The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 15
by John Dryden · English · Gutenberg #47641 · 718,131 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 15
Author: John Dryden
Editor: Walter Scott
Release date: December 12, 2014 [eBook #47641]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN, NOW FIRST COLLECTED IN EIGHTEEN VOLUMES. VOLUME 15 ***
THE
WORKS
OF
JOHN DRYDEN,
NOW FIRST COLLECTED
_IN EIGHTEEN VOLUMES_.
ILLUSTRATED
WITH NOTES,
HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND EXPLANATORY,
AND
A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,
BY
WALTER SCOTT, ESQ.
VOL. XV.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR WILLIAM MILLER, ALBEMARLE STREET,
BY JAMES BALLANTYNE AND CO. EDINBURGH.
1808.
CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME FIFTEENTH.
PAGE.
Æneis, Book VIII 1
Notes on Book VIII 29
Book IX 30
Notes on Book IX 62
Book X 64
Notes on Book X 102
Book XI 105
Book XII 143
Notes on Book XII 182
Postscript to the Reader, 187
POEMS ASCRIBED TO DRYDEN.
An Essay upon Satire, 201
A familiar Epistle to Mr Julian, 218
The Art of Poetry, 227
Tarquin and Tullia, 267
On the young Statesmen, 273
Suum cuique, 276
DRYDEN'S ORIGINAL PROSE WORKS.
Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 283
Dedication to the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, 286
Heads of an Answer to Mr Rymer's Remarks on
the Tragedies of the last Age, 383
Preface to Notes and Observations on the Empress
of Morocco, 397
Preface to the Husband his own Cuckold, 414
ÆNEÏS,
BOOK VIII.
ARGUMENT.
_The war being now begun, both the generals make all possible
preparations. Turnus sends to Diomedes. Æneas goes in person to
beg succours from Evander and the Tuscans. Evander receives him
kindly, furnishes him with men, and sends his son Pallas with him.
Vulcan, at the request of Venus, makes arms for her son Æneas, and
draws on his shield the most memorable actions of his posterity._
When Turnus had assembled all his powers,
His standard planted on Laurentum's towers,
When now the sprightly trumpet, from afar,
Had given the signal of approaching war,
Had roused the neighing steeds to scour the fields,
While the fierce riders clattered on their shields,
Trembling with rage, the Latian youth prepare
To join the allies, and headlong rush to war.
Fierce Ufens, and Messapus, led the crowd,
With bold Mezentius, who blasphemed aloud.
These through the country took their wasteful course,
The fields to forage, and to gather force.
Then Venulus to Diomede they send,
To beg his aid Ausonia to defend,
Declare the common danger, and inform
The Grecian leader of the growing storm:
"Æneas, landed on the Latian coast,
With banished gods, and with a baffled host,
Yet now aspired to conquest of the state,
And claimed a title from the gods and fate;
What numerous nations in his quarrel came,
And how they spread his formidable name.
What he designed, what mischiefs might arise,
If fortune favoured his first enterprize,
Was left for him to weigh, whose equal fears,
And common interest, was involved in theirs."
While Turnus and the allies thus urge the war, }
The Trojan, floating in a flood of care, }
Beholds the tempest which his foes prepare. }
This way, and that, he turns his anxious mind;
Thinks and rejects the counsels he designed;
Explores himself in vain, in every part,
And gives no rest to his distracted heart.
So, when the sun by day, or moon by night,
Strike on the polished brass their trembling light,[1]
The glittering species here and there divide,
And cast their dubious beams from side to side;
Now on the walls, now on the pavement play,
And to the cieling flash the glaring day.
'Twas night; and weary nature lulled asleep
The birds of air, and fishes of the deep,
And beasts, and mortal men. The Trojan chief }
Was laid on Tyber's banks, oppressed with grief, }
And found, in silent slumber, late relief. }
Then, through the shadows of the poplar wood,
Arose the father of the Roman flood;
An azure robe was o'er his body spread,
A wreath of shady reeds adorned his head:
Thus, manifest to sight, the god appeared,
And with these pleasing words his sorrow cheered:--
"Undoubted offspring of etherial race,
O long expected in this promised place!
Who, through the foes, hast borne thy banished gods,
Restored them to their hearths, and old abodes--
This is thy happy home, the clime where fate
Ordains thee to restore the Trojan state.
Fear not! The war shall end in lasting peace,
And all the rage of haughty Juno cease.
And that this nightly vision may not seem
The effect of fancy, or an idle dream,
A sow beneath an oak shall lie along,
All white herself, and white her thirty young.
When thirty rolling years have run their race,
Thy son Ascanius, on this empty space,
Shall build a royal town, of lasting fame,
Which from this omen shall receive the name.
Time shall approve the truth.--For what remains,
And how with sure success to crown thy pains,
With patience next attend. A banished band,
Driven with Evander from the Arcadian land,
Have planted here, and placed on high their walls;
Their town the founder Pallanteum calls,
Derived from Pallas, his great grandsire's name:
But the fierce Latians old possession claim,
With war infesting the new colony.
These make thy friends, and on their aid rely.
To thy free passage I submit my streams.
Wake, son of Venus, from thy pleasing dreams;
And, when the setting stars are lost in day,
To Juno's power thy just devotion pay;
With sacrifice the wrathful queen appease:
Her pride at length shall fall, her fury cease.
When thou return'st victorious from the war,
Perform thy vows to me with grateful care.
The god am I, whose yellow water flows
Around these fields, and fattens as it goes:
Tyber my name--among the rolling floods,
Renowned on earth, esteemed among the gods.
This is my certain seat. In times to come,
My waves shall wash the walls of mighty Rome."
He said; and plunged below. While yet he spoke,
His dream Æneas and his sleep forsook.
He rose, and, looking up, beheld the skies
With purple blushing, and the day arise.
Then water in his hollow palm he took
From Tyber's flood, and thus the powers bespoke:--
"Laurentian nymphs, by whom the streams are fed,
And father Tyber, in thy sacred bed
Receive Æneas, and from danger keep.
Whatever fount, whatever holy deep,
Conceals thy watery stores--where'er they rise,
And, bubbling from below, salute the skies--
Thou, king of horned floods, whose plenteous urn
Suffices fatness to the fruitful corn,
For this thy kind compassion of our woes,
Shalt share my morning song, and evening vows.
But, oh! be present to thy people's aid,
And firm the gracious promise thou hast made."
Thus having said, two galleys, from his stores,
With care he chuses, mans, and fits with oars.
Now on the shore the fatal swine is found--
Wonderous to tell!--She lay along the ground:
Her well-fed offspring at her udders hung;
She white herself, and white her thirty young.
Æneas takes the mother and her brood,
And all on Juno's altar are bestowed.[2]
The following night, and the succeeding day,
Propitious Tyber smoothed his watery way:
He rolled his river back, and poised he stood,
A gentle swelling, and a peaceful flood.
The Trojans mount their ships; they put from shore,
Borne on the waves, and scarcely dip an oar.
Shouts from the land give omen to their course,
And the pitched vessels glide with easy force.
The woods and waters wonder at the gleam
Of shields, and painted ships that stem the stream.
One summer's night and one whole day they pass
Betwixt the greenwood shades, and cut the liquid glass.
The fiery sun had finished half his race,
Looked back, and doubted in the middle space,
When they from far beheld the rising towers,
The tops of sheds, and shepherds' lowly bowers,
Thin as they stood, which, then of homely clay,
Now rise in marble, from the Roman sway.
These cots (Evander's kingdom, mean and poor)
The Trojan saw, and turned his ships to shore.
'Twas on a solemn day: the Arcadian states,
The king and prince, without the city gates,
Then paid their offerings in a sacred grove
To Hercules, the warrior son of Jove.
Thick clouds of rolling smoke involve the skies,
And fat of entrails on his altar fries.
But, when they saw the ships that stemmed the flood,
And glittered through the covert of the wood,
They rose with fear, and left the unfinished feast,
Till dauntless Pallas re-assured the rest
To pay the rites. Himself without delay
A javelin seized, and singly took his way,
Then gained a rising ground, and called from far:-- }
"Resolve me, strangers, whence, and what you are; }
Your business here; and bring you peace or war?" }
High on the stern Æneas took his stand,
And held a branch of olive in his hand,
While thus he spoke:--"The Phrygians' arms you see,
Expelled from Troy, provoked in Italy
By Latian foes, with war unjustly made--
At first affianced, and at last betrayed.
This message bear:--The Trojans and their chief
Bring holy peace, and beg the king's relief."
Struck with so great a name, and all on fire,
The youth replies:--"Whatever you require,
Your fame exacts. Upon our shores descend,
A welcome guest, and, what you wish, a friend."
He said, and, downward hasting to the strand,
Embraced the stranger prince, and joined his hand.
Conducted to the grove, Æneas broke
The silence first, and thus the king bespoke:--
"Best of the Greeks! to whom, by fate's command,
I bear these peaceful branches in my hand--
Undaunted I approach you, though I know
Your birth is Grecian, and your land my foe;
From Atreus though your ancient lineage came,
And both the brother kings your kindred claim;
Yet, my self-conscious worth, your high renown,
Your virtue, through the neighbouring nations blown,
Our fathers' mingled blood, Apollo's voice,
Have led me hither, less by need than choice.
Our father Dardanus, as fame has sung,
And Greeks acknowledge, from Electra sprung:
Electra from the loins of Atlas came--
Atlas, whose head sustains the starry frame.
Your sire is Mercury, whom long before
On cold Cyllene's top fair Maia bore.
Maia the fair, on fame if we rely,
Was Atlas daughter, who sustains the sky.
Thus from one common source our streams divide;
Ours is the Trojan, yours the Arcadian side.
Raised by these hopes, I sent no news before, }
Nor asked your leave, nor did your faith implore; }
But come, without a pledge, my own ambassador. }
The same Rutulians, who with arms pursue
The Trojan race, are equal foes to you.
Our host expelled, what farther force can stay
The victor troops from universal sway?
Then will they stretch their power athwart the land,
And either sea from side to side command.
Receive our offered faith, and give us thine;
Ours is a generous and experienced line:
We want not hearts nor bodies for the war;
In council cautious, and in fields we dare."
He said; and, while he spoke, with piercing eyes
Evander viewed the man with vast surprise--
Pleased with his action, ravished with his face;
Then answered briefly, with a royal grace:--
"O valiant leader of the Trojan line,
In whom the features of thy father shine!
How I recall Anchises! how I see
His motions, mien, and all my friend, in thee!
Long though it be, 'tis fresh within my mind,
When Priam to his sister's court designed
A welcome visit, with a friendly stay,
And through the Arcadian kingdom took his way.
Then, past a boy, the callow down began
To shade my chin, and call me first a man.
I saw the shining train with vast delight,
And Priam's goodly person pleased my sight:
But great Anchises, far above the rest,
With awful wonder fired my youthful breast.
I longed to join, in friendship's holy bands,
Our mutual hearts, and plight our mutual hands.
I first accosted him: I sued, I sought,
And, with a loving force, to Pheneus brought.
He gave me, when at length constrained to go,
A Lycian quiver and a Gnossian bow,
A vest embroidered, glorious to behold, }
And two rich bridles, with their bits of gold, }
Which my son's coursers in obedience hold. }
The league you ask, I offer, as your right;
And, when to-morrow's sun reveals the light,
With swift supplies you shall be sent away. }
Now celebrate, with us, this solemn day, }
Whose holy rites admit no long delay. }
Honour our annual feast; and take your seat,
With friendly welcome, at a homely treat."
Thus having said, the bowls (removed for fear)
The youths replaced, and soon restored the cheer.
On sods of turf he set the soldiers round:
A maple throne, raised higher from the ground,
Received the Trojan chief; and, o'er the bed,
A lion's shaggy hide, for ornament, they spread.
The loaves were served in canisters; the wine }
In bowls; the priest renewed the rites divine: }
Broiled entrails are their food, and beef's continued chine. }
But, when the rage of hunger was repressed,
Thus spoke Evander to his royal guest:--
"These rites, these altars, and this feast, O king,
From no vain fears or superstition spring,
Or blind devotion, or from blinder chance,
Or heady zeal, or brutal ignorance:
But, saved from danger, with a grateful sense,
The labours of a god we recompense.
See, from afar, yon rock that mates the sky,
About whose feet such heaps of rubbish lie;
Such indigested ruin; bleak and bare,
How desert now it stands, exposed in air!
'Twas once a robber's den, inclosed around
With living stone, and deep beneath the ground,
The monster Cacus, more than half a beast,
This hold, impervious to the sun, possessed.
The pavement ever foul with human gore;
Heads, and their mangled members, hung the door.
Vulcan this plague begot; and, like his sire,
Black clouds he belched, and flakes of livid fire.
Time, long expected, eased us of our load,
And brought the needful presence of a god.
The avenging force of Hercules, from Spain, }
Arrived in triumph, from Geryon slain:-- }
Thrice lived the giant, and thrice lived in vain. }
His prize, the lowing herds, Alcides drove
Near Tyber's banks, to graze the shady grove.
Allured with hope of plunder, and intent
By force to rob, by fraud to circumvent,
The brutal Cacus, as by chance they strayed,
Four oxen thence, and four fair kine, conveyed.
And, lest the printed footsteps might be seen,
He dragged them backwards to his rocky den.
The tracks averse a lying notice gave,
And led the searcher backward from the cave.
Meantime the herdsman hero shifts his place,
To find fresh pasture and untrodden grass.
The beasts, who missed their mates, filled all around
With bellowings, and the rocks restored the sound.
One heifer, who had heard her love complain,
Roared from the cave, and made the project vain.
Alcides found the fraud; with rage he shook,
And tossed about his head his knotted oak.
Swift as the winds, or Scythian arrows' flight,
He clomb, with eager haste, the aërial height.
Then first we saw the monster mend his pace;
Fear in his eyes, and paleness in his face,
Confessed the god's approach. Trembling he springs,
As terror had increased his feet with wings;
Nor stayed for stairs; but down the depth he threw
His body, on his back the door he drew:
(The door, a rib of living rock; with pains
His father hewed it out, and bound with iron chains,)
He broke the heavy links, the mountain closed,
And bars and levers to his foe opposed.
The wretch had hardly made his dungeon fast;
The fierce avenger came with bounding haste;
Surveyed the mouth of the forbidden hold,
And here and there his raging eyes he rolled.
He gnashed his teeth; and thrice he compassed round
With winged speed the circuit of the ground.
Thrice at the cavern's mouth he pulled in vain,
And, panting, thrice desisted from his pain.
A pointed flinty rock, all bare and black,
Grew gibbous from behind the mountain's back;
Owls, ravens, all ill omens of the night,
Here built their nests, and hither winged their flight.
The leaning head hung threatening o'er the flood,
And nodded to the left. The hero stood
Averse, with planted feet, and, from the right,
Tugged at the solid stone with all his might.
Thus heaved, the fixed foundations of the rock
Gave way; heaven echoed at the rattling shock.
Tumbling, it choked the flood: on either side
The banks leap backward, and the streams divide;
The sky shrunk upward with unusual dread,
And trembling Tyber dived beneath his bed.
The court of Cacus stands revealed to sight;
The cavern glares with new-admitted light.
So the pent vapours, with a rumbling sound,
Heave from below, and rend the hollow ground;
A sounding flaw succeeds; and, from on high,
The gods with hate behold[3] the nether sky:
The ghosts repine at violated night,
And curse the invading sun, and sicken at the sight.
The graceless monster, caught in open day,
Inclosed, and in despair to fly away,
Howls horrible from underneath, and fills
His hollow palace with unmanly yells.
The hero stands above, and from afar
Plies him with darts, and stones, and distant war.
He, from his nostrils and huge mouth, expires
Black clouds of smoke, amidst his father's fires,
Gathering, with each repeated blast, the night,
To make uncertain aim, and erring sight.
The wrathful god then plunges from above,
And, where in thickest waves the sparkles drove,
There lights; and wades through fumes, and gropes his way,
Half singed, half stifled, till he grasps his prey.
The monster, spewing fruitless flames, he found; }
He squeezed his throat; he writhed his neck around, }
And in a knot his crippled members bound; }
Then, from their sockets, tore his burning eyes.
Rolled on a heap, the breathless robber lies.
The doors, unbarred, receive the rushing day,
And thorough lights disclose the ravished prey.
The bulls, redeemed, breathe open air agen.
Next, by the feet, they drag him from his den.
The wondering neighbourhood, with glad surprise, }
Beheld his shagged breast, his giant size, }
His mouth that flames no more, and his extinguished eyes. }
From that auspicious day, with rites divine,
We worship at the hero's holy shrine.
Potitius first ordained these annual vows:
As priests, were added the Pinarian house,
Who raised this altar in the sacred shade,
Where honours, ever due, for ever shall be paid.
For these deserts, and this high virtue shown,
Ye warlike youths, your heads with garlands crown:
Fill high the goblets with a sparkling flood,
And with deep draughts invoke our common god."
This said, a double wreath Evander twined,
And poplars black and white his temples bind.
Then brims his ample bowl. With like design
The rest invoke the gods, with sprinkled wine.
Meantime the sun descended from the skies,
And the bright evening-star began to rise.
And now the priests, Potitius at their head,
In skins of beasts involved, the long procession led;
Held high the flaming tapers in their hands,
As custom had prescribed their holy bands;
Then with a second course the tables load,
And with full chargers offer to the god.
The Salii sing, and cense his altars round
With Saban smoke, their heads with poplar bound--
One choir of old, another of the young,
To dance, and bear the burden of the song.
The lay records the labours, and the praise,
And all the immortal acts of Hercules:
First, how the mighty babe, when swathed in bands,
The serpents strangled with his infant hands;
Then, as in years and matchless force he grew,
The Œchalian walls, and Trojan, overthrew.
Besides, a thousand hazards they relate,
Procured by Juno's and Eurystheus' hate.
"Thy hands, unconquered hero, could subdue
The cloud-born Centaurs, and the monster crew:
Nor thy resistless arm the bull withstood,
Nor he, the roaring terror of the wood.
The triple porter of the Stygian seat, }
With lolling tongue, lay fawning at thy feet, }
And, seized with fear, forgot his mangled meat. }
The infernal waters trembled at thy sight;
Thee, god! no face of danger could affright;
Not huge Typhöeus, nor the unnumbered snake,
Increased with hissing heads, in Lerna's lake.
Hail, Jove's undoubted son! an added grace
To heaven and the great author of thy race!
Receive the grateful offerings which we pay,
And smile propitious on thy solemn day!"
In numbers thus they sung: above the rest,
The den and death of Cacus crown the feast.
The woods to hollow vales convey the sound,
The vales to hills, and hills the notes rebound.
The rites performed, the cheerful train retire.
Betwixt young Pallas and his aged sire,
The Trojan passed, the city to survey,
And pleasing talk beguiled the tedious way.
The stranger cast around his curious eyes,
New objects viewing still with new surprise;
With greedy joy inquires of various things,
And acts and monuments of ancient kings.
Then thus the founder of the Roman towers:--
"These woods were first the seat of sylvan powers,
Of Nymphs and Fauns, and savage men, who took
Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn oak.
Nor laws they knew, nor manners, nor the care }
Of labouring oxen, nor the shining share, }
Nor arts of gain, nor what they gained to spare. }
Their exercise the chase; the running flood
Supplied their thirst, the trees supplied their food.
Then Saturn came, who fled the power of Jove,
Robbed of his realms, and banished from above.
The men, dispersed on hills, to towns he brought,
And laws ordained, and civil customs taught,
And Latium called the land where safe he lay
From his unduteous son, and his usurping sway.
With his mild empire, peace and plenty came;
And hence the golden times derived their name.
A more degenerate and discoloured age
Succeeded this, with avarice and rage.
The Ausonians then, and bold Sicanians, came;
And Saturn's empire often changed the name.
Then kings--gigantic Tybris, and the rest--
With arbitrary sway the land oppressed:
For Tyber's flood was Albula before,
Till, from the tyrant's fate, his name it bore.
I last arrived, driven from my native home,
By fortune's power, and fate's resistless doom.
Long tossed on seas, I sought this happy land,
Warned by my mother nymph, and called by heaven's command."
Thus, walking on, he spoke, and shewed the gate,
Since called Carmental by the Roman state;
Where stood an altar, sacred to the name
Of old Carmenta, the prophetic dame,
Who to her son foretold the Ænean race,
Sublime in fame, and Rome's imperial place;--
Then shews the forests, which, in after-times,
Fierce Romulus, for perpetrated crimes,
A sacred refuge made;--with this, the shrine
Where Pan below the rock had rites divine;--
Then tells of Argus' death, his murdered guest,
Whose grave and tomb his innocence attest.
Thence, to the steep Tarpeian rock he leads--
Now roofed with gold, then thatched with homely reeds.
A reverent fear (such superstition reigns
Among the rude) even then possessed the swains.
Some god, they knew--what god, they could not tell--
Did there amidst the sacred horror dwell.
