The Aeneid
Page 22
a warning against such monstrous passion. Here its lair,
that house of labor, the endless blinding maze,
but Daedalus, pitying royal Ariadne’s love so deep,
unraveled his own baffling labyrinth’s winding paths,
guiding Theseus’ groping steps with a trail of thread.
And you too, Icarus, what part you might have played
in a work that great, had Daedalus’ grief allowed it.
Twice he tried to engrave your fall in gold and
twice his hands, a father’s hands, fell useless.
Yes,
and they would have kept on scanning scene by scene
if Achates, sent ahead, had not returned, bringing
Deiphobe, Glaucus’ daughter, priestess of Phoebus
and Diana too, and the Sibyl tells the king:
“This is no time for gazing at the sights.
Better to slaughter seven bulls from a herd
unbroken by the yoke, as the old rite requires,
and as many head of teething yearling sheep.”
Directing Aeneas so—and his men are quick
with the sacrifice she demands—
the Sibyl calls them into her lofty shrine.
Now carved out of the rocky flanks of Cumae
lies an enormous cavern pierced by a hundred tunnels,
a hundred mouths with as many voices rushing out,
the Sibyl’s rapt replies. They had just gained
the sacred sill when the virgin cries aloud:
“Now is the time to ask your fate to speak!
The god, look, the god!”
So she cries before
the entrance—suddenly all her features, all
her color changes, her braided hair flies loose
and her breast heaves, her heart bursts with frenzy,
she seems to rise in height, the ring of her voice no longer
human—the breath, the power of god comes closer, closer.
“Why so slow, Trojan Aeneas?” she shouts, “so slow
to pray, to swear your vows? Not until you do
will the great jaws of our spellbound house gape wide.”
And with that command the prophetess fell silent.
An icy shiver runs through the Trojans’ sturdy spines
and the king’s prayers come pouring from his heart:
“Apollo, you always pitied the Trojans’ heavy labors!
You guided the arrow of Paris, pierced Achilles’ body.
You led me through many seas, bordering endless coasts,
far-off Massylian tribes, and fields washed by the Syrtes,
and now, at long last, Italy’s shores, forever fading,
lie within our grasp. Let the doom of Troy pursue us
just this far, no more. You too, you gods and goddesses,
all who could never suffer Troy and Troy’s high glory,
spare the people of Pergamum now, it’s only right.
And you, you blessed Sibyl who knows the future,
grant my prayer. I ask no more than the realm
my fate decrees: let the Trojans rest in Latium,
they and their roaming gods, their rootless powers!
Then I will build you a solid marble temple,
Apollo and Diana, establish hallowed days,
Apollo, in your name. And Sibyl, for you too,
a magnificent sacred shrine awaits you in our kingdom.
There I will house your oracles, mystic revelations
made to our race, and ordain your chosen priests,
my gracious lady. Just don’t commit your words
to the rustling, scattering leaves—
sport of the winds that whirl them all away.
Sing them yourself, I beg you!” There Aeneas stopped.
But the Sibyl, still not broken in by Apollo, storms
with a wild fury through her cave. And the more she tries
to pitch the great god off her breast, the more his bridle
exhausts her raving lips, overwhelming her untamed heart,
bending her to his will. Now the hundred immense
mouths of the house swing open, all on their own,
and bear the Sibyl’s answers through the air:
“You who have braved the terrors of the sea,
though worse remain on land—you Trojans will reach
Lavinium’s realm—lift that care from your hearts—
but you will rue your arrival. Wars, horrendous wars,
and the Tiber foaming with tides of blood, I see it all!
Simois, Xanthus, a Greek camp—you’ll never lack them here.
Already a new Achilles springs to life in Latium,
son of a goddess too! Nor will Juno ever fail
to harry the Trojan race, and all the while,
pleading, pressed by need—what tribes, what towns
of Italy won’t you beg for help! And the cause of this,
this new Trojan grief? Again a stranger bride,
a marriage with a stranger once again.
But never bow to suffering, go and face it,
all the bolder, wherever Fortune clears the way.
Your path to safety will open first from where
you least expect it—a city built by Greeks!”
Those words
re-echoing from her shrine, the Cumaean Sibyl chants
her riddling visions filled with dread, her cave resounds
as she shrouds the truth in darkness—Phoebus whips her on
in all her frenzy, twisting his spurs below her breast.
As soon as her fury dies and raving lips fall still,
the hero Aeneas launches in: “No trials, my lady,
can loom before me in any new, surprising form.
No, deep in my spirit I have known them all,
I’ve faced them all before. But grant one prayer.
Since here, they say, are the gates of Death’s king
and the dark marsh where the Acheron comes flooding up,
please, allow me to go and see my beloved father,
meet him face-to-face.
