The Aeneid
Page 12
Never refuse to bow to my commands.
“‘There,
yes, where you see the massive ramparts shattered,
blocks wrenched from blocks, the billowing smoke and ash—
it’s Neptune himself, prising loose with his giant trident
the foundation-stones of Troy, he’s making the walls quake,
ripping up the entire city by her roots.
“‘There’s Juno,
cruelest in fury, first to commandeer the Scaean Gates,
sword at her hip and mustering comrades, shock troops
streaming out of the ships.
“‘Already up on the heights—
turn around and look—there’s Pallas holding the fortress,
flaming out of the clouds, her savage Gorgon glaring.
Even Father himself, he’s filling the Greek hearts
with courage, stamina—Jove in person spurring the gods
to fight the Trojan armies!
“‘Run for your life, my son.
Put an end to your labors. I will never leave you,
I will set you safe at your father’s door.’
“Parting words. She vanished into the dense night.
And now they all come looming up before me,
terrible shapes, the deadly foes of Troy,
the gods gigantic in power.
“Then at last
I saw it all, all Ilium settling into her embers,
Neptune’s Troy, toppling over now from her roots
like a proud, veteran ash on its mountain summit,
chopped by stroke after stroke of the iron axe as
woodsmen fight to bring it down, and over and
over it threatens to fall, its boughs shudder,
its leafy crown quakes and back and forth it sways
till overwhelmed by its wounds, with a long last groan
it goes—torn up from its heights it crashes down
in ruins from its ridge . . .
Venus leading, down from the roof I climb
and win my way through fires and massing foes.
The spears recede, the flames roll back before me.
“At last, gaining the door of father’s ancient house,
my first concern was to find the man, my first wish
to spirit him off, into the high mountain range,
but father, seeing Ilium razed from the earth,
refused to drag his life out now and suffer exile.
‘You,’ he argued, ‘you in your prime, untouched by age,
your blood still coursing strong, you hearts of oak,
you are the ones to hurry your escape. Myself,
if the gods on high had wished me to live on,
they would have saved my palace for me here.
Enough—more than enough—that I have seen
one sack of my city, once survived its capture.
Here I lie, here laid out for death. Come say
your parting salutes and leave my body so.
I will find my own death, sword in hand:
my enemies keen for spoils will be so kind.
Death without burial? A small price to pay.
For years now, I’ve lingered out my life,
despised by the gods, a dead weight to men,
ever since the Father of Gods and King of Mortals
stormed at me with his bolt and scorched me with its fire.’
“So he said, planted there. Nothing could shake him now.
But we dissolved in tears, my wife, Creusa, Ascanius,
the whole household, begging my father not to pull
our lives down with him, adding his own weight
to the fate that dragged us down.
He still refuses, holds to his resolve,
clings to the spot. And again I rush to arms,
desperate to die myself. Where could I turn?
What were our chances now, at this point?
‘What!’ I cried. ‘Did you, my own father,
dream that I could run away and desert you here?
How could such an outrage slip from a father’s lips?
If it please the gods that nothing of our great city
shall survive—if you are bent on adding your own death
to the deaths of Troy and of all your loved ones too,
the doors of the deaths you crave are spread wide open.
Pyrrhus will soon be here, bathed in Priam’s blood,
Pyrrhus who butchers sons in their fathers’ faces,
slaughters fathers at the altar. Was it for this,
my loving mother, you swept me clear of the weapons,
free of the flames? Just to see the enemy camped
in the very heart of our house, to see my son, Ascanius,
see my father, my wife, Creusa, with them, sacrificed,
massacred in each other’s blood?
‘Arms, my comrades,
bring me arms! The last light calls the defeated.
Send me back to the Greeks, let me go back
to fight new battles. Not all of us here
will die today without revenge.’
“Now buckling on
my sword again and working my left arm through
the shieldstrap, grasping it tightly, just as I
was rushing out, right at the doors my wife, Creusa,
look, flung herself at my feet and hugged my knees
and raised our little Iulus up to his father.
‘If you are going off to die,’ she begged,
‘then take us with you too,
to face the worst together. But if your battles
teach you to hope in arms, the arms you buckle on,
your first duty should be to guard our house.
Desert us, leave us now—to whom? Whom?
Little Iulus, your father and your wife,
so I once was called.’
“So Creusa cries,
her wails of anguish echoing through the house
when out of the blue an omen strikes—a marvel!
Now as we held our son between our hands
and both our grieving faces, a tongue of fire,
watch, flares up from the crown of Iulus’ head,
a subtle flame licking his downy hair, feeding
around the boy’s brow, and though it never harmed him,
panicked, we rush to shake the flame from his curls
and smother the holy fire, damp it down with water.
