once they have taken up their quivers.
126| Media bears the bitter juice and lingering taste of the blessed citron, than which no remedy is more immediate, if ever cruel stepmothers have tainted the cups [and mixed in herbs and spells that are not harmless]: it brings help and drives the dark poisons from the limbs. The tree itself is large and very like a laurel in appearance, and if it did not spread another scent far and wide it would be a laurel. Its leaves do not fall in any wind, and its blossom clings tightly. The Medes use it to freshen their breath and sweeten their mouths, and with it they treat the wheezing of old men. But neither the forests of the Medes, richest of lands, nor the lovely Ganges and the Hermus turbid with gold could rival the praises of Italy; nor could Bactra, nor the Indians, nor all of Panchaia, rich in its incense-bearing sands. This land was never plowed by bulls breathing fire from their nostrils to sow the teeth of a monstrous serpent, nor did a crop of men bristle with helmets and thick spears. Instead heavy grain and the Massic juice of Bacchus have filled it; olives and cheerful herds possess it. From here the warhorse proudly enters the plain; from here come white flocks, Clitumnus, and the bull, greatest of victims, which, often bathed in your sacred stream, have led Roman triumphs to the temples of the gods.
149| Here is continual spring, and summer in months not its own: the flocks bear twice, the trees give fruit twice. But raging tigers are absent, and the savage brood of lions; aconite does not deceive wretched gatherers; no scaly snake drags its huge coils over the ground or gathers itself into a spiral of such length. Add so many outstanding cities and the labor of their works, so many towns piled up by hand on sheer cliffs, and rivers gliding beneath ancient walls. Should I mention the sea above, and the sea that washes below? Or the great lakes? You, Larius, greatest of them, and you, Benacus, rising with the roar and waves of the sea? Or should I mention the harbors, and the barrier added to the Lucrine lake, and the sea raging with loud roaring where the Julian water echoes far as the sea is driven back, and the Tyrrhenian tide is let into the Avernian channels? This same land has shown streams of silver and veins of copper in its ores, and has flowed abundantly with gold. It has brought forth a keen race of men, the Marsi and the Sabellian youth, the Ligurian used to hardship and the Volscians armed with javelins; it has produced the Decii, the Marii, and the great Camilli, the Scipios hard in war, and you, greatest Caesar, who now, already victorious on the farthest shores of Asia, are turning the unwarlike Indian away from Roman citadels.
173| Hail, Saturnian land, great mother of crops, great mother of men: for you I take up a subject of ancient renown and its craft, daring to open the sacred springs, and I sing an Ascraean song through Roman towns. Now for the character of the fields: what strength each has, what color, and what nature for bearing crops. First, difficult land and unkind hills, where the clay is thin and there are pebbles in the brushy fields, delight in a grove of long-lived Palladian olive; the evidence is the wild olive rising in great numbers over the same ground, and the fields strewn with its wild berries. But the soil that is rich and cheerful with sweet moisture, and the plain thick with grass and fertile in its richness, such as we often look down on in the hollow of a mountain valley (streams flow down here from the highest crags, carrying fertile silt), and the ground that rises to face the south wind and nourishes the fern that hates the curved plow: this will one day supply you with strong vines and plenty of wine, this is fertile in grapes, this in the liquor we pour from bowls and golden cups when the fat Etruscan has blown his ivory pipe at the altars, and in curved dishes we offer up the smoking entrails.
195| But if your concern is rather to look after cattle and calves, or the lambs of sheep, or goats that scorch the crops, make for the glades and rich pastures of far-off Tarentum, and for the sort of plain that unlucky Mantua lost, which fed snow-white swans on a grassy river. There the flocks will not lack clear springs or grass, and whatever the herds crop in the long days, the cool dew will restore in a short night. Soil that is generally black and rich beneath the pressed plowshare, and whose ground is crumbly (for that is what we imitate by plowing), is best for grain: from no other field will you see more wagons drawn home by slow oxen. Or there is land from which an angry plowman has carried off a forest and overturned groves that had stood idle for many years, and torn up the ancient homes of birds with the very roots; the birds leave their nests and fly high, while the rough plain gleams under the driven plowshare. For the meager gravel of hilly land hardly supplies low-growing cassia and rosemary to the bees; and rough tufa and chalk eaten away by black water snakes show that no other fields give serpents such sweet food or such winding hiding places.
217| Soil that breathes out a thin mist and flying vapors, drinks in moisture and gives it back whenever it likes, that always clothes itself in its own green grass and does not harm iron with scab or salty rust: that soil will entwine your elms with abundant vines, that soil is rich in oil, and you will find by working it that it is easy for livestock and patient under the curved plow. Such is the land that wealthy Capua plows, and the shore beside the ridge of Vesuvius, and the Clanius, which was unkind to deserted Acerrae. Now I will tell you how you can recognize each kind. If you want to know whether the soil is loose or unusually dense (since the one favors grain and the other Bacchus; dense soil suits Ceres better, and the loosest suits Lyaeus), first you will pick out the spot with your eyes, and have a pit sunk deep into the solid ground, then put all the earth back and level the top of the sand with your feet. If it falls short, the land is loose, and will be richer and better for cattle and nourishing vines; but if the earth cannot go back into its own place and is left over when the holes are filled, the ground is dense: expect sluggish clods and thick ridges, and break the soil with strong oxen.
238| Salty soil, and what is called bitter (unproductive for crops, not made tame by plowing, and keeping neither the character of its wine nor the names of its fruits) will give you this proof. Take woven baskets of tightly twisted twigs and the strainers of wine presses from the smoky rafters; into these let that bad ground and sweet water from springs be trampled until full. All the water will, of course, force its way out, and big drops will run through the twigs; but the taste will give clear evidence, and will twist the faces of those who try it with its bitter sensation. In the same way, we learn finally whether soil is rich by this method: when tossed in the hands it never crumbles, but clings like pitch to the fingers as it is held. Moist soil feeds taller plants, and is itself more luxuriant than it should be. Ah, may that land not be too fertile for me, nor show itself overly vigorous in its first ears of grain! The soil that is heavy betrays itself silently by its weight, and so does the light. It is easy to learn beforehand by sight which is black, and what the color is of each. But to find out a harmful cold is difficult: only pitch pines and baleful yews, and sometimes black ivy, reveal its traces.
259| Once you have observed these things, remember to bake the ground long beforehand and cut great mountains of earth into trenches, turning the clods up to the North Wind, before you plant the fertile kind of vine. Fields with crumbly soil are best: the winds and the cold frosts see to that, and the strong digger who stirs up the loosened acres. But men who miss no point of care first seek out a site like the one where the young trees' first nursery is prepared and where they will soon be transplanted in rows, so that the seedlings do not suddenly fail to recognize a changed mother. They even mark the quarter of the sky on the bark, so that each tree can be set back as it stood, with the side that bore the southern heat and the back it turned to the pole; so much does habit matter in tender plants. Ask first whether it is better to set the vine on hills or on the plain. If you are laying out the rich soil of a plain, plant thickly (Bacchus is no less productive in a crowded planting); but if the ground is sloping hillocks and tilted hills, be generous with the spacing between rows; and all the same, once the trees are set, let every path cut between them line up exactly:
279| as often in a great war, when a legion has deployed its long cohorts and the army stands in an open field, and the battle lines are drawn straight, and the whole earth far and wide ripples with gleaming bronze, and they have not yet joined the dreadful fighting, but Mars wavers uncertainly among the armed ranks. Let everything be measured out with equal intervals between the rows, not only so that the view may feed an idle mind, but because the earth will not otherwise give equal strength to all the vines, and the branches will not be able to spread out into open space. Perhaps you would also ask how deep the trenches should be. I would dare to entrust a vine even to a shallow furrow; a tree is planted deeper, far down in the earth, the oak above all, which stretches as far down with its root toward Tartarus as it reaches with its crown toward the heavens. So no winter storms, no gusts or rains uproot it: it stays unmoved, and by lasting outlives many descendants and many generations of men as they roll by; then far and wide it stretches its strong branches and arms, and itself, in the middle, supports an enormous shade. And do not let your vineyards face the setting sun, or plant a hazel among the vines, or look for shoots at the top, or break off cuttings from the top of the tree (so great is their love of the earth), or hurt the young plants with a blunt blade, or graft stumps of wild olive onto them.
303| For fire often slips from careless shepherds; first it hides secretly under the oily bark and takes hold of the timber, then escapes into the high leaves and sends up a huge roar to the sky; then it follows along the branches and reigns as victor over the tall treetops, and wraps the whole grove in flames and sends a black cloud of pitchy smoke billowing up to the sky, especially if a storm has settled on the woods from above and the wind drives and gathers the blaze. When this has happened, the vines have no strength from the root, and when cut down they cannot come back and grow green again from the base; the unlucky wild olive with its bitter leaves is what survives. And let no adviser, however wise, persuade you to work the earth when the North Wind is blowing and it is stiff. Then winter shuts the fields with frost, and does not let the root fix itself in the hardened earth when seed is thrown. The best planting for vineyards is when in the reddening spring the white bird, hated by long snakes, arrives, or else just as the first cold of autumn comes on, when the swift Sun has not yet reached winter with his horses, but summer is already past.
323| Spring, in fact, is for the foliage of the groves, spring is useful for the woods; in spring the earth swells and calls for the seeds of generation. Then Father Aether, the all-powerful, descends in fertilizing rain into the lap of his joyful wife, and, great himself and mingled with her great body, nourishes every offspring. Then the pathless thickets resound with singing birds, and herds seek Venus on fixed days; the kindly field gives birth, and the fields open their bosoms to the mild breezes of the west wind; a tender moisture is everywhere abundant, and the grasses dare to trust themselves safely to the new suns, and the vine does not fear the rising south winds or the rain driven from the sky by the great north winds, but pushes out its buds and unfolds all its leaves. I would believe that no other days shone, or had any other course, at the first origin of the growing world: it was spring, the great world was passing through spring, and the east winds held back their wintry blasts, when the first animals drank in the light, and the race of men sprung from the earth lifted its head from the hard fields, and wild beasts were let loose in the woods and stars in the sky.
343| Nor could tender things endure this hardship if so great a rest did not come between the cold and the heat, and if the mildness of the sky did not welcome the earth. As for the rest: whatever cuttings you bury in the fields, scatter them with rich dung, and, remembering, cover them with plenty of earth, or bury porous stone or rough shells with them; for water will seep between and a fine vapor will pass in, and the plants will lift their spirits. And some have already been found who pressed down on top with a stone and a huge weight of tile: this is a defense against pouring rain, and when the Dog Star brings the heat and the gaping fields split with thirst. Once the cuttings are set, it remains to draw the earth away from the stems rather often and to swing the hard two-pronged hoes, or to work the soil under a pressed plowshare and to turn the straining oxen among the vines themselves; then to fit smooth reeds and shafts of peeled rod and ash stakes and strong forked props, with whose strength they may learn to struggle up, to scorn the winds, and to climb to the topmost branches of the elms by stages. And while their first age grows up with new leaves, the tender things must be spared, and while the cheerful shoot sends itself up to the air, let loose through the clear sky with slack reins, it must not yet be tried with the very edge of the pruning knife, but the leaves should be picked and plucked here and there with hooked hands.
367| Then, when they have climbed out with strong stems, embracing the elms, trim their foliage then, cut back the arms then (before that they dread the iron), and only then exercise hard control and curb the straggling branches. Hedges also must be woven and all livestock kept out, especially while the leaf is tender and unaware of hardship; besides undeserved winters and the strong sun, wild aurochs and pursuing goats constantly torment it, and sheep and greedy heifers graze it. Neither cold stiffened by white frost nor summer heat pressing heavily on parched rocks has hurt it as much as the herds have, and the poison of their hard tooth, and the scar marked on the stock by the bite. For no other fault a goat is slaughtered to Bacchus at every altar, and the old plays enter the stage; and the descendants of Theseus set prizes for talent through the villages and crossroads, and merry among their cups they leapt on oiled wineskins in soft meadows. The Ausonian settlers too, a people sent from Troy, play with rough verses and loose laughter, and put on frightful faces of hollow bark, and call on you, Bacchus, in joyful songs, and hang soft masks for you from a tall pine.
390| From this every vineyard swells with abundant produce, and the hollow valleys fill, and the deep glades, and wherever the god has turned his beautiful head. So we shall duly pay Bacchus his honor in ancestral songs, and bring dishes and cakes, and the sacred goat, led by the horn, will stand at the altar, and we shall roast the rich entrails on hazel spits. There is also another labor in tending vines, which can never be finished enough: for all the ground must be cut open every year three or four times, and the clods broken without end by turning the hoes, and every grove relieved of its leaves. The farmers' toil returns, driven in a circle, and the year turns back on itself along its own tracks. And as soon as the vineyard has shed its last leaves, and the cold North Wind has shaken the glory from the woods, even then the keen countryman stretches his cares into the coming year, and goes after the vine left behind with Saturn's curved blade, trimming it and shaping it by pruning. Be first to dig the soil, first to burn the cut-off branches, and first to carry the stakes under cover;
410| be last to harvest. Twice shade falls heavily on the vines, twice weeds cover the crop with thick brambles; each is hard work: praise large estates, but farm a small one. Also the rough stems of butcher's broom are cut in the woods, and river reeds on the banks, and the care of an untended willow bed keeps one busy. Now the vines are tied up, now the orchards put down the knife, now the last vinedresser sings of the finished rows; yet the earth must still be stirred, the dust turned over, and Jupiter feared for the already ripe grapes. Olives, on the other hand, need no cultivation, and they do not wait for the bent pruning hook and the clinging rakes, once they have taken hold in the fields and endured the breezes; the earth itself, when opened by the hooked tooth, supplies enough moisture, and with the plowshare, heavy crops. So rear the rich olive, dear to Peace. Fruit trees too, as soon as they have felt their trunks grow strong and have gained their own strength, rush upward to the stars by their own force and do not need our help. And meanwhile every grove grows heavy with fruit, and the wild bird haunts redden with blood-colored berries.
431| Cytisus is cut for fodder, the deep forest supplies pine torches, and night fires feed on them and pour out light. And do people hesitate to plant and spend their care? Why should I go on to greater trees? Willows and low broom give either leaves for the flock or shade for the shepherds, and they supply a hedge for the crops and pasturage for honey. And it is a joy to see Cytorus rippling with boxwood and the groves of Narycian pitch, a joy to see fields that owe nothing to rakes or to any human care. Even the barren woods on the peak of the Caucasus, which the fierce East Winds constantly break and carry off, yield different crops, each its own; the pine gives timber useful for ships, and cedar and cypress for houses; from these farmers have turned spokes for wheels and solid disks for wagons, and have laid curved keels for boats. Willows are rich in withies, elms in leaves, while myrtle gives strong spear shafts and cornel is good for war; yews are bent into Ituraean bows. Nor do smooth limes and boxwood, shaved by the lathe, fail to take shape and be hollowed out with sharp iron; and the light alder, launched on the Po, floats on the rushing water; and bees too store their swarms in hollow bark and in the cavity of a decayed holm oak.
454| What gifts of Bacchus have brought anything as worth recalling? Bacchus has also given causes for wrongdoing: he subdued the raging Centaurs to death, Rhoecus and Pholus and Hylaeus, who threatened the Lapiths with a great mixing bowl. Oh, farmers, too fortunate if they knew their own blessings! For them the most just earth, far from clashing weapons, pours easy sustenance from the soil. If a tall house does not from its proud doors disgorge in the morning a vast wave of callers from all its rooms, if they do not gape at doorposts inlaid with beautiful tortoiseshell, at garments embroidered with gold, at Ephyrean bronzes, if white wool is not dyed with Assyrian drug, and the use of clear olive oil is not spoiled by cassia; yet there is untroubled rest and a life that knows no deceit, rich in various goods; there is leisure on broad estates, caves, natural lakes, cool valleys, the lowing of cattle, and soft sleep under a tree. There are woodland pastures and the lairs of wild animals, young men who endure work and are used to little, sacred rites of the gods and revered fathers; among them Justice, as she left the earth, left her last footprints.
475| As for me, may the sweet Muses above all things take me first, whose sacred rites I carry, struck with great love, and may they show me the paths of the sky and the stars, the varied eclipses of the sun and the moon's labors; where the earthquake comes from, by what force the deep seas swell up with their barriers broken and then sink back into themselves, why the winter suns hurry so to dip into Ocean, or what delay holds back the slow nights. But if the chill blood around my heart stands in the way, so that I cannot approach these parts of nature, then may the countryside and the streams that water the valleys please me; may I love rivers and woods, without glory. Oh, where are the plains and the Spercheios and Taygetus, where Spartan maidens celebrate the rites of Bacchus! Oh, who will set me in the cool valleys of Haemus and shield me with the vast shade of branches! Blessed is he who succeeded in discovering the causes of things and has set beneath his feet all fears and inexorable fate and the roar of greedy Acheron. Fortunate too is he who knows the country gods, Pan and old Silvanus and the sister Nymphs.
495| The rods of office of the people did not sway him, nor the purple of kings, nor discord stirring faithless brothers, nor the Dacian coming down from the conspiring Danube, nor Roman affairs and doomed kingdoms; he neither grieved in pity for the poor nor envied the man who had wealth. The fruits that the branches and the willing fields themselves bore of their own accord, he gathered, and he has not seen the iron laws, the maddened forum, or the people's archives. Others trouble the blind seas with oars, and rush into the sword, and push into palaces and the thresholds of kings; one man seeks a city and its wretched household gods for destruction, so that he may drink from a gem and sleep on Tyrian purple; another hoards wealth and broods over buried gold; one stands dazed at the speakers' platform, another, gaping, is carried away by the applause, redoubled through the benches of the common people and the senators; they rejoice, spattered with their brothers' blood, and exchange their homes and sweet thresholds for exile, and look for a fatherland lying under another sun. The farmer has broken the earth with his curved plow: this is the work of his year, from this he supports his country and little grandchildren, from this his herds of cattle and his deserving oxen.
516| There is no rest: the year overflows either with fruit, or with young of the flocks, or with sheaves of Ceres' stalks, and loads the furrows with its yield and overflows the barns. Winter comes: the Sicyonian berry is crushed in the olive presses, the pigs come home happy with acorns, the woods give arbutus berries; autumn lays down its varied fruits, and high up on the sunny rocks the vintage ripens mellow. Meanwhile his sweet children hang on his kisses, his chaste house keeps its purity, the cows let down their milky udders, and on the glad grass fat kids wrestle with each other, horn against horn. He himself keeps holidays, and stretched out on the grass, where a fire is in the middle and his companions wreathe the mixing bowl, he pours a libation and calls on you, god of the winepress, and sets up contests with the swift javelin on an elm for the herdsmen, and they strip their hardy bodies for country wrestling. This was the life the ancient Sabines once lived, this Remus and his brother; so, surely, Etruria grew strong, and Rome became the most beautiful thing in the world and enclosed her seven hills with a single wall.
536| Before the scepter of the Dictaean king, too, and before an impious race feasted on slaughtered bullocks, golden Saturn lived this life on earth; men had not yet heard war trumpets blown, nor yet swords ringing as they were laid on hard anvils. But we have covered an immense distance on our course, and now it is time to unyoke the steaming necks of our horses.

