these sunless homes of sorrow, harrowed lands?”
Trading words, as Dawn in her rose-red chariot
crossed in mid-career, high noon in the arching sky,
and they might have spent what time they had with tales
if the Sibyl next to Aeneas had not warned him tersely:
“Night comes on, Aeneas. We waste our time with tears.
This is the place where the road divides in two.
To the right it runs below the mighty walls of Death,
our path to Elysium, but the left-hand road torments
the wicked, leading down to Tartarus, path to doom.”
“No anger, please, great priestess,” begged Deiphobus.
“Back I go to the shades to fill the tally out.
Now go, our glory of Troy, go forth and enjoy
a better fate than mine.” With his last words
he turned in his tracks and went his way.
Aeneas
suddenly glances back and beneath a cliff to the left
he sees an enormous fortress ringed with triple walls
and raging around it all, a blazing flood of lava,
Tartarus’ River of Fire, whirling thunderous boulders.
Before it rears a giant gate, its columns solid adamant,
so no power of man, not even the gods themselves
can root it out in war. An iron tower looms on high
where Tisiphone, crouching with bloody shroud girt up,
never sleeping, keeps her watch at the entrance night and day.
Groans resound from the depths, the savage crack of the lash,
the grating creak of iron, the clank of dragging chains.
And Aeneas froze there, terrified, taking in the din:
“What are the crimes, what kinds? Tell me, Sibyl,
what are the punishments, why this scourging?
Why such wailing echoing in the air?”
The seer rose to the moment: “Famous captain of Troy,
no pure soul may set foot on that wicked threshold.
But when Hecate put me in charge of Avernus’ groves
she taught me all the punishments of the gods,
she led me through them all.
Here Cretan Rhadamanthus rules with an iron hand,
censuring men, exposing fraud, forcing confessions
when anyone up above, reveling in his hidden crimes,
puts off his day of atonement till he dies, the fool,
too late. That very moment, vengeful Tisiphone, armed
with lashes, springs on the guilty, whips them till they quail,
with her left hand shaking all her twisting serpents,
summoning up her savage sisters, bands of Furies.
Then at last, screeching out on their grinding hinge
the infernal gates swing wide.
“Can you see that sentry
crouched at the entrance? What a specter guards the threshold!
Fiercer still, the monstrous Hydra, fifty black maws gaping,
holds its lair inside.
“Then the abyss, Tartarus itself
plunges headlong down through the darkness twice as far
as our gaze goes up to Olympus rising toward the skies.
Here the ancient line of the Earth, the Titans’ spawn,
flung down by lightning, writhe in the deep pit.
There I saw the twin sons of Aloeus too, giant bodies
that clawed the soaring sky with their hands to tear it down
and thrust great Jove from his kingdom high above.
“I saw Salmoneus too, who paid a brutal price
for aping the flames of Jove and Olympus’ thunder.
Sped by his four-horse chariot, flaunting torches,
right through the Greek tribes and Elis city’s heart
he rode in triumph, claiming as his the honors of the gods.
The madman, trying to match the storm and matchless lightning
just by stamping on bronze with prancing horn-hoofed steeds!
The almighty Father hurled his bolt through the thunderheads—
no torches for him, no smoky flicker of pitch-pines, no,
he spun him headlong down in a raging whirlwind.
“Tityus too:
you could see that son of Earth, the mother of us all,
his giant body splayed out over nine whole acres,
a hideous vulture with hooked beak gorging down
his immortal liver and innards ever ripe for torture.
Deep in his chest it nestles, ripping into its feast
and the fibers, grown afresh, get no relief from pain.
“What need to tell of the Lapiths, Ixion, or Pirithous?
Above them a black rock—now, now slipping, teetering,
watch, forever about to fall. While the golden posts
of high festal couches gleam, and a banquet spreads
before their eyes with luxury fit for kings . . .
but reclining just beside them, the oldest Fury
holds back their hands from even touching the food,
surging up with her brandished torch and deafening screams.
“Here those who hated their brothers, while alive,
or struck their fathers down
or embroiled clients in fraud, or brooded alone
over troves of gold they gained and never put aside
some share for their own kin—a great multitude, these—
then those killed for adultery, those who marched to the flag
of civil war and never shrank from breaking their pledge
to their lords and masters: all of them, walled up here,
wait to meet their doom.
“Don’t hunger to know their doom,
what form of torture or twist of Fortune drags them down.
Some trundle enormous boulders, others dangle, racked
to the breaking point on the spokes of rolling wheels.
Doomed Theseus sits on his seat and there he will sit forever.
