in Italy’s life-giving land? You are goddesses,
you remember it all, and you can tell it all—
all we catch is the distant ring of fame.
First
to march to war is brutal Mezentius, scorner of gods,
fresh from the Tuscan coasts to deploy his troops for battle.
Beside him, his son, Lausus, second in build and beauty
to Latian Turnus alone: Lausus, breaker of horses,
hunter of wild game. From Agylla town he led
a thousand men—who could not save his life—
a son who deserved more joy in a father’s rule,
anyone but Mezentius for a father.
Following them
comes Aventinus, handsome Hercules’ handsome son,
parading his victor’s team across the field, his chariot
crowned with the victor’s palm, his shield emblazed
with his father’s sign: the Hydra’s hundred snakes,
the serpents twisting round. Deep in the woods
on Aventine hill the priestess Rhea bore him
all in secret, into the world of light.
A woman matched with a god, with Hercules,
hero of Tiryns come to the Latin land in glory,
fresh from cutting the monster Geryon down,
to wash the herds of Spain in the Tiber River.
The men bear spears and grim pikes into battle,
fight with sword-blades ground to a razor edge
and Sabellian hurling spears. The man himself
came out on foot, swirling a giant lion’s hide,
its shaggy head hooding his head with its white teeth,
a terrible sight as he marched up to the palace,
the wild battle-dress of his father Hercules
wrapped around his shoulders.
Next in the march
come twin brothers, leaving Tibur’s walls and
people named for their brother’s name, Tiburtus—
Catillus and fearless Coras, boys from Argos.
Out of the front lines,
into the thick-and-fast of spears they’d charge
as two Centaurs born in the clouds come bolting
headlong down from a steep summit, speeding down from
Homole or from Othrys’ snowy slopes, and the tall timber
cleaves wide at their onrush, thickets split
with a huge resounding crash.
Nor was Praeneste’s
founder lacking from the ranks: King Caeculus born
to Vulcan among the flocks, all ages still believe,
and found on a burning hearth. His rustic bands
escort him now from near and far, the men who live
on Praeneste’s heights, on the fields of Gabine Juno,
men from the Anio’s icy stream, the Hernici’s dripping rocks,
men you nourish, rich Anagnia—bathed in your river,
Father Amasenus. Not all of them march to war
with armor, shields and chariots rumbling on.
Mostly slingers spraying pellets of livid lead,
some brandish a pair of lances, all heads cowled
with tawny wolfskin caps, their left feet planted,
making a naked print, their right feet shod
with a rugged rawhide boot.
Next Messapus,
breaker of horses, Neptune’s son, a king
whom neither fire nor iron could bring down:
he suddenly grasps his fighting sword again,
calls back to arms his people long at peace,
his rusty contingents long at rest from battle.
Men who hold Fescennia’s ridge, Aequi Falisci too,
the steep slopes of Soracte and all Flavina’s fields,
the lake of Ciminus rimmed with hills, and Capena’s groves.
They marched in cadence and sang their ruler’s praise
like snowy swans you’ll see in the misting clouds,
winging back from their feeding grounds, their song
bursting out of their long throats with beat on beat,
resounding far from the river banks and Asian marsh
that their pulsing chorus pounds.
You’d never think such a throng of men in bronze
were massing for battle now, but high in the sky
a cloud of birds with their raucous song were surging
home from open sea to shore.
But look—Clausus,
born of the age-old Sabine blood, heading a mighty force,
a mighty force himself. From Clausus spreads through Latium
both the Claudian tribe and clan, once Rome had long
been shared with Sabine people. Under his command
came huge divisions from Amiternum, the first Quirites,
all the ranks from Eretum, Mutusca green with olives, all
who live in Nomentum city, the Rosean fields by Lake Velinus,
all on Tetrica’s shaggy spurs and grim-set Mount Severus,
all in Casperia, Foruli, on the Himella River’s banks,
men who drink the Tiber and Fabaris, men dispatched
from icy Nursia, musters from Orta, the Latin tribes,
men that the Allia—ominous name—divides as it flows on.
Men as many as breakers rolling in from the Libyan sea
when savage Orion sets low in the winter waves or
dense as the ears of corn baked by an early sun
on Hermus’ plain or Lycia’s burnished fields.
Shields clang and under the trampling feet
the earth quakes in fear.
Next Agamemnon’s man
who hated the very name of Troy—Halaesus,
yoking his team to a chariot, speeds along
a thousand diehard clans in Turnus’ cause.
Men whose mattocks till the Massic earth for wine,
Auruncans their fathers sent from the rising hills
and Sidicine flats close by, and men just come from Cales,
men who make their homes along the Volturnus’ shoals
and beside them rough Saticulans, squads of Oscans.
