The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 14

by John Dryden

Note III.

----Her princely guest
Was next her side.—P. 259.

This, I confess, is improperly translated, and according to the modern fashion of sitting at table. But the ancient custom of lying on beds had not been understood by the unlearned reader.

FOOTNOTES:

[99] The Hymn on Venus.

---

ÆNEÏS,
BOOK II.

ARGUMENT.

Æneas relates how the city of Troy was taken, after a ten years' siege, by the treachery of Sinon, and the stratagem of a wooden horse. He declares the fixed resolution he had taken not to survive the ruin of his country, and the various adventures he met with in the defence of it. At last, having been before advised by Hector's ghost, and now by the appearance of his mother Venus, he is prevailed upon to leave the town, and settle his household gods in another country. In order to do this, he carries off his father on his shoulders, and leads his little son by the hand, his wife following him behind. When he comes to the place appointed for the general rendezvous, he finds a great confluence of people, but misses his wife, whose ghost afterwards appears to him, and tells him the land which was designed for him.[100]

All were attentive to the godlike man,
When from his lofty couch he thus began:—
"Great queen, what you command me to relate,
Renews the sad remembrance of our fate:
An empire from its old foundations rent,
And every woe the Trojans underwent;
A peopled city made a desert place;
All that I saw, and part of which I was;
Not even the hardest of our foes could hear,
Nor stern Ulysses tell, without a tear.
And now the latter watch of wasting night,
And setting stars, to kindly rest invite.
But, since you take such interest in our woe,
And Troy's disastrous end desire to know,
I will restrain my tears, and briefly tell
What in our last and fatal night befell.
By destiny compelled, and in despair,
The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war,
And, by Minerva's aid, a fabric reared,
Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared:
The sides were planked with pine: they feigned it made
For their return, and this the vow they paid.
Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side,
Selected numbers of their soldiers hide:
With inward arms the dire machine they load,
And iron bowels stuff the dark abode.
In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle
(While Fortune did on Priam's empire smile)
Renowned for wealth; but, since, a faithless bay,
Where ships exposed to wind and weather lay.
There was their fleet concealed. We thought, for Greece
Their sails were hoisted, and our fears release.
The Trojans, cooped within their walls so long,
Unbar their gates, and issue in a throng,
Like swarming bees, and with delight survey
The camp deserted, where the Grecians lay:
The quarters of the several chiefs they showed— }
Here Phœnix, here Achilles, made abode; }
Here joined the battles; there the navy rode. }
Part on the pile their wondering eyes employ—
The pile by Pallas raised to ruin Troy.
Thymœtes first ('tis doubtful whether hired,
Or so the Trojan destiny required)
Moved, that the ramparts might be broken down,
To lodge the monster fabric in the town.
But Capys, and the rest of sounder mind,
The fatal present to the flames designed,
Or to the watery deep; at least to bore
The hollow sides, and hidden frauds explore.
The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide,
With noise say nothing, and in parts divide.
Laocoön, followed by a numerous crowd,
Ran from the fort, and cried, from far, aloud:—
"O wretched countrymen! what fury reigns?
What more than madness has possessed your brains?
Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone?
And are Ulysses' arts no better known?
This hollow fabric either must inclose,
Within its blind recess, our secret foes;
Or 'tis an engine raised above the town,
To o'erlook the walls, and then to batter down.
Somewhat is sure designed, by fraud or force—
Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse."
Thus having said, against the steed he threw
His forceful spear, which, hissing as it flew,
Pierced through the yielding planks of jointed wood,
And trembling in the hollow belly stood.
The sides, transpierced, return a rattling sound,
And groans of Greeks inclosed come issuing through the wound.
And, had not heaven the fall of Troy designed, }
Or had not men been fated to be blind, }
Enough was said and done to inspire a better mind. }
Then had our lances pierced the treacherous wood,
And Ilian towers and Priam's empire stood.
Meantime, with shouts, the Trojan shepherds bring
A captive Greek in bands, before the king—
Taken, to take—who made himself their prey,
To impose on their belief, and Troy betray;
Fixed on his aim, and obstinately bent
To die undaunted, or to circumvent.
About the captive, tides of Trojans flow;
All press to see, and some insult the foe.
Now hear how well the Greeks their wiles disguised;
Behold a nation in a man comprised.
Trembling the miscreant stood; unarmed and bound,
He stared, and rolled his hagard eyes around,
Then said, "Alas! what earth remains, what sea
Is open to receive unhappy me?
What fate a wretched fugitive attends,
Scorned by my foes, abandoned by my friends?"
He said, and sighed, and cast a rueful eye;
Our pity kindles, and our passions die.
We cheer the youth to make his own defence,
And freely tell us what he was, and whence:
What news he could impart, we long to know,
And what to credit from a captive foe.
His fear at length dismissed, he said,—"Whate'er
My fate ordains, my words shall be sincere:
I neither can nor dare my birth disclaim;
Greece is my country, Sinon is my name.
Though plunged by Fortune's power in misery,
'Tis not in Fortune's power to make me lie.
If any chance has hither brought the name
Of Palamedes, not unknown to fame,
Who suffered from the malice of the times,
Accused and sentenced for pretended crimes,
Because the fatal wars he would prevent;
Whose death the wretched Greeks too late lament—
Me, then a boy, my father, poor and bare }
Of other means, committed to his care, }
His kinsman and companion in the war. }
While Fortune favoured, while his arms support
The cause, and ruled the counsels of the court,
I made some figure there; nor was my name
Obscure, nor I without my share of fame.
But when Ulysses, with fallacious arts,
Had made impression in the people's hearts,
And forged a treason in my patron's name,
(I speak of things too far divulged by fame,)
My kinsman fell. Then I, without support,
In private mourned his loss, and left the court.
Mad as I was, I could not bear his fate
With silent grief, but loudly blamed the state,
And cursed the direful author of my woes.—
'Twas told again; and hence my ruin rose.
I threatened, if indulgent heaven once more }
Would land me safely on my native shore, }
His death with double vengeance to restore. }
This moved the murderer's hate; and soon ensued
The effects of malice from a man so proud.
Ambiguous rumours through the camp he spread,
And sought, by treason, my devoted head;
New crimes invented; left unturned no stone,
To make my guilt appear, and hide his own;
Till Calchas was by force and threatening wrought—
But why—why dwell I on that anxious thought?
If on my nation just revenge you seek,
And 'tis to appear a foe, to appear a Greek;
Already you my name and country know;
Assuage your thirst of blood, and strike the blow:
My death will both the kingly brothers please,
And set insatiate Ithacus at ease."
This fair unfinished tale, these broken starts, }
Raised expectations in our longing hearts; }
Unknowing as we were in Grecian arts. }
His former trembling once again renewed,
With acted fear, the villain thus pursued:—
"Long had the Grecians (tired with fruitless care,
And wearied with an unsuccessful war)
Resolved to raise the siege, and leave the town;
And, had the gods permitted, they had gone.
But oft the wintery seas, and southern winds,
Withstood their passage home, and changed their minds.
Portents and prodigies their souls amazed;
But most, when this stupendous pile was raised:
Then flaming meteors, hung in air, were seen,
And thunders rattled through a sky serene.
Dismayed, and fearful of some dire event,
Eurypylus, to inquire their fate, was sent.
He from the gods this dreadful answer brought: }
'O Grecians, when the Trojan shores you sought, }
Your passage with a virgin's blood was bought: }
So must your safe return be bought again,
And Grecian blood once more atone the main.'
The spreading rumour round the people ran;
All feared, and each believed himself the man.
Ulysses took the advantage of their fright;
Called Calchas, and produced in open sight,
Then bade him name the wretch, ordained by fate
The public victim, to redeem the state.
Already some presaged the dire event,
And saw what sacrifice Ulysses meant.
For twice five days the good old seer withstood
The intended treason, and was dumb to blood,
Till, tired with endless clamours and pursuit
Of Ithacus, he stood no longer mute,
But, as it was agreed, pronounced that I
Was destined by the wrathful gods to die.
All praised the sentence, pleased the storm should fall
On one alone, whose fury threatened all.
The dismal day was come; the priests prepare
Their leavened cakes, and fillets for my hair.
I followed nature's laws, and must avow,
I broke my bonds, and fled the fatal blow.
Hid in a weedy lake all night I lay,
Secure of safety when they sailed away.
But now what further hopes for me remain,
To see my friends, or native soil, again;
My tender infants, or my careful sire,
Whom they returning will to death require;
Will perpetrate on them their first design,
And take the forfeit of their heads for mine?
Which, O! if pity mortal minds can move,
If there be faith below, or gods above,
If innocence and truth can claim desert,
Ye Trojans, from an injured wretch avert."
False tears true pity move; the king commands
To loose his fetters, and unbind his hands,
Then adds these friendly words:—"Dismiss thy fears;
Forget the Greeks; be mine as thou wert theirs;
But truly tell, was it for force or guile,
Or some religious end, you raised the pile?"
Thus said the king.—He, full of fraudful arts,
This well-invented tale for truth imparts:—
"Ye lamps of heaven!" he said, and lifted high
His hands now free,—"thou venerable sky!
Inviolable powers, adored with dread! }
Ye fatal fillets, that once bound this head! }
Ye sacred altars, from whose flames I fled! }
Be all of you adjured; and grant I may,
Without a crime, the ungrateful Greeks betray,
Reveal the secrets of the guilty state,
And justly punish whom I justly hate!
But you, O king, preserve the faith you gave,
If I, to save myself, your empire save.
The Grecian hopes, and all the attempts they made,
Were only founded on Minerva's aid.
But from the time when impious Diomede,
And false Ulysses, that inventive head,
Her fatal image from the temple drew,
The sleeping guardians of the castle slew,
Her virgin statue with their bloody hands
Polluted, and profaned her holy bands;
From thence the tide of fortune left their shore,
And ebbed much faster than it flowed before:
Their courage languished, as their hopes decayed;
And Pallas, now averse, refused her aid.
Nor did the goddess doubtfully declare
Her altered mind, and alienated care.
When first her fatal image touched the ground,
She sternly cast her glaring eyes around,
That sparkled as they rolled, and seemed to threat:
Her heavenly limbs distilled a briny sweat.
Thrice from the ground she leaped, was seen to wield
Her brandished lance, and shake her horrid shield.
Then Calchas bade our host for flight prepare,
And hope no conquest from the tedious war,
Till first they sailed for Greece; with prayers besought
Her injured power, and better omens brought.
And now their navy ploughs the watery main, }
Yet soon expect it on your shores again, }
With Pallas pleased; as Calchas did ordain. }
But first, to reconcile the blue-eyed maid
For her stolen statue and her tower betrayed,
Warned by the seer, to her offended name
We raised and dedicate this wonderous frame,
So lofty, lest through your forbidden gates
It pass, and intercept our better fates:
For, once admitted there, our hopes are lost;
And Troy may then a new Palladium boast;
For so religion and the gods ordain,
That, if you violate with hands profane
Minerva's gift, your town in flames shall burn,
(Which omen, O ye gods, on Græcia turn!)
But if it climb, with your assisting hands,
The Trojan walls, and in the city stands;
Then Troy shall Argos and Mycenæ burn,
And the reverse of fate on us return."
With such deceits he gained their easy hearts,
Too prone to credit his perfidious arts.
What Diomede, nor Thetis' greater son, }
A thousand ships, nor ten years' siege, had done—}
False tears and fawning words the city won. }
A greater omen, and of worse portent, }
Did our unwary minds with fear torment, }
Concurring to produce the dire event. }
Laocoön, Neptune's priest by lot that year,
With solemn pomp then sacrificed a steer;
When (dreadful to behold!) from sea we spied }
Two serpents, ranked abreast, the seas divide, }
And smoothly sweep along the swelling tide. }
Their flaming crests above the waves they show;
Their bellies seem to burn the seas below;
Their speckled tails advance to steer their course,
And on the sounding shore the flying billows force.
And now the strand, and now the plain, they held.
Their ardent eyes with bloody streaks were filled;
Their nimble tongues they brandished as they came,
And licked their hissing jaws, that sputtered flame.
We fled amazed; their destined way they take,
And to Laocoön and his children make;
And first around the tender boys they wind,
Then with their sharpened fangs their limbs and bodies grind.
The wretched father, running to their aid
With pious haste, but vain, they next invade;
Twice round his waist their winding volumes rolled;
And twice about his gasping throat they fold.
The priest thus doubly choked—their crests divide,
And towering o'er his head in triumph ride.
With both his hands he labours at the knots;
His holy fillets the blue venom blots;
His roaring fills the flitting air around.
Thus, when an ox receives a glancing wound,
He breaks his bands, the fatal altar flies,
And with loud bellowings breaks the yielding skies.
Their tasks performed, the serpents quit their prey,
And to the tower of Pallas make their way:
Couched at her feet, they lie protected there,
By her large buckler, and protended spear.
Amazement seizes all; the general cry
Proclaims Laocoön justly doomed to die,
Whose hand the will of Pallas had withstood,
And dared to violate the sacred wood.
All vote to admit the steed, that vows be paid,
And incense offered, to the offended maid.
A spacious breach is made; the town lies bare;
Some hoisting-levers, some the wheels, prepare,
And fasten to the horses feet; the rest
With cables haul along the unwieldy beast.
Each on his fellow for assistance calls;
At length the fatal fabric mounts the walls,
Big with destruction. Boys with chaplets crowned,
And choirs of virgins, sing and dance around.
Thus raised aloft, and then descending down,
It enters o'er our heads, and threats the town.
O sacred city, built by hands divine!
O valiant heroes of the Trojan line!
Four times he struck; as oft the clashing sound
Of arms was heard, and inward groans rebound.
Yet, mad with zeal, and blinded with our fate,
We haul along the horse in solemn state;
Then place the dire portent within the tower.
Cassandra cried, and cursed the unhappy hour;
Foretold our fate; but, by the god's decree,
All heard, and none believed the prophecy.
With branches we the fanes adorn, and waste,
In jollity, the day ordained to be the last.
Meantime the rapid heavens rolled down the light,
And on the shaded ocean rushed the night;
Our men, secure, nor guards nor sentries held,
But easy sleep their weary limbs compelled.
The Grecians had embarked their naval powers
From Tenedos, and sought our well-known shores,
Safe under covert of the silent night,
And guided by the imperial galley's light;
When Sinon, favoured by the partial gods,
Unlocked the horse, and oped his dark abodes;
Restored to vital air our hidden foes,
Who joyful from their long confinement rose.
Thessander bold, and Sthenelus their guide,
And dire Ulysses, down the cable slide:
Then Thoas, Athamas, and Pyrrhus, haste;
Nor was the Podalirian hero last,
Nor injured Menelaüs, nor the famed
Epeus, who the fatal engine framed.
A nameless crowd succeed; their forces join
To invade the town, oppressed with sleep and wine.
Those few they find awake, first meet their fate;
Then to their fellows they unbar the gate.
'Twas in the dead of night, when sleep repairs
Our bodies worn with toils, our minds with cares,
When Hector's ghost before my sight appears:
A bloody shroud he seemed, and bathed in tears;
Such as he was, when, by Pelides slain,
Thessalian coursers dragged him o'er the plain.
Swoln were his feet, as when the thongs were thrust
Through the bored holes; his body black with dust;
Unlike that Hector, who returned, from toils
Of war, triumphant in Æacian spoils,
Or him, who made the fainting Greeks retire,
And launched against their navy Phrygian fire.
His hair and beard stood stiffened with his gore;
And all the wounds he for his country bore,
Now streamed afresh, and with new purple ran. }
I wept to see the visionary man, }
And, while my trance continued, thus began:— }
"O light of Trojans, and support of Troy,
Thy father's champion, and thy country's joy!
O, long expected by thy friends! from whence
Art thou so late returned for our defence?
Do we behold thee, wearied as we are,
With length of labours, and with toils of war?
After so many funerals of thy own,
Art thou restored to thy declining town?
But say, what wounds are these? what new disgrace
Deforms the manly features of thy face?"
To this the spectre no reply did frame,
But answered to the cause for which he came,
And, groaning from the bottom of his breast,
This warning, in these mournful words, expressed:
"O goddess-born! escape, by timely flight,
The flames and horrors of this fatal night.
The foes already have possessed the wall;
Troy nods from high, and totters to her fall.
Enough is paid to Priam's royal name,
More than enough to duty and to fame.
If by a mortal hand my father's throne
Could be defended, 'twas by mine alone.
Now Troy to thee commends her future state,
And gives her gods companions of thy fate:
From their assistance, happier walls expect,
Which, wandering long, at last thou shalt erect."
He said, and brought me, from their blest abodes,
The venerable statues of the gods,
With ancient Vesta from the sacred choir,
The wreaths and reliques of the immortal fire.
Now peals of shouts come thundering from afar,
Cries, threats, and loud laments, and mingled war:
The noise approaches, though our palace stood
Aloof from streets, encompassed with a wood.
Louder, and yet more loud, I hear the alarms
Of human cries distinct, and clashing arms.
Fear broke my slumbers; I no longer stay, }
But mount the terrace, thence the town survey, }
And hearken what the frightful sounds convey. }
Thus, when a flood of fire by wind is borne,
Crackling it rolls, and mows the standing corn;
Or deluges, descending on the plains, }
Sweep o'er the yellow year, destroy the pains }
Of labouring oxen, and the peasant's gains; }
Unroot the forest oaks, and bear away
Flocks, folds, and trees, an undistinguished prey—
The shepherd climbs the cliff, and sees from far
The wasteful ravage of the watery war.
Then Hector's faith was manifestly cleared,
And Grecian frauds in open light appeared.
The palace of Deïphobus ascends
In smoky flames, and catches on his friends.
Ucalegon burns next: the seas are bright
With splendour not their own, and shine with Trojan light.
New clamours and new clangors now arise,
The sound of trumpets mixed with fighting cries.
With phrensy seized, I run to meet the alarms,
Resolved on death, resolved to die in arms,
But first to gather friends, with them to oppose
(If Fortune favoured) and repel the foes;
Spurred by my courage, by my country fired,
With sense of honour and revenge inspired.
Panthûs, Apollo's priest, a sacred name,
Had 'scaped the Grecian swords, and passed the flame:
With reliques loaden, to my doors he fled,
And by the hand his tender grandson led.
"What hope, O Panthûs? whither can we run?
Where make a stand? and what may yet be done?"
Scarce had I said, when Panthûs, with a groan,—
"Troy is no more, and Ilium was a town!
The fatal day, the appointed hour, is come,
When wrathful Jove's irrevocable doom
Transfers the Trojan state to Grecian hands.
The fire consumes the town, the foe commands;
And armed hosts, an unexpected force,
Break from the bowels of the fatal horse.
Within the gates, proud Sinon throws about
The flames; and foes, for entrance, press without,
With thousand others, whom I fear to name,
More than from Argos or Mycenæ came.
To several posts their parties they divide;
Some block the narrow streets, some scour the wide:
The bold they kill, the unwary they surprise;
Who fights finds death, and death finds him who flies.
The warders of the gate but scarce maintain
The unequal combat, and resist in vain."
I heard; and heaven, that well-born souls inspires,
Prompts me, through lifted swords and rising fires,
To run, where clashing arms and clamour calls,
And rush undaunted to defend the walls.
Ripheus and Iphitus by my side engage,
For valour one renowned, and one for age.
Dymas and Hypanis by moonlight knew
My motions and my mien, and to my party drew;
With young Chorœbus, who by love was led
To win renown, and fair Cassandra's bed;
And lately brought his troops to Priam's aid,
Forewarned in vain by the prophetic maid:
Whom when I saw resolved in arms to fall,
And that one spirit animated all,
"Brave souls!" said I,—"but brave, alas! in vain—
Come, finish what our cruel fates ordain.
You see the desperate state of our affairs,
And heaven's protecting powers are deaf to prayers.
The passive gods behold the Greeks defile
Their temples, and abandon to the spoil
Their own abodes: we, feeble few, conspire
To save a sinking town, involved in fire.
Then let us fall, but fall amidst our foes:
Despair of life the means of living shows."
So bold a speech encouraged their desire
Of death, and added fuel to their fire.
As hungry wolves, with raging appetite,
Scour through the fields, nor fear the stormy night—
Their whelps at home expect the promised food,
And long to temper their dry chaps in blood—
So rushed we forth at once: resolved to die,
Resolved, in death, the last extremes to try,
We leave the narrow lanes behind, and dare }
The unequal combat in the public square: }
Night was our friend; our leader was despair. }
What tongue can tell the slaughter of that night?
What eyes can weep the sorrows and affright?
An ancient and imperial city falls;
The streets are filled with frequent funerals;
Houses and holy temples float in blood,
And hostile nations make a common flood.
Not only Trojans fall; but, in their turn,
The vanquished triumph, and the victors mourn.
Ours take new courage from despair and night;
Confused the fortune is, confused the fight.
All parts resound with tumults, plaints, and fears;
And grisly Death in sundry shapes appears.
Androgeos fell among us, with his band,
Who thought us Grecians newly come to land.
"From whence," said he, "my friends, this long delay?
You loiter, while the spoils are borne away:
Our ships are laden with the Trojan store;
And you, like truants, come too late ashore."
He said, but soon corrected his mistake,
Found, by the doubtful answers which we make.
Amazed, he would have shunned the unequal fight;
But we, more numerous, intercept his flight.
As when some peasant in a bushy brake,
Has with unwary footing pressed a snake;
He starts aside, astonished, when he spies }
His rising crest, blue neck, and rolling eyes; }
So, from our arms, surprised Androgeos flies— }
In vain; for him and his we compass round, }
Possessed with fear, unknowing of the ground, }
And of their lives an easy conquest found. }
Thus Fortune on our first endeavour smiled.
Chorœbus then, with youthful hopes beguiled,
Swoln with success, and of a daring mind,
This new invention fatally designed.
"My friends," said he, "since Fortune shows the way,
'Tis fit we should the auspicious guide obey.
For what has she these Grecian arms bestowed,
But their destruction, and the Trojans' good?
Then change we shields, and their devices bear:
Let fraud supply the want of force in war.
They find us arms." This said, himself he dressed }
In dead Androgeos' spoils, his upper vest, }
His painted buckler, and his plumy crest. }
Thus Ripheus, Dymas, all the Trojan train,
Lay down their own attire, and strip the slain.
Mixed with the Greeks, we go with ill presage,
Flattered with hopes to glut our greedy rage;
Unknown, assaulting whom we blindly meet,
And strew, with Grecian carcases, the street.
Thus while their straggling parties we defeat,
Some to the shore and safer ships retreat;
And some, oppressed with more ignoble fear,
Remount the hollow horse, and pant in secret there.
But, ah! what use of valour can be made,
When heaven's propitious powers refuse their aid?
Behold the royal prophetess, the fair
Cassandra, dragged by her dishevelled hair,
Whom not Minerva's shrine, nor sacred bands,
In safety could protect from sacrilegious hands:
On heaven she cast her eyes, she sighed, she cried—
'Twas all she could—her tender arms were tied.
So sad a sight Chorœbus could not bear;
But, fired with rage, distracted with despair,
Amid the barbarous ravishers he flew.
Our leader's rash example we pursue:
But storms of stones, from the proud temple's height,
Pour down, and on our battered helms alight:
We from our friends received this fatal blow,
Who thought us Grecians, as we seemed in show.
They aim at the mistaken crests, from high;
And ours beneath the ponderous ruin lie.
Then, moved with anger and disdain, to see
Their troops dispersed, the royal virgin free,
The Grecians rally, and their powers unite,
With fury charge us, and renew the fight.
The brother kings with Ajax join their force,
And the whole squadron of Thessalian horse.
Thus, when the rival winds their quarrel try,
Contending for the kingdom of the sky,
South, east, and west, on airy coursers borne—
The whirlwind gathers, and the woods are torn:
Then Nereus strikes the deep: the billows rise,
And, mixed with ooze and sand, pollute the skies.
The troops we squandered first, again appear
From several quarters, and inclose the rear.
They first observe, and to the rest betray,
Our different speech; our borrowed arms survey.
Oppressed with odds, we fall; Chorœbus first,
At Pallas' altar, by Peneleus pierced.
Then Ripheus followed, in the unequal fight;
Just of his word, observant of the right:
Heaven thought not so. Dymas their fate attends,
With Hypanis, mistaken by their friends.
Nor, Panthûs, thee thy mitre, nor the bands
Of awful Phœbus, saved from impious hands.
Ye Trojan flames! your testimony bear,
What I performed, and what I suffered there;
No sword avoiding in the fatal strife,
Exposed to death, and prodigal of life.
Witness, ye heavens! I live not by my fault:
I strove to have deserved the death I sought.
But, when I could not fight, and would have died,
Borne off to distance by the growing tide,
Old Iphitus and I were hurried thence,
With Pelias wounded, and without defence.
New clamours from the invested palace ring:
We run to die, or disengage the king.
So hot the assault, so high the tumult rose,
While ours defend, and while the Greeks oppose,
As all the Dardan and Argolic race
Had been contracted in that narrow space;
Or as all Ilium else were void of fear,
And tumult, war, and slaughter, only there.
Their targets in a tortoise cast, the foes,
Secure advancing, to the turrets rose:
Some mount the scaling-ladders; some, more bold,
Swerve upwards, and by posts and pillars hold:
Their left hand gripes their bucklers in the ascent,
While with the right they seize the battlement.
From the demolished towers, the Trojans throw
Huge heaps of stones, that, falling, crush the foe:
And heavy beams and rafters from the sides,
(Such arms their last necessity provides!)
And gilded roofs, come tumbling from on high,
The marks of state, and ancient royalty.
The guards below, fixed in the pass, attend
The charge undaunted, and the gate defend.
Renewed in courage with recovered breath,
A second time we ran to tempt our death,
To clear the palace from the foe, succeed
The weary living, and revenge the dead.
A postern-door, yet unobserved and free,
Joined by the length of a blind gallery,
To the king's closet led—a way well known
To Hector's wife, while Priam held the throne—
Through which she brought Astyanax, unseen,
To cheer his grandsire, and his grandsire's queen.
Through this we pass, and mount the tower, from whence
With unavailing arms the Trojans make defence.
From this the trembling king had oft descried
The Grecian camp, and saw their navy ride.
Beams from its lofty height with swords we hew,
Then, wrenching with our hands, the assault renew;
And, where the rafters on the columns meet,
We push them headlong with our arms and feet.
The lightning flies not swifter than the fall,
Nor thunder louder than the ruined wall:
Down goes the top at once; the Greeks beneath
Are piecemeal torn, or pounded into death.
Yet more succeed, and more to death are sent:
We cease not from above, nor they below relent.
Before the gate stood Pyrrhus, threatening loud,
With glittering arms conspicuous in the crowd.
So shines, renewed in youth, the crested snake,
Who slept the winter in a thorny brake,
And, casting off his slough when spring returns,
Now looks aloft, and with new glory burns,
Restored with poisonous herbs; his ardent sides
Reflect the sun; and, raised on spires, he rides
High o'er the grass: hissing he rolls along,
And brandishes by fits his forky tongue.
Proud Periphas, and fierce Automedon,
His father's charioteer, together run
To force the gate: the Scyrian infantry
Rush on in crowds, and the barred passage free.
Entering the court, with shouts the skies they rend;
And flaming firebrands to the roofs ascend.
Himself, among the foremost, deals his blows,
And with his axe repeated strokes bestows
On the strong doors; then all their shoulders ply,
Till from the posts the brazen hinges fly.
He hews apace: the double bars at length
Yield to his axe, and unresisted strength.
A mighty breach is made: the rooms concealed
Appear, and all the palace is revealed—
The halls of audience, and of public state,
And where the lonely queen in secret sate.
Armed soldiers now by trembling maids are seen,
With not a door, and scarce a space, between.
The house is filled with loud laments and cries,
And shrieks of women rend the vaulted skies.
The fearful matrons run from place to place,
And kiss the thresholds, and the posts embrace.
The fatal work inhuman Pyrrhus plies,
And all his father sparkles in his eyes.
Nor bars, nor fighting guards, his force sustain:
The bars are broken, and the guards are slain.
In rush the Greeks, and all the apartments fill;
Those few defendants whom they find, they kill.
Not with so fierce a rage the foaming flood
Roars, when he finds his rapid course withstood;
Bears down the dams with unresisted sway,
And sweeps the cattle and the cots away.
These eyes beheld him, when he marched between
The brother kings: I saw the unhappy queen,
The hundred wives, and where old Priam stood,
To stain his hallowed altar with his blood.
The fifty nuptial beds, (such hopes had he,
So large a promise, of a progeny,)
The posts of plated gold, and hung with spoils,
Fell the reward of the proud victor's toils.
Where'er the raging fire had left a space,
The Grecians enter, and possess the place.
Perhaps you may of Priam's fate inquire.
He—when he saw his regal town on fire,
His ruined palace, and his entering foes,
On every side inevitable woes—
In arms disused, invests his limbs, decayed,
Like them, with age; a late and useless aid.
His feeble shoulders scarce the weight sustain; }
Loaded, not armed, he creeps along with pain, }
Despairing of success, ambitious to be slain! }
Uncovered but by heaven, there stood in view
An altar: near the hearth a laurel grew,
Dodder'd with age, whose boughs encompass round
The household gods, and shade the holy ground.
Here Hecuba, with all her helpless train
Of dames, for shelter sought, but sought in vain.
Driven like a flock of doves along the sky,
Their images they hug, and to their altars fly.
The queen, when she beheld her trembling lord,
And hanging by his side a heavy sword,
"What rage," she cried, "has seized my husband's mind?
What arms are these, and to what use designed?
These times want other aids! Were Hector here,
Even Hector now in vain, like Priam, would appear.
With us, one common shelter thou shalt find,
Or in one common fate with us be joined."
She said, and with a last salute embraced
The poor old man, and by the laurel placed.
Behold! Polites, one of Priam's sons,
Pursued by Pyrrhus, there for safety runs.
Through swords and foes, amazed and hurt, he flies
Through empty courts, and open galleries.
Him Pyrrhus, urging with his lance, pursues,
And often reaches, and his thrusts renews.
The youth transfixed, with lamentable cries,
Expires before his wretched parents' eyes:
Whom gasping at his feet when Priam saw,
The fear of death gave place to nature's law;
And, shaking more with anger than with age,
"The gods," said he, "requite thy brutal rage!
As sure they will, barbarian, sure they must,
If there be gods in heaven, and gods be just—
Who tak'st in wrongs an insolent delight;
With a son's death to infect a father's sight.
Not he, whom thou and lying fame conspire
To call thee his—not he, thy vaunted sire,
Thus used my wretched age: the gods he feared,
The laws of nature and of nations heard.
He cheered my sorrows, and, for sums of gold,
The bloodless carcase of my Hector sold;
Pitied the woes a parent underwent,
And sent me back in safety from his tent."
This said, his feeble hand a javelin threw,
Which, fluttering, seemed to loiter as it flew:
Just, and but barely, to the mark it held,
And faintly tinkled on the brazen shield.
Then Pyrrhus thus: "Go thou from me to fate,
And to my father my foul deeds relate.
Now die!"—With that he dragged the trembling sire,
Sliddering through clottered blood and holy mire,
(The mingled paste his murdered son had made,) }
Hauled from beneath the violated shade, }
And on the sacred pile the royal victim laid. }
His right hand held his bloody faulchion bare,
His left he twisted in his hoary hair;
Then, with a speeding thrust, his heart he found; }
The lukewarm blood came rushing through the wound, }
And sanguine streams distained the sacred ground. }
Thus Priam fell, and shared one common fate
With Troy in ashes, and his ruined state—
He, who the sceptre of all Asia swayed,
Whom monarchs like domestic slaves obeyed.
On the bleak shore now lies the abandoned king,
A headless carcase, and a nameless thing.
Then, not before, I felt my cruddled blood
Congeal with fear, my hair with horror stood:
My father's image filled my pious mind,
Lest equal years might equal fortune find.
Again I thought on my forsaken wife,
And trembled for my son's abandoned life.
I looked about, but found myself alone,
Deserted at my need! My friends were gone.
Some spent with toil, some with despair oppressed,
Leaped headlong from the heights; the flames consumed the rest.
Thus wandering in my way without a guide,
The graceless Helen in the porch I spied
Of Vesta's temple; there she lurked alone;
Muffled she sate, and, what she could, unknown:
But, by the flames that cast their blaze around,
That common bane of Greece and Troy I found.
For Ilium burnt, she dreads the Trojan sword; }
More dreads the vengeance of her injured lord; }
Even by those gods, who refuged her, abhorred. }
Trembling with rage, the strumpet I regard,
Resolved to give her guilt the due reward.
"Shall she triumphant sail before the wind,
And leave in flames unhappy Troy behind?
Shall she her kingdom and her friends review,
In state attended with a captive crew,
While unrevenged the good old Priam falls,
And Grecian fires consume the Trojan walls?
For this the Phrygian fields and Xanthian flood
Were swelled with bodies, and were drunk with blood?
'Tis true, a soldier can small honour gain,
And boast no conquest, from a woman slain:
Yet shall the fact not pass without applause,
Of vengeance taken in so just a cause.
The punished crime shall set my soul at ease,
And murmuring manes of my friends appease."
Thus while I rave, a gleam of pleasing light }
Spread o'er the place; and, shining heavenly bright, }
My mother stood revealed before my sight— }
Never so radiant did her eyes appear;
Not her own star confessed a light so clear—
Great in her charms, as when on gods above
She looks, and breathes herself into their love.
She held my hand, the destined blow to break;
Then from her rosy lips began to speak:—
"My son! from whence this madness, this neglect
Of my commands, and those whom I protect?
Why this unmanly rage? Recall to mind
Whom you forsake, what pledges leave behind.
Look if your helpless father yet survive,
Or if Ascanius or Creüsa live.
Around your house the greedy Grecians err; }
And these had perished in the nightly war, }
But for my presence and protecting care. }
Not Helen's face, nor Paris, was in fault;
But by the gods was this destruction brought.
Now cast your eyes around, while I dissolve
The mists and films that mortal eyes involve,
Purge from your sight the dross, and make you see
The shape of each avenging deity.
Enlightened thus, my just commands fulfil,
Nor fear obedience to your mother's will.
Where yon disordered heap of ruin lies,
Stones rent from stones,—where clouds of dust arise,—
Amid that smother, Neptune holds his place, }
Below the wall's foundation drives his mace, }
And heaves the building from the solid base. }
Look, where, in arms, imperial Juno stands }
Full in the Scæan gate, with loud commands, }
Urging on shore the tardy Grecian bands. }
See! Pallas, of her snaky buckler proud,
Bestrides the tower, refulgent through the cloud:
See! Jove new courage to the foe supplies,
And arms against the town the partial deities.
Haste hence, my son! this fruitless labour end: }
Haste, where your trembling spouse and sire attend: }
Haste! and a mother's care your passage shall befriend." }
She said, and swiftly vanished from my sight,
Obscure in clouds, and gloomy shades of night.
I looked, I listened; dreadful sounds I hear;
And the dire forms of hostile gods appear.
Troy sunk in flames I saw, (nor could prevent,)
And Ilium from its old foundations rent—
Rent like a mountain-ash, which dared the winds,
And stood the sturdy strokes of labouring hinds.
About the roots the cruel axe resounds;
The stumps are pierced with oft-repeated wounds:
The war is felt on high; the nodding crown
Now threats a fall, and throws the leafy honours down.
To their united force it yields, though late,
And mourns with mortal groans the approaching fate:
The roots no more their upper load sustain;
But down she falls, and spreads a ruin through the plain.
Descending thence, I 'scape through foes and fire:
Before the goddess, foes and flames retire.
Arrived at home, he, for whose only sake,
Or most for his, such toils I undertake—
The good Anchises—whom, by timely flight,
I purposed to secure on Ida's height—
Refused the journey, resolute to die,
And add his funerals to the fate of Troy,
Rather than exile and old age sustain.
"Go you, whose blood runs warm in every vein.
Had heaven decreed, that I should life enjoy,
Heaven had decreed to save unhappy Troy.
'Tis, sure, enough, if not too much, for one,
Twice to have seen our Ilium overthrown.
Make haste to save the poor remaining crew,
And give this useless corpse a long adieu.
These weak old hands suffice to stop my breath;
At least the pitying foes will aid my death,
To take my spoils, and leave my body bare:
As for my sepulchre, let heaven take care.
'Tis long since I, for my celestial wife,
Loathed by the gods, have dragged a lingering life;
Since every hour and moment I expire,
Blasted from heaven by Jove's avenging fire."
This oft repeated, he stood fixed to die: }
Myself, my wife, my son, my family, }
Entreat, pray, beg, and raise a doleful cry— }
"What! will he still persist, on death resolve,
And in his ruin all his house involve?"
He still persists his reasons to maintain;
Our prayers, our tears, our loud laments, are vain.
Urged by despair, again I go to try
The fate of arms, resolved in fight to die.
What hope remains, but what my death must give?
"Can I, without so dear a father, live?
You term it prudence, what I baseness call:
Could such a word from such a parent fall?
If Fortune please, and so the gods ordain, }
That nothing should of ruined Troy remain, }
And you conspire with Fortune to be slain; }
The way to death is wide, the approaches near:
For soon relentless Pyrrhus will appear,
Reeking with Priam's blood—the wretch who slew }
The son (inhuman) in the father's view, }
And then the sire himself to the dire altar drew. }
O goddess mother! give me back to Fate;
Your gift was undesired, and came too late.
Did you, for this, unhappy me convey
Through foes and fires, to see my house a prey?
Shall I my father, wife, and son, behold,
Weltering in blood, each other's arms infold?
Haste! gird my sword, though spent, and overcome:
'Tis the last summons to receive our doom.
I hear thee, Fate! and I obey thy call!
Not unrevenged the foe shall see me fall.
Restore me to the yet unfinished fight:
My death is wanting to conclude the night."
Armed once again, my glittering sword I wield, }
While the other hand sustains my weighty shield, }
And forth I rush to seek the abandoned field. }
I went; but sad Creüsa stopped my way,
And 'cross the threshold in my passage lay,
Embraced my knees, and, when I would have gone,
Shewed me my feeble sire, and tender son.
"If death be your design—at least," said she,
"Take us along to share your destiny.
If any farther hopes in arms remain,
This place, these pledges of your love, maintain.
To whom do you expose your father's life,
Your son's, and mine, your now forgotten wife?"
While thus she fills the house with clamorous cries,
Our hearing is diverted by our eyes:
For, while I held my son, in the short space
Betwixt our kisses and our last embrace,
(Strange to relate!) from young Iülus' head }
A lambent flame arose, which gently spread }
Around his brows, and on his temples fed. }
Amazed, with running water we prepare
To quench the sacred fire, and slake his hair;
But old Anchises, versed in omens, reared
His hands to heaven, and this request preferred:—
"If any vows, almighty Jove, can bend }
Thy will—if piety can prayers commend— }
Confirm the glad presage which thou art pleased to send." }
Scarce had he said, when, on our left, we hear
A peal of rattling thunder roll in air:
There shot a streaming lamp along the sky,
Which on the winged lightning seemed to fly:
From o'er the roof the blaze began to move,
And, trailing, vanished in the Idæan grove.
It swept a path in heaven, and shone a guide,
Then in a steaming stench of sulphur died.
The good old man with suppliant hands implored
The gods' protection, and their star adored.
"Now, now," said he, "my son, no more delay!
I yield, I follow where heaven shews the way.
Keep (O my country gods!) our dwelling-place,
And guard this relique of the Trojan race,
This tender child!—These omens are your own,
And you can yet restore the ruined town.
At least accomplish what your signs foreshow:
I stand resigned, and am prepared to go."
He said.—The crackling flames appear on high,
And driving sparkles dance along the sky.
With Vulcan's rage the rising winds conspire,
And near our palace roll the flood of fire.
"Haste, my dear father! ('tis no time to wait,)
And load my shoulders with a willing freight.
Whate'er befalls, your life shall be my care;
One death, or one deliverance, we will share.
My hand shall lead our little son; and you,
My faithful consort, shall our steps pursue.
Next you, my servants, heed my strict commands:
Without the walls a ruined temple stands,
To Ceres hallowed once; a cypress nigh
Shoots up her venerable head on high,
By long religion kept; there bend your feet,
And in divided parties let us meet.
Our country gods, the reliques, and the bands,
Hold you, my father, in your guiltless hands:
In me 'tis impious holy things to bear,
Red as I am with slaughter, new from war,
Till in some living stream I cleanse the guilt
Of dire debate, and blood in battle spilt."
Thus ordering all that prudence could provide,
I clothe my shoulders with a lion's hide,
And yellow spoils; then, on my bending back,
The welcome load of my dear father take;
While on my better hand Ascanius hung,
And with unequal paces tript along.
Creüsa kept behind: by choice we stray
Through every dark and every devious way.
I, who so bold and dauntless, just before,
The Grecian darts and shock of lances bore,
At every shadow now am seized with fear,
Not for myself, but for the charge I bear;
Till, near the ruined gate arrived at last,
Secure, and deeming all the danger past,
A frightful noise of trampling feet we hear.
My father, looking through the shades with fear,
Cried out,—"Haste, haste, my son! the foes are nigh;
Their swords and shining armour I descry."
Some hostile god, for some unknown offence,
Had sure bereft my mind of better sense;
For, while through winding ways I took my flight,
And sought the shelter of the gloomy night,
Alas! I lost Creüsa: hard to tell
If by her fatal destiny she fell,
Or weary sate, or wandered with affright;
But she was lost for ever to my sight.
I knew not, or reflected, till I meet
My friends, at Ceres' now deserted seat.
We met: not one was wanting; only she
Deceived her friends, her son, and wretched me.
What mad expressions did my tongue refuse?
Whom did I not, of gods or men, accuse?
This was the fatal blow, that pained me more
Than all I felt from ruined Troy before.
Stung with my loss, and raving with despair,
Abandoning my now forgotten care,
Of counsel, comfort, and of hope, bereft,
My sire, my son, my country gods, I left.
In shining armour once again I sheath
My limbs, not feeling wounds, nor fearing death.
Then headlong to the burning walls I run,
And seek the danger I was forced to shun.
I tread my former tracks, through night explore,
Each passage, every street I crossed before.
All things were full of horror and affright,
And dreadful even the silence of the night.
Then to my father's house I make repair,
With some small glimpse of hope to find her there.
Instead of her, the cruel Greeks I met:
The house was filled with foes, with flames beset.
Driven on the wings of winds, whole sheets of fire,
Through air transported, to the roofs aspire.
From thence to Priam's palace I resort,
And search the citadel, and desert court.
Then, unobserved, I pass by Juno's church:
A guard of Grecians had possessed the porch;
There Phœnix and Ulysses watch the prey,
And thither all the wealth of Troy convey—
The spoils which they from ransacked houses brought,
And golden bowls from burning altars caught,
The tables of the gods, the purple vests,
The people's treasure, and the pomp of priests.
A rank of wretched youths, with pinioned hands,
And captive matrons, in long order stands.
Then, with ungoverned madness, I proclaim,
Through all the silent streets, Creüsa's name:
Creüsa still I call; at length she hears,
And sudden, through the shades of night, appears—
Appears, no more Creüsa, nor my wife,
But a pale spectre, larger than the life.
Aghast, astonished, and struck dumb with fear,
I stood; like bristles rose my stiffened hair.
Then thus the ghost began to sooth my grief:—
"Nor tears, nor cries, can give the dead relief.
Desist, my much-loved lord, to indulge your pain;
You bear no more than what the gods ordain.
My fates permit me not from hence to fly;
Nor he, the great controller of the sky.
Long wandering ways for you the powers decree—
On land hard labours, and a length of sea.
Then, after many painful years are past,
On Latium's happy shore you shall be cast,
Where gentle Tyber from his bed beholds
The flowery meadows, and the feeding folds.
There end your toils; and there your fates provide
A quiet kingdom, and a royal bride:
There Fortune shall the Trojan line restore,
And you for lost Creüsa weep no more.
Fear not that I shall watch, with servile shame,
The imperious looks of some proud Grecian dame,
Or, stooping to the victor's lust, disgrace
My goddess mother, or my royal race.
And now, farewell! the parent of the gods
Restrains my fleeting soul in her abodes.
I trust our common issue to your care."
She said, and gliding passed unseen in air.
I strove to speak: but horror tied my tongue; }
And thrice about her neck my arms I flung, }
And, thrice deceived, on vain embraces hung. }
Light as an empty dream at break of day,
Or as a blast of wind, she rushed away.
Thus having passed the night in fruitless pain,
I to my longing friends return again—
Amazed the augmented number to behold,
Of men and matrons mixed, of young and old—
A wretched exiled crew together brought,
With arms appointed, and with treasure fraught,
Resolved, and willing, under my command,
To run all hazards both of sea and land.
The Morn began, from Ida, to display
Her rosy cheeks; and Phosphor led the day:
Before the gates the Grecians took their post,
And all pretence of late relief was lost.
I yield to Fate, unwillingly retire,
And, loaded, up the hill convey my sire.