But Father Anchises lifts his eyes to the stars in joy
and stretching his hands toward the sky, sings out:
‘Almighty Jove! If any prayer can persuade you now,
look down on us—that’s all I ask—if our devotion
has earned it, grant us another omen, Father,
seal this first clear sign.’
“No sooner said
than an instant peal of thunder crashes on the left
and down from the sky a shooting star comes gliding,
trailing a flaming torch to irradiate the night
as it comes sweeping down. We watch it sailing
over the topmost palace roofs to bury itself,
still burning bright, in the forests of Mount Ida,
blazing its path with light, leaving a broad furrow,
a fiery wake, and miles around the smoking sulfur fumes.
Won over at last, my father rises to his full height
and prays to the gods and reveres that holy star:
‘No more delay, not now! You gods of my fathers,
now I follow wherever you lead me, I am with you.
Safeguard our house, safeguard my grandson Iulus!
This sign is yours: Troy rests in your power.
I give way, my son. No more refusals.
I will go with you, your comrade.’
“So he yielded
but now the roar of flames grows louder all through Troy
and the seething floods of fire are ro
lling closer.
‘So come, dear father, climb up onto my shoulders!
I will carry you on my back. This labor of love
will never wear me down. Whatever falls to us now,
we both will share one peril, one path to safety.
Little Iulus, walk beside me, and you, my wife,
follow me at a distance, in my footsteps.
Servants, listen closely . . .
Just past the city walls a grave-mound lies
where an old shrine of forsaken Ceres stands
with an ancient cypress growing close beside it—
our fathers’ reverence kept it green for years.
Coming by many routes, it’s there we meet,
our rendezvous. And you, my father, carry
our hearth-gods now, our fathers’ sacred vessels.
I, just back from the war and fresh from slaughter,
I must not handle the holy things—it’s wrong—
not till I cleanse myself in running springs.’
“With that,
over my broad shoulders and round my neck I spread
a tawny lion’s skin for a cloak, and bowing down,
I lift my burden up. Little Iulus, clutching
my right hand, keeps pace with tripping steps.
My wife trails on behind. And so we make our way
along the pitch-dark paths, and I who had never flinched
at the hurtling spears or swarming Greek assaults—
now every stir of wind, every whisper of sound
alarms me, anxious both for the child beside me
and burden on my back. And then, nearing the gates,
thinking we’ve all got safely through, I suddenly
seem to catch the steady tramp of marching feet
and father, peering out through the darkness, cries:
‘Run for it now, my boy, you must. They’re closing in,
I can see their glinting shields, their flashing bronze!’
“Then in my panic something strange, some enemy power
robbed me of my senses. Lost, I was leaving behind
familiar paths, at a run down blind dead ends
when—
“Oh dear god, my wife, Creusa—
torn from me by a brutal fate! What then,
did she stop in her tracks or lose her way?
Or exhausted, sink down to rest? Who knows?
I never set my eyes on her again.
I never looked back, she never crossed my mind—
Creusa, lost—not till we reached that barrow
sacred to ancient Ceres where, with all our people
rallied at last, she alone was missing. Lost
to her friends, her son, her husband—gone forever.
Raving, I blamed them all, the gods, the human race—
what crueler blow did I feel the night that Troy went down?
Ascanius, father Anchises, and all the gods of Troy,
entrusting them to my friends, I hide them well away
in a valley’s shelter, don my burnished gear
and back I go to Troy . . .
my mind steeled to relive the whole disaster,
retrace my route through the whole city now
and put my life in danger one more time.
“First then,
back to the looming walls, the shadowy rear gates
by which I’d left the city, back I go in my tracks,
retracing, straining to find my footsteps in the dark,
with terror at every turn, the very silence makes me cringe.
Then back to my house I go—if only, only she’s gone there—
but the Greeks have flooded in, seized the entire place.
All over now. Devouring fire whipped by the winds
goes churning into the rooftops, flames surging
over them, scorching blasts raging up the sky.
On I go and again I see the palace of Priam
set on the heights, but there in colonnades
deserted now, in the sanctuary of Juno, there
stand the elite watchmen, Phoenix, ruthless Ulysses
guarding all their loot. All the treasures of Troy
hauled from the burning shrines—the sacramental tables,
bowls of solid gold and the holy robes they’d seized
from every quarter—Greeks, piling high the plunder.
Children and trembling mothers rounded up
in a long, endless line.
“Why, I even dared fling
my voice through the dark, my shouts filled the streets
as time and again, overcome with grief I called out
‘Creusa!’ Nothing, no reply, and again ‘Creusa!’
