The Aeneid
Page 15
if the tale is true, then looming over the waves ahead,
Lacinian Juno’s temple, Caulon’s fort on the rugged coast
of Scylaceum, wrecker of ships, then far across the seas,
rising up from the swells, we can see Mount Etna, Sicily,
hear the tremendous groaning of waters, pounding rocks,
the resounding roar of breakers crashing on the shore—
reefs spring up, swirling sand in the sea-surge.
Father Anchises cries out: ‘Surely that’s Charybdis,
those the cliffs that Helenus warned of, craggy deathtraps.
Row for your lives, my shipmates—backs in the oars, now stroke!’
“They snapped to commands, pulled hard, Palinurus first
to swerve his shuddering prow to port for open sea
and the whole fleet swung to port with oars and sails.
Up to the sky an immense billow hoists us, then at once,
as the wave sank down, down we plunge to the pit of hell.
Three times the cliffs roared out from between the hollow caves,
three times we saw the spume exploding to spray the stars.
At last the sun and the wind went down, abandoned us,
broken men, our bearings lost . . . floating adrift
toward the Cyclops’ coast.
“There is a harbor
clear of the wind, and spacious, calm, a haven,
but Etna rumbles, hard by, showering deadly scree
and now it heaves into the sky a thundering dark cloud,
a whirlwind pitch-black with smoke and red-hot coals
and it hurls up huge balls of fire that lap the stars—
and now it vomits rocks ripped from the mountain’s bowels
erupting lava into the air, enormous molten boulders,
groaning magma roiling up from its bedrock depths.
They say Enceladus’ body, half-devoured by lightning,
lies crushed under Etna’s mass, the mighty volcano piled
over him, breathing flames from its furnaces blasting open,
and every time the giant rolls on his bone-weary side
all Sicily moans, quakes, shrouds the sky with smoke.
Covered by woods that night we brave out horrors,
unable to see what made such a monstrous uproar.
The stars were extinguished, the high skies black,
the luminous heavens blotted out by a thick cloud cover,
the dead of night had wrapped the moon in mist.
“At last
the day was breaking, the morning star on the rise,
Aurora had just burned off the night’s dank fog,
when suddenly out of the woods the weird shape
of a man, a stranger, all but starved to death,
in wretched condition, emerges, staggers toward us,
hands outstretched to us on the beaches, begging mercy.
We turned, looked back at him . . . his filth appalling,
his beard all tangled, his rags hooked up with thorns.
Still, head to foot a Greek, a man once sent to Troy
equipped with his country’s arms. Soon as he saw
our Dardan dress from afar, our Trojan swords,
he froze in his tracks a moment, gripped by fear,
then breakneck made for the shore with tears and prayers:
‘I beg you, Trojans, beg by the stars, the gods above,
the clear bright air we breathe—sail me off and away!
Anywhere, any land you please, that’s all I want.
I am, I confess, a man from the Greek fleets,
I admit I fought to seize your household gods.
For that, if my crime against you is so wicked,
rip me to bits and fling the bits in the sea,
plunge me into the depths! If die I must,
death at the hands of men will be a joy!’
“With that,
he clutched my knees and kneeling, groveling, clung fast.
We press him hard—who is he? Who are his parents?
What rough fortune has driven him to despair?
Father Anchises, barely pausing, gives the man his hand
and the friendly gesture lifts the stranger’s spirits.
Setting his fears aside, he starts out on his story:
‘I come from Ithaca, my country . . .
unlucky Ulysses’ comrade. Call me Achaemenides.
My father Adamastus was poor, and so I sailed to Troy—
Oh if only our poverty lasted longer! But here
my comrades left me, forgot me—this monstrous cave
of the Cyclops—fleeing in terror from its brutal mouth.
This gruesome house. Gory with its hideous feasts.
Pitch-dark inside. Immense. The giant himself,
his head scrapes the stars! God save our earth
from such a scourge! No looking him in the face,
no trying to reach him with a word. He gorges himself
on the innards and black blood of all his wretched victims.
With my own eyes I’ve seen him snatch a pair of our men
in one massive hand and, sprawling amidst his lair,
crush their bodies on the rocks till the cave’s maw
swam with splashing blood. I’ve seen him gnawing limbs,
oozing dark filth, and the warm flesh twitching still
between his grinding jaws.
“‘But what a price he paid!
Ulysses would not tolerate such an outrage,
always true to himself when it’s life-or-death.
Soon as the monster gorged himself to bursting,
buried deep in wine, his neck slumping to one side,
spreading his huge hulk across his cave, dead asleep
but retching chunks of flesh and wine awash with filth—
we prayed to the great gods, drew lots, rushed in a ring
around him there and drilled out with a stabbing spike
his one enormous eye, lodged deep in his grisly brow,
big as a Greek shield or Apollo’s torch, the sun.
