unlucky Cydon, pursuing Clytius, your new love,
his cheeks soft with the first gold down of youth—
you would have gone down under the Trojan’s hand
and died a pitiful death,
with all recall of your young boy lovers lost,
if a pack of your brothers had not blocked Aeneas,
seven of Phorcus’ offspring rifling seven spears,
some glancing off his shield and his helmet, harmless,
others, that loving Venus flicked away, just scratched his body.
Aeneas cries to Achates: “Give me a sheaf of weapons!
I won’t miss a single Rutulian with my spear,
just as my spears impaled the Greeks at Troy!”
With that he seizes a heavy lance and wings it hard
and straight through the bronze of Maeon’s shield it pounds,
ripping open his breast and breastplate both at once.
His brother Alcanor runs to brace his falling brother,
quick, but the spear’s already flown its bloody way,
stabbing his dying arm that hangs from his shoulder,
dangling loose by the tendons. Another, Numitor,
wrenching out the shaft from his brother’s body,
went at Aeneas, praying to hit him, pay him back
but not a chance of that—he could only graze
the stalwart Achates in the thigh.
Now up steps
Clausus from Cures, flushed with his young strength
and flings his burly spear from a distance, hitting Dryops
under the chin full force to choke the Trojan’s throat
as he shouted, cutting off both his voice and life
in the same breath, and his brow slams the ground
as he vomits clots of blood.
Three Thracians too, of the Northwind’s lofty stock,
and three whom their father, Idas, and fatherland Ismarus
sent away to the wars, but Clausus kills them all
with a novel twist of death for each. Halaesus
rushes in with Auruncan troops and Messapus,
Neptune’s son, as well, the brilliant horseman.
Trojans and Latins, struggling to rout each other,
seesawing back and forth as they fight it out
on Italy’s very doorstep. Like clashing winds
in the vast heavens, bursting forth into battle,
matched in spirit, in power—no gust surrendering,
one to another, neither the winds nor clouds nor seas:
all hangs in the balance, the world gripped in a deadlock.
So they clash, the Trojan armies, armies of Latins,
foot dug in against foot, man packed against man.
Another zone
where a torrent had hurled down boulders, heaving them
far and wide and torn out trees from its banks . . .
When Pallas saw his Arcadians, untrained to attack
on foot and turning tail before the Latins’ pursuit—
the lay of the rock-choked land convinced them all
to desert their horses—so, seizing on one last way
to stem disaster, now with prayers, now stinging taunts,
he fires up their war-lust: “Where are you flying, friends?
I beg you now by your self-respect, your own brave work,
by your chief Evander’s name, your victories won,
by my own rising hopes to match my father’s fame,
don’t trust to your feet—hack the foe with swords,
that’s the way! Over there, where the massed infantry
pushes forward, that’s where your famous land
demands you back with Pallas in the lead.
No gods force us on—
we’re mortals, harried by mortal enemies.
They have as many hands and lives as we. Look,
the ocean shuts us in with immense blockades of waves,
no land to fly to! What, shall we head for the sea—
or Troy?”
Fighting words, and he hurls himself
at the enemy’s massed ranks.
First to confront him?
Lagus, lured on by a harsh fate. As he tries to lift
an enormous rock, Pallas rifles a spear that strikes his spine
midway where it parts the ribs, and wrenches back the shaft
that’s wedged in the bone as Hisbo pounces down on him,
filled with the hope to take his man off guard.
But Pallas takes him first—Hisbo rushing in fury,
off his guard, berserk with his comrade’s death
as Pallas welcomes him in with the naked sword
he plunges into his lungs puffed up with rage.
Next he goes for Sthenius, then Anchemolus
sprung from Rhoeteus’ age-old line, a man
who dared befoul his own stepmother’s bed.
You too, you twins, went down on Latian fields,
Thymber, Larides, Daucus’ sons: identical twins,
an endearing puzzlement to your parents till
Pallas made a strict distinction between you.
Thymber—he lops off your head with one sweep
of Evander’s sword and, Larides, chops your hand
and the fighter’s dying hand gropes for its body,
quivering fingers claw for the sword once more.
Enflamed by his taunts and watching his brilliant work,
the Arcadians, armed with grief and shame, stand braced
to meet the enemy.
Suddenly Pallas runs Rhoeteus through
as he races past in his two-horse chariot. That much
respite and breathing room had Ilus won—at Ilus
Pallas had flung a rugged spear at long range,
but Rhoeteus pausing between them
takes the point head-on as he flees from you,
distinguished Teuthras, you and your brother Tyres—
Rhoeteus spilling out of his car in death-throes,
drumming the fields of Italy with his heels. So
as in summer, just when the winds he prayed for rise
and a shepherd kindles fires scattered through the forest,
suddenly all in the midst ignite into one long jagged
battle line of fire rampaging through the fields and high
on his perch he gazes down in triumph, seeing the blaze
exulting on—just as your comrades’ courage speeds
to your rescue, all at a single point, Pallas,
and joy fills your heart.
