part women, part beasts, and hundred-handed Briareus
and the savage Hydra of Lerna, that hissing horror,
the Chimaera armed with torches—Gorgons, Harpies
and triple-bodied Geryon, his great ghost. And here,
instantly struck with terror, Aeneas grips his sword
and offers its naked edge against them as they come,
and if his experienced comrade had not warned him
they are mere disembodied creatures, flimsy
will-o’-the-wisps that flit like living forms,
he would have rushed them all,
slashed through empty phantoms with his blade.
From there
the road leads down to the Acheron’s Tartarean waves.
Here the enormous whirlpool gapes aswirl with filth,
seethes and spews out all its silt in the Wailing River.
And here the dreaded ferryman guards the flood,
grisly in his squalor—Charon . . .
his scraggly beard a tangled mat of white, his eyes
fixed in a fiery stare, and his grimy rags hang down
from his shoulders by a knot. But all on his own
he punts his craft with a pole and hoists sail
as he ferries the dead souls in his rust-red skiff.
He’s on in years, but a god’s old age is hale and green.
A huge throng of the dead came streaming toward the banks:
mothers and grown men and ghosts of great-souled heroes,
their bodies stripped of life, and boys and unwed girls
and sons laid on the pyre before their parents’ eyes.
As thick as leaves in autumn woods at the first frost
that slip and float to earth, or dense as flocks of birds
that wing from the heaving sea to shore when winter’s chill
drives them over the waves to landfalls drenched in sunlight.
There they stood, pleading to be the first ones ferried over,
reaching out their hands in longing toward the farther shore.
But the grim ferryman ushers aboard now these, now those,
others he thrusts away, back from the water’s edge.
Aeneas,
astonished, stirred by the tumult, calls out: “Tell me,
Sibyl, what does it mean, this thronging toward the river?
What do the dead souls want? What divides them all?
Some are turned away from the banks and others
scull the murky waters with their oars!”
The aged priestess answered Aeneas briefly:
“Son of Anchises—born of the gods, no doubt—
what you see are Cocytus’ pools and Styx’s marsh,
Powers by which the gods swear oaths they dare not break.
And the great rout you see is helpless, still not buried.
That ferryman there is Charon. Those borne by the stream
have found their graves. And no spirits may be conveyed
across the horrendous banks and hoarse, roaring flood
until their bones are buried, and they rest in peace . . .
A hundred years they wander, hovering round these shores
till at last they may return and see once more the pools
they long to cross.”
Anchises’ son came to a halt
and stood there, pondering long, while pity filled his heart,
their lot so hard, unjust. And then he spots two men,
grief-stricken and robbed of death’s last tribute:
Leucaspis and Orontes, the Lycian fleet’s commander.
Together they sailed from Troy over windswept seas
and a Southern gale sprang up and
toppling breakers crushed their ships and crews.
Look,
the pilot Palinurus was drifting toward him now,
fresh from the Libyan run where, watching the stars,
he plunged from his stern, pitched out in heavy seas.
Aeneas, barely sighting him grieving in the shadows,
hailed him first: “What god, Palinurus, snatched you
from our midst and drowned you in open waters?
Tell me, please. Apollo has never lied before.
This is his one reply that’s played me false:
he swore you would cross the ocean safe and sound
and reach Italian shores. Is this the end he promised?”
But the pilot answered: “Captain, Anchises’ son,
Apollo’s prophetic cauldron has not failed you—
no god drowned me in open waters. No, the rudder
I clung to, holding us all on course—my charge—
some powerful force ripped it away by chance
and I dragged it down as I dropped headlong too.
By the cruel seas I swear I felt no fear for myself
to match my fear that your ship, stripped of her tiller,
steersman wrenched away, might founder in that great surge.
Three blustery winter nights the Southwind bore me wildly
over the endless waters, then at the fourth dawn, swept up
on a breaker’s crest, I could almost sight it now—Italy!
Stroke by stroke I swam for land, safety was in my grasp,
weighed down by my sodden clothes, my fingers clawing
the jutting spurs of a cliff, when a band of brutes
came at me, ran me through with knives, the fools,
they took me for plunder worth the taking.
The tides hold me now
and the stormwinds roll my body down the shore.
By the sky’s lovely light and the buoyant breeze I beg you,
by your father, your hopes for Iulus rising to his prime,
pluck me up from my pain, my undefeated captain!
Or throw some earth on my body—you know you can—
sail back to Velia’s port. Or if there’s a way and
your goddess mother makes it clear—for not without
the will of the gods, I’m certain, do you strive
to cross these awesome streams and Stygian marsh—
give me your pledge, your hand, in all my torment!