Teach me the way, throw wide the sacred doors!
Through fires, a thousand menacing spears I swept him off
on these shoulders, saved him from our enemies’ onslaught.
He shared all roads and he braved all seas with me,
all threats of the waves and skies—frail as he was
but graced with a strength beyond his years, his lot.
He was the one, in fact, who ordered, pressed me on
to reach your doors and seek you, beg you now.
Pity the son and father, I pray you, kindly lady!
All power is yours. Hecate held back nothing,
put you in charge of Avernus’ groves. If Orpheus
could summon up the ghost of his wife, trusting so
to his Thracian lyre and echoing strings; if Pollux
could ransom his brother and share his death by turns,
time and again traversing the same road up and down;
if Theseus, mighty Hercules—must I mention them?
I too can trace my birth from Jove on high.”
So he prayed,
grasping the altar while the Sibyl gave her answer:
“Born of the blood of gods, Anchises’ son,
man of Troy, the descent to the Underworld is easy.
Night and day the gates of shadowy Death stand open wide,
but to retrace your steps, to climb back to the upper air—
there the struggle, there the labor lies. Only a few,
loved by impartial Jove or borne aloft to the sky
by their own fiery virtue—some sons of the gods
have made their way. The entire heartland here
is thick with woods, Cocytus glides around it,
coiling dense and dark.
But if such a wild desire seizes on you—twice
to sail
the Stygian marsh, to see black Tartarus twice—
if you’re so eager to give yourself to this, this mad ordeal,
then hear what you must accomplish first.
“Hidden
deep in a shady tree there grows a golden bough,
its leaves and its hardy, sinewy stem all gold,
held sacred to Juno of the Dead, Proserpina.
The whole grove covers it over, dusky valleys
enfold it too, closing in around it. No one
may pass below the secret places of earth before
he plucks the fruit, the golden foliage of that tree.
As her beauty’s due, Proserpina decreed this bough
shall be offered up to her as her own hallowed gift.
When the first spray’s torn away, another takes its place,
gold too, the metal breaks into leaf again, all gold.
Lift up your eyes and search, and once you find it,
duly pluck it off with your hand. Freely, easily,
all by itself it comes away, if Fate calls you on.
If not, no strength within you can overpower it,
no iron blade, however hard, can tear it off.
“One thing more I must tell you.
A friend lies dead—oh, you could not know—
his body pollutes your entire fleet with death
while you search on for oracles, linger at our doors.
Bear him first to his place of rest, bury him in his tomb.
Lead black cattle there, first offerings of atonement.
Only then can you set eyes on the Stygian groves
and the realms no living man has ever trod.”
Abruptly she fell silent, lips sealed tight.
His eyes fixed on the ground, his face in tears,
Aeneas moves on, leaving the cavern, turning over
within his mind these strange, dark events.
His trusty comrade Achates keeps his pace
and the same cares weigh down his plodding steps.
They traded many questions, wondering, back and forth,
what dead friend did the Sibyl mean, whose body must be buried?
Suddenly, Misenus—out on the dry beach they see him,
reach him now, cut off by a death all undeserved.
Misenus, Aeolus’ son, a herald unsurpassed
at rallying troops with his trumpet’s cry,
igniting the God of War with its shrill blare.
He had been mighty Hector’s friend, by Hector’s side
in the rush of battle, shining with spear and trumpet both.
But when triumphant Achilles stripped Hector’s life,
the gallant hero joined forces with Dardan Aeneas,
followed a captain every bit as strong. But then,
chancing to make the ocean ring with his hollow shell,
the madman challenged the gods to match him blast for blast
and jealous Triton—if we can believe the story—
snatched him up and drowned the man in the surf
that seethed between the rocks.
So all his shipmates
gathered round his body and raised a loud lament,
devoted Aeneas in the lead. Then still in tears,
they rush to perform the Sibyl’s orders, no delay,
they strive to pile up trees, to build an altar-pyre
rising to the skies. Then into an ancient wood
and the hidden dens of beasts they make their way,
and down crash the pines, the ilex rings to the axe,
the trunks of ash and oak are split by the driving wedge,
and they roll huge rowans down the hilly slopes.
Aeneas spurs his men in the forefront of their labors,
geared with the same woodsmen’s tools around his waist.
But the same anxiety keeps on churning in his heart
as he scans the endless woods and prays by chance:
“If only that golden bough would gleam before us now
on a tree in this dark grove! Since all the Sibyl
foretold of you was true, Misenus, all too true.”
No sooner said than before his eyes, twin doves
chanced to come flying down the sky and lit
on the green grass at his feet. His mother’s birds—
the great captain knew them and raised a prayer of joy:
“Be my guides! If there’s a path, fly through the air,
set me a course to the grove where that rich branch
shades the good green earth. And you, goddess,
mother, don’t fail me in this, my hour of doubt!”