FOOTNOTES:

[100] The destruction of Veii is here shadowed under that of Troy. Livy, in his description of it, seems to have emulated in his prose, and almost equalled, the beauty of Virgil's verse.—Dryden.

---

ÆNEÏS,
BOOK III.

ARGUMENT.

Æneas proceeds in his relation: he gives an account of the fleet with which he sailed, and the success of his first voyage to Thrace. From thence he directs his course to Delos, and asks the oracle what place the gods had appointed for his habitation? By a mistake of the oracle's answer, he settles in Crete. His household gods give him the true sense of the oracle, in a dream. He follows their advice, and makes the best of his way for Italy. He is cast on several shores, and meets with very surprising adventures, till at length he lands on Sicily, where his father Anchises dies. This is the place which he was sailing from, when the tempest rose, and threw him upon the Carthaginian coast.

When heaven had overturned the Trojan state,
And Priam's throne, by too severe a fate;
When ruined Troy became the Grecians' prey,
And Ilium's lofty towers in ashes lay;
Warned by celestial omens, we retreat,
To seek in foreign lands a happier seat.
Near old Antandros, and at Ida's foot,
The timber of the sacred groves we cut,
And build our fleet—uncertain yet to find
What place the gods for our repose assigned.
Friends daily flock; and scarce the kindly spring
Began to clothe the ground, and birds to sing,
When old Anchises summoned all to sea:
The crew my father and the Fates obey.
With sighs and tears I leave my native shore,
And empty fields, where Ilium stood before.
My sire, my son, our less and greater gods,
All sail at once, and cleave the briny floods.
Against our coast appears a spacious land,
Which once the fierce Lycurgus did command,
(Thracia the name—the people bold in war—
Vast are their fields, and tillage is their care,)
A hospitable realm while Fate was kind,
With Troy in friendship and religion joined.
I land, with luckless omens; then adore
Their gods, and draw a line along the shore:
I lay the deep foundations of a wall,
And Ænos, named from me, the city call.
To Dionæan Venus vows are paid, }
And all the powers that rising labours aid; }
A bull on Jove's imperial altar laid. }
Not far, a rising hillock stood in view;
Sharp myrtles, on the sides, and cornels grew.
There, while I went to crop the sylvan scenes,
And shade our altar with their leafy greens,
I pulled a plant—with horror I relate
A prodigy so strange, and full of fate—
The rooted fibres rose; and, from the wound,
Black bloody drops distilled upon the ground.
Mute and amazed, my hair with terror stood;
Fear shrunk my sinews, and congealed my blood.
Manned once again, another plant I try:
That other gushed with the same sanguine die.
Then, fearing guilt for some offence unknown,
With prayers and vows the Dryads I atone,
With all the sisters of the woods, and most
The god of arms, who rules the Thracian coast—
That they, or he, these omens would avert,
Release our fears, and better signs impart.
Cleared, as I thought, and fully fixed at length
To learn the cause, I tugged with all my strength:
I bent my knees against the ground: once more
The violated myrtle ran with gore.
Scarce dare I tell the sequel: from the womb
Of wounded earth, and caverns of the tomb,
A groan, as of a troubled ghost, renewed
My fright, and then these dreadful words ensued:—
"Why dost thou thus my buried body rend?
O! spare the corpse of thy unhappy friend!
Spare to pollute thy pious hands with blood:
The tears distil not from the wounded wood;
But every drop this living tree contains,
Is kindred blood, and ran in Trojan veins.
O! fly from this inhospitable shore,
Warned by my fate; for I am Polydore!
Here loads of lances, in my blood embrued,
Again shoot upward, by my blood renewed."
My faultering tongue and shivering limbs declare
My horror, and in bristles rose my hair.
When Troy with Grecian arms was closely pent, }
Old Priam, fearful of the war's event, }
This hapless Polydore to Thracia sent: }
Loaded with gold, he sent his darling, far }
From noise and tumults, and destructive war, }
Committed to the faithless tyrant's care; }
Who, when he saw the power of Troy decline,
Forsook the weaker with the strong to join—
Broke every bond of nature and of truth,
And murdered, for his wealth, the royal youth.
O sacred hunger of pernicious gold!
What bands of faith can impious lucre hold?
Now, when my soul had shaken off her fears,
I call my father, and the Trojan peers—
Relate the prodigies of heaven—require
What he commands, and their advice desire.
All vote to leave that execrable shore,
Polluted with the blood of Polydore;
But, ere we sail, his funeral rites prepare,
Then, to his ghost, a tomb and altars rear.
In mournful pomp the matrons walk the round, }
With baleful cypress and blue fillets crowned, }
With eyes dejected, and with hair unbound. }
Then bowls of tepid milk and blood we pour,
And thrice invoke the soul of Polydore.
Now, when the raging storms no longer reign,
But southern gales invite us to the main,
We launch our vessels, with a prosperous wind,
And leave the cities and the shores behind.
An island in the Ægæan main appears:
Neptune and watery Doris claim it theirs.
It floated once, till Phœbus fixed the sides
To rooted earth, and now it braves the tides.
Here, borne by friendly winds, we come ashore, }
With needful ease our weary limbs restore, }
And the Sun's temple and his town adore. }
Anius, the priest and king, with laurel crowned,
His hoary locks with purple fillets bound,
Who saw my sire the Delian shore ascend,
Came forth with eager haste to meet his friend;
Invites him to his palace; and, in sign
Of ancient love, their plighted hands they join.
Then to the temple of the god I went,
And thus, before the shrine, my vows present:—
"Give, O Thymbræus! give a resting place
To the sad reliques of the Trojan race;
A seat secure, a region of their own,
A lasting empire, and a happier town.
Where shall we fix? where shall our labours end?
Whom shall we follow, and what fate attend?
Let not my prayers a doubtful answer find;
But in clear auguries unveil thy mind."
Scarce had I said: he shook the holy ground, }
The laurels, and the lofty hills around; }
And from the tripos rushed a bellowing sound. }
Prostrate we fell; confessed the present god,
Who gave this answer from his dark abode:—
"Undaunted youths! go, seek that mother earth
From which your ancestors derive their birth.
The soil that sent you forth, her ancient race,
In her old bosom, shall again embrace.
Through the wide world the Æneian house shall reign,
And children's children shall the crown sustain."
Thus Phœbus did our future fates disclose:
A mighty tumult, mixed with joy, arose.
All are concerned to know what place the god
Assigned, and where determined our abode.
My father, long revolving in his mind
The race and lineage of the Trojan kind,
Thus answered their demands:—"Ye princes, hear
Your pleasing fortune, and dispel your fear.
The fruitful isle of Crete, well known to fame,
Sacred of old to Jove's imperial name,
In the mid ocean lies, with large command,
And on its plains a hundred cities stand.
Another Ida rises there, and we
From thence derive our Trojan ancestry.
From thence, as 'tis divulged by certain fame,
To the Rhœtean shores old Teucer came;
There fixed, and there the seat of empire chose,
Ere Ilium and the Trojan towers arose.
In humble vales they built their soft abodes, }
Till Cybele, the mother of the gods, }
With tinkling cymbals charmed the Idæan woods. }
She secret rites and ceremonies taught,
And to the yoke the savage lions brought.
Let us the land, which heaven appoints, explore;
Appease the winds, and seek the Gnosian shore.
If Jove assists the passage of our fleet,
The third propitious dawn discovers Crete."
Thus having said, the sacrifices, laid
On smoking altars, to the gods he paid—
A bull, to Neptune an oblation due,
Another bull to bright Apollo, slew—
A milk-white ewe, the western winds to please,
And one coal-black, to calm the stormy seas.
Ere this, a flying rumour had been spread,
That fierce Idomeneus from Crete was fled,
Expelled and exiled; that the coast was free
From foreign or domestic enemy.
We leave the Delian ports, and put to sea;
By Naxos, famed for vintage, make our way;
Then green Donysa pass; and sail in sight
Of Paros' isle, with marble quarries white.
We pass the scattered isles of Cyclades,
That, scarce distinguished, seem to stud the seas.
The shouts of sailors double near the shores;
They stretch their canvas, and they ply their oars.
"All hands aloft! for Crete! for Crete!" they cry,
And swiftly through the foamy billows fly.
Full on the promised land at length we bore,
With joy descending on the Cretan shore.
With eager haste a rising town I frame,
Which from the Trojan Pergamus I name:
The name itself was grateful:—I exhort
To found their houses, and erect a fort.
Our ships are hauled upon the yellow strand;
The youth begin to till the laboured land;
And I myself new marriages promote,
Give laws, and dwellings I divide by lot;
When rising vapours choke the wholesome air,
And blasts of noisome winds corrupt the year;
The trees devouring caterpillars burn;
Parched was the grass, and blighted was the corn:
Nor 'scape the beasts; for Sirius, from on high, }
With pestilential heat infects the sky: }
My men—some fall, the rest in fevers fry. }
Again my father bids me seek the shore
Of sacred Delos, and the god implore,
To learn what end of woes we might expect,
And to what clime our weary course direct.
'Twas night, when every creature, void of cares,
The common gift of balmy slumber shares;
The statues of my gods, (for such they seemed,)
Those gods whom I from flaming Troy redeemed,
Before me stood, majestically bright,
Full in the beams of Phœbe's entering light.
Then thus they spoke, and eased my troubled mind:
"What from the Delian god thou goest to find,
He tells thee here, and sends us to relate.
Those powers are we, companions of thy fate,
Who from the burning town by thee were brought,
Thy fortune followed, and thy safety wrought.
Through seas and lands as we thy steps attend,
So shall our care thy glorious race befriend.
An ample realm for thee thy fates ordain,
A town, that o'er the conquered world shall reign.
Thou, mighty walls for mighty nations build;
Nor let thy weary mind to labours yield:
But change thy seat; for not the Delian god,
Nor we, have given thee Crete for our abode.
A land there is, Hesperia called of old,
(The soil is fruitful, and the natives bold—
The Œnotrians held it once,) by later fame
Now called Italia, from the leader's name.
Iasius there and Dardanus were born;
From thence we came, and thither must return.
Rise, and thy sire with these glad tidings greet.
Search Italy; for Jove denies thee Crete."
Astonished at their voices and their sight,
(Nor were they dreams, but visions of the night;
I saw, I knew their faces, and descried,
In perfect view, their hair with fillets tied,)
I started from my couch; a clammy sweat
On all my limbs and shivering body sate.
To heaven I lift my hands with pious haste,
And sacred incense in the flames I cast.
Thus to the gods their perfect honours done,
More cheerful to my good old sire I run,
And tell the pleasing news. In little space
He found his error of the double race;
Not, as before he deemed, derived from Crete;
No more deluded by the doubtful seat;
Then said,—"O son, turmoiled in Trojan fate!
Such things as these Cassandra did relate.
This day revives within my mind, what she
Foretold of Troy renewed in Italy,
And Latian lands; but who could then have thought, }
That Phrygian gods to Latium should be brought? }
Or who believed what mad Cassandra taught? }
Now let us go, where Phœbus leads the way."
He said; and we with glad consent obey,
Forsake the seat, and, leaving few behind,
We spread our sails before the willing wind.
Now from the sight of land our galleys move,
With only seas around, and skies above;
When o'er our heads descends a burst of rain,
And night with sable clouds involves the main;
The ruffling winds the foamy billows raise;
The scattered fleet is forced to several ways;
The face of heaven is ravished from our eyes,
And in redoubled peals the roaring thunder flies.
Cast from our course, we wander in the dark;
No stars to guide, no point of land to mark.
Even Palinurus no distinction found
Betwixt the night and day; such darkness reigned around.
Three starless nights the doubtful navy strays,
Without distinction, and three sunless days;
The fourth renews the light, and, from our shrouds,
We view a rising land, like distant clouds;
The mountain-tops confirm the pleasing sight,
And curling smoke ascending from their height.
The canvas falls; their oars the sailors ply;
From the rude strokes the whirling waters fly.
At length I land upon the Strophades,
Safe from the danger of the stormy seas.
Those isles are compassed by the Ionian main,
The dire abode where the foul Harpies reign,
Forced by the winged warriors to repair
To their old homes, and leave their costly fare.
Monsters more fierce offended heaven ne'er sent
From hell's abyss, for human punishment—
With virgin-faces, but with wombs obscene, }
Foul paunches, and with ordure still unclean; }
With claws for hands, and looks for ever lean. }
We landed at the port, and soon beheld
Fat herds of oxen graze the flowery field,
And wanton goats without a keeper strayed.—
With weapons we the welcome prey invade,
Then call the gods for partners of our feast,
And Jove himself, the chief invited guest.
We spread the tables on the greensward ground;
We feed with hunger, and the bowls go round;
When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry,
And clattering wings, the hungry Harpies fly:
They snatch the meat, defiling all they find,
And, parting, leave a loathsome stench behind.
Close by a hollow rock, again we sit,
New dress the dinner, and the beds refit,
Secure from sight, beneath a pleasing shade,
Where tufted trees a native arbour made.
Again the holy fires on altars burn;
And once again the ravenous birds return,
Or from the dark recesses where they lie,
Or from another quarter of the sky—
With filthy claws their odious meal repeat,
And mix their loathsome ordures with their[101] meat.
I bid my friends for vengeance then prepare,
And with the hellish nation wage the war.
They, as commanded, for the fight provide,
And in the grass their glittering weapons hide;
Then, when along the crooked shore we hear
Their clattering wings, and saw the foes appear,
Misenus sounds a charge: we take the alarm,
And our strong hands with swords and bucklers arm.
In this new kind of combat, all employ
Their utmost force, the monsters to destroy—
In vain:—the fated skin is proof to wounds;
And from their plumes the shining sword rebounds.
At length rebuffed, they leave their mangled prey,
And their stretched pinions to the skies display.
Yet one remained—the messenger of Fate, }
High on a craggy cliff Celæno sate, }
And thus her dismal errand did relate:— }
"What! not contented with our oxen slain, }
Dare you with heaven an impious war maintain, }
And drive the Harpies from their native reign? }
Heed therefore what I say; and keep in mind
What Jove decrees, what Phœbus has designed,
And I, the Furies' queen, from both relate—
You seek the Italian shores, foredoomed by Fate:
The Italian shores are granted you to find,
And a safe passage to the port assigned.
But know, that, ere your promised walls you build,
My curses shall severely be fulfilled.
Fierce famine is your lot—for this misdeed,
Reduced to grind the plates on which you feed."
She said, and to the neighbouring forest flew.
Our courage fails us, and our fears renew.
Hopeless to win by war, to prayers we fall,
And on the offended Harpies humbly call,
And (whether gods or birds obscene they were)
Our vows, for pardon and for peace, prefer.
But old Anchises, offering sacrifice,
And lifting up to heaven his hands and eyes,
Adored the greater gods—"Avert," said he,
"These omens! render vain this prophecy,
And from the impending curse a pious people free."
Thus having said, he bids us put to sea;
We loose from shore our halsers, and obey,
And soon with swelling sails pursue our watery way.
Amidst our course, Zacynthian woods appear;
And next by rocky Neritos we steer:
We fly from Ithaca's detested shore,
And curse the land which dire Ulysses bore.
At length Leucate's cloudy top appears,
And the Sun's temple, which the sailor fears.
Resolved to breathe a while from labour past, }
Our crooked anchors from the prow we cast, }
And joyful to the little city haste. }
Here, safe beyond our hopes, our vows we pay
To Jove, the guide and patron of our way.
The customs of our country we pursue,
And Trojan games on Actian shores renew.
Our youth their naked limbs besmear with oil,
And exercise the wrestlers' noble toil—
Pleased to have sailed so long before the wind,
And left so many Grecian towns behind.
The sun had now fulfilled his annual course,
And Boreas on the seas displayed his force:
I fixed upon the temple's lofty door
The brazen shield which vanquished Abas bore;
The verse beneath my name and action speaks:—
"These arms Æneas took from conquering Greeks."
Then I command to weigh; the seamen ply
Their sweeping oars; the smoking billows fly.
The sight of high Phæacia soon we lost,
And skimmed along Epirus' rocky coast.
Then to Chaonia's port our course we bend,
And, landed, to Buthrotus' heights ascend.
Here wondrous things were loudly blazed by Fame—
How Helenus revived the Trojan name,
And reigned in Greece; that Priam's captive son
Succeeded Pyrrhus in his bed and throne;
And fair Andromache, restored by Fate,
Once more was happy in a Trojan mate.
I leave my galleys riding in the port,
And long to see the new Dardanian court.
By chance, the mournful queen, before the gate,
Then solemnized her former husband's fate.
Green altars, raised of turf, with gifts she crowned, }
And sacred priests in order stand around, }
And thrice the name of hapless Hector sound. }
The grove itself resembles Ida's wood;
And Simoïs seemed the well-dissembled flood.
But when, at nearer distance, she beheld
My shining armour and my Trojan shield,
Astonished at the sight, the vital heat
Forsakes her limbs, her veins no longer beat:
She faints, she falls, and scarce recovering strength,
Thus, with a faultering tongue, she speaks at length:
"Are you alive, O goddess-born?" she said,
"Or if a ghost, then where is Hector's shade?"
At this she cast a loud and frightful cry.—
With broken words I made this brief reply:
"All of me, that remains, appears in sight;
I live, if living be to loath the light—
No phantom; but I drag a wretched life,
My fate resembling that of Hector's wife.
What have you suffered since you lost your lord?
By what strange blessing are you now restored?
Still are you Hector's? or is Hector fled,
And his remembrance lost in Pyrrhus' bed?"
With eyes dejected, in a lowly tone,
After a modest pause, she thus begun:—
"Oh only happy maid of Priam's race,
Whom death delivered from the foe's embrace!
Commanded on Achilles' tomb to die, }
Not forced, like us, to hard captivity, }
Or in a haughty master's arms to lie. }
In Grecian ships, unhappy we were borne,
Endured the victor's lust, sustained the scorn:
Thus I submitted to the lawless pride
Of Pyrrhus, more a handmaid than a bride.
Cloyed with possession, he forsook my bed,
And Helen's lovely daughter sought to wed;
Then me to Trojan Helenus resigned,
And his two slaves in equal marriage joined;
Till young Orestes, pierced with deep despair, }
And longing to redeem the promised fair, }
Before Apollo's altar slew the ravisher. }
By Pyrrhus' death the kingdom we regained:
At least one half with Helenus remained.
Our part, from Chaon, he Chaonia calls,
And names, from Pergamus, his rising walls.
But you what fates have landed on our coast?
What gods have sent you, or what storms have tossed?
Does young Ascanius life and health enjoy,
Saved from the ruins of unhappy Troy?
O! tell me how his mother's loss he bears, }
What hopes are promised from his blooming years, }
How much of Hector in his face appears?"— }
She spoke; and mixed her speech with mournful cries,
And fruitless tears came trickling from her eyes.
At length her lord descends upon the plain,
In pomp, attended with a numerous train;
Receives his friends, and to the city leads,
And tears of joy amidst his welcome sheds.
Proceeding on, another Troy I see,
Or, in less compass, Troy's epitome.
A rivulet by the name of Xanthus ran,
And I embrace the Scæan gate again.
My friends in porticoes were entertained,
And feasts and pleasures through the city reigned.
The tables filled the spacious hall around,
And golden bowls with sparkling wine were crowned.
Two days we passed in mirth, till friendly gales,
Blown from the south, supplied our swelling sails.
Then to the royal seer I thus began:—
"O thou, who know'st, beyond the reach of man,
The laws of heaven, and what the stars decree, }
Whom Phœbus taught unerring prophecy, }
From his own tripod, and his holy tree; }
Skilled in the winged inhabitants of air,
What auspices their notes and flights declare—
O! say; for all religious rites portend
A happy voyage, and a prosperous end;
And every power and omen of the sky
Direct my course for destined Italy;
But only dire Celæno, from the gods,
A dismal famine fatally forebodes—
O! say, what dangers I am first to shun,
What toils to vanquish, and what course to run."
The prophet first with sacrifice adores
The greater gods; their pardon then implores;
Unbinds the fillet from his holy head; }
To Phœbus, next, my trembling steps he led, }
Full of religious doubts and awful dread. }
Then, with his god possessed, before the shrine,
These words proceeded from his mouth divine:—
"O goddess-born! (for heaven's appointed will,
With greater auspices of good than ill,
Foreshows thy voyage, and thy course directs;
Thy fates conspire, and Jove himself protects,)
Of many things, some few I shall explain, }
Teach thee to shun the dangers of the main, }
And how at length the promised shore to gain. }
The rest the Fates from Helenus conceal,
And Juno's angry power forbids to tell.
First, then, that happy shore, that seems so nigh, }
Will far from your deluded wishes fly; }
Long tracts of seas divide your hopes from Italy: }
For you must cruize along Sicilian shores,
And stem the currents with your struggling oars;
Then round the Italian coast your navy steer;
And, after this, to Circe's island veer;
And, last, before your new foundations rise,
Must pass the Stygian lake, and view the nether skies.
Now mark the signs of future ease and rest,
And bear them safely treasured in thy breast.
When, in the shady shelter of a wood,
And near the margin of a gentle flood,
Thou shalt behold a sow upon the ground,
With thirty sucking young encompassed round;
The dam and offspring white as falling snow— }
These on thy city shall their name bestow, }
And there shall end thy labours and thy woe. }
Nor let the threatened famine fright thy mind;
For Phœbus will assist, and Fate the way will find.
Let not thy course to that ill coast be bent,
Which fronts from far the Epirian continent:
Those parts are all by Grecian foes possessed.
The savage Locrians here the shores infest:
There fierce Idomeneus his city builds,
And guards with arms the Salentinian fields;
And on the mountain's brow Petilia stands,
Which Philoctetes with his troops commands.
Even when thy fleet is landed on the shore,
And priests with holy vows the gods adore,
Then with a purple veil involve your eyes,
Lest hostile faces blast the sacrifice.
These rites and customs to the rest commend,
That to your pious race they may descend.
"When, parted hence, the wind, that ready waits
For Sicily, shall bear you to the straits,
Where proud Pelorus opes a wider way,
Tack to the larboard, and stand off to sea:
Veer starboard sea and land. The Italian shore,
And fair Sicilia's coast, were one, before
An earthquake caused the flaw: the roaring tides }
The passage broke, that land from land divides; }
And, where the lands retired, the rushing ocean rides. }
Distinguished by the straights, on either hand,
Now rising cities in long order stand,
And fruitful fields:—so much can time invade
The mouldering work, that beauteous Nature made.—
Far on the right, her dogs foul Scylla hides: }
Charybdis roaring on the left presides, }
And in her greedy whirlpool sucks the tides; }
Then spouts them from below: with fury driven,
The waves mount up, and wash the face of heaven.
But Scylla from her den, with open jaws,
The sinking vessel in her eddy draws,
Then dashes on the rocks.—A human face,
And virgin bosom, hides her tail's disgrace:
Her parts obscene below the waves descend,
With dogs inclosed, and in a dolphin end.
'Tis safer, then, to bear aloof to sea,
And coast Pachynus, though with more delay,
Than once to view mis-shapen Scylla near,
And the loud yell of watery wolves to hear.
"Besides, if faith to Helenus be due,
And if prophetic Phœbus tell me true,
Do not this precept of your friend forget,
Which therefore more than once I must repeat:
Above the rest, great Juno's name adore;
Pay vows to Juno; Juno's aid implore.
Let gifts be to the mighty queen designed,
And mollify with prayers her haughty mind.
Thus, at the length, your passage shall be free,
And you shall safe descend on Italy.
Arrived at Cumæ, when you view the flood
Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood,
The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find,
Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclined.
She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits,
The notes and names, inscribed, to leaves commits.
What she commits to leaves, in order laid,
Before the cavern's entrance are displayed:
Unmoved they lie; but, if a blast of wind
Without, or vapours issue from behind,
The leaves are borne aloft in liquid air,
And she resumes no more her museful care,
Nor gathers from the rocks her scattered verse,
Nor sets in order what the winds disperse.
Thus, many not succeeding, most upbraid }
The madness of the visionary maid, }
And with loud curses leave the mystic shade. }
"Think it not loss of time a while to stay,
Though thy companions chide thy long delay;
Though summoned to the seas, though pleasing gales
Invite thy course, and stretch thy swelling sails:
But beg the sacred priestess to relate
With willing words, and not to write, thy fate.
The fierce Italian people she will show, }
And all thy wars, and all thy future woe, }
And what thou may'st avoid, and what must undergo. }
She shall direct thy course, instruct thy mind,
And teach thee how the happy shores to find.
This is what heaven allows me to relate; }
Now part in peace; pursue thy better fate, }
And raise, by strength of arms, the Trojan state." }
This when the priest with friendly voice declared,
He gave me licence, and rich gifts prepared:
Bounteous of treasure, he supplied my want
With heavy gold, and polished elephant,
Then Dodonæan cauldrons put on board,
And every ship with sums of silver stored.
A trusty coat of mail to me he sent,
Thrice chained with gold, for use and ornament;
The helm of Pyrrhus added to the rest,
That flourished with a plume and waving crest.
Nor was my sire forgotten, nor my friends;
And large recruits he to my navy sends—
Men, horses, captains, arms, and warlike stores;
Supplies new pilots, and new sweeping oars.
Meantime, my sire commands to hoist our sails,
Lest we should lose the first auspicious gales.
The prophet blessed the parting crew, and, last,
With words like these, his ancient friend embraced:—
"Old happy man, the care of gods above,
Whom heavenly Venus honoured with her love,
And twice preserved thy life when Troy was lost!
Behold from far the wished Ausonian coast:
There land; but take a larger compass round,
For that before is all forbidden ground.
The shore that Phœbus has designed for you,
At farther distance lies, concealed from view.
Go happy hence, and seek your new abodes,
Blessed in a son, and favoured by the gods:
For I with useless words prolong your stay,
When southern gales have summoned you away."
Nor less the queen our parting thence deplored,
Nor was less bounteous than her Trojan lord.
A noble present to my son she brought,
A robe with flowers on golden tissue wrought,
A Phrygian vest; and loads with gifts beside
Of precious texture, and of Asian pride.
"Accept," she said, "these monuments of love,
Which in my youth with happier hands I wove:
Regard these trifles for the giver's sake;
'Tis the last present Hector's wife can make.
Thou call'st my lost Astyanax to mind;
In thee, his features and his form I find.
His eyes so sparkled with a lively flame; }
Such were his motions; such was all his frame; }
And ah! had heaven so pleased, his years had been the same." }
With tears I took my last adieu, and said,—
"Your fortune, happy pair, already made,
Leaves you no farther wish. My different state,
Avoiding one, incurs another fate.
To you a quiet seat the gods allow:
You have no shores to search, no seas to plough,
Nor fields of flying Italy to chase—
Deluding visions, and a vain embrace!
You see another Simoïs, and enjoy
The labour of your hands, another Troy,
With better auspice than her ancient towers,
And less obnoxious to the Grecian powers.
If e'er the gods, whom I with vows adore,
Conduct my steps to Tyber's happy shore;
If ever I ascend the Latian throne,
And build a city I may call my own;
As both of us our birth from Troy derive, }
So let our kindred lines in concord live, }
And both in acts of equal friendship strive. }
Our fortunes, good or bad, shall be the same:
The double Troy shall differ but in name;
That what we now begin, may never end,
But long to late posterity descend."
Near the Ceraunian rocks our course we bore,
The shortest passage to the Italian shore.
Now had the sun withdrawn his radiant light,
And hills were hid in dusky shades of night:
We land, and, on the bosom of the ground,
A safe retreat and a bare lodging found.
Close by the shore we lay; the sailors keep
Their watches, and the rest securely sleep.
The night, proceeding on with silent pace, }
Stood in her noon, and viewed with equal face }
Her steepy rise, and her declining race. }
Then wakeful Palinurus rose, to spy }
The face of heaven, and the nocturnal sky; }
And listened, every breath of air to try; }
Observes the stars, and notes their sliding course,
The Pleiads, Hyads, and their watery force;
And both the Bears is careful to behold,
And bright Orion, armed with burnished gold.
Then, when he saw no threatening tempest nigh,
But a sure promise of a settled sky,
He gave the sign to weigh: we break our sleep,
Forsake the pleasing shore, and plough the deep.
And now the rising morn with rosy light
Adorns the skies, and puts the stars to flight;
When we from far, like bluish mists, descry
The hills, and then the plains, of Italy.
Achates first pronounced the joyful sound;
Then "Italy!" the cheerful crew rebound.
My sire Anchises crowned a cup with wine,
And, offering, thus implored the powers divine:—
"Ye gods, presiding over lands and seas,
And you who raging winds and waves appease,
Breathe on our swelling sails a prosperous wind,
And smooth our passage to the port assigned!"
The gentle gales their flagging force renew,
And now the happy harbour is in view.
Minerva's temple then salutes our sight,
Placed, as a landmark, on the mountain's height.
We furl our sails, and turn the prows to shore;
The curling waters round the galleys roar.
The land lies open to the raging east,
Then, bending like a bow, with rocks compressed,
Shuts out the storms; the winds and waves complain,
And vent their malice on the cliffs in vain.
The port lies hid within; on either side,
Two towering rocks the narrow mouth divide.
The temple, which aloft we viewed before,
To distance flies, and seems to shun the shore.
Scarce landed, the first omens I beheld
Were four white steeds that cropped the flowery field.
"War, war is threatened from this foreign ground,
(My father cried,) where warlike steeds are found.
Yet since reclaimed, to chariots they submit,
And bend to stubborn yokes, and champ the bit,
Peace may succeed to war."—Our way we bend
To Pallas, and the sacred hill ascend;
There prostrate to the fierce virago pray,
Whose temple was the landmark of our way.
Each with a Phrygian mantle veiled his head, }
And all commands of Helenus obeyed, }
And pious rites to Grecian Juno paid. }
These dues performed, we stretch our sails, and stand
To sea, forsaking that suspected land.
From hence Tarentum's bay appears in view,
For Hercules renowned, if fame be true.
Just opposite, Lacinian Juno stands;
Caulonian towers, and Scylacæan strands
For shipwrecks feared. Mount Ætna thence we spy,
Known by the smoky flames which cloud the sky.
Far off we hear the waves with surly sound
Invade the rocks, the rocks their groans rebound.
The billows break upon the sounding strand,
And roll the rising tide, impure with sand.
Then thus Anchises, in experience old:—
"'Tis that Charybdis which the seer foretold,
And those the promised rocks! Bear off to sea!"
With haste the frighted mariners obey.
First Palinurus to the larboard veered;
Then all the fleet by his example steered.
To heaven aloft on ridgy waves we ride,
Then down to hell descend, when they divide;
And thrice our galleys knocked the stony ground, }
And thrice the hollow rocks returned the sound, }
And thrice we saw the stars, that stood with dews around. }
The flagging winds forsook us, with the sun;
And, wearied, on Cyclopian shores we run.
The port capacious, and secure from wind,
Is to the foot of thundering Ætna joined.
By turns a pitchy cloud she rolls on high; }
By turns hot embers from her entrails fly, }
And flakes of mounting flames, that lick the sky. }
Oft from her bowels massy rocks are thrown,
And, shivered by the force, come piece-meal down.
Oft liquid lakes of burning sulphur flow,
Fed from the fiery springs that boil below.
Enceladus, they say, transfixed by Jove,
With blasted limbs came tumbling from above;
And, where he fell, the avenging father drew
This flaming hill, and on his body threw.
As often as he turns his weary sides,
He shakes the solid isle, and smoke the heavens hides.
In shady woods we pass the tedious night, }
Where bellowing sounds and groans our souls affright, }
Of which no cause is offered to the sight. }
For not one star was kindled in the sky,
Nor could the moon her borrowed light supply;
For misty clouds involved the firmament,
The stars were muffled, and the moon was pent.
Scarce had the rising sun the day revealed,
Scarce had his heat the pearly dews dispelled,
When from the woods there bolts, before our sight,
Somewhat betwixt a mortal and a sprite,
So thin, so ghastly meagre, and so wan,
So bare of flesh, he scarce resembled man.
This thing, all tattered, seemed from far to implore
Our pious aid, and pointed to the shore.
We look behind, then view his shaggy beard;
His clothes were tagged with thorns, and filth his limbs besmeared;
The rest, in mien, in habit, and in face,
Appeared a Greek, and such indeed he was.
He cast on us, from far, a frightful view,
Whom soon for Trojans and for foes he knew—
Stood still, and paused; then all at once began
To stretch his limbs, and trembled as he ran.
Soon as approached, upon his knees he falls,
And thus with tears and sighs for pity calls:—
"Now, by the powers above, and what we share
From Nature's common gift, this vital air,
O Trojans, take me hence! I beg no more;
But bear me far from this unhappy shore.
'Tis true, I am a Greek, and farther own,
Among your foes besieged the imperial town.
For such demerits if my death be due,
No more for this abandoned life I sue:
This only favour let my tears obtain,
To throw me headlong in the rapid main:
Since nothing more than death my crime demands,
I die content, to die by human hands."
He said, and on his knees my knees embraced:
I bade him boldly tell his fortune past,
His present state, his lineage, and his name,
The occasion of his fears, and whence he came.
The good Anchises raised him with his hand;
Who thus, encouraged, answered our demand:—
"From Ithaca, my native soil, I came
To Troy; and Achæmenides my name.
Me my poor father with Ulysses sent;
(O! had I stayed, with poverty content!)
But, fearful for themselves, my countrymen
Left me forsaken in the Cyclops' den.
The cave, though large, was dark; the dismal floor
Was paved with mangled limbs and putrid gore.
Our monstrous host, of more than human size,
Erects his head, and stares within the skies.
Bellowing his voice, and horrid is his hue.
Ye gods, remove this plague from mortal view!
The joints of slaughtered wretches are his food;
And for his wine he quaffs the streaming blood.
These eyes beheld, when with his spacious hand
He seized two captives of our Grecian band;
Stretched on his back, he dashed against the stones
Their broken bodies, and their crackling bones:
With spouting blood the purple pavement swims,
While the dire glutton grinds the trembling limbs.
Not unrevenged Ulysses bore their fate,
Nor thoughtless of his own unhappy state;
For, gorged with flesh, and drunk with human wine,
While fast asleep the giant lay supine,
Snoaring aloud, and belching from his maw
His indigested foam, and morsels raw—
We pray; we cast the lots, and then surround
The monstrous body, stretched along the ground:
Each, as he could approach him, lends a hand
To bore his eye-ball with a flaming brand.
Beneath his frowning forehead lay his eye;
For only one did the vast frame supply—
But that a globe so large, his front it filled,
Like the sun's disk, or like a Grecian shield.
The stroke succeeds; and down the pupil bends;
This vengeance followed for our slaughtered friends.—
But haste, unhappy wretches! haste to fly!
Your cables cut, and on your oars rely!
Such, and so vast as Polypheme appears,
A hundred more this hated island bears:
Like him, in caves they shut their woolly sheep; }
Like him, their herds on tops of mountains keep; }
Like him, with mighty strides, they stalk from steep to steep. }
And now three moons their sharpened horns renew,
Since thus in woods and wilds, obscure from view,
I drag my loathsome days with mortal fright,
And in deserted caverns lodge by night;
Oft from the rocks a dreadful prospect see
Of the huge Cyclops, like a walking tree:
From far I hear his thundering voice resound,
And trampling feet that shake the solid ground.
Cornels and savage berries of the wood,
And roots and herbs, have been my meagre food.
While all around my longing eyes I cast,
I saw your happy ships appear at last.
On those I fixed my hopes, to these I run;
'Tis all I ask, this cruel race to shun;
What other death you please, yourselves bestow."
Scarce had he said, when on the mountain's brow
We saw the giant shepherd stalk before
His following flock, and leading to the shore—
A monstrous bulk, deformed, deprived of sight;
His staff a trunk of pine, to guide his steps aright.
His ponderous whistle from his neck descends; }
His woolly care their pensive lord attends: }
This only solace his hard fortune sends. }
Soon as he reached the shore, and touched the waves,
From his bored eye the guttering blood he laves:
He gnashed his teeth, and groaned; through seas he strides,
And scarce the topmost billows touched his sides.
Seized with a sudden fear, we run to sea,
The cables cut, and silent haste away;
The well-deserving stranger entertain;
Then, buckling to the work, our oars divide the main.
The giant hearkened to the dashing sound:
But, when our vessels out of reach he found,
He strided onward, and in vain essayed
The Ionian deep, and durst no farther wade.
With that he roared aloud: the dreadful cry }
Shakes earth, and air, and seas; the billows fly, }
Before the bellowing noise, to distant Italy. }
The neighbouring Ætna trembling all around,
The winding caverns echo to the sound.
His brother Cyclops hear the yelling roar,
And, rushing down the mountains, crowd the shore.
We saw their stern distorted looks, from far,
And one-eyed glance, that vainly threatened war—
A dreadful council! with their heads on high,
(The misty clouds about their foreheads fly,)
Not yielding to the towering tree of Jove,
Or tallest cypress of Diana's grove.
New pangs of mortal fear our minds assail; }
We tug at every oar, and hoist up every sail, }
And take the advantage of the friendly gale. }
Forewarned by Helenus, we strive to shun
Charybdis' gulf, nor dare to Scylla run.
An equal fate on either side appears:
We, tacking to the left, are free from fears;
For, from Pelorus' point, the North arose,
And drove us back where swift Pantagias flows.
His rocky mouth we pass; and make our way
By Thapsus, and Megara's winding bay.
This passage Achæmenides had shown,
Tracing the course which he before had run.
Right o'er-against Plemmyrium's watery strand,
There lies an isle, once called the Ortygian land.
Alpheüs, as old fame reports, has found
From Greece a secret passage under ground,
By love to beauteous Arethusa led;
And, mingling here, they roll in the same sacred bed.
As Helenus enjoined, we next adore
Diana's name, protectress of the shore.
With prosperous gales we pass the quiet sounds
Of still Helorus, and his fruitful bounds.
Then, doubling Cape Pachynus, we survey
The rocky shore extended to the sea.
The town of Camarine from far we see,
And fenny lake, undrained by Fate's decree.
In sight of the Geloan fields we pass,
And the large walls, where mighty Gela was;
Then Agragas, with lofty summits crowned,
Long for the race of warlike steeds renowned.
We passed Selinus, and the palmy land, }
And widely shun the Lilybæan strand, }
Unsafe, for secret rocks and moving sand. }
At length on shore the weary fleet arrived,
Which Drepanum's unhappy port received.
Here, after endless labours, often tossed }
By raging storms, and driven on every coast, }
My dear, dear father, spent with age, I lost— }
Ease of my cares, and solace of my pain,
Saved through a thousand toils, but saved in vain.
The prophet, who my future woes revealed,
Yet this, the greatest and the worst, concealed;
And dire Celæno, whose foreboding skill
Denounced all else, was silent of this ill.
This my last labour was. Some friendly god
From thence conveyed us to your blest abode."
Thus, to the listening queen, the royal guest }
His wandering course and all his toils expressed; }
And here concluding, he retired to rest. }

FOOTNOTES:

[101] Dr Carey proposes to read our; but the alteration seems unnecessary.