======== Georgics — Book III ========

1| You too, great Pales, I will sing, and you, shepherd from Amphrysus, worthy to be remembered, and you, woods and rivers of Lycaeus. Everything else that might have held idle minds with song is already common knowledge: who does not know harsh Eurystheus, or the altars of infamous Busiris? Who has not told of the boy Hylas, and Latona's Delos, and Hippodame, and Pelops, marked by his ivory shoulder, bold with horses? I must try a path by which I too can rise from the ground and fly victorious on the lips of men. I will be the first, if only life remains to me, to come home to my native land bringing the Muses with me from the Aonian peak; I will be the first to bring back to you, Mantua, the palms of Idumaea, and on the green plain I will build a temple of marble beside the water, where the great Mincius wanders in slow windings and fringes its banks with tender reeds. In the middle I will have Caesar, and he will possess the temple. In his honor I, the victor, conspicuous in Tyrian purple, will drive a hundred four-horse chariots beside the river. All Greece will leave the Alpheus and the groves of Molorchus to compete for me in races and with the rawhide gauntlet.
21| I myself, my head adorned with leaves of trimmed olive, will bring gifts. Even now it is a joy to lead the solemn processions to the shrines and see the bullocks slaughtered, or watch how the scene withdraws as the panels turn, and how the Britons woven into it lift the purple curtain. On the doors I will make in gold and solid ivory the battle of the Ganges people and the arms of victorious Quirinus, and here the Nile surging with war and flowing in full flood, and columns rising with the bronze of ships' beaks. I will add the conquered cities of Asia, Niphates driven back, and the Parthian trusting in flight and arrows shot backward; and two trophies snatched by hand from two different enemies, and nations twice led in triumph from either shore. There will stand Parian marbles too, statues that breathe: the offspring of Assaracus and the great names of the race descended from Jupiter, father Tros, and the Cynthian founder of Troy. Wretched Envy will fear the Furies and the stern river of Cocytus, Ixion's twisted snakes and his monstrous wheel, and the stone that cannot be overcome. Meanwhile let us pursue the woods of the Dryads and their untouched glades — your command, Maecenas, and no easy one:
42| without you my mind begins nothing lofty. Come, break off slow delay: Cithaeron calls with a great shout, and the hounds of Taygetus, and Epidaurus, tamer of horses, and the cry, redoubled by the woods' assent, roars back. Yet soon I will prepare to tell of Caesar's blazing battles and to carry his name in fame through as many years as Caesar is distant from the first birth of Tithonus. Whether someone, admiring the prize of the Olympic palm, breeds horses, or someone breeds bullocks strong for the plough, let him choose above all the bodies of the mothers. The best shape for a fierce-looking cow is an ugly head, a very thick neck, and dewlaps hanging from the chin down to the legs; then there is no limit to her long flank: everything is large, even the foot, with shaggy ears under crooked horns. Nor would I be displeased with one marked with spots and white, or one that refuses the yoke and is sometimes rough with her horn, more like a bull in face, tall all over, and sweeping her footprints with the tip of her tail as she walks. The age for enduring Lucina and lawful mating ends before ten and begins after four years;
62| the rest of her life is neither fit for breeding nor strong for the plough. Meanwhile, while glad youth is still abundant in the herds, let the males loose; be the first to send your cattle to mate, and supply one generation after another by breeding. The best days of life are the first to flee from wretched mortals; diseases creep on, and grim old age and suffering, and the harshness of unrelenting death snatches them away. There will always be some whose bodies you would rather change: so always replace them, and so that you do not miss them when they are gone, act beforehand and choose new stock for the herd every year. The same selection is needed for horses. Only, on those you mean to raise in hope of continuing the breed, spend special care right from their earliest youth. From the start the foal of a noble breed steps higher in the fields and sets down its legs lightly; it is the first to dare to lead the way, to try threatening rivers, and to trust itself to an unknown bridge, and it does not shy at idle noises. It has a high neck and a clean-cut head, a short belly and broad back, and its spirited chest swells with muscles. Bays and grays are good; the worst color is white or dun. Then, if arms clash somewhere far off, it cannot stand still; it pricks its ears, its limbs tremble, and, snorting, it rolls the pent-up fire beneath its nostrils.
86| His mane is thick, and tossed about it settles on his right shoulder; a double spine runs along his loins, and his hoof digs the ground and rings heavily with solid horn. Such was Cyllarus, tamed by the reins of Amyclaean Pollux, and such the pair of horses of Mars, whom the Greek poets remember, and the horses of great Achilles' chariot. Such too was Saturn himself, swift, spreading his mane over a horse's neck at his wife's arrival, and filling high Pelion as he fled with his shrill whinny. This horse too, when he fails, weighed down by sickness or already slower with years, shut away at home, and show no mercy to his shameful old age. An older horse is cold toward Venus, and drags on a thankless labor in vain, and if battle is ever reached, like a great fire in stubble, without strength, it rages to no purpose. So you will note especially their spirit and age; then their other qualities, the offspring of their parents, what pain each feels when beaten, and what glory the palm brings. Do you not see, when the chariots have seized the field in a headlong contest and rush pouring out of the starting gates, when the hopes of the young drivers are lifted high, and pounding fear drains their exultant hearts? They press on with twisted whip and lean forward to give the reins, and the axle flies, glowing with speed;
108| and now they seem to be carried low, and now raised high through the empty air and rising up into the winds. There is no pause and no rest; a cloud of tawny sand rises, and they are wet with the foam and breath of those pursuing: so great is the love of praise, so great the care for victory. Erichthonius was first to dare to yoke four horses to a chariot and stand victorious on the swift wheels. The Lapiths of Pelethronium, mounted on the horse's back, introduced the bridle and the rings of training, and taught the rider in arms to leap on the ground and to gather his proud steps. Each task is equal; the trainers equally look for a young horse that is hot in spirit and keen in running, even though he has often driven off enemies in flight and boasts of Epirus as his homeland and of strong Mycenae, and traces his stock itself to Neptune's origin. With these things observed, as the time approaches they press on and spend all their care to fatten with dense fat the one they have chosen as leader and named as husband of the herd, and they cut flowering grass and supply water and grain, so that he may not fail to survive the pleasing labor, and weak foals not show their fathers' hunger.
129| But the herds themselves, on purpose, they make thin with leanness; and when the now familiar pleasure first stirs them for mating, they deny leaves and keep them from the springs. Often they also shake them with running and tire them in the sun, when the threshing floor groans under heavily beaten grain, and when empty chaff is tossed to the rising west wind. They do this so that too much luxury may not dull the use of the generative field and clog the idle furrows, but that it may eagerly seize Venus and store her deeper. Again, the care of the fathers begins to fall away and that of the mothers to follow. When the pregnant mares wander after their months are done, let no one allow them to pull the yoke on heavy wagons, or to leap across the road, or to crop meadows in swift flight, or to swim rushing rivers. They are pastured in empty glades and beside full rivers, where there is moss and a bank richest in green grass, and caves give cover and rocky shade stretches out. Around the groves of Silarus and Alburnus, green with holm oaks, there flits in great numbers an insect whose Roman name is asilus, which the Greeks have turned into oestrus; it is fierce and has a harsh buzz, and at it whole herds, terrified, scatter through the woods; the sky, shaken, rages with their bellowing, and the woods, and the bank of the dry Tanager.
152| With this monster in former days Juno, plotting destruction for the heifer of Inachus, vented her terrible anger. This pest too (for it presses more fiercely in midsummer heat) you will keep away from the pregnant herd, and you will pasture the cattle when the sun has just risen or when the stars are leading on the night. After birth all care is shifted to the calves; at once they brand them with marks and the names of their stock, and those whom they would rather set aside for breeding the herd, or keep consecrated for the altars, or for breaking the earth and turning over the bristling field in broken clods. The rest of the herd graze on the green grass. As for those you will train for farm work and use, urge the calves on now and start on the way to taming them, while the spirits of the young are easy, while their age is pliant. First fasten loose rings of slender withy around the neck; then, when their free necks have grown used to service, join matched pairs together by the collars themselves, and make the young steers keep pace; and let empty wheels be drawn behind them often over the ground, and mark their tracks in the surface dust.
172| Afterward a beech-wood axle straining under a heavy load groans, and a bronze-rimmed wheel drags the yoked pole along. Meanwhile, for the untamed young horses you will gather not only grass or the tender leaves of willows and marsh sedge, but grain, cut by your own hand from the sown field; nor, as our fathers did, will you fill the milk pails with snow-white milk from calving cows, but let the foals use up all the udder for their own sweet feeding. But if your interest runs more to war and fierce squadrons, or to gliding on wheels past the river Alpheus at Pisa and driving flying chariots in Jupiter's grove, then the horse's first task is to look on the spirit and weapons of warriors, to endure the trumpets, to bear a groaning wheel as it drags, and to hear the clink of bits in the stable. Then more and more let him delight in his trainer's gentle praise and love the sound of his own neck being patted. Let him dare all this soon after he has been weaned from his mother's udder, and let him offer his mouth in turn to soft halters while still weak and trembling, still ignorant of his age. But when three years have passed and the fourth summer has come, let him soon begin to circle at the gallop, to beat out a rhythm with his hooves in measured steps, and to curve his legs in alternating bends, and let him look as if he is working at it. Then let him challenge the winds to a race, and flying over the open plains like a horse set free from the reins, scarcely leave his footprints on the surface of the sand.
196| As when the North Wind swoops down thick from Hyperborean shores and scatters the winters of Scythia and the dry clouds, then the tall cornfields and rippling plains shiver under the gentle gusts, the tops of the woods give out a rushing sound, and long waves press toward the shore; he flies on, sweeping fields and seas together in his flight. From there the horse will either sweat on the turning posts and the vast tracks at Elis and drive foam from his mouth flecked with blood, or he will pull a Belgic war cart better with a supple neck. Only then, when they have been broken in, let their great bodies grow fat on rich fodder; for before they are tamed they will lift up proud spirits, and once caught they will refuse to endure the pliant whip or to obey the hard curb. But no care strengthens their vigor more than keeping them away from sex and the goads of blind love, whether one prefers the use of cattle or of horses. And so they send bulls far away to lonely pastures behind a mountain barrier and across wide rivers, or keep them shut in at full mangers. For the female wears down the male's strength little by little and burns him with the mere sight of her, and with her sweet allurements she lets him remember neither woods nor grass; and often she makes her proud lovers fight it out between them with their horns.
219| The beautiful heifer grazes in the great forest of Sila. The bulls clash in turn in battle with great force and with repeated wounds; dark blood bathes their bodies, and the horns, turned against each other as they strain, are driven together with a vast groaning; the woods and the long sky of Olympus echo. Nor is it the habit of the fighters to stable together, but the one who is beaten goes away and lives in exile in distant, unknown lands, groaning deeply over his disgrace and the blows of the proud victor, and then over the love he lost unavenged; and looking back at his stalls, he has left the kingdom of his ancestors. So he trains his strength with every care, and lies the whole night on hard rocks with no bedding laid beneath him, feeding on rough leaves and sharp sedge; he tests himself and learns to turn his anger into his horns, straining against a tree trunk, and he provokes the winds with blows and rehearses for the fight by scattering sand. Then when his strength has been gathered and his vigor restored, he breaks camp and rushes headlong at the enemy, who has forgotten him: as when a wave begins to whiten in mid-sea, draws its curve from further out in the deep, and, rolling toward the land, roars enormously among the rocks and crashes down no smaller than a mountain itself, while the water below boils up in whirlpools and throws the black sand high.
242| Indeed every kind on earth, of men and of beasts, and the race of the sea, the cattle and the brightly colored birds, rush into frenzy and fire: love is the same for all. At no other time does the lioness, forgetting her cubs, prowl more savagely over the plains, nor do shapeless bears deal out so much death and carnage through the woods; then the boar is fierce, then the tiger is at her worst; ah, it is a bad time then to wander in the lonely fields of Libya. Do you not see how a trembling runs through the whole body of the horses, if only a scent has carried a familiar breath on the breeze? Neither the bridles of men nor cruel whips now hold them back, nor crags and hollow cliffs, nor rivers set in their way that whirl mountains away when they seize them. The Sabine boar himself charges, sharpens his tusks, paws the ground with his foot, rubs his ribs against a tree, and toughens his shoulders on this side and that against wounds. What of the young man, in whose bones harsh love stirs a mighty fire? He swims, late at night in the blind darkness, through seas stirred up by sudden storms; above him the great gate of heaven thunders, and the waves, dashed against the rocks, cry out against him; nor can his unhappy parents call him back, nor the girl who will die over his cruel death.
264| What of the spotted lynxes of Bacchus, the fierce breed of wolves, and of dogs? What of the timid deer, who fight in battle? But of all of them, the madness of mares is the most remarkable; Venus herself gave them this frenzy, at the time when the Potnian mares of Glaucus tore his limbs to pieces with their jaws. Love leads them across Gargara and across the roaring Ascanius; they climb mountains and swim rivers. And as soon as the flame has been put under their eager marrow (more so in spring, because in spring warmth returns to the bones), they all stand on high rocks with their faces turned to the west wind and catch the light breezes, and often, with no mating at all, made pregnant by the wind (wonderful to tell), they scatter over rocks and crags and down into low valleys, not toward your quarter, East Wind, nor toward the sunrise, but toward the North Wind and the Northwest, or where the blackest South Wind is born and saddens the sky with rainy cold. Here at last, what the shepherds rightly call by the name hippomanes, a thick poison drips from the groin, hippomanes, which wicked stepmothers have often gathered and mixed with herbs and harmful spells.