The Arcadians thought him Jove; and said they saw
The mighty Thunderer with majestic awe,
Who shook his shield, and dealt his bolts around,
And scattered tempests on the teeming ground.
Then saw two heaps of ruins, (once they stood
Two stately towns, on either side the flood,)
Saturnia's and Janiculum's remains;
And either place the founder's name retains.
Discoursing thus together, they resort
Where poor Evander kept his country court.
They viewed the ground of Rome's litigious hall;
(Once oxen lowed, where now the lawyers bawl,)
Then, stooping, through the narrow gate they pressed,
When thus the king bespoke his Trojan guest:--
"Mean as it is, this palace, and this door,
Received Alcides, then a conqueror.
Dare to be poor; accept our homely food,
Which feasted him, and emulate a god."
Then underneath a lowly roof he led }
The weary prince, and laid him on a bed; }
The stuffing leaves with hides of bears o'erspread. }
Now night had shed her silver dews around,
And with her sable wings embraced the ground,
When love's fair goddess, anxious for her son,
(New tumults rising, and new wars begun,)
Couched with her husband in his golden bed,
With these alluring words invokes his aid--
And, that her pleasing speech his mind may move,
Inspires each accent with the charms of love:--
"While cruel fate conspired with Grecian powers,
To level with the ground the Trojan towers,
I asked not aid the unhappy to restore,
Nor did the succour of thy skill implore;
Nor urged the labours of my lord in vain,
A sinking empire longer to sustain,
Though much I owed to Priam's house, and more
The danger of Æneas did deplore.
But now, by Jove's command, and fate's decree,
His race is doomed to reign in Italy;
With humble suit I beg thy needful art,
O still propitious power, that rul'st my heart!
A mother kneels a suppliant for her son.
By Thetis and Aurora thou wert won
To forge impenetrable shields, and grace
With fated arms a less illustrious race.
Behold, what haughty nations are combined
Against the reliques of the Phrygian kind,
With fire and sword my people to destroy,
And conquer Venus twice, in conquering Troy."
She said; and strait her arms, of snowy hue,
About her unresolving husband threw.
Her soft embraces soon infuse desire; }
His bones and marrow sudden warmth inspire; }
And all the godhead feels the wonted fire. }
Not half so swift the rattling thunder flies,
Or forky lightnings flash along the skies.
The goddess, proud of her successful wiles,
And conscious of her form, in secret smiles.
Then thus the power, obnoxious to her charms,
Panting, and half dissolving in her arms:--
"Why seek you reasons for a cause so just,
Or your own beauties or my love distrust?
Long since, had you required my helpful hand,
The artificer and art you might command,
To labour arms for Troy: nor Jove, nor Fate,
Confined their empire to so short a date.
And, if you now desire new wars to wage,
My skill I promise, and my pains engage.
Whatever melting metals can conspire,
Or breathing bellows, or the forming fire,
Is freely yours: your anxious fears remove,
And think no task is difficult to love."
Trembling he spoke; and, eager of her charms,
He snatched the willing goddess to his arms;
Till, in her lap infused, he lay possessed
Of full desire, and sunk to pleasing rest.
Now when the night her middle race had rode,
And his first slumber had refreshed the god--
The time when early housewives leave the bed;
When living embers on the hearth they spread,
Supply the lamp, and call the maids to rise;--
With yawning mouths, and with half-opened eyes,
They ply the distaff by the winking light,
And to their daily labour add the night:
Thus frugally they earn their children's bread,
And uncorrupted keep their nuptial bed--
Not less concerned, nor at a later hour,
Rose from his downy couch the forging power.
Sacred to Vulcan's name, an isle there lay,
Betwixt Sicilia's coasts and Lipare,
Raised high on smoking rocks: and, deep below,
In hollow caves the fires of Ætna glow.
The Cyclops here their heavy hammers deal;
Loud strokes, and hissings of tormented steel,
Are heard around; the boiling waters roar,
And smoky flames through fuming tunnels soar.
Hither the father of the fire, by night,
Through the brown air precipitates his flight.
On their eternal anvils here he found
The brethren beating, and the blows go round:
A load of pointless thunder now there lies
Before their hands, to ripen for the skies:
These darts, for angry Jove, they daily cast--
Consumed on mortals with prodigious waste.
Three rays of writhen rain, of fire three more,
Of winged southern winds and cloudy store
As many parts, the dreadful mixture frame;
And fears are added, and avenging flame.
Inferior ministers, for Mars, repair
His broken axle-trees, and blunted war,
And send him forth again with furbished arms,
To wake the lazy war, with trumpets' loud alarms.
The rest refresh the scaly snakes, that fold
The shield of Pallas, and renew their gold.
Full on the crest the Gorgon's head they place,
With eyes that roll in death, and with distorted face.
"My sons!" said Vulcan, "set your tasks aside;
Your strength and master-skill must now be tried.
Arms for a hero forge--arms that require
Your force, your speed, and all your forming fire."
He said. They set their former work aside,
And their new toils with eager haste divide.
A flood of molten silver, brass, and gold,
And deadly steel, in the large furnace rolled;
Of this, their artful hands a shield prepare,
Alone sufficient to sustain the war.
Seven orbs within a spacious round they close:
One stirs the fire, and one the bellows blows.
The hissing steel is in the smithy drowned;
The grot with beaten anvils groans around.
By turns, their arms advance in equal time;
By turns, their hands descend, and hammers chime.
They turn the glowing mass with crooked tongs;
The fiery work proceeds, with rustic songs.
While, at the Lemnian god's command, they urge
Their labours thus, and ply the Æolian forge,
The cheerful morn salutes Evander's eyes,
And songs of chirping birds invite to rise.
He leaves his lowly bed: his buskins meet
Above his ankles; sandals sheath his feet:
He sets his trusty sword upon his side,
And o'er his shoulder throws a panther's hide.
Two menial dogs before their master press'd.
Thus clad, and guarded thus, he seeks his kingly guest.
Mindful of promised aid, he mends his pace,
But meets Æneas in the middle space.
Young Pallas did his father's steps attend,
And true Achates waited on his friend.
They join their hands; a secret seat they chuse;
The Arcadian first their former talk renews:
"Undaunted prince! I never can believe
The Trojan empire lost, while you survive.
Command the assistance of a faithful friend:
But feeble are the succours I can send.
Our narrow kingdom here the Tyber bounds; }
That other side the Latian state surrounds, }
Insults our walls, and wastes our fruitful grounds. }
But mighty nations I prepare to join
Their arms with yours, and aid your just design.
You come, as by your better genius sent,
And Fortune seems to favour your intent.
Not far from hence there stands a hilly town,
Of ancient building, and of high renown,
Torn from the Tuscans by the Lydian race,
Who gave the name of Cære to the place,
Once Agyllina called. It flourished long,
In pride of wealth and warlike people strong,
Till cursed Mezentius, in a fatal hour,
Assumed the crown, with arbitrary power.
What words can paint those execrable times,
The subjects' sufferings, and the tyrant's crimes?
That blood, those murders, O ye gods! replace
On his own head, and on his impious race!
The living and the dead, at his command,
Were coupled, face to face, and hand to hand,
Till, choked with stench, in loathed embraces tied,
The lingering wretches pined away and died.
Thus plunged in ills, and meditating more--
The people's patience, tried, no longer bore
The raging monster; but with arms beset
His house, and vengeance and destruction threat.
They fire his palace: while the flame ascends,
They force his guards, and execute his friends.
He cleaves the crowd, and, favoured by the night,
To Turnus' friendly court directs his flight.
By just revenge the Tuscans set on fire,
With arms, their king to punishment require:
Their numerous troops, now mustered on the strand,
My counsel shall submit to your command.
Their navy swarms upon the coasts; they cry
To hoist their anchors, but the gods deny.
An ancient augur, skilled in future fate,
With these foreboding words restrains their hate:--
"Ye brave in arms, ye Lydian blood, the flower
Of Tuscan youth, and choice of all their power,
Whom just revenge against Mezentius arms,
To seek your tyrant's death by lawful arms!
Know this: no native of our land may lead
This powerful people; seek a foreign head."
Awed with these words, in camps they still abide,
And wait with longing looks their promised guide.
Tarchon, the Tuscan chief, to me has sent
Their crown, and every regal ornament:
The people join their own with his desire;
And all my conduct, as their king, require.
But the chill blood that creeps within my veins,
And age, and listless limbs unfit for pains,
And a soul conscious of its own decay,
Have forced me to refuse imperial sway.
My Pallas were more fit to mount the throne,
And should, but he's a Sabine mother's son,
And half a native: but, in you, combine
A manly vigour, and a foreign line.
Where Fate and smiling Fortune shew the way,
Pursue the ready path to sovereign sway.
The staff of my declining days, my son,
Shall make your good or ill success his own;
In fighting fields, from you shall learn to dare,
And serve the hard apprenticeship of war;
Your matchless courage and your conduct view,
And early shall begin to admire and copy you.
Besides, two hundred horse he shall command--
Though few, a warlike and well-chosen band.
These in my name are listed; and my son
As many more has added in his own."
Scarce had he said; Achates and his guest,
With downcast eyes, their silent grief expressed;
Who, short of succours, and in deep despair,
Shook at the dismal prospect of the war.
But his bright mother, from a breaking cloud,
To cheer her issue, thundered thrice aloud;
Thrice forky lightning flashed along the sky,
And Tyrrhene trumpets thrice were heard on high.
Then, gazing up, repeated peals they hear;
And in a heaven serene, refulgent arms appear:
Reddening the skies, and glittering all around,
The tempered metals clash, and yield a silver sound.
The rest stood trembling: struck with awe divine,
Æneas only, conscious to the sign,
Presaged the event, and joyful viewed, above,
The accomplished promise of the queen of love.
Then, to the Arcadian king:--"This prodigy
(Dismiss your fear) belongs alone to me.
Heaven calls me to the war: the expected sign
Is given of promised aid, and arms divine.
My goddess mother, whose indulgent care
Foresaw the dangers of the growing war,
This omen gave, when bright Vulcanian arms,
Fated from force of steel by Stygian charms,
Suspended, shone on high: she then foreshowed
Approaching fights, and fields to float in blood.
Turnus shall dearly pay for faith forsworn;
And corps, and swords, and shields, on Tyber borne,
Shall choke his flood: now sound the loud alarms;
And, Latian troops, prepare your perjured arms."
He said, and, rising from his homely throne,
The solemn rites of Hercules begun,
And on his altars waked the sleeping fires;
Then cheerful to his household gods retires;
There offers chosen sheep. The Arcadian king
And Trojan youth the same oblations bring.
Next, of his men and ships he makes review;
Draws out the best, and ablest of the crew.
Down with the falling stream the refuse run,
To raise with joyful news his drooping son.
Steeds are prepared to mount the Trojan band,
Who wait their leader to the Tyrrhene land.
A sprightly courser, fairer than the rest,
The king himself presents his royal guest.
A lion's hide his back and limbs infold,
Precious with studded work, and paws of gold.
Fame through the little city spreads aloud
The intended march: amid the fearful crowd,
The matrons beat their breasts, dissolve in tears,
And double their devotion in their fears.
The war at hand appears with more affright,
And rises every moment to the sight.
Then old Evander, with a close embrace,
Strained his departing friend; and tears o'erflow his face.
"Would heaven (said he) my strength and youth recal,
Such as I was beneath Præneste's wall--
Then when I made the foremost foes retire,
And set whole heaps of conquered shields on fire;
When Herilus in single fight I slew,
Whom with three lives Feronia did endue;
And thrice I sent him to the Stygian shore,
Till the last ebbing soul returned no more--
Such if I stood renewed, not these alarms,
Nor death, should rend me from my Pallas' arms;
Nor proud Mezentius thus, unpunished, boast
His rapes and murders on the Tuscan coast.
Ye gods! and mighty Jove! in pity bring
Relief, and hear a father and a king!
If fate and you reserve these eyes, to see
My son returned with peace and victory;
If the loved boy shall bless his father's sight;
If we shall meet again with more delight;
Then draw my life in length; let me sustain,
In hopes of his embrace, the worst of pain.
But, if your hard decrees--which, O! I dread--
Have doomed to death his undeserving head;
This, O! this very moment let me die,
While hopes and fears in equal balance lie;
While, yet possessed of all his youthful charms,
I strain him close within these aged arms--
Before that fatal news my soul shall wound!"
He said, and, swooning, sunk upon the ground.
His servants bore him off, and softly laid
His languished limbs upon his homely bed.
The horsemen march; the gates are opened wide;
Æneas at their head, Achates by his side.
Next these, the Trojan leaders rode along;
Last, follows in the rear the Arcadian throng.
Young Pallas shone conspicuous o'er the rest;
Gilded his arms, embroidered was his vest.
So, from the seas, exerts his radiant head
The star, by whom the lights of heaven are led;
Shakes from his rosy locks the pearly dews,
Dispels the darkness, and the day renews.
The trembling wives the walls and turrets crowd,
And follow, with their eyes, the dusty cloud,
Which winds disperse by fits, and shew from far
The blaze of arms, and shields, and shining war.
The troops, drawn up in beautiful array,
O'er heathy plains pursue the ready way.
Repeated peals of shouts are heard around; }
The neighing coursers answer to the sound, }
And shake with horny hoofs the solid ground. }
A greenwood shade, for long religion known,
Stands by the streams that wash the Tuscan town,
Incompassed round with gloomy hills above,
Which add a holy horror to the grove.
The first inhabitants, of Grecian blood,
That sacred forest to Silvanus vowed,
The guardian of their flocks and fields--and pay
Their due devotions on his annual day.
Not far from hence, along the river's side,
In tents secure, the Tuscan troops abide,
By Tarchon led. Now, from a rising ground,
Æneas cast his wondering eyes around,
And all the Tyrrhene army had in sight,
Stretched on the spacious plain from left to right.
Thither his warlike train the Trojan led,
Refreshed his men, and wearied horses fed.
Meantime the mother goddess, crowned with charms,
Breaks through the clouds, and brings the fated arms.
Within a winding vale she finds her son,
On the cool river's banks, retired alone.
She shews her heavenly form without disguise,
And gives herself to his desiring eyes.
"Behold (she said) performed, in every part,
My promise made, and Vulcan's laboured art.
Now seek, secure, the Latian enemy,
And haughty Turnus to the field defy."
She said: and, having first her son embraced,
The radiant arms beneath an oak she placed.
Proud of the gift, he rolled his greedy sight
Around the work, and gazed with vast delight.
He lifts, he turns, he poises, and admires
The crested helm, that vomits radiant fires:
His hands the fatal sword and corslet hold,
One keen with tempered steel, one stiff with gold:
Both ample, flaming both, and beamy bright;
So shines a cloud, when edged with adverse light.
He shakes the pointed spear, and longs to try
The plaited cuishes on his manly thigh;
But most admires the shield's mysterious mould,
And Roman triumphs rising on the gold:
For there, embossed, the heavenly smith had wrought
(Not in the rolls of future fate untaught)
The wars in order, and the race divine
Of warriors issuing from the Julian line.
The cave of Mars was dressed with mossy greens:
There, by the wolf, were laid the martial twins.
Intrepid on her swelling dugs they hung:
The foster-dam lolled out her fawning tongue:
They sucked secure, while, bending back her head,
She licked their tender limbs, and formed them as they fed.
Not far from thence new Rome appears, with games
Projected for the rape of Sabine dames.
The pit resounds with shrieks; a war succeeds,
For breach of public faith, and unexampled deeds.
Here for revenge the Sabine troops contend;
The Romans there with arms the prey defend.
Wearied with tedious war, at length they cease;
And both the kings and kingdoms plight the peace.
The friendly chiefs before Jove's altar stand,
Both armed, with each a charger in his hand:
A fatted sow for sacrifice is led,
With imprecations on the perjured head.
Near this, the traitor Metius, stretched between
Four fiery steeds, is dragged along the green,
By Tullus' doom: the brambles drink his blood;
And his torn limbs are left, the vulture's food.
There, Porsena to Rome proud Tarquin brings,
And would by force restore the banished kings.
One tyrant for his fellow-tyrant fights:
The Roman youth assert their native rights.
Before the town the Tuscan army lies,
To win by famine, or by fraud surprise.
Their king, half threatening, half disdaining, stood,
While Cocles broke the bridge, and stemmed the flood.
The captive maids there tempt the raging tide,
'Scaped from their chains, with Clœlia for their guide.
High on a rock heroic Manlius stood,
To guard the temple, and the temple's god.
Then Rome was poor; and there you might behold
The palace thatched with straw, now roofed with gold.
The silver goose before the shining gate
There flew, and, by her cackle, saved the state.
She told the Gauls' approach: the approaching Gauls,
Obscure in night, ascend, and seize the walls.
The gold dissembled well their yellow hair,
And golden chains on their white necks they wear.
Gold are their vests; long Alpine spears they wield,
And their left arm sustains a length of shield.
Hard by, the leaping Salian priests advance;
And naked through the streets the mad Luperci dance:
In caps of wool; the targets dropt from heaven.
Here modest matrons, in soft litters driven,
To pay their vows in solemn pomp appear,
And odorous gums in their chaste hands they bear.
Far hence removed, the Stygian seats are seen;
Pains of the damned, and punished Catiline,
Hung on a rock--the traitor; and, around,
The Furies hissing from the nether ground.
Apart from these, the happy souls he draws,
And Cato's holy ghost dispensing laws.
Betwixt the quarters flows a golden sea;
But foaming surges there in silver play.
The dancing dolphins with their tails divide
The glittering waves, and cut the precious tide.
Amid the main, two mighty fleets engage--
Their brazen beaks opposed with equal rage.
Actium surveys the well-disputed prize:
Leucate's watery plain with foamy billows fries.
Young Cæsar, on the stern, in armour bright,
Here leads the Romans and their gods to fight:
His beamy temples shoot their flames afar,
And o'er his head is hung the Julian star.
Agrippa seconds him, with prosperous gales,
And, with propitious gods, his foes assails.
A naval crown, that binds his manly brows,
The happy fortune of the fight foreshows.
Ranged on the line opposed, Antonius brings
Barbarian aids, and troops of eastern kings,
The Arabians near, and Bactrians from afar,
Of tongues discordant, and a mingled war:
And, rich in gaudy robes, amidst the strife,
His ill fate follows him--the Egyptian wife.
Moving they fight: with oars and forky prows,
The froth is gathered, and the water glows.
It seems, as if the Cyclades again
Were rooted up, and jostled in the main;
Or floating mountains floating mountains meet;
Such is the fierce encounter of the fleet.
Fire-balls are thrown, and pointed javelins fly;
The fields of Neptune take a purple dye.
The queen herself, amidst the loud alarms,
With cymbals tossed, her fainting soldiers warms--
Fool as she was! who had not yet divined
Her cruel fate, nor saw the snakes behind.
Her country gods, the monsters of the sky,
Great Neptune, Pallas, and love's queen defy.
The dog Anubis barks, but barks in vain,
Nor longer dares oppose the etherial train.
Mars, in the middle of the shining shield,
Is graved, and strides along the liquid field.
The Diræ sowse from heaven with swift descent:
And Discord, dyed in blood, with garments rent,
Divides the prease: her steps Bellona treads,
And shakes her iron rod above their heads.
This seen, Apollo, from his Actian height,
Pours down his arrows; at whose winged flight
The trembling Indians and Egyptians yield,
And soft Sabæans quit the watery field.
The fatal mistress hoists her silken sails,
And, shrinking from the fight, invokes the gales.
Aghast she looks, and heaves her breast for breath,
Panting, and pale with fear of future death.
The god had figured her, as driven along
By winds and waves, and scudding through the throng.
Just opposite, sad Nilus opens wide
His arms and ample bosom to the tide,
And spreads his mantle o'er the winding coast,
In which he wraps his queen, and hides the flying host.
The victor to the gods his thanks expressed,
And Rome triumphant with his presence blessed.
Three hundred temples in the town he placed;
With spoils and altars every temple graced.
Three shining nights, and three succeeding days, }
The fields resound with shouts, the streets with praise, }
The domes with songs, the theatres with plays. }
All altars flame: before each altar lies,
Drenched in his gore, the destined sacrifice,
Great Cæsar sits sublime upon his throne,
Before Apollo's porch of Parian stone;
Accepts the presents vowed for victory,
And hangs the monumental crowns on high.
Vast crowds of vanquished nations march along,
Various in arms, in habit, and in tongue.
Here, Mulciber assigns the proper place
For Carians, and the ungirt Numidian race;
Then ranks the Tracians in the second row,
With Scythians, expert in the dart and bow.
And here the tamed Euphrates humbly glides,
And there the Rhine submits her swelling tides,
And proud Araxes, whom no bridge could bind. }
The Danes' unconquered offspring march behind; }
And Morini, the last of human kind. }
These figures, on the shield divinely wrought, }
By Vulcan laboured, and by Venus brought, }
With joy and wonder fill the hero's thought. }
Unknown the names, he yet admires the grace,
And bears aloft the fame and fortune of his race.
