Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
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.
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