embracing a hundred grandsons. All dwell in the heavens,
all command the heights.
“Now turn your eyes this way
and behold these people, your own Roman people.
Here is Caesar and all the line of Iulus
soon to venture under the sky’s great arch.
Here is the man, he’s here! Time and again
you’ve heard his coming promised—Caesar Augustus!
Son of a god, he will bring back the Age of Gold
to the Latian fields where Saturn once held sway,
expand his empire past the Garamants and the Indians
to a land beyond the stars, beyond the wheel of the year,
the course of the sun itself, where Atlas bears the skies
and turns on his shoulder the heavens studded with flaming stars.
Even now the Caspian and Maeotic kingdoms quake at his coming,
oracles sound the alarm and the seven mouths of the Nile
churn with fear. Not even Hercules himself could cross
such a vast expanse of earth, though it’s true he shot
the stag with its brazen hoofs, and brought peace
to the ravaged woods of Erymanthus, terrorized
the Hydra of Lerna with his bow. Not even Bacchus
in all his glory, driving his team with vines for reins
and lashing his tigers down from Nysa’s soaring ridge.
Do we still flinch from turning our valor into deeds?
Or fear to make our home on Western soil?
“But look,
who is that over there, crowned with an olive wreath
and bearing sacred emblems? I know his snowy hair,
his beard—the first king to found our Rome on laws,
Numa, sent from the poor town of Cures, paltry land,
to wield imperial power.
“And after him comes Tullus
disrupting his country’s peace to rouse a stagnant people,
armies stale to the taste of triumph, back to war again.
And just behind him, Ancus, full of the old bravado,
even now too swayed by the breeze of public favor.
“Wait,
would you like to see the Tarquin kings, the overweening
spirit of Brutus the Avenger, the fasces he reclaims?
The first to hold a consul’s power and ruthless axes,
then, when his sons foment rebellion against the city,
their father summons them to the executioner’s block
in freedom’s noble name, unfortunate man . . .
however the future years will exalt his actions:
a patriot’s love wins out, and boundless lust for praise.
“Now,
the Decii and the Drusi—look over there—Torquatus too,
with his savage axe, Camillus bringing home the standards.
But you see that pair of spirits? Gleaming in equal armor,
equals now at peace, while darkness pins them down,
but if they should reach the light of life, what war
they’ll rouse between them! Battles, massacres—Caesar,
the bride’s father, marching down from his Alpine ramparts,
Fortress Monaco, Pompey her husband set to oppose him
with the armies of the East.
“No, my sons, never inure
yourselves to civil war, never turn your sturdy power
against your country’s heart. You, Caesar, you
be first in mercy—you trace your line from Olympus—
born of my blood, throw down your weapons now!
“Mummius her
he will conquer Corinth and, famed for killing Achaeans,
drive his victor’s chariot up the Capitol’s heights.
And there is Paullus, and he will rout all Argos
and Agamemnon’s own Mycenae and cut Perseus down—
the heir of Aeacus, born of Achilles’ warrior blood—
and avenge his Trojan kin and Minerva’s violated shrine.
“Who,
noble Cato, could pass you by in silence? Or you, Cossus?
Or the Gracchi and their kin? Or the two Scipios,
both thunderbolts of battle, Libya’s scourge?
Or you, Fabricius, reared from poverty into power?
Or you, Serranus the Sower, seeding your furrow?
You Fabii, where do you rush me, all but spent?
And you, famous Maximus, you are the one man
whose delaying tactics save our Roman state.
“Others, I have no doubt,
will forge the bronze to breathe with suppler lines,
draw from the block of marble features quick with life,
plead their cases better, chart with their rods the stars
that climb the sky and foretell the times they rise.
But you, Roman, remember, rule with all your power
the peoples of the earth—these will be your arts:
to put your stamp on the works and ways of peace,
to spare the defeated, break the proud in war.”
They were struck with awe as father Anchises paused,
then carried on: “Look there, Marcellus marching toward us,
decked in splendid plunder he tore from a chief he killed,
victorious, towering over all. This man on horseback,
he will steady the Roman state when rocked by chaos,
mow the Carthaginians down in droves, the rebel Gauls.
He is only the third to offer up to Father Quirinus
the enemy’s captured arms.”
Aeneas broke in now,
for he saw a young man walking at Marcellus’ side,
handsome, striking, his armor burnished bright
but his face showed little joy, his eyes cast down.
“Who is that, Father, matching Marcellus stride for stride?
A son, or one of his son’s descendants born of noble stock?
What acclaim from his comrades! What fine bearing,
the man himself! True, but around his head
a mournful shadow flutters black as night.”