NOTES
ON
ÆNEÏS, BOOK VIII.
Note I.
_So, when the sun by day, or moon by night,
Strike on the polished brass their trembling light._--P. 2.
This similitude is literally taken from Apollonius Rhodius; and it is
hard to say whether the original or the translation excels. But, in
the shield which he describes afterwards in this Æneïd, he as much
transcends his master Homer, as the arms of Glaucus were richer than
those of Diomedes--Χρυσεα χαλχειων.
Note II.
_Æneas takes the mother and her brood,
And all on Juno's altar are bestowed._--P. 4.
The translation is infinitely short of Virgil, whose words are these:
----_Tibi_ enim, _tibi maxima Juno,
Mactat, sacra ferens, et cum grege sistit ad aram_--
for I could not turn the word _enim_ into English with any grace,
though it was of such necessity in the Roman rites, that a sacrifice
could not be performed without it. It is of the same nature, (if I may
presume to name that sacred mystery,) in our words of consecration at
the altar.
Æ N E Ï S,
BOOK IX.
ARGUMENT.
_Turnus takes advantage of Æneas's absence, fires some of his
ships, (which are transformed into sea-nymphs,) and assaults
his camp. The Trojans, reduced to the last extremities, send
Nisus and Euryalus to recal Æneas; which furnishes the poet with
that admirable episode of their friendship, generosity, and the
conclusion of their adventures._
While these affairs in distant places passed,
The various Iris Juno sends with haste,
To find bold Turnus, who, with anxious thought,
The secret shade of his great grandsire sought.
Retired alone she found the daring man,
And oped her rosy lips, and thus began:--
"What none of all the gods could grant thy vows--
That, Turnus, this auspicious day bestows.
Æneas, gone to seek the Arcadian prince,
Has left the Trojan camp without defence;
And, short of succours there, employs his pains
In parts remote to raise the Tuscan swains.
Now snatch an hour that favours thy designs;
Unite thy forces, and attack their lines."
This said, on equal wings she poised her weight,
And formed a radiant rainbow in her flight.
The Daunian hero lifts his hands and eyes,
And thus invokes the goddess as she flies:--
"Iris, the grace of heaven! what power divine
Has sent thee down, through dusky clouds to shine?
See, they divide: immortal day appears,
And glittering planets dancing in their spheres!
With joy, these happy omens I obey,
And follow, to the war, the god that leads the way."
Thus having said, as by the brook he stood,
He scooped the water from the crystal flood;
Then with his hands the drops to heaven he throws,
And loads the powers above with offered vows.
Now march the bold confederates through the plain,
Well horsed, well clad--a rich and shining train.
Messapus leads the van; and, in the rear,
The sons of Tyrrheus in bright arms appear.
In the main battle, with his flaming crest,
The mighty Turnus towers above the rest,
Silent they move, majestically slow,
Like ebbing Nile, or Ganges in his flow.
The Trojans view the dusty cloud from far,
And the dark menace of the distant war.
Caïcus from the rampire saw it rise,
Blackening the fields, and thickening through the skies.
Then to his fellows thus aloud he calls:--
"What rolling clouds, my friends, approach the walls?
Arm! arm! and man the works! prepare your spears,
And pointed darts! the Latian host appears."
Thus warned, they shut their gates; with shouts ascend
The bulwarks, and, secure, their foes attend:
For their wise general, with foreseeing care,
Had charged them not to tempt the doubtful war,
Nor, though provoked, in opens fields advance,
But close within their lines attend their chance.
Unwilling, yet they keep the strict command,
And sourly wait in arms the hostile band.
The fiery Turnus flew before the rest: }
A piebald steed of Thracian strain he pressed; }
His helm of massy gold; and crimson was his crest. }
With twenty horse to second his designs,
An unexpected foe, he faced the lines.--
"Is there, (he said,) in arms, who bravely dare
His leader's honour and his dangers share?"
Then spurring on, his brandished dart he threw,
In sign of war: applauding shouts ensue.
Amazed to find a dastard race, that run
Behind the rampires, and the battle shun,
He rides around the camp, with rolling eyes,
And stops at every post, and every passage tries.
So roams the nightly wolf about the fold:
Wet with descending showers, and stiff with cold,
He howls for hunger, and he grins for pain,
(His gnashing teeth are exercised in vain,)
And, impotent of anger, finds no way
In his distended paws to grasp the prey.
The mothers listen; but the bleating lambs
Securely swig the dug, beneath the dams.
Thus ranges eager Turnus o'er the plain,
Sharp with desire, and furious with disdain;
Surveys each passage with a piercing sight,
To force his foes in equal field to fight.
Thus while he gazes round, at length he spies,
Where, fenced with strong redoubts, their navy lies.
Close underneath the walls: the washing tide
Secures from all approach this weaker side.
He takes the wished occasion, fills his hand
With ready fires, and shakes a flaming brand.
Urged by his presence, every soul is warmed,
And every hand with kindled fires is armed.
From the fired pines the scattering sparkles fly;
Fat vapours, mixed with flames, involve the sky.
What power, O Muses, could avert the flame,
Which threatened, in the fleet, the Trojan name?
Tell: for the fact, through length of time obscure,
Is hard to faith; yet shall the fame endure.
'Tis said, that, when the chief prepared his flight,
And felled his timber from mount Ida's height,
The Grandame goddess then approached her son,
And with a mother's majesty begun:--
"Grant me (she said) the sole request I bring,
Since conquered heaven has owned you for its king.
On Ida's brows, for ages past, there stood,
With firs and maples filled, a shady wood;
And on the summit rose a sacred grove,
Where I was worshipped with religious love.
These woods, that holy grove, my long delight,
I gave the Trojan prince, to speed his flight.
Now, filled with fear, on their behalf I come;
Let neither winds o'erset, nor waves intomb,
The floating forests of the sacred pine;
But let it be their safety to be mine."
Then thus replied her awful son, who rolls
The radiant stars, and heaven and earth controuls:--
"How dare you, mother, endless date demand
For vessels moulded by a mortal hand?
What then is fate? Shall bold Æneas ride,
Of safety certain, on the uncertain tide?
Yet, what I can, I grant: when, wafted o'er,
The chief is landed on the Latian shore,
Whatever ships escape the raging storms,
At my command shall change their fading forms
To nymphs divine, and plough the watery way,
Like Doto and the daughters of the sea."
To seal his sacred vow, by Styx he swore,
The lake of liquid pitch, the dreary shore,
And Phlegethon's innavigable flood, }
And the black regions of his brother god. }
He said; and shook the skies with his imperial nod. }
And now at length the numbered hours were come,
Prefixed by fate's irrevocable doom,
When the great mother of the gods was free
To save her ships, and finish Jove's decree.
First, from the quarter of the morn, there sprung
A light that signed the heavens, and shot along;
Then from a cloud, fringed round with golden fires,
Were timbrels heard, and Berecynthian choirs;
And, last, a voice, with more than mortal sounds,
Both hosts, in arms opposed, with equal horror wounds:--
"O Trojan race! your needless aid forbear,
And know, my ships are my peculiar care.
With greater ease the bold Rutulian may,
With hissing brands, attempt to burn the sea,
Than singe my sacred pines. But you, my charge,
Loosed from your crooked anchors, launch at large,
Exalted each a nymph: forsake the sand,
And swim the seas, at Cybele's command."
No sooner had the goddess ceased to speak,
When, lo! the obedient ships their halsers break;
And, strange to tell, like dolphins, in the main
They plunge their prows, and dive, and spring again:
As many beauteous maids the billows sweep,
As rode before tall vessels on the deep.
The foes, surprised with wonder, stood aghast;
Messapus curbed his fiery courser's haste:
Old Tyber roared, and, raising up his head,
Called back his waters to their oozy bed.
Turnus alone, undaunted, bore the shock,
And with these words his trembling troops bespoke:--
"These monsters for the Trojans' fate are meant,
And are by Jove for black presages sent.
He takes the cowards' last relief away; }
For fly they cannot, and, constrained to stay, }
Must yield unfought, a base inglorious prey. }
The liquid half of all the globe is lost;
Heaven shuts the seas, and we secure the coast.
Theirs is no more than that small spot of ground,
Which myriads of our martial men surround.
Their feats I fear not, or vain oracles.
'Twas given to Venus they should cross the seas,
And land secure upon the Latian plains:
Their promised hour is passed, and mine remains.
'Tis in the fate of Turnus, to destroy,
With sword and fire, the faithless race of Troy.
Shall such affronts as these, alone, inflame
The Grecian brothers, and the Grecian name?
My cause and theirs is one; a fatal strife,
And final ruin, for a ravished wife.
Was't not enough, that, punished for the crime,
They fell--but will they fall a second time?
One would have thought they paid enough before,
To curse the costly sex, and durst offend no more.
Can they securely trust their feeble wall,
A slight partition, a thin interval,
Betwixt their fate and them; when Troy, though built
By hands divine, yet perished by their guilt?
Lend me, for once, my friends, your valiant hands,
To force from out their lines these dastard bands.
Less than a thousand ships will end this war,
Nor Vulcan needs his fated arms prepare.
Let all the Tuscans, all the Arcadians, join!
Nor these, nor those, shall frustrate my design.
Let them not fear the treasons of the night, }
The robbed Palladium, the pretended flight: }
Our onset shall be made in open light. }
No wooden engine shall their town betray;
Fires they shall have around, but fires by day.
No Grecian babes before their camp appear,
Whom Hector's arms detained to the tenth tardy year.
Now, since the sun is rolling to the west,
Give we the silent night to needful rest:
Refresh your bodies, and your arms prepare;
The morn shall end the small remains of war."
The post of honour to Messapus falls,
To keep the nightly guard, to watch the walls,
To pitch the fires at distances around,
And close the Trojans in their scanty ground.
Twice seven Rutulian captains ready stand,
And twice seven hundred horse these chiefs command;
All clad in shining arms the works invest,
Each with a radiant helm and waving crest.
Stretched at their length, they press the grassy ground;
They laugh, they sing, (the jolly bowls go round,)
With lights and cheerful fires renew the day,
And pass the wakeful night in feasts and play.
The Trojans, from above, their foes beheld,
And with armed legions all the rampires filled.
Seized with affright, their gates they first explore;
Join works to works with bridges, tower to tower:
Thus all things needful for defence abound:
Mnestheus and brave Serestus walk the round,
Commissioned by their absent prince to share
The common danger, and divide the care.
The soldiers draw their lots, and, as they fall,
By turns relieve each other on the wall.
Nigh where the foes their utmost guards advance,
To watch the gate was warlike Nisus' chance.
His father Hyrtacus of noble blood;
His mother was a huntress of the wood,
And sent him to the wars. Well could he bear
His lance in fight, and dart the flying spear,
But better skilled unerring shafts to send.
Beside him stood Euryalus, his friend--
Euryalus, than whom the Trojan host
No fairer face, or sweeter air, could boast.
Scarce had the down to shade his cheeks begun.
One was their care, and their delight was one.
One common hazard in the war they shared,
And now were both by choice upon the guard.
Then Nisus thus:--"Or do the gods inspire
This warmth, or make we gods of our desire?
A generous ardour boils within my breast,
Eager of action, enemy to rest:
This urges me to fight, and fires my mind,
To leave a memorable name behind.
Thou seest the foe secure; how faintly shine
Their scattered fires: the most, in sleep supine
Along the ground, an easy conquest lie:
The wakeful few the fuming flaggon ply:
All hushed around. Now hear what I revolve--
A thought unripe--and scarcely yet resolve.
Our absent prince both camp and council mourn;
By message both would hasten his return:
If they confer what I demand on thee,
(For fame is recompense enough for me,)
Methinks, beneath yon hill, I have espied
A way that safely will my passage guide."
Euryalus stood listening while he spoke;
With love of praise, and noble envy struck;
Then to his ardent friend exposed his mind:-- }
"All this, alone, and leaving me behind! }
Am I unworthy, Nisus, to be joined? }
Think'st thou I can my share of glory yield,
Or send thee unassisted to the field?
Not so my father taught my childhood arms--
Born in a siege, and bred among alarms.
Nor is my youth unworthy of my friend,
Nor of the heaven born hero I attend.
The thing, called life, with ease I can disclaim,
And think it over-sold to purchase fame."
Then Nisus thus:--"Alas! thy tender years
Would minister new matter to my fears.
So may the gods, who view this friendly strife,
Restore me to thy loved embrace with life,
Condemned to pay my vows, (as sure I trust,)
This thy request is cruel and unjust.
But if some chance--as many chances are,
And doubtful hazards, in the deeds of war--
If one should reach my head, there let it fall,
And spare thy life; I would not perish all.
Thy bloomy youth deserves a longer date:
Live thou to mourn thy love's unhappy fate,
To bear my mangled body from the foe,
Or buy it back, and funeral rites bestow.
Or, if hard fortune shall those dues deny,
Thou canst at least an empty tomb supply.
O! let not me the widow's tears renew,
Nor let a mother's curse my name pursue--
Thy pious parent, who, for love of thee,
Forsook the coasts of friendly Sicily,
Her age committing to the seas and wind,
When every weary matron staid behind."
To this, Euryalus:--"You plead in vain,
And but protract the cause you cannot gain.
No more delays! but haste!" With that, he wakes
The nodding watch; each to his office takes.
The guard relieved, the generous couple went
To find the council at the royal tent.
All creatures else forgot their daily care,
And sleep, the common gift of nature, share;
Except the Trojan peers, who wakeful sate
In nightly council for the endangered state.
They vote a message to their absent chief,
Shew their distress, and beg a swift relief.
Amid the camp a silent seat they chose,
Remote from clamour, and secure from foes.
On their left arms their ample shields they bear,
Their right reclined upon the bending spear.
Now Nisus and his friend approach the guard, }
And beg admission, eager to be heard-- }
The affair important, not to be deferred. }
Ascanius bids them be conducted in,
Ordering the more experienced to begin.
Then Nisus thus:--"Ye fathers, lend your ears;
Nor judge our bold attempt beyond our years.
The foe, securely drenched in sleep and wine,
Neglect their watch; the fires but thinly shine;
And, where the smoke in cloudy vapours flies,
Covering the plain, and curling to the skies,
Betwixt two paths, which at the gate divide, }
Close by the sea, a passage we have spied, }
Which will our way to great Æneas guide. }
Expect each hour to see him safe again,
Loaded with spoils of foes in battle slain.
Snatch we the lucky minute while we may;
Nor can we be mistaken in the way;
For, hunting in the vales, we both have seen
The rising turrets, and the stream between,
And know the winding course, with every ford."
He ceased; and old Aletes took the word:--
"Our country gods, in whom our trust we place,
Will yet from ruin save the Trojan race,
While we behold such dauntless worth appear
In dawning youth, and souls so void of fear."
Then into tears of joy the father broke; }
Each in his longing arms by turns he took; }
Panted and paused; and thus again he spoke:-- }
"Ye brave young men, what equal gifts can we,
In recompense of such desert, decree?
The greatest, sure, and best you can receive,
The gods and your own conscious worth will give.
The rest our grateful general will bestow,
And young Ascanius, till his manhood, owe."
"And I, whose welfare in my father lies,"
Ascanius adds, "by the great deities,
By my dear country, by my household gods,
By hoary Vesta's rites and dark abodes,
Adjure you both, (on you my fortune stands;
That and my faith I plight into your hands,)
Make me but happy in his safe return,
Whose wanted presence I can only mourn;
Your common gift shall two large goblets be
Of silver, wrought with curious imagery,
And high embossed, which, when old Priam reigned,
My conquering sire at sacked Arisba gained;
And, more, two tripods cast in antique mould,
With two great talents of the finest gold;
Beside a costly bowl, engraved with art,
Which Dido gave, when first she gave her heart.
But, if in conquered Italy we reign,
When spoils by lot the victor shall obtain--
Thou saw'st the courser by proud Turnus pressed,
That, Nisus! and his arms, and nodding crest,
And shield, from chance exempt, shall be thy share; }
Twelve labouring slaves, twelve handmaids young and fair, }
All clad in rich attire, and trained with care; }
And, last, a Latian field with fruitful plains,
And a large portion of the king's domains.
But thou, whose years are more to mine allied,
No fate my vowed affection shall divide
From thee, heroic youth! Be wholly mine;
Take full possession; all my soul is thine.
One faith, one fame, one fate, shall both attend:
My life's companion, and my bosom friend--
My peace shall be committed to thy care;
And, to thy conduct, my concerns in war."
Then thus the young Euryalus replied:--
"Whatever fortune, good or bad, betide,
The same shall be my age, as now my youth;
No time shall find me wanting to my truth.
This only from your goodness let me gain--
(And, this ungranted, all rewards are vain,)
Of Priam's royal race my mother came--
And sure the best that ever bore the name--
Whom neither Troy nor Sicily could hold
From me departing, but, o'erspent and old,
My fate she followed. Ignorant of this
(Whatever) danger, neither parting kiss,
Nor pious blessing taken, her I leave,
And in this only act of all my life deceive.
By this right hand, and conscious night, I swear,
My soul so sad a farewell could not bear.
Be you her comfort; fill my vacant place;
(Permit me to presume so great a grace;)
Support her age, forsaken and distressed.
That hope alone will fortify my breast
Against the worst of fortunes, and of fears."
He said. The moved assistants melt in tears.
Then thus Ascanius, wonder-struck to see
That image of his filial piety:--
"So great beginnings, in so green an age,
Exact the faith which I again engage.
Thy mother all the dues shall justly claim,
Creüsa had, and only want the name.
Whate'er event thy bold attempt shall have,
'Tis merit to have borne a son so brave.
Now by my head, a sacred oath, I swear,
(My father used it,) what, returning here
Crowned with success, I for thyself prepare,
That, if thou fail, shall thy loved mother share."
He said, and, weeping while he spoke the word,
From his broad belt he drew a shining sword,
Magnificent with gold. Lycaon made,
And in an ivory scabbard sheathed the blade.
This was his gift. Great Mnestheus gave his friend
A lion's hide, his body to defend;
And good Aletes furnished him, beside,
With his own trusty helm, of temper tried.
Thus armed they went. The noble Trojans wait
Their issuing forth, and follow to the gate
With prayers and vows. Above the rest appears
Ascanius, manly far beyond his years,
And messages committed to their care,
Which all in winds were lost, and flitting air.
The trenches first they passed; then took their way
Where their proud foes in pitched pavilions lay;
To many fatal, ere themselves were slain.
They found the careless host dispersed upon the plain,
Who, gorged, and drunk with wine, supinely snore.
Unharnessed chariots stand along the shore:
Amidst the wheels and reins, the goblet by,
A medley of debauch and war, they lie.
Observing Nisus shewed his friend the sight:--
"Behold a conquest gained without a fight.
Occasion offers, and I stand prepared;
There lies our way: be thou upon the guard,
And look around, while I securely go,
And hew a passage through the sleeping foe."
Softly he spoke; then, striding, took his way,
With his drawn sword, where haughty Rhamnes lay;
His head raised high on tapestry beneath,
And heaving from his breast, he drew his breath--
A king and prophet, by king Turnus loved;
But fate by prescience cannot be removed.
Him and his sleeping slaves he slew; then spies
Where Remus, with his rich retinue, lies.
His armour-bearer first, and next he kills
His charioteer, intrenched betwixt the wheels
And his loved horses; last invades their lord;
Full on his neck he drives the fatal sword:
The gasping head flies off; a purple flood
Flows from the trunk, that welters in the blood,
Which, by the spurning heels dispersed around,
The bed besprinkles, and bedews the ground.
Lamus the bold, and Lamyrus the strong,
He slew, and then Sarranus fair and young.
From dice and wine the youth retired to rest,
And puffed the fumy god from out his breast:
Even then he dreamt of drink and lucky play--
More lucky, had it lasted till the day.
The famished lion thus, with hunger bold,
O'erleaps the fences of the nightly fold,
And tears the peaceful flocks: with silent awe
Trembling they lie, and pant beneath his paw.
Nor with less rage Euryalus employs
The wrathful sword, or fewer foes destroys:
But on the ignoble crowd his fury flew;
He Fadus, Hebesus, and Rhoetus slew.
Oppressed with heavy sleep the former fall,
But Rhoetus wakeful, and observing all:
Behind a spacious jar he slinked for fear;
The fatal iron found and reached him there;
For, as he rose, it pierced his naked side,
And, reeking, thence returned in crimson dyed.
The wound pours out a stream of wine and blood;
The purple soul comes floating in the flood.
Now, where Messapus quartered, they arrive.
The fires were fainting there, and just alive:
The warrior-horses, tied in order, fed;
Nisus observed the discipline, and said:--
"Our eager thirst of blood may both betray;
And see the scattered streaks of dawning day,
Foe to nocturnal thefts. No more, my friend;
Here let our glutted execution end.
A lane through slaughtered bodies we have made."