Take me with you over the waves. At least in death
I’ll find a peaceful haven.”
So the pilot begged
and so the Sibyl cut him short: “How, Palinurus,
how can you harbor this mad desire of yours?
You think that you, unburied, can lay your eyes
on the Styx’s flood, the Furies’ ruthless stream,
and approach the banks unsummoned? Hope no more
the gods’ decrees can be brushed aside by prayer.
Hold fast to my words and keep them well in mind
to comfort your hard lot. For neighboring people
living in cities near and far, compelled by signs
from the great gods on high, will appease your bones,
will build you a tomb and pay your tomb due rites
and the site will bear the name of Palinurus
now and always.”
That promise lifts his anguish,
drives, for a while, the grief from his sad heart.
He takes delight in the cape that bears his name.
So now they press on with their journey under way
and at last approach the river. But once the ferryman,
still out in the Styx’s currents, spied them moving
across the silent grove and turning toward the bank,
he greets them first with a rough abrupt rebuke:
“Stop, whoever you are at our river’s edge,
in full armor too! Why have you come? Speak up,
from right where you are, not one step more! This
is the realm of shadows, sleep and drowsy night.
The law forbids me to carry living bodies across
in my Stygian boat. I’d little joy, believe me,
when Hercules came and I sail
ed the hero over,
or Theseus, Pirithous, sons of gods as they were
with their high and mighty power. Hercules stole
our watchdog—chained him, the poor trembling creature,
dragged him away from our king’s very throne! The others
tried to snatch our queen from the bridal bed of Death!”
But Apollo’s seer broke in and countered Charon:
“There’s no such treachery here—just calm down—
no threat of force in our weapons. The huge guard
at the gates can howl for eternity from his cave,
terrifying the bloodless shades, Persephone keep
her chastity safe at home behind her uncle’s doors.
Aeneas of Troy, famous for his devotion, feats of arms,
goes down to the deepest shades of hell to see his father.
But if this image of devotion cannot move you, here,
this bough”—showing the bough enfolded in her robes—
“You know it well.”
At this, the heaving rage
subsides in his chest. The Sibyl says no more.
The ferryman, marveling at the awesome gift,
the fateful branch unseen so many years,
swerves his dusky craft and approaches shore.
The souls already crouched at the long thwarts—
he brusquely thrusts them out, clearing the gangways,
quickly taking massive Aeneas aboard the little skiff.
Under his weight the boat groans and her stitched seams
gape as she ships great pools of water pouring in.
At last, the river crossed, the ferryman lands
the seer and hero all unharmed in the marsh,
the repellent oozing slime and livid sedge.
These
are the realms that monstrous Cerberus rocks with howls
braying out of his three throats, his enormous bulk
squatting low in the cave that faced them there.
The Sibyl, seeing the serpents writhe around his neck,
tossed him a sop, slumbrous with honey and drugged seed,
and he, frothing with hunger, three jaws spread wide,
snapped it up where the Sibyl tossed it—gone.
His tremendous back relaxed, he sags to earth
and sprawls over all his cave, his giant hulk limp.
The watchdog buried now in sleep, Aeneas seizes
the way in, quickly clear of the river’s edge,
the point of no return.
At that moment, cries—
they could hear them now, a crescendo of wailing,
ghosts of infants weeping, robbed of their share
of this sweet life, at its very threshold too:
all, snatched from the breast on that black day
that swept them off and drowned them in bitter death.
Beside them were those condemned to die on a false charge.
But not without jury picked by lot, not without judge
are their places handed down. Not at all.
Minos the grand inquisitor stirs the urn,
he summons the silent jury of the dead,
he scans the lives of those accused, their charges.
The region next to them is held by those sad ghosts,
innocents all, who brought on death by their own hands;
despising the light, they threw their lives away.
How they would yearn, now, in the world above
to endure grim want and long hard labor!
But Fate bars the way. The grisly swamp
and its loveless, lethal waters bind them fast,
Styx with its nine huge coils holds them captive.
Close to the spot, extending toward the horizon—
the Sibyl points them out—are the Fields of Mourning,
that is the name they bear. Here wait those souls
consumed by the harsh, wasting sickness, cruel love,
concealed on lonely paths, shrouded by myrtle bowers.
Not even in death do their torments leave them, ever.
Here he glimpses Phaedra, Procris, and Eriphyle grieving,
baring the wounds her heartless son had dealt her.
Evadne, Pasiphaë, and Laodamia walking side by side,
and another, a young man once, a woman now, Caeneus,
turned back by Fate to the form she bore at first.
And wandering there among them, wound still fresh,
Phoenician Dido drifted along the endless woods.