With that he stopped in his tracks, watching keenly—
what sign would they offer? Where would they lead?
And on they flew, pausing to feed, then flying on
as far as a follower’s eye could track their flight
and once they reached the foul-smelling gorge of Avernus,
up they veered, quickly, then slipped down through the clear air
to settle atop the longed-for goal, the twofold tree, its green
a foil for the breath of gold that glows along its branch.
As mistletoe in the dead of winter’s icy forests
leafs with life on a tree that never gave it birth,
embracing the smooth trunk with its pale yellow bloom,
so glowed the golden foliage against the ilex evergreen,
so rustled the sheer gold leaf in the light breeze.
Aeneas grips it at once—the bough holds back—
he tears it off in his zeal
and bears it into the vatic Sibyl’s shrine.
All the while
the Trojans along the shore keep weeping for Misenus,
paying his thankless ashes final rites. And first
they build an immense pyre of resinous pitch-pine
and oaken logs, weaving into its flanks dark leaves
and setting before it rows of funereal cypress,
crowning it all with the herald’s gleaming arms.
Some heat water in cauldrons fired to boiling,
bathe and anoint the body chill with death.
The dirge rises up. Then, their weeping over,
they lay his corpse on a litter, swathe him round
in purple robes that form the well-known shroud.
Some hoisted up the enormous bier—sad service—
their eyes averted, after their fathers’ ways of old,
and thrust the torch below. The piled offerings blazed,
frankincense, hallowed foods and brimming bowls of oil.
And after the coals sank in and the fires died down,
they washed his embers, thirsty remains, with wine.
Corynaeus sealed the bones he culled in a bronze urn,
then circling his comrades three times with pure water,
sprinkling light drops from a blooming olive spray,
he cleansed the men and voiced the last farewell.
But devout Aeneas mounds the tomb—an immense barrow
crowned with the man’s own gear, his oar and trumpet—
under a steep headland, called after the herald now
and for all time to come it bears Misenus’ name.
The rite
performed, Aeneas hurries to carry out the Sibyl’s orders.
There was a vast cave deep in the gaping, jagged rock,
shielded well by a dusky lake and shadowed grove.
Over it no bird on earth could make its way unscathed,
such poisonous vapors steamed up from its dark throat
to cloud the arching sky. Here, as her first step,
the priestess steadies four black-backed calves,
she tips wine on their brows, then plucks some tufts
from the crown between their horns and casts them
over the altar fire, first offerings, crying out
to Hecate, mighty Queen of Heaven and Hell.
Attendants run knives under throats and catch
warm blood in bowls. Aeneas himself, sword drawn,
slaughters a black-fleeced lamb to the Furies’ mother,
Night, and to her great sister, Earth, and to you,
Proserpina, kills a barren heifer. Then to the king
of the river Styx, he raises altars into the dark night
and over their fires lays whole carcasses of bulls
and pours fat oil over their entrails flaming up.
Then suddenly, look, at the break of day, first light,
the earth groans underfoot and the wooded heights quake
and across the gloom the hounds seem to howl
at the goddess coming closer.
“Away, away!”
the Sibyl shrieks, “all you unhallowed ones—away
from this whole grove! But you launch out on your journey,
tear your sword from its sheath, Aeneas. Now for courage,
now the steady heart!” And the Sibyl says no more but
into the yawning cave she flings herself, possessed—
he follows her boldly, matching stride for stride.
You gods
who govern the realm of ghosts, you voiceless shades and Chaos—
you, the River of Fire, you far-flung regions hushed in night—
lend me the right to tell what I have heard, lend your power
to reveal the world immersed in the misty depths of earth.
On they went, those dim travelers under the lonely night,
through gloom and the empty halls of Death’s ghostly realm,
like those who walk through woods by a grudging moon’s
deceptive light when Jove has plunged the sky in dark
and the black night drains all color from the world.
There in the entryway, the gorge of hell itself,
Grief and the pangs of Conscience make their beds,
and fatal pale Disease lives there, and bleak Old Age,
Dread and Hunger, seductress to crime, and grinding Poverty,
all, terrible shapes to see—and Death and deadly Struggle
and Sleep, twin brother of Death, and twisted, wicked Joys
and facing them at the threshold, War, rife with death,
and the Furies’ iron chambers, and mad, raging Strife
whose blood-stained headbands knot her snaky locks.
There in the midst, a giant shadowy elm tree spreads
her ancient branching arms, home, they say, to swarms
of false dreams, one clinging tight under each leaf.
And a throng of monsters too—what brutal forms
are stabled at the gates—Centaurs, mongrel Scyllas,