The bold Euryalus, though loth, obeyed.
Of arms, and arras, and of plate, they find
A precious load; but these they leave behind.
Yet, fond of gaudy spoils, the boy would stay }
To make the rich caparison his prey, }
Which on the steed of conquered Rhamnes lay. }
Nor did his eyes less longingly behold
The girdle-belt, with nails of burnished gold.
This present Cædicus the rich bestowed
On Remulus, when friendship first they vowed,
And, absent, joined in hospitable ties:
He, dying, to his heir bequeathed the prize;
Till, by the conquering Ardean troops oppressed,
He fell; and they the glorious gift possessed.
These glittering spoils (now made the victor's gain)
He to his body suits, but suits in vain.
Messapus' helm he finds among the rest,
And laces on, and wears the waving crest.
Proud of their conquest, prouder of their prey,
They leave the camp, and take the ready way.
But far they had not passed, before they spied
Three hundred horse, with Volscens for their guide.
The queen a legion to king Turnus sent; }
But the swift horse the slower foot prevent, }
And now, advancing, sought the leader's tent. }
They saw the pair; for, through the doubtful shade, }
His shining helm Euryalus betrayed, }
On which the moon with full reflexion played. }
"'Tis not for nought," cried Volscens from the crowd,
"These men go there;" then raised his voice aloud:
"Stand! stand! why thus in arms? and whither bent?
From whence, to whom, and on what errand sent?"
Silent they scud away, and haste their flight
To neighbouring woods, and trust themselves to night.
The speedy horse all passages belay,
And spur their smoking steeds to cross their way;
And watch each entrance of the winding wood.
Black was the forest: thick with beech it stood,
Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn;
Few paths of human feet, or tracks of beasts, were worn.
The darkness of the shades, his heavy prey,
And fear, misled the younger from his way.
But Nisus hit the turns with happier haste,
And, thoughtless of his friend, the forest passed,
And Alban plains (from Alba's name so called)
Where king Latinus then his oxen stalled;
Till, turning at the length, he stood his ground,
And missed his friend, and cast his eyes around:--
"Ah wretch!" he cried--"where have I left behind
The unhappy youth? where shall I hope to find?
Or what way take?" Again he ventures back,
And treads the mazes of his former track.
He winds the wood, and, listening, hears the noise
Of trampling coursers, and the riders' voice.
The sound approached; and suddenly he viewed
The foes inclosing, and his friend pursued,
Forelaid and taken, while he strove in vain
The shelter of the friendly shades to gain.
What should he next attempt? what arms employ,
What fruitless force, to free the captive boy?
Or desperate should he rush and lose his life,
With odds oppressed, in such unequal strife?
Resolved at length, his pointed spear he shook;
And, casting on the moon a mournful look,--
"Guardian of groves, and goddess of the night!
Fair queen!" he said, "direct my dart aright.
If e'er my pious father, for my sake,
Did grateful offerings on thy altars make,
Or I increased them with my sylvan toils,
And hung thy holy roofs with savage spoils,
Give me to scatter these." Then from his ear
He poised, and aimed, and launched the trembling spear.
The deadly weapon, hissing from the grove,
Impetuous on the back of Sulmo drove;
Pierced his thin armour, drank his vital blood,
And in his body left the broken wood.
He staggers round; his eyeballs roll in death,
And with short sobs he gasps away his breath.
All stand amazed:--a second javelin flies
With equal strength, and quivers through the skies.
This through thy temples, Tagus, forced the way,
And in the brain-pan warmly buried lay.
Fierce Volscens foams with rage, and, gazing round,
Descried not him who gave the fatal wound,
Nor knew to fix revenge:--"But thou," he cries,
"Shalt pay for both," and at the prisoner flies
With his drawn sword. Then, struck with deep despair,
That cruel sight the lover could not bear;
But from his covert rushed in open view,
And sent his voice before him as he flew:--
"Me! me!" he cried--"turn all your swords alone
On me--the fact confessed, the fault my own.
He neither could nor durst, the guiltless youth--
Ye moon and stars, bear witness to the truth!
His only crime (if friendship can offend)
Is too much love to his unhappy friend."
Too late he speaks:--the sword, which fury guides,
Driven with full force, had pierced his tender sides.
Down fell the beauteous youth: the yawning wound
Gushed out a purple stream, and stained the ground.
His snowy neck reclines upon his breast,
Like a fair flower by the keen share oppressed--
Like a white poppy sinking on the plain,
Whose heavy head is overcharged with rain.
Despair, and rage, and vengeance justly vowed,
Drove Nisus headlong on the hostile crowd.
Volscens he seeks; on him alone he bends:
Borne back and bored by his surrounding friends,
Onward he pressed, and kept him still in sight,
Then whirled aloft his sword with all his might:
The unerring steel descended while he spoke,
Pierced his wide mouth, and through his weazon broke.
Dying, he slew; and, staggering on the plain,
With swimming eyes he sought his lover slain;
Then quiet on his bleeding bosom fell,
Content, in death, to be revenged so well.
O happy friends! for, if my verse can give
Immortal life, your fame shall ever live,
Fixed as the Capitol's foundation lies,
And spread, where'er the Roman eagle flies!
The conquering party first divide the prey,
Then their slain leader to the camp convey.
With wonder, as they went, the troops were filled,
To see such numbers whom so few had killed.
Saranus, Rhamnes, and the rest, they found; }
Vast crowds the dying and the dead surround; }
And the yet reeking blood o'erflows the ground. }
All knew the helmet which Messapus lost,
But mourned a purchase that so dear had cost.
Now rose the ruddy morn from Tithon's bed,
And with the dawn of day the skies o'erspread:
Nor long the sun his daily course with-held,
But added colours to the world revealed:
When early Turnus, wakening with the light,
All clad in armour, calls his troops to fight.
His martial men with fierce harangues he fired,
And his own ardour in their souls inspired.
This done--to give new terror to his foes,
The heads of Nisus and his friend he shows,
Raised high on pointed spears--a ghastly sight!
Loud peals of shouts ensue, and barbarous delight.
Meantime the Trojans run, where danger calls:
They line their trenches, and they man their walls.
In front extended to the left they stood:
Safe was the right, surrounded by the flood.
But, casting from their towers a frightful view,
They saw the faces, which too well they knew,
Though then disguised in death, and smeared all o'er
With filth obscene, and dropping putrid gore.
Soon hasty fame through the sad city bears
The mournful message to the mother's ears.
An icy cold benumbs her limbs; she shakes;
Her cheeks the blood, her hand the web forsakes.
She runs the rampires round amidst the war, }
Nor fears the flying darts: she rends her hair, }
And fills with loud laments the liquid air. }
"Thus, then, my loved Euryalus appears!
Thus looks the prop of my declining years!
Was't on this face my famished eyes I fed?
Ah! how unlike the living is the dead!
And could'st thou leave me, cruel, thus alone?
Not one kind kiss from a departing son!
No look, no last adieu before he went,
In an ill-boding hour to slaughter sent!
Cold on the ground, and pressing foreign clay,
To Latian dogs and fowls he lies a prey!
Nor was I near to close his dying eyes,
To wash his wounds, to weep his obsequies,
To call about his corpse his crying friends,
Or spread the mantle (made for other ends)
On his dear body, which I wove with care,
Nor did my daily pains or nightly labour spare.
Where shall I find his corpse? what earth sustains
His trunk dismembered, and his cold remains?
For this, alas! I left my needful ease,
Exposed my life to winds, and winter seas!
If any pity touch Rutulian hearts,
Here empty all your quivers, all your darts:
Or, if they fail, thou, Jove, conclude my woe,
And send me thunder-struck to shades below!"
Her shrieks and clamours pierce the Trojans' ears,
Unman their courage, and augment their fears:
Nor young Ascanius could the sight sustain,
Nor old Ilioneus his tears restrain,
But Actor and Idæus jointly sent,
To bear the madding mother to her tent.
And now the trumpets terribly, from far,
With rattling clangour, rouse the sleepy war.
The soldiers' shouts succeed the brazen sounds;
And heaven, from pole to pole, the noise rebounds.
The Volscians bear their shields upon their head,
And, rushing forward, form a moving shed.
These fill the ditch; those pull the bulwarks down;
Some raise the ladders; others scale the town.
But, where void spaces on the walls appear,
Or thin defence, they pour their forces there.
With poles and missive weapons, from afar,
The Trojans keep aloof the rising war.
Taught, by their ten years' siege, defensive fight,
They roll down ribs of rocks, an unresisted weight,
To break the penthouse with the ponderous blow,
Which yet the patient Volscians undergo--
But could not bear the unequal combat long;
For, where the Trojans find the thickest throng,
The ruin falls: their shattered shields give way,
And their crushed heads become an easy prey.
They shrink for fear, abated of their rage,
Nor longer dare in a blind fight engage--
Contented now to gall them from below
With darts and slings, and with the distant bow.
Elsewhere Mezentius, terrible to view,
A blazing pine within the trenches threw.
But brave Messapus, Neptune's warlike son, }
Broke down the palisades, the trenches won, }
And loud for ladders calls, to scale the town. }
Calliope, begin! Ye sacred Nine,
Inspire your poet in his high design,
To sing what slaughter manly Turnus made,
What souls he sent below the Stygian shade,
What fame the soldiers with their captain share,
And the vast circuit of the fatal war;
For you, in singing martial facts, excel;
You best remember, and alone can tell.
There stood a tower, amazing to the sight,
Built up of beams, and of stupendous height:
Art, and the nature of the place, conspired
To furnish all the strength that war required.
To level this, the bold Italians join;
The wary Trojans obviate their design;
With weighty stones o'erwhelm their troops below,
Shoot through the loopholes, and sharp javelins throw.
Turnus, the chief, tossed from his thundering hand,
Against the wooden walls, a flaming brand:
It stuck, the fiery plague; the winds were high;
The planks were seasoned, and the timber dry.
Contagion caught the posts; it spread along,
Scorched, and to distance drove, the scattered throng.
The Trojans fled; the fire pursued amain,
Still gathering fast upon the trembling train;
Till, crowding to the corners of the wall,
Down the defence and the defenders fall.
The mighty flaw makes heaven itself resound:
The dead and dying Trojans strew the ground.
The tower, that followed on the fallen crew,
Whelmed o'er their heads, and buried whom it slew:
Some stuck upon the darts themselves had sent;
All the same equal ruin underwent.
Young Lycus and Helenor only 'scape;
Saved--how, they know not--from the steepy leap.
Helenor, elder of the two: by birth,
On one side royal, one a son of earth,
Whom, to the Lydian king, Licymnia bare, }
And sent her boasted bastard to the war: }
(A privilege which none but freemen share.) }
Slight were his arms, a sword and silver shield:
No marks of honour charged its empty field.
Light as he fell, so light the youth arose,
And rising, found himself amidst his foes;
Nor flight was left, nor hopes to force his way.
Emboldened by despair, he stood at bay;
And, like a stag, whom all the troop surrounds
Of eager huntsmen and invading hounds--
Resolved on death, he dissipates his fears,
And bounds aloft against the pointed spears:
So dares the youth, secure of death; and throws
His dying body on his thickest foes.
But Lycus, swifter of his feet by far,
Runs, doubles, winds, and turns, amidst the war;
Springs to the walls, and leaves his foes behind,
And snatches at the beam he first can find;
Looks up, and leaps aloft at all the stretch,
In hopes the helping hand of some kind friend to reach.
But Turnus followed hard his hunted prey,
(His spear had almost reached him in the way,
Short of his reins, and scarce a span behind,)
"Fool!" said the chief, "though fleeter than the wind,
Could'st thou presume to 'scape, when I pursue?"
He said, and downward by the feet he drew
The trembling dastard; at the tug he falls;
Vast ruins come along rent from the smoking walls.
Thus on some silver swan, or timorous hare,
Jove's bird comes sowsing down from upper air;
Her crooked talons truss the fearful prey:
Then out of sight she soars, and wings her way.
So seizes the grim wolf the tender lamb,
In vain lamented by the bleating dam.
Then rushing onward with a barbarous cry,
The troops of Turnus to the combat fly.
The ditch with faggots filled, the daring foe
Tossed firebrands to the steepy turrets throw.
Ilioneus, as bold Lucetius came
To force the gate, and feed the kindling flame,
Rolled down the fragment of a rock so right,
It crushed him double underneath the weight.
Two more young Liger and Asylas slew: }
To bend the bow young Liger better knew; }
Asylas best the pointed javelin threw. }
Brave Cæneus laid Ortygius on the plain;
The victor Cæneus was by Turnus slain.
By the same hand, Clonius and Itys fall,
Sagar, and Idas standing on the wall.
From Capys' arms his fate Privernus found:
Hurt by Temilla first--but slight the wound--
His shield thrown by, to mitigate the smart,
He clapped his hand upon the wounded part:
The second shaft came swift and unespied,
And pierced his hand, and nailed it to his side,
Transfixed his breathing lungs, and beating heart:
The soul came issuing out, and hissed against the dart.
The son of Arcens shone amid the rest,
In glittering armour and a purple vest,
(Fair was his face, his eyes inspiring love,)
Bred by his father in the Martian grove,
Where the fat altars of Palicus flame,
And sent in arms to purchase early fame.
Him when he spied from far, the Tuscan king
Laid by the lance, and took him to the sling,
Thrice whirled the thong around his head, and threw;
The heated lead half melted as it flew:
It pierced his hollow temples and his brain;
The youth came tumbling down, and spurned the plain.
Then young Ascanius, who, before this day,
Was wont in woods to shoot the savage prey,
First bent in martial strife the twanging bow,
And exercised against a human foe--
With this bereft Numanus of his life,
Who Turnus' younger sister took to wife.
Proud of his realm, and of his royal bride, }
Vaunting before his troops, and lengthened with a stride, }
In these insulting terms the Trojans he defied:-- }
"Twice-conquered cowards! now your shame is shown--
Cooped up a second time within your town!
Who dare not issue forth in open field,
But hold your walls before you for a shield.
Thus threat you war? thus our alliance force?
What gods, what madness, hither steered your course?
You shall not find the sons of Atreus here,
Nor need the frauds of sly Ulysses fear.
Strong from the cradle, of a sturdy brood,
We bear our new-born infants to the flood;
There bathed amid the stream, our boys we hold,
With winter hardened, and inured to cold.
They wake before the day to range the wood,
Kill ere they eat, nor taste unconquered food.
No sports, but what belong to war, they know--
To break the stubborn colt, to bend the bow.
Our youth, of labour patient, earn their bread;
Hardly they work, with frugal diet fed.
From ploughs and harrows sent to seek renown,
They fight in fields, and storm the shaken town.
No part of life from toils of war is free,
No change in age, or difference in degree.
We plough and till in arms: our oxen feel,
Instead of goads, the spur and pointed steel:
The inverted lance makes furrows in the plain.
Even time, that changes all, yet changes us in vain--
The body, not the mind--nor can controul
The immortal vigour, or abate the soul.
Our helms defend the young, disguise the grey:
We live by plunder, and delight in prey.
Your vests embroidered with rich purple shine;
In sloth you glory, and in dances join.
Your vests have sweeping sleeves: with female pride,
Your turbans underneath your chins are tied.
Go, Phrygians, to your Dindymus agen!
Go, less than women, in the shapes of men!
Go! mixed with eunuchs in the Mother's rites,
(Where with unequal sound the flute invites,)
Sing, dance, and howl, by turns, in Ida's shade:
Resign the war to men, who know the martial trade."
This foul reproach Ascanius could not hear
With patience, or a vowed revenge forbear.
At the full stretch of both his hands, he drew,
And almost joined, the horns of the tough yew.[4]
But, first, before the throne of Jove he stood,
And thus with lifted hands invoked the god:--
"My first attempt, great Jupiter, succeed!
An annual offering in thy grove shall bleed,
A snow-white steer, before thy altar led,
Who, like his mother, bears aloft his head,
Butts with his threatening brows, and bellowing stands,
And dares the fight, and spurns the yellow sands."
Jove bowed the heavens, and lent a gracious ear,
And thundered on the left, amidst the clear.
Sounded at once the bow; and swiftly flies
The feathered death, and hisses through the skies.
The steel through both his temples forced the way:
Extended on the ground, Numanus lay.
"Go now, vain boaster! and true valour scorn!
The Phrygians, twice subdued, yet make this third return."
Ascanius said no more. The Trojans shake
The heavens with shouting, and new vigour take.
Apollo then bestrode a golden cloud, }
To view the feats of arms, and fighting crowd; }
And thus the beardless victor he bespoke aloud:-- }
"Advance, illustrious youth! increase in fame,
And wide from east to west extend thy name--
Offspring of gods thyself; and Rome shall owe
To thee a race of demigods below.
This is the way to heaven: the powers divine
From this beginning date the Julian line.
To thee, to them, and their victorious heirs,
The conquered war is due, and the vast world is theirs.
Troy is too narrow for thy name." He said,
And plunging downward shot his radiant head;
Dispelled the breathing air, that broke his flight:
Shorn of his beams, a man to mortal sight,
Old Butes' form he took, Anchises' squire,
Now left, to rule Ascanius, by his sire:
His wrinkled visage, and his hoary hairs, }
His mien, his habit, and his arms, he wears, }
And thus salutes the boy, too forward for his years:-- }
"Suffice it thee, thy father's worthy son,
The warlike prize thou hast already won.
The god of archers gives thy youth a part
Of his own praise, nor envies equal art.
Now tempt the war no more." He said, and flew
Obscure in air, and vanished from their view.
The Trojans, by his arms, their patron know,
And hear the twanging of his heavenly bow.
Then duteous force they use, and Phœbus' name,
To keep from fight the youth too fond of fame.
Undaunted, they themselves no danger shun;
From wall to wall, the shouts and clamours run;
They bend their bows; they whirl their slings around; }
Heaps of spent arrows fall, and strew the ground; }
And helms, and shields, and rattling arms, resound. }
The combat thickens, like the storm that flies
From westward, when the showery Kids arise;
Or pattering hail comes pouring on the main,
When Jupiter descends in hardened rain,
Or bellowing clouds burst with a stormy sound,
And with an armed winter strew the ground.
Pand'rus and Bitias, thunder-bolts of war,
Whom Hiera to bold Alcanor bare
On Ida's top--two youths of height and size
Like firs that on their mother mountain rise--
Presuming on their force, the gates unbar,
And of their own accord invite the war,
With fates averse, against their king's command.
Armed, on the right and on the left they stand,
And flank the passage: shining steel they wear,
And waving crests above their heads appear.
Thus two tall oaks, that Padus' banks adorn,
Lift up to heaven their leafy heads unshorn,
And, overpressed with nature's heavy load,
Dance to the whistling winds, and at each other nod.
In flows a tide of Latians, when they see
The gate set open, and the passage free;
Bold Quercens, with rash Tmarus, rushing on,
Aquicolus, that in bright armour shone,
And Hæmon first: but soon repulsed they fly,
Or in the well-defended pass they die.
These with success are fired, and those with rage,
And each on equal terms at length engage.
Drawn from their lines, and issuing on the plain,
The Trojans hand to hand the fight maintain.
Fierce Turnus in another quarter fought,
When suddenly the unhoped-for news was brought,
The foes had left the fastness of their place,
Prevailed in fight, and had his men in chase.
He quits the attack, and, to prevent their fate,
Runs, where the giant brothers guard the gate.
The first he met, Antiphates the brave,
(But base-begotten on a Theban slave--
Sarpedon's son) he slew: the deadly dart
Found passage through his breast, and pierced his heart.
Fixed in the wound the Italian cornel stood,
Warmed in his lungs, and in his vital blood.
Aphidnus next, and Erymanthus dies, }
And Meropes, and the gigantic size }
Of Bitias, threatening with his ardent eyes. }
Not by the feeble dart he fell oppressed,
(A dart were lost within that roomy breast,)
But from a knotted lance, large, heavy, strong,
Which roared like thunder as it whirled along:
Not two bull-hides the impetuous force withhold,
Nor coat of double mail, with scales of gold.
Down sunk the monster-bulk, and pressed the ground,
(His arms and clattering shield on the vast body sound,)
Not with less ruin than the Baian mole,
Raised on the seas, the surges to controul--
At once comes tumbling down the rocky wall;
Prone to the deep, the stones disjointed fall
Of the vast pile; the scattered ocean flies;
Black sands, discoloured froth, and mingled mud, arise:
The frighted billows roll, and seek the shores:
Then trembles Prochyta, then Ischia roars:
Typhöeus, thrown beneath by Jove's command,
Astonished at the flaw that shakes the land,
Soon shifts his weary side, and, scarce awake,
With wonder feels the weight press lighter on his back.
The warrior god the Latian troops inspired,
New strung their sinews, and their courage fired,
But chills the Trojan hearts with cold affright:
Then black despair precipitates their flight.