284| But time flies meanwhile, flies beyond recall, while we, captivated by love, wander round each separate topic. This is enough about the herds: the other part of the task remains, to look after woolly flocks and shaggy goats. Here is hard work, and from it you brave farmers may hope for praise. Nor am I in doubt in my own mind how hard it is to master these subjects in words and to add this distinction to such humble matters; but a sweet love carries me over the lonely heights of Parnassus; it is a joy to walk the ridges where no track of earlier poets turns off down a gentle slope to Castalia. Now, revered Pales, now I must sound with a great voice. To begin, I tell you to let the sheep graze on soft grass in their stalls until leafy summer returns, and to spread plenty of straw and bundles of fern on the hard ground beneath them, so that the cold ice does not hurt the tender flock and bring on the scab and foul foot-rot. After this I move on, and tell you to supply the goats with leafy arbutus and to give them fresh running water, and to set their shelters facing away from the winds, toward the winter sun, to the south, when icy Aquarius is setting and sprinkles the last of the year with rain.
305| These animals too must be looked after with no less care, and they will be of no less use, though Milesian fleeces, dyed in Tyrian purple, fetch a high price. From goats come more offspring, and from them an abundant supply of milk; the more the pail has foamed over from an emptied udder, the more the streams will flow, richly, from the pressed teats. Meanwhile they shear the beards and grizzled chins of the Cinyphian he-goat, grizzled chins and shaggy hair for use in camps and as covers for wretched sailors. They graze in the woods and on the heights of Lycaeus, on bristling brambles and on thorn-bushes that love the heights; and they come home of their own accord, remembering their way back to the shelters, and lead their kids, and scarcely get over the threshold with their heavy udders. So, with all the more care, since they need less from human hands, you must keep ice and snow-bringing winds away from them, and bring them food and leafy fodder gladly, and not shut your hayloft for the whole winter. But when happy summer, at the call of the west winds, sends both flocks out to the glades and pastures, let us at the first rising of the Morning Star go out into the cool country, while the morning is new, while the grass is white, and the dew on the tender grass is most welcome to the flock.
327| Then, when the fourth hour of the day has gathered thirst, and the plaintive cicadas break the thickets with their song, I will tell the flocks to drink running water from wells or deep pools, through channels of holm-oak wood; but in the midday heat to look for a shady valley, wherever the great oak of Jupiter, with its ancient strength, spreads its huge branches, or wherever a dark grove of crowded holm-oaks lies with its sacred shade. Then give them thin water again, and feed them again toward sunset, when the cool Evening Star tempers the air, and the dewy moon now restores the glades, and the shores echo with the kingfisher, the thickets with the goldfinch. Why should I follow in verse the shepherds of Libya, and their pastures, and their huts scattered with few roofs? Often day and night and a whole month in order the flock grazes and goes on through long deserts without any lodgings: so vast is the plain that lies open. The African herdsman takes everything with him: his roof, his household god, his weapons, his Spartan dog and his Cretan quiver; just as the tough Roman in his country's arms, when he is on the march under a heavy pack, pitches camp and stands in battle line facing the enemy before he is expected.
349| But it is not so where the tribes of Scythia live, and the waters of Lake Maeotis, and where the muddy Hister rolls its yellow sands, and where Rhodope stretches back toward the middle of the sky. There they keep the herds shut in their stalls, and no grass shows on the plain and no leaves on a tree; but the land lies shapeless under heaps of snow and deep frost, far and wide, and rises to a height of seven ells. It is always winter, always the North-West winds breathing cold; and the Sun never scatters the pale shadows, neither when he is carried on his horses to the high sky, nor when he bathes his plunging chariot in the red water of Ocean. Sudden crusts of ice form on a running river, and soon the water carries iron-rimmed wheels on its back, welcoming first ships, now broad wagons; bronze vessels commonly split, clothes freeze stiff on the body, people hack with axes the wine that was once liquid, whole pools turn to solid ice, and rough icicles harden on uncombed beards. Meanwhile it snows just as heavily through the whole sky: the sheep die, the great bodies of oxen stand wrapped in frost, and the deer, in a packed herd, are numbed by the strange weight and barely show above it with the tips of their antlers.
371| These they hunt, not by setting dogs on them, not with any nets, nor by scaring them with the dread of crimson feathers, but as the deer vainly push with their chests against the mountain of snow in front of them, the hunters kill them at close quarters with the sword, and, as they bellow loudly, cut them down and carry them back with a great, happy shout. The men themselves pass their leisure in safety, deep underground in dug-out caves; they have rolled up piled oak logs and whole elms to their hearths and given them to the fire. Here they spend the night in play, and cheerfully imitate wine with fermented barley and sour service-berries. Such is the unbridled race of men lying under the Hyperborean North, beaten by the Riphaean East Wind, with their bodies wrapped in the tawny hides of animals. If wool is your concern, first, let rough woodland and burrs and thistles be kept away; avoid rich pastures; and from the start choose flocks that are white, with soft fleece. As for a ram, though he himself is brilliant white, if he has a black tongue under his moist palate, reject him, so that he does not darken the fleeces of his newborn lambs with dusky spots; and look around the full field for another.
391| It was by the gift of snow-white wool, if it is right to believe it, that the god Pan of Arcadia deceived you, Moon, and caught you, calling you into the deep woods; and you did not scorn his call. But whoever loves milk should himself bring clover and plenty of lotus and salted herbs to the mangers with his own hand: from this the animals love the rivers more, and swell their udders more, and carry a hidden taste of salt in their milk. Many also keep the kids away from their mothers when weaned, and fasten iron-spiked muzzles on their mouths at first. The milk they draw at sunrise and in the daytime hours they press into cheese at night; what they milk in the dark and at sundown, before dawn: they carry it off in baskets (the shepherd goes into town), or they sprinkle it with a little salt and put it by for winter. Nor should your care for dogs come last, but feed the swift pups of Sparta and the fierce Molossian together on rich whey. With them as guards you will never have to fear a night thief at the stables, or wolves charging, or restless Spaniards at your back. Often too you will chase timid wild asses at a run, and with dogs you will hunt the hare, with dogs the fallow deer;
411| often you will drive wild boars from their forest wallows and unsettle them by barking as you chase, and through high mountains with shouting you will press a huge stag toward the nets. Learn also to burn fragrant cedar in the stalls and to drive off foul water-snakes with the smoke of galbanum. Often under unmoved mangers a viper, dangerous to touch, has lurked and, terrified of daylight, fled; or the snake that is used to creeping under the roof and the shade (the bitter plague of cattle) and spraying poison on the herd, has lain nestled on the ground. Take stones in your hand, take clubs, shepherd, and knock it down as it raises its threats and swells its hissing neck! And now it has hidden its frightened head deep in flight, when the coils in the middle and the rows of the tail's end loosen, and the last curve drags its slow folds. There is also that evil snake in the glades of Calabria, rolling its scaly back, with its breast lifted, and with a long belly spotted with large marks; as long as any rivers burst from springs, and as long as the earth is wet with spring damp and rainy south winds, it haunts the pools and, living on the banks, wickedly fills its black gullet here with fish and with chattering frogs;
432| When the marsh is burnt dry and the earth cracks open with the heat, it leaps out onto dry land and, rolling its flaming eyes, rages through the fields, harsh with thirst and maddened by the heat. May I not then want to take soft sleep under the open sky, or to lie on a wooded ridge among the grass, when it has shed its slough and rolls along, new and glossy with youth, leaving its young or its eggs in their hiding place, rearing up toward the sun and flickering with its three-forked tongue. I will also teach you the causes and signs of diseases. Foul scab attacks sheep when cold rain and winter stiff with white frost have sunk deeper into the quick, or when unwashed sweat has stuck to them after shearing, and bristling brambles have cut their bodies. For this reason the shepherds bathe the whole flock in fresh river water, and the ram, his fleece soaked, is dunked in the pool and sent floating down the current; or after shearing they anoint the body with bitter olive dregs and mix in silver scum, live sulphur, pitch of Ida, wax rich in oil, squill, strong hellebore and black bitumen.
452| Yet no remedy for their troubles is more effective than if someone has been able to cut open with a blade the top of the sore's opening: the sickness is nourished and lives by being covered up, while the shepherd refuses to apply healing hands to the wounds and sits praying the gods for better omens. Indeed even when pain has sunk to the lowest bones of the bleating sheep and rages there, and dry fever feeds on their limbs, it has helped to draw off the burning heat and to cut the throbbing vein in the lowest part of the foot, as the Bisaltae are used to do, and the fierce Geloni, when they flee into Rhodope and the deserts of the Getae, and drink milk curdled with horse blood. Any sheep you notice from a distance going too often into the soft shade, or nibble the tips of the grass with listless mouth and trail at the rear, or lie down in the middle of the field while grazing, and withdraw alone in the late night, at once check the fault with the knife, before the dreadful contagion spreads through the unwary flock. A whirlwind driving a storm does not sweep down on the sea as thick as the many plagues of cattle. Nor do diseases seize single bodies only, but whole summer pastures at once, hope and flock together, and the entire stock from its origin.
474| Anyone would know it, if even now, after so long, he should see the high Alps and the Noric hill-forts on their mounds and the fields of Iapydian Timavus, and the kingdoms of shepherds, empty, and the glades vacant far and wide. Here once a pitiable plague arose from a sickness of the sky and burned through the whole heat of autumn, and gave every kind of cattle to death, every kind of wild beast, and poisoned the lakes and infected the pastures with rot. Nor was the way to death simple; but when a fiery thirst, driven through all the veins, had shriveled the wretched limbs, a watery fluid flowed over again and drew all the bones, collapsed into it by the disease, into itself bit by bit. Often a victim standing at the altar in the midst of the honor paid to the gods, while the woolen fillet was being wound round her with its white ribbon, fell dying among the hesitating attendants; or if the priest had earlier struck one down with the knife, then the altars did not burn with the entrails laid on them, and the seer, when consulted, could not give answers, and the knives placed beneath were barely stained with blood, and the surface of the sand was darkened only with thin matter.
494| From this calves die everywhere in the lush grass and give up their sweet lives at full mangers; from this madness comes to friendly dogs, and a gasping cough shakes the sick pigs and chokes them in swollen throats. The victorious horse, unlucky, forgetful of his efforts and of grass, slips away, turns from the springs and paws the ground often with his hoof; his ears droop, his sweat is irregular, and cold, in those who are about to die; the skin dries and, to the touch of the one handling it, resists hard. These signs they give in the first days before the end: but if as it proceeds the disease begins to grow more harsh, then indeed the eyes burn and the breath is drawn from deep down, sometimes heavy with groaning, and the lowest flanks are stretched with long gasping, black blood runs from the nostrils, and a rough tongue presses on the blocked throat. It helped to pour wine of Lenaeus down through a horn pushed in; that seemed the one salvation for the dying. Soon this very thing was their destruction, and, revived, they blazed with frenzy, and, already in the grip of sickly death (may the gods grant better to the dutiful, and that madness to our enemies!), they tore their own limbs apart with bare teeth.
515| But look: the bull, steaming under the hard ploughshare, collapses, vomits blood mixed with foam from his mouth, and heaves his last groans. The ploughman goes sadly to unyoke the other bullock, grieving for his brother's death, and leaves the plough stuck fast in the middle of the work. No shade of high groves, no soft meadows can stir his spirit, nor the river that rolls over the rocks, purer than amber, as it seeks the plain; but the depths of his flanks go slack, a stupor weighs on his dull eyes, and his neck sinks to the ground with its drooping weight. What good are his toil and his services? What good to have turned the heavy earth with the ploughshare? And yet it was not the Massic gifts of Bacchus, not lavish banquets, that harmed these beasts: they feed on leaves and a diet of simple grass; their drink is clear springs and rivers racing in their course, and no worry breaks their healthy sleep. At no other time, they say, were cows sought in vain in those regions for Juno's rites, and the chariots were drawn to the high temple offerings by mismatched aurochs. So men scratch the earth with hoes, with difficulty, dig in the seed with their own nails, and with straining necks drag the creaking wagons over the high mountains.
537| The wolf does not explore around the sheepfolds for an ambush or prowl around the flocks at night: a sharper care tames him. Timid does and fleeing stags now wander among the dogs and around the houses. Now the waves wash up the offspring of the vast sea and every race of swimming things on the edge of the shore, like shipwrecked bodies; seals flee, against their habit, into the rivers. The viper dies too, protected in vain by its winding hiding places, and the water snakes, stunned, their scales standing on end. The air itself is hostile to the birds, and they fall headlong and leave their lives beneath the high clouds. Besides, it no longer helps to change pastures; the remedies sought out do harm; the masters have given up, Chiron son of Phillyra and Melampus son of Amythaon. Pale Tisiphone, let loose from the Stygian darkness into the light, rages, drives Diseases and Fear before her, and day by day, rising, lifts her greedy head higher. The rivers, the parched banks, and the sloping hills echo with the bleating of flocks and constant lowing. Now she deals out slaughter in droves and heaps up in the very stalls the corpses rotting with foul decay, until men learn to cover them with earth and bury them in pits.
559| For the hides were of no use, and no one could cleanse the flesh with water or master it with fire; they could not even shear the fleeces eaten through with disease and filth, or touch the rotten threads; and if anyone had tried on the hateful garments, burning blisters and a foul sweat ran over his stinking limbs, and before long the sacred fire was devouring his infected body.