Their weapons are long, pointed stakes they like
to fit with a supple thong for swifter hurling.
They have bucklers to shield their left side,
sickle-swords for combat, cut-and-thrust.
Nor will you,
Oebalus, go unsung in our songs. You, they say,
the river-nymph Sebethis once bore Telon,
an old man now, when Telon ruled over Capreae,
the Teleboean isle. But the son unlike the father,
not content with his forebears’ holdings, even now
held sway over broader realms: the Sarrastian clans,
their meadows washed by the Sarnus, men from Rufrae,
Batulum and Celemna’s farms, and soldiers overseen
by the high walls of Abella rife with apples,
fighters who whirl the barbed lance, Teutonic style,
their heads wrapped with the bark they strip from cork-trees,
bronze shields gleaming—gleaming bronze, their swords.
You too, Ufens, Nersae’s foothills sent you to war
with your glowing fame, your brilliant luck in arms
and your Aequian clans, most rugged men alive,
seasoned to rough hunting in thicket groves
on their hardscrabble land. Armed to the hilt
they work the earth, their constant joy to haul
fresh booty home and live off all they seize.
Next,
from the Marsian stock a priest came marching in,
his helmet crowned with a leafy olive spray:
sent by King Archippus, Umbro, no man braver,
an old hand, with his touch and spells, at shedding
sleep on the vipers’ spawn and lake-snakes hissing death,
at soothing their anger, healing bites with his magic arts
.
But he had no cure for the stab of a Trojan lance,
none of his drowsy incantations, no drugs culled
on the Marsian hills could heal him of his wounds.
For you the grove of Angitia wept, for you
the crystal swells of Fucinus Lake, for you
the clear quiet pools.
He rode to war as well,
Virbius, striking son of Hippolytus, sent to fight
by his mother Aricia: Virbius in his triumph, bred
in Egeria’s grove that rings the marshy banks
where Diana’s altar stands, rich with victims
fit to win her favor. For they say Hippolytus,
once his stepmother’s craft had laid him low
and he’d paid the price his father set in blood
and his horses went berserk and tore the man apart,
back he came, under the world of stars and windy sky,
reborn by the Healer’s potent herbs and Diana’s love.
Then Father Almighty, enraged that any mortal rise
from the shades below, return to the light of life,
Jove with his lightning bolt struck down Apollo’s son
who honed such healing skills, down to the Styx’s flood.
But kind Diana hides the man away in a secret haunt,
sends him off to Egeria, deep in the nymph’s grove
where, alone in Italian woods and all unsung—
Virbius, his new name—he might live out his time.
And so it is that horn-hoofed steeds are barred
from Diana Trivia’s shrine and holy groves
since horses, panicked by monsters of the deep,
scattered the man and chariot out along the shore.
Nevertheless his son was lashing fiery chargers
down the level fields, his chariot hurtling
Virbius into battle.
And there the man himself,
Turnus, his build magnificent, sword brandished,
marches among his captains, topping all by a head.
Triple-plumed, his high helmet raises up a Chimaera
with all the fires of Etna blasting from its throat
and roaring all the more, its searing flames more deadly
the more blood flows and the battle grows more fierce.
There on the burnished shield, Io, blazoned in gold,
her horns raised, her skin already bristly with hair,
already changed to a cow—
an awesome emblem—as Argus guards the girl and
Father Inachus pours his stream from a chased urn.
And following Turnus comes a cloud of troops on foot,
shield-bearing battalions swarming the whole plain.
Men in their prime from Argos, ranks of Auruncans,
Rutulians, Sicanian veterans on in years, Sacranians
in columns, Labicians bearing their painted shields,
men who plow your glades, old Tiber, the Numicus’
holy banks, whose plowshare turns the Rutulian slopes
and Circe’s high-ridged cape. Then men from fields
where Jove of Anxur reigns and Goddess Feronia
takes joy in her fine green grove, and troops
from Satura’s black marsh where the frigid Ufens
weaves his way through a valley’s bottom land
and plunges down to sea.
Topping off the armies
rides Camilla, sprung from the Volscian people,
heading her horsemen, squadrons gleaming bronze.
This warrior girl, with her young hands untrained
for Minerva’s spools and baskets filled with wool,
a virgin seasoned to bear the rough work of battle,
swift to outrace the winds with her lightning pace.
Camilla could skim the tips of the unreaped crops,
never bruising the tender ears in her swift rush
or wing her way, hovering over the mid-sea swell
and never dip her racing feet in the waves.
Young men all come pouring from homes and fields
and crowding mothers marvel, stare at her as she strides—
awestruck, breathless, how the beauty of royal purple
cloaks her glossy shoulders! How her golden brooch
binds up her hair—how she cradles a Lycian quiver,
her shepherd’s staff of myrtle spiked with steel.
