press him to leave his camp or cast his life to the winds?
To trust his walls, the whole command of the battle to a boy?
To disrupt the Tuscans’ faith, inflame a peaceful people?
What god, what ruthless power of mine drove him to ruin?
Where’s Juno in this? Or Iris sped from the clouds? So,
it’s wrong for Italians to ring your newborn Troy with fire?
For Turnus to plant his feet on his own native soil?
His forebear is Pilumnus, his mother a goddess, Venilia!
What of the Trojans putting the Latins to the torch?
Yoking the fields of others, hauling off the plunder?
Taking their pick of daughters, tearing the sworn bride
from her husband’s arms? Their hands pleading for peace
while they arm their sterns with spears! Oh, you can
whisk Aeneas clear of the clutches of the Greeks,
in place of a man puff up some vapid fume of air!
You can change an armada into sea-nymphs, yes,
but if we in our turn offer the Latin side
a helping hand, is that such a horrid crime?
‘Aeneas knows nothing, the man is miles away’?
Unknowing let him stay there!
Why, you have Paphus, Idalia, steep Cythera too—
why tamper with brute Italians, a city rife with war?
Is it I who try to overwhelm from the roots up
your sinking Phrygian state? Not I! Wasn’t it
he who exposed your wretched Trojans to the Greeks?
What inspired Europe and Asia to surge up in arms,
underhandedly break the bonds of friendship?
Was it I who lured the Trojan adulterer on
to lay Sparta low? Or I who equipped the man
with weapons, fanned the flames of war with lust?
You should have feared for your chosen people then.
It’s too late now for rising up with your groundless
accusations—flinging empty slander in my face!”
While Juno harangued the gods with her appeals,
all were murmuring low, assenting, dissenting . . .
low as the first stir of stormwind caught in the trees
when the rustling unseen murmur keeps on rolling,
warning sailors that gales are coming on. Then
the almighty Father, power that rules the world,
begins, and as he speaks the lofty house of the gods
falls silent, earth rocks to its roots, the heights
of the sky are hushed and the Western breezes drop
and the Ocean calms its waters into peace: “So then,
take what I say to heart and stamp it in your minds.
Since it is not allowed that Latins and Trojans
join in pacts of peace, and there is no end
to your eternal clashes—now, whatever the luck
of each man today, and whatever hope he follows,
Trojan or Italian, I make no choice between them.
Whether Italy’s happy fate lays siege to the camp
or the Trojans’ folly, the deadly prophecies they follow.
Nor do I exempt the Italians. How each man weaves
his web will bring him to glory or to grief.
King Jupiter is the king to all alike.
The Fates will find the way.”
And now, sealing
his pledge by the river Styx, his brother’s stream,
by the banks that churn with pitch-black rapids,
whirlpools swirling dark, he nodded his assent
and his nod made all of Mount Olympus quake.
The great debate had closed.
Jupiter rises up from his golden throne
as the gods of heaven flock around him there
and escort him to the gateway of his mansion.
All day
the Rutulians encircle every entry, battling on to bring
their enemies down in blood and ring their walls with fire.
But Aeneas’ force is locked fast in its own ramparts now,
no hope of a breakout. Shattered, helpless, posted high
on the turrets, girding walls with a thin defensive ring
are Asius, son of Imbrasus, Thymoetes, Hicetaon’s son,
the Assaraci twins and Castor with aged Thymbris
up in front: behind them, both Sarpedon’s brothers,
Clarus and Thaemon, new allies from Lycia’s highlands.
One man puts his weight into heaving up a boulder,
no mean piece of a crag—Acmon born in Lyrnesus,
strong as his father Clytius, his brother Menestheus.
All of them struggle there to defend their walls,
some with javelins, some with rocks or flinging
blazing torches, nocking arrows to bowstrings.
There amidst them, look, the Dardan boy himself,
Venus’ favorite, rightly—handsome head laid bare,
he shines like a brilliant gemstone set in tawny gold,
adorning a head or neck, or aglow as ivory deftly
inlaid in box or black Orician terebinth wood
and over his milk-white neck his long locks fall,
clasped tight by a torque of hammered gold.
Ismarus, you too, your fine hardy fighters
watched you dipping your arrowheads in poison,
winging wounds at the enemy. You, the noble son
of a proud Maeonian house, where the farmhands work
the loamy soil and Pactolus floods the fields with gold.
And there was Mnestheus too, his glory riding high
with yesterday’s triumph—driving Turnus off the walls—
and Capys too, whose name comes down to us in Capua,
the famed Campanian town.
And so both sides
had clashed in the cruel thick-and-fast of war
while Aeneas plowed the sea in the dead of night.
Once he left Evander and entered the Tuscan camp,
he seeks King Tarchon, tells him his name and stock
and the help he needs and the help he brings himself.