---

NOTE
ON
ÆNEÏS, BOOK III.

And children's children shall the crown sustain.—P. 300.

Et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis.

Virgil translated this verse from Homer, Homer had it from Orpheus, and Orpheus from an ancient oracle of Apollo. On this account it is that Virgil immediately subjoins these words, Hæc Phœbus, &c. Eustathius takes notice, that the old poets were wont to take whole paragraphs from one another; which justifies our poet for what he borrows from Homer. Bochartus, in his letter to Ségrais, mentions an oracle which he found in the fragments of an old Greek historian, the sense whereof is this in English, that, when the empire of the Priamidæ should be destroyed, the line of Anchises should succeed. Venus therefore, says the historian, was desirous to have a son by Anchises, though he was then in his decrepit age; accordingly she had Æneas. After this, she sought occasion to ruin the race of Priam, and set on foot the intrigue of Alexander (or Paris) with Helena. She being ravished, Venus pretended still to favour the Trojans, lest they should restore Helen, in case they should be reduced to the last necessity. Whence it appears, that the controversy betwixt Juno and Venus was on no trivial account, but concerned the succession to a great empire.

---

ÆNEÏS,
BOOK IV.

ARGUMENT.

Dido discovers to her sister her passion for Æneas, and her thoughts of marrying him. She prepares a hunting-match for his entertainment. Juno, by Venus's consent, raises a storm, which separates the hunters, and drives Æneas and Dido into the same cave, where their marriage is supposed to be completed. Jupiter dispatches Mercury to Æneas, to warn him from Carthage. Æneas secretly prepares for his voyage. Dido finds out his design, and, to put a stop to it, makes use of her own and her sister's entreaties, and discovers all the variety of passions that are incident to a neglected lover. When nothing would prevail upon him, she contrives her own death, with which this book concludes.

But anxious cares already seized the queen;
She fed within her veins a flame unseen;
The hero's valour, acts, and birth, inspire
Her soul with love, and fan the secret fire.
His words, his looks, imprinted in her heart,
Improve the passion, and increase the smart.
Now, when the purple morn had chased away
The dewy shadows, and restored the day,
Her sister first with early care she sought,
And thus in mournful accents eased her thought:—
"My dearest Anna! what new dreams affright
My labouring soul! what visions of the night
Disturb my quiet, and distract my breast
With strange ideas of our Trojan guest!
His worth, his actions, and majestic air,
A man descended from the gods declare.
Fear ever argues a degenerate kind;
His birth is well asserted by his mind.
Then, what he suffered, when by Fate betrayed!
What brave attempts for falling Troy he made!
Such were his looks, so gracefully he spoke,
That, were I not resolved against the yoke
Of hapless marriage—never to be cursed
With second love, so fatal was my first—
To this one error I might yield again;
For, since Sichæus was untimely slain,
This only man is able to subvert
The fixed foundations of my stubborn heart.
And, to confess my frailty, to my shame, }
Somewhat I find within, if not the same, }
Too like the sparkles of my former flame.}
But first let yawning earth a passage rend,
And let me through the dark abyss descend—
First let avenging Jove, with flames from high,}
Drive down this body to the nether sky, }
Condemned with ghosts in endless night to lie—}
Before I break the plighted faith I gave! }
No! he who had my vows, shall ever have; }
For, whom I loved on earth, I worship in the grave."}
She said: the tears ran gushing from her eyes,
And stopped her speech. Her sister thus replies:—
"O dearer than the vital air I breathe!
Will you to grief your blooming years bequeath,
Condemned to waste in woes your lonely life,
Without the joys of mother, or of wife?
Think you these tears, this pompous train of woe,
Are known or valued by the ghosts below?
I grant, that, while your sorrows yet were green,
It well became a woman, and a queen,
The vows of Tyrian princes to neglect,
To scorn Iarbas, and his love reject,
With all the Libyan lords of mighty name;
But will you fight against a pleasing flame?
This little spot of land, which heaven bestows,
On every side is hemmed with warlike foes;
Gætulian cities here are spread around,
And fierce Numidians there your frontiers bound;
Here lies a barren waste of thirsty land,
And there the Syrtes raise the moving sand;
Barcæan troops besiege the narrow shore,
And from the sea Pygmalion threatens more.
Propitious heaven, and gracious Juno, lead
This wandering navy to your needful aid:
How will your empire spread, your city rise,
From such a union, and with such allies!
Implore the favour of the powers above,
And leave the conduct of the rest to love.
Continue still your hospitable way,
And still invent occasions of their stay,
Till storms and winter winds shall cease to threat,
And planks and oars repair their shattered fleet."
These words, which from a friend and sister came,}
With ease resolved the scruples of her fame, }
And added fury to the kindled flame. }
Inspired with hope, the project they pursue;
On every altar sacrifice renew;
A chosen ewe of two years old they pay
To Ceres, Bacchus, and the god of day.
Preferring Juno's power, (for Juno ties
The nuptial knot, and makes the marriage-joys,)
The beauteous queen before her altar stands,
And holds the golden goblet in her hands.
A milk-white heifer she with flowers adorns,
And pours the ruddy wine betwixt her horns;
And, while the priests with prayer the gods invoke,
She feeds their altars with Sabæan smoke,
With hourly care the sacrifice renews,
And anxiously the panting entrails views.
What priestly rites, alas! what pious art,
What vows, avail to cure a bleeding heart?
A gentle fire she feeds within her veins,
Where the soft god secure in silence reigns.
Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves,
From street to street the raving Dido roves.
So, when the watchful shepherd, from the blind,
Wounds with a random shaft the careless hind,
Distracted with her pain she flies the woods,
Bounds o'er the lawn, and seeks the silent floods—
With fruitless care; for still the fatal dart
Sticks in her side, and rankles in her heart.
And now she leads the Trojan chief along
The lofty walls, amidst the busy throng;
Displays her Tyrian wealth, and rising town,
Which love, without his labour, makes his own.
This pomp she shows, to tempt her wandering guest;
Her faultering tongue forbids to speak the rest.
When day declines, and feasts renew the night,
Still on his face she feeds her famished sight;
She longs again to hear the prince relate
His own adventures, and the Trojan fate.
He tells it o'er and o'er; but still in vain,
For still she begs to hear it once again.
The hearer on the speaker's mouth depends,
And thus the tragic story never ends.
Then, when they part, when Phœbe's paler light
Withdraws, and falling stars to sleep invite,
She last remains, when every guest is gone,
Sits on the bed he pressed, and sighs alone;
Absent, her absent hero sees and hears;
Or in her bosom young Ascanius bears,
And seeks the father's image in the child,
If love by likeness might be so beguiled.
Meantime the rising towers are at a stand;
No labours exercise the youthful band,
Nor use of arts, nor toils of arms they know;
The mole is left unfinished to the foe;
The mounds, the works, the walls, neglected lie,
Short of their promised height, that seemed to threat the sky.
But when imperial Juno, from above,
Saw Dido fettered in the chains of love,
Hot with the venom which her veins inflamed,
And by no sense of shame to be reclaimed,
With soothing words to Venus she begun:—
"High praises, endless honours, you have won,
And mighty trophies, with your worthy son!
Two gods a silly woman have undone!
Nor am I ignorant, you both suspect
This rising city, which my hands erect:
But shall celestial discord never cease?
'Tis better ended in a lasting peace.
You stand possessed of all your soul desired;
Poor Dido with consuming love is fired.
Your Trojan with my Tyrian let us join;}
So Dido shall be yours, Æneas mine— }
One common kingdom, one united line. }
Eliza shall a Dardan lord obey,
And lofty Carthage for a dower convey."
Then Venus (who her hidden fraud descried, }
Which would the sceptre of the world misguide}
To Libyan shores) thus artfully replied:— }
"Who, but a fool, would wars with Juno chuse,
And such alliance and such gifts refuse,
If Fortune with our joint desires comply?
The doubt is all from Jove, and destiny;[102]
Lest he forbid, with absolute command,
To mix the people in one common land—
Or will the Trojan and the Tyrian line,
In lasting leagues and sure succession, join.
But you, the partner of his bed and throne,
May move his mind; my wishes are your own."
"Mine," said imperial Juno, "be the care:—}
Time urges now:—to perfect this affair, }
Attend my counsel, and the secret share. }
When next the Sun his rising light displays,
And gilds the world below with purple rays,
The queen, Æneas, and the Tyrian court,
Shall to the shady woods, for sylvan game, resort.
There, while the huntsmen pitch their toils around,
And cheerful horns, from side to side, resound,
A pitchy cloud shall cover all the plain
With hail, and thunder, and tempestuous rain;
The fearful train shall take their speedy flight,
Dispersed, and all involved in gloomy night;
One cave a grateful shelter shall afford
To the fair princess and the Trojan lord.
I will myself the bridal bed prepare,
If you, to bless the nuptials, will be there:
So shall their loves be crowned with due delights,
And Hymen shall be present at the rites."
The queen of love consents, and closely smiles
At her vain project, and discovered wiles.
The rosy morn was risen from the main,
And horns and hounds awake the princely train:
They issue early through the city gate,
Where the more wakeful huntsmen ready wait,
With nets, and toils, and darts, beside the force
Of Spartan dogs, and swift Massylian horse.
The Tyrian peers and officers of state,
For the slow queen, in antechambers wait;
Her lofty courser, in the court below,
Who his majestic rider seems to know,
Proud of his purple trappings, paws the ground,
And champs the golden bit, and spreads the foam around.
The queen at length appears: on either hand,
The brawny guards in martial order stand.
A flowered cymar with golden fringe she wore,
And at her back a golden quiver bore;
Her flowing hair a golden caul restrains,
A golden clasp the Tyrian robe sustains.
Then young Ascanius, with a sprightly grace,
Leads on the Trojan youth to view the chase.
But far above the rest in beauty shines
The great Æneas, when the troop he joins;
Like fair Apollo, when he leaves the frost
Of wintery Xanthus, and the Lycian coast,
When to his native Delos he resorts,
Ordains the dances, and renews the sports;
Where painted Scythians, mixed with Cretan bands,
Before the joyful altars join their hands:
Himself, on Cynthus walking, sees below
The merry madness of the sacred show.
Green wreaths of bays his length of hair inclose;
A golden fillet binds his awful brows;
His quiver sounds.—Not less the prince is seen
In manly presence, or in lofty mien.
Now had they reached the hills, and stormed the seat
Of savage beasts, in dens, their last retreat.
The cry pursues the mountain-goats: they bound
From rock to rock, and keep the craggy ground:
Quite otherwise the stags, a trembling train,}
In herds unsingled, scour the dusty plain, }
And a long chase, in open view, maintain. }
The glad Ascanius, as his courser guides,
Spurs through the vale, and these and those outrides.
His horses flanks and sides are forced to feel
The clanking lash, and goring of the steel.
Impatiently he views the feeble prey,
Wishing some nobler beast to cross his way,
And rather would the tusky boar attend,
Or see the tawny lion downward bend.
Meantime, the gathering clouds obscure the skies:
From pole to pole the forky lightning flies;
The rattling thunders roll; and Juno pours
A wintry deluge down, and sounding showers.
The company, dispersed, to coverts ride,
And seek the homely cots, or mountain's hollow side.
The rapid rains, descending from the hills,
To rolling torrents raise the creeping rills.
The queen and prince, as Love or Fortune guides,
One common cavern in her bosom hides.
Then first the trembling earth the signal gave,
And flashing fires enlighten all the cave;
Hell from below, and Juno from above,
And howling nymphs, were conscious to their love.
From this ill-omen'd hour, in time arose
Debate and death, and all succeeding woes.
The queen, whom sense of honour could not move,
No longer made a secret of her love,
But called it marriage, by that specious name
To veil the crime, and sanctify the shame.
The loud report through Libyan cities goes.
Fame, the great ill, from small beginnings grows—
Swift from the first; and every moment brings
New vigour to her flights, new pinions to her wings.
Soon grows the pygmy to gigantic size;
Her feet on earth, her forehead in the skies.
Enraged against the gods, revengeful Earth
Produced her, last of the Titanian birth—
Swift is her walk, more swift her winged haste—
A monstrous phantom, horrible and vast.
As many plumes as raise her lofty flight,
So many piercing eyes enlarge her sight;
Millions of opening mouths to Fame belong, }
And every mouth is furnished with a tongue, }
And round with listening ears the flying plague is hung.}
She fills the peaceful universe with cries;
No slumbers ever close her wakeful eyes;
By day, from lofty towers her head she shews,
And spreads through trembling crowds disastrous news;
With court informers haunts, and royal spies;
Things done relates, not done she feigns, and mingles truth with lies.
Talk is her business; and her chief delight
To tell of prodigies, and cause affright.
She fills the people's ears with Dido's name,
Who, "lost to honour and the sense of shame,
Admits into her throne and nuptial bed
A wandering guest, who from his country fled:
Whole days with him she passes in delights,
And wastes in luxury long winter nights,
Forgetful of her fame, and royal trust,
Dissolved in ease, abandoned to her lust."
The goddess widely spreads the loud report,
And flies at length to king Iarbas' court.
When first possessed with this unwelcome news,
Whom did he not of men and gods accuse?
This prince, from ravished Garamantis born,
A hundred temples did with spoils adorn,
In Ammon's honour, his celestial sire;
A hundred altars fed with wakeful fire;
And, through his vast dominions, priests ordained,
Whose watchful care these holy rites maintained.
The gates and columns were with garlands crowned,
And blood of victim beasts enriched the ground.
He, when he heard a fugitive could move
The Tyrian princess, who disdained his love,
His breast with fury burned, his eyes with fire,
Mad with despair, impatient with desire;
Then on the sacred altars pouring wine,
He thus with prayers implored his sire divine:—
"Great Jove, propitious to the Moorish race,
Who feast on painted beds, with offerings grace
Thy temples, and adore thy power divine
With blood of victims, and with sparkling wine!
Seest thou not this? or do we fear in vain
Thy boasted thunder, and thy thoughtless reign?
Do thy broad hands the forky lightnings lance?
Thine are the bolts, or the blind work of chance?
A wandering woman builds, within our state,
A little town, bought at an easy rate;
She pays me homage; (and my grants allow
A narrow space of Libyan lands to plough)
Yet, scorning me, by passion blindly led,
Admits a banished Trojan to her bed!
And now this other Paris, with his train
Of conquered cowards, must in Afric reign!
(Whom, what they are, their looks and garb confess,
Their locks with oil perfumed, their Lydian dress.)
He takes the spoil, enjoys the princely dame;
And I, rejected I, adore an empty name!"
His vows, in haughty terms, he thus preferred, And held his altar's horns. The mighty Thunderer heard,
Then cast his eyes on Carthage, where he found
The lustful pair in lawless pleasure drowned,
Lost in their loves, insensible of shame,
And both forgetful of their better fame.
He calls Cyllenius, and the god attends,
By whom this menacing command he sends:—
"Go, mount the western winds, and cleave the sky;
Then, with a swift descent, to Carthage fly:
There find the Trojan chief, who wastes his days
In slothful riot and inglorious ease,
Nor minds the future city, given by Fate.
To him this message from my mouth relate:—
Not so fair Venus hoped, when twice she won
Thy life with prayers, nor promised such a son.
Hers was a hero, destined to command
A martial race, and rule the Latian land;
Who should his ancient line from Teucer draw,
And on the conquered world impose the law.
If glory cannot move a mind so mean,
Nor future praise from fading pleasure wean,
Yet why should he defraud his son of fame,
And grudge the Romans their immortal name?
What are his vain designs? what hopes he more
From his long lingering on a hostile shore,
Regardless to redeem his honour lost,
And for his race to gain the Ausonian coast?
Bid him with speed the Tyrian court forsake;
With this command the slumbering warrior wake."
Hermes obeys; with golden pinions binds
His flying feet, and mounts the western winds:
And, whether o'er the seas or earth he flies,
With rapid force they bear him down the skies.
But first he grasps within his awful hand
The mark of sovereign power, his magic wand;
With this he draws the ghosts from hollow graves;
With this he drives them down the Stygian waves;
With this he seals in sleep the wakeful sight,
And eyes, though closed in death, restores to light.
Thus armed, the god begins his airy race,
And drives the racking clouds along the liquid space;
Now sees the top of Atlas, as he flies,
Whose brawny back supports the starry skies;
Atlas, whose head, with piny forests crowned,
Is beaten by the winds, with foggy vapours bound.
Snows hide his shoulders; from beneath his chin
The founts of rolling streams their race begin;
A beard of ice on his large breast depends.—
Here, poised upon his wings, the god descends:
Then, rested thus, he from the towering height
Plunged downward with precipitated flight,
Lights on the seas, and skims along the flood.
As water-fowl, who seek their fishy food,
Less, and yet less, to distant prospect show;
By turns they dance aloft, and dive below:
Like these, the steerage of his wings he plies,
And near the surface of the water flies,
Till, having passed the seas, and crossed the sands,
He closed his wings, and stooped on Libyan lands,
Where shepherds once were housed in homely sheds;
Now towers within the clouds advance their heads.
Arriving there, he found the Trojan prince
New ramparts raising for the town's defence.
A purple scarf, with gold embroidered o'er,
(Queen Dido's gift) about his waist he wore;
A sword, with glittering gems diversified,
For ornament, not use, hung idly by his side.
Then thus, with winged words, the god began,
Resuming his own shape—"Degenerate man!
Thou woman's property! what mak'st thou here,
These foreign walls and Tyrian towers to rear,
Forgetful of thy own? All-powerful Jove,
Who sways the world below and heaven above,
Has sent me down with this severe command:
What means thy lingering in the Libyan land?
If glory cannot move a mind so mean,
Nor future praise from flitting pleasure wean,
Regard the fortunes of thy rising heir:
The promised crown let young Ascanius wear,
To whom the Ausonian sceptre, and the state
Of Rome's imperial name, is owed by Fate."
So spoke the god; and, speaking, took his flight,
Involved in clouds, and vanished out of sight.
The pious prince was seized with sudden fear;
Mute was his tongue, and upright stood his hair.
Revolving in his mind the stern command,
He longs to fly, and loaths the charming land.
What should he say? or how should he begin?}
What course, alas! remains to steer between}
The offended lover and the powerful queen? }
This way, and that, he turns his anxious mind,
And all expedients tries, and none can find.
Fixed on the deed, but doubtful of the means,
After long thought, to this advice he leans:
Three chiefs he calls, commands them to repair
The fleet, and ship their men, with silent care:
Some plausible pretence he bids them find,
To colour what in secret he designed.
Himself, meantime, the softest hours would chuse,
Before the love-sick lady heard the news;
And move her tender mind, by slow degrees,
To suffer what the sovereign power decrees:
Jove will inspire him, when, and what to say.—
They hear with pleasure, and with haste obey.
But soon the queen perceives the thin disguise:
(What arts can blind a jealous woman's eyes?)
She was the first to find the secret fraud,
Before the fatal news was blazed abroad.
Love the first motions of the lover hears,
Quick to presage, and even in safety fears.
Nor impious Fame was wanting, to report }
The ships repaired, the Trojans' thick resort,}
And purpose to forsake the Tyrian court. }
Frantic with fear, impatient of the wound,
And impotent of mind, she roves the city round.
Less wild the Bacchanalian dames appear, }
When, from afar, their nightly god they hear, }
And howl about the hills, and shake the wreathy spear.}
At length she finds the dear perfidious man;
Prevents his formed excuse, and thus began:—
"Base and ungrateful! could you hope to fly,
And undiscovered 'scape a lover's eye?
Nor could my kindness your compassion move,
Nor plighted vows, nor dearer bands of love?
Or is the death of a despairing queen
Not worth preventing, though too well foreseen?
Even when the wintery winds command your stay,
You dare the tempests, and defy the sea.
False, as you are, suppose you were not bound
To lands unknown, and foreign coasts to sound;
Were Troy restored, and Priam's happy reign,
Now durst you tempt, for Troy, the raging main?
See, whom you fly! am I the foe you shun?
Now, by those holy vows, so late begun,
By this right hand, (since I have nothing more
To challenge, but the faith you gave before,)
I beg you by these tears too truly shed,
By the new pleasures of our nuptial bed;
If ever Dido, when you most were kind,
Were pleasing in your eyes, or touched your mind;
By these my prayers, if prayers may yet have place,
Pity the fortunes of a falling race!
For you, I have provoked a tyrant's hate,
Incensed the Libyan and the Tyrian state;
For you alone, I suffer in my fame,
Bereft of honour, and exposed to shame!
Whom have I now to trust, ungrateful guest?
(That only name remains of all the rest!)
What have I left? or whither can I fly?
Must I attend Pygmalion's cruelty,
Or till Iarbas shall in triumph lead
A queen, that proudly scorned his proffered bed?
Had you deferred, at least, your hasty flight, }
And left behind some pledge of our delight, }
Some babe to bless the mother's mournful sight,}
Some young Æneas to supply your place,
Whose features might express his father's face;
I should not then complain to live bereft
Of all my husband, or be wholly left."
Here paused the queen. Unmoved he holds his eyes, }
By Jove's command; nor suffered love to rise, }
Though heaving in his heart; and thus at length replies:—}
"Fair queen, you never can enough repeat
Your boundless favours, or I own my debt;
Nor can my mind forget Eliza's name,
While vital breath inspires this mortal frame.
This only let me speak in my defence—
I never hoped a secret flight from hence,
Much less pretended to the lawful claim
Of sacred nuptials, or a husband's name.
For, if indulgent heaven would leave me free,
And not submit my life to Fate's decree,
My choice would lead me to the Trojan shore,}
Those reliques to review, their dust adore, }
And Priam's ruined palace to restore. }
But now the Delphian oracle commands,
And Fate invites me to the Latian lands.
That is the promised place to which I steer,
And all my vows are terminated there.
If you, a Tyrian and a stranger born,
With walls and towers a Libyan town adorn,
Why may not we—like you, a foreign race—
Like you, seek shelter in a foreign place?
As often as the night obscures the skies
With humid shades, or twinkling stars arise,
Anchises' angry ghost in dreams appears,
Chides my delay, and fills my soul with fears;
And young Ascanius justly may complain,
Defrauded of his fate, and destined reign.
Even now the herald of the gods appeared—
Waking I saw him, and his message heard.
From Jove he came commissioned, heavenly bright
With radiant beams, and manifest to sight:
(The sender and the sent I both attest,)
These walls he entered, and those words expressed:—
Fair queen, oppose not what the gods command;
Forced by my fate, I leave your happy land."
Thus while he spoke, already she began,
With sparkling eyes, to view the guilty man;
From head to foot surveyed his person o'er,
Nor longer these outrageous threats forbore:—
"False as thou art, and, more than false, forsworn!
Not sprung from noble blood, nor goddess-born,
But hewn from hardened entrails of a rock!
And rough Hyrcanian tygers gave thee suck!
Why should I fawn? what have I worse to fear? }
Did he once look, or lent a listening ear, }
Sighed when I sobbed, or shed one kindly tear?}
All symptoms of a base ungrateful mind,
So foul, that, which is worse, 'tis hard to find.
Of man's injustice why should I complain?
The gods, and Jove himself, behold in vain
Triumphant treason; yet no thunder flies, }
Nor Juno views my wrongs with equal eyes; }
Faithless is earth, and faithless are the skies!}
Justice is fled, and truth is now no more!
I saved the shipwrecked exile on my shore;
With needful food his hungry Trojans fed;
I took the traitor to my throne and bed:
Fool that I was—'tis little to repeat
The rest—I stored and rigged his ruined fleet.
I rave, I rave! A god's command he pleads,
And makes heaven accessory to his deeds.
Now Lycian lots, and now the Delian god,
Now Hermes is employed from Jove's abode,
To warn him hence; as if the peaceful state
Of heavenly powers were touched with human fate!
But go! thy flight no longer I detain—
Go! seek thy promised kingdom through the main!
Yet, if the heavens will hear my pious vow,
The faithless waves, not half so false as thou,
Or secret sands, shall sepulchres afford
To thy proud vessels, and their perjured lord.
Then shalt thou call on injured Dido's name: }
Dido shall come in a black sulphury flame, }
When death has once dissolved her mortal frame—}
Shall smile to see the traitor vainly weep: }
Her angry ghost, arising from the deep, }
Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep.}
At least my shade thy punishment shall know,
And Fame shall spread the pleasing news below."
Abruptly here she stops—then turns away
Her loathing eyes, and shuns the sight of day.
Amazed he stood, revolving in his mind
What speech to frame, and what excuse to find.
Her fearful maids their fainting mistress led,
And softly laid her on her ivory bed.
But good Æneas, though he much desired
To give that pity which her grief required—
Though much he mourned, and laboured with his love—
Resolved at length, obeys the will of Jove;
Reviews his forces: they with early care
Unmoor their vessels, and for sea prepare.
The fleet is soon afloat, in all its pride,
And well-caulked galleys in the harbour ride.
Then oaks for oars they felled; or, as they stood,
Of its green arms despoiled the growing wood,
Studious of flight. The beach is covered o'er
With Trojan bands, that blacken all the shore:
On every side are seen, descending down,
Thick swarms of soldiers, loaden from the town.
Thus, in battalia, march embodied ants,
Fearful of winter, and of future wants,
To invade the corn, and to their cells convey
The plundered forage of their yellow prey.
The sable troops, along the narrow tracks,
Scarce bear the weighty burden on their backs:
Some set their shoulders to the ponderous grain; }
Some guard the spoil; some lash the lagging train; }
All ply their several tasks, and equal toil sustain. }
What pangs the tender breast of Dido tore,
When, from the tower, she saw the covered shore,
And heard the shouts of sailors from afar,
Mixed with the murmurs of the watery war!
All-powerful Love! what changes canst thou cause
In human hearts, subjected to thy laws!
Once more her haughty soul the tyrant bends:
To prayers and mean submissions she descends.
No female arts or aids she left untried,
Nor counsels unexplored, before she died.
"Look, Anna! look! the Trojans crowd to sea;
They spread their canvas, and their anchors weigh.
The shouting crew their ships with garlands bind,
Invoke the sea-gods, and invite the wind.
Could I have thought this threatening blow so near,
My tender soul had been forewarned to bear.
But do not you my last request deny; }
With yon perfidious man your interest try, }
And bring me news, if I must live or die. }
You are his favourite; you alone can find
The dark recesses of his inmost mind:
In all his trusted secrets you have part,
And know the soft approaches to his heart.
Haste then, and humbly seek my haughty foe;
Tell him, I did not with the Grecians go,
Nor did my fleet against his friends employ,
Nor swore the ruin of unhappy Troy,
Nor moved with hands prophane his father's dust:
Why should he then reject a suit so just?
Whom does he shun? and whither would he fly?
Can he this last, this only prayer deny?
Let him at least his dangerous flight delay,
Wait better winds, and hope a calmer sea.
The nuptials he disclaims, I urge no more:
Let him pursue the promised Latian shore.
A short delay is all I ask him now—
A pause of grief, an interval from woe,
Till my soft soul be tempered to sustain
Accustomed sorrows, and inured to pain.
If you in pity grant this one request,
My death shall glut the hatred of his breast."
This mournful message pious Anna bears,
And seconds, with her own, her sister's tears:
But all her arts are still employed in vain;
Again she comes, and is refused again.
His hardened heart nor prayers nor threatenings move;
Fate, and the god, had stopped his ears to love.
As, when the winds their airy quarrel try,
Jostling from every quarter of the sky,
This way and that the mountain oak they bend,
His boughs they shatter, and his branches rend;
With leaves and falling mast they spread the ground;
The hollow valleys echo to the sound:
Unmoved, the royal plant their fury mocks,
Or, shaken, clings more closely to the rocks:
Far as he shoots his towering head on high,
So deep in earth his fixed foundations lie.—
No less a storm the Trojan hero bears; }
Thick messages and loud complaints he hears, }
And bandied words, still beating on his ears. }
Sighs, groans, and tears, proclaim his inward pains;
But the firm purpose of his heart remains.
The wretched queen, pursued by cruel Fate,
Begins at length the light of heaven to hate,
And loaths to live. Then dire portents she sees,
To hasten on the death her soul decrees—
Strange to relate! for when, before the shrine,
She pours in sacrifice the purple wine,
The purple wine is turned to putrid blood,
And the white offered milk converts to mud.
This dire presage, to her alone revealed,
From all, and even her sister, she concealed.
A marble temple stood within the grove,
Sacred to death, and to her murdered love;
That honoured chapel she had hung around
With snowy fleeces, and with garlands crowned:
Oft, when she visited this lonely dome,
Strange voices issued from her husband's tomb:
She thought she heard him summon her away,
Invite her to his grave, and chide her stay.
Hourly 'tis heard, when with a boding note
The solitary screech-owl strains her throat,
And, on a chimney's top, or turret's height,
With songs obscene, disturbs the silence of the night.
Besides, old prophecies augment her fears;
And stern Æneas in her dreams appears,
Disdainful as by day: she seems, alone,
To wander in her sleep, through ways unknown,
Guideless and dark; or, in a desert plain,
To seek her subjects, and to seek in vain—
Like Pentheus, when, distracted with his fear,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes, appear;
Or mad Orestes, when his mother's ghost
Full in his face infernal torches tossed,
And shook her snaky locks: he shuns the sight, }
Flies o'er the stage, surprised with mortal fright; }
The Furies guard the door, and intercept his flight. }
Now, sinking underneath a load of grief,
From death alone she seeks her last relief;
The time and means resolved within her breast,
She to her mournful sister thus addressed:—
(Dissembling hope, her cloudy front she clears,
And a false vigour in her eyes appears.)
"Rejoice!" she said. "Instructed from above,
My lover I shall gain, or lose my love.
Nigh rising Atlas, next the falling sun,
Long tracts of Ethiopian climates run:
There a Massylian priestess I have found,
Honoured for age, for magic arts renowned:
The Hesperian temple was her trusted care;
'Twas she supplied the wakeful dragon's fare.
She poppy-seeds in honey taught to steep,
Reclaimed his rage, and soothed him into sleep:
She watched the golden fruit. Her charms unbind
The chains of love, or fix them on the mind:
She stops the torrents, leaves the channel dry,
Repels the stars, and backward bears the sky.
The yawning earth rebellows to her call,
Pale ghosts ascend, and mountain ashes fall.
Witness, ye gods, and thou my better part,
How loth I am to try this impious art!
Within the secret court, with silent care,
Erect a lofty pile, exposed in air:
Hang, on the topmost part, the Trojan vest,
Spoils, arms, and presents, of my faithless guest.
Next, under these, the bridal bed be placed,
Where I my ruin in his arms embraced.
All reliques of the wretch are doomed to fire;
For so the priestess and her charms require."
Thus far she said, and farther speech forbears.
A mortal paleness in her face appears:
Yet the mistrustless Anna could not find }
The secret funeral, in these rites designed; }
Nor thought so dire a rage possessed her mind. }
Unknowing of a train concealed so well,
She feared no worse than when Sichæus fell;
Therefore obeys. The fatal pile they rear,
Within the secret court, exposed in air.
The cloven holms and pines are heaped on high,
And garlands on the hollow spaces lie.
Sad cypress, vervain, yew, compose the wreath,
And every baleful green denoting death.
The queen, determined to the fatal deed, }
The spoils and sword he left, in order spread, }
And the man's image on the nuptial bed. }
And now (the sacred altars placed around) }
The priestess enters, with her hair unbound, }
And thrice invokes the powers below the ground. }
Night, Erebus, and Chaos, she proclaims,
And threefold Hecate, with her hundred names,
And three Dianas: next, she sprinkles round,
With feigned Avernian drops, the hallowed ground;
Culls hoary simples, found by Phœbe's light,
With brazen sickles reaped at noon of night;
Then mixes baleful juices in the bowl,
And cuts the forehead of a new-born foal,
Robbing the mother's love.—The destined queen
Observes, assisting at the rites obscene:
A leavened cake in her devoted hands
She holds, and next the highest altar stands:
One tender foot was shod, her other bare,
Girt was her gathered gown, and loose her hair.
Thus dressed, she summoned, with her dying breath,
The heavens and planets conscious of her death,
And every power, if any rules above,
Who minds, or who revenges, injured love.
'Twas dead of night, when weary bodies close
Their eyes in balmy sleep, and soft repose:
The winds no longer whisper through the woods,
Nor murmuring tides disturb the gentle floods.
The stars in silent order moved around;
And Peace, with downy wings, was brooding on the ground.
The flocks and herds, and party-coloured fowl,
Which haunt the woods, or swim the weedy pool,
Stretched on the quiet earth, securely lay,
Forgetting the past labours of the day.
All else of nature's common gift partake:
Unhappy Dido was alone awake.
Nor sleep nor ease the furious queen can find;
Sleep fled her eyes, as quiet fled her mind.
Despair, and rage, and love, divide her heart;
Despair and rage had some, but love the greater part.
Then thus she said within her secret mind:—
"What shall I do? what succour can I find?
Become a suppliant to Iarbas' pride,
And take my turn to court, and be denied?
Shall I with this ungrateful Trojan go,
Forsake an empire, and attend a foe?
Himself I refuged, and his train relieved—
'Tis true—but am I sure to be received?
Can gratitude in Trojan souls have place?
Laomedon still lives in all his race!
Then, shall I seek alone the churlish crew,
Or with my fleet their flying sails pursue?
What force have I but those, whom scarce before
I drew reluctant from their native shore?
Will they again embark at my desire,
Once more sustain the seas, and quit their second Tyre?
Rather with steel thy guilty breast invade,
And take the fortune thou thyself hast made.
Your pity, sister, first seduced my mind,
Or seconded too well what I designed.
These dear-bought pleasures had I never known,
Had I continued free, and still my own—
Avoiding love, I had not found despair,
But shared with savage beasts the common air.
Like them, a lonely life I might have led,
Not mourned the living, nor disturbed the dead."
These thoughts she brooded in her anxious breast.—
On board, the Trojan found more easy rest.
Resolved to sail, in sleep he passed the night;
And ordered all things for his early flight.
To whom once more the winged god appears; }
His former youthful mien and shape he wears, }
And with this new alarm invades his ears:— }
"Sleep'st thou, O goddess-born? and canst thou drown
Thy needful cares, so near a hostile town,
Beset with foes; nor hear'st the western gales
Invite thy passage, and inspire thy sails?
She harbours in her heart a furious hate,
And thou shalt find the dire effects too late;
Fixed on revenge, and obstinate to die.
Haste swiftly hence, while thou hast power to fly.
The sea with ships will soon be covered o'er,
And blazing firebrands kindle all the shore.
Prevent her rage, while night obscures the skies,
And sail before the purple morn arise.
Who knows what hazards thy delay may bring?
Woman's a various and a changeful thing."—
Thus Hermes in the dream; then took his flight
Aloft in air unseen, and mixed with night.
Twice warned by the celestial messenger,
The pious prince arose with hasty fear;
Then roused his drowsy train without delay: }
"Haste to your banks! your crooked anchors weigh, }
And spread your flying sails, and stand to sea! }
A God commands: he stood before my sight,
And urged us once again to speedy flight.
O sacred power! what power soe'er thou art,
To thy blessed orders I resign my heart.
Lead thou the way; protect thy Trojan bands,
And prosper the design thy will commands."—
He said; and, drawing forth his flaming sword,
His thundering arm divides the many-twisted cord.
An emulating zeal inspires his train:
They run; they snatch; they rush into the main.
With headlong haste they leave the desert shores,
And brush the liquid seas with labouring oars.
Aurora now had left her saffron bed,
And beams of early light the heavens o'erspread,
When, from a tower, the queen, with wakeful eyes,
Saw day point upward from the rosy skies.
She looked to seaward; but the sea was void,
And scarce in ken the sailing ships descried.
Stung with despite, and furious with despair,
She struck her trembling breast, and tore her hair.
"And shall the ungrateful traitor go, (she said,)
My land forsaken, and my love betrayed?
Shall we not arm? not rush from every street,
To follow, sink, and burn, his perjured fleet?
Haste, haul my galleys out! pursue the foe!
Bring flaming brands! set sail, and swiftly row!—
What have I said? where am I? Fury turns
My brain; and my distempered bosom burns.
Then, when I gave my person and my throne,
This hate, this rage, had been more timely shown.
See now the promised faith, the vaunted name,
The pious man, who, rushing through the flame,
Preserved his gods, and to the Phrygian shore
The burden of his feeble father bore!
I should have torn him piece-meal—strewed in floods
His scattered limbs, or left exposed in woods—
Destroyed his friends, and son; and, from the fire,
Have set the reeking boy before the sire.
Events are doubtful, which on battle wait:
Yet where's the doubt, to souls secure of fate?
My Tyrians, at their injured queen's command,
Had tossed their fires amid the Trojan band;
At once extinguished all the faithless name; }
And I myself, in vengeance of my shame, }
Had fallen upon the pile, to mend the funeral flame. }
Thou Sun, who view'st at once the world below!
Thou Juno, guardian of the nuptial vow!
Thou Hecate, hearken from thy dark abodes!
Ye Furies, Fiends, and violated Gods!
All powers invoked with Dido's dying breath,
Attend her curses, and avenge her death!
If so the Fates ordain, and Jove commands,
The ungrateful wretch should find the Latian lands,
Yet let a race untamed, and haughty foes,
His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose:
Oppressed with numbers in the unequal field,
His men discouraged, and himself expelled,
Let him for succour sue from place to place,
Torn from his subjects, and his son's embrace.
First, let him see his friends in battle slain,
And their untimely fate lament in vain:
And when, at length, the cruel war shall cease,
On hard conditions may he buy his peace:
Nor let him then enjoy supreme command; }
But fall, untimely, by some hostile hand, }
And lie unburied on the barren sand! }
These are my prayers, and this my dying will;
And you, my Tyrians, every curse fulfil.
Perpetual hate, and mortal wars proclaim,
Against the prince, the people, and the name.
These grateful offerings on my grave bestow;
Nor league, nor love, the hostile nations know!
Now, and from hence, in every future age,
When rage excites your arms, and strength supplies the rage,
Rise some avenger of our Libyan blood,
With fire and sword pursue the perjured brood;
Our arms, our seas, our shores, opposed to theirs;
And the same hate descend on all our heirs!"
This said, within her anxious mind she weighs
The means of cutting short her odious days.
Then to Sichæus' nurse she briefly said,
(For, when she left her country, her's was dead,)
"Go, Barce, call my sister. Let her care
The solemn rites of sacrifice prepare;
The sheep, and all the atoning offerings, bring;
Sprinkling her body from the crystal spring
With living drops; then let her come, and thou
With sacred fillets bind thy hoary brow.
Thus will I pay my vows to Stygian Jove,
And end the cares of my disastrous love;
Then cast the Trojan image on the fire,
And, as that burns, my passion shall expire."
The nurse moves onward with officious care,
And all the speed her aged limbs can bear.
But furious Dido, with dark thoughts involved,
Shook at the mighty mischief she resolved.
With livid spots distinguished was her face;
Red were her rolling eyes, and discomposed her pace;
Ghastly she gazed, with pain she drew her breath,
And nature shivered at approaching death.
Then swiftly to the fatal place she passed,
And mounts the funeral pile with furious haste;
Unsheaths the sword the Trojan left behind,
(Not for so dire an enterprize designed.)
But when she viewed the garments loosely spread,
Which once he wore, and saw the conscious bed,
She paused, and, with a sigh, the robes embraced, }
Then on the couch her trembling body cast, }
Repressed the ready tears, and spoke her last:— }
"Dear pledges of my love, while heaven so pleased,
Receive a soul, of mortal anguish eased.
My fatal course is finished; and I go,
A glorious name, among the ghosts below.
A lofty city by my hands is raised;
Pygmalion punished, and my lord appeased.
What could my fortune have afforded more,
Had the false Trojan never touched my shore?"
Then kissed the couch; and "Must I die," she said,
"And unrevenged? 'tis doubly to be dead!
Yet even this death with pleasure I receive:
On any terms, 'tis better than to live.
These flames, from far, may the false Trojan view;
These boding omens his base flight pursue!"
She said, and struck; deep entered in her side
The piercing steel, with reeking purple dyed:
Clogged in the wound the cruel weapon stands;
The spouting blood came streaming on her hands.
Her sad attendants saw the deadly stroke,
And with loud cries the sounding palace shook.
Distracted, from the fatal sight they fled,
And through the town the dismal rumour spread.
First, from the frighted court the yell began;
Redoubled, thence from house to house it ran:
The groans of men, with shrieks, laments, and cries
Of mixing women, mount the vaulted skies.
Not less the clamour, than if—ancient Tyre,
Or the new Carthage, set by foes on fire—
The rolling ruin, with their loved abodes,
Involved the blazing temples of their gods.
Her sister hears; and, furious with despair,
She beats her breast, and rends her yellow hair,
And, calling on Eliza's name aloud,
Runs breathless to the place, and breaks the crowd.
"Was all that pomp of woe for this prepared,
These fires, this funeral pile, these altars reared?
Was all this train of plots contrived, (said she,)
All only to deceive unhappy me?
Which is the worst? Didst thou in death pretend
To scorn thy sister, or delude thy friend?
Thy summoned sister, and thy friend, had come;
One sword had served us both, one common tomb:
Was I to raise the pile, the powers invoke,
Not to be present at the fatal stroke?
At once thou hast destroyed thyself and me,
Thy town, thy senate, and thy colony!
Bring water! bathe the wound; while I in death
Lay close my lips to hers, and catch the flying breath."
This said, she mounts the pile with eager haste,
And in her arms the gasping queen embraced;
Her temples chafed; and her own garments tore,
To staunch the streaming blood, and cleanse the gore.
Thrice Dido tried to raise her drooping head,
And, fainting, thrice fell grovelling on the bed;
Thrice oped her heavy eyes, and saw the light, }
But, having found it, sickened at the sight, }
And closed her lids at last in endless night. }
Then Juno, grieving that she should sustain
A death so lingering, and so full of pain,
Sent Iris down, to free her from the strife
Of labouring nature, and dissolve her life.
For, since she died, not doomed by heaven's decree,
Or her own crime, but human casualty,
And rage of love, that plunged her in despair,
The Sisters had not cut the topmost hair,
Which Proserpine and they can only know;
Nor made her sacred to the shades below.—
Downward the various Goddess took her flight,
And drew a thousand colours from the light;
Then stood above the dying lover's head,
And said, "I thus devote thee to the dead.
This offering to the infernal gods I bear." }
Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair: }
The struggling soul was loosed, and life dissolved in air. }