“My son,”
his tears brimming, father Anchises started in,
“don’t press to know your people’s awesome grief.
Only a glimpse of him the Fates will grant the world,
not let him linger longer. Too mighty, the Roman race,
it seemed to You above, if this grand gift should last.
Now what wails of men will the Field of Mars send up
to Mars’ tremendous city! What a cortege you’ll see,
old Tiber, flowing past the massive tomb just built!
No child of Troy will ever raise so high the hopes
of his Latin forebears, nor will the land of Romulus take
such pride in a son she’s borne. Mourn for his virtue!
Mourn for his honor forged of old, his sword arm
never conquered in battle. No enemy could ever
go against him in arms and leave unscathed,
whether he fought on foot or rode on horseback,
digging spurs in his charger’s lathered flanks.
Oh, child of heartbreak! If only you could burst
the stern decrees of Fate! You will be Marcellus.
Fill my arms with lilies, let me scatter flowers,
lustrous roses—piling high these gifts, at least,
on our descendant’s shade—and perform a futile rite.”
So they wander over the endless fields of air,
gazing at every region, viewing realm by realm.
Once Anchises has led his son through each new scene
and fired his soul with a love of glory still to come,
he tells him next of the wars Aeneas still must wage,
he tells of Laurentine peoples, tells of Latinus’ city,
and how he should shun or shoulder each ordeal
that he must meet.
There are twin Gates of Sleep.
One, they say, is called the Gate of Horn
and it offers easy passage to all true shades.
The other glistens with ivory, radiant, flawless,
but through it the dead send false dreams up toward the sky.
And here Anchises, his vision told in full, escorts
his son and Sibyl both and shows them out now
through the Ivory Gate.
Aeneas cuts his way
to the waiting ships to see his crews again,
then sets a course straight on to Caieta’s harbor.
Anchors run from prows, the sterns line the shore.
BOOK SEVEN
Beachhead in Latium, Armies Gather
In death, Caieta, Aeneas’ nurse, you too
have granted our shores a fame that never dies.
And now your honor preserves your resting place,
and if such glory is any glory at all, your name
marks out your bones in the Great Land of the West.
But devout Aeneas now—the last rites performed
and the grave-mound piled high—once the seas lie calm,
sets sail on his journey, puts the port astern.
Freshening breezes blow as night comes on
and a full moon speeds their course,
its dancing light strikes sparkles off the waves.
And they closely skirt the coasts of Circe’s land
where the Sun’s rich daughter makes her deadly groves
resound with her endless song, and deep in her proud halls
she kindles fragrant cedar flaring through the night
as her whirring shuttle sweeps her fine-spun loom.
From there you could hear the furious growls of lions
bridling at their chains, roaring into the dead of night,
the raging of bristly boars and bears caged in their pens
and the looming forms of howling wolves: the men whose shapes
the brutal goddess Circe changed with her potent drugs,
tricked them out in the hides and look of wild beasts.
But to spare the loyal Trojans such a monstrous fate—
risking that harbor, touching those lethal shores—
Neptune swelled their sails with following winds
and gave them a swift escape,
speeding them past the churning shoals unharmed.
Now the sea was going red with the rays of Dawn,
from the heavens gold Aurora shone in her rose-red car
when the wind died down, suddenly every breeze fell flat
and the oars struggle against a sluggish, leaden swell.
But now Aeneas, still at sea, scanning the offing,
spots an enormous wood and running through it,
the Tiber in all its glory, rapids, whirlpools
golden with sand and bursting out to sea. And over it,
round it, birds, all kinds, haunting the riverbed and banks,
entrance the air with their song and flutter through the trees.
“Change course!” he commands his men. “Turn prows to land!”
And he enters the great shaded river, overjoyed.
Now come,
Erato—who were the kings, the tides and times, how stood
the old Latin state when that army of intruders
first beached their fleet on Italian shores?
All that I will unfold, I will recall
how the battle first began . . .
And you, goddess, inspire your singer, come!
I will tell of horrendous wars, tell of battle lines
and princes fired with courage, driven to their deaths,
Etruscan battalions, all Hesperia called to arms.
A greater tide of events springs up before me now,
I launch a greater labor.
King Latinus, already old,
had governed the fields and towns through long years of peace.
Faunus’ son he was, and the Latian nymph’s, Marica,
so we hear. Picus was Faunus’ father, and Picus
boasted you as his sire, Great Saturn, you,
the founder of the bloodline. Latinus had no son,
his one male issue torn from him by the gods’ decrees,
in the first bloom of youth. One daughter alone
was left to preserve the house and royal line—
ripe for marriage now, a full-grown woman now.