He tells him Mezentius musters fighters to his side,
tells him the heart of Turnus flares for battle,
warns him of what to trust in men’s affairs,
concluding all with his own strong appeals.
Then no delay, Tarchon joins forces at once
and seals a pact. And so, free of Fate’s demand,
since they are sworn to a foreign leader now,
under the will of god the Etruscans set sail.
Aeneas’ ship’s in the lead, with Phrygian lions
fixed on her beak, Mount Ida looming aloft,
a god-sent sign of home to Trojan exiles.
There sits great Aeneas . . .
musing over the shifting tides of war
as Pallas flanks him closely on his left, asking
now of the stars that guide them through the night
and now of the hardships he had braved on land and sea.
Now throw Helicon open, Muses, launch your song!
What forces sail with Aeneas fresh from the Tuscan shores,
manning their ships for battle, sweeping through the waves?
Massicus first. He plows the sea in the bronze-sided Tiger.
Under him sail battalions, a thousand men who put astern
the walls of Clusium, Cosae too; their weapons, arrows,
shouldering lightweight quivers, bows bristling death.
Fierce Abas joins him, all his fighters shining in arms
with a brilliant gilded Apollo stationed at the stern.
Six hundred men his motherland Populonia gave him,
soldiers drilled for war, three hundred more from Ilva,
the Blacksmiths’ inexhaustible island rife with iron ore.
Asilas third, the famous seer who bridges the worlds
> of gods and men, a reader of animals’ entrails,
stars that sweep the sky and the cries of birds
and the lightning charged with Fate. A thousand men
he rushes aboard, tight ranks spiked with spears.
Pisa placed them at his command, a Greek city
born by the river Alpheus, bred by Tuscan soil.
And following in his wake sails irresistible Astyr,
Astyr who trusts to his horse and armor rainbow-hued.
And swelling his ranks, three hundred, all as one
alert to obey his orders, men whose home is Caere,
men from Minio’s fields, from ancient Pyrgi
and fever-racked Graviscae.
Nor could I pass you by,
Cunarus, staunchest in war of all Liguria’s chiefs,
or you with your modest band of men, Cupavo.
Topping your crest the swan plumes toss,
a fabulous mark of your father’s altered form,
and all for offending you, Love, you and Venus.
They tell how Cycnus, wrung by grief for his lover,
lifting a song to soothe his broken heart for Phaëthon—
shadowed by leafy poplars, Phaëthon’s sisters once—
Cycnus donned the downy white plumage of old age,
left the earth behind and soared up to the stars
on wings of song. And now his son, Cupavo,
flanked by fighters his own age on deck,
drives along under oars the giant Centaur—
the monster high on the figurehead makes threats
to heave from aloft a massive boulder down on the waves
while the long keel cuts its furrow through the deep.
Ocnus too, heading an army come from native coasts,
a son of Manto the seer and the Tuscan river Tiber.
He gave you, Mantua, walls and his mother’s name,
Mantua, rich in the rosters of her forebears.
Not all of a single tribe but three in one,
four clans under each, and Mantua leads them all
and the city draws her force from Tuscan blood.
Mantua, source of the five hundred men Mezentius
goaded on to fight against himself: men the Mincius,
son of Father Benacus gowned in gray-green reeds,
steers down to the sea in warships built of pine.
Aulestes bears down too, surging on with the beat
of a hundred oaken oars that thrash the swells,
churning the sea’s clean surface into spume.
He sails the massive Triton, her sea-horn making
the blue deep quake, and as she runs on her prow displays
a shaggy man to the waist, all dragon to the tail and
under the monster’s breast, part man, part beast,
the foaming swells resound.
So many chosen captains
heading thirty warships, speeding to rescue Troy,
cleft the fields of salt with beaks of bronze.
By now
the day had slipped from the sky and the gentle moon
was riding high through the heavens at mid-career,
her horses pounding through the night. As pressures
gave no rest to his limbs, Aeneas sat astern,
guiding the tiller, trimming sail, when suddenly,
look—a troop of his comrades comes to meet him,
halfway home, the nymphs that kindly Cybebe told
to rule the sea in power, changing the ships
to sea-nymphs swimming abreast, cutting the waves,
as many as all the bronze prows berthed at anchor once.
They know their king far off, circling, dancing round him
and one, most eloquent of them all, Cymodocea swims in
on his wake and grips his stern with her right hand,
arching her back above the swells as her left hand
rows the silent waves, and she calls out to Aeneas,
lost to it all: “Awake, Aeneas, son of the gods?
Wake up! Fling your sheets to the winds, sail free!
Here we are, the pines from the sacred ridge of Ida,
now we’re nymphs of the sea—we are your fleet!
When traitorous Turnus forced us headlong on
with sword and torch, we burst your mooring lines,
we had no choice, and now we scour the seas
to find our captain. The Great Mother pitied us,
changed our shape, she made us goddesses, yes,
and so we pass our lives beneath the waves.