But Halaesus hot for combat
charges against them now, compressing all his force
behind his weapons. Ladon he butchers, Pheres, Demodocus—
a flash of his sword and he slices off Strymonius’ hand
just as it clutched his throat. He smashes Thoas full
in the face with a rock and crushes out his skull
in a spray of brains and blood. Halaesus’ father,
foreseeing his son’s doom, hid him deep in the woods,
but when the old man’s eyes went glazing blind in death,
the Fates, taking the son in hand, devoted him here
to Evander’s lance. Pallas attacks him, praying first:
“Now, Father Tiber, grant the spear I’m about to hurl
a lucky path through rugged Halaesus’ chest—
I’ll strip him of weapons, hang them on your oak!”
The Tiber heard his prayer. As Halaesus guarded Imaon,
the hapless fighter left his chest defenseless,
bared to the Arcadian lance.
But Lausus, who plays
a front-line role in war, won’t let his soldiers flinch
at Pallas’ carnage. First he finishes Abas, quick
to face him there: that burly knot, that bulwark of battle.
Arcadia’s prime he hacks down, hacks down the Tuscans
and you whose
bodies went unscarred by the Greeks,
you Trojans too. And the lines of fighters clash,
matched in chiefs, in power, the rearguard packs tight,
no room for maneuver, no spear hurled in the press.
Here Pallas drives and lunges, Lausus opposes him,
all but equal in age, remarkably handsome, both,
but Fortune grudged them both safe passage home.
Yet Jove would not allow those fighters to clash;
he saved each man for his own fate, soon now, under
a stronger foe.
Now his loving sister, Juturna,
spurs her brother Turnus quickly to Lausus’ side.
Turnus races his chariot straight through the ranks
and shouts as he sees his comrades: “Now’s the time
to halt your fighting! I will go after Pallas,
Pallas is mine now, my prize alone. If only
his father were here to watch it all in person!”
At that, his comrades cleared off from the field
and as they withdrew, young Pallas, struck dumb
by that arrogant command, runs his eyes over Turnus’
enormous frame, scanning every feature from where he stood
and glancing grimly, Pallas volleys back these words
to counter the words his high and mighty enemy used:
“Now’s my time to win some glory, either for stripping
off a wealth of spoils or dying a noble death—
my father can stand up under either fate.
Enough of your threats!”
Enough said.
Pallas marches out to the center of the field
and the blood runs cold in each Arcadian heart.
Down from his chariot Turnus vaulted, nerved
to attack the enemy face-to-face on foot.
Like some lion that spots from his high lookout,
far off on the plain and flexing for combat there,
an immense bull, and the lion plunges toward his kill—
and that is the image of Turnus coming on for battle.
When Pallas judged him just in range of his spear
he moved up first—if only Fortune would speed
his daring, pitting himself against unequal odds,
and he cries out to the arching heavens: “Hercules,
by my father’s board, the welcome you met as a stranger,
I beg you, stand by the great task I’m tackling now.
May Turnus see me stripping the bloody armor off his body,
bear the sight of his conqueror—eyes dulled in death!”
Hercules heard the young man’s prayer, suppressed a groan
that rose up from his heart, and wept helpless tears
as the Father said these tender words to his son:
“Each man has his day, and the time of life
is brief for all, and never comes again.
But to lengthen out one’s fame with action,
that’s the work of courage. How many sons of gods
went down under Troy’s high wall! Why, I lost
a son of my own with all the rest—Sarpedon.
For Turnus too, his own fate calls, and the man
has reached the end of all his days on earth.”
So Jove declares, and turns his glance away
from the Latian fields below . . .
Where Pallas rifles his spear full force
and sweeps his flashing sword from its casing sheath.
The spear goes flying on and it hits the armor high up
where the bronze rims the shoulder’s ridge, and glancing off,
it rams its way through the shield’s plies and finally
scrapes the skin of Turnus’ massive body. But Turnus,
balancing long his oakwood spear with its iron tip,
flings it at Pallas with winging words: “Now we’ll see
if my spear pierces deeper!” And Pallas’ shield, for all
its layers of iron and bronze, its countless layers of oxhide
rounding it out for strength—still Turnus’ vibrant spear
goes shattering through the shield with stabbing impact,
piercing the breastplate’s guard and Pallas’ broad chest.
Pallas wrenches the spearhead warm from his wound—no use—
his blood and his life breath follow hard on the same track out.
Collapsing onto his wound, his armor clanging over him,
Pallas dies, pounding enemy earth with his bloody mouth
as Turnus trumpets over him: “You Arcadians, listen!