Many suitors sought her all through Latium,
all Ausonia too, and the handsomest of the lot
was Turnus, strong in his noble birth and breeding.
The queen mother burned with a will to wed him
to her daughter, true, but down from the gods
came sign on sign of alarm to block the way.
Far in the palace depths there stood a laurel,
its foliage sacred, tended with awe for many years.
Father Latinus, they say, had found it once himself,
building his first stronghold, hallowed it to Phoebus
and named his settlers after the laurel’s name, Laurentes.
Now sweeping toward this tree from a clear blue sky—
a marvel, listen, a squadron of bees came buzzing
to high heaven, swarmed in an instant, massed
on the tree’s crown and hooking feet together,
bent the laurel’s leafy branches down.
A prophet cries at once: “A stranger—I see him!
A whole army of men arriving out of the same quarter,
bent on the same goal, to rule our city’s heights!”
What’s worse, as the young virgin Lavinia lit
the altar with pure torches, flanking her father,
look—what horror!—her flowing hair caught fire,
her lovely regalia crackled in the flames,
her regal tresses blazed, her crown blazing,
studded with flashing jewels—the next moment
the girl was engulfed in a smoky yellow glare,
strewing the God of Fire’s power through the house.
That sight was bruited about as a sign of wonder, terror:
for Lavinia, prophets sang of a brilliant fame to come,
for the people they foretold a long, grueling war.
Dismayed by the signs, the king seeks out the oracle
of Faunus, his vatic father. He consults the grove
below Albunea’s heights, where the grand woods resound
with a holy spring and exhale their dark, deadly fumes.
Here all the Italian tribes and all Oenotria’s land
seek out the oracle’s response in hours of doubt.
Here the priest, when he brings the sacred gifts
and looks for sleep beneath the silent night—
stretched out on the hides of slaughtered sheep—
will see whole hosts of phantoms, miracles on the wing,
hear the voices swarm, engage with the gods in words
and speak with Acheron in Avernus’ deepest pools.
Here too, Latinus himself, seeking out responses,
slaughtered a hundred yearling sheep in the old way
and there he lay ensconced, at rest on fleecy hides
when a sudden voice broke from the grove’s depths:
“Never seek to marry your daughter to a Latin,
put no trust, my son, in a marriage ready-made.
Strangers will come, and come to be your sons
and their lifeblood will lift our name to the stars.
Their sons’ sons will see, wherever the wheeling Sun
looks down on the Ocean, rising or setting, East or West,
the whole earth turn beneath their feet, their rule!”
This response from father Faunus, a warning sent
in the silent night—Latinus did not seal his lips,
Rumor had spread it already, flying far and wide
through Ausonia’s towns b
efore the sons of Troy
tied up their fleet at the river’s green embankments.
Now Aeneas, his ranking chiefs and handsome Iulus
stretch out on the grass below the boughs of a tall tree,
then set about their meal, spreading a feast on wheaten cakes—
Jove himself impelled them—heaping the plates with Ceres’ gifts,
her country fruits. And once they’d devoured all in sight,
still not sated, their hunger drove them on to attack
the fateful plates themselves, their hands and teeth
defiling, ripping into the thin dry crusts, never
sparing a crumb of the flat-bread scored in quarters.
Suddenly Iulus shouted:
“What, we’re even eating
our platters now?”
Only a joke, and nothing more,
but his words, once heard, first spelled an end of troubles.
As they first fell from the boy’s lips, his father
seized upon them, struck by the will of god,
and made him hold his peace, and Aeneas cries
at once: “Hail to the country owed to me by Fate!
Hail to you, you faithful household gods of Troy!
Here is our home, here is our native land!
For my own father—now I remember—Anchises
left to me these secret signs of Fate:
‘When, my son, borne to an unknown shore,
reduced to iron rations, hunger drives you
to eat your own platters, then’s the moment,
exhausted as you are, to hope for home.
There—never forget—your hands must labor
to build your first houses, ring them round with mounds.’
This is the hunger he meant, this the last trial,
the last limit set to our pains of exile. Come,
with the first light of day, our spirits high,
let’s explore the land. What people hold it?
Where are their towns? Scatter out from port
on different routes. But now pour cups to Jove
and call on Father Anchises with our prayers,
set out the wine on tables once again!”
With that,
he wreathes his brows with a leafy green spray
and prays to the spirit of the place, and Earth,
first of the gods, and nymphs and rivers still unknown,
and then to the Night and the rising stars of Night.
He calls on Jove of Ida, calls the Phrygian Mother,
both gods in turn, and then his two parents,
The Aeneid Page 25