Complete Works of Virgil

by Virgil

Clear water for his hands the sisters bring,

  With napkins of shorn pile, while others heap

  The board with dainties, and set on afresh

  The brimming goblets; with Panchaian fires

  Upleap the altars; then the mother spake,

  “Take beakers of Maconian wine,” she said,

  “Pour we to Ocean.” Ocean, sire of all,

  She worships, and the sister-nymphs who guard

  The hundred forests and the hundred streams;

  Thrice Vesta’s fire with nectar clear she dashed,

  Thrice to the roof-top shot the flame and shone:

  Armed with which omen she essayed to speak:

  “In Neptune’s gulf Carpathian dwells a seer,

  Caerulean Proteus, he who metes the main

  With fish-drawn chariot of two-footed steeds;

  Now visits he his native home once more,

  Pallene and the Emathian ports; to him

  We nymphs do reverence, ay, and Nereus old;

  For all things knows the seer, both those which are

  And have been, or which time hath yet to bring;

  So willed it Neptune, whose portentous flocks,

  And loathly sea-calves ‘neath the surge he feeds.

  Him first, my son, behoves thee seize and bind

  That he may all the cause of sickness show,

  And grant a prosperous end. For save by force

  No rede will he vouchsafe, nor shalt thou bend

  His soul by praying; whom once made captive, ply

  With rigorous force and fetters; against these

  His wiles will break and spend themselves in vain.

  I, when the sun has lit his noontide fires,

  When the blades thirst, and cattle love the shade,

  Myself will guide thee to the old man’s haunt,

  Whither he hies him weary from the waves,

  That thou mayst safelier steal upon his sleep.

  But when thou hast gripped him fast with hand and gyve,

  Then divers forms and bestial semblances

  Shall mock thy grasp; for sudden he will change

  To bristly boar, fell tigress, dragon scaled,

  And tawny-tufted lioness, or send forth

  A crackling sound of fire, and so shake of

  The fetters, or in showery drops anon

  Dissolve and vanish. But the more he shifts

  His endless transformations, thou, my son,

  More straitlier clench the clinging bands, until

  His body’s shape return to that thou sawest,

  When with closed eyelids first he sank to sleep.”

  So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew

  She sheds around, and all his frame therewith

  Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks

  Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt

  Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast

  Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave

  By the wind’s stress is driven, and breaks far up

  Its inmost creeks- safe anchorage from of old

  For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin,

  Behind a rock’s huge barrier, Proteus hides.

  Here in close covert out of the sun’s eye

  The youth she places, and herself the while

  Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof.

  And now the ravening dog-star that burns up

  The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course

  The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades

  Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws

  Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray,

  When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave

  Strode from the billows: round him frolicking

  The watery folk that people the waste sea

  Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide.

  Along the shore in scattered groups to feed

  The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself,

  Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids

  The steers from pasture to their stall repair,

  And the lambs’ bleating whets the listening wolves,

  Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale.

  But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch,

  Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs,

  With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose

  Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless,

  All unforgetful of his ancient craft,

  Transforms himself to every wondrous thing,

  Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream.

  But when no trickery found a path for flight,

  Baffled at length, to his own shape returned,

  With human lips he spake, “Who bade thee, then,

  So reckless in youth’s hardihood, affront

  Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?”- But he,

  “Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest;

  For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou

  To practise upon me: at heaven’s behest

  I for my fainting fortunes hither come

  An oracle to ask thee.” There he ceased.

  Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained,

  Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes

  Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth

  Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven:

  “Doubt not ’tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus,

  Nor light the debt thou payest; ’tis Orpheus’ self,

  Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his,

  So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires,

  Yet madly raging for his ravished bride.

  She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit

  Along the stream, saw not the coming death,

  Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank

  In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake.

  But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers

  Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks:

  Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope,

  And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars,

  The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less

  With Hebrus’ stream; and Orithyia wept,

  Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus’ self,

  Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell,

  Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone,

  Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang.

  Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came,

  Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove

  Grim with a horror of great darkness- came,

  Entered, and faced the Manes and the King

  Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame.

  Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus,

  Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades

  Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms

  Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie

  To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour

  Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;

  Matrons and men, and great heroic frames

  Done with life’s service, boys, unwedded girls,

  Youths placed on pyre before their fathers’ eyes.

  Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,

  Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp

  Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast,

  Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.

  Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death

  Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides,

  Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined;

  Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,

  And, the wind hushed, Ixion’s wheel stood still.

  And now with homeward footstep he had passed

  All perils scathless, and, at length restored,

  E
urydice to realms of upper air

  Had well-nigh won, behind him following-

  So Proserpine had ruled it- when his heart

  A sudden mad desire surprised and seized-

  Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.

  For at the very threshold of the day,

  Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,

  He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice

  His own once more. But even with the look,

  Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond

  Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard

  Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.

  ‘Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought

  On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again

  The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep

  Closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell:

  Girt with enormous night I am borne away,

  Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,

  These helpless hands.’ She spake, and suddenly,

  Like smoke dissolving into empty air,

  Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him

  Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,

  Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time

  Hell’s boatman brooks he pass the watery bar.

  What should he do? fly whither, twice bereaved?

  Move with what tears the Manes, with what voice

  The Powers of darkness? She indeed even now

  Death-cold was floating on the Stygian barge!

  For seven whole months unceasingly, men say,

  Beneath a skyey crag, by thy lone wave,

  Strymon, he wept, and in the caverns chill

  Unrolled his story, melting tigers’ hearts,

  And leading with his lay the oaks along.

  As in the poplar-shade a nightingale

  Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain,

  Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she

  Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray

  With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,

  Till all the region with her wrongs o’erflows.

  No love, no new desire, constrained his soul:

  By snow-bound Tanais and the icy north,

  Far steppes to frost Rhipaean forever wed,

  Alone he wandered, lost Eurydice

  Lamenting, and the gifts of Dis ungiven.

  Scorned by which tribute the Ciconian dames,

  Amid their awful Bacchanalian rites

  And midnight revellings, tore him limb from limb,

  And strewed his fragments over the wide fields.

  Then too, even then, what time the Hebrus stream,

  Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled,

  Rent from the marble neck, his drifting head,

  The death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry

  ‘Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!’

  With parting breath he called her, and the banks

  From the broad stream caught up ‘Eurydice!’”

  So Proteus ending plunged into the deep,

  And, where he plunged, beneath the eddying whirl

  Churned into foam the water, and was gone;

  But not Cyrene, who unquestioned thus

  Bespake the trembling listener: “Nay, my son,

  From that sad bosom thou mayst banish care:

  Hence came that plague of sickness, hence the nymphs,

  With whom in the tall woods the dance she wove,

  Wrought on thy bees, alas! this deadly bane.

  Bend thou before the Dell-nymphs, gracious powers:

  Bring gifts, and sue for pardon: they will grant

  Peace to thine asking, and an end of wrath.

  But how to approach them will I first unfold-

  Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,

  That browse to-day the green Lycaean heights,

  Pick from thy herds, as many kine to match,

  Whose necks the yoke pressed never: then for these

  Build up four altars by the lofty fanes,

  And from their throats let gush the victims’ blood,

  And in the greenwood leave their bodies lone.

  Then, when the ninth dawn hath displayed its beams,

  To Orpheus shalt thou send his funeral dues,

  Poppies of Lethe, and let slay a sheep

  Coal-black, then seek the grove again, and soon

  For pardon found adore Eurydice

  With a slain calf for victim.”

  No delay:

  The self-same hour he hies him forth to do

  His mother’s bidding: to the shrine he came,

  The appointed altars reared, and thither led

  Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,

  With kine to match, that never yoke had known;

  Then, when the ninth dawn had led in the day,

  To Orpheus sent his funeral dues, and sought

  The grove once more. But sudden, strange to tell

  A portent they espy: through the oxen’s flesh,

  Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum

  Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil

  In endless clouds they spread them, till at last

  On yon tree-top together fused they cling,

  And drop their cluster from the bending boughs.

  So sang I of the tilth of furrowed fields,

  Of flocks and trees, while Caesar’s majesty

  Launched forth the levin-bolts of war by deep

  Euphrates, and bare rule o’er willing folk

  Though vanquished, and essayed the heights of heaven.