Phlegyas, most in agony, sounds out his warning to all,
his piercing cries bear witness through the darkness:
‘Learn to bow to justice. Never scorn the gods.
You all stand forewarned!’
“Here’s one who bartered his native land for gold,
he saddled her with a tyrant, set up laws for a bribe,
for a bribe he struck them down. This one forced himself
on his daughter’s bed and sealed a forbidden marriage.
All dared an outrageous crime and what they dared, they did.
“No, not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths
and a voice of iron too—I could never capture
all the crimes or run through all the torments,
doom by doom.”
So Apollo’s aged priestess
ended her answer, then she added: “Come,
press on with your journey. See it through,
this duty you’ve undertaken. We must hurry now.
I can just make out the ramparts forged by the Cyclops.
There are the gates, facing us with their arch.
There our orders say to place our gifts.”
At that,
both of them march in step along the shadowed paths,
consuming the space between, and approach the doors.
Aeneas springs to the entryway and rinsing his limbs
with fresh pure water, there at the threshold,
just before them, stakes the golden bough.
The rite complete at last,
their duty to the goddess performed in full,
they gained the land of joy, the fresh green fields,
the Fortunate Groves where the blessed make their homes.
Here a freer air, a dazzling radiance clothes the fields
and the spirits possess their own sun, their own stars.
Some flex their limbs in the grassy wrestling-rings,
>
contending in sport, they grapple on the golden sands.
Some beat out a dance with their feet and chant their songs.
And Orpheus himself, the Thracian priest with his long robes,
keeps their rhythm strong with his lyre’s seven ringing strings,
plucking now with his fingers, now with his ivory plectrum.
Here is the ancient line of Teucer, noblest stock of all,
those great-hearted heroic sons born in better years,
Ilus, and Assaracus, and Dardanus, founder of Troy.
Far off, Aeneas gazes in awe—their arms, their chariots,
phantoms all, their lances fixed in the ground, their horses,
freed from harness, grazing the grasslands near and far.
The same joy they took in arms and chariots when alive,
in currying horses sleek and putting them to pasture,
follows them now they rest beneath the earth.
Others, look,
he glimpses left and right in the meadows, feasting,
singing in joy a chorus raised to Healing Apollo,
deep in a redolent laurel grove where Eridanus River
rushes up, in full spate, and rolls through woods
in the high world above. And here are troops of men
who had suffered wounds, fighting to save their country,
and those who had been pure priests while still alive,
and the faithful poets whose songs were fit for Phoebus;
those who enriched our lives with the newfound arts they forged
and those we remember well for the good they did mankind.
And all, with snow-white headbands crowning their brows,
flow around the Sibyl as she addresses them there,
Musaeus first, who holds the center of that huge throng,
his shoulders rearing high as they gaze up toward him:
“Tell us, happy spirits, and you, the best of poets,
what part of your world, what region holds Anchises?
All for him we have come,
we’ve sailed across the mighty streams of hell.”
And at once the great soul made a brief reply:
“No one’s home is fixed. We live in shady groves,
we settle on pillowed banks and meadows washed with brooks.
But you, if your heart compels you, climb this ridge
and I soon will set your steps on an easy path.”
So he said and walking on ahead, from high above
points out to them open country swept with light.
Down they come and leave the heights behind.
Now father Anchises, deep in a valley’s green recess,
was passing among the souls secluded there, reviewing them,
eagerly, on their way to the world of light above. By chance
he was counting over his own people, all his cherished heirs,
their fame and their fates, their values, acts of valor.
When he saw Aeneas striding toward him over the fields,
he reached out both his hands as his spirit lifted,
tears ran down his cheeks, a cry broke from his lips:
“You’ve come at last? Has the love your father hoped for
mastered the hardship of the journey? Let me look at your face,
my son, exchange some words, and hear your familiar voice.
So I dreamed, I knew you’d come, I counted the moments—
my longing has not betrayed me.
Over what lands, what seas have you been driven,
buffeted by what perils into my open arms, my son?
How I feared the realm of Libya might well do you harm!”
“Your ghost, my father,” he replied, “your grieving ghost,
so often it came and urged me to your threshold!
My ships are lying moored in the Tuscan sea.
Let me clasp your hand, my father, let me—
I beg you, don’t withdraw from my embrace!”
So Aeneas pleaded, his face streaming tears.
Three times he tried to fling his arms around his neck,
three times he embraced—nothing . . . the phantom
sifting through his fingers,
light as wind, quick as a dream in flight.