BOOK EIGHT
The Shield of Aeneas
Soon as Turnus hoisted the banner of war from Laurentum’s heights
and the piercing trumpets blared, soon as he whipped his horses
rearing for action, clashed his spear against his shield—
passions rose at once, all Latium stirred in frenzy
to swear the oath, and young troops blazed for war.
The chiefs in the lead, Messapus, Ufens, Mezentius,
scorner of gods, call up forces from all quarters
and strip the fields of men who worked the soil.
They send Venulus out to great Diomedes’ city
to seek reserves and announce that Trojan ranks
encamp in Latium: “Aeneas arrives with his armada,
bringing the conquered household gods of Troy,
claiming himself a king demanded now by Fate.
And the many tribes report to join the Dardan chief
and his name rings far and wide through Latian country.
But where does the build-up end? What does he long to gain,
if luck is on his side, from open warfare? Clearly,
Diomedes would know—better than King Turnus,
better than King Latinus.”
So things went in Latium. Watching it all,
the Trojan hero heaved in a churning sea of anguish,
his thoughts racing, here, there, probing his options,
shifting to this plan, that—as quick as flickering light
thrown off by water in bronze bowls reflects the sun
or radiant moon, now flittering near and far, now
rising to strike a ceiling’s gilded fretwork.
The dead of night.
Over the earth all weary living things, all birds and flocks
were fast asleep when captain Aeneas, his heart racked
by the threat of war, lay down on a bank beneath
the chilly arc of the sky and at long last
indulged his limbs in sleep. Before his eyes
the god of the lovely river, old Tiber himself,
seemed to rise from among the poplar leaves,
gowned in his blue-grey linen fine as mist
with a shady crown of reeds to wreathe his hair,
and greeted Aeneas to ease him of his anguish:
“Born of the stock of gods, you who bring back Troy
to us from enemy hands and save her heights forever!
How long we waited for you, here on Laurentine soil
and Latian fields. Here your home is assured, yes,
assured for your household gods. Don’t retreat.
Don’t fear the threats of war.
The swelling rage of the gods has died away.
I tell you now—so you won’t think me an empty dream—
that under an oak along the banks you’ll find a great sow
stretched on her side with thirty pigs just farrowed,
a snow-white mother with snow-white young at her dugs.
By this sign, after thirty years have made their rounds
Ascanius will establish Alba, bright as the city’s name.
All that I foresee has been decreed.
“But how to begin
this current struggle here and see it through,
victorious all the way?
I’ll explain in a word or so. Listen closely.
On these shores Arcadians sprung from Pallas—
King Evander’s comrades marching under his banner—
picked their site and placed a cit
y on these hills,
Pallanteum, named for their famous forebear, Pallas.
They wage a relentless war against the Latin people.
Welcome them to your camp as allies, seal your pacts.
I myself will lead you between my banks, upstream,
making your way against the current under oars—
I’ll speed you on your journey. Up with you,
son of Venus! Now, as the first stars set,
offer the proper prayers to Juno, overcome
her anger and threats with vows and plead for help.
You will pay me with honors once you have won your way.
I am the flowing river that you see, sweeping the banks
and cutting across the tilled fields rich and green.
I am the river Tiber. Clear blue as the heavens,
stream most loved by the gods who rule the sky.
My great home is here,
my fountainhead gives rise to noble cities.”
With that,
the river sank low in his deep pool, heading down
to the depths as Aeneas, night and slumber over,
gazing toward the sunlight climbing up the sky,
rises, duly draws up water in cupped hands
and pours forth this prayer to heaven’s heights:
“You nymphs, Laurentine nymphs, you springs of rivers,
and you, Father Tiber, you and your holy stream,
embrace Aeneas, shield him from dangers, now at last.
You who pity our hardships—wherever the ground lies
where you come surging forth in all your glory—always
with offerings, always with gifts I’ll do you honor,
you great horned king of the rivers of the West.
Just be with me. Prove your will with works.”
So he prays and choosing a pair of galleys
from the fleet, he mans them both with rowers
while fitting out his troops with battle gear.
But look,
suddenly, right before his awestruck eyes, a marvel,
shining white through the woods with a brood as white,
lying stretched out on a grassy bank for all to see—
a great sow. Devout Aeneas offers her up to you,
Queen Juno on high, a blood sacrifice to you,
standing her at your altar with her young.
And all night long the Tiber lulled his swell,
checking his current so his waves would lie serene,
silent, still as a clear lagoon or peaceful marsh,
soothing its surface smooth, no labor there for oars.
So they embark with cheers to speed them on their way
and the dark tarred hulls go gliding through the river,
amazing the tides, amazing the groves unused to the sight
The Aeneid Page 28