But then as I madly rushed from house to house,
no end in sight, abruptly, right before my eyes
I saw her stricken ghost, my own Creusa’s shade.
But larger than life, the life I’d known so well.
I froze. My hackles bristled, voice choked in my throat,
and my wife spoke out to ease me of my anguish:
‘My dear husband, why so eager to give yourself
to such mad flights of grief? It’s not without
the will of the gods these things have come to pass.
But the gods forbid you to take Creusa with you,
bound from Troy together. The king of lofty Olympus
won’t allow it. A long exile is your fate . . .
the vast plains of the sea are yours to plow
until you reach Hesperian land, where Lydian Tiber
flows with its smooth march through rich and loamy fields,
a land of hardy people. There great joy and a kingdom
are yours to claim, and a queen to make your wife.
Dispel your tears for Creusa whom you loved.
I will never behold the high and mighty pride
of their palaces, the Myrmidons, the Dolopians,
or go as a slave to some Greek matron, no, not I,
daughter of Dardanus that I am, the wife of Venus’ son.
The Great Mother of Gods detains me on these shores.
And now farewell. Hold dear the son we share,
we love together.’
“These were her parting words
and for all my tears—I longed to say so much—
dissolving into the empty air she left me now.
Three times I tried to fling my arms around her neck,
three times I embraced—nothing . . . her phantom
sifting through my fingers,
light as wind, quick as a dream in flight.
“Gone—
and at last the night was over. Back I went to my people
and I was amazed to see what throngs of new companions
had poured in to swell our numbers, mothers, men,
our forces gathered for exile, grieving masses.
They had come together from every quarter,
belongings, spirits ready for me to lead them
over the sea to whatever lands I’d choose.
And now the morning star was mounting above
the high crests of Ida, leading on the day.
The Greeks had taken the city, blocked off every gate.
No hope of rescue now. So I gave way at last and
lifting my father, headed toward the mountains.”
BOOK THREE
Landfalls, Ports of Call
“Now that it pleased the gods to crush the power of Asia
and Priam’s innocent people, now proud Troy had fallen—
Neptune’s city a total ruin smoking on the ground—
signs from the high gods drive us on, exiles now,
searching earth for a home in some neglected land.
We labor to build a fleet—hard by Antandros,
under the heights of Phrygian Ida—knowing nothing.
Where would destiny take us? Where are we to settle?
We muster m
en for crews. Summer has just begun
when father commands us: ‘Hoist our sails to Fate!’
And I launch out in tears and desert our native land,
the old safe haven, the plains where Troy once stood.
So I take to the open sea, an exile outward bound
with son and comrades, gods of hearth and home
and the great gods themselves.
“Just in the offing
lies the land of Mars, the boundless farmlands tilled
by the Thracian fieldhands, ruled in the old days
by merciless Lycurgus. His realm was a friend
of Troy for years, our household gods in league
so long as our fortunes lasted. Well, here I sail
and begin to build our first walls on the curving shore,
though Fate will block our way—and I give the town
the name of Aenus modeled on my own.
“Now,
making offerings to my mother, Dione’s daughter,
and to the gods who bless new ventures, I was poised,
there on the beach, to slaughter a pure white bull
to Jove above all who rules the Powers on high.
Nearby I chanced on a rise of ground topped off
by thickets bristling dogwood and myrtle spears.
I tried to tear some green shoots from the brush
to make a canopy for the altar with leafy boughs,
when a dreadful, ghastly sight, too strange for words,
strikes my eyes.
“Soon as I tear the first stalk
from its roots and rip it up from the earth . . .
dark blood oozes out and fouls the soil with filth.
Icy shudders rack my limbs—my blood chills with fear.
But again I try, I tear at another stubborn stalk—
I’ll probe this mystery to its hidden roots,
and again the dark blood runs from the torn bark.
Deeply shaken, I pray to the country nymphs
and Father Mars who strides the fields of Thrace:
‘Make this sight a blessing, lift the omen’s weight!’
But now as I pitch at a third stalk, doubling my effort,
knees bracing against the sand, struggling to pry it loose—
shall I tell you or hold my tongue?—I hear it, clearly,
a wrenching groan rising up from the deep mound,
a cry heaving into the air: ‘Why, Aeneas,
why mangle this wretched flesh? Spare the body
buried here—spare your own pure hands, don’t stain them!
I am no stranger to you. I was born in Troy,
and the blood you see is oozing from no tree.
Oh escape from this savage land, I beg you,
flee these grasping shores! I am Polydorus.