======== Georgics — Book IV ========

1| Next I will go on to the heavenly gift of honey from the air: look on this part too, Maecenas. I will tell you of wondrous spectacles of a tiny world, of great-hearted leaders, and in due order of a whole nation's character and pursuits, its peoples and its battles. The labor is on a slight theme, but the glory is not slight, if unfriendly powers allow it and Apollo hears when called.
8| First, you must look for a site and a settled home for your bees, where the winds have no access — for winds prevent them from carrying their food home — and where no sheep or butting kids trample the flowers, nor a heifer wandering over the plain shakes off the dew and wears down the growing grass. Keep away from the rich hives the painted lizard with its scaly back, bee-eaters and other birds, and Procne, her breast marked by bloodstained hands; for they lay everything waste far and wide, and catch the bees themselves in flight and carry them in their beaks as sweet food for their pitiless nestlings. But let there be clear springs nearby, and pools green with moss, and a thin stream slipping through the grass; let a palm or a huge wild olive shade the entrance, so that when the new kings lead out the first swarms in their own springtime, and the young ones let out of the combs come out to play, a nearby bank may invite them to escape the heat, and a tree in their path may hold them in its leafy hospitality. In the middle of the water, whether it stands still or flows, throw willows crosswise and big stones, so that they can rest on many bridges and spread their wings to the summer sun, if the east wind has happened to scatter them as they linger or plunged them headlong into Neptune's waters.
30| Around these let green cassia flourish, and wild thyme with its far-reaching scent, and a wealth of strong-smelling savory, and let beds of violets drink from the running spring. As for the hives themselves, whether you have stitched them from hollow bark or woven them from pliant osier, let them have narrow entrances: for winter congeals the honey with cold, and heat melts it and makes it run. Both forces are equally to be feared for bees; it is not for nothing that in their homes they vie in smearing the thin crevices with wax, filling the edges with pollen and flowers, and keeping for this very task a glue they have gathered, stickier than birdlime or the pitch of Phrygian Ida. Often too, if the story is true, they have made their home in burrows dug underground, and have been found deep within hollow pumice and in the cavity of a rotten tree. Still, you should smear smooth mud around their cracked chambers to keep them warm, and throw a few leaves on top. Do not let a yew grow too near their home, do not roast reddening crabs on your hearth, and do not trust a deep marsh, or a place where there is a heavy smell of mud, or where hollow rocks ring when struck and the echo of a voice rebounds.
51| For the rest, when the golden sun has driven winter underground and opened the sky with summer light, at once they range over glades and woods, harvest the bright flowers, and sip lightly from the surface of the streams. From then on, glad with a sweetness I cannot name, they cherish their offspring and their nests; from then on they skillfully hammer out fresh wax and mold the clinging honey. Then, when you look up and see a column let out of the hives swimming toward the stars of the sky through the clear summer air, and marvel at the dark cloud drawn along by the wind, watch it closely: they always make for fresh water and leafy shelter. Sprinkle there the scents I prescribe, bruised balm and the humble honeywort, raise a tinkling, and shake the cymbals of the Mother around them. They will settle on the scented sites of their own accord; of their own accord, in their usual way, they will hide themselves in the innermost cradles.
67| But if they have gone out to battle — for often discord has come upon two kings with great commotion, and at once you can tell far in advance the mood of the crowd and their hearts quivering for war; for that martial music of harsh bronze rebukes the laggards, and a sound is heard like the broken blasts of trumpets — then they gather anxiously, their wings flashing, sharpen their stings on their beaks, flex their muscles, and swarm densely around the king and right up to his headquarters, and call the enemy with loud cries. So, when they find a clear spring day and open fields, they burst out of the gates; they clash; there is a noise high in the air; they are mixed up and massed in a great ball and fall headlong. Hail from the sky is not thicker, nor do so many acorns rain down from a shaken oak. The leaders themselves, in the midst of the ranks, with their distinguished wings, turn great spirits in their small breasts, determined never to give way, until the heavy hand of the victor forces one side or the other to turn its back in flight. These passions of spirit and these great contests will be checked and laid to rest by the throw of a little dust. But when you have called both leaders back from the battle, put to death the one who seems the worse, so that he does no harm by wasting; let the better one reign in the empty palace. The one will be ablaze with flecks of rough gold — for there are two kinds: this, the better, distinguished in appearance and bright with gleaming scales; the other, shaggy with sloth, inglorious, dragging a broad belly.
95| As there are two looks for kings, so too for the common bodies. For some are ugly and bristle, as a thirsty traveler does when he comes out of deep dust and spits the dirt from his dry mouth; others are bright and flash, glowing with gold, their bodies marked with even drops. This is the better stock; from it at the proper season of the year you will press sweet honey, and not only sweet but clear, and able to soften the harsh taste of wine.
103| But when the swarms fly aimlessly and play in the sky, scorn the combs and leave their cold dwellings, you must keep their unsteady minds from this empty play. It is no great task to stop them: pluck the wings from the kings; with them hesitating, no one will dare to go on a high journey or pull up the standards from camp. Let gardens breathing with yellow flowers draw them, and let the guardian of thieves and birds, Priapus of the Hellespont, with his willow sickle, keep watch. Let the man to whom such things matter bring thyme and pines from high mountains and plant them widely around the hives; let him wear out his hand with hard labor, let him set fruitful plants in the ground and water them with kindly showers.
116| And indeed, if I were not now drawing in my sails near the end of my labors and hurrying to turn my prow to land, perhaps I would also sing what care would adorn rich gardens, and the rose-beds of Paestum that flower twice a year, and how endives rejoice in the streams from which they drink, and green banks in celery, and how the cucumber twists through the grass and swells into a belly; nor would I have left unmentioned the late-flowering narcissus, the shoot of the curling acanthus, the pale ivies and the myrtles that love the shore. For I remember that under the towers of the Oebalian citadel, where dark Galaesus waters the yellow fields, I saw an old man from Corycus, who had a few acres of abandoned land, neither fertile for bullocks, nor suited to flocks, nor good for the vine. Yet he, planting here and there among the brambles a scattering of vegetables, with white lilies around them, and vervain and slender poppy, matched the wealth of kings in his spirit, and returning home late at night loaded his table with a feast he had not bought. He was the first to pick the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn, and when grim winter was still splitting the rocks with cold and holding back the courses of the waters with ice, he was already cutting the bloom of the soft hyacinth, scolding the late summer and the delaying west winds.
139| So he also was first to overflow with breeding bees and a great swarm, and to collect frothing honey from the pressed combs; he had linden trees and the richest pines, and as many fruits as the fertile tree had put on in its first blossom, so many it held ripe in autumn. He also transplanted late elms in rows, a hardened pear tree, thorns already bearing plums, and a plane tree already giving shade to drinkers. But these things I myself pass over, shut out by the unfavorable limits of space, and leave for others to tell after me.
149| Now come, I will set out the natures which Jupiter himself gave to the bees, as the reward for which, following the ringing sounds of the Curetes and their clashing bronze, they fed the king of heaven in the Dictaean cave. They alone hold their children in common, they have houses shared as one city, and they live their lives under great laws, and they alone know a homeland and fixed household gods, and, mindful of the winter to come, they test their labor in summer and place what they have gained in a common store. For some keep watch over food, and, by a pact agreed, are sent out into the fields; some within the enclosures of their homes lay the first foundations of the combs with the tears of narcissus and sticky gum from bark, then hang up the clinging wax; others lead out the grown young, the hope of the race; others pack the purest honey and swell the cells with clear nectar. There are some to whom the guarding of the gates fell by lot, and who in turn watch the rains and the clouds of the sky, or take the loads of those arriving, or, forming a column, drive the drones, a lazy herd, away from the hives.
169| The work is hot, and the fragrant honey smells of thyme. And just as the Cyclopes, when they hurry thunderbolts out of tough lumps of metal, some take in air and send it out again with bulls' hide bellows, others dip the hissing bronze in the water; Etna groans under the anvils set on it; they raise their arms among themselves with great force in rhythm and turn the iron in the gripping tongs: just so, if one may compare small things with great, an inborn love of gain drives the Attic bees, each at her own task. The old ones have the care of the towns, to fortify the combs and to build the cunningly made houses. But the younger ones come back tired late at night, their legs full of thyme; they feed everywhere on arbutus and gray willows, cassia, red saffron, rich linden and dark hyacinths. All have one rest from their work, all one toil: in the morning they rush out of the gates; there is no delay; and again, when the evening has warned them at last to leave the fields where they fed, then they head for home, then they look after their bodies; a hum rises, and they murmur around the edges and the threshold.
189| Afterward, when they have settled in their chambers, there is silence into the night, and their own sleep takes hold of their weary limbs. Nor, when rain threatens, do they go far from the hives or trust the sky when east winds are coming, but they draw water nearby, safe under the walls of their city, make short trial flights, and often lift little stones, as unstable boats do ballast in the tossing waves, and with these they steady themselves through the empty clouds. You will marvel that this custom pleased the bees, that they do not indulge in mating, nor slackly relax their bodies into love, nor give birth with labor pains: rather they themselves gather their young with their mouths from leaves and sweet herbs, they themselves provide a king and little Quirites, and rebuild their courts and waxen realms. Often too, wandering over hard rocks, they wear their wings away and of their own accord give up their lives under their load: such is their love of flowers and their pride in making honey. So although the limit of a short life awaits the bees themselves, for no more than the seventh summer is lived through, yet the race remains immortal and for many years the fortune of the house stands firm and grandfathers of grandfathers are counted.
210| Besides, neither Egypt nor vast Lydia nor the peoples of the Parthians or the Median Hydaspes look up to their king as the bees do. While the king is safe, all have one mind; when he is lost, they break faith and tear apart the honey they built and loosen the lattices of the combs. He is the guardian of their works; all admire him and stand round him with a dense murmur and crowd about him in numbers, and often lift him on their shoulders, throw their bodies in front of him in battle and seek a noble death through wounds.
219| Following these signs and these examples, some have said that the bees have a share of the divine mind and draughts of the upper air; for they say that god goes through all lands and tracts of sea and the deep sky. From him flocks, herds, men, and every kind of wild beast, each at its birth, draw their slender lives; and surely to him all things return afterwards and, once dissolved, are given back, and there is no place for death, but alive they fly into the ranks of the stars and rise to the high heaven.
228| If ever you are going to unseal their narrow home and the honey stored in its treasuries, first sprinkle your mouth with a draught of water and hold out in your hand the pursuing smoke. They gather their heavy yield twice, two seasons of harvest: when Taygete the Pleiad first shows her fair face to the earth and with her foot thrusts aside the despised streams of Ocean, or when the same star, fleeing the watery constellation of the Fish, descends from the sky more grimly into the winter waves. Their anger knows no limit, and when hurt they breathe poison into the bites and leave their unseen stings fixed in the veins, and lay down their lives in the wound. But if you fear a hard winter and will spare the future, and pity their crushed spirits and ruined fortunes, who would hesitate to fumigate with thyme and cut away the empty wax? For often an unseen lizard has eaten into the combs, and cells have been packed with cockroaches that shun the light, and the drone, sitting idle at another's food, has crept in, or the harsh hornet, with unequal weapons, or the dreadful tribe of moths, or Minerva's hated spider has hung her loose webs at the door. The more they have been drained, the harder all will strive to repair the ruin of their fallen race, and fill the passageways and weave their storehouses of flowers.
251| But if, since life has brought bees too our human misfortunes, their bodies grow weak with a sad sickness (which you can now recognize by clear signs): at once the sick have a different color, a rough thinness disfigures their appearance, then they carry out the bodies of those that lack light from the hive and conduct a sad funeral; or they hang by their feet linked together at the entrance, or loiter shut up inside their dwellings, all sluggish with hunger and slow with cold that has drawn them in. Then a deeper sound is heard, and they hum in a drawn-out way, as the cold south wind sometimes murmurs in the woods, as the troubled sea hisses with its ebbing waves, as raging fire seethes in closed furnaces: then I will advise burning scented galbanum and bringing in honey through reed tubes, encouraging them and calling the weary ones to their known food. It will help also to mix in the taste of crushed gall, and dried roses, or must boiled thick over a strong fire, or raisins from the Psithian vine, and Attic thyme and strongly smelling centaury. There is also a flower in the meadows which farmers have named amellus, an easy plant to find for those who look; for from a single clump it raises a great thicket, golden itself, but in the leaves, which spread out in great numbers around, the purple of the dark violet shines faintly through; [the altars of the gods have often been decked with woven garlands of it;] its taste is harsh in the mouth; shepherds gather it in mown valleys and near the winding streams of the Mella. Boil its roots in fragrant wine and set it out as food at the entrance in full baskets.