FOOTNOTES:

[102] This is very obscurely worded, and lest seems to be used unauthorisedly in the sense of whether. The doubt, says the goddess, is, whether Jove will prohibit or sanction the proposed alliance. The old copies placed a period after destiny, and a point of interrogation after join. Edit.

---

NOTE
ON
ÆNEÏS, BOOK IV.

----And "must I die," she said,
"And unrevenged? 'tis doubly to be dead!
Yet even this death with pleasure I receive;
On any terms, 'tis better than to live."—P. 351.

This is certainly the sense of Virgil, on which I have paraphrased, to make it plain. His words are these:

----Moriemur inultæ?
Sed moriamur, ait; sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras.

Servius makes an interrogation at the word sic; thus, sic? Sic juvat ire sub umbras; which Mr Cowley justly censures: but his own judgment may perhaps be questioned; for he would retrench the latter part of the verse, and leave it a hemistick,—Sed moriamur, ait. That Virgil never intended to have left any hemistick, I have proved already in the preface. That this verse was filled up by him with these words, sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras, is very probable, if we consider the weight of them; for this procedure of Dido does not only contain that dira execratio, quæ nullo expiatur carmine,[103] (as Horace observes in his "Canidia,") but, besides that, Virgil, who is full of allusions to history, under another name describes the Decii devoting themselves to death this way, though in a better cause, in order to the destruction of the enemy. The reader, who will take the pains to consult Livy in his accurate description of those Decii thus devoting themselves, will find a great resemblance betwixt these two passages. And it is judiciously observed upon that verse,

Nulla fides populis nec fœdera sunto,

that Virgil uses, in the word sunto, a verbum juris, a form of speaking on solemn and religious occasions. Livy does the like. Note also, that Dido puts herself into the habitus Gabinus, which was the girding herself round with one sleeve of her vest; which is also according to the Roman pontifical, in this dreadful ceremony, as Livy has observed; which is a farther confirmation of this conjecture. So that, upon the whole matter, Dido only doubts whether she should die before she had taken her revenge, which she rather wished; but, considering that this devoting herself was the most certain and infallible way of compassing her vengeance, she thus exclaims:

----Sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras!
Hauriat hunc oculis ignem crudelis ab alto
Dardanus, et nostræ secum ferat omina mortis?

Those flames from far may the false Trojan view;
Those boding omens his base flight pursue!

which translation I take to be according to the sense of Virgil. I should have added a note on that former verse,

Infelix Dido! nunc te fata impia tangunt—

which, in the edition of Heinsius, is thus printed, nunc te facta impia tangunt? The word facta, instead of fata, is reasonably altered; for Virgil says afterwards, she died not by fate, nor by any deserved death, nec fato, meritâ nec morte, peribat, &c. When I translated that passage, I doubted of the sense, and therefore omitted that hemistick, nunc te fata impia tangunt. But Heinsius is mistaken only in making an interrogation-point instead of a period. The words facta impia, I suppose, are genuine; for she had perjured herself in her second marriage, having firmly resolved, as she told her sister in the beginning of this Æneid, never to love again, after the death of her first husband; and had confirmed this resolution by a curse on herself, if she should alter it:

Sed mihi vel tellus, optem, prius ima dehiscat, &c.
Ante, pudor, quam te violem, aut tua jura resolvam.
Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit: ille habeat secum, servetque sepulcro.

FOOTNOTES:

[103] Read,

——dira detestatio
Nulla expiatur victima. Epod. v. 89.

---

ÆNEÏS,
BOOK V.

ARGUMENT.

Æneas, setting sail from Afric, is driven by a storm on the coast of Sicily, where he is hospitably received by his friend Acestes, king of part of the island, and born of Trojan parentage. He applies himself to celebrate the memory of his father with divine honours, and accordingly institutes funeral games, and appoints prizes for those who should conquer in them. While the ceremonies were performing, Juno sends Iris to persuade the Trojan women to burn the ships, who, upon her instigation, set fire to them; which burned four, and would have consumed the rest, had not Jupiter, by a miraculous shower, extinguished it. Upon this, Æneas, by the advice of one of his generals, and a vision of his father, builds a city for the women, old men, and others, who were either unfit for war, or weary of the voyage, and sails for Italy. Venus procures of Neptune a safe voyage for him and all his men, excepting only his pilot Palinurus, who was unfortunately lost.[104]