As the Trojan hero paused beside her, recognized her
through the shadows, a dim, misty figure—as one
when the month is young may see or seem to see
the new moon rising up through banks of clouds—
that moment Aeneas wept and approached the ghost
with tender words of love: “Tragic Dido,
so, was the story true that came my way?
I heard that you were dead . . .
you took the final measure with a sword.
Oh, dear god, was it I who caused your death?
I swear by the stars, by the Powers on high, whatever
faith one swears by here in the depths of earth,
I left your shores, my Queen, against my will. Yes,
the will of the gods, that drives me through the shadows now,
these moldering places so forlorn, this deep unfathomed night—
their decrees have forced me on. Nor did I ever dream
my leaving could have brought you so much grief.
Stay a moment. Don’t withdraw from my sight.
Running away—from whom? This is the last word
that Fate allows me to say to you. The last.”
Aeneas, with such appeals, with welling tears,
tried to soothe her rage, her wild fiery glance.
But she, her eyes fixed on the ground, turned away,
her features no more moved by his pleas as he talked on
than if she were set in stony flint or Parian marble rock.
And at last she tears herself away, his enemy forever,
fleeing back to the shadowed forests where Sychaeus,
her husband long ago, answers all her anguish,
meets her love with love. But Aeneas, no less
struck by her unjust fate, escorts her from afar
with streaming tears and pities her as she passes.
From there they labor along the charted path
and at last they gain the utmost outer fields
where throngs of the great war heroes live apart.
Here Tydeus comes to meet him, Parthenopaeus
shining in arms, and Adrastus’ pallid phantom. Here,
mourned in the world above and fallen dead in battle,
sons of Dardanus, chiefs arrayed in a long ranked line.
Seeing them all, he groaned—Glaucus, Medon, Thersilochus,
Antenor’s three sons and the priest of Ceres, Polyboetes,
Idaeus too, still with chariot, still with gear in hand.
Their spirits crowding around Aeneas, left and right,
beg him to linger longer—a glimpse is not enough—
to walk beside him and learn the reasons why he’s come.
But the Greek commanders and Agamemnon’s troops in phalanx,
spotting the hero and his armor glinting through the shadows—
blinding panic grips them, some turn tail and run
as they once ran back to the ships, some strain
to raise a battle cry, a thin wisp of a cry
that mocks their gaping jaws.
And here he sees Deiphobus too, Priam’s son
mutilated, his whole body, his face hacked to pieces—
Ah, so cruel—his face and both his hands, and his ears
ripped from his ravaged head, his nostrils slashed,
disgraceful wound. He can hardly recognize him,
a cowering shadow hiding his
punishments so raw.
Aeneas, never pausing, hails the ghost at once
in an old familiar voice: “Mighty captain,
Deiphobus, sprung of the noble blood of Teucer,
who was bent on making you pay a price so harsh?
Who could maim you so? I heard on that last night
that you, exhausted from killing hordes of Greeks,
had fallen dead on a mangled pile of carnage.
So I was the one who raised your empty tomb
on Rhoeteum Cape and called out to your shade
three times with a ringing voice. Your name and armor
mark the site, my friend, but I could not find you,
could not bury your bones in native soil
when I set out to sea.”
“Nothing, my friend,” Priam’s son replies,
“you have left nothing undone. All that’s owed
Deiphobus and his shadow you have paid in full.
My own fate and the deadly crimes of that Spartan whore
have plunged me in this hell. Look at the souvenirs she left me!
And how we spent that last night, lost in deluded joys,
you know. Remember it we must, and all too well.
When the fatal horse mounted over our steep walls,
its weighted belly teeming with infantry in arms—
she led the Phrygian women round the city, feigning
the orgiastic rites of Bacchus, dancing, shrieking
but in their midst she shook her monstrous torch,
a flare from the city heights, a signal to the Greeks.
While I in our cursed bridal chamber, there I lay,
bone-weary with anguish, buried deep in sleep,
peaceful, sweet, like the peace of death itself.
And all the while that matchless wife of mine
is removing all my weapons from the house,
even slipping my trusty sword from under my pillow.
She calls Menelaus in and flings the doors wide open,
hoping no doubt by this grand gift to him, her lover,
to wipe the slate clean of her former wicked ways.
Why drag things out? They burst into the bedroom,
Ulysses, that rouser of outrage right beside them,
Aeolus’ crafty heir. You gods, if my lips are pure,
I pray for vengeance now—
deal such blows to the Greeks as they dealt me!
But come, tell me in turn what twist of fate
has brought you here alive? Forced by wanderings,
storm-tossed at sea, or prompted by the gods?
What destiny hounds you on to visit these,
The Aeneid Page 23