281| But if a swarm's whole offspring should suddenly fail, and you have no stock from which to restore a new line, it is time to reveal the memorable discovery of the Arcadian master, and the way in which the corrupted blood of slaughtered bullocks has often before now produced bees. I will set out the whole story at length, tracing it back to its first origin. For in the region where the fortunate people of Pellaean Canopus live beside the Nile as it floods and stands over the land, and travel about their own fields in painted boats, and where the neighborhood of quiver-bearing Persia presses close, [and where the river, rushing down from the dark-skinned Indians, enriches green Egypt with black silt and runs off in seven separate mouths], the whole country stakes its sure well-being on this craft. First a small place is chosen, narrow and prepared for this very purpose; they enclose it with a roof of tiles in a tight space and with walls pressed close, and add four windows facing the four winds, admitting a slanting light. Then a bullock is sought, one just curving its horns on a two-year-old brow. Though he struggles hard, both his nostrils and the breath of his mouth are stopped up, and when he has been beaten to death, his entrails are pounded to pulp through the unbroken hide.
303| They leave him lying like this in the closed room and put under his ribs broken sprigs, thyme and fresh cassia. This is done when the Zephyrs are first driving on the waves, before the meadows redden with new colors, before the chattering swallow hangs her nest from the rafters. Meanwhile the moisture, warmed in the tender bones, ferments, and creatures wonderful to see, at first without feet, soon buzzing with wings as well, swarm together and take more and more of the thin air, until they burst out like rain pouring from summer clouds, or like arrows from the string when the light Parthians first enter battle.
315| Which god, Muses, which god forged this art for us? Where did this new experience of men begin? The shepherd Aristaeus, fleeing Peneian Tempe after losing his bees, so the story goes, to disease and hunger, stood sorrowful at the sacred source of the river, at its far end, and in his many complaints addressed his mother with these words: 'Mother, mother Cyrene, you who hold the depths of this pool, why did you bear me, of a glorious line of gods, if indeed my father is Thymbraean Apollo, as you say, only to be hated by the Fates? Or where has your love for me been driven? Why did you bid me hope for heaven? See, even this very honor of mortal life, which my skillful care of crops and herds, trying everything, had barely forged for me, I am giving up, though you are my mother. Come now, with your own hand tear up my fruitful woods, bring hostile fire to my stalls and destroy my harvests, burn my crops and swing the strong double axe against my vines, if such disgust at my reputation has seized you.' But his mother heard the sound from her chamber deep under the river. Around her the Nymphs were carding Milesian fleeces dyed with the deep color of glass, Drymo and Xantho and Ligea and Phyllodoce, their glossy hair spread over their white necks, Nesaea and Spio and Thalia and Cymodoce, Cydippe and golden Lycorias, one a maiden, the other just then experiencing the first labors of Lucina, Clio and her sister Beroe, both daughters of Ocean, both belted with gold, both draped in painted skins, and Ephyre and Opis and Asian Deiopea and swift Arethusa, at last with her arrows laid aside.
345| Among them Clymene was telling of Vulcan's fruitless anxiety and the tricks and sweet thefts of Mars, and from Chaos she was counting off the crowded loves of the gods. While, spellbound by her song, they unwound the soft wool from their spindles, once more the grief of Aristaeus struck his mother's ears, and all of them sat stunned on their glassy seats. But before the other sisters, Arethusa looked out and raised her golden head above the water's surface, and called from far off: 'O Cyrene, sister, not without reason are you startled by so great a lament. It is Aristaeus himself, your greatest care, who stands sorrowing and in tears by the water of his father Peneus, and calls you cruel by name.' His mother, her mind struck with new dread, said: 'Bring him, bring him to us. He is permitted to touch the thresholds of the gods.' At the same time she ordered the deep waters to part widely, where the young man might set his steps. The wave curved itself into the shape of a mountain and stood around him, received him in its vast hollow, and sent him down beneath the river. And now, marveling at his mother's home and her watery realm, at the pools shut in caves and the resounding groves, he went on, stunned by the huge motion of the waters, and he gazed at all the rivers gliding beneath the great earth, flowing in different places: the Phasis and the Lycus, and the spring from which deep Enipeus first bursts out, where father Tiber comes from, and the streams of the Anio, and rocky, roaring Hypanis, and Mysian Caicus, and Eridanus, gilded, with two horns on a bull's face, than which no other river pours more violently through rich farmland into the purple sea.
374| When they had come to the chamber roofed with hanging pumice, and Cyrene recognized her son's empty tears, Cyrene's sisters in turn gave him clear spring water for his hands and brought towels of shorn-nap wool. Some load the tables with food and set out full cups again; the altars blaze with Panchaean incense. His mother said: 'Take up cups of Maeonian wine. Let us pour a libation to Ocean.' At the same time she herself prays to Ocean, father of all things, and to the sister Nymphs who guard a hundred woods and a hundred rivers. Three times she sprinkled blazing Vesta with bright nectar, three times the flame shot up to the top of the roof. Strengthening his spirit with this omen, she began to speak in these words:
387| 'In Neptune's Carpathian sea there is a seer, sea-blue Proteus, who traverses the vast ocean with fishes and a chariot drawn by a team of two-footed horses. He is now revisiting the harbors of Emathia and his homeland Pallene. We Nymphs revere him, and aged Nereus himself does too; for the seer knows everything, what is, what has been, and what is about to come in the future. Such was Neptune's will, whose monstrous herds and ugly seals he pastures beneath the sea. This is the one, my son, you must first take in chains, so that he may explain the whole cause of the disease and bring about a good outcome. For without force he will give no instructions at all, and you will not bend him by pleading. When you have caught him, apply harsh force and chains; against these his tricks will in the end break and come to nothing. I myself will lead you, when the sun has kindled its noonday heat, when the grass is thirsty and the shade is now more welcome to the herds, into the old man's secret place, where he retires tired from the waves, so that you may easily attack him as he lies asleep. But when you have him seized in your hands and held in chains, then various shapes and the faces of wild beasts will mock you. For he will suddenly become a bristling boar, a black tiger, a scaly serpent, and a lioness with tawny mane; or he will make the sharp crackle of flame and so slip out of the chains, or slide away into thin water and vanish. But the more he turns himself into every shape, the harder, my son, you must pull the tight chains, until, his body changed, he becomes such as you saw him when he began to close his eyes in sleep.'
415| So she spoke and poured out the liquid fragrance of ambrosia, with which she anointed her son's whole body; and a sweet breath breathed from his combed hair, and nimble strength came into his limbs. There is a huge cave in the hollowed flank of a mountain, where much water is driven by the wind and divides into curving inlets, once a very safe anchorage for sailors caught by storm; inside, Proteus hides himself behind a barrier of vast rock. Here the Nymph placed the young man in a hiding place, turned away from the light; she herself stood at a distance, hidden in mist. Now the raging dog star Sirius was scorching the thirsty Indians, and the fiery sun had drunk up half its course in the sky; the grass was withering, and the sun's rays were baking the hollow streams, warm down to the mud, in their dry channels. Then Proteus, making for his accustomed cave from the waves, came along; around him the wet tribe of the vast sea leapt and scattered the bitter spray far and wide. The seals lay down to sleep, scattered along the shore. He himself, like a herdsman in the mountains at times, when evening brings the calves back from pasture to the folds and the lambs' bleating sharpens the wolves, sat down on a rock in the middle and counted over his flock.
437| Since the chance was now offered to Aristaeus, he scarcely allowed the old man to settle his weary limbs, but rushed at him with a great shout and seized him with shackles as he lay. Proteus, for his part, not forgetting his art, changed himself into every kind of wonder: fire, a terrifying beast, flowing water. But when no deception found a way to escape, beaten, he returned to himself and finally spoke in a human voice: 'Who, most reckless of young men, told you to come to our home? And what do you seek here?' he said. The other answered: 'You know, Proteus, you yourself know; nothing can deceive you. But stop trying. Following the gods' instructions, we have come here to seek an oracle for our ruined fortunes.' That was all he said. At this the seer, with great force at last, rolled his blazing eyes with their gray-green gleam, gnashed his teeth hard, and so loosed his lips to speak the fates.
453| "It is the anger of some divine power that is hounding you; you are paying for a great crime. Pitiable Orpheus — who by no means deserves it — is calling down these punishments on you, unless the Fates stand in the way, and he rages bitterly for the wife who was taken from him. She, rushing headlong along the river to escape you, did not see, poor girl, doomed to die, the monstrous water snake guarding the banks in the deep grass before her feet. But the band of Dryads, her companions, filled the mountain heights with their cries; the peaks of Rhodope wept, and high Pangaea, and Rhesus' land of war, and the Getae, and the Hebrus, and Attic Orithyia. He himself, consoling his aching love with the hollow lyre, sang of you, sweet wife, of you alone with himself on the lonely shore, of you as the day came, of you as it departed. Even the jaws of Taenarus he entered, the deep gateway of Dis, and the grove dark with black terror, and approached the shades and their dreaded king, and the hearts that human prayers cannot make gentle. But stirred by his song, from the deepest seats of Erebus came the insubstantial shades and the phantoms of those deprived of light, as many as the thousands of birds that hide among the leaves when evening or a winter storm drives them from the mountains: mothers and men, and the bodies of great-hearted heroes done with life, boys and unmarried girls, and young men placed on the pyre before their parents' eyes; all held fast by the black mud and the ugly reeds of Cocytus, and the unlovely marsh with its sluggish water, and Styx, flowing nine times between, hems them in.
481| Even the halls of Death themselves were astonished, and the innermost depths of Tartarus, and the Furies with dark-blue snakes twined in their hair; Cerberus held his three mouths gaping, and the wheel of Ixion stopped turning in the wind. And now, retracing his steps, he had escaped every danger, and Eurydice, given back, was coming up to the air above, following behind — for Proserpina had made that condition — when a sudden madness seized the unwary lover, one to be forgiven, if the shades knew how to forgive. He stopped, and on the very edge of the light, forgetting, alas, and overcome in his heart, he looked back at his Eurydice. In that moment all his toil was poured away, the pact with the pitiless tyrant was broken, and three times a crash was heard over the pools of Avernus. She cried: 'What is this, Orpheus, that has destroyed both me in my misery and you? What great madness? Look, once again the cruel Fates call me back, and sleep shuts my swimming eyes. And now, farewell: I am carried off, wrapped in vast night, stretching out to you hands that have no strength — ah, no longer yours!' She spoke, and suddenly, like smoke mingling with thin air, she fled from his sight in the other direction, and did not see him again as he clutched in vain at the shadows and longed to say so much; and the ferryman of Orcus did not let him cross the barrier of the marsh again.
504| What was he to do? Where was he to go, his wife twice taken from him? With what weeping could he move the shades, with what voice the powers below? She, already cold, was floating in the Stygian boat. For seven whole months on end, they say, he wept beneath a towering cliff by the waters of the lonely Strymon, and unfolded his story in the cold caves, soothing tigers and moving oaks with his song: as a nightingale mourning in the poplar shade laments her lost young, whom a hard-hearted ploughman has spied and dragged unfledged from the nest; but she weeps all night, and sitting on a branch she renews her pitiful song and fills the places far and wide with her sorrowful complaints. No love, no marriage turned his heart. Alone he roamed the Hyperborean ice and the snowy Tanais and the fields never free of Riphaean frost, lamenting Eurydice taken from him and the empty gifts of Dis. Scorned by this devotion, the Ciconian women, amid the sacred rites of the gods and the orgies of Bacchus by night, tore the young man apart and scattered him over the wide fields. Even then, while the Hebrus, the river of Oeagrus, carried his head, torn from his marble neck, and rolled it in the middle of its current, the voice itself and the cold tongue, with his life fleeing, called 'Eurydice — ah, poor Eurydice!'; 'Eurydice,' the banks echoed all along the river."
528| So spoke Proteus, and with a leap he threw himself into the deep sea, and where he plunged, he twisted the foaming water into a whirl. But Cyrene did not leave; of her own accord she spoke to her frightened son:
531| 'My son, you may lay aside your sad cares. This is the whole cause of the disease; from this the Nymphs, with whom she used to dance in the high groves, sent the pitiful destruction on your bees. You must humbly offer gifts, asking for peace, and honor the gentle Napaean nymphs; for they will grant pardon to your prayers and let their anger go. But first I will tell you in order the manner of the entreaty. Choose four outstanding bulls of fine build, which now graze the green heights of Lycaeus for you, and the same number of heifers with necks untouched by the yoke. For these, set up four altars by the high shrines of the goddesses, and let the sacred blood flow from their throats, and leave the bodies of the cattle themselves in the leafy grove. Afterward, when the ninth Dawn has shown her rising, you will send Lethe poppies as funeral offerings to Orpheus and sacrifice a black ewe, and go back to the grove. You will honor the appeased Eurydice by slaughtering a calf.'
548| Without delay he carries out his mother's instructions at once: he comes to the shrines, raises the altars as he was shown, leads four choice bulls of outstanding build and as many heifers whose necks the yoke has never touched. Then, when the ninth Dawn had brought on her rising, he sends Orpheus his funeral offerings and returns to the grove. And here they see a sudden portent, wondrous to tell: through the decaying flesh of the cattle, all through their bellies, bees are buzzing and boiling out of the broken ribs, trailing in vast clouds, and now streaming together at the top of a tree and hanging in a cluster from the bending boughs.
559| This I was singing of the care of fields and flocks and of trees, while great Caesar was hurling the thunderbolt of war by the deep Euphrates, and, victorious, was giving laws to willing peoples and setting out on the road to Olympus. At that time sweet Parthenope was nurturing me, Virgil, as I flourished in the pursuits of inglorious ease — I who played at shepherds' songs, and, bold in my youth, sang of you, Tityrus, under the cover of a spreading beech.

