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