When Pandarus beheld his brother killed,
The town with fear and wild confusion filled,
He turns the hinges of the heavy gate
With both his hands, and adds his shoulders to the weight;
Some happier friends within the walls inclosed;
The rest shut out, to certain death exposed:
Fool as he was, and frantic in his care,
To admit young Turnus, and include the war!
He thrust amid the crowd, securely bold,
Like a fierce tyger pent amid the fold.
Too late his blazing buckler they descry,
And sparkling fires that shot from either eye,
His mighty members, and his ample breast,
His rattling armour, and his crimson crest.
Far from that hated face the Trojans fly,
All but the fool who sought his destiny.
Mad Pandarus steps forth, with vengeance vowed
For Bitias' death, and threatens thus aloud:--
"These are not Ardea's walls, nor this the town
Amata proffers with Lavinia's crown:
'Tis hostile earth you tread. Of hope bereft,
No means of safe return by flight are left."
To whom, with countenance calm, and soul sedate,
Thus Turnus:--"Then begin, and try thy fate:
My message to the ghost of Priam bear;
Tell him a new Achilles sent thee there."
A lance of tough ground-ash the Trojan threw,
Rough in the rind, and knotted as it grew:
With his full force he whirled it first around;
But the soft yielding air received the wound:
Imperial Juno turned the course before,
And fixed the wandering weapon in the door.
"But hope not thou," said Turnus, "when I strike,
To shun thy fate: our force is not alike,
Nor thy steel tempered by the Lemnian god."
Then rising, on his utmost stretch he stood,
And aimed from high: the full descending blow
Cleaves the broad front and beardless cheeks in two.
Down sinks the giant with a thundering sound: }
His ponderous limbs oppress the trembling ground; }
Blood, brains, and foam, gush from the gaping wound. }
Scalp, face, and shoulders, the keen steel divides;
And the shared visage hangs on equal sides.
The Trojans fly from their approaching fate:
And, had the victor then secured the gate,
And, to his troops without, unclosed the bars,
One lucky day had ended all his wars.
But boiling youth, and blind desire of blood,
Push on his fury, to pursue the crowd.
Hamstringed behind, unhappy Gyges died;
Then Phalaris is added to his side.
The pointed javelins from the dead he drew,
And their friends' arms against their fellows threw.
Strong Halys stands in vain; weak Phegeus flies;
Saturnia, still at hand, new force and fire supplies.
Then Halius, Prytanis, Alcander fall--
Engaged against the foes who scaled the wall:
But, whom they feared without, they found within.
At last, though late, by Lynceus he was seen.
He calls new succours, and assaults the prince:
But weak his force, and vain is their defence.
Turned to the right, his sword the hero drew,
And at one blow the bold aggressor slew.
He joints the neck; and, with a stroke so strong,
The helm flies off, and bears the head along.
Next him, the huntsman Amycus he killed,
In darts envenomed and in poison skilled.
Then Clytius fell beneath his fatal spear,
And Cretheus, whom the Muses held so dear:
He fought with courage, and he sung the fight;
Arms were his business, verses his delight.
The Trojan chiefs behold, with rage and grief,
Their slaughtered friends, and hasten their relief.
Bold Mnestheus rallies first the broken train,
Whom brave Serestus and his troop sustain.
To save the living, and revenge the dead,
Against one warrior's arms all Troy they led.
"O, void of sense and courage!" Mnestheus cried,
"Where can you hope your coward heads to hide?
Ah! where beyond these rampires can you run?
One man, and in your camp inclosed, you shun!
Shall then a single sword such slaughter boast,
And pass unpunished from a numerous host?
Forsaking honour, and renouncing fame,
Your gods, your country, and your king, you shame!"
This just reproach their virtue does excite:
They stand, they join, they thicken to the fight.
Now Turnus doubts, and yet disdains to yield,
But with slow paces measures back the field,
And inches to the walls, where Tyber's tide,
Washing the camp, defends the weaker side.
The more he loses, they advance the more,
And tread in every step he trod before.
They shout; they bear him back; and, whom by might
They cannot conquer, they oppress with weight.
As, compassed with a wood of spears around,
The lordly lion still maintains his ground;
Grins horrible, retires, and turns again;
Threats his distended paws, and shakes his mane;
He loses while in vain he presses on,
Nor will his courage let him dare to run:
So Turnus fares, and, unresolved of flight,
Moves tardy back, and just recedes from fight.
Yet twice, enraged, the combat he renews,
Twice breaks, and twice his broken foes pursues.
But now they swarm, and, with fresh troops supplied,
Come rolling on, and rush from every side:
Nor Juno, who sustained his arms before,
Dares with new strength suffice the exhausted store;
For Jove, with sour commands, sent Iris down,
To force the invader from the frighted town.
With labour spent, no longer can he wield
The heavy faulchion, or sustain the shield,
O'erwhelmed with darts, which from afar they fling:
The weapons round his hollow temples ring:
His golden helm gives way, with stony blows
Battered, and flat, and beaten to his brows.
His crest is rashed away; his ample shield
Is falsified, and round with javelins filled.[5]
The foe, now faint, the Trojans overwhelm;
And Mnestheus lays hard load upon his helm.
Sick sweat succeeds; he drops at every pore;
With driving dust his cheeks are pasted o'er;
Shorter and shorter every gasp he takes;
And vain efforts and hurtless blows he makes.
Armed as he was, at length he leaped from high,
Plunged in the flood, and made the waters fly.
The yellow god the welcome burden bore,
And wiped the sweat, and washed away the gore;
Then gently wafts him to the farther coast,
And sends him safe to cheer his anxious host.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Note I.]
[Footnote 2: Note II.]
[Footnote 3: Early editions, _beheld_.]
[Footnote 4: Note I.]
[Footnote 5: Note II.]
NOTES
ON
ÆNEÏS, BOOK IX.
Note I.
_At the full stretch of both his hands, he drew,
And almost joined, the horns of the tough yew._--P. 54.
The first of these lines is all of monosyllables, and both verses are
very rough, but of choice; for it had been easy for me to have smoothed
them. But either my ear deceives me, or they express the thing which I
intended in their sound: for the stress of a bow, which is drawn to the
full extent, is expressed in the harshness of the first verse, clogged
not only with monosyllables, but with consonants; and these words, _the
tough yew_, which conclude the second line, seem as forceful, as they
are unharmonious. Homer and Virgil are both frequent in their adapting
sounds to the thing they signify. One example will serve for both;
because Virgil borrowed the following verses from Homer's Odysses.
_Una Eurusque Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis
Africus, et vastos volvunt ad litora fluctus._
Συν δ' Ευροστε, Νοτοςτ' επεσεν.
Ζεφυροστε δυσαης,
Και Βορεης αιθρηγενετης,
μεγα κυμα κυλινδων.
Our language is not often capable of these beauties, though sometimes I
have copied them, of which these verses are an instance.
Note II.
---- ---- ---- ---- _His ample shield_
_Is falsified, and round with javelins filled._--P. 61.
When I read this Æneïd to many of my friends in company together, most
of them quarrelled at the word _falsified_, as an innovation in our
language. The fact is confessed; for I remember not to have read it in
any English author, though perhaps it may be found in Spenser's "Fairy
Queen;" but, suppose it be not there, why am I forbidden to borrow
from the Italian (a polished language) the word which is wanting in my
native tongue? Terence has often Grecised; Lucretius has followed his
example, and pleaded for it--
_Sic quia me cogit patrii sermonis egestus._
Virgil has confirmed it by his frequent practice; and even Cicero in
prose, wanting terms of philosophy in the Latin tongue, has taken them
from Aristotle's Greek. Horace has given us a rule for coining words,
_si Græco fonte cadant_; especially, when other words are joined with
them, which explain the sense. I use the word _falsify_ in this place,
to mean, that the shield of Turnus was not of proof against the spears
and javelins of the Trojans, which had pierced it through and through
(as we say) in many places. The words which accompany this new one,
make my meaning plain, according to the precept which Horace gave. But
I said I borrowed the word from the Italian. _Vide_ Ariosto, Cant. 26.
_Ma sì l'usbergo d'ambi era perfetto,
Che mai poter falsarlo in nessun canto._
_Falsar_ cannot otherwise be turned, than by _falsified_; for _his
shield was falsed_, is not English. I might indeed have contented
myself with saying, his shield was pierced, and bored, and stuck with
javelins, _nec sufficit umbo ictibus_. They, who will not admit a new
word, may take the old; the matter is not worth dispute.
ÆNEÏS,
BOOK X.
ARGUMENT.
_Jupiter, calling a council of the gods, forbids them to engage
in either party. At Æneas's return there is a bloody battle:
Turnus killing Pallas; Æneas, Lausus and Mezentius. Mezentius is
described as an atheist; Lausus as a pious and virtuous youth.
The different actions and death of these two are the subject of a
noble episode._
The gates of heaven unfold: Jove summons all
The gods to council in the common hall.
Sublimely seated, he surveys from far
The fields, the camp, the fortune of the war,
And all the inferior world. From first to last,
The sovereign senate in degrees are placed.
Then thus the almighty sire began:--"Ye gods,
Natives or denizens of blest abodes!
From whence these murmurs, and this change of mind,
This backward fate from what was first designed?
Why thus protracted war, when my commands
Pronounced a peace, and gave the Latian lands?
What fear or hope on either part divides
Our heavens, and arms our powers on different sides?
A lawful time of war at length will come,
(Nor need your haste anticipate the doom,)
When Carthage shall contend the world with Rome;
Shall force the rigid rocks and Alpine chains,
And, like a flood, come pouring on the plains.
Then is your time for faction and debate,
For partial favour, and permitted hate.
Let now your immature dissention cease;
Sit quiet, and compose your souls to peace."
Thus Jupiter in few unfolds the charge;
But lovely Venus thus replies at large:--
"O power immense! eternal energy!
(For to what else protection can we fly?)
Seest thou the proud Rutulians, how they dare
In fields, unpunished, and insult my care?
How lofty Turnus vaunts amidst his train,
In shining arms triumphant on the plain?
Even in their lines and trenches they contend,
And scarce their walls the Trojan troops defend:
The town is filled with slaughter, and o'erfloats,
With a red deluge, their increasing moats.
Æneas, ignorant, and far from thence,
Has left a camp exposed, without defence.
This endless outrage shall they still sustain?
Shall Troy renewed be forced and fired again?
A second siege my banished issue fears,
And a new Diomede in arms appears.
One more audacious mortal will be found;
And I, thy daughter, wait another wound.
Yet, if, with fates averse, without thy leave,
The Latian lands my progeny receive,
Bear they the pains of violated law,
And thy protection from their aid withdraw.
But, if the gods their sure success foretell--
If those of heaven consent with those of hell,
To promise Italy; who dare debate
The power of Jove, or fix another fate?
What should I tell of tempests on the main,
Of Æolus usurping Neptune's reign?
Of Iris sent, with Bacchanalian heat
To inspire the matrons, and destroy the fleet?
Now Juno to the Stygian sky descends,
Solicits hell for aid, and arms the fiends.
That new example wanted yet above--
An act that well became the wife of Jove!
Alecto, raised by her, with rage inflames
The peaceful bosoms of the Latian dames.
Imperial sway no more exalts my mind;
(Such hopes I had indeed, while heaven was kind,)
Now let my happier foes possess my place, }
Whom Jove prefers before the Trojan race; }
And conquer they, whom you with conquest grace. }
Since you can spare, from all your wide command,
No spot of earth, no hospitable land,
Which may my wandering fugitives receive;
(Since haughty Juno will not give you leave,)
Then, father, (if I still may use that name,)
By ruined Troy, yet smoking from the flame,
I beg you, let Ascanius, by my care,
Be freed from danger, and dismissed the war:
Inglorious let him live, without a crown: }
The father may be cast on coasts unknown, }
Struggling with fate; but let me save the son. }
Mine is Cythera, mine the Cyprian towers:
In those recesses, and those sacred bowers,
Obscurely let him rest; his right resign
To promised empire, and his Julian line.
Then Carthage may the Ausonian towns destroy,
Nor fear the race of a rejected boy.
What profits it my son, to 'scape the fire,
Armed with his gods, and loaded with his sire;
To pass the perils of the seas and wind;
Evade the Greeks, and leave the war behind;
To reach the Italian shores; if, after all,
Our second Pergamus is doomed to fall?
Much better had he curbed his high desires,
And hovered o'er his ill-extinguished fires.
To Simoïs' banks the fugitives restore,
And give them back to war, and all the woes before."
Deep indignation swelled Saturnia's heart:
"And must I own," she said, "my secret smart--
What with more decence were in silence kept,
And, but for this unjust reproach, had slept?
Did god or man your favourite son advise,
With war unhoped the Latians to surprise?
By fate, you boast, and by the gods' decree,
He left his native land for Italy!
Confess the truth; by mad Cassandra, more
Than heaven, inspired, he sought a foreign shore.
Did I persuade to trust his second Troy
To the raw conduct of a beardless boy,
With walls unfinished, which himself forsakes,
And through the waves a wandering voyage takes?
When have I urged him meanly to demand
The Tuscan aid, and arm a quiet land?
Did I or Iris give this mad advice?
Or made the fool himself the fatal choice?
You think it hard, the Latians should destroy
With swords your Trojans, and with fires your Troy!
Hard and unjust indeed, for men to draw
Their native air, nor take a foreign law!
That Turnus is permitted still to live,
To whom his birth a god and goddess give!
But yet 'tis just and lawful for your line
To drive their fields, and force with fraud to join;
Realms, not your own, among your clans divide,
And from the bridegroom tear the promised bride;
Petition, while you public arms prepare;
Pretend a peace, and yet provoke a war!
'Twas given to you, your darling son to shroud, }
To draw the dastard from the fighting crowd, }
And, for a man, obtend an empty cloud. }
From flaming fleets you turned the fire away,
And changed the ships to daughters of the sea.
But 'tis my crime--the queen of heaven offends,
If she presume to save her suffering friends!
Your son, not knowing what his foes decree,
You say, is absent: absent let him be.
Yours is Cythera, yours the Cyprian towers,
The soft recesses, and the sacred bowers.
Why do you then these needless arms prepare,
And thus provoke a people prone to war?
Did I with fire the Trojan town deface,
Or hinder from return your exiled race?
Was I the cause of mischief, or the man,
Whose lawless lust the fatal war began?
Think on whose faith the adulterous youth relied;
Who promised, who procured, the Spartan bride?
When all the united states of Greece combined,
To purge the world of the perfidious kind,
Then was your time to fear the Trojan fate:--
Your quarrels and complaints are now too late."
Thus Juno. Murmurs rise, with mixed applause,
Just as they favour or dislike the cause.
So winds, when yet unfledged in woods they lie,
In whispers first their tender voices try,
Then issue on the main with bellowing rage,
And storms to trembling mariners presage.
Then thus to both replied the imperial god,
Who shakes heaven's axles with his awful nod.
(When he begins, the silent senate stand,
With reverence listening to the dread command:
The clouds dispel; the winds their breath restrain;
And the hushed waves lie flatted on the main.)
"Celestials! your attentive ears incline! }
Since (said the god) the Trojans must not join }
In wished alliance with the Latian line-- }
Since endless jarrings and immortal hate, }
Tend but to discompose our happy state-- }
The war henceforward be resigned to fate: }
Each to his proper fortune stand or fall;
Equal and unconcerned I look on all.
Rutulians, Trojans, are the same to me;
And both shall draw the lots their fates decree.
Let these assault, if Fortune be their friend;
And, if she favours those, let those defend:--
The fates will find their way." The Thunderer said;
And shook the sacred honours of his head,
Attesting Styx, the inviolable flood, }
And the black regions of his brother god. }
Trembled the poles of heaven, and earth confessed the nod. }
This end the sessions had: the senate rise,
And to his palace wait their sovereign through the skies.
Meantime, intent upon their siege, the foes
Within their walls the Trojan host inclose:
They wound, they kill, they watch at every gate;
Renew the fires, and urge their happy fate.
The Æneans wish in vain their wanted chief,
Hopeless of flight, more hopeless of relief.
Thin on the towers they stand; and even those few,
A feeble, fainting, and dejected crew.
Yet in the face of danger some there stood:
The two bold brothers of Sarpedon's blood,
Asius, and Acmon: both the Assaraci;
Young Hæmon, and, though young, resolved to die.
With these were Clarus and Thymœtes joined;
Thymbris and Castor, both of Lycian kind.
From Acmon's hands a rolling stone there came,
So large, it half deserved a mountain's name!
Strong-sinewed was the youth, and big of bone: }
His brother Mnestheus could not more have done, }
Or the great father of the intrepid son. }
Some firebrands throw, some flights of arrows send;
And some with darts, and some with stones, defend.
Amid the press appears the beauteous boy,
The care of Venus, and the hope of Troy.
His lovely face unarmed, his head was bare;
In ringlets o'er his shoulders hung his hair.
His forehead circled with a diadem;
Distinguished from the crowd, he shines a gem,
Enchased in gold, or polished ivory set,
Amidst the meaner foil of sable jet.
Nor Ismarus was wanting to the war,
Directing ointed arrows from afar,
And death with poison armed--in Lydia born,
Where plenteous harvests the fat fields adorn;
Where proud Pactolus floats the fruitful lands,
And leaves a rich manure of golden sands.
There Capys, author of the Capuan name, }
And there was Mnestheus too, increased in fame, }
Since Turnus from the camp he cast with shame. }
Thus mortal war was waged on either side.
Meantime the hero cuts the nightly tide:
For, anxious, from Evander when he went,
He sought the Tyrrhene camp, and Tarchon's tent;
Exposed the cause of coming to the chief;
His name and country told, and asked relief;
Proposed the terms; his own small strength declared;
What vengeance proud Mezentius had prepared;
What Turnus, bold and violent, designed;
Then shewed the slippery state of human-kind,
And fickle fortune; warned him to beware,
And to his wholesome counsel added prayer.
Tarchon, without delay, the treaty signs,
And to the Trojan troops the Tuscan joins.
They soon set sail; nor now the Fates withstand;
Their forces trusted with a foreign hand.
Æneas leads; upon his stern appear }
Two lions carved, which rising Ida bear-- }
Ida, to wandering Trojans ever dear. }
Under their grateful shade Æneas sate,
Revolving war's events, and various fate.
His left young Pallas kept, fixed to his side,
And oft of winds inquired, and of the tide;
Oft of the stars, and of their watery way;
And what he suffered both by land and sea.
Now, sacred sisters, open all your spring!
The Tuscan leaders, and their army, sing,[6]
Which followed great Æneas to the war:
Their arms, their numbers, and their names, declare.
A thousand youths brave Massicus obey,
Borne in the Tiger through the foaming sea;
From Clusium[7] brought, and Cosa, by his care:
For arms, light quivers, bows and shafts, they bear.
Fierce Abas next: his men bright armour wore:
His stern Apollo's golden statue bore.
Six hundred Populonia sent along,
All skilled in martial exercise, and strong.
Three hundred more for battle Ilva joins,
An isle renowned for steel, and unexhausted mines.
Asylas on his prow the third appears,
Who heaven interprets, and the wandering stars;
From offered entrails, prodigies expounds,
And peals of thunder, with presaging sounds.
A thousand spears in warlike order stand,
Sent by the Pisans under his command.
Fair Astur follows in the watery field,
Proud of his managed horse, and painted shield.
Gravisca, noisome from the neighbouring fen,
And his own Cære, sent three hundred men,
With those which Minio's fields, and Pyrgi gave;
All bred in arms, unanimous, and brave.
Thou, Muse, the name of Cinyras renew,
And brave Cupavo followed but by few;
Whose helm confessed the lineage of the man,
And bore, with wings displayed, a silver swan.
Love was the fault of his famed ancestry,
Whose forms and fortunes in his ensign fly.
For Cycnus loved unhappy Phaëthon,
And sung his loss in poplar groves, alone,
Beneath the sister shades, to sooth his grief.
Heaven heard his song, and hastened his relief,
And changed to snowy plumes his hoary hair,
And winged his flight, to chant aloft in air.
His son Cupavo brushed the briny flood;
Upon his stern a brawny Centaur stood,
Who heaved a rock, and, threatening still to throw,
With lifted hands alarmed the seas below:
They seemed to fear the formidable sight,
And rolled their billows on, to speed his flight.[8]
Ocnus was next, who led his native train
Of hardy warriors through the watery plain--
The son of Manto, by the Tuscan stream,
From whence the Mantuan town derives the name--
An ancient city, but of mixed descent:
Three several tribes compose the government;
Four towns are under each; but all obey
The Mantuan laws, and own the Tuscan sway.
Hate to Mezentius armed five hundred more, }
Whom Mincius from his sire Benacus bore-- }
Mincius, with wreaths of reeds his forehead covered o'er. }
These grave Aulestes leads: a hundred sweep
With stretching oars at once the glassy deep.
Him, and his martial train, the Triton bears;
High on his poop the sea-green god appears:
Frowning he seems his crooked shell to sound,
And at the blast the billows dance around.