And now Aeneas sees in the valley’s depths
a sheltered grove and rustling wooded brakes
and the Lethe flowing past the homes of peace.
Around it hovered numberless races, nations of souls
like bees in meadowlands on a cloudless summer day
that settle on flowers, riots of color, swarming round
the lilies’ lustrous sheen, and the whole field comes alive
with a humming murmur. Struck by the sudden sight,
Aeneas, all unknowing, wonders aloud, and asks:
“What is the river over there? And who are they
who crowd the banks in such a growing throng?”
His father Anchises answers: “They are the spirits
owed a second body by the Fates. They drink deep
of the river Lethe’s currents there, long drafts
that will set them free of cares, oblivious forever.
How long I have yearned to tell you, show them to you,
face-to-face, yes, as I count the tally out
of all my children’s children. So all the more
you can rejoice with me in Italy, found at last.”
“What, Father, can we suppose that any spirits
rise from here to the world above, return once more
to the shackles of the body? Why this mad desire,
poor souls, for the light of life?”
“I will tell you,
my son, not keep you in suspense,” Anchises says,
and unfolds all things in order, one by one.
“First,
the sky and the earth and the flowing fields of the sea,
the shining orb of the moon and the Titan sun, the stars:
an inner spirit feeds them, coursing through all their limbs,
mind stirs the mass and their fusion brings the world to birth.
From their union springs the human race and the wild beasts,
the winged lives of birds and the wondrous monsters bred
below the glistening surface of the sea. The seeds of life—
fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they
are weighed down by the bodies’ ills or dulled
by earthly limbs and flesh that’s born for death.
That is the source of all men’s fears and longings,
joys and sorrows, nor can they see the heavens’ light,
shut up in the body’s tomb, a prison dark and deep.
“True,
but even on that last day, when the light of life departs,
the wretches are not completely purged of all the taints,
nor are they wholly freed of all the body’s plagues.
Down deep they harden fast—they must, so long engrained
in the flesh—in strange, uncanny ways. And so the souls
are drilled in punishments, they must pay for their old offenses.
Some are hung splayed out, exposed to the empty winds,
some are plunged in the rushing floods—their stains,
their crimes scoured off or scorched away by fire.
Each of us must suffer his own demanding ghost.
Then we are sent to Elysium’s broad expanse,
a few of us even hold these fields of joy
till the long days, a cycle of time seen through,
cleanse our hard, inveterate stains and leave us clear
ethereal sense, the eternal breath of fire purged and pure.
But all the rest, once they have turned the wheel of time
for a thousand years: God calls them forth to the Lethe,
great armies of souls, their memories blank so that
they may revisit the overarchi
ng world once more
and begin to long to return to bodies yet again.”
Anchises, silent a moment, drawing his son and Sibyl
with him into the midst of the vast murmuring throng,
took his stand on a rise of ground where he could scan
the long column marching toward him, soul by soul,
and recognize their features as they neared.
“So come,
the glory that will follow the sons of Troy through time,
your children born of Italian stock who wait for life,
bright souls, future heirs of our name and our renown:
I will reveal them all and tell you of your fate.
“There,
you see that youth who leans on a tipless spear of honor?
Assigned the nearest place to the world of light,
the first to rise to the air above, his blood
mixed with Italian blood, he bears an Alban name.
Silvius, your son, your last-born, when late
in your old age your wife Lavinia brings him up,
deep in the woods—a king who fathers kings in turn,
he founds our race that rules in Alba Longa.
“Nearby,
there’s Procas, pride of the Trojan people, then come
Capys, Numitor, and the one who revives your name,
Silvius Aeneas, your equal in arms and duty,
famed, if he ever comes to rule the Alban throne.
What brave young men! Look at the power they display
and the oakleaf civic crowns that shade their foreheads.
They will erect for you Nomentum, Gabii, Fidena town
and build Collatia’s ramparts on the mountains,
Pometia too, and Inuis’ fortress, Bola and Cora.
Famous names in the future, nameless places now.
“Here,
a son of Mars, his grandsire Numitor’s comrade—Romulus,
bred from Assaracus’ blood by his mother, Ilia.
See how the twin plumes stand joined on his helmet?
And the Father of Gods himself already marks him out
with his own bolts of honor. Under his auspices, watch,
my son, our brilliant Rome will extend her empire far
and wide as the earth, her spirit high as Olympus.
Within her single wall she will gird her seven hills,
blest in her breed of men: like the Berecynthian Mother
crowned with her turrets, riding her victor’s chariot
through the Phrygian cities, glad in her brood of gods,
The Aeneid Page 24