  I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope

  The nursling, wooed the flowery walks of peace

  Inglorious, who erst trilled for shepherd-wights

  The wanton ditty, and sang in saucy youth

  THE AENEID

  The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, composed from 29 to 19 BC. Commissioned by the Emperor Augustus, it tells the legendary tale of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, becoming the ancestor of the Romans. Augustus’ aim was to create a poem that could rival the Greeks’ Homeric works. Virgil’s epic is composed of approximately 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem’s twelve books narrate the story of Aeneas’ wanderings from Troy to Italy, whilst the second half of the epic poem concerns the Trojans’ ultimately victorious war against the Latins.

  Prior to the epic’s composition, the hero Aeneas was already a figure of Greco-Roman legends, having been a character from Homer’s The Iliad. Virgil used the disconnected tales of Aeneas’ wanderings and the hero’s vague association with the foundation of Rome, fashioning the tales into a compelling founding myth, linking Rome to the legends of Troy. Interestingly, on his untimely deathbed, Virgil ordered The Aeneid to be destroyed, which, according to legend was almost obeyed, but for Augustus’ countermand to preserve the poem. Now, The Aeneid is regarded as one of the most important poems in the history of western literature.

  A first century terracotta expressing the pietas of Aeneas, who carries his aged father and leads his young son (Book 2)

  A Roman bas-relief from the second century: Aeneas lands in Latium, leading his son Ascanius (Book 8)

  ‘Aeneas's defeat of Turnus’ (Book 12) by Luca Giordano

  Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia, by Jean-Joseph Taillasson, 1787

  ENEADOS – Douglas’ Translation

  Gavin Douglas’ Eneados, a medieval Scots translation of the Aeneid completed in 1513, is the first full translation of a full-length classical poem from antiquity into any modern Germanic language. The translation, which is faithful and precise throughout, includes the thirteenth book by Mapheus Vegius, completing Virgil’s unfinished tale. Each of the thirteen books is also introduced by an original verse prologue, dealing with a variety of subjects, sometimes semi-autobiographical, in a variety of styles. For several centuries Doug
las’ translation has won critical recognition, in spite of its archaic and Scots dialect language, which now renders it difficult for modern readers. Even in the twentieth century, Ezra Pound considered Douglas’ translation of the Aeneid still to be the best, praising the “richness and fervour” of its language and its fidelity to the original Latin text.

  ‘Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia’ by Jean-Baptiste Wicar

  Gavin Douglas (c. 1474-1522) — statue in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh

  DOUGLAS’ ENEADOS

  CONTENTS

  PROLOUG

  CONTENTIS

  BUKE I

  BUKE II

  BUKE III

  BUKE IV

  BUKE V

  BUKE VI

  BUKE VII

  BUKE VIII

  BUKE IX

  BUKE X

  BUKE XI

  BUKE XII

  BUKE XIII

  CONCLUSIO

  EXCUSIS

  PROLOUG

  Heyr begynnys the proloug of Virgyll prynce of Latyn poetis in hys twelf bukis of Eneados compilit and translatit furth of Latyn in our Scottis langage by ane right nobill and wirschipfull clerk Master Gawyn Dowglas provest of Sanct Gylys Kyrk in Edinburgh and person of Lyntoun in Louthiane quhilk eftyr was bischop of Dunkeld.

  Incipit Prologus in Virgilii Eneados

  Lawd, honour, praysyngis, thankis infynyte

  To the and thy dulce ornat fresch endyte,

  Maist reuerend Virgill, of Latyn poetis prynce,

  Gem of engyne and flude of eloquens,

  Thow peirless perle, patroun of poetry,

  Royss, regester, palm, lawrer and glory,

  Chosyn charbukkill, cheif flour and cedyr tre,

  Lantarn, laid stern, myrrour and A per se,

  Maister of masteris, sweit sours and spryngand well

  Wyde quhar our all rung is thyne hevynly bell —

  I meyn thy crafty warkis curyus

  Sa quyk, lusty and maist sentencyus,

  Plesand, perfyte and feilabill in all degre,

  As quha the mater beheld tofor thar e,

  In every volume quhilk the lyst do wryte

  Surmontyng fer all other maner endyte,

  Lyke as the royss in Iune with hir sweit smell

  The maryguld or dasy doith excell.

  Quhy suld I than with dull forhed and vayn,

  With rude engyne and barrand emptyve brayn,