A hairy man above the waist he shows;
A porpoise-tail beneath his belly grows;
And ends a fish: his breast the waves divides,
And froth and foam augment the murmuring tides.
Full thirty ships transport the chosen train,
For Troy's relief, and scour the briny main.
Now was the world forsaken by the sun,
And Phoebe half her nightly race had run.
The careful chief, who never closed his eyes,
Himself the rudder holds, the sails supplies.
A choir of Nereids meet him on the flood,[9]
Once his own galleys, hewn from Ida's wood;
But now, as many nymphs, the sea they sweep,
As rode, before, tall vessels on the deep.
They know him from afar; and in a ring
Inclose the ship that bore the Trojan king.
Cymodoce, whose voice excelled the rest,
Above the waves advanced her snowy breast;
Her right hand stops the stern; her left divides
The curling ocean, and corrects the tides.
She spoke for all the choir; and thus began,
With pleasing words, to warn the unknowing man:--
"Sleeps our loved lord? O goddess-born! awake!
Spread every sail, pursue your watery track,
And haste your course. Your navy once were we,
From Ida's height descending to the sea;
Till Turnus, as at anchor fixed we stood,
Presumed to violate our holy wood.
Then, loosed from shore, we fled his fires profane, }
(Unwillingly we broke our master's chain,) }
And since have sought you through the Tuscan main. }
The mighty Mother changed our forms to these,
And gave us life immortal in the seas.
But young Ascanius, in his camp distressed,
By your insulting foes is hardly pressed.
The Arcadian horsemen, and Etrurian host,
Advance in order on the Latian coast:
To cut their way the Daunian chief designs,
Before their troops can reach the Trojan lines.
Thou, when the rosy morn restores the light,
First arm thy soldiers for the ensuing fight:
Thyself the fated sword of Vulcan wield,
And bear aloft the impenetrable shield.
To-morrow's sun, unless my skill be vain,
Shall see huge heaps of foes in battle slain."
Parting, she spoke; and with immortal force
Pushed on the vessel in her watery course;
For well she knew the way. Impelled behind,
The ship flew forward, and outstript the wind.
The rest make up. Unknowing of the cause,
The chief admires their speed, and happy omens draws.
Then thus he prayed, and fixed on heaven his eyes:--
"Hear thou, great Mother of the deities,
With turrets crowned! (on Ida's holy hill,
Fierce tygers, reined and curbed, obey thy will.)
Firm thy own omens; lead us on to fight;
And let thy Phrygians conquer in thy right."
He said no more. And now renewing day
Had chased the shadows of the night away.
He charged the soldiers, with preventing care, }
Their flags to follow, and their arms prepare; }
Warned of the ensuing fight, and bade them hope the war. }
Now, from his lofty poop, he viewed below
His camp encompassed, and the inclosing foe.
His blazing shield, embraced, he held on high;
The camp receive the sign, and with loud shouts reply.
Hope arms their courage: from their towers they throw
Their darts with double force, and drive the foe.
Thus, at the signal given, the cranes arise
Before the stormy south, and blacken all the skies.
King Turnus wondered at the fight renewed,
Till, looking back, the Trojan fleet he viewed,
The seas with swelling canvas covered o'er,
And the swift ships descending on the shore.
The Latians saw from far, with dazzled eyes,
The radiant crest that seemed in flames to rise,
And dart diffusive fires around the field,
And the keen glittering of the golden shield.
Thus threatening comets, when by night they rise,
Shoot sanguine streams, and sadden all the skies:
So Sirius, flashing forth sinister lights,
Pale human kind with plagues and with dry famine frights.
Yet Turnus, with undaunted mind, is bent
To man the shores, and hinder their descent,
And thus awakes the courage of his friends:--
"What you so long have wished, kind Fortune sends--
In ardent arms to meet the invading foe:
You find, and find him at advantage now.
Yours is the day: you need but only dare;
Your swords will make you masters of the war.
Your sires, your sons, your houses, and your lands,
And dearest wives, are all within your hands.
Be mindful of the race from whence you came,
And emulate in arms your fathers' fame.
Now take the time, while staggering yet they stand
With feet unfirm, and prepossess the strand:
Fortune befriends the bold." No more he said,
But balanced, whom to leave, and whom to lead;
Then these elects, the landing to prevent;
And those he leaves, to keep the city pent.
Meantime the Trojan sends his troops ashore:
Some are by boats exposed, by bridges more.
With labouring oars they bear along the strand,
Where the tide languishes, and leap a-land.
Tarchon observes the coast with careful eyes,
And, where no ford he finds, no water fries,
Nor billows with unequal murmurs roar,
But smoothly slide along, and swell the shore,
That course he steered, and thus he gave command:
"Here ply your oars, and at all hazard land:
Force on the vessel, that her keel may wound
This hated soil, and furrow hostile ground.
Let me securely land--I ask no more;
Then sink my ships, or shatter on the shore."
This fiery speech inflames his fearful friends:
They tug at every oar, and every stretcher bends:
They run their ships aground; the vessels knock,
(Thus forced ashore,) and tremble with the shock.
Tarchon's alone was lost, and stranded stood:
Stuck on a bank, and beaten by the flood,
She breaks her back; the loosened sides give way,
And plunge the Tuscan soldiers in the sea.
Their broken oars and floating planks withstand }
Their passage, while they labour to the land, }
And ebbing tides bear back upon the uncertain sand. }
Now Turnus leads his troops without delay,
Advancing to the margin of the sea.
The trumpets sound: Æneas first assailed
The clowns new-raised and raw, and soon prevailed.
Great Theron fell, an omen of the fight--
Great Theron, large of limbs, of giant height.
He first in open fields defied the prince:
But armour scaled with gold was no defence
Against the fated sword, which opened wide
His plated shield, and pierced his naked side.
Next Lichas fell, who, not like others born,
Was from his wretched mother ripped and torn;
Sacred, O Phœbus! from his birth to thee;
For his beginning life from biting steel was free.
Not far from him was Gyas laid along,
Of monstrous bulk; with Cisseus fierce and strong:
Vain bulk and strength! for, when the chief assailed,
Nor valour nor Herculean arms availed,
Nor their famed father, wont in war to go
With great Alcides, while he toiled below.
The noisy Pharos next received his death:
Æneas writhed his dart, and stopped his bawling breath.
Then wretched Cydon had received his doom,
Who courted Clytius in his beardless bloom,
And sought with lust obscene polluted joys--
The Trojan sword had cured his love of boys,
Had not his seven bold brethren stopped the course
Of the fierce champion, with united force.
Seven darts were thrown at once; and some rebound
From his bright shield, some on his helmet sound:
The rest had reached him; but his mother's care
Prevented those, and turned aside in air.
The prince then called Achates, to supply
The spears, that knew the way to victory--
"Those fatal weapons, which, inured to blood,
In Grecian bodies under Ilium stood:
Not one of those my hand shall toss in vain
Against our foes, on this contended plain."
He said; then seized a mighty spear, and threw;
Which, winged with fate, through Mæon's buckler flew,
Pierced all the brazen plates, and reached his heart:
He staggered with intolerable smart.
Alcanor saw; and reached, but reached in vain,
His helping hand, his brother to sustain.
A second spear, which kept the former course,
From the same hand, and sent with equal force,
His right arm pierced, and holding on, bereft
His use of both, and pinioned down his left.
Then Numitor from his dead brother drew
The ill-omen'd spear, and at the Trojan threw:
Preventing fate directs the lance awry,
Which, glancing, only marked Achates' thigh.
In pride of youth the Sabine Clausus came,
And, from afar, at Dryops took his aim.
The spear flew hissing through the middle space,
And pierced his throat, directed at his face;
It stopped at once the passage of his wind,
And the free soul to flitting air resigned:
His forehead was the first that struck the ground;
Life-blood and life rushed mingled through the wound.
He slew three brothers of the Borean race, }
And three, whom Ismarus, their native place, }
Had sent to war, but all the sons of Thrace. }
Halesus, next, the bold Aurunci leads:
The son of Neptune to his aid succeeds,
Conspicuous on his horse. On either hand,
These fight to keep, and those to win, the land.
With mutual blood the Ausonian soil is dyed,
While on its borders each their claim decide.
As wintery winds, contending in the sky,
With equal force of lungs their titles try:
They rage, they roar; the doubtful rack of heaven
Stands without motion, and the tide undriven:
Each bent to conquer, neither side to yield,
They long suspend the fortune of the field.
Both armies thus perform what courage can;
Foot set to foot, and mingled, man to man.
But, in another part, the Arcadian horse
With ill success engage the Latin force:
For, where the impetuous torrent, rushing down,
Huge craggy stones and rooted trees had thrown,
They left their coursers, and, unused to fight
On foot, were scattered in a shameful flight.
Pallas, who, with disdain and grief, had viewed
His foes pursuing, and his friends pursued,
Used threatenings mixed with prayers, his last resource,
With these to move their minds, with those to fire their force.
"Which way, companions? whither would you run?
By you yourselves, and mighty battles won,
By my great sire, by his established name,
And early promise of my future fame;
By my youth, emulous of equal right
To share his honours--shun ignoble flight!
Trust not your feet: your hands must hew your way
Through yon black body, and that thick array:
'Tis through that forward path that we must come;
There lies our way, and that our passage home.
Nor powers above, nor destinies below, }
Oppress our arms: with equal strength we go, }
With mortal hands to meet a mortal foe. }
See on what foot we stand! a scanty shore--
The sea behind, our enemies before;
No passage left, unless we swim the main;
Or, forcing these, the Trojan trenches gain."
This said, he strode with eager haste along,
And bore amidst the thickest of the throng.
Lagus, the first he met, with fate to foe,
Had heaved a stone of mighty weight, to throw:
Stooping, the spear descended on his chine,
Just where the bone distinguished either loin:
It stuck so fast, so deeply buried lay,
That scarce the victor forced the steel away.
Hisbo came on: but, while he moved too slow
To wished revenge, the prince prevents his blow;
For, warding his at once, at once he pressed,
And plunged the fatal weapon in his breast.
Then lewd Anchemolus he laid in dust,
Who stained his stepdame's bed with impious lust.
And, after him, the Daunian twins were slain,
Laris and Thymbrus, on the Latian plain;
So wondrous like in feature, shape, and size,
As caused an error in their parents' eyes--
Grateful mistake! but soon the sword decides
The nice distinction, and their fate divides:
For Thymbrus' head was lopped; and Laris' hand,
Dismembered, sought its owner on the strand:
The trembling fingers yet the faulchion strain,
And threaten still the extended stroke in vain.
Now, to renew the charge, the Arcadians came: }
Sight of such acts, and sense of honest shame, }
And grief, with anger mixed, their minds inflame. }
Then, with a casual blow was Rhœteus slain,
Who chanced, as Pallas threw, to cross the plain:
The flying spear was after Ilus sent;
But Rhœteus happened on a death unmeant:
From Teuthras and from Tyres while he fled,
The lance, athwart his body, laid him dead:
Rolled from his chariot with a mortal wound,
And intercepted fate, he spurned the ground.
As when, in summer, welcome winds arise,
The watchful shepherd to the forest flies,
And fires the midmost plants; contagion spreads,
And catching flames infect the neighbouring heads;
Around the forest flies the furious blast, }
And all the leafy nation sinks at last, }
And Vulcan rides in triumph o'er the waste; }
The pastor, pleased with his dire victory,
Beholds the satiate flames in sheets ascend the sky:--
So Pallas' troops their scattered strength unite,
And, pouring on their foes, their prince delight.
Halseus came, fierce with desire of blood;
But first collected in his arms he stood:
Advancing then, he plied the spear so well,
Ladon, Demodocus, and Pheres, fell.
Around his head he tossed his glittering brand,
And from Strymonius hewed his better hand,
Held up to guard his throat; then hurled a stone
At Thoas' ample front, and pierced the bone:
It struck beneath the space of either eye;
And blood, and mingled brains, together fly.
Deep skilled in future fates, Halesus' sire
Did with the youth to lonely groves retire:
But, when the father's mortal race was run,
Dire destiny laid hold upon the son,
And hauled him to the war, to find, beneath
The Evandrian spear, a memorable death.
Pallas the encounter seeks, but, ere he throws,
To Tuscan Tyber thus addressed his vows:--
"O sacred stream! direct my flying dart,
And give to pass the proud Halesus' heart:
His arms and spoils the holy oak shall bear."
Pleased with the bribe, the god received his prayer:
For, while his shield protects a friend distressed,
The dart came driving on, and pierced his breast.
But Lausus, no small portion of the war,
Permits not panic fear to reign too far,
Caused by the death of so renowned a knight;
But by his own example cheers the fight.
Fierce Abas first he slew--Abas, the stay
Of Trojan hopes, and hinderance of the day.
The Phrygian troops escaped the Greeks in vain:
They, and their mixed allies, now load the plain.
To the rude shock of war both armies came;
Their leaders equal, and their strength the same.
The rear so pressed the front, they could not wield
Their angry weapons, to dispute the field.
Here Pallas urges on, and Lausus there: }
Of equal youth and beauty both appear, }
But both by fate forbid to breathe their native air. }
Their congress in the field great Jove withstands--
Both doomed to fall, but fall by greater hands.
Meantime Juturna warns the Daunian chief
Of Lausus' danger, urging swift relief.
With his driven chariot he divides the crowd,
And, making to his friends, thus calls aloud:--
"Let none presume his needless aid to join;
Retire, and clear the field; the fight is mine:
To this right hand is Pallas only due;
Oh! were his father here, my just revenge to view!"
From the forbidden space his men retired.
Pallas their awe, and his stern words, admired;
Surveyed him o'er and o'er with wondering sight,
Struck with his haughty mien, and towering height.
Then to the king:--"Your empty vaunts forbear;
Success I hope, and fate I cannot fear.
Alive, or dead, I shall deserve a name;
Jove is impartial, and to both the same."
He said, and to the void advanced his pace:
Pale horror sat on each Arcadian face.
Then Turnus, from his chariot leaping light,
Addressed himself on foot to single fight.
And, as a lion--when he spies from far
A bull that seems to meditate the war,
Bending his neck, and spurning back the sand--
Runs roaring downward from his hilly stand:
Imagine eager Turnus not more slow,
To rush from high on his unequal foe.
Young Pallas, when he saw the chief advance
Within due distance of his flying lance,
Prepares to charge him first--resolved to try
If fortune would his want of force supply;
And thus to heaven and Hercules addressed:--
"Alcides, once on earth Evander's guest!
His son adjures thee by those holy rites,
That hospitable board, those genial nights;
Assist my great attempt to gain this prize,
And let proud Turnus view, with dying eyes,
His ravished spoils." 'Twas heard, the vain request;
Alcides mourned, and stifled sighs within his breast.
Then Jove, to sooth his sorrow, thus began:-- }
"Short bounds of life are set to mortal man. }
'Tis virtue's work alone to stretch the narrow span. }
So many sons of gods, in bloody fight
Around the walls of Troy, have lost the light:
My own Sarpedon fell beneath his foe;
Nor I, his mighty sire, could ward the blow.[10]
Even Turnus shortly shall resign his breath
And stands already on the verge of death."
This said, the god permits the fatal fight,
But from the Latian fields averts his sight.
Now with full force his spear young Pallas threw,
And, having thrown, his shining faulchion drew.
The steel just grazed along the shoulder-joint,
And marked it slightly with the glancing point.
Fierce Turnus first to nearer distance drew,
And poised his pointed spear, before he threw:
Then, as the winged weapon whizzed along,
"See now," said he, "whose arm is better strung."
The spear kept on the fatal course, unstayed
By plates of iron, which o'er the shield were laid:
Through folded brass, and tough bull-hides, it passed,
His corslet pierced, and reached his heart at last.
In vain the youth tugs at the broken wood;
The soul comes issuing with the vital blood:
He falls; his arms upon his body sound;
And with his bloody teeth he bites the ground.
Turnus bestrode the corpse:--"Arcadians, hear,
Said he; "my message to your master bear:
Such as the sire deserved, the son I send;
It costs him dear to be the Phrygian's friend.
The lifeless body, tell him, I bestow
Unasked, to rest his wandering ghost below."
He said, and trampled down, with all the force
Of his left foot, and spurned the wretched corse;
Then snatched the shining belt, with gold inlaid--
The belt Eurytion's artful hands had made,
Where fifty fatal brides, expressed to sight, }
All in the compass of one mournful night, }
Deprived their bridegrooms of returning light. }
In an ill hour insulting Turnus tore
Those golden spoils, and in a worse he wore.
O mortals! blind in[11] fate, who never know
To bear high fortune, or endure the low!
The time shall come, when Turnus, but in vain,
Shall wish untouched the trophies of the slain--
Shall wish the fatal belt were far away,
And curse the dire remembrance of the day.
The sad Arcadians, from the unhappy field,
Bear back the breathless body on a shield.
O grace and grief of war! at once restored,
With praises, to thy sire, at once deplored.
One day first sent thee to the fighting field, }
Beheld whole heaps of foes in battle killed; }
One day beheld thee dead, and borne upon thy shield. }
This dismal news, not from uncertain fame,
But sad spectators, to the hero came:
His friends upon the brink of ruin stand,
Unless relieved by his victorious hand.
He whirls his sword around, without delay,
And hews through adverse foes an ample way,
To find fierce Turnus, of his conquest proud.
Evander, Pallas, all that friendship owed
To large deserts, are present to his eyes--
His plighted hand, and hospitable ties.
Four sons of Sulmo, four whom Ufens bred,
He took in fight, and living victims led,
To please the ghost of Pallas, and expire,
In sacrifice, before his funeral fire.
At Magus next he threw: he stooped below
The flying spear, and shunned the promised blow,
Then, creeping, clasped the hero's knees, and prayed:
"By young Iulus, by thy father's shade,
O! spare my life, and send me back to see
My longing sire, and tender progeny.
A lofty house I have, and wealth untold,
In silver ingots, and in bars of gold:
All these, and sums besides, which see no day,
The ransom of this one poor life shall pay.
If I survive, shall Troy the less prevail?
A single soul's too light to turn the scale."
He said. The hero sternly thus replied:---
"Thy bars and ingots, and the sums beside,
Leave for thy children's lot. Thy Turnus broke
All rules of war by one relentless stroke,
When Pallas fell: so deems, nor deems alone,
My father's shadow, but my living son."
Thus having said, of kind remorse bereft,
He seized his helm, and dragged him with his left;
Then with his right hand, while his neck he wreathed,
Up to the hilts his shining faulchion sheathed.
Apollo's priest, Hæmonides, was near;
His holy fillets on his front appear;
Glittering in arms, he shone amidst the crowd,
Much of his god, more of his purple, proud.
Him the fierce Trojan followed through the field:
The holy coward fell; and, forced to yield,
The prince stood o'er the priest, and, at one blow,
Sent him an offering to the shades below.
His arms Serestus on his shoulders bears,
Designed a trophy to the god of wars.
Vulcanian Cæculus renews the fight,
And Umbro born upon the mountain's height.
The champion cheers his troops to encounter those,
And seeks revenge himself on other foes.
At Anxur's shield he drove; and, at the blow,
Both shield and arm to ground together go.
Anxur had boasted much of magic charms,
And thought he wore impenetrable arms,
So made by muttered spells; and, from the spheres,
Had life secured, in vain, for length of years.
Then Tarquitus the field in triumph trod;
A nymph his mother, and his sire a god.
Exulting in bright arms, he braves the prince:
With his protended lance he makes defence;
Bears back his feeble foe; then, pressing on,
Arrests his better hand, and drags him down;
Stands o'er the prostrate wretch, and (as he lay,
Vain tales inventing, and prepared to pray)
Mows off his head: the trunk a moment stood,
Then sunk, and rolled along the sand in blood.
The vengeful victor thus upbraids the slain:--
"Lie there, proud man, unpitied on the plain;
Lie there, inglorious, and without a tomb,
Far from thy mother and thy native home,
Exposed to savage beasts, and birds of prey,
Or thrown for food to monsters of the sea."
On Lucas and Antæus next he ran,
Two chiefs of Turnus, and who led his van.
They fled for fear; with these, he chased along }
Camers the yellow-locked, and Numa strong; }
Both great in arms, and both were fair and young. }
Camers was son to Volscens lately slain, }
In wealth surpassing all the Latian train, }
And in Amyclæ fixed his silent easy reign. }
And, as Ægæon, when with heaven he strove,
Stood opposite in arms to mighty Jove;
Moved all his hundred hands, provoked the war,
Defied the forky lightning from afar;
At fifty mouths his flaming breath expires,
And flash for flash returns, and fires for fires;
In his right hand as many swords he wields,
And takes the thunder on as many shields:
With strength like his, the Trojan hero stood; }
And soon the fields with falling corpse were strowed, }
When once his faulchion found the taste of blood. }
With fury scarce to be conceived, he flew
Against Niphæus, whom four coursers drew.
They, when they see the fiery chief advance,
And pushing at their chests his pointed lance,
Wheeled with so swift a motion, mad with fear,
They threw their master headlong from the chair.