Take a message home to Evander, tell him this:
The Pallas I send him back will serve him right!
Whatever tribute a tomb can give, whatever
balm a burial, I am only too glad to give.
But the welcome he gave Aeneas costs him dear.”
With that, he stamped his left foot on the corpse
and stripped away the sword-belt’s massive weight
engraved with its monstrous crime: how one night,
their wedding night, that troop of grooms was butchered,
fouling their wedding chambers with pools of blood—
all carved by Clonus, Eurytus’ son, in priceless gold.
Now Turnus glories in that spoil, exults to make it his.
How blind men’s minds to their fate and what the future holds,
how blind to limits when fortune lifts men high. Yes,
the time will come when Turnus would give his all
to have Pallas whole, intact,
when all this spoil, this very day he’ll loathe.
But a huge throng of friends is attending Pallas,
moaning, weeping, and bears him back upon his shield.
Oh you return to your father, his great grief and glory!
This day first gave you to war and this day takes you off
and still you leave behind great heaps of Latian dead.
Such a heavy blow. Now a trusted herald,
no empty rumor, wings the news to Aeneas:
His men stand on the razor edge of death—
now is the time to rescue his routed Trojans.
The closest enemy ranks he mows down with iron,
reaping a good wide swath through the Latian front,
blazing with rage as his sword-blade hacks that path,
hunting for you, Turnus, so proud of your latest kill.
As Pallas, Evander, all of them rise before Aeneas’ eyes,
the welcoming board that met him that first day,
the right hands clasped in trust—
And four sons of Sulmo,
fighters all, and the same number reared by Ufens:
Aeneas takes them alive to offer Pallas’ shade
and soak his flaming pyre with captive blood.
And next he wings from afar a deadly spear at Magus
ducking under it, quick, as the quivering shaft flies past
and Magus, hugging Aeneas’ knees, implores: “I beg you now
by your father’s ghost, by your hopes for rising Iulus,
spare this life of mine for my father and my son!
Ours is a stately mansion, deep inside lie buried
bars of ridged silver and heavy weights of gold,
some of it tooled, some untooled—mine alone!
Now how can a Trojan victory hinge on me?
How can a single life make such a difference?”
Magus begged no more as Aeneas lashed back:
“All those bars of silver and gold you brag of,
save them for your sons! Such bargaining in battle,
Turnus already cut it short when he cut Pallas down!
So the ghost of my father, so my son declares.”
And seizing Magus’ helmet tight in his left hand
and wrenching back his neck as the man prays on,
he digs his sword-blade deep down to the hilt.
Har
d by,
the son of Haemon and priest of Phoebus and Diana,
his temples wreathed in the consecrated bands,
all white in his robes, brilliant in his array—
Aeneas confronts him, coursing him down the field
and rearing over him as he stumbles, slaughters him,
shrouding his brilliant robes with a mighty shade.
Serestus gathers the armor, shoulders it home
to you, King Mars, your trophy now.
Now Caeculus,
Vulcan’s stock, and Umbro fresh from the Marsian highlands
rally their troops as Aeneas rages on against them.
His slashing sword had already hacked off Anxur’s
left arm and his round buckler slammed the ground.
He’d shouted some great boast, trusting his strength
would match his words, probably lifting his spirits
sky-high and promising gray hairs for himself
and a ripe old age—
as Aeneas faced down Tarquitus
gloating in burnished gear and born to Faunus,
god of the woods, by the wood-nymph Dryope.
Tarquitus blocked his path as Aeneas blazed on
and cocking back his spear he flings it and stakes
the breastplate fast to the shield’s groaning weight.
Then as Tarquitus begs him, struggling to keep on begging,
all for nothing, Aeneas dashes his head to the ground
and rolling the man’s warm trunk along and looming
over him vaunts with all the hatred in his heart:
“Now lie there, you great, frightful man!
No loving mother will bury you in the ground
or weight your body down with your fathers’ tomb.
You’ll be abandoned now to carrion birds or plunged
in the deep sea and swept away by the waves and
ravening fish will dart and lick your wounds!”
Plunging on he goes, overtaking their finest,
Turnus’ front-line troops: Antaeus, Lucas
and stalwart Numa and Camers with tawny locks,
magnanimous Volcens’ son, the richest landholder
in all Italy once, the lord of Amyclae, quiet town.
Aeneas like Aegaeon who, they say, had a hundred arms
and a hundred hands, and flames blazed from his fifty maws
and chests when he fought down Jupiter’s bolts of lightning,
clashing as many matching shields, unsheathing as many swords—
so Aeneas now, rampaging in triumph all across the plain,
once his sword had warmed to the slaughter. Look there,
he heads for Niphaeus’ car and his four horses raising
The Aeneid Page 36