Meantime the Trojan cuts his watery way,
Fixed on his voyage, through the curling sea;
Then, casting back his eyes, with dire amaze,
Sees on the Punic shore the mounting blaze.
The cause unknown; yet his presaging mind }
The fate of Dido from the fire divined; }
He knew the stormy souls of woman-kind, }
What secret springs their eager passions move,
How capable of death for injured love.
Dire auguries from hence the Trojans draw;
Till neither fires nor shining shores they saw.
Now seas and skies their prospect only bound—
An empty space above, a floating field around.
But soon the heavens with shadows were o'erspread;
A swelling cloud hung hovering o'er their head:
Livid it looked—the threatening of a storm:
Then night and horror ocean's face deform.
The pilot, Palinurus, cried aloud,—
"What gusts of weather from that gathering cloud
My thoughts presage! Ere yet the tempest roars,
Stand to your tackle, mates, and stretch your oars;
Contract your swelling sails, and luff to wind."
The frighted crew perform the task assigned.
Then, to his fearless chief,—"Not heaven, (said he) }
Though Jove himself should promise Italy, }
Can stem the torrent of this raging sea. }
Mark, how the shifting winds from west arise,
And what collected night involves the skies!
Nor can our shaken vessels live at sea, }
Much less against the tempest force their way. }
'Tis Fate diverts our course, and Fate we must obey. }
Not far from hence, if I observed aright
The southing of the stars, and polar light,
Sicilia lies, whose hospitable shores
In safety we may reach with struggling oars."
Æneas then replied:—"Too sure I find,
We strive in vain against the seas and wind:
Now shift your sails; what place can please me more
Than what you promise, the Sicilian shore,
Whose hallowed earth Anchises' bones contains,
And where a prince of Trojan lineage reigns?"
The course resolved, before the western wind
They scud amain, and make the port assigned.
Meantime Acestes, from a lofty stand,
Beheld the fleet descending on the land;
And, not unmindful of his ancient race, }
Down from the cliff he ran with eager pace, }
And held the hero in a strict embrace. }
Of a rough Libyan bear the spoils he wore,
And either hand a pointed javelin bore.
His mother was a dame of Dardan blood;
His sire Crinisus, a Sicilian flood.
He welcomes his returning friends ashore
With plenteous country cates, and homely store.
Now, when the following morn had chased away
The flying stars, and light restored the day,
Æneas called the Trojan troops around,
And thus bespoke them from a rising ground:—
"Offspring of heaven, divine Dardanian race!
The sun, revolving through the etherial space,
The shining circle of the year has filled,
Since first this isle my father's ashes held:
And now the rising day renews the year—
A day for ever sad, for ever dear.
This would I celebrate with annual games,
With gifts on altars piled, and holy flames,
Though banished to Gætulia's barren sands,
Caught on the Grecian seas, or hostile lands:
But since this happy storm our fleet has driven
(Not, as I deem, without the will of heaven)
Upon these friendly shores, and flowery plains,
Which hide Anchises and his blest remains,
Let us with joy perform his honours due,
And pray for prosperous winds, our voyage to renew—
Pray, that, in towns and temples of our own, }
The name of great Anchises may be known, }
And yearly games may spread the god's renown. }
Our sports Acestes, of the Trojan race,
With royal gifts ordained, is pleased to grace:
Two steers on every ship the king bestows:
His gods and ours shall share your equal vows.
Besides, if, nine days hence, the rosy morn
Shall with unclouded light the skies adorn,
That day with solemn sports I mean to grace:
Light galleys on the seas shall run a watery race:
Some shall in swiftness for the goal contend,
And others try the twanging bow to bend:
The strong, with iron gauntlets armed, shall stand
Opposed in combat on the yellow sand.
Let all be present at the games prepared,
And joyful victors wait the just reward.
But now assist the rites, with garlands crowned."
He said, and first his brows with myrtle bound.
Then Helymus, by his example led,
And old Acestes, each adorned his head;
Thus young Ascanius, with a sprightly grace,
His temples tied, and all the Trojan race.
Æneas then advanced amidst the train,
By thousands followed through the flowery plain,
To great Anchises' tomb; which when he found,
He poured to Bacchus, on the hallowed ground,
Two bowls of sparkling wine, of milk two more,
And two (from offered bulls) of purple gore.
With roses then the sepulchre he strow'd,
And thus his father's ghost bespoke aloud:—
"Hail, O ye holy manes! hail again,
Paternal ashes, now reviewed in vain!
The gods permitted not, that you, with me, }
Should reach the promised shores of Italy, }
Or Tyber's flood, what flood soe'er it be." }
Scarce had he finished, when, with speckled pride,
A serpent from the tomb began to glide;
His hugy bulk on seven high volumes rolled;
Blue was his breadth of back, but streaked with scaly gold:
Thus riding on his curls, he seemed to pass
A rolling fire along, and singe the grass.
More various colours through his body run,
Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun.
Betwixt the rising altars, and around,
The sacred monster shot along the ground;
With harmless play amidst the bowls he passed,
And with his lolling tongue assayed the taste:
Thus fed with holy food, the wondrous guest
Within the hollow tomb retired to rest.
The pious prince, surprised at what he viewed,
The funeral honours with more zeal renewed,
Doubtful if this the place's genius were,
Or guardian of his father's sepulchre.
Five sheep, according to the rites, he slew;
As many swine, and steers of sable hue;
New generous wine he from the goblets poured,
And called his father's ghost, from hell restored.
The glad attendants in long order come,
Offering their gifts at great Anchises' tomb:
Some add more oxen; some divide the spoil; }
Some place the chargers on the grassy soil; }
Some blow the fires, and offered entrails boil. }
Now came the day desired. The skies were bright
With rosy lustre of the rising light:
The bordering people, roused by sounding fame
Of Trojan feasts and great Acestes' name,
The crowded shore with acclamations fill,
Part to behold, and part to prove their skill.
And first the gifts in public view they place,
Green laurel wreaths, and palm, the victors' grace:
Within the circle, arms and tripods lie, }
Ingots of gold and silver heaped on high, }
And vests embroidered, of the Tyrian dye. }
The trumpet's clangor then the feast proclaims,
And all prepare for their appointed games.
Four galleys first, which equal rowers bear,
Advancing, in the watery lists appear.
The speedy Dolphin, that outstrips the wind,
Bore Mnestheus, author of the Memmian kind:
Gyas the vast Chimæra's bulk commands,
Which rising like a towering city stands:
Three Trojans tug at every labouring oar; }
Three banks in three degrees the sailors bore; }
Beneath their sturdy strokes the billows roar. }
Sergestus, who began the Sergian race,
In the great Centaur took the leading place:
Cloanthus on the sea-green Scylla stood,
From whom Cluentius draws his Trojan blood.
Far in the sea, against the foaming shore,
There stands a rock: the raging billows roar
Above his head in storms; but, when 'tis clear,
Uncurl their ridgy backs, and at his foot appear.
In peace below the gentle waters run;
The cormorants above lie basking in the sun.
On this the hero fixed an oak in sight,
The mark to guide the mariners aright.
To bear with this, the seamen stretch their oars;
Then round the rock they steer, and seek the former shores.
The lots decide their place. Above the rest,
Each leader shining in his Tyrian vest;
The common crew, with wreaths of poplar boughs,
Their temples crown, and shade their sweaty brows;
Besmeared with oil, their naked shoulders shine.
All take their seats, and wait the sounding sign:
They gripe their oars; and every panting breast
Is raised by turns with hope, by turns with fear depressed.
The clangor of the trumpet gives the sign;
At once they start, advancing in a line:
With shouts the sailors rend the starry skies; }
Lashed with their oars, the smoky billows rise; }
Sparkles the briny main, and the vexed ocean fries. }
Exact in time, with equal strokes they row: }
At once the brushing oars and brazen prow }
Dash up the sandy waves, and ope the depths below. }
Not fiery coursers, in a chariot race,
Invade the field with half so swift a pace:
Not the fierce driver with more fury lends }
The sounding lash, and ere the stroke descends, }
Low to the wheels his pliant body bends. }
The partial crowd their hopes and fears divide,
And aid, with eager shouts, the favoured side.
Cries, murmurs, clamours, with a mixing sound,
From woods to woods, from hills to hills, rebound.
Amidst the loud applauses of the shore,
Gyas outstripped the rest, and sprung before:
Cloanthus, better manned, pursued him fast,
But his o'er-masted galley checked his haste.
The Centaur and the Dolphin brush the brine
With equal oars, advancing in a line;
And now the mighty Centaur seems to lead,
And now the speedy Dolphin gets a-head;
Now board to board the rival vessels row,
The billows lave the skies, and ocean groans below.
They reached the mark. Proud Gyas and his train
In triumph rode, the victors of the main;
But, steering round, he charged his pilot stand
More close to shore, and skim along the sand;—
"Let others bear to sea!"—Menœtes heard; }
But secret shelves too cautiously he feared, }
And, fearing, sought the deep; and still aloof he steered. }
With louder cries the captain called again:—
"Bear to the rocky shore, and shun the main."
He spoke, and, speaking, at his stern he saw
The bold Cloanthus near the shelvings draw.
Betwixt the mark and him the Scylla stood,
And in a closer compass ploughed the flood.
He passed the mark; and, wheeling, got before:— }
Gyas blasphemed the gods, devoutly swore, }
Cried out for anger, and his hair he tore. }
Mindless of others' lives, (so high was grown
His rising rage,) and careless of his own,
The trembling dotard to the deck he drew,
And hoisted up, and overboard he threw:
This done, he seized the helm; his fellows cheered,
Turned short upon the shelves, and madly steered.
Hardly his head the plunging pilot rears,
Clogged with his clothes, and cumbered with his years:
Now dropping wet, he climbs the cliff with pain.
The crowd, that saw him fall and float again,
Shout from the distant shore; and loudly laught,
To see his heaving breast disgorge the briny draught.
The following Centaur, and the Dolphin's crew,
Their vanished hopes of victory renew;
While Gyas lags, they kindle in the race,
To reach the mark. Sergestus takes the place;
Mnestheus pursues; and, while around they wind,
Comes up, not half his galley's length behind;
Then on the deck, amidst his mates, appeared,
And thus their drooping courages he cheered:—
"My friends, and Hector's followers heretofore,
Exert your vigour; tug the labouring oar;
Stretch to your strokes, my still unconquered crew,
Whom from the flaming walls of Troy I drew.
In this our common interest, let me find
That strength of hand, that courage of the mind,
As when you stemmed the strong Malean flood,
And o'er the Syrtes' broken billows rowed.
I seek not now the foremost palm to gain; }
Though yet—but, ah! that haughty wish is vain! }
Let those enjoy it whom the gods ordain. }
But to be last, the lags of all the race!—
Redeem yourselves and me from that disgrace."
Now, one and all, they tug amain; they row
At the full stretch, and shake the brazen prow.
The sea beneath them sinks; their labouring sides
Are swelled, and sweat runs guttering down in tides.
Chance aids their daring with unhoped success:
Sergestus, eager with his beak to press
Betwixt the rival galley and the rock,
Shuts up the unwieldy Centaur in the lock.
The vessel struck; and, with the dreadful shock,
Her oars she shivered, and her head she broke.
The trembling rowers from their banks arise,
And, anxious for themselves, renounce the prize.
With iron poles they heave her off the shores,
And gather from the sea their floating oars.
The crew of Mnestheus, with elated minds,
Urge their success, and call the willing winds,
Then ply their oars, and cut their liquid way
In larger compass on the roomy sea.
As, when the dove her rocky hold forsakes,
Roused in a fright, her sounding wings she shakes;
The cavern rings with clattering; out she flies,
And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies:
At first she flutters; but at length she springs
To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wing:
So Mnestheus in the Dolphin cuts the sea;
And, flying with a force, that force assists his way.
Sergestus in the Centaur soon he passed,
Wedged in the rocky shoals, and sticking fast.
In vain the victor he with cries implores,
And practises to row with shattered oars.
Then Mnestheus bears with Gyas, and outflies:
The ship, without a pilot, yields the prize.
Unvanquished Scylla now alone remains;
Her he pursues, and all his vigour strains.
Shouts from the favouring multitude arise; }
Applauding Echo to the shouts replies; }
Shouts, wishes, and applause, run rattling through the skies. }
These clamours with disdain the Scylla heard,
Much grudged the praise, but more the robbed reward:
Resolved to hold their own, they mend their pace,
All obstinate to die, or gain the race.
Raised with success, the Dolphin swiftly ran;
For they can conquer, who believe they can.
Both urge their oars, and Fortune both supplies,
And both perhaps had shared an equal prize;
When to the seas Cloanthus holds his hands,
And succour from the watery powers demands:—
"Gods of the liquid realms, on which I row! }
If, given by you, the laurel bind my brow, }
(Assist to make me guilty of my vow!) }
A snow-white bull shall on your shore be slain;
His offered entrails cast into the main,
And ruddy wine from golden goblets thrown,
Your grateful gift and my return shall own."
The choir of nymphs, and Phorcus, from below,
With virgin Panopea, heard his vow;
And old Portunus, with his breadth of hand,
Pushed on, and sped the galley to the land.
Swift as a shaft, or winged wind, she flies,
And, darting to the port, obtains the prize.
The herald summons all, and then proclaims
Cloanthus conqueror of the naval games.
The prince with laurel crowns the victor's head,
And three fat steers are to his vessel led,
The ship's reward; with generous wine beside,
And sums of silver, which the crew divide.
The leaders are distinguished from the rest;
The victor honoured with a nobler vest,
Where gold and purple strive in equal rows,
And needle-work its happy cost bestows.
There, Ganymede is wrought with living art,
Chasing through Ida's groves the trembling hart:
Breathless he seems, yet eager to pursue;
When from aloft descends, in open view,
The bird of Jove, and, sousing on his prey,
With crooked talons bears the boy away.
In vain, with lifted hands and gazing eyes, }
His guards behold him soaring through the skies, }
And dogs pursue his flight with imitated cries. }
Mnestheus the second victor was declared;
And, summoned there, the second prize he shared—
A coat of mail, which brave Demoleus bore, }
More brave Æneas from his shoulders tore, }
In single combat on the Trojan shore. }
This was ordained for Mnestheus to possess—
In war for his defence, for ornament in peace.
Rich was the gift, and glorious to behold,
But yet so ponderous with its plates of gold,
That scarce two servants could the weight sustain; }
Yet, loaded thus, Demoleus o'er the plain }
Pursued, and lightly seized, the Trojan train. }
The third, succeeding to the last reward,
Two goodly bowls of massy silver shared,
With figures prominent, and richly wrought,
And two brass cauldrons from Dodona brought.
Thus all, rewarded by the hero's hands,
Their conquering temples bound with purple bands.
And now Sergestus, clearing from the rock,
Brought back his galley shattered with the shock.
Forlorn she looked, without an aiding oar,
And, hooted by the vulgar, made to shore;
As when a snake, surprised upon the road,
Is crushed athwart her body by the load
Of heavy wheels; or with a mortal wound
Her belly bruised, and trodden to the ground—
In vain, with loosened curls, she crawls along;
Yet, fierce above, she brandishes her tongue;
Glares with her eyes, and bristles with her scales;
But, grovelling in the dust, her parts unsound she trails.
So slowly to the port the Centaur tends,
But, what she wants in oars, with sails amends.
Yet, for his galley saved, the grateful prince
Is pleased the unhappy chief to recompense.
Pholoe, the Cretan slave, rewards his care,
Beauteous herself, with lovely twins as fair.
From thence his way the Trojan hero bent
Into the neighbouring plain, with mountains pent,
Whose sides were shaded with surrounding wood.
Full in the midst of this fair valley, stood
A native theatre, which, rising slow
By just degrees, o'erlooked the ground below.
High on a sylvan throne the leader sate;
A numerous train attend in solemn state.
Here those, that in the rapid course delight,
Desire of honour, and the prize, invite.
The rival runners without order stand;
The Trojans, mixed with the Sicilian band.
First Nisus, with Euryalus, appears—
Euryalus a boy of blooming years,
With sprightly grace and equal beauty crowned—
Nisus, for friendship to the youth, renowned.
Diores next, of Priam's royal race,
Then Salius, joined with Patron, took their place;
(But Patron in Arcadia had his birth,
And Salius, his from Acarnanian earth;)
Then two Sicilian youths—the names of these,
Swift Helymus, and lovely Panopes,
(Both jolly huntsmen, both in forests bred,
And owning old Acestes for their head,)
With several others of ignobler name,
Whom time has not delivered o'er to fame.
To these the hero thus his thoughts explained,
In words which general approbation gained:—
"One common largess is for all designed,
(The vanquished and the victor shall be joined,)
Two darts of polished steel and Gnossian wood,
A silver-studded axe, alike bestowed.
The foremost three have olive wreaths decreed:
The first of these obtains a stately steed
Adorned with trappings; and the next in fame,
The quiver of an Amazonian dame,
With feathered Thracian arrows well supplied: }
A golden belt shall gird his manly side, }
Which with a sparkling diamond shall be tied. }
The third this Grecian helmet shall content."
He said. To their appointed base they went;
With beating hearts the expected sign receive,
And, starting all at once, the barrier leave.
Spread out, as on the winged winds, they flew,
And seized the distant goal with greedy view.
Shot from the crowd, swift Nisus all o'er-passed;
Nor storms, nor thunder, equal half his haste.
The next, but, though the next, yet far disjoined,
Came Salius, and Euryalus behind;
Then Helymus, whom young Diores plied,
Step after step, and almost side by side,
His shoulders pressing—and, in longer space,
Had won, or left at least a dubious race.
Now, spent, the goal they almost reach at last,
When eager Nisus, hapless in his haste,
Slipped first, and, slipping, fell upon the plain,
Soaked with the blood of oxen newly slain.
The careless victor had not marked his way;
But, treading where the treacherous puddle lay,
His heels flew up; and on the grassy floor
He fell, besmeared with filth and holy gore.
Not mindless then, Euryalus, of thee,
Nor of the sacred bonds of amity,
He strove the immediate rival's hope to cross,
And caught the foot of Salius as he rose:
So Salius lay extended on the plain:
Euryalus springs out, the prize to gain,
And leaves the crowd:—applauding peals attend
The victor to the goal, who vanquished by his friend.
Next Helymus; and then Diores came,
By two misfortunes made the third in fame.
But Salius enters, and, exclaiming loud
For justice, deafens and disturbs the crowd;
Urges his cause may in the court be heard;
And pleads the prize is wrongfully conferred.
But favour for Euryalus appears;
His blooming beauty, with his tender years,
Had bribed the judges for the promised prize;
Besides, Diores fills the court with cries,
Who vainly reaches at the last reward,
If the first palm on Salius be conferred.
Then thus the prince: "Let no disputes arise:
Where Fortune placed it, I award the prize.
But Fortune's errors give me leave to mend,
At least to pity my deserving friend"
He said, and, from among the spoils, he draws
(Ponderous with shaggy mane and golden paws)
A lion's hide: to Salius this he gives:
Nisus with envy sees the gift, and grieves.
"If such rewards to vanquished men are due,
(He said) and falling is to rise by you,
What prize may Nisus from your bounty claim,
Who merited the first rewards and fame?
In falling, both an equal fortune tried;
Would Fortune for my fall so well provide!"
With this he pointed to his face, and showed
His hands and all his habit smeared with blood.
The indulgent father of the people smiled,
And caused to be produced an ample shield,
Of wondrous art, by Didymaon wrought,
Long since from Neptune's bars in triumph brought.
This given to Nisus, he divides the rest,
And equal justice in his gifts expressed.
The race thus ended, and rewards bestowed,
Once more the prince bespeaks the attentive crowd:—
"If there be here, whose dauntless courage dare
In gauntlet fight, with limbs and body bare,
His opposite sustain in open view,
Stand forth the champion, and the games renew.
Two prizes I propose, and thus divide—
A bull with gilded horns, and fillets tied,
Shall be the portion of the conquering chief:
A sword and helm shall cheer the loser's grief."
Then haughty Dares in the lists appears;
Stalking he strides, his head erected bears:
His nervous arms the weighty gauntlet wield,
And loud applauses echo through the field.
Dares alone in combat used to stand
The match of mighty Paris, hand to hand;
The same, at Hector's funerals, undertook
Gigantic Butes, of the Amycian stock,
And, by the stroke of his resistless hand,
Stretched the vast bulk upon the yellow sand.
Such Dares was; and such he strode along,
And drew the wonder of the gazing throng.
His brawny back and ample breast he shows; }
His lifted arms around his head he throws, }
And deals, in whistling air, his empty blows. }
His match is sought: but, through the trembling band,
Not one dares answer to the proud demand.
Presuming of his force, with sparkling eyes
Already he devours the promised prize.
He claims the bull with awless insolence,
And, having seized his horns, accosts the prince:—
"If none my matchless valour dares oppose,
How long shall Dares wait his dastard foes?
Permit me, chief, permit, without delay,
To lead this uncontended gift away."
The crowd assents, and, with redoubled cries,
For the proud challenger demands the prize.
Acestes, fired with just disdain, to see
The palm usurped without a victory,
Reproached Entellus thus, who sate beside,
And heard and saw, unmoved, the Trojan's pride:—
"Once, but in vain, a champion of renown,
So tamely can you bear the ravished crown,
A prize in triumph borne before your sight,
And shun, for fear, the danger of the fight?
Where is our Eryx now, the boasted name,
The god, who taught your thundering arm the game?
Where now your baffled honour? where the spoil
That filled your house, and fame that filled our isle?"
Entellus, thus:—"My soul is still the same,
Unmoved with fear, and moved with martial fame;
But my chill blood is curdled in my veins,
And scarce the shadow of a man remains.
Oh! could I turn to that fair prime again,
That prime, of which this boaster is so vain,
The brave, who this decrepit age defies,
Should feel my force, without the promised prize."
He said; and, rising at the word, he threw
Two ponderous gauntlets down in open view—
Gauntlets, which Eryx wont in fight to wield,
And sheath his hands with, in the listed field.
With fear and wonder seized, the crowd beholds
The gloves of death, with seven distinguished folds
Of tough bull-hides; the space within is spread
With iron, or with loads of heavy lead:
Dares himself was daunted at the sight,
Renounced his challenge, and refused to fight.
Astonished at their weight, the hero stands,
And poised the ponderous engines in his hands.
"What had your wonder (said Entellus) been, }
Had you the gauntlets of Alcides seen, }
Or viewed the stern debate on this unhappy green! }
These, which I bear, your brother Eryx bore,
Still marked with battered brains and mingled gore.
With these he long sustained the Herculean arm;
And these I wielded while my blood was warm,
This languished frame while better spirits fed,
Ere age unstrung my nerves, or time o'ersnowed my head.
But, if the challenger these arms refuse,
And cannot wield their weight, or dare not use;
If great Æneas and Acestes join
In his request, these gauntlets I resign;
Let us with equal arms perform the fight,
And let him leave to fear, since I resign my right."
This said, Entellus for the strife prepares;
Stripped of his quilted coat, his body bares;
Composed of mighty bones and brawn, he stands,
A goodly towering object on the sands.
Then just Æneas equal arms supplied,
Which round their shoulders to their wrists they tied.
Both on the tiptoe stand, at full extent,
Their arms aloft, their bodies inly bent;
Their heads from aiming blows they bear afar;
With clashing gauntlets then provoke the war.
One on his youth and pliant limbs relies;