======== Eclogues — Eclogue I ========

1| [Meliboeus] Tityrus, lying back under the cover of a spreading beech, you practice the woodland Muse on a slender reed pipe; we are leaving the borders of our homeland and our sweet fields. We are fleeing our homeland; you, Tityrus, at ease in the shade, teach the forest to ring with the name of lovely Amaryllis.Tityrus] Meliboeus, it was a god who made this leisure for us. For he will always be a god to me; a tender lamb from our folds will often stain his altar. It was he who allowed my cattle to wander, as you see, and me myself to play what I like on my country pipe. [Meliboeus] I do not begrudge it — rather, I am amazed: there is such turmoil everywhere in all the countryside. Look, I myself, sick at heart, am driving my goats on and on; this one, Tityrus, I can barely lead. For just now, here among the thick hazels, she gave birth to twins, the hope of the flock, and left them, ah, on the bare flint. I remember how often oaks struck from the sky foretold this misfortune to us, if my mind had not been blind. But still, Tityrus, tell us who this god of yours is. [Tityrus] The city they call Rome, Meliboeus, I thought, fool that I was, was like this one of ours, where we shepherds often drive the tender young of our sheep.
22| So I knew puppies were like dogs, so I knew kids were like their mothers, so I used to compare great things with small. But this city has raised its head as high among other cities as cypresses do among the pliant wayfaring trees. [Meliboeus] And what was your great reason for seeing Rome? [Tityrus] Freedom, which, though late, still looked back on me in my idleness, after my beard was falling whiter when it was trimmed; still, she looked back and came after a long time, now that Amaryllis has me and Galatea has left me. For — I will confess it — while Galatea held me, I had no hope of liberty and no care for my savings. Though many victims left my pens, and much rich cheese was pressed for the ungrateful town, my right hand never came home heavy with money. [Meliboeus] I wondered why you called sadly on the gods, Amaryllis, and for whom you let the apples hang on their trees. Tityrus was away. The very pines, Tityrus, the very springs, these very orchards were calling for you. [Tityrus] What was I to do? I could not leave my slavery, nor find gods so ready to help anywhere else.
42| Here, Meliboeus, I saw that young man for whom our altars smoke twice six days every year. Here he was the first to give me an answer when I asked: "Graze your cattle as before, boys; rear your bulls." [Meliboeus] Fortunate old man, so your land will remain, and it is large enough for you, though bare stone and marsh cover all your pastures with muddy rushes. No unfamiliar fodder will harm your pregnant ewes, nor will diseases from a neighbor's flock infect them. Fortunate old man, here among familiar rivers and sacred springs you will enjoy the cool shade. On this side, as always, the hedge on your neighbor's boundary, whose willow blossoms the bees of Hybla feed on, will often coax you into sleep with its soft humming; on that side, under the high rock, the leaf-pruner will sing to the breezes; and meanwhile the hoarse wood pigeons, your delight, will not stop cooing, nor the turtledove moaning from the lofty elm. [Tityrus] Sooner, then, will light-footed stags graze in the air, and the seas leave their fish naked on the shore; sooner, both of them wandering in exile across each other's borders, will the Parthian drink the Arar or Germany the Tigris, than his face will slip from my heart.
64| [Meliboeus] But we must go from here, some to the thirsty Africans, some to Scythia and the chalky, swift Oaxes, and to the Britons, wholly cut off from all the world. Ah, will I ever, long afterward, see my native land again and the turf-heaped roof of my poor cottage, and look with wonder, after some harvests, at the few ears of grain that were my kingdom? A godless soldier will own these well-tilled fallows, a barbarian these crops. See where discord has brought our wretched citizens! For these we have sown our fields! Graft your pears now, Meliboeus, set your vines in rows! Go, my goats, go, once a happy flock. Never again, stretched out in a green cave, will I watch you from far off hanging on a bushy rock; I will sing no songs; you will not crop the flowering clover and bitter willows with me as your herdsman, my goats. [Tityrus] Still, you could rest here with me tonight on green leaves. I have ripe apples, soft chestnuts, and plenty of pressed cheese; and already the rooftops of the farmhouses are smoking in the distance, and longer shadows fall from the high mountains.

======== Eclogues — Eclogue II ========

1| The shepherd Corydon burned for handsome Alexis, his master's darling, and had nothing to hope for. All he could do was come again and again among the dense beeches with their shady tops. There, alone, he would fling these artless words to the mountains and woods in vain longing:
6| "Cruel Alexis, do you care nothing for my songs? Do you have no pity for me? Will you drive me to death in the end? Now even the cattle look for shade and coolness, now even the thickets hide the green lizards, and Thestylis pounds garlic and thyme, pungent herbs, for the reapers worn out by the scorching heat. But with me, as I track your footsteps, the orchards ring under the blazing sun with the hoarse cicadas. Would it not have been better to put up with Amaryllis' sullen anger and her proud disdain? Or with Menalcas, dark though he was, fair though you are? Lovely boy, do not trust too much to your coloring: white privet flowers fall, dark hyacinths are gathered.
19| You despise me, Alexis, and do not ask who I am, how rich in flocks, how well supplied with snow-white milk. A thousand lambs of mine wander on the hills of Sicily; I am never short of fresh milk, summer or winter. I sing the songs Dircaean Amphion used to sing when he called his herds on Attic Aracynthus. Nor am I so ugly: I saw myself on the shore recently, when the sea lay still and calm under the winds. I would not fear Daphnis, with you as judge, if reflections never lie.
28| If only you would be willing to live with me in the humble countryside and lowly cottages, to shoot deer and drive a flock of kids with a green switch of mallow! With me in the woods you will imitate Pan in song. Pan first taught men to join several reeds with wax; Pan cares for sheep and for the masters of sheep. And do not be sorry to have rubbed your lip on the reed: to know these same skills, what did Amyntas not do? I have a pipe made of seven hemlock stalks of unequal length, which Damoetas once gave me as a gift; and as he died he said: 'Now it has you as its second master.' So said Damoetas; foolish Amyntas was envious. Besides, I have two young roe deer I found in a dangerous valley, their hides still spotted with white; they drain a ewe's udders twice a day; I am keeping them for you. Thestylis has long been begging to take them from me; and she will, since my gifts mean nothing to you.
45| Come here, lovely boy: look, the Nymphs bring you lilies in full baskets; for you a fair Naiad, plucking pale violets and poppy heads, joins narcissus and the flower of sweet-smelling dill; then, weaving them with cassia and other fragrant herbs, she sets off the soft hyacinths with yellow marigold. I myself will pick quinces, pale with tender down, and chestnuts, which my Amaryllis loved; I will add waxy plums — this fruit too shall have its honor — and I will pluck you, laurels, and you, myrtle, next to them, since, placed together, you blend your sweet scents.
56| You are a bumpkin, Corydon: Alexis cares nothing for gifts, and if you competed in gifts, Iollas would not give way. Alas, alas, what have I wanted, wretch that I am? I have let the south wind in on my flowers, ruined man, and boars into my clear springs.
60| Whom are you running from, madman? The gods too have lived in the woods, and Dardan Paris. Let Pallas live in the citadels she has founded; let the woods please us above all else. The grim lioness follows the wolf, the wolf himself follows the goat, the playful goat follows the flowering clover, and Corydon follows you, Alexis: each is drawn by his own desire.
66| Look, the bullocks are bringing home the ploughs hung from the yoke, and the setting sun doubles the lengthening shadows; yet love burns me still: for what limit can there be to love? Ah, Corydon, Corydon, what madness has seized you? Your vine is half pruned on the leafy elm. Why not rather at least set about weaving something you need, out of osiers and soft rushes? You will find another Alexis, if this one scorns you."

======== Eclogues — Eclogue III ========

1| [Menalcas] Tell me, Damoetas, whose flock is this? Meliboeus'?
2| [Damoetas] No, it's Aegon's; Aegon handed it over to me recently.
3| [Menalcas] Poor sheep, always an unlucky flock! While he himself fondles Neaera and worries that she may prefer me to him, this hired keeper milks the ewes twice an hour, and the juice is drained from the flock and the milk from the lambs.
7| [Damoetas] Remember, though, to be more sparing in throwing such things at men. We know who did what to you, while the he-goats looked on askance, and in which shrine — but the easygoing Nymphs just laughed.
10| [Menalcas] That was when, I suppose, they saw me hacking Micon's orchard and his young vines with a wicked pruning hook.
12| [Damoetas] Or here by the old beeches, when you broke Daphnis' bow and arrows; you were sore, you spiteful Menalcas, when you saw them given to the boy, and if you hadn't done him some harm you would have died.
16| [Menalcas] What can masters do, when thieves are so bold? Didn't I see you, you villain, catching Damon's goat in an ambush, while Lycisca barked her head off? And when I shouted, "Where is he off to now? Tityrus, round up the flock!" you were hiding behind the sedge.
21| [Damoetas] Well, when he lost the singing match, shouldn't he have handed over the goat my pipe had won with its songs? In case you don't know, that goat was mine; Damon himself admitted it to me, but said he couldn't pay up.
25| [Menalcas] You beat him at singing? Did you ever even own a pipe joined with wax? Weren't you the one, you ignoramus, who used to murder a wretched tune at the crossroads on a screeching straw?
28| [Damoetas] So do you want us to try, turn and turn about, what each of us can do? I stake this heifer — in case you refuse, she comes to the milking pail twice a day and feeds two calves at her udder. You tell me what stake you'll match me with.
32| [Menalcas] I wouldn't dare stake anything from the flock against you. I have a father at home, and an unfair stepmother, and they both count the flock twice a day, and one of them counts the kids. But since you're so keen to make a fool of yourself, I'll stake something you yourself will admit is worth much more: beechwood cups, the carved work of the divine Alcimedon. On them a pliant vine, added with a deft lathe, clothes clusters of berries spread out with pale ivy. In the middle are two figures, Conon and — who was the other, who marked out the whole world for the nations with his rod, and the seasons the reaper should keep and the stooping ploughman? I have not yet put my lips to them, but keep them stored away.
44| [Damoetas] The same Alcimedon made two cups for me too; he wrapped soft acanthus round the handles and set Orpheus in the middle with the woods following him. I have not yet put my lips to them, but keep them stored away. If you look at the heifer, there is nothing to praise in cups.
49| [Menalcas] You'll never get away today; I'll come wherever you call me. Only let someone hear us — look, here comes Palaemon. I'll make sure that after this you don't challenge anyone to sing.
52| [Damoetas] Come on, then, if you have anything; there will be no delay on my part, and I don't run from anyone. Only, neighbor Palaemon, take this to heart — it is no small matter.
55| [Palaemon] Sing, then, since we are sitting on the soft grass. Now every field, now every tree is in bud; now the woods are in leaf, now the year is at its loveliest. Begin, Damoetas; then you follow, Menalcas. You will sing in turns: the Muses love alternation.
60| [Damoetas] From Jupiter is the Muse's beginning; all things are full of Jupiter; he cares for the earth; my songs are his concern.
62| [Menalcas] And Phoebus loves me; I always have Phoebus' own gifts by me, laurels and the sweetly blushing hyacinth.
64| [Damoetas] Galatea, a playful girl, pelts me with an apple, and runs off to the willows — but wants to be seen first.
66| [Menalcas] But my flame, Amyntas, offers himself to me unasked, so that now even Delia is no better known to my dogs.
68| [Damoetas] I have found gifts for my love; for I have marked the place myself where the airy wood pigeons have built their nest.
70| [Menalcas] I have sent my boy what I could, ten golden apples picked from a tree in the woods; tomorrow I will send ten more.
72| [Damoetas] Oh, how often, and what things, Galatea has said to me! Winds, carry some part of them to the ears of the gods.
74| [Menalcas] What good is it, Amyntas, that you do not scorn me in your heart, if you hunt the boars while I keep watch over the nets?
76| [Damoetas] Send me Phyllis; it is my birthday, Iollas. When I sacrifice a heifer for the crops, come yourself.
78| [Menalcas] I love Phyllis above all others; for she wept when I left, and said a long "Goodbye, goodbye, handsome," Iollas.
80| [Damoetas] The wolf is a grim thing to the folds, rain to ripe crops, wind to trees, and to me the anger of Amaryllis.
82| [Menalcas] Moisture is sweet to the sown fields, the arbutus to weaned kids, the pliant willow to the pregnant flock, and to me Amyntas alone.
84| [Damoetas] Pollio loves my Muse, rustic though she is: Pierian Muses, fatten a heifer for your reader.
86| [Menalcas] Pollio himself makes new songs too: fatten a bull, one that already butts with his horn and scatters the sand with his hooves.
88| [Damoetas] Whoever loves you, Pollio, let him come where he is glad you too have come; let honey flow for him, and the rough bramble bear spice.
90| [Menalcas] Whoever does not hate Bavius, let him love your songs, Maevius, and let the same man yoke foxes and milk he-goats.
92| [Damoetas] You who gather flowers and strawberries springing from the ground, run away from here, boys: a cold snake is lurking in the grass.
94| [Menalcas] Don't go too far, sheep: it is not good to trust the bank; even the ram himself is still drying his fleece.
96| [Damoetas] Tityrus, drive the grazing goats back from the river; when it is time, I will wash them all in the spring myself.
98| [Menalcas] Round up the sheep, boys: if the heat dries up their milk, as it did recently, we will squeeze the udders with our hands in vain.
100| [Damoetas] Alas, alas, how thin my bull is in the rich vetch! The same love is ruin to the herd and to the herd's master.
102| [Menalcas] These of mine — and love is surely not the cause — barely hold together at the bones; some evil eye or other is bewitching my tender lambs.
104| [Damoetas] Tell me in what land — and you will be great Apollo to me — the space of the sky is no more than three ells wide.
106| [Menalcas] Tell me in what land flowers grow inscribed with the names of kings — and have Phyllis to yourself.
108| [Palaemon] It is not for me to settle so great a contest between you: you deserve the heifer, and so does he, and so does anyone who will fear the sweetness of love or taste its bitterness. Close the channels now, boys: the meadows have drunk enough.