They stare, they start, nor stop their course, before
They bear the bounding chariot to the shore.
Now Lucagus and Liger scour the plains, }
With two white steeds; but Liger holds the reins, }
And Lucagus the lofty seat maintains-- }
Bold brethren both. The former waved in air }
His flaming sword: Æneas couched his spear, }
Unused to threats, and more unused to fear. }
Then Liger thus:--"Thy confidence is vain
To 'scape from hence, as from the Trojan plain:
Nor these the steeds which Diomede bestrode,
Nor this the chariot where Achilles rode;
Nor Venus' veil is here, nor Neptune's shield;
Thy fatal hour is come, and this the field."
Thus Liger vainly vaunts: the Trojan peer
Returned his answer with his flying spear.
As Lucagus, to lash his horses, bends,
Prone to the wheels, and his left foot protends,
Prepared for fight--the fatal dart arrives,
And through the border of his buckler drives;
Passed through, and pierced his groin. The deadly wound,
Cast from his chariot, rolled him on the ground:
Whom thus the chief upbraids with scornful spite:--
"Blame not the slowness of your steeds in flight;
Vain shadows did not force their swift retreat;
But you yourself forsake your empty seat."
He said, and seized at once the loosened rein;
For Liger lay already on the plain
By the same shock; then, stretching out his hands,
The recreant thus his wretched life demands:--
"Now, by thyself, O more than mortal man!
By her and him from whom thy breath began,
Who formed thee thus divine, I beg thee, spare
This forfeit life, and hear thy suppliant's prayer."
Thus much he spoke, and more he would have said;
But the stern hero turned aside his head,
And cut him short:--"I hear another man;
You talked not thus before the fight began.
Now take your turn; and, as a brother should,
Attend your brother to the Stygian flood."
Then through his breast his fatal sword he sent,
And the soul issued at the gaping vent.
As storms the skies, and torrents tear the ground,
Thus raged the prince, and scattered deaths around.
At length Ascanius, and the Trojan train,
Broke from the camp, so long besieged in vain.
Meantime the king of gods and mortal man
Held conference with his queen, and thus began:--
"My sister goddess, and well-pleasing wife,
Still think you Venus' aid supports the strife--
Sustains her Trojans--or themselves, alone,
With inborn valour force their fortune on?
How fierce in fight, with courage undecayed!
Judge if such warriors want immortal aid."
To whom the goddess with the charming eyes,
Soft in her tone, submissively replies:--
"Why, O my sovereign lord, whose frown I fear,
And cannot, unconcerned, your anger bear--
Why urge you thus my grief? when, if I still,
(As once I was,) were mistress of your will,
From your almighty power your pleasing wife
Might gain the grace of lengthening Turnus' life,
Securely snatch him from the fatal fight,
And give him to his aged father's sight.
Now let him perish, since you hold it good,
And glut the Trojans with his pious blood.
Yet from our lineage he derives his name,
And, in the fourth degree, from god Pilumnus came!
Yet he devoutly pays you rites divine,
And offers daily incense at your shrine."
Then shortly thus the sovereign god replied:--
"Since in my power and goodness you confide,
If, for a little space, a lengthened span,
You beg reprieve for this expiring man,
I grant you leave to take your Turnus hence
From instant fate, and can so far dispense.
But, if some secret meaning lies beneath,
To save the short-lived youth from destined death,
Or, if a farther thought you entertain,
To change the fates; you feed your hopes in vain."
To whom the goddess thus, with weeping eyes:--
"And what if that request, your tongue denies,
Your heart should grant--and not a short reprieve,
But length of certain life, to Turnus give?
Now speedy death attends the guiltless youth,
If my presaging soul divines with truth;
Which, O! I wish, might err through causeless fears,
And you (for you have power) prolong his years!"
Thus having said, involved in clouds, she flies,
And drives a storm before her through the skies.
Swift she descends, alighting on the plain,
Where the fierce foes a dubious fight maintain.
Of air condensed, a spectre soon she made;
And, what Æneas was, such seemed the shade.
Adorned with Dardan arms, the phantom bore
His head aloft; a plumy crest he wore:
This hand appeared a shining sword to wield,
And that sustained an imitated shield.
With manly mien he stalked along the ground,
Nor wanted voice belied, nor vaunting sound.
(Thus haunting ghosts appear to waking sight,
Or dreadful visions in our dreams by night.)
The spectre seems the Daunian chief to dare,
And flourishes his empty sword in air.
At this, advancing, Turnus hurled his spear:
The phantom wheeled, and seemed to fly for fear.
Deluded Turnus thought the Trojan fled,
And with vain hopes his haughty fancy fed.
"Whither, O coward?" (thus he calls aloud,
Nor found he spoke to wind, and chased a cloud,)
"Why thus forsake your bride! Receive from me
The fated land you sought so long by sea."
He said, and, brandishing at once his blade,
With eager pace pursued the flying shade.
By chance a ship was fastened to the shore,
Which from old Clusium king Osinius bore:
The plank was ready laid for safe ascent; }
For shelter there the trembling shadow bent, }
And skipped and skulked, and under hatches went. }
Exulting Turnus, with regardless haste,
Ascends the plank, and to the galley passed.
Scarce had he reached the prow; Saturnia's hand
The halsers cuts, and shoots the ship from land.
With wind in poop, the vessel ploughs the sea,
And measures back with speed her former way.
Meantime Æneas seeks his absent foe,
And sends his slaughtered troops to shades below.
The guileful phantom now forsook the shroud,
And flew sublime, and vanished in a cloud.
Too late young Turnus the delusion found,
Far on the sea, still making from the ground.
Then, thankless for a life redeemed by shame,
With sense of honour stung, and forfeit fame,
Fearful besides of what in fight had passed,
His hands and hagard eyes to heaven he cast:--
"O Jove!" he cried--"for what offence have I
Deserved to bear this endless infamy?
Whence am I forced, and whither am I borne?
How, and with what reproach, shall I return?
Shall ever I behold the Latian plain,
Or see Laurentum's lofty towers again?
What will they say of their deserting chief?
The war was mine: I fly from their relief!
I led to slaughter, and in slaughter leave;
And even from hence their dying groans receive.
Here, over-matched in fight, in heaps they lie,
There, scattered o'er the fields, ignobly fly.
Gape wide, O earth, and draw me down alive! }
Or, oh! ye pitying winds, a wretch relieve! }
On sands or shelves the splitting vessel drive; }
Or set me shipwrecked on some desert shore,
Where no Rutulian eyes may see me more--
Unknown to friends, or foes, or conscious fame,
Lest she should follow, and my flight proclaim."
Thus Turnus raved, and various fates revolved:
The choice was doubtful, but the death resolved.
And now the sword, and now the sea, took place--
That to revenge, and this to purge disgrace.
Sometimes he thought to swim the stormy main,
By stretch of arms the distant shore to gain.
Thrice he the sword essayed, and thrice the flood;
But Juno, moved with pity, both withstood,
And thrice repressed his rage; strong gales supplied,
And pushed the vessel o'er the swelling tide.
At length she lands him on his native shores,
And to his father's longing arms restores.
Meantime, by Jove's impulse, Mezentius armed,
Succeeding Turnus, with his ardour warmed
His fainting friends, reproached their shameful flight,
Repelled the victors, and renewed the fight.
Against their king the Tuscan troops conspire;
Such is their hate, and such their fierce desire
Of wished revenge--on him, and him alone,
All hands employed, and all their darts are thrown.
He, like a solid rock by seas inclosed,
To raging winds and roaring waves opposed,
From his proud summit looking down, disdains
Their empty menace, and unmoved remains.
Beneath his feet fell haughty Hebrus dead,
Then Latagus, and Palmus as he fled.
At Latagus a weighty stone he flung:
His face was flatted, and his helmet rung.
But Palmus from behind receives his wound:
Hamstringed he falls, and grovels on the ground:
His crest and armour, from his body torn,
Thy shoulders, Lausus, and thy head, adorn.
Evas and Mimas, both of Troy, he slew.
Mimas his birth from fair Theano drew--
Born on that fatal night, when, big with fire,
The queen produced young Paris to his sire.
But Paris in the Phrygian fields was slain,
Unthinking Mimas on the Latian plain.
And, as a savage boar, on mountains bred,
With forest mast and fattening marshes fed,
When once he sees himself in toils inclosed,
By huntsmen and their eager hounds opposed,
He whets his tusks, and turns, and dares the war,
The invaders dart their javelins from afar:
All keep aloof, and safely shout around;
But none presumes to give a nearer wound:
He frets and froths, erects his bristled hide,
And shakes a grove of lances from his side:
Not otherwise the troops, with hate inspired,
And just revenge against the tyrant fired,
Their darts with clamour at a distance drive,
And only keep the languished war alive.
From Corythus came Acron to the fight,
Who left his spouse betrothed, and unconsummate night.
Mezentius sees him through the squadron ride,
Proud of the purple favours of his bride.
Then, as a hungry lion, who beholds
A gamesome goat, who frisks about the folds,
Or beamy stag, that grazes on the plain--
He runs, he roars, he shakes his rising mane;
He grins, and opens wide his greedy jaws:
The prey lies panting underneath his paws:
He fills his famished maw; his mouth runs o'er
With unchewed morsels, while he churns the gore:
So proud Mezentius rushes on his foes,
And first unhappy Acron overthrows:
Stretched at his length, he spurns the swarthy ground;
The lance, besmeared with blood, lies broken in the wound.
Then with disdain the haughty victor viewed
Orodes flying, nor the wretch pursued,
Nor thought the dastard's back deserved a wound,
But, running, gained the advantage of the ground:
Then turning short, he met him face to face,
To give his victory the better grace.
Orodes falls, in equal fight oppressed:
Mezentius fixed his foot upon his breast,
And rested lance; and thus aloud he cries:--
"Lo! here the champion of my rebels lies!"
The fields around with "Iö Pæan!" ring;
And peals of shouts applaud the conquering king.
At this the vanquished, with his dying breath,
Thus faintly spoke, and prophesied in death:--
"Nor thou, proud man, unpunished shalt remain.
Like death attends thee on this fatal plain."
Then, sourly smiling, thus the king replied:--
"For what belongs to me, let Jove provide;
But die thou first, whatever chance ensue."
He said, and from the wound the weapon drew.
A hovering mist came swimming o'er his sight,
And sealed his eyes in everlasting night.
By Cædicus, Alcathöus was slain;
Sacrator laid Hydaspes on the plain;
Orses the strong to greater strength must yield;
He, with Parthenius, were by Rapo killed.
Then brave Messapus Ericetes slew,
Who from Lycaon's blood his lineage drew.
But from his headstrong horse his fate he found, }
Who threw his master, as he made a bound: }
The chief, alighting, stuck him to the ground; }
Then Clonius, hand to hand, on foot assails:
The Trojan sinks, and Neptune's son prevails.
Agis the Lycian, stepping forth with pride,
To single fight the boldest foe defied;
Whom Tuscan Valerus by force o'ercame,
And not belied his mighty father's fame.
Salius to death the great Authronius sent:
But the same fate the victor underwent,
Slain by Nealces' hand, well skilled to throw
The flying dart, and draw the far-deceiving bow.
Thus equal deaths are dealt with equal chance:
By turns they quit their ground, by turns advance,
Victors and vanquished in the various field,
Nor wholly overcome, nor wholly yield.
The gods from heaven survey the fatal strife,
And mourn the miseries of human life.
Above the rest, two goddesses appear
Concerned for each: here Venus, Juno there.
Amidst the crowd, infernal Ate shakes
Her scourge aloft, and crest of hissing snakes.
Once more the proud Mezentius, with disdain,
Brandished his spear, and rushed into the plain,
Where towering in the midmost ranks he stood,
Like tall Orion stalking o'er the flood,
(When with his brawny breast he cuts the waves,
His shoulders scarce the topmost billow laves,)
Or like a mountain-ash, whose roots are spread,
Deep fixed in earth--in clouds he hides his head.
The Trojan prince beheld him from afar,
And dauntless undertook the doubtful war.
Collected in his strength, and like a rock
Poised on his base, Mezentius stood the shock.
He stood, and, measuring first with careful eyes
The space his spear could reach, aloud he cries:--
"My strong right hand, and sword, assist my stroke!
(Those only gods Mezentius will invoke)
His armour, from the Trojan pirate torn,
By my triumphant Lausus shall be worn."
He said; and with his utmost force he threw
The massy spear, which, hissing as it flew,
Reached the celestial shield: that stopped the course;
But, glancing thence, the yet unbroken force
Took a new bent obliquely, and, betwixt
The side and bowels, famed Antores fixed.
Antores had from Argos travelled far,
Alcides' friend, and brother of the war;
Till, tired with toils, fair Italy he chose,
And in Evander's palace sought repose.
Now falling by another's wound, his eyes
He casts to heaven, on Argos thinks, and dies.
The pious Trojan then his javelin sent;
The shield gave way; through triple plates it went
Of solid brass, of linen triply rolled,
And three bull-hides which round the buckler rolled.
All these it passed, resistless in the course,
Transpierced his thigh, and spent its dying force.
The gaping wound gushed out a crimson flood.
The Trojan, glad with sight of hostile blood,
His faulchion drew, to closer fight addressed,
And with new force his fainting foe oppressed.
His father's peril Lausus viewed with grief;
He sighed, he wept, he ran to his relief.
And here, heroic youth, 'tis here I must
To thy immortal memory be just,
And sing an act so noble and so new,
Posterity will scarce believe 'tis true.
Pained with his wound, and useless for the fight,
The father sought to save himself by flight:
Encumbered, slow he dragged the spear along,
Which pierced his thigh, and in his buckler hung.
The pious youth, resolved on death, below }
The lifted sword, springs forth to face the foe; }
Protects his parent, and prevents the blow. }
Shouts of applause ran ringing through the field,
To see the son the vanquished father shield.
All, fired with generous indignation, strive,
And with a storm of darts, to distance drive
The Trojan chief, who, held at bay from far,
On his Vulcanian orb sustained the war.
As, when thick hail comes rattling in the wind,
The ploughman, passenger, and labouring hind,
For shelter to the neighbouring covert fly,
Or, housed, or safe in hollow caverns, lie;
But, that o'erblown, when heaven above them smiles,
Return to travail, and renew their toils:
Æneas thus, o'erwhelmed on every side, }
The storm of darts, undaunted, did abide; }
And thus to Lausus loud with friendly threatening cried:-- }
"Why wilt thou rush to certain death, and rage
In rash attempts, beyond thy tender age,
Betrayed by pious love?"--Nor, thus forborne,
The youth desists, but with insulting scorn
Provokes the lingering prince, whose patience, tired,
Gave place; and all his breast with fury fired.
For now the Fates prepared their sharpened shears;
And lifted high the flaming sword appears,
Which, full descending with a frightful sway,
Through shield and corslet forced the impetuous way,
And buried deep in his fair bosom lay.
The purple streams through the thin armour strove,
And drenched the embroidered coat his mother wove;
And life at length forsook his heaving heart,
Loth from so sweet a mansion to depart.
But when, with blood and paleness all o'erspread,
The pious prince beheld young Lausus dead,
He grieved; he wept, (the sight an image brought
Of his own filial love, a sadly pleasing thought,)
Then stretched his hand to hold him up, and said:--
"Poor hapless youth! what praises can be paid
To love so great, to such transcendent store
Of early worth, and sure presage of more?
Accept whate'er Æneas can afford;
Untouched thy arms, untaken be thy sword;
And all that pleased the living, still remain
Inviolate, and sacred to the slain.
Thy body on thy parents I bestow, }
To rest thy soul, at least, if shadows know, }
Or have a sense of human things below. }
There to thy fellow-ghosts with glory tell,
'Twas by the great Æneas' hand I fell."
With this, his distant friends he beckons near,
Provokes their duty, and prevents their fear:
Himself assists to lift him from the ground,
With clotted locks, and blood that welled from out the wound.
Meantime, his father, now no father, stood,
And washed his wounds, by Tyber's yellow flood:
Oppressed with anguish, panting, and o'erspent,
His fainting limbs against an oak he leant.
A bough his brazen helmet did sustain;
His heavier arms lay scattered on the plain:
A chosen train of youth around him stand;
His drooping head was rested on his hand:
His grisly beard his pensive bosom sought;
And all on Lausus ran his restless thought.
Careful, concerned his danger to prevent,
He much inquired, and many a message sent
To warn him from the field--alas! in vain!
Behold, his mournful followers bear him slain!
O'er his broad shield still gushed the yawning wound,
And drew a bloody trail along the ground.
Far off he heard their cries, far off divined
The dire event with a foreboding mind.
With dust he sprinkled first his hoary head; }
Then both his lifted hands to heaven he spread; }
Last, the dear corpse embracing, thus he said:-- }
"What joys, alas! could this frail being give,
That I have been so covetous to live?
To see my son, and such a son, resign
His life, a ransom for preserving mine?
And am I then preserved, and art thou lost?
How much too dear has that redemption cost!
'Tis now my bitter banishment I feel:
This is a wound too deep for time to heal.
My guilt thy growing virtues did defame;
My blackness blotted thy unblemished name.
Chased from a throne, abandoned, and exiled
For foul misdeeds, were punishments too mild:
I owed my people these, and, from their hate,
With less resentment could have borne my fate.
And yet I live, and yet sustain the sight
Of hated men, and of more hated light--
But will not long." With that he raised from ground
His fainting limbs, that staggered with his wound;
Yet, with a mind resolved, and unappalled
With pains or perils, for his courser called--
Well-mouthed, well-managed, whom himself did dress }
With daily care, and mounted with success-- }
His aid in arms, his ornament in peace. }
Soothing his courage with a gentle stroke,
The steed seemed sensible, while thus he spoke:--
O Rhbus! we have lived too long for me--
If life and long were terms that could agree.
This day thou either shalt bring back the head
And bloody trophies of the Trojan dead--
This day thou either shalt revenge my woe,
For murdered Lausus, on his cruel foe;
Or, if inexorable Fate deny
Our conquest, with thy conquered master die:
For, after such a lord, I rest secure,
Thou wilt no foreign reins, or Trojan load,[12] endure."
He said; and straight the officious courser kneels,
To take his wonted weight. His hands he fills
With pointed javelins; on his head he laced
His glittering helm, which terribly was graced
With waving horse-hair, nodding from afar;
Then spurred his thundering steed amidst the war.
Love, anguish, wrath, and grief, to madness wrought,
Despair, and secret shame, and conscious thought
Of inborn worth, his labouring soul oppressed,
Rolled in his eyes, and raged within his breast.
Then loud he called Æneas thrice by name:
The loud repeated voice to glad Æneas came.
"Great Jove," he said, "and the far-shooting god,
Inspire thy mind to make thy challenge good!"
He spoke no more, but hastened, void of fear,
And threatened with his long protended spear.
To whom Mezentius thus:--"Thy vaunts are vain.
My Lausus lies extended on the plain:
He's lost! thy conquest is already won;
The wretched sire is murdered in the son.
Nor fate I fear, but all the gods defy. }
Forbear thy threats: my business is to die; }
But first receive this parting legacy." }
He said; and straight a whirling dart he sent;
Another after, and another, went.
Round in a spacious ring he rides the field, }
And vainly plies the impenetrable shield. }
Thrice rode he round; and thrice Æneas wheeled, }
Turned as he turned: the golden orb withstood
The strokes, and bore about an iron wood.
Impatient of delay, and weary grown,
Still to defend, and to defend alone,
To wrench the darts which in his buckler light,
Urged, and o'er-laboured in unequal fight--
At length resolved, he throws, with all his force,
Full at the temples of the warrior horse.
Just where the stroke was aimed, the unerring spear
Made way, and stood transfixed through either ear.
Seized with unwonted pain, surprised with fright,
The wounded steed curvets, and, raised upright,
Lights on his feet before; his hoofs behind
Spring up in air aloft, and lash the wind.
Down comes the rider headlong from his height:
His horse came after with unwieldy weight,
And, floundering forward, pitching on his head,
His lord's encumbered shoulder overlaid.
From either host, the mingled shouts and cries
Of Trojans and Rutulians rend the skies:
Æneas, hastening, waved his fatal sword
High o'er his head, with this reproachful word:--
"Now! where are now thy vaunts, the fierce disdain,
Of proud Mezentius, and the lofty strain?"
Struggling, and wildly staring on the skies
With scarce recovered sight, he thus replies:--
"Why these insulting words, this waste of breath,
To souls undaunted, and secure of death?
'Tis no dishonour for the brave to die:
Nor came I here with hope of victory;
Nor ask I life, nor fought with that design.
As I had used my fortune, use thou thine.
My dying son contracted no such band:
The gift is hateful from his murderer's hand.
For this, this only favour let me sue,
If pity can to conquered foes be due,
Refuse it not; but let my body have
The last retreat of human kind, a grave.