One on his sinews, and his giant size.
The last is stiff with age, his motion slow; }
He heaves for breath, he staggers to and fro, }
And clouds of issuing smoke his nostrils loudly blow. }
Yet equal in success, they ward, they strike;
Their ways are different, but their art alike.
Before, behind, the blows are dealt; around
Their hollow sides the rattling thumps resound.
A storm of strokes, well meant, with fury flies,
And errs about their temples, ears, and eyes—
Nor always errs; for oft the gauntlet draws
A sweeping stroke along the crackling jaws.
Heavy with age, Entellus stands his ground,
But with his warping body wards the wound.
His hand and watchful eye keep even pace;
While Dares traverses, and shifts his place,
And, like a captain who beleaguers round
Some strong-built castle on a rising ground,
Views all the approaches with observing eyes; }
This and that other part in vain he tries, }
And more on industry than force relies. }
With hands on high, Entellus threats the foe; }
But Dares watched the motion from below, }
And slipped aside, and shunned the long-descending blow. }
Entellus wastes his forces on the wind,
And, thus deluded of the stroke designed,
Headlong and heavy fell; his ample breast,
And weighty limbs, his ancient mother pressed.
So falls a hollow pine, that long had stood
On Ida's height, or Erymanthus' wood,
Torn from the roots. The differing nations rise;
And shouts and mingled murmurs rend the skies.
Acestes runs with eager haste, to raise
The fallen companion of his youthful days.
Dauntless he rose, and to the fight returned;
With shame his glowing cheeks, his eyes with fury burned.
Disdain and conscious virtue fired his breast,
And with redoubled force his foe he pressed.
He lays on load with either hand, amain,
And headlong drives the Trojan o'er the plain;
Nor stops, nor stays; nor rest nor breath allows; }
But storms of strokes descend about his brows, }
A rattling tempest, and a hail of blows. }
But now the prince, who saw the wild increase }
Of wounds, commands the combatants to cease, }
And bounds Entellus' wrath, and bids the peace. }
First to the Trojan, spent with toil, he came,
And soothed his sorrow for the suffered shame.
"What fury seized my friend? The Gods, (said he)
To him propitious, and averse to thee,
Have given his arm superior force to thine.
'Tis madness to contend with strength divine."
The gauntlet-fight thus ended, from the shore
His faithful friends unhappy Dares bore:
His mouth and nostrils poured a purple flood,
And pounded teeth came rushing with his blood.
Faintly he staggered through the hissing throng,
And hung his head, and trailed his legs along.
The sword and casque are carried by his train;
But with his foe the palm and ox remain.
The champion, then, before Æneas came,
Proud of his prize, but prouder of his fame:
"O goddess-born, and you, Dardanian host,
Mark with attention, and forgive my boast;
Learn what I was, by what remains; and know,
From what impending fate you saved my foe."
Sternly he spoke, and then confronts the bull; }
And, on his ample forehead aiming full, }
The deadly stroke, descending, pierced the skull. }
Down drops the beast, nor needs a second wound,
But sprawls in pangs of death, and spurns the ground.
Then, thus:—"In Dares's stead I offer this.
Eryx! accept a nobler sacrifice:
Take the last gift my withered arms can yield:
The gauntlets I resign, and here renounce the field."
This done, Æneas orders, for the close,
The strife of archers, with contending bows.
The mast, Sergestus' shattered galley bore,
With his own hands he raises on the shore.
A fluttering dove upon the top they tie,
The living mark at which their arrows fly.
The rival archers in a line advance,
Their turn of shooting to receive from chance.
A helmet holds their names: the lots are drawn;
On the first scroll was read Hippocoon:
The people shout. Upon the next was found
Young Mnestheus, late with naval honours crowned.
The third contained Eurytion's noble name,
Thy brother, Pandarus, and next in fame,
Whom Pallas urged the treaty to confound,
And send among the Greeks a feathered wound.
Acestes, in the bottom, last remained,
Whom not his age from youthful sports restrained.
Soon all with vigour bend their trusty bows,
And from the quiver each his arrow chose.
Hippocoon's was the first: with forceful sway
It flew, and, whizzing, cut the liquid way.
Fixed in the mast the feathered weapon stands:
The fearful pigeon flutters in her bands,
And the tree trembled, and the shouting cries
Of the pleased people rend the vaulted skies.
Then Mnestheus to the head his arrow drove, }
With lifted eyes, and took his aim above, }
But made a glancing shot, and missed the dove; }
Yet missed so narrow, that he cut the cord,
Which fastened, by the foot, the flitting bird.
The captive thus released, away she flies,
And beats, with clapping wings, the yielding skies.
His bow already bent, Eurytion stood;
And, having first invoked his brother god,
His winged shaft with eager haste he sped.
The fatal message reached her as she fled:
She leaves her life aloft; she strikes the ground,
And renders back the weapon in the wound.
Acestes, grudging at his lot, remains,
Without a prize to gratify his pains.
Yet, shooting upward, sends his shaft, to show
An archer's art, and boast his twanging bow.
The feathered arrow gave a dire portent,
And latter augurs judge from this event.
Chafed by the speed, it fired; and, as it flew,
A trail of following flames, ascending drew:
Kindling they mount, and mark the shiny way; }
Across the skies as falling meteors play, }
And vanish into wind, or in a blaze decay. }
The Trojans and Sicilians wildly stare,
And, trembling, turn their wonder into prayer.
The Dardan prince put on a smiling face,
And strained Acestes with a close embrace;
Then honouring him with gifts above the rest,
Turned the bad omen, nor his fears confessed.
"The gods (said he) this miracle have wrought,
And ordered you the prize without the lot.
Accept this goblet, rough with figured gold,
Which Thracian Cisseus gave my sire of old:
This pledge of ancient amity receive,
Which to my second sire I justly give."
He said, and, with the trumpet's cheerful sound,
Proclaimed him victor, and with laurel crowned.
Nor good Eurytion envied him the prize,
Though he transfixed the pigeon in the skies.
Who cut the line, with second gifts was graced;
The third was his, whose arrow pierced the mast.
The chief, before the games were wholly done,
Called Periphantes, tutor to his son,
And whispered thus:—"With speed Ascanius find;
And, if his childish troop be ready joined,
On horseback let him grace his grandsire's day,
And lead his equals armed in just array."
He said; and, calling out, the cirque he clears.
The crowd withdrawn, an open plain appears.
And now the noble youths, of form divine, }
Advance before their fathers, in a line: }
The riders grace the steeds; the steeds with glory shine. }
Thus marching on in military pride,
Shouts of applause resound from side to side.
Their casques adorned with laurel wreaths they wear,
Each brandishing aloft a cornel spear.
Some at their backs their gilded quivers bore;
Their chains of burnished gold hung down before.
Three graceful troops they formed upon the green; }
Three graceful leaders at their head were seen; }
Twelve followed every chief, and left a space between. }
The first young Priam led—a lovely boy,
Whose grandsire was the unhappy king of Troy;
(His race in after-times was known to fame, }
New honours adding to the Latian name,) }
And well the royal boy his Thracian steed became. }
White were the fetlocks of his feet before,
And on his front a snowy star he bore.
Then beauteous Atys, with Iülus bred,
Of equal age, the second squadron led.
The last in order, but the first in place,[105]
First in the lovely features of his face,
Rode fair Ascanius on a fiery steed,
Queen Dido's gift, and of the Tyrian breed.
Sure coursers for the rest the king ordains,
With golden bits adorned, and purple reins.
The pleased spectators peals of shouts renew,
And all the parents in the children view;
Their make, their motions, and their sprightly grace,
And hopes and fears alternate in their face.
The unfledged commanders, and their martial train,
First make the circuit of the sandy plain
Around their sires, and, at the appointed sign,
Drawn up in beauteous order, form a line.
The second signal sounds, the troop divides
In three distinguished parts, with three distinguished guides.
Again they close, and once again disjoin:
In troop to troop opposed, and line to line.
They meet; they wheel; they throw their darts afar,
With harmless rage, and well-dissembled war.
Then in a round the mingled bodies run:
Flying they follow, and pursuing shun;
Broken, they break; and, rallying, they renew
In other forms the military show.
At last, in order undiscerned they join,
And march together in a friendly line.
And, as the Cretan labyrinth of old,
With wandering ways, and many a winding fold,
Involved the weary feet, without redress,
In a round error, which denied recess;
So fought the Trojan boys in warlike play,
Turned and returned, and still a different way.
Thus dolphins, in the deep, each other chase
In circles, when they swim around the watery race.
This game, these carousals, Ascanius taught;
And, building Alba, to the Latins brought,
Shewed what he learned: the Latin sires impart
To their succeeding sons the graceful art:
From these imperial Rome received the game,
Which Troy, the youths the Trojan troop, they name.
Thus far the sacred sports they celebrate:
But Fortune soon resumed her ancient hate;
For, while they pay the dead his annual dues,
Those envied rites Saturnian Juno views;
And sends the goddess of the various bow,
To try new methods of revenge below;
Supplies the winds to wing her airy way,
Where in the port secure the navy lay.
Swiftly fair Iris down her arch descends,
And, undiscerned, her fatal voyage ends.
She saw the gathering crowd; and, gliding thence,
The desert shore, and fleet without defence.
The Trojan matrons, on the sands alone,
With sighs and tears Anchises' death bemoan:
Then, turning to the sea their weeping eyes,
Their pity to themselves renews their cries.
"Alas!" said one, "what oceans yet remain
For us to sail! what labours to sustain!"
All take the word, and, with a general groan,
Implore the gods for peace, and places of their own.
The goddess, great in mischief, views their pains,
And in a woman's form her heavenly limbs restrains.
In face and shape, old Beroë she became, }
Doryclus' wife, a venerable dame, }
Once blessed with riches, and a mother's name. }
Thus changed, amidst the crying crowd she ran,
Mixed with the matrons, and these words began:—
"O wretched we! whom not the Grecian power,
Nor flames, destroyed, in Troy's unhappy hour!
O wretched we! reserved by cruel Fate,
Beyond the ruins of the sinking state!
Now seven revolving years are wholly run,
Since this improsperous voyage we begun;
Since, tossed from shores to shores, from lands to lands,
Inhospitable rocks and barren sands,
Wandering in exile, through the stormy sea,
We search in vain for flying Italy.
Now cast by Fortune on this kindred land, }
What should our rest and rising walls withstand, }
Or hinder here to fix our banished band? }
O country lost, and gods redeemed in vain,
If still in endless exile we remain!
Shall we no more the Trojan walls renew,
Or streams of some dissembled Simoïs view?
Haste! join with me! the unhappy fleet consume!
Cassandra bids; and I declare her doom.
In sleep I saw her; she supplied my hands
(For this I more than dreamt) with flaming brands:
'With these, (said she,) these wandering ships destroy: }
These are your fatal seats, and this your Troy.' }
Time calls you now; the precious hour employ: }
Slack not the good presage, while heaven inspires
Our minds to dare, and gives the ready fires.
See! Neptune's altars minister their brands:
The god is pleased; the god supplies our hands."
Then, from the pile, a flaming fir she drew,
And, tossed in air, amidst the galleys threw.
Rapt in amaze, the matrons wildly stare:
Then Pyrgo, reverenced for her hoary hair,
Pyrgo, the nurse of Priam's numerous race,
"No Beroë this, though she belies her face!
What terrors from her frowning front arise!
Behold a goddess in her ardent eyes!
What rays around her heavenly face are seen!
Mark her majestic voice, and more than mortal mien!
Beroë but now I left, whom, pined with pain,
Her age and anguish from these rites detain."
She said. The matrons, seized with new amaze,
Roll their malignant eyes, and on the navy gaze.
They fear, and hope, and neither part obey:
They hope the fated land, but fear the fatal way.
The goddess, having done her task below,
Mounts up on equal wings, and bends her painted bow.
Struck with the sight, and seized with rage divine,
The matrons prosecute their mad design:
They shriek aloud; they snatch, with impious hands,
The food of altars; firs and flaming brands,
Green boughs and saplings, mingled in their haste,
And smoking torches, on the ships they cast.
The flame, unstopped at first, more fury gains,
And Vulcan rides at large with loosened reins:
Triumphant to the painted sterns he soars,
And seizes, in his way, the banks and crackling oars.
Eumelus was the first, the news to bear,
While yet they crowd the rural theatre.
Then, what they hear, is witnessed by their eyes:
A storm of sparkles, and of flames, arise.
Ascanius took the alarm, while yet he led
His early warriors on his prancing steed,
And, spurring on, his equals soon o'erpassed;
Nor could his frighted friends reclaim his haste.
Soon as the royal youth appeared in view,
He sent his voice before him as he flew:—
"What madness moves you, matrons! to destroy
The last remainders of unhappy Troy?
Not hostile fleets, but your own hopes, you burn,
And on your friends your fatal fury turn.
Behold your own Ascanius!"—While he said, }
He drew his glittering helmet from his head, }
In which the youths to sportful arms he led. }
By this, Æneas and his train appear;
And now the women, seized with shame and fear,
Dispersed, to woods and caverns take their flight,
Abhor their actions, and avoid the light;
Their friends acknowledge, and their error find,
And shake the goddess from their altered mind.
Not so the raging fires their fury cease,
But, lurking in the seams, with seeming peace,
Work on their way amid the smouldering tow,
Sure in destruction, but in motion slow.
The silent plague through the green timber eats,
And vomits out a tardy flame by fits.
Down to the keels, and upward to the sails,
The fire descends, or mounts, but still prevails;
Nor buckets poured, nor strength of human hand,
Can the victorious element withstand.
The pious hero rends his robe, and throws
To heaven his hands, and, with his hands, his vows.—
"O Jove! (he cried,) if prayers can yet have place;
If thou abhorr'st not all the Dardan race;
If any spark of pity still remain; }
If gods are gods, and not invoked in vain; }
Yet spare the reliques of the Trojan train! }
Yet from the flames our burning vessels free!
Or let thy fury fall alone on me.
At this devoted head thy thunder throw,
And send the willing sacrifice below."
Scarce had he said, when southern storms arise:
From pole to pole the forky lightning flies;
Loud rattling shakes the mountains and the plain;
Heaven bellies downward, and descends in rain.
Whole sheets of water from the clouds are sent,
Which, hissing through the planks, the flames prevent
And stop the fiery pest. Four ships alone
Burn to the waist, and for the fleet atone.
But doubtful thoughts the hero's heart divide,
If he should still in Sicily reside,
Forgetful of his fates,—or tempt the main,
In hope the promised Italy to gain.
Then Nautes, old and wise, to whom alone
The will of heaven by Pallas was foreshown;
Versed in portents, experienced, and inspired
To tell events, and what the fates required—
Thus while he stood, to neither part inclined,
With cheerful words relieved his labouring mind:—
"O goddess-born! resigned in every state,
With patience bear, with prudence push, your fate.
By suffering well, our fortune we subdue;
Fly when she frowns, and, when she calls, pursue.
Your friend Acestes is of Trojan kind;
To him disclose the secrets of your mind:
Trust in his hands your old and useless train,
Too numerous for the ships which yet remain—
The feeble, old, indulgent of their ease,
The dames who dread the dangers of the seas,
With all the dastard crew, who dare not stand
The shock of battle with your foes by land.
Here you may build a common town for all,
And, from Acestes' name, Acesta call."
The reasons, with his friend's experience joined,
Encouraged much, but more disturbed, his mind.
'Twas dead of night; when, to his slumbering eyes,
His father's shade descended from the skies;
And thus he spoke:—"O, more than vital breath,
Loved while I lived, and dear even after death!
O son, in various toils and troubles tossed!
The king of heaven employs my careful ghost
On his commands—the god, who saved from fire
Your flaming fleet, and heard your just desire.
The wholesome counsel of your friend receive,
And here the coward train and women leave:
The chosen youth, and those who nobly dare,
Transport, to tempt the dangers of the war.
The stern Italians will their courage try;
Rough are their manners, and their minds are high.
But first to Pluto's palace you shall go,
And seek my shade among the blest below:
For not with impious ghosts my soul remains, }
Nor suffers, with the damned, perpetual pains, }
But breathes the living air of soft Elysian plains. }
The chaste Sibylla shall your steps convey,
And blood of offered victims free the way.
There shall you know what realms the gods assign,
And learn the fates and fortunes of your line.
But now, farewell! I vanish with the night, }
And feel the blast of heaven's approaching light." }
He said, and mixed with shades, and took his airy flight.— }
"Whither so fast?" the filial duty cried;
"And why, ah! why the wished embrace denied?"
He said, and rose: as holy zeal inspires,
He rakes hot embers, and renews the fires;
His country gods and Vesta then adores
With cakes and incense, and their aid implores.
Next, for his friends and royal host he sent,
Revealed his vision, and the god's intent,
With his own purpose.—All, without delay,
The will of Jove, and his desires, obey.
They list with women each degenerate name,
Who dares not hazard life for future fame.
These they cashier. The brave remaining few,
Oars, banks, and cables, half consumed, renew.
The prince designs a city with the plough:
The lots their several tenements allow,
This part is named from Ilium, that from Troy,
And the new king ascends the throne with joy;
A chosen senate from the people draws;
Appoints the judges, and ordains the laws.
Then, on the top of Eryx, they begin
A rising temple to the Paphian queen.
Anchises, last, is honoured as a god: }
A priest is added, annual gifts bestowed, }
And groves are planted round his blest abode. }
Nine days they pass in feasts, their temples crowned;
And fumes of incense in the fanes abound.
Then from the south arose a gentle breeze,
That curled the smoothness of the glassy seas:
The rising winds a ruffling gale afford,
And call the merry mariners aboard.
Now loud laments along the shores resound,
Of parting friends in close embraces bound.
The trembling women, the degenerate train,
Who shunned the frightful dangers of the main,
Even those desire to sail, and take their share
Of the rough passage, and the promised war:
Whom good Æneas cheers, and recommends
To their new master's care his fearful friends.
On Eryx' altars three fat calves he lays; }
A lamb new-fallen to the stormy seas; }
Then slips his halsers, and his anchors weighs. }
High on the deck the godlike hero stands,
With olive crowned, a charger in his hands;
Then cast the reeking entrails in the brine,
And poured the sacrifice of purple wine.
Fresh gales arise; with equal strokes they vie,
And brush the buxom seas, and o'er the billows fly.
Meantime the mother goddess, full of fears,
To Neptune thus addressed, with tender tears:—
"The pride of Jove's imperious queen, the rage,
The malice, which no sufferings can assuage,
Compel me to these prayers; since neither fate,
Nor time, nor pity, can remove her hate.
Even Jove is thwarted by his haughty wife;
Still vanquished, yet she still renews the strife.
As if 'twere little to consume the town
Which awed the world, and wore the imperial crown,
She prosecutes the ghost of Troy with pains,
And gnaws, e'en to the bones, the last remains.
Let her the causes of her hatred tell;
But you can witness its effects too well.
You saw the storm she raised on Libyan floods,
That mixed the mounting billows with the clouds;
When, bribing Æolus, she shook the main,
And moved rebellion in your watery reign.
With fury she possessed the Dardan dames,
To burn their fleet with execrable flames,
And forced Æneas, when his ships were lost,
To leave his followers on a foreign coast.
For what remains, your godhead I implore,
And trust my son to your protecting power.
If neither Jove's nor Fate's decree withstand,
Secure his passage to the Latian land."
Then thus the mighty Ruler of the Main:—
"What may not Venus hope from Neptune's reign?
My kingdom claims your birth; my late defence
Of your endangered fleet may claim your confidence.
Nor less by land than sea my deeds declare,
How much your loved Æneas is my care.
Thee, Xanthus! and thee, Simoïs! I attest—
Your Trojan troops when proud Achilles pressed,
And drove before him headlong on the plain, }
And dashed against the walls the trembling train; }
When floods were filled with bodies of the slain; }
When crimson Xanthus, doubtful of his way, }
Stood up on ridges to behold the sea, }
New heaps came tumbling in, and choked his way; }
When your Æneas fought, but fought with odds
Of force unequal, and unequal gods;
I spread a cloud before the victor's sight,
Sustained the vanquished, and secured his flight—
Even then secured him, when I sought with joy
The vowed destruction of ungrateful Troy.
My will's the same: fair goddess! fear no more,
Your fleet shall safely gain the Latian shore;
Their lives are given; one destined head alone
Shall perish, and for multitudes atone."
Thus having armed with hopes her anxious mind,
His finny team Saturnian Neptune joined,
Then adds the foamy bridle to their jaws,
And to the loosened reins permits the laws.
High on the waves his azure car he guides; }
Its axles thunder, and the sea subsides, }
And the smooth ocean rolls her silent tides. }
The tempests fly before their father's face,
Trains of inferior gods his triumph grace,
And monster whales before their master play,
And choirs of Tritons crowd the watery way.
The marshalled powers in equal troops divide }
To right and left; the gods his better side }
Inclose; and, on the worse, the Nymphs and Nereids ride. }
Now smiling hope, with sweet vicissitude,
Within the hero's mind his joys renewed.
He calls to raise the masts, the sheets display; }
The cheerful crew with diligence obey; }
They scud before the wind, and sail in open sea. }
A-head of all the master-pilot steers;
And, as he leads, the following navy veers.
The steeds of Night had travelled half the sky,
The drowsy rowers on their benches lie,
When the soft God of Sleep, with easy flight,
Descends, and draws behind a trail of light.
Thou, Palinurus, art his destined prey;
To thee alone he takes his fatal way.
Dire dreams to thee, and iron sleep, he bears;
And, lighting on thy prow, the form of Phorbas wears.
Then thus the traitor god began his tale:— }
"The winds, my friend, inspire a pleasing gale; }
The ships, without thy care, securely sail. }
Now steal an hour of sweet repose; and I
Will take the rudder, and thy room supply."
To whom the yawning pilot, half-asleep:—
"Me dost thou bid to trust the treacherous deep,
The harlot-smiles of her dissembling face,
And to her faith commit the Trojan race?
Shall I believe the Siren South again,
And, oft betrayed, not know the monster main?"
He said: his fastened hands the rudder keep,
And, fixed on heaven, his eyes repel invading sleep.
The god was wroth, and at his temples threw
A branch in Lethe dipped, and drunk with Stygian dew:
The pilot, vanquished by the power divine,
Soon closed his swimming eyes, and lay supine.
Scarce were his limbs extended at their length,
The god, insulting with superior strength,
Fell heavy on him, plunged him in the sea,
And, with the stern, the rudder tore away.
Headlong he fell, and, struggling in the main,
Cried out for helping hands, but cried in vain.
The victor Dæmon mounts obscure in air,
While the ship sails without the pilot's care.
On Neptune's faith the floating fleet relies; }
But what the man forsook, the god supplies, }
And, o'er the dangerous deep, secure the navy flies; }
Glides by the Sirens' cliffs, a shelfy coast,
Long infamous for ships and sailors lost,
And white with bones. The impetuous ocean roars,
And rocks rebellow from the sounding shores.
The watchful hero felt the knocks; and found
The tossing vessel sailed on shoaly ground.
Sure of his pilot's loss, he takes himself
The helm, and steers aloof, and shuns the shelf.
Inly he grieved, and, groaning from the breast,
Deplored his death; and thus his pain expressed:—
"For faith reposed on seas, and on the flattering sky,
Thy naked corpse is doomed on shores unknown to lie."