So at last we avenged our comrades’ shades—elated.
“‘But you, poor men, run now, run for your lives,
cut your hawsers, sail away! Just as horrible,
huge as Polyphemus here in his rocky cavern,
penning his woolly sheep, milking their udders dry,
there are a hundred more accursed Cyclops, everywhere,
crowding the deep inlets, lumbering over the ridged hills.
Three times now the horns of the moon have filled with light
since I’ve dragged out my lonely days through the woods,
where only the wild things have their dens and lairs,
and watched from a lookout crag for the giant Cyclops,
quaking to hear their rumbling tread, their shouts.
I live on the meager fare the branches offer,
berries and cornel nuts as hard as rocks, and feed
on roots I tear from the earth. As I scanned the horizon,
yours were the first ships that I’d seen come ashore.
I throw myself on your mercy, whoever you may be.
Enough for me to escape that barbarous crew!
Better for you to take this wretched life—
by any death you please.’
“He’d barely finished
when there, up on a ridge we saw him, Polyphemus!
The shepherd among his flock, hauling his massive hulk,
groping toward the shore he knew by heart. The monster,
immense, gargantuan, hideous—blind, his lone eye gone—
clutching a pine-tree trunk to keep his footing firm.
His woolly sheep at his side, his sole pleasure,
his only solace in pain . . .
Soon as the giant gained deep water and offshore swells,
he washed the blood still trickling down from his dug-out sock
et,
gnashing his teeth, groaning, and wades out in the surf
but the breakers still can’t douse his soaring thighs.
In panic we rush to escape, get clear of his reach,
take aboard the fugitive—he had earned his way—
and we cut our lines, dead quiet, put our backs
in a racing stroke that makes the waters churn.
“He hears us, wheels to follow our splashing oars
but he has no chance to seize us in his clutches,
he’s no match for Ionian tides in his pursuit,
so he gives a tremendous howl that shakes the sea
and all its waves, all Italy inland shudders in fear
and Etna’s echoing caverns bellow from their depths.
Down from the woods and high hills they lumber in alarm,
the tribe of Cyclops, down to the harbor, crowding the shore,
the brotherhood of Etna! We see them standing there, powerless,
each with his one glaring eye, their heads towering up,
an horrendous muster looming into the vaulting sky
like mountain oaks or cypress heavy with cones
in Jupiter’s soaring woods or Diana’s sacred grove.
“Breakneck on, impelled by the sharp edge of fear,
we shake our sheets out, spread our sails to the wind,
wherever it may blow. But we run counter to Helenus’
warnings not to steer between Scylla and Charybdis—
only a razor-edge between the devil and deep blue sea—
so it’s come about, we must swing back, when look,
a Northwind speeds to our rescue, sweeping South
from the narrow cape of Pelorus, driving us past
the Pantagias’ mouth, that haven of native rock,
past the bay of Megara, Thapsus lying low,
sea-marks pointed out by Achaemenides now,
retracing the shores he once had coasted past
as luckless Ulysses’ shipmate.
“There is an island
fronting the bay of Syracuse—over against Plemyrium’s
headland rocked by breakers—called Ortygia once
by men in the old days. They tell how Alpheus,
the Elean river, forcing his passage undersea
by secret channels, now, Arethusa, mixes streams
at your fountain’s mouth with your Sicilian waters.
We act on command, we worship the Powers of the place,
then sail on past the Helorus’ rich, marshy fields,
then brush by the jutting reefs of craggy Cape Pachynus,
then distant Camerina heaves into view, a town the Fates
will never allow to move, then Gela’s fields and Gela
named for its rushing torrent. Next in the offing
Acragas rears, steep city, once a famous breeder
of fiery steeds, and shows its mighty ramparts.
Next we run with the winds and leave Selinus,
city of palms, astern, then pick our way
by the shoals and hidden spurs of Lilybaeum.
Then, at last, the port of Drepanum takes me in,
a shore that brought no joy.
“Here, after all the blows
of sea and storm I lost my father, my mainstay
in every danger and defeat. Spent as I was,
you left me here, Anchises, best of fathers,
plucked from so many perils, all for nothing.
Not even Helenus, filled with dreadful warnings,
foresaw such grief for me—not even foul Celaeno.
This was my last ordeal, my long journey’s end.
From here I sailed. God drove me to your shores.”
So Aeneas,
with all eyes fixed on him alone, the founder of his people
recalled his wanderings now, the fates the gods had sent.
He fell hushed at last, his tale complete, at rest.
BOOK FOUR
The Tragic Queen of Carthage
But the queen—too long she has suffered the pain of love,
hour by hour nursing the wound with her lifeblood,
consumed by the fire buried in her heart.