Too well I know the insulting people's hate;
Protect me from their vengeance after fate:
This refuge for my poor remains provide, }
And lay my much-loved Lausus by my side." }
He said, and to the sword his throat applied. }
The crimson stream distained his arms around,
And the disdainful soul came rushing through the wound.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: Note II.]
[Footnote 7: _Assium_, according to the old editions; but Virgil bears,
----_qui mœnia Clusi,
Quique urbem liquere Cosas_----
Accordingly Carey's edition reads _Clusium_, and is here followed.]
[Footnote 8: This conceit is not Virgil's: The original runs thus:
---- ---- ---- ----_ille
Instat aguæ, saxumque undis immane minatur
Arduus, et longa sulcat maria alta carina_.
]
[Footnote 9: Note I.]
[Footnote 10: Note III.]
[Footnote 11: Dr Carey reads, "of fate," without authority, and, as I
think, without necessity.]
[Footnote 12: Dr Carey proposes to read _lord_, which is doubtless the
more close translation of
----_dominos dignabere Teucros_.
But all the old editions have _load_, which is excellent good sense.]
NOTES
ON
ÆNEÏS, BOOK X.
Note I.
_A choir of Nereids_, &c.--P. 73.
These were transformed from ships to sea-nymphs. This is almost as
violent a machine, as the death of Arruns by a goddess in the episode
of Camilla. But the poet makes use of it with greater art; for here it
carries on the main design. These new-made divinities not only tell
Æneas what had passed in his camp during his absence, and what was the
present distress of his besieged people, and that his horsemen, whom
he had sent by land, were ready to join him at his descent; but warn
him to provide for battle the next day, and foretel him good success:
so that this episodical machine is properly a part of the great poem;
for, besides what I have said, they push on his navy with celestial
vigour, that it might reach the port more speedily, and take the enemy
more unprovided to resist the landing: whereas the machine relating to
Camilla is only ornamental; for it has no effect, which I can find,
but to please the reader, who is concerned that her death should be
revenged.
Note II.
_Now, sacred sisters, open all your spring!
The Tuscan leaders, and their army, sing._--P. 71.
The poet here begins to tell the names of the Tuscan captains who
followed Æneas to the war: and I observe him to be very particular in
the description of their persons, and not forgetful of their manners;
exact also in the relation of the numbers which each of them command.
I doubt not but, as, in the Fifth Book, he gave us the names of the
champions who contended for the several prizes, that he might oblige
many of the most ancient Roman families, their descendants--and as,
in the Seventh Book, he mustered the auxiliary forces of the Latins
on the same account--so here he gratifies his Tuscan friends with the
like remembrance of their ancestors, and, above the rest, Mæcenas, his
great patron, who, being of a royal family in Etruria, was probably
represented under one of the names here mentioned, then known among
the Romans, though, at so great a distance, unknown to us. And, for
his sake chiefly, as I guess, he makes Æneas (by whom he always means
Augustus) to seek for aid in the country of Mæcenas, thereby to endear
his protector to his emperor, as if there had been a former friendship
betwixt their lines. And who knows, but Mæcenas might pretend, that the
Cilnian family was derived from Tarchon, the chief commander of the
Tuscans?
Note III.
_Nor I, his mighty sire, could ward the blow._--P. 83.
I have mentioned this passage in my preface to the Æneïs, to prove
that fate was superior to the gods, and that Jove could neither defer
nor alter its decrees. Sir Robert Howard has since been pleased to
send me the concurrent testimony of Ovid: it is in the last book of
his Metamorphoses, where Venus complains that her descendant, Julius
Cæsar, was in danger of being murdered by Brutus and Cassius, at the
head of the commonwealth-faction, and desires [_the gods_] to prevent
that barbarous assassination. They are moved to compassion; they are
concerned for Cæsar; but the poet plainly tells us, that it was not in
their power to change destiny. All they could do, was to testify their
sorrow for his approaching death, by fore-shewing it with signs and
prodigies, as appears by the following lines:--
_Talia necquidquam toto Venus anxia cælo
Verba jacit; superosque movet: qui rumpere quanquam
Ferrea non possunt veterum decreta sororum,
Signa tamen luctús dant haud incerta futuri._
Then she addresses to her father Jupiter, hoping aid from him, because
he was thought omnipotent. But he, it seems, could do as little as the
rest; for he answers thus:
----_sola insuperabile Fatum,
Nata, movere paras? Intres licet ipsa sororum
Tecta trium; cernes illic, molimine vasto,
Ex ære et solido rerum tabularia ferro_,
_Quæ neque concursum cœli, neque fulminis iram,
Nec metuunt ullas, tuta atque æterna, ruinas.
Invenies illic, incisa adamante perenni,
Fata tui generis. Legi ipse, animoque notavi;
Et referam, ne sis etiamnum ignara futuri.
Hic sua complevit (pro quo, Cytherea, laboras)
Tempora, perfectis, quos terræ debuit, annis, &c._
Jupiter, you see, is only library-keeper, or _custos rotulorum_, to the
Fates: for he offers his daughter a cast of his office, to give her a
sight of their decrees, which the inferior gods were not permitted to
read without his leave. This agrees with what I have said already in
the preface; that they, not having seen the records, might believe they
were his own hand-writing, and consequently at his disposing, either to
blot out or alter as he saw convenient. And of this opinion was Juno in
those words, _tua, qui potes, orsa reflectas_. Now the abode of those
Destinies being in hell, we cannot wonder why the swearing by Styx was
an inviolable oath amongst the gods of heaven, and that Jupiter himself
should fear to be accused of forgery by the Fates, if he altered any
thing in their decrees; Chaos, Night, and Erebus, being the most
ancient of the deities, and instituting those fundamental laws, by
which he was afterwards to govern. Hesiod gives us the genealogy of the
gods; and I think I may safely infer the rest. I will only add, that
Homer was more a fatalist than Virgil: for it has been observed, that
the word Τυχη, or _Fortune_, is not to be found in his two
poems; but, instead of it, always Μοιρα.
ÆNEÏS,
BOOK XI.
ARGUMENT.
_Æneas erects a trophy of the spoils of Mezentius, grants a truce
for burying the dead, and sends home the body of Pallas with great
solemnity. Latinus calls a council, to propose offers of peace to
Æneas; which occasions great animosity betwixt Turnus and Drances.
In the mean time there is a sharp engagement of the horse; wherein
Camilla signalises herself, is killed; and the Latine troops are
entirely defeated._
Scarce had the rosy morning raised her head
Above the waves, and left her watery bed;
The pious chief, whom double cares attend
For his unburied soldiers and his friend,
Yet first to heaven performed a victor's vows:
He bared an ancient oak of all her boughs;
Then on a rising ground the trunk he placed,
Which with the spoils of his dead foe he graced.
The coat of arms by proud Mezentius worn,
Now on a naked snag in triumph borne,
Was hung on high, and glittered from afar,
A trophy sacred to the god of war.
Above his arms, fixed on the leafless wood,
Appeared his plumy crest, besmeared with blood:
His brazen buckler on the left was seen;
Trunchions of shivered lances hung between;
And on the right was placed his corslet, bored;
And to the neck was tied his unavailing sword.
A crowd of chiefs inclose the godlike man,
Who thus, conspicuous in the midst, began:--
"Our toils, my friends, are crowned with sure success;
The greater part performed, achieve the less.
Now follow cheerful to the trembling town;
Press but an entrance, and presume it won.
Fear is no more: For fierce Mezentius lies,
As the first fruits of war, a sacrifice.
Turnus shall fall extended on the plain,
And, in this omen, is already slain.
Prepared in arms, pursue your happy chance;
That none unwarned may plead his ignorance,
And I, at heaven's appointed hour, may find
Your warlike ensigns waving in the wind.
Meantime the rites and funeral pomps prepare,
Due to your dead companions of the war--
The last respect the living can bestow,
To shield their shadows from contempt below.
That conquered earth be theirs, for which they fought,
And which for us with their own blood they bought.
But first the corpse of our unhappy friend
To the sad city of Evander send,
Who, not inglorious, in his age's bloom
Was hurried hence by too severe a doom."
Thus, weeping while he spoke, he took his way,
Where, new in death, lamented Pallas lay.
Acœtes watched the corpse; whose youth deserved
The father's trust; and now the son he served
With equal faith, but less suspicious care.
The attendants of the slain his sorrow share.
A troop of Trojans mixed with these appear,
And mourning matrons with dishevelled hair.
Soon as the prince appears, they raise a cry;
All beat their breasts, and echoes rend the sky.
They rear his drooping forehead from the ground;
But, when Æneas viewed the grisly wound
Which Pallas in his manly bosom bore,
And the fair flesh distained with purple gore;
First, melting into tears, the pious man
Deplored so sad a sight, then thus began:--
"Unhappy youth! when Fortune gave the rest
Of my full wishes, she refused the best!
She came; but brought not thee along, to bless
My longing eyes, and share in my success:
She grudged thy safe return, the triumphs due
To prosperous valour, in the public view.
Not thus I promised, when thy father lent
Thy needless succour with a sad consent;
Embraced me, parting for the Etrurian land,
And sent me to possess a large command.
He warned, and from his own experience told,
Our foes were warlike, disciplined, and bold.
And now perhaps, in hopes of thy return,
Rich odours on his loaded altars burn,
While we, with vain officious pomp, prepare
To send him back his portion of the war,
A bloody breathless body, which can owe
No farther debt, but to the powers below.
The wretched father, ere his race is run,
Shall view the funeral honours of his son!
These are my triumphs of the Latian war,
Fruits of my plighted faith and boasted care!
And yet, unhappy sire, thou shalt not see
A son, whose death disgraced his ancestry:
Thou shall not blush, old man, however grieved:
Thy Pallas no dishonest wound received.
He died no death to make thee wish, too late,
Thou hadst not lived to see his shameful fate.
But what a champion has the Ausonian coast,
And what a friend hast thou, Ascanius, lost!"
Thus having mourned, he gave the word around,
To raise the breathless body from the ground;
And chose a thousand horse, the flower of all
His warlike troops, to wait the funeral,
To bear him back, and share Evander's grief--
A well-becoming, but a weak relief.
Of oaken twigs they twist an easy bier,
Then on their shoulders the sad burden rear.
The body on this rural hearse is borne:
Strewed leaves and funeral greens the bier adorn.
All pale he lies, and looks a lovely flower,
New cropt by virgin hands, to dress the bower:
Unfaded yet, but yet unfed below,
No more to mother earth or the green stem shall owe.
Then two fair vests, of wonderous work and cost,
Of purple woven, and with gold embossed,
For ornament the Trojan hero brought,
Which with her hands Sidonian Dido wrought.
One vest arrayed the corpse; and one they spread
O'er his closed eyes, and wrapped around his head,
That, when the yellow hair in flame should fall,
The catching fire might burn the golden caul.
Besides, the spoils of foes in battle slain,
When he descended on the Latian plain--
Arms, trappings, horses--by the hearse are led
In long array--the achievements of the dead.
Then, pinioned with their hands behind, appear
The unhappy captives, marching in the rear,
Appointed offerings in the victor's name,
To sprinkle with their blood the funeral flame.
Inferior trophies by the chiefs are borne;
Gauntlets and helms their loaded hands adorn;
And fair inscriptions fixed, and titles read
Of Latian leaders conquered by the dead.
Acœtes on his pupil's corpse attends,
With feeble steps, supported by his friends.
Pausing at every pace, in sorrow drowned,
Betwixt their arms he sinks upon the ground;
Where grovelling while he lies in deep despair,
He beats his breast, and rends his hoary hair.
The champion's chariot next is seen to roll,
Besmeared with hostile blood, and honourably foul.
To close the pomp, Æthon, the steed of state,
Is led, the funerals of his lord to wait.
Stripped of his trappings, with a sullen pace
He walks; and the big tears run rolling down his face.
The lance of Pallas, and the crimson crest,
Are borne behind:--the victor seized the rest.
The march begins: the trumpets hoarsely sound;
The pikes and lances trail along the ground.
Thus while the Trojan and Arcadian horse
To Pallantean towers direct their course,
In long procession ranked; the pious chief
Stopped in the rear, and gave a vent to grief:--
"The public care," he said, "which war attends,
Diverts our present woes, at least suspends.
Peace with the manes of great Pallas dwell!
Hail, holy reliques! and a last farewell!"
He said no more, but, inly though he mourned,
Restrained his tears, and to the camp returned.
Now suppliants, from Laurentum sent, demand
A truce, with olive-branches in their hand;
Obtest his clemency, and from the plain
Beg leave to draw the bodies of their slain.
They plead, that none those common rites deny
To conquered foes, that in fair battle die.
All cause of hate was ended in their death;
Nor could he war with bodies void of breath.
A king, they hoped, would hear a king's request,
Whose son he once was called, and once his guest.
Their suit, which was too just to be denied,
The hero grants, and farther thus replied:--
"O Latian princes! how severe a fate
In causeless quarrels has involved your state,
And armed against an unoffending man,
Who sought your friendship ere the war began!
You beg a truce, which I would gladly give,
Not only for the slain, but those who live.
I came not hither but by heaven's command,
And sent by fate to share the Latian land.
Nor wage I wars unjust: your king denied
My proffered friendship, and my promised bride;
Left me for Turnus. Turnus then should try
His cause in arms, to conquer or to die.
My right and his are in dispute: the slain
Fell without fault, our quarrel to maintain.
In equal arms let us alone contend;
And let him vanquish, whom his fates befriend.
This is the way (so tell him) to possess
The royal virgin, and restore the peace.
Bear this my message back--with ample leave,
That your slain friends may funeral rites receive."
Thus having said--the embassadors, amazed,
Stood mute a while, and on each other gazed.
Drances, their chief, who harboured in his breast
Long hate to Turnus, as his foe professed,
Broke silence first, and to the godlike man,
With graceful action bowing, thus began:--
"Auspicious prince, in arms a mighty name,
But yet whose actions far transcend your fame!
Would I your justice or your force express,
Thought can but equal; and all words are less.
Your answer we shall thankfully relate,
And favours granted to the Latian state.
If wished success our labour shall attend,
Think peace concluded, and the king your friend:
Let Turnus leave the realm to your command,
And seek alliance in some other land:
Build you the city which your fates assign;
We shall be proud in the great work to join."
Thus Drances; and his words so well persuade
The rest empowered, that soon a truce is made.
Twelve days the term allowed: and, during those,
Latians and Trojans, now no longer foes,
Mixed in the woods, for funeral piles prepare
To fell the timber, and forget the war.
Loud axes through the groaning groves resound;
Oak, mountain-ash, and poplar, spread the ground;
Firs fall from high; and some the trunks receive
In loaden wains; with wedges some they cleave.
And now the fatal news by Fame is blown
Through the short circuit of the Arcadian town,
Of Pallas slain--, by Fame, which just before
His triumphs on distended pinions bore.
Rushing from out the gate, the people stand,
Each with a funeral flambeau in his hand.
Wildly they stare, distracted with amaze:
The fields are lightened with a fiery blaze,
That casts a sullen splendour on their friends--
The marching troop which their dead prince attends.
Both parties meet: they raise a doleful cry; }
The matrons from the walls with shrieks reply, }
And their mixed mourning rends the vaulted sky. }
The town is filled with tumult and with tears,
Till the loud clamours reach Evander's ears:
Forgetful of his state, he runs along,
With a disordered pace, and cleaves the throng;
Falls on the corpse; and groaning there he lies,
With silent grief, that speaks but at his eyes.
Short sighs and sobs succeed; till sorrow breaks
A passage, and at once he weeps and speaks:--
"O Pallas! thou hast failed thy plighted word!
To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword,
I warned thee, but in vain; for well I knew
What perils youthful ardour would pursue--
That boiling blood would carry thee too far,
Young as thou wert in dangers, raw to war!
O curst essay of arms! disastrous doom!
Prelude of bloody fields, and fights to come!
Hard elements of inauspicious war!
Vain vows to heaven, and unavailing care!
Thrice happy thou, dear partner of my bed!
Whose holy soul the stroke of Fortune fled--
Præscious of ills, and leaving me behind,
To drink the dregs of life by fate assigned.
Beyond the goal of nature I have gone:
My Pallas late set out, but reached too soon.
If, for my league against the Ausonian state,
Amidst their weapons I had found my fate,
(Deserved from them,) then I had been returned
A breathless victor, and my son had mourned.
Yet will I not my Trojan friend upbraid,
Nor grudge the alliance I so gladly made.
'Twas not his fault, my Pallas fell so young,
But my own crime for having lived too long.
Yet, since the gods had destined him to die,
At least, he led the way to victory:
First for his friends he won the fatal shore, }
And sent whole herds of slaughtered foes before-- }
A death too great, too glorious to deplore. }
Nor will I add new honours to thy grave,
Content with those the Trojan hero gave--
That funeral pomp thy Phrygian friends designed,
In which the Tuscan chiefs and army joined.
Great spoils and trophies, gained by thee, they bear:
Then let thy own achievements be thy share.
Even thou, O Turnus, hadst a trophy stood,
Whose mighty trunk had better graced the wood,
If Pallas had arrived, with equal length
Of years, to match thy bulk with equal strength.
But why, unhappy man! dost thou detain
These troops, to view the tears thou shedd'st in vain?
Go, friends! this message to your lord relate:
Tell him, that, if I bear my bitter fate,
And, after Pallas' death, live lingering on,
'Tis to behold his vengeance for my son.
I stay for Turnus, whose devoted head
Is owing to the living and the dead.
My son and I expect it from his hand;
'Tis all that he can give, or we demand.
Joy is no more; but I would gladly go,
To greet my Pallas with such news below."
The morn had now dispelled the shades of night,
Restoring toils, when she restored the light.
The Trojan king, and Tuscan chief, command
To raise the piles along the winding strand.
Their friends convey the dead to funeral fires; }
Black smouldering smoke from the green wood expires; }
The light of heaven is choked, and the new day retires. }
Then thrice around the kindled piles they go;
(For ancient custom had ordained it so;)
Thrice horse and foot about the fires are led;
And thrice, with loud laments, they hail the dead.
Tears, trickling down their breasts, bedew the ground,
And drums and trumpets mix their mournful sound.
Amid the blaze, their pious brethren throw
The spoils, in battle taken from the foe--
Helms, bitts embossed, and swords of shining steel;
One casts a target, one a chariot-wheel;
Some to their fellows their own arms restore--
The faulchions which in luckless fight they bore,
Their bucklers pierced, their darts bestowed in vain,
And shivered lances gathered from the plain.
Whole herds of offered bulls, about the fire,
And bristled boars, and woolly sheep, expire.
Around the piles a careful troop attends,
To watch the wasting flames, and weep their burning friends--
Lingering along the shore, till dewy night
New decks the face of heaven with starry light.
The conquered Latians, with like pious care,
Piles without number for their dead prepare.
Part, in the places where they fell, are laid;
And part are to the neighbouring fields conveyed.
The corps of kings, and captains of renown,
Borne off in state, are buried in the town;
The rest, unhonoured, and without a name,
Are cast a common heap to feed the flame.
Trojans and Latians vie with like desires }
To make the field of battle shine with fires, }
And the promiscuous blaze to heaven aspires. }
Now had the morning thrice renewed the light,
And thrice dispelled the shadows of the night,
When those who round the wasted fires remain,
Perform the last sad office to the slain.
They rake the yet warm ashes from below;
These, and the bones unburned, in earth bestow:
These reliques with their country rites they grace,
And raise a mount of turf to mark the place.
But, in the palace of the king, appears
A scene more solemn, and a pomp of tears.
Maids, matrons, widows, mix their common moans;
Orphans their sires, and sires lament their sons.
All in that universal sorrow share,
And curse the cause of this unhappy war--
A broken league, a bride unjustly sought,
A crown usurped, which with their blood is bought!
These are the crimes, with which they load the name
Of Turnus, and on him alone exclaim:--
"Let him, who lords it o'er the Ausonian land,
Engage the Trojan hero hand to hand:
His is the gain; our lot is but to serve;
'Tis just, the sway he seeks, he should deserve."
This Drances aggravates; and adds, with spite,
His foe expects, and dares him to the fight.
Nor Turnus wants a party, to support
His cause and credit in the Latian court.
His former acts secure his present fame,
And the queen shades him with her mighty name.
While thus their factious minds with fury burn,
The legates from the Ætolian prince return:
Sad news they bring, that, after all the cost
And care employed, their embassy is lost;
That Diomede refused his aid in war,
Unmoved with presents, and as deaf to prayer.
Some new alliance must elsewhere be sought,
Or peace with Troy on hard conditions bought.
Latinus, sunk in sorrow, finds too late,
A foreign son is pointed out by fate;
And, till Æneas shall Lavinia wed,
The wrath of heaven is hovering o'er his head.
The gods, he saw, espoused the juster side, }
When late their titles in the field were tried: }
Witness the fresh laments, and funeral tears undried. }
Thus full of anxious thought, he summons all
The Latian senate to the council-hall.
The princes come, commanded by
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