FOOTNOTES:

[104] A great part of this book is borrowed from Apollonius Rhodius; and the reader may observe the great judgment and distinction tion of our author, in what he borrows from the ancients, by comparing them. I conceive the reason why he omits the horse-race in the funeral games, was, because he shows Ascanius afterwards on horseback, with his troops of boys, and would not wear that subject thread-bare, which Statius, in the next age, described so happily. Virgil seems, to me, to have excelled Homer in those sports, and to have laboured them the more in honour of Octavius, his patron, who instituted the like games for perpetuating the memory of his uncle Julius: piety, as Virgil calls it, or dutifulness to parents, being a most popular virtue among the Romans.

[105] Dr Carey reads grace; but Dryden here uses place, for eminence of rank. Ascanius was the last in order, but the first in dignity; this, by the way, is an Ovidian point superinduced upon the simplicity of Virgil:

Extremus, formaque ante omnes pulcher, Iulus.

---

ÆNEÏS,
BOOK VI.

ARGUMENT.

The Sibyl foretels Æneas the adventures he should meet with in Italy. She attends him to hell; describing to him the various scenes of that place, and conducting him to his father Anchises, who instructs him in those sublime mysteries of the soul of the world, and the transmigration; and shews him that glorious race of heroes, which was to descend from him and his posterity.