======== Eclogues — Eclogue IV ========

1| Sicilian Muses, let us sing of somewhat greater things. Orchards and low tamarisks do not please everyone; if we sing of woods, let the woods be worthy of a consul.
4| The last age of the Cumaean song has come now; the great sequence of the ages is born anew. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation is sent down from high heaven. Only look kindly, chaste Lucina, on the boy at his birth, under whom the race of iron will first come to an end and a race of gold will rise up throughout the world: your own Apollo now reigns.
11| And it is in your consulship, yours, Pollio, that this glory of the age will begin, and the great months will start their march. Under your leadership any traces of our crime that remain will be made void and free the earth from its unending fear. He will receive the life of the gods, and will see heroes mingled with gods, and will himself be seen among them, and will rule a world made peaceful by his father's virtues.
18| But for you, boy, the earth, untilled, will pour out its first little gifts: ivy straying everywhere with foxglove, and Egyptian beans mingled with smiling acanthus. Unbidden, the goats will bring home udders swollen with milk, and the herds will not fear great lions. Your very cradle will pour out caressing flowers for you. The snake will die, and the treacherous poisonous plant will die; Assyrian spice will spring up everywhere.
26| And as soon as you can read of the glories of heroes and your father's deeds, and learn what courage is, the plain will slowly turn golden with soft ears of grain, the reddening grape will hang from untended brambles, and hard oaks will sweat dewy honey.
31| Still, a few traces of the old wickedness will lurk beneath, to bid men tempt Thetis with ships, ring towns with walls, and cut furrows in the earth. There will be a second Tiphys then, and a second Argo to carry chosen heroes; there will be second wars too, and great Achilles will be sent to Troy again.
37| Then, when the strength of the years has made you a man, even the merchant will give up the sea, and no ship of pine will trade its wares; every land will bear everything. The soil will not endure the hoe, nor the vineyard the pruning hook; the sturdy ploughman too will now free his bulls from the yoke. Wool will not learn to counterfeit varied colors; the ram himself in the meadows will change his fleece, now to sweetly blushing purple, now to saffron yellow; scarlet will clothe the grazing lambs of its own accord.
46| "Run on, such ages," the Fates said to their spindles, in harmony with the fixed will of destiny.
48| Enter on your great honors — the time will soon be here — dear offspring of the gods, great increase of Jupiter! See the world nodding with its vaulted mass, the lands and the expanses of sea and the depths of the sky; see how everything rejoices in the age to come!
53| O may the last part of a long life remain to me then, and breath enough to tell of your deeds: neither Thracian Orpheus nor Linus would beat me in song, though his mother stood by the one and his father by the other — Calliope by Orpheus, handsome Apollo by Linus. Even Pan, if he competed with me with Arcadia as judge, even Pan would declare himself beaten, with Arcadia as judge.
60| Begin, little boy, to know your mother with a smile: ten months have brought your mother long discomfort. Begin, little boy. Those who have not smiled at a parent — no god has honored such a one with his table, no goddess with her bed.

======== Eclogues — Eclogue V ========

1| [Menalcas] Mopsus, since we have met, both of us skilled — you at blowing on light reeds, I at singing verses — why don't we sit down here among the elms mixed with hazels?
4| [Mopsus] You are the elder; it is right for me to obey you, Menalcas, whether we go under the shifting shade as the west winds stir it, or rather into the cave. Look how the wild vine has spread its scattered clusters over the cave.
8| [Menalcas] In our hills only Amyntas competes with you.
9| [Mopsus] What if he were to compete in outsinging Phoebus too?
10| [Menalcas] Begin first, Mopsus, if you have any songs of the flames of Phyllis, or praises of Alcon, or quarrels with Codrus. Begin; Tityrus will watch the grazing kids.
13| [Mopsus] No, I will try these verses I wrote down the other day on the green bark of a beech, setting them to music and marking them in turn: then you can tell Amyntas to compete.
16| [Menalcas] As far as the pliant willow yields to the pale olive, as far as the lowly valerian yields to the crimson rose beds, so far, in my judgment, does Amyntas yield to you. But say no more, boy: we have come into the cave.
20| [Mopsus] The Nymphs were weeping for Daphnis, cut off by a cruel death — you hazels and rivers are witnesses for the Nymphs — when his mother, clasping her son's pitiful body, called the gods and the stars cruel. In those days, Daphnis, no one drove the pastured cattle to the cool rivers; no four-footed beast drank from the stream or touched a blade of grass. Daphnis, the wild mountains and woods tell how even the lions of Carthage groaned at your death. Daphnis taught men to yoke Armenian tigers to the chariot; Daphnis taught them to lead the dancing bands of Bacchus and to twine pliant wands with soft leaves. As the vine is the glory of the trees, as grapes are of the vines, bulls of the herds, crops of the rich fields, you were the whole glory of your people. Since the Fates took you, Pales herself and Apollo himself have left the fields. In the furrows where we often sowed big barley, miserable darnel and barren wild oats spring up; in place of the soft violet, in place of the purple narcissus, the thistle grows and the thorn with its sharp spikes. Strew the ground with leaves, shepherds, draw shade over the springs — Daphnis bids that this be done for him — and build a tomb, and on the tomb add this verse: "I am Daphnis, known in the woods from here to the stars; lovely was the flock I guarded, lovelier I myself."
45| [Menalcas] Your song is to me, divine poet, what sleep on the grass is to the weary, what quenching thirst in the heat from a leaping stream of sweet water is. You match your master not only on the reed but with your voice; fortunate boy, you will now be second only to him. Still, I will sing you these verses of mine in my turn, as best I can, and I will raise your Daphnis to the stars; I will carry Daphnis to the stars: Daphnis loved me too.
53| [Mopsus] Could any gift be greater to me than that? The boy himself deserved to be sung, and Stimichon praised those songs of yours to me long ago.
56| [Menalcas] Radiant Daphnis marvels at the unfamiliar threshold of Olympus and sees the clouds and stars beneath his feet. So a lively delight fills the woods and the rest of the countryside, and Pan, and the shepherds, and the Dryad girls. The wolf plots no ambush against the flock, and no nets plot deception for the deer: kind Daphnis loves peace. The unshorn mountains themselves fling their joyful voices to the stars; the very rocks, the very orchards now ring with the song: "A god, he is a god, Menalcas!" Be kind and gracious to your own! Look, here are four altars: two for you, Daphnis, two high altars for Phoebus. Every year I will set up for you two cups foaming with fresh milk and two bowls of rich olive oil; and above all, cheering the feast with plenty of wine, in front of the hearth if it is cold, in the shade if it is harvest time, I will pour from goblets Ariusian wine, a new nectar. Damoetas and Lyctian Aegon will sing for me; Alphesiboeus will imitate the dancing Satyrs. These rites will always be yours, both when we pay our solemn vows to the Nymphs and when we purify the fields. As long as the boar loves the mountain ridges and the fish the rivers, as long as bees feed on thyme and cicadas on dew, your honor, your name and your praises will always remain. As to Bacchus and Ceres, so to you the farmers will make vows every year; you too will hold them bound to their vows.
81| [Mopsus] What gifts, what gifts can I give you in return for such a song? For neither the whistling of the rising south wind delights me so much, nor shores beaten by the waves, nor rivers running down between rocky valleys.
85| [Menalcas] First I will give you this fragile hemlock pipe: this taught me "Corydon burned for handsome Alexis"; this same one taught me "Whose flock is this? Meliboeus'?"
88| [Mopsus] And you, Menalcas, take this crook, handsome with its even knots and its bronze, which Antigenes did not get, though he often asked me for it — and he was worth loving then.

======== Eclogues — Eclogue VI ========

1| My Thalia was the first to deign to play in Syracusan verse, and she did not blush to live in the woods. When I was singing of kings and battles, the Cynthian god tweaked my ear and warned me: "A shepherd, Tityrus, should feed fat sheep and sing a finely spun song." Now I — for you will have plenty of others, Varus, eager to sing your praises and to set down grim wars — will practice the country Muse on a slender reed. I do not sing unbidden. Yet if anyone, anyone captivated by love, reads these verses too, it is you, Varus, that my tamarisks will sing of, you that every grove will sing; and no page is dearer to Phoebus than the one that bears the name of Varus at its head. Go on, Pierian Muses. The boys Chromis and Mnasyllos saw Silenus lying asleep in a cave, his veins swollen, as always, with yesterday's wine; the garland lay some way off, merely slipped from his head, and his heavy tankard hung by its well-worn handle. Attacking him — for the old man had often cheated them both of the hope of a song — they cast on him fetters made from the garlands themselves. Aegle joins them as an ally and comes up to the timid boys;
21| Aegle, loveliest of the Naiads, and, as he opens his eyes, she paints his forehead and temples with blood-red mulberries. Laughing at the trick, he says: "Why are you tying these fetters? Untie me, boys: it is enough to have shown you could. Hear the songs you want: songs for you, and for her there will be another kind of reward." And at once he begins. Then indeed you could see Fauns and wild beasts dancing in rhythm, and stiff oaks nodding their tops. Not so much does the rock of Parnassus rejoice in Phoebus, not so much do Rhodope and Ismarus marvel at Orpheus. For he sang how through the vast void the seeds of earth and air and sea, and of liquid fire too, had been brought together; how from these first beginnings all things, and the young globe of the world itself, grew solid; how then the ground began to harden, to shut off Nereus in the sea, and little by little to take on the forms of things; how the earth is amazed at the new sun shining, and the rain falls from higher up as the clouds are lifted; when the woods first begin to rise, and when a few animals wander over the mountains that do not know them.
41| Next he tells of the stones Pyrrha threw, the reign of Saturn, the birds of the Caucasus, and the theft of Prometheus. To these he adds the spring at which the sailors had left Hylas and called for him, so that the whole shore rang "Hylas, Hylas!"; and he consoles Pasiphae with her love for a snow-white bullock — happy she would have been, if herds had never existed. Ah, unhappy girl, what madness has seized you! The daughters of Proetus filled the fields with false lowing; yet not one of them pursued so shameful a union with cattle, though each had feared the plough on her neck and often felt for horns on her smooth forehead. Ah, unhappy girl, now you wander in the mountains: he, resting his snow-white flank on soft hyacinth, chews pale grass under a dark holm oak, or follows some cow in the great herd. "Close, Nymphs, Dictaean Nymphs, close now the glades of the woods, in case by chance the straying tracks of the bull should come before my eyes: perhaps some cows will lead him to the stalls of Gortyn, caught by green grass or following the herd."
61| Then he sings of the girl who marveled at the apples of the Hesperides; then he wraps the sisters of Phaethon in the moss of bitter bark and raises them from the ground as tall alders. Then he sings how one of the sisters led Gallus, as he wandered by the streams of Permessus, to the Aonian mountains, and how the whole choir of Phoebus rose for the man; how Linus the shepherd, his hair crowned with flowers and bitter parsley, said to him in divine song: "The Muses give you these reeds — here, take them — which they once gave the old man of Ascra, with which he used to draw the stiff ash trees down from the mountains by his singing. With these let the origin of the Grynean grove be told by you, so that there may be no grove in which Apollo takes more pride." Why should I tell how he sang of Scylla, daughter of Nisus, of whom the story goes that, her white loins girded with barking monsters, she harried the ships of Ulysses and in the deep whirlpool, ah, tore the terrified sailors with her sea dogs; or how he told of the transformed limbs of Tereus, what feast, what gifts Philomela prepared for him, with what flight she sought the wilderness, and with what wings the unhappy one first fluttered over her own roof? All the songs that happy Eurotas once heard as Phoebus practiced them, and bade its laurels learn by heart, he sings — the valleys, struck by the sound, echo them to the stars — until the Evening Star bade them pen the sheep in their folds and count their number, and moved on across an unwilling sky.

