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