He said, and wept; then spread his sails before }
The winds, and reached at length the Cuman shore: }
Their anchors dropped, his crew the vessels moor. }
They turn their heads to sea, their sterns to land,
And greet with greedy joy the Italian strand.
Some strike from clashing flints their fiery seed;
Some gather sticks, the kindled flames to feed,
Or search for hollow trees, and fell the woods,
Or trace through valleys the discovered floods.
Thus while their several charges they fulfil,
The pious prince ascends the sacred hill
Where Phœbus is adored; and seeks the shade,
Which hides from sight his venerable maid.
Deep in a cave the Sibyl makes abode;
Thence full of Fate returns, and of the god.
Through Trivia's grove they walk; and now behold,
And enter now, the temple roofed with gold.
When Dædalus, to fly the Cretan shore,
His heavy limbs on jointed pinions bore,
(The first who sailed in air,) 'tis sung by Fame, }
To the Cumæan coast at length he came, }
And, here alighting, built this costly frame. }
Inscribed to Phœbus, here he hung on high
The steerage of his wings, that cut the sky:
Then, o'er the lofty gate, his art embossed
Androgeos' death, and (offerings to his ghost)
Seven youths from Athens yearly sent, to meet
The fate appointed by revengeful Crete.
And next to these the dreadful urn was placed,
In which the destined names by lots were cast:
The mournful parents stand around in tears,
And rising Crete against their shore appears.
There too, in living sculpture, might be seen
The mad affection of the Cretan queen;
Then how she cheats her bellowing lover's eye;
The rushing leap, the doubtful progeny—
The lower part a beast, a man above—
The monument of their polluted love.
Nor far from thence he graved the wonderous maze,
A thousand doors, a thousand winding ways:
Here dwells the monster, hid from human view,
Not to be found, but by the faithful clue;
Till the kind artist, moved with pious grief,
Lent to the loving maid this last relief,
And all those erring paths described so well,
That Theseus conquered, and the monster fell.
Here hapless Icarus had found his part,
Had not the father's grief restrained his art.
He twice essayed to cast his son in gold;
Twice from his hands he dropped the forming mould.
All this with wondering eyes Æneas viewed:
Each varying object his delight renewed.
Eager to read the rest...Achates came, }
And by his side the mad divining dame, }
The priestess of the god, Deïphobe her name. }
"Time suffers not," she said, "to feed your eyes
With empty pleasures; haste the sacrifice.
Seven bullocks, yet unyoked, for Phœbus chuse,
And for Diana seven unspotted ewes."
This said, the servants urge the sacred rites,
While to the temple she the prince invites.
A spacious cave, within its farmost part,
Was hewed and fashioned by laborious art,
Through the hill's hollow sides: before the place,
A hundred doors a hundred entries grace:
As many voices issue, and the sound
Of Sibyl's words as many times rebound.
Now to the mouth they come. Aloud she cries,—
"This is the time! inquire your destinies!
He comes! behold the god!" Thus while she said,
(And shivering at the sacred entry staid,)
Her colour changed; her face was not the same,
And hollow groans from her deep spirit came.
Her hair stood up; convulsive rage possessed
Her trembling limbs, and heaved her labouring breast.
Greater than human kind she seemed to look,
And, with an accent more than mortal, spoke.
Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll,
When all the god came rushing on her soul.
Swiftly she turned, and, foaming as she spoke,—
"Why this delay?" she cried—"the powers invoke.
Thy prayers alone can open this abode;
Else vain are my demands, and dumb the god."
She said no more. The trembling Trojans hear,
O'er-spread with a damp sweat, and holy fear.
The prince himself, with awful dread possessed,
His vows to great Apollo thus addressed:—
"Indulgent god! propitious power to Troy,
Swift to relieve, unwilling to destroy!
Directed by whose hand, the Dardan dart
Pierced the proud Grecian's only mortal part!
Thus far, by Fate's decrees and thy commands,
Through ambient seas and through devouring sands,
Our exiled crew has sought the Ausonian ground;
And now, at length, the flying coast is found.
Thus far the fate of Troy, from place to place,
With fury has pursued her wandering race.
Here cease, ye powers, and let your vengeance end:
Troy is no more, and can no more offend.
And thou, O sacred maid, inspired to see
The event of things in dark futurity!
Give me, what heaven has promised to my fate,
To conquer and command the Latian state;
To fix my wandering gods, and find a place
For the long exiles of the Trojan race.
Then shall my grateful hands a temple rear
To the twin gods, with vows and solemn prayer;
And annual rites, and festivals, and games,
Shall be performed to their auspicious names.
Nor shalt thou want thy honours in my land;
For there thy faithful oracles shall stand,
Preserved in shrines; and every sacred lay,
Which, by thy mouth, Apollo shall convey—-
All shall be treasured by a chosen train
Of holy priests, and ever shall remain.
But, oh! commit not thy prophetic mind
To flitting leaves, the sport of every wind,
Lest they disperse in air our empty fate;
Write not, but, what the powers ordain, relate."
Struggling in vain, impatient of her load,
And labouring underneath the ponderous god,
The more she strove to shake him from her breast,
With more and far superior force he pressed;
Commands his entrance, and, without controul,
Usurps her organs, and inspires her soul.
Now, with a furious blast, the hundred doors }
Ope of themselves; a rushing whirlwind roars }
Within the cave, and Sibyl's voice restores:— }
"Escaped the dangers of the watery reign,
Yet more and greater ills by land remain.
The coast, so long desired, (nor doubt the event,)
Thy troops shall reach, but, having reached, repent.
Wars, horrid wars, I view—a field of blood,
And Tyber rolling with a purple flood.
Simoïs nor Xanthus shall be wanting there:
A new Achilles shall in arms appear,
And he, too, goddess-born. Fierce Juno's hate,
Added to hostile force, shall urge thy fate.
To what strange nations shalt not thou resort,
Driven to solicit aid at every court!
The cause the same which Ilium once oppressed—
A foreign mistress, and a foreign guest.
But thou, secure of soul, unbent with woes,
The more thy fortune frowns, the more oppose.
The dawnings of thy safety shall be shown,
From, whence thou least shall hope, a Grecian town."
Thus, from the dark recess, the Sibyl spoke, }
And the resisting air the thunder broke; }
The cave rebellowed, and the temple shook. }
The ambiguous god, who ruled her labouring breast, }
In these mysterious words his mind expressed; }
Some truths revealed, in terms involved the rest. }
At length her fury fell, her foaming ceased,
And, ebbing in her soul, the god decreased.
Then thus the chief:—"No terror to my view,
No frightful face of danger, can be new.
Inured to suffer, and resolved to dare,
The Fates, without my power, shall be without my care.
This let me crave—since near your grove the road }
To hell lies open, and the dark abode, }
Which Acheron surrounds, the innavigable flood— }
Conduct me through the regions void of light,
And lead me longing to my father's sight.
For him, a thousand dangers I have sought, }
And, rushing where the thickest Grecians fought, }
Safe on my back the sacred burden brought. }
He, for my sake, the raging ocean tried, }
And wrath of heaven, (my still auspicious guide,) }
And bore, beyond the strength decrepit age supplied. }
Oft, since he breathed his last, in dead of night,
His reverend image stood before my sight;
Enjoined to seek, below, his holy shade—
Conducted there by your unerring aid.
But you, if pious minds by prayers are won,
Oblige the father, and protect the son.
Yours is the power; nor Proserpine in vain
Has made you priestess of her nightly reign.
If Orpheus, armed with his enchanting lyre,
The ruthless king with pity could inspire,
And from the shades below redeem his wife;
If Pollux, offering his alternate life,
Could free his brother, and can daily go
By turns aloft, by turns descend below;—
Why name I Theseus, or his greater friend,
Who trod the downward path, and upward could ascend?
Not less than theirs, from Jove my lineage came;
My mother greater, my descent the same."
So prayed the Trojan prince, and, while he prayed,
His hand upon the holy altar laid.
Then thus replied the prophetess divine:—
"O goddess-born, of great Anchises' line!
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But, to return, and view the cheerful skies—
In this the task and mighty labour lies.
To few great Jupiter imparts this grace,
And those of shining worth, and heavenly race.
Betwixt those regions and our upper light,
Deep forests and impenetrable night
Possess the middle space: the infernal bounds
Cocytus, with his sable waves, surrounds.
But, if so dire a love your soul invades,
As twice below to view the trembling shades;
If you so hard a toil will undertake,
As twice to pass the innavigable lake;
Receive my counsel. In the neighbouring grove
There stands a tree; the queen of Stygian Jove
Claims it her own; thick woods and gloomy night
Conceal the happy plant from human sight.
One bough it bears; but (wonderous to behold!)
The ductile rind and leaves of radiant gold:
This from the vulgar branches must be torn,
And to fair Proserpine the present borne,
Ere leave be given to tempt the nether skies. }
The first thus rent, a second will arise, }
And the same metal the same room supplies. }
Look round the wood, with lifted eyes, to see
The lurking gold upon the fatal tree:
Then rend it off, as holy rites command;
The willing metal will obey thy hand,
Following with ease, if, favoured by thy fate,
Thou art foredoomed to view the Stygian state:
If not, no labour can the tree constrain;
And strength of stubborn arms, and steel, are vain.
Besides, you know not, while you here attend,
The unworthy fate of your unhappy friend:
Breathless he lies; and his unburied ghost,
Deprived of funeral rites, pollutes your host.
Pay first his pious dues; and, for the dead,
Two sable sheep around his hearse be led;
Then, living turfs upon his body lay: }
This done, securely take the destined way, }
To find the regions destitute of day." }
She said, and held her peace.—Æneas went }
Sad from the cave, and full of discontent, }
Unknowing whom the sacred Sibyl meant. }
Achates, the companion of his breast,
Goes grieving by his side, with equal cares oppressed.
Walking, they talked, and fruitlessly divined,
What friend the priestess by those words designed.
But soon they found an object to deplore:
Misenus lay extended on the shore—
Son of the god of winds:—none so renowned,
The warrior trumpet in the field to sound,
With breathing brass to kindle fierce alarms,
And rouse to dare their fate in honourable arms.
He served great Hector, and was ever near,
Not with his trumpet only, but his spear.
But, by Pelides' arms when Hector fell,
He chose Æneas; and he chose as well.
Swoln with applause, and aiming still at more,
He now provokes the sea-gods from the shore.
With envy, Triton heard the martial sound,
And the bold champion, for his challenge, drowned;
Then cast his mangled carcase on the strand:—
The gazing crowd around the body stand.
All weep; but most Æneas mourns his fate,
And hastens to perform the funeral state.
In altar-wise, a stately pile they rear;
The basis broad below, and top advanced in air.
An ancient wood, fit for the work designed,
(The shady covert of the savage kind,)
The Trojans found: the sounding axe is plied;
Firs, pines, and pitch trees, and the towering pride
Of forest ashes, feel the fatal stroke,
And piercing wedges cleave the stubborn oak.
Huge trunks of trees, felled from the steepy crown
Of the bare mountains, roll with ruin down.
Armed like the rest the Trojan prince appears,
And, by his pious labour, urges theirs.
Thus while he wrought, revolving in his mind
The ways to compass what his wish designed,
He cast his eyes upon the gloomy grove,
And then with vows implored the queen of love:—
"O! may thy power, propitious still to me,
Conduct my steps to find the fatal tree,
In this deep forest; since the Sibyl's breath
Foretold, alas! too true, Misenus' death."
Scarce had he said, when, full before his sight, }
Two doves, descending from their airy flight, }
Secure upon the grassy plain alight. }
He knew his mother's birds; and thus he prayed:—
"Be you my guides, with your auspicious aid,
And lead my footsteps, till the branch be found,
Whose glittering shadow gilds the sacred ground.
And thou, great parent! with celestial care,
In this distress, be present to my prayer."
Thus having said, he stopped, with watchful sight,
Observing still the motions of their flight,
What course they took, what happy signs they shew. }
They fed, and, fluttering, by degrees withdrew }
Still farther from the place, but still in view: }
Hopping and flying thus, they led him on
To the slow lake, whose baleful stench to shun,
They winged their flight aloft, then, stooping low,
Perched on the double tree, that bears the golden bough.
Through the green leaves the glittering shadows glow;
As, on the sacred oak, the wintery misletoe,
Where the proud mother views her precious brood;
And happier branches, which she never sowed.
Such was the glittering; such the ruddy rind,
And dancing leaves, that wantoned in the wind.
He seized the shining bough with griping hold,
And rent away, with ease, the lingering gold,
Then to the Sibyl's palace bore the prize. }
Meantime, the Trojan troops, with weeping eyes, }
To dead Misenus pay his obsequies. }
First, from the ground, a lofty pile they rear,
Of pitch-trees, oaks, and pines, and unctuous fir:
The fabric's front with cypress twigs they strew,
And stick the sides with boughs of baleful yew.
The topmost part his glittering arms adorn;
Warm waters, then, in brazen cauldrons borne,
Are poured to wash his body, joint by joint,
And fragrant oils the stiffened limbs anoint.
With groans and cries Misenus they deplore;
Then on a bier, with purple covered o'er,
The breathless body, thus bewailed, they lay, }
And fire the pile, their faces turned away: }
(Such reverent rites their fathers used to pay.) }
Pure oil and incense on the fire they throw,
And fat of victims, which his friends bestow.
These gifts the greedy flames to dust devour;
Then, on the living coals, red wine they pour;
And, last, the reliques by themselves dispose,
Which in a brazen urn the priests inclose.
Old Corynæus compassed thrice the crew,
And dipped an olive-branch in holy dew;
Which thrice he sprinkled round, and thrice aloud
Invoked the dead, and then dismissed the crowd.
But good Æneas ordered on the shore }
A stately tomb, whose top a trumpet bore, }
A soldier's faulchion, and a seaman's oar. }
Thus was his friend interred; and deathless fame
Still to the lofty cape consigns his name.
These rites performed, the prince, without delay,
Hastes, to the nether world, his destined way.
Deep was the cave; and, downward as it went
From the wide mouth, a rocky rough descent;
And here the access a gloomy grove defends,
And here the innavigable lake extends,
O'er whose unhappy waters, void of light,
No bird presumes to steer his airy flight;
Such deadly stenches from the depth arise,
And steaming sulphur, that infects the skies.
From hence the Grecian bards their legends make,
And give the name Avernus to the lake.
Four sable bullocks, in the yoke untaught,
For sacrifice the pious hero brought.
The priestess pours the wine betwixt their horns;
Then cuts the curling hair; that first oblation burns,
Invoking Hecat hither to repair—
A powerful name in hell and upper air.
The sacred priests, with ready knives, bereave
The beasts of life, and in full bowls receive
The streaming blood: a lamb to Hell and Night
(The sable wool without a streak of white)
Æneas offers; and, by Fate's decree,
A barren heifer, Proserpine, to thee.
With holocausts he Pluto's altar fills:
Seven brawny bulls with his own hand he kills:
Then, on the broiling entrails, oil he pours;
Which, ointed thus, the raging flame devours.
Late the nocturnal sacrifice begun,
Nor ended, till the next returning sun.
Then earth began to bellow, trees to dance,
And howling dogs in glimmering light advance,
Ere Hecat came.—"Far hence be souls prophane!"
The Sibyl cryed—"and from the grove abstain!
Now, Trojan, take the way thy fates afford;
Assume thy courage, and unsheath thy sword."
She said, and passed along the gloomy space;
The prince pursued her steps with equal pace.
Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sight
Ye gods, who rule the regions of the night!
Ye gliding ghosts! permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state.
Obscure they went through dreary shades, that led
Along the waste dominions of the dead.
Thus wander travellers in woods by night,
By the moon's doubtful and malignant light,
When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies,
And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes.
Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell,
And pale Diseases, and repining Age,
Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage;
Here Toils, and Death, and Deaths half-brother, Sleep,
(Forms terrible to view) their centry keep;
With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind,
Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind;
The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakes
Her hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes.
Full in the midst of this infernal road,
An elm displays her dusky arms abroad:
The god of sleep there hides his heavy head,
And empty dreams on every leaf are spread.
Of various forms unnumbered spectres more,
Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door.
Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands,
And Briareus with all his hundred hands;
Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame;
And vain Chimæra vomits empty flame.
The chief unsheathed his shining steel, prepared,
Though seized with sudden fear, to force the guard,
Offering his brandished weapon at their face;
Had not the Sibyl stopped his eager pace,
And told him what those empty phantoms were—
Forms without bodies, and impassive air.
Hence to deep Acheron they take their way,
Whose troubled eddies, thick with ooze and clay,
Are whirled aloft, and in Cocytus lost:
There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast—
A sordid god: down from his hoary chin
A length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean:
His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;
A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.
He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers;
The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears.
He looked in years; yet, in his years, were seen
A youthful vigour, and autumnal green.
An airy crowd came rushing where he stood,
Which filled the margin of the fatal flood—
Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids,
And mighty heroes' more majestic shades,
And youths, entombed before their father's eyes,
With hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries.
Thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods,
Or fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods,
And wing their hasty flight to happier lands— }
Such, and so thick, the shivering army stands, }
And press for passage with extended hands. }
Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore:
The rest he drove to distance from the shore.
The hero, who beheld, with wondering eyes,
The tumult mixed with shrieks, laments, and cries,
Asked of his guide, what the rude concourse meant?
Why to the shore the thronging people bent?
What forms of law among the ghosts were used?
Why some were ferried o'er, and some refused?
"Son of Anchises! offspring of the gods!
(The Sibyl said) you see the Stygian floods,
The sacred streams, which heaven's imperial state
Attests in oaths, and fears to violate.
The ghosts rejected are the unhappy crew
Deprived of sepulchres and funeral due:
The boatman, Charon; those, the buried host,
He ferries over to the farther coast;
Nor dares his transport vessel cross the waves
With such whose bones are not composed in graves.
A hundred years they wander on the shore;
At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er."
The Trojan chief his forward pace repressed,
Revolving anxious thoughts within his breast.
He saw his friends, who, whelmed beneath the waves;
Their funeral honours claimed, and asked their quiet graves.
The lost Leucaspis in the crowd he knew,
And the brave leader of the Lycian crew,
Whom, on the Tyrrhene seas, the tempests met;
The sailors mastered, and the ship o'erset.
Amidst the spirits, Palinurus pressed,
Yet fresh from life, a new-admitted guest,
Who, while he steering viewed the stars, and bore
His course from Afric to the Latian shore,
Fell headlong down. The Trojan fixed his view,
And scarcely through the gloom the sullen shadow knew.
Then thus the prince:—"What envious power, O friend!
Brought your loved life to this disastrous end?
For Phœbus, ever true in all he said,
Has, in your fate alone, my faith betrayed.
The god foretold you should not die, before
You reached, secure from seas, the Italian shore.
Is this the unerring power?"—The ghost replied:
"Nor Phœbus flattered, nor his answers lied;
Nor envious gods have sent me to the deep: }
But, while the stars and course of heaven I keep, }
My wearied eyes were seized with fatal sleep. }
I fell; and, with my weight, the helm constrained
Was drawn along, which yet my gripe retained.
Now by the winds and raging waves I swear,
Your safety, more than mine, was then my care;
Lest, of the guide bereft, the rudder lost,
Your ship should run against the rocky coast.
Three blustering nights, borne by the southern blast,
I floated, and discovered land at last:
High on a mounting wave, my head I bore,
Forcing my strength, and gathering to the shore.
Panting, but past the danger, now I seized
The craggy cliffs, and my tired members eased.
While, cumbered with my dropping clothes, I lay,
The cruel nation, covetous of prey,
Stained with my blood the unhospitable coast;
And now, by winds and waves, my lifeless limbs are tossed:
Which, O! avert, by yon etherial light,
Which I have lost for this eternal night:
Or, if by dearer ties you may be won,
By your dead sire, and by your living son,
Redeem from this reproach my wandering ghost.
Or with your navy seek the Velin coast,
And in a peaceful grave my corpse compose;
Or, if a nearer way your mother shows,
(Without whose aid, you durst not undertake
This frightful passage o'er the Stygian lake,)
Lend to this wretch your hand, and waft him o'er
To the sweet banks of yon forbidden shore."
Scarce had he said; the prophetess began:—
"What hopes delude thee, miserable man?
Think'st thou, thus unintombed, to cross the floods, }
To view the Furies and infernal gods, }
And visit, without leave, the dark abodes? }
Attend the term of long revolving years;
Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears.[106]
This comfort of thy dire misfortune take—
The wrath of heaven, inflicted for thy sake,
With vengeance shall pursue the inhuman coast,
Till they propitiate thy offended ghost,
And raise a tomb, with vows and solemn prayer;
And Palinurus' name the place shall bear."
This calmed his cares; soothed with his future fame,
And pleased to hear his propagated name.
Now nearer to the Stygian lake they draw:
Whom, from the shore, the surly boatman saw;
Observed their passage through the shady wood,
And marked their near approaches to the flood:
Then thus he called aloud, inflamed with wrath:—
"Mortal, whate'er, who this forbidden path
In arms presum'st to tread! I charge thee, stand,
And tell thy name, and business in the land.
Know, this the realm of night—the Stygian shore:
My boat conveys no living bodies o'er;
Nor was I pleased great Theseus once to bear,
(Who forced a passage with his pointed spear,)
Nor strong Alcides—men of mighty fame,
And from the immortal gods their lineage came.
In fetters one the barking porter tied, }
And took him trembling from his sovereign's side: }
Two sought by force to seize his beauteous bride." }
To whom the Sibyl thus:—"Compose thy mind;
Nor frauds are here contrived, nor force designed.
Still may the dog the wandering troops constrain }
Of airy ghosts, and vex the guilty train, }
And with her grisly lord his lovely queen remain. }
The Trojan chief, whose lineage is from Jove, }
Much famed for arms, and more for filial love, }
Is sent to seek his sire in your Elysian grove. }
If neither piety, nor heaven's command,
Can gain his passage to the Stygian strand,
This fatal present shall prevail, at least"—
Then shewed the shining bough, concealed within her vest.
No more was needful: for the gloomy god
Stood mute with awe, to see the golden rod;
Admired the destined offering to his queen—
A venerable gift, so rarely seen.
His fury thus appeased, he puts to land;
The ghosts forsake their seats at his command:
He clears the deck, receives the mighty freight;
The leaky vessel groans beneath the weight.
Slowly she[107] sails, and scarcely stems the tides;
The pressing water pours within her sides.
His passengers at length are wafted o'er,
Exposed, in muddy weeds, upon the miry shore.
No sooner landed, in his den they found
The triple porter of the Stygian sound,
Grim Cerberus, who soon began to rear
His crested snakes, and armed his bristling hair.
The prudent Sibyl had before prepared
A sop, in honey steeped, to charm the guard;
Which, mixed with powerful drugs, she cast before
His greedy grinning jaws, just oped to roar.
With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight,
With hunger pressed, devours the pleasing bait.
Long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslave;
He reels, and, falling, fills the spacious cave.
The keeper charmed, the chief without delay
Passed on, and took the irremeable way.
Before the gates, the cries of babes new born,
Whom Fate had from their tender mothers torn,
Assault his ears: then those, whom form of laws
Condemned to die, when traitors judged their cause.
Nor want they lots, nor judges to review
The wrongful sentence, and award a new.
Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears;
And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears.
Round, in his urn, the blended balls he rolls,
Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.
The next, in place and punishment, are they
Who prodigally throw their souls away—[108]
Fools, who, repining at their wretched state,
And loathing anxious life, suborned their fate.
With late repentance, now they would retrieve
The bodies they forsook, and wish to live;
Their pains and poverty desire to bear,
To view the light of heaven, and breathe the vital air:
But Fate forbids; the Stygian floods oppose,
And, with nine circling streams, the captive souls inclose.
Not far from thence, the Mournful Fields appear,
So called from lovers that inhabit there.
The souls, whom that unhappy flame invades,
In secret solitude and myrtle shades
Make endless moans, and, pining with desire,
Lament too late their unextinguished fire.
Here Procris, Eriphyle here he found
Baring her breast, yet bleeding with the wound
Made by her son. He saw Pasiphaë there,
With Phædra's ghost, a foul incestuous pair.
There Laodamia, with Evadne, moves—
Unhappy both, but loyal in their loves:
Cæneus, a woman once, and once a man,
But ending in the sex she first began.
Not far from these Phœnician Dido stood,
Fresh from her wound, her bosom bathed in blood;
Whom when the Trojan hero hardly knew,
Obscure in shades, and with a doubtful view,
(Doubtful as he who sees, through dusky night,
Or thinks he sees, the moon's uncertain light,)
With tears he first approached the sullen shade;
And, as his love inspired him, thus he said;—
"Unhappy queen! then is the common breath
Of rumour true, in your reported death,
And I, alas! the cause?—By heaven, I vow,
And all the powers that rule the realms below,
Unwilling I forsook your friendly state,
Commanded by the gods, and forced by Fate—
Those gods, that Fate, whose unresisted might }
Have sent me to these regions void of light }
Through the vast empire of eternal night. }
Nor dared I to presume, that, pressed with grief,
My flight should urge you to this dire relief.
Stay, stay your steps, and listen to my vows!
'Tis the last interview that Fate allows!"
In vain he thus attempts her mind to move
With tears and prayers, and late-repenting love.
Disdainfully she looked; then turning round,
But fixed her eyes unmoved upon the ground,
And, what he says and swears, regards no more,
Than the deaf rocks, when the loud billows roar;
But whirled away, to shun his hateful sight,
Hid in the forest, and the shades of night;
Then sought Sichæus through the shady grove,
Who answered all her cares, and equalled all her love.
Some pious tears the pitying hero paid,
And followed with his eyes the flitting shade,
Then took the forward way, by Fate ordained, }
And, with his guide, the farther fields attained, }
Where, severed from the rest, the warrior souls remained. }
Tydeus he met, with Meleager's race, }
The pride of armies, and the soldiers' grace; }
And pale Adrastus with his ghastly face. }
Of Trojan chiefs he viewed a numerous train,
All much lamented, all in battle slain—
Glaucus and Medon, high above the rest,
Antenor's sons, and Ceres' sacred priest.
And proud Idæus, Priam's charioteer,
Who shakes his empty reins, and aims his airy spear.
The gladsome ghosts, in circling troops, attend,
And with unwearied eyes behold their friend;
Delight to hover near, and long to know
What business brought him to the realms below.
But Argive chiefs, and Agamemnon's train,
When his refulgent arms flashed through the shady plain,
Fled from his well known face, with wonted fear, }
As when his thundering sword and pointed spear }
Drove headlong to their ships, and gleaned the routed rear. }
They raised a feeble cry, with trembling notes;
But the weak voice deceived their gasping throats.
Here Priam's son, Deïphobus, he found,
Whose face and limbs were one continued wound.
Dishonest, with lopped arms, the youth appears,
Spoiled of his nose, and shortened of his ears.
He scarcely knew him, striving to disown
His blotted form, and blushing to be known;
And therefore first began:—"O Teucer's race! }
Who durst thy faultless figure thus deface? }
What heart could wish, what hand inflict, this dire disgrace? }
'Twas famed, that, in our last and fatal night,
Your single prowess long sustained the fight,
Till, tired, not forced, a glorious fate you chose,
And fell upon a heap of slaughtered foes.
But, in remembrance of so brave a deed,
A tomb and funeral honours I decreed;
Thrice called your manes on the Trojan plains:
The place your armour and your name retains.
Your body too I sought, and, had I found,
Designed for burial in your native ground."
The ghost replied:—"Your piety has paid
All needful rites, to rest my wandering shade:
But cruel Fate, and my more cruel wife,
To Grecian swords betrayed my sleeping life.
These are the monuments of Helen's love—
The shame I bear below, the marks I bore above.
You know in what deluding joys we past
The night, that was by heaven decreed our last.
For, when the fatal horse, descending down,
Pregnant with arms, o'erwhelmed the unhappy town,
She feigned nocturnal orgies; left my bed,
And, mixed with Trojan dames, the dances led;
Then, waving high her torch, the signal made,
Which roused the Grecians from their ambuscade.
With watching overworn, with cares oppressed, }
Unhappy I had laid me down to rest, }
And heavy sleep my weary limbs possessed. }
Meantime my worthy wife our arms mislaid,
And, from beneath my head, my sword conveyed;
The door unlatched, and, with repeated calls,
Invites her former lord within my walls.
Thus in her crime her confidence she placed,
And with new treasons would redeem the past.
What need I more? Into the room they ran,
And meanly murdered a defenceless man.
Ulysses, basely born, first led the way.— }
Avenging powers! with justice if I pray, }
That fortune be their own another day!— }
But answer you; and in your turn relate,
What brought you, living, to the Stygian state.
Driven by the winds and errors of the sea, }
Or did you heaven's superior doom obey? }
Or tell what other chance conducts your way, }
To view, with mortal eyes, our dark retreats,
Tumults and torments of the infernal seats."
While thus, in talk, the flying hours they pass,
The sun had finished more than half his race:
And they, perhaps, in words and tears had spent
The little time of stay which heaven had lent:
But thus the Sibyl chides their long delay:—
"Night rushes down, and headlong drives the day:
'Tis here, in different paths, the way divides;
The right to Pluto's golden palace guides;
The left to that unhappy region tends, }
Which to the depth of Tartarus descends— }
The seat of night profound, and punished fiends." }
Then thus Deïphobus:—"O sacred maid!
Forbear to chide, and be your will obeyed.
Lo! to the secret shadows I retire,
To pay my penance till my years expire.[109]
Proceed, auspicious prince, with glory crowned,
And born to better fates than I have found."
He said; and, while he said, his steps he turned
To secret shadows, and in silence mourned.
The hero, looking on the left, espied
A lofty tower, and strong on every side
With treble walls, which Phlegethon surrounds, }
Whose fiery flood the burning empire bounds; }
And, pressed betwixt the rocks, the bellowing noise resounds. }
Wide is the fronting gate, and, raised on high
With adamantine columns, threats the sky.
Vain is the force of man, and heaven's as vain,
To crush the pillars which the pile sustain.
Sublime on these a tower of steel is reared;
And dire Tysiphone there keeps the ward,
Girt in her sanguine gown, by night and day,
Observant of the souls that pass the downward way.
From hence are heard the groans of ghosts, the pains
Of sounding lashes, and of dragging chains.
The Trojan stood astonished at their cries,
And asked his guide, from whence those yells arise;
And what the crimes, and what the tortures were,
And loud laments, that rent the liquid air.
She thus replied:—"The chaste and holy race
Are all forbidden this polluted place.
But Hecat, when she gave to rule the woods, }
Then led me trembling through these dire abodes, }
And taught the tortures of the avenging gods. }
These are the realms of unrelenting Fate;
And awful Rhadamanthus rules the state.
He hears and judges each committed crime;
Inquires into the manner, place, and time.
The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal,
(Loth to confess, unable to conceal,)
From the first moment of his vital breath,
To his last hour of unrepenting death.
Straight, o'er the guilty ghost, the Fury shakes }
The sounding whip, and brandishes her snakes, }
And the pale sinner, with her sisters, takes. }
Then, of itself, unfolds the eternal door;
With dreadful sounds the brazen hinges roar.
You see before the gate, what stalking ghost
Commands the guard, what centries keep the post.
More formidable Hydra stands within,
Whose jaws with iron teeth severely grin.
The gaping gulf low to the centre lies,
And twice as deep, as earth is distant from the skies.
The rivals of the gods, the Titan race,
Here, singed with lightning, roll within the unfathomed space.
Here lie the Aloëan twins, (I saw them both,)
Enormous bodies, of gigantic growth,
Who dared in fight the Thunderer to defy,
Affect his heaven, and force him from the sky.
Salmoneus, suffering cruel pains, I found,
For emulating Jove with rattling sound
Of mimic thunder, and the glittering blaze
Of pointed lightnings, and their forky rays.
Through Elis, and the Grecian towns, he flew:
The audacious wretch four fiery coursers drew:
He waved a torch aloft, and, madly vain,
Sought god-like worship from a servile train.
Ambitious fool! with horny hoofs to pass
O'er hollow arches of resounding brass,
To rival thunder in its rapid course,
And imitate inimitable force!
But he, the king of heaven, obscure on high,
Bared his red arm, and, launching from the sky
His writhen bolt, not shaking empty smoke,
Down to the deep abyss the flaming felon struck.
There Tityus was to see, who took his birth
From heaven, his nursing from the foodful earth.
Here his gigantic limbs, with large embrace,
Infold nine acres of infernal space.
A ravenous vulture, in his opened side,
Her crooked beak and cruel talons tried;
Still for the growing liver digged his breast;
The growing liver still supplied the feast;
Still are his entrails fruitful to their pains:
The immortal hunger lasts, the immortal food remains.
Ixion and Pirithoüs I could name,
And more Thessalian chiefs of mighty fame.
High o'er their heads a mouldering rock is placed,
That promises a fall, and shakes at every blast.
They lie below, on golden beds displayed;
And genial feasts with regal pomp are made.
The queen of Furies by their sides is set,
And snatches from their mouths the untasted meat,
Which if they touch, her hissing snakes she rears,
Tossing her torch, and thundering in their ears.
Then they, who brothers' better claim disown,
Expel their parents, and usurp the throne;
Defraud their clients, and, to lucre sold,
Sit brooding on unprofitable gold—
Who dare not give, and even refuse to lend,
To their poor kindred, or a wanting friend—
Vast is the throng of these; nor less the train
Of lustful youths, for foul adultery slain—
Hosts of deserters, who their honour sold,
And basely broke their faith for bribes of gold.
All these within the dungeon's depth remain,
Despairing pardon, and expecting pain.
Ask not what pains; nor farther seek to know
Their process, or the forms of law below.
Some roll a mighty stone; some, laid along,
And bound with burning wires, on spokes of wheels are hung.
Unhappy Theseus, doomed for ever there,
Is fixed by Fate on his eternal chair:
And wretched Phlegyas warns the world with cries, }
(Could warning make the world more just or wise,) }
'Learn righteousness, and dread the avenging deities.' }
To tyrants others have their country sold,
Imposing foreign lords, for foreign gold:
Some have old laws repealed, new statutes made,
Not as the people pleased, but as they paid.
With incest some their daughters' bed profaned.

All dared the worst of ills, and, what they dared, attained.
Had I a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues,
And throats of brass, inspired with iron lungs,
I could not half those horrid crimes repeat,
Nor half the punishments those crimes have met.
But let us haste our voyage to pursue:
The walls of Pluto's palace are in view;
The gate, and iron arch above it, stands,
On anvils laboured by the Cyclops' hands.
Before our farther way the Fates allow,
Here must we fix on high the golden bow."
She said: and through the gloomy shades they past,
And chose the middle path.—Arrived at last,
The prince, with living water, sprinkled o'er
His limbs and body; then approached the door,
Possessed the porch, and on the front above
He fixed the fatal bough, required by Pluto's love.
These holy rites performed, they took their way,
Where long extended plains of pleasure lay;
The verdant fields with those of heaven may vie,
With æther vested, and a purple sky—
The blissful seats of happy souls below:
Stars of their own, and their own suns, they know:
Their airy limbs in sports they exercise,
And, on the green, contend the wrestler's prize.
Some, in heroic verse, divinely sing;
Others in artful measures lead the ring.
The Thracian bard, surrounded by the rest,
There stands conspicuous in his flowing vest.
His flying fingers, and harmonious quill,
Strike seven distinguished notes, and seven at once they fill.
Here found they Teucer's old heroic race,
Born better times and happier years to grace.
Assaracus and Ilus here enjoy
Perpetual fame, with him who founded Troy.
The chief beheld their chariots from afar,
Their shining arms, and coursers trained to war.
Their lances fixed in earth, their steeds around,
Free from their harness, graze the flowery ground.
The love of horses which they had, alive,
And care of chariots, after death survive.
Some cheerful souls were feasting on the plain;
Some did the song, and some the choir, maintain,
Beneath a laurel shade, where mighty Po
Mounts up to woods above, and hides his head below.
Here patriots live, who, for their country's good,
In fighting-fields, were prodigal of blood:
Priests of unblemished lives here make abode,
And poets worthy their inspiring god;
And searching wits, of more mechanic parts,
Who graced their age with new-invented arts;
Those, who to worth their bounty did extend,
And those who knew that bounty to commend.
The heads of these with holy fillets bound,
And all their temples were with garlands crowned.
To these the Sibyl thus her speech addressed, }
And first to him surrounded by the rest— }
Towering his height, and ample was his breast:— }
"Say, happy souls! divine Musæus! say,
Where lives Anchises, and where lies our way
To find the hero, for whose only sake
We sought the dark abodes, and crossed the bitter lake?"
To this the sacred poet thus replied:—
"In no fixed place the happy souls reside.
In groves we live, and lie on mossy beds,
By crystal streams, that murmur through the meads:
But pass yon easy hill, and thence descend;
The path conducts you to your journey's end."
This said, he led them up the mountain's brow, }
And shews them all the shining fields below. }
They wind the hill, and through the blissful meadows go. }
But old Anchises, in a flowery vale,
Reviewed his mustered race, and took the tale—
Those happy spirits, which, ordained by Fate,
For future being and new bodies wait—
With studious thought observed the illustrious throng,
In Nature's order as they passed along—
Their names, their fates, their conduct, and their care,
In peaceful senates, and successful war.
He, when Æneas on the plain appears,
Meets him with open arms, and falling tears.—
"Welcome," he said, "the gods' undoubted race! }
O long expected to my dear embrace! }
Once more 'tis given me to behold your face! }
The love and pious duty which you pay,
Have passed the perils of so hard a way.
'Tis true, computing times, I now believed
The happy day approached; nor are my hopes deceived.
What length of lands, what oceans have you passed,
What storms sustained, and on what shores been cast!
How have I feared your fate! but feared it most,
When love assailed you on the Libyan coast."
To this, the filial duty thus replies:— }
"Your sacred ghost, before my sleeping eyes, }
Appeared, and often urged this painful enterprize. }
After long tossing on the Tyrrhene sea,
My navy rides at anchor in the bay.
But reach your hand, oh parent shade! nor shun
The dear embraces of your longing son!"
He said; and falling tears his face bedew:
Then thrice around his neck his arms he threw;
And thrice the fleeting shadow slipped away,
Like winds, or empty dreams, that fly the day.
Now, in a secret vale, the Trojan sees }
A separate grove, through which a gentle breeze }
Plays with a passing breath, and whispers through the trees: }
And, just before the confines of the wood,
The gliding Lethe leads her silent flood.
About the boughs an airy nation flew,
Thick as the humming bees, that hunt the golden dew
In summer's heat; on tops of lilies feed,
And creep within their bells, to suck the balmy seed:
The winged army roams the field around;
The rivers and the rocks remurmur to the sound.
Æneas wondering stood, then asked the cause,
Which to the stream the crowding people draws.
Then thus the sire:—"The souls that throng the flood
Are those, to whom, by Fate, are other bodies owed:
In Lethe's lake they long oblivion taste,
Of future life secure, forgetful of the past.
Long has my soul desired this time and place,
To set before your sight your glorious race,
That this presaging joy may fire your mind,
To seek the shores by destiny designed."—
"O father! can it be, that souls sublime
Return to visit our terrestrial clime,
And that the generous mind, released by death,
Can covet lazy limbs, and mortal breath?"
Anchises then, in order, thus begun
To clear those wonders to his godlike son:—
"Know, first, that heaven, and earth's compacted frame,
And flowing waters, and the starry flame,
And both the radiant lights,[110] one common soul
Inspires and feeds, and animates the whole.
This active mind, infused through all the space,
Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.
Hence men and beasts the breath of life obtain,
And birds of air, and monsters of the main.
The etherial vigour is in all the same,
And every soul is filled with equal flame—
As much as earthy limbs, and gross allay }
Of mortal members subject to decay, }
Blunt not the beams of heaven and edge of day. }
From this coarse mixture of terrestrial parts,
Desire and fear by turns possess their hearts,
And grief, and joy; nor can the grovelling mind, }
In the dark dungeon of the limbs confined, }
Assert the native skies, or own its heavenly kind: }
Nor death itself can wholly wash their stains;
But long-contracted filth even in the soul remains.
The reliques of inveterate vice they wear,
And spots of sin obscene in every face appear.
For this are various penances enjoined;
And some are hung to bleach upon the wind,
Some plunged in waters, others purged in fires,
Till all the dregs are drained, and all the rust expires.
All have their manes, and those manes bear: }
The few, so cleansed, to these abodes repair, }
And breathe, in ample fields, the soft Elysian air. }
Then are they happy, when by length of time
The scurf is worn away, of each committed crime;
No speck is left of their habitual stains,
But the pure æther of the soul remains.
But, when a thousand rolling years are past,
(So long their punishments and penance last,)
Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god,
Compelled to drink the deep Lethæan flood,
In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares
Of their past labours, and their irksome years,
That, unremembering of its former pain,
The soul may suffer mortal flesh again."
Thus having said, the father spirit leads
The priestess and his son through swarms of shades,
And takes a rising ground, from thence to see
The long procession of his progeny.—
"Survey (pursued the sire) this airy throng,
As, offered to thy view, they pass along.
These are the Italian names, which Fate will join
With ours, and graff upon the Trojan line.
Observe the youth who first appears in sight,
And holds the nearest station to the light,
Already seems to snuff the vital air,
And leans just forward on a shining spear:
Silvius is he, thy last-begotten race,
But first in order sent, to fill thy place—
An Alban name, but mixed with Dardan blood;
Born in the covert of a shady wood,
Him fair Lavinia, thy surviving wife,
Shall breed in groves, to lead a solitary life.
In Alba he shall fix his royal seat,
And, born a king, a race of kings beget;—
Then Procas, honour of the Trojan name,
Capys, and Numitor, of endless fame.
A second Silvius after these appears;
Silvius Æneas, for thy name he bears;
For arms and justice equally renowned,
Who, late restored, in Alba shall be crowned.
How great they look! how vigorously they wield
Their weighty lances, and sustain the shield!
But they, who crowned with oaken wreaths appear,
Shall Gabian walls and strong Fidena rear;
Nomentum, Bola, with Pometia, found;
And raise Collatian towers on rocky ground.
All these shall then be towns of mighty fame,
Though now they lie obscure, and lands without a name.
See Romulus the great, born to restore
The crown that once his injured grandsire wore.
This prince a priestess of our blood shall bear,
And like his sire in arms he shall appear.
Two rising crests his royal head adorn;
Born from a god, himself to godhead born,
His sire already signs him for the skies,
And marks his seat amidst the deities.
Auspicious chief! thy race, in times to come,
Shall spread the conquests of imperial Rome—
Rome, whose ascending towers shall heaven invade,
Involving earth and ocean in her shade;
High as the mother of the gods in place,
And proud, like her, of an immortal race.
Then, when in pomp she makes the Phrygian round,
With golden turrets on her temples crowned;
A hundred gods her sweeping train supply,
Her offspring all, and all command the sky.
Now fix your sight, and stand intent, to see
Your Roman race, and Julian progeny.
The mighty Cæsar waits his vital hour,
Impatient for the world, and grasps his promised power.
But next behold the youth of form divine—
Cæsar himself, exalted in his line—
Augustus, promised oft, and long foretold, }
Sent to the realm that Saturn ruled of old; }
Born to restore a better age of gold. }
Afric and India shall his power obey; }
He shall extend his propagated sway }
Beyond the solar year, without the starry way, }
Where Atlas turns the rolling heavens around,
And his broad shoulders with their lights are crowned.
At his foreseen approach, already quake
The Caspian kingdoms and Mæotian lake.
Their seers behold the tempest from afar;
And threatening oracles denounce the war.
Nile hears him knocking at his sevenfold gates,
And seeks his hidden spring, and fears his nephew's fates.
Nor Hercules more lands or labours knew,
Not though the brazen-footed hind he slew,
Freed Erymanthus from the foaming boar,
And dipped his arrows in Lernæan gore;
Nor Bacchus, turning from his Indian war,
By tygers drawn triumphant in his car,
From Nysa's top descending on the plains,
With curling vines around his purple reins.
And doubt we yet through dangers to pursue