======== Eclogues — Eclogue VII ========

1| [Meliboeus] Daphnis, as it happened, had sat down under a rustling holm oak, and Corydon and Thyrsis had driven their flocks together, Thyrsis his sheep, Corydon his goats heavy with milk, both in the flower of their youth, Arcadians both, equal in singing and ready to answer back. Here, while I was protecting my tender myrtles from the cold, the husband of my flock, the he-goat himself, had strayed; and I catch sight of Daphnis. When he sees me opposite, he says: "Quick, come here, Meliboeus; your he-goat is safe, and the kids too,, and if you can spare some leisure, rest in the shade. The bullocks will come here across the meadows of their own accord to drink; here the Mincius fringes its green banks with tender reeds, and swarms hum from the sacred oak." What was I to do? I had no Alcippe or Phyllis to shut up the weaned lambs at home, and there was a great contest, Corydon against Thyrsis. Still, I put my business second to their game. So both began to compete in alternating verses; the Muses wanted to remember alternating verses. Corydon sang these, Thyrsis those, in turn.
21| [Corydon] Nymphs of Libethra, my love, either grant me a song like the one you gave my Codrus — he makes verses next to Phoebus' — or, if we cannot all do it, here on the sacred pine my tuneful pipe will hang.
25| [Thyrsis] Shepherds of Arcadia, crown your rising poet with ivy, so that Codrus may burst his sides with envy; or, if he praises me beyond what is welcome, wreathe my brow with foxglove, so that no evil tongue may harm the poet to be.
29| [Corydon] This head of a bristly boar, Delia, little Micon gives you, and the branching antlers of a long-lived stag. If this luck holds, you will stand full length in smooth marble, your calves bound with crimson boots.
33| [Thyrsis] A bowl of milk and these cakes, Priapus, are enough for you to expect every year: you guard a poor man's garden. For now we have made you of marble, as times allow; but if the lambing fills up my flock, be made of gold.
37| [Corydon] Galatea, daughter of Nereus, sweeter to me than the thyme of Hybla, whiter than swans, lovelier than pale ivy, as soon as the bulls come back from pasture to their stalls, if you care at all for your Corydon, come to me.
41| [Thyrsis] No, let me seem to you more bitter than Sardinian herbs, more bristly than butcher's broom, cheaper than seaweed thrown up on the shore, if this day is not already longer to me than a whole year. Go home, bullocks, you have grazed enough; go, if you have any shame.
45| [Corydon] Mossy springs, and grass softer than sleep, and green arbutus that covers you with its thin shade, keep the midsummer heat from my flock: already scorching summer is coming, already the buds are swelling on the pliant vine.
49| [Thyrsis] Here is a hearth and resinous pine torches, here a great fire always, and doorposts black with constant soot; here we care as much for the cold of the north wind as the wolf cares for the number of the sheep, or rushing rivers for their banks.
53| [Corydon] The junipers and the bristly chestnuts are standing; their fruits lie strewn everywhere, each under its tree; everything smiles now. But if lovely Alexis left these hills, you would see even the rivers dry.
57| [Thyrsis] The field is parched; the grass is dying, thirsting in the sickly air; Liber has grudged the hills the shade of their vine leaves. When my Phyllis comes, every grove will grow green, and Jupiter will come down in abundance in glad rain.
61| [Corydon] The poplar is dearest to Hercules, the vine to Bacchus, the myrtle to lovely Venus, his own laurel to Phoebus; Phyllis loves the hazels: as long as Phyllis loves them, neither myrtle nor Phoebus' laurel will outdo the hazels.
65| [Thyrsis] The ash is loveliest in the woods, the pine in gardens, the poplar by rivers, the fir on high mountains; but if you visit me more often, lovely Lycidas, the ash in the woods will yield to you, and the pine in the gardens.
69| [Meliboeus] This I remember, and how Thyrsis, beaten, competed in vain. Ever since that day it has been Corydon, Corydon for us.

======== Eclogues — Eclogue VIII ========

1| The Muse of the shepherds Damon and Alphesiboeus, at whose contest the heifer marveled, forgetting her grass, at whose song the lynxes stood stunned, and the rivers changed and stopped their courses — the Muse of Damon and Alphesiboeus I will sing. You, whether you are already passing the rocks of the great Timavus or skirting the coast of the Illyrian sea — will that day ever come when I may tell of your deeds? Will it ever come that I may carry through the whole world your songs, the only ones worthy of Sophocles' buskin? From you is my beginning; in you I will end. Accept these songs, begun at your command, and let this ivy creep around your temples among the victor's laurels. The cold shadow of night had barely left the sky, at the hour when the dew on the tender grass is sweetest to the flock, when Damon, leaning on his smooth olive staff, began: "Rise, Morning Star, and, coming before it, bring on the kindly day, while I, deceived by an unworthy love for my bride Nysa, lament, and though I have gained nothing by calling the gods to witness, still, dying, I speak to them in my last hour.
21| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
22| Maenalus always has a rustling grove and talking pines; it always hears the loves of shepherds, and Pan, who first would not let reeds lie idle.
25| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
26| Nysa is given to Mopsus: what may we lovers not expect? Griffins will now be mated with mares, and in the age to come timid does will come with dogs to drink.
29| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
30| Mopsus, cut new torches: a wife is being brought home for you. Scatter nuts, bridegroom: for you the Evening Star is leaving Oeta.
31| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
32| You are joined to a worthy husband, you who look down on everyone, who hate my pipe, my goats, my shaggy eyebrows and long beard, and do not believe that any god cares about the affairs of mortals!
36| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
37| I saw you, a little girl, in our orchard, picking dewy apples with your mother — I was your guide. I had just reached the year after my eleventh; I could just touch the brittle branches from the ground. When I saw you, how I was lost, how a fatal madness carried me away!
42| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
43| Now I know what Love is: Tmaros or Rhodope or the furthest Garamantes bear him on hard crags, a child neither of our race nor of our blood.
46| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
47| Savage Love taught a mother to stain her hands with her children's blood; you too were cruel, mother. Was the mother more cruel, or that boy more wicked? That boy was wicked; you too were cruel, mother.
51| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
52| Now let the wolf even run away from the sheep of his own accord; let hard oaks bear golden apples, let the alder bloom with narcissus, let tamarisks sweat rich amber from their bark; let owls compete with swans, let Tityrus be an Orpheus, an Orpheus in the woods, an Arion among the dolphins.
57| Begin with me, my pipe, the songs of Maenalus.
58| Let everything even become the open sea. Farewell, woods: I will throw myself headlong from the lookout of the high mountain into the waves; take this as the last gift of a dying man.
61| Stop, my pipe, stop now the songs of Maenalus."
62| So Damon sang. You, Pierian Muses, tell how Alphesiboeus answered: we cannot all do everything. "Bring out water, wreathe these altars with a soft ribbon, and burn rich vervain and male frankincense, so that I may try to turn my husband's sane mind with magic rites: nothing is missing here but the spells.
68| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
69| Spells can even draw the moon down from the sky; with spells Circe transformed the companions of Ulysses; by chanting, the cold snake in the meadows is burst apart.
72| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
73| First I wind around you these three threads, each of three different colors, and three times I lead your image around these altars: the god delights in an odd number.
76| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
77| Tie the three colors, Amaryllis, in three knots; just tie them, Amaryllis, and say: 'I tie the bonds of Venus.'
79| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
80| As this clay hardens and as this wax melts in one and the same fire, so may Daphnis by my love. Sprinkle the meal and set the brittle laurels ablaze with pitch. Cruel Daphnis burns me; I burn this laurel against Daphnis.
84| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
85| May such love take hold of Daphnis as when a heifer, weary from searching for a bullock through the woods and the high groves, sinks down, lost, in the green sedge by a stream of water, and does not remember to make way for the late night — may such love hold him, and let me have no care to cure it. Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
91| These clothes that faithless man once left me, dear pledges of himself; now I entrust them to you, earth, on the very threshold: these pledges owe me Daphnis.
94| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
95| These herbs and these poisons, gathered in Pontus, Moeris himself gave me — they grow in great numbers in Pontus. With these I have often seen Moeris turn into a wolf and hide in the woods, often call up spirits from the depths of their tombs, and move sown crops to another field.
100| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
101| Carry the ashes outside, Amaryllis, and throw them over your head into the running stream, and do not look back. With these I will attack Daphnis; he cares nothing for gods, nothing for spells.
104| Bring Daphnis home from the city, my spells, bring Daphnis home.
105| Look: while I delay in carrying it out, the ash itself has caught the altar in flickering flames of its own accord. May it be a good sign! There is certainly something — and Hylax is barking on the threshold. Do we believe it? Or do lovers make up their own dreams?
109| Stop, spells, stop now: Daphnis is coming from the city."

======== Eclogues — Eclogue IX ========

1| [Lycidas] Where are your feet taking you, Moeris? Into town, where the road leads?
2| [Moeris] Lycidas, we have lived to see this — something we never feared — a stranger, the owner of our little farm, saying: "This is mine; move out, you old tenants." Now, beaten and sad, since chance turns everything upside down, we are sending him these kids — and may it bring him no luck!
7| [Lycidas] But surely I had heard that, from where the hills begin to slope away and let down their ridge in a gentle incline, all the way to the water and the old beeches, their tops now broken, your Menalcas had saved everything with his songs.
11| [Moeris] You had heard, and that was the story; but our songs, Lycidas, have as much power among the weapons of Mars as they say the doves of Chaonia have when the eagle comes. Indeed, if a crow on the left had not warned me from a hollow holm oak to cut short the new quarrel any way I could, neither your Moeris nor Menalcas himself would be alive.
17| [Lycidas] Alas! Can anyone be guilty of so great a crime? Alas, Menalcas, were we almost robbed, along with you, of the comfort you give us? Who would sing of the Nymphs? Who would strew the ground with flowering plants, or cover the springs with green shade? Or sing the songs I quietly picked up from you the other day, when you were on your way to Amaryllis, our darling? "Tityrus, till I come back — the way is short — graze my goats; and when they have grazed, drive them to drink, Tityrus, and while you drive them, watch out for meeting the billy goat — he butts."
26| [Moeris] Or rather these lines, still unfinished, that he was singing to Varus: "Varus, if only Mantua is left to us — Mantua, alas, too near unhappy Cremona — singing swans will carry your name aloft to the stars."
30| [Lycidas] So may your swarms avoid the yews of Corsica, so may your cows, fed on clover, fill their udders: begin, if you have anything. The Pierian Muses have made me a poet too; I too have songs; the shepherds call me a bard as well, but I do not believe them; for I do not think I yet sing anything worthy of Varius or Cinna, but cackle like a goose among tuneful swans.
37| [Moeris] That is just what I am doing, Lycidas, turning it over quietly in my mind, in case I can remember it; and it is no mean song: "Come here, Galatea: what fun is there in the waves? Here is radiant spring; here, around the streams, the earth pours out flowers of every color; here a white poplar leans over the cave, and pliant vines weave shady bowers. Come here; let the mad waves beat the shore."
44| [Lycidas] What about the song I had heard you singing alone on a clear night? I remember the tune, if only I could hold the words: "Daphnis, why do you watch the risings of the old constellations? Look, the star of Caesar, descendant of Dione, has come out, the star by which the fields would rejoice in their grain, and the grape would deepen its color on the sunny hills. Graft your pears, Daphnis: your grandchildren will pick their fruit."
51| [Moeris] Time takes everything away, even the mind; as a boy, I remember, I often laid long summer days to rest with singing. Now I have forgotten so many songs; even his voice itself is leaving Moeris now: the wolves saw Moeris first. But Menalcas will often repeat those songs to you well enough.
56| [Lycidas] With your excuses you put off what I long for. And now, look, the whole sea lies smooth and silent for you, and every breath of the murmuring wind has died down. From here, in fact, we are halfway: the tomb of Bianor is beginning to come into sight. Here, where the farmers are stripping the thick leaves, here, Moeris, let us sing; put down your kids here; we will still reach the town. Or, if we are afraid that night may bring rain first, we can go on singing all the way — the road is less tiring that way. So that we can go on singing, I will take this load off you.
66| [Moeris] Say no more, boy, and let us do what is in front of us now. We will sing our songs better when he himself has come.

======== Eclogues — Eclogue X ========

1| Grant me this last task, Arethusa: I must sing a few songs for my Gallus, but songs Lycoris herself may read. Who would deny Gallus songs? So, when you glide beneath the Sicilian waves, may bitter Doris not mix her water with yours. Begin: let us tell of the troubled loves of Gallus, while the snub-nosed goats nibble the tender shrubs. We do not sing to the deaf: the woods answer everything. What groves, what glades held you, Naiad girls, when Gallus was dying of an unworthy love? For neither the ridges of Parnassus nor any of Pindus held you back, nor Aonian Aganippe. Even the laurels wept for him, even the tamarisks; pine-covered Maenalus and the rocks of cold Lycaeus wept for him as he lay beneath a lonely cliff. The sheep stand around him too — they are not ashamed of us, and you, divine poet, should not be ashamed of the flock: lovely Adonis too grazed sheep by the rivers. The shepherd came too; the slow swineherds came; Menalcas came, wet from gathering winter acorns.
21| All ask: "Where does this love of yours come from?" Apollo came: "Gallus, why this madness?" he said. "Your darling Lycoris has gone after another man through the snows and the rough camps." Silvanus came too, his head crowned with rustic honors, shaking flowering fennel stalks and tall lilies. Pan came, god of Arcadia, whom we ourselves saw, red with blood-red elderberries and vermilion. "Will there be no end?" he said. "Love does not care about such things: cruel Love is never sated with tears, nor grass with streams, nor bees with clover, nor goats with leaves." But Gallus, in sorrow, said: "Still, Arcadians, you will sing of this to your mountains, you Arcadians, the only ones skilled in song. Oh, how softly my bones would rest then, if one day your pipe were to tell of my love! And if only I had been one of you, a keeper of your flock or a vine-dresser of your ripe grapes! Surely, whether it were Phyllis or Amyntas or whoever my passion was — and what if Amyntas is dark? Violets are dark, and hyacinths are dark — they would lie with me among the willows under the pliant vine:
41| Phyllis would pick garlands for me, Amyntas would sing. Here are cool springs, Lycoris, here soft meadows, here woodland; here, with you, I would be worn away by the years themselves. But now mad love keeps me under the arms of harsh Mars, in the midst of weapons and facing the enemy. You, far from home — if only I did not have to believe it — you look, alone, without me, ah, hard-hearted one, at the Alpine snows and the frosts of the Rhine. Ah, may the frosts not hurt you! Ah, may the sharp ice not cut your tender feet! I will go and play on the Sicilian shepherd's pipe the songs I composed in Chalcidian verse. My mind is made up: I would rather suffer in the woods among the dens of wild beasts and carve my love on young trees: they will grow, and you, my loves, will grow with them. Meanwhile I will roam Maenalus with the Nymphs, or hunt fierce boars; no frosts will stop me ringing the glades of Parthenius with hounds. Already I seem to be going over rocks and through echoing groves; I long to shoot Cretan arrows from a Parthian bow — as if this could cure my madness, or that god could learn to soften at the sufferings of men!
62| Now neither the Hamadryads nor even songs please me any more; once more, woods, go away. No efforts of ours can change him, not if we were to drink the Hebrus in the middle of the frosts and endure the Sithonian snows of rainy winter, not if, when the bark is dying and drying on the tall elm, we drove the sheep of the Ethiopians under the star of the Crab. Love conquers all: let us too give way to Love." This will be enough, goddesses, for your poet to have sung while he sits and weaves a little basket of slender mallow, Pierian Muses: you will make it of the highest worth for Gallus, Gallus, for whom my love increases hour by hour as much as the green alder shoots up in early spring. Let us get up: the shade is often harmful to singers, the juniper's shade is harmful; shade hurts the crops too. Go home, you have had your fill, the Evening Star is coming, go home, my goats.