The man’s courage, the sheer pride of his line,
they all come pressing home to her, over and over.
His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling—
no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none.
A new day’s dawn was moving over the earth, Aurora’s torch
cleansing the sky, burning away the dank shade of night
as the restless queen, beside herself, confides now
to the sister of her soul: “Dear Anna, the dreams
that haunt my quaking heart! Who is this stranger
just arrived to lodge in our house—our guest?
How noble his face, his courage, and what a soldier!
I’m sure—I know it’s true—the man is born of the gods.
Fear exposes the lowborn man at once. But, oh, how tossed
he’s been by the blows of fate. What a tale he’s told,
what a bitter bowl of war he’s drunk to the dregs.
If my heart had not been fixed, dead set against
embracing another man in the bonds of marriage—
ever since my first love deceived me, cheated me
by his death—if I were not as sick as I am
of the bridal bed and torch, this, perhaps,
is my one lapse that might have brought me down.
I confess it, Anna, yes. Ever since my Sychaeus,
my poor husband met his fate, and my own brother
shed his blood and stained our household gods,
this is the only man who’s roused me deeply,
swayed my wavering heart . . .
The signs of the old flame, I know them well.
I pray that the earth gape deep enough to take me down
or the almighty Father blast me with one bolt to the shades,
the pale, glimmering shades in hell, the pit of night,
before I dishonor you, my conscience, break your laws.
He’s carried my love away, the man who wed me first—
may he hold it tight, safeguard it in his grave.”
She broke off, her voice choking with tears
that brimmed and wet her breast.
But Anna answered:
“Dear one, dearer than light to me, your sister,
would you waste away, grieving your youth away, alone,
never to know the joy of children, all the gifts of love?
Do you really believe that’s what the dust desires,
the ghosts in their ashen tombs? Have it your way.
But granted that no one tempted you in the past,
not in your great grief,
no Libyan suitor, and none before in Tyre,
you scorned Iarbas and other lords of Africa,
sons bred by this fertile earth in all their triumph:
why resist it now, this love that stirs your heart?
Don’t you recall whose lands you settled here,
the men who press around you? On one side
the Gaetulian cities, fighters matchless in battle,
unbridled Numidians—Syrtes, the treacherous Sandbanks.
On the other side an endless desert, parched earth
where the wild Barcan marauders range at will.
Why mention the war that’s boiling up in Tyre,
your brother’s deadly threats? I think, in fact,
the favor of all the gods and Juno’s backing drove
these Trojan ships on the winds that sailed them here.
Think what a city you will see, my sister, what a kingdom
rising high if you marry such a man! With a Trojan army
marching at our side, think how the glory of Carthage
will tower to the clouds! Just ask the gods for pardon,
win them
with offerings. Treat your guests like kings.
Weave together some pretext for delay, while winter
spends its rage and drenching Orion whips the sea—
the ships still battered, weather still too wild.”
These were the words that fanned her sister’s fire,
turned her doubts to hopes and dissolved her sense of shame.
And first they visit the altars, make the rounds,
praying the gods for blessings, shrine by shrine.
They slaughter the pick of yearling sheep, the old way,
to Ceres, Giver of Laws, to Apollo, Bacchus who sets us free
and Juno above all, who guards the bonds of marriage.
Dido aglow with beauty holds the bowl in her right hand,
pouring wine between the horns of a pure white cow
or gravely paces before the gods’ fragrant altars,
under their statues’ eyes refreshing her first gifts,
dawn to dusk. And when the victims’ chests are splayed,
Dido, her lips parted, pores over their entrails,
throbbing still, for signs . . .
But, oh, how little they know, the omniscient seers.
What good are prayers and shrines to a person mad with love?
The flame keeps gnawing into her tender marrow hour by hour
and deep in her heart the silent wound lives on.
Dido burns with love—the tragic queen.
She wanders in frenzy through her city streets
like a wounded doe caught all off guard by a hunter
stalking the woods of Crete, who strikes her from afar
and leaves his winging steel in her flesh, and he’s unaware
but she veers in flight through Dicte’s woody glades,
fixed in her side the shaft that takes her life.
And now
Dido leads her guest through the heart of Carthage,
displaying Phoenician power, the city readied for him.
She’d speak her heart but her voice chokes, mid-word.
Now at dusk she calls for the feast to start again,
madly begging to hear again the agony of Troy,
to hang on his lips again, savoring his story.
Then, with the guests gone, and the dimming moon
quenching its light in turn, and the setting stars
inclining heads to sleep—alone in the echoing hall,
distraught, she flings herself on the couch that he left empty.
Lost as he is, she’s lost as well, she hears him, sees him
or she holds Ascanius back and dandles him on her lap,