“But not
your son, Ascanius, trapped now by the wall and trench,
in the thick of the spears, the Latins spiked for war.
Already Arcadian horsemen flanked by strong Etruscans
hold assigned positions. But Turnus is dead against
their joining up with the Trojan camp. He’s setting
his own squadrons between their closing forces now.
Up with you! Call your men to arms with the dawn.
That first, then seize the indestructible shield
the God of Fire gave you, ringed with gold.
Daybreak, if you find my urgings on the mark,
will see vast heaps of Rutulians cut down in blood!”
She closed with a dive and drove the tall ship on
with her right hand—how well she knew the ropes!
and on it flies, faster than spear or wind-swift shaft
while the rest race on in her wake.
The Trojan son of Anchises, stunned with awe,
his spirits lift with the sign and scanning the skies
above his head Aeneas prays a few strong words:
“Ida’s generous queen and Mother of the Gods,
by Dindyma dear to your heart, by towered cities,
the double team of lions yoked to your reins,
lead me in war, bring on the omen, goddess,
speed the Trojans home with your victor’s stride!”
No more words. As the wheeling sun swung round
to the full light of day and put the dark to flight,
first he commands his troops to follow orders,
brace their hearts for battle, gear for war.
Now Aeneas,
standing high astern, no sooner catches a glimpse
of his own Trojan camp than he quickly hoists
his burnished, brazen shield in his left hand.
The Trojans up on the ramparts shout to the skies—
fresh hope ignites their rage—and wing their spears
like cranes from the river Strymon calling out commands
as they swoop through the air below the black clouds,
flying before the Southwinds, cries raised in joy.
The Rutulian king and the Latin captains marvel
till, glancing back, they see an armada heading
toward the shore and the whole sea rolling down
on them now in a tide of ships. From the peak
of Aeneas’ helmet flames are leaping forth
and a deadly blaze comes pouring from its crest.
The golden boss of his shield spews streams of fire,
strong as the lethal, blood-red light of comets streaming
on in a clear night, or bright as the Dog Star, Sirius,
bearing plague and thirst to afflicted mortals,
rises up to shroud the sky with gloom.
But dauntless Turnus
never lost his faith in his daring, certain to seize
the beaches first and hurl the invader off the land:
“Now then, here is the answer to your prayers—
we’ll break them all by force!
The god of battle is in your hands, my men.
Let each fighter think of his own wife, his home,
remember the great works, the triumphs of our fathers.
Down to the shore we go to take them on. They’re dazed,
t
hey’ve just debarked, they’ve got no land-legs yet!
Fortune speeds the bold!”
Urging them on but torn:
whom to lead to the shore assault? Whom to trust
to besiege the embattled walls?
And all the while
Aeneas lands his men by planks from the high sterns.
Many, who watch for the ebbing waves to slip away,
go vaulting into the shallows, others row for shore.
Tarchon, on the watch for a welcome stretch of beach
where the shoals don’t churn, no breakers booming low
but a smooth unbroken groundswell glides toward the sand,
abruptly swerves his prow around and spurs his shipmates:
“Now, my chosen hands, you bend to your sturdy oars!
Lift up your prows, thrust them on, beaks plowing
this enemy coast, keels cutting their own furrows!
I don’t flinch from a wreck in such a mooring
once I’ve seized the land!”
At Tarchon’s command
his shipmates rise to their oars and drive their vessels
foaming onto the Latian shore until their beaks have
gripped dry land, all keels beached safe and sound,
all but your own ship, Tarchon. Aground on the shoals,
long impaled on a jagged reef it teeters back and forth,
tiring the waves—and suddenly breaks up, flinging
crews in the surf, ensnared in the shattered oars
and bobbing thwarts as the heavy backwash drags
their feet from shore.
But Turnus wastes no time,
he deploys his full force quickly against the Trojan force
to fight them at the beaches. Trumpets blare. Aeneas
is the first to attack the beleaguered farmers and—
sign of the battle’s outcome—brings the Latins down,
killing mighty Theron who dared to attack Aeneas.
His sword pierces the bronze mesh of Theron’s tunic,
stiff with its golden scales, and drains his gaping flank.
Lichas next—cut live from his dead mother’s womb
and hallowed to you, the Healer—
but what good now to elude the knife at birth?
Next Aeneas, as rugged Cisseus, giant Gyas clubbed
their way through his ranks: he flung both down to death.
No help to them now, the weapons of Hercules, no,
nor their own strong arms or their father Melampus,
Hercules’ mainstay, long as the earth afforded
the man his grueling labors.
Here’s Pharus, watch,
hurling his hollow threats as Aeneas hurls his javelin,
stakes it square in the man’s howling mouth. You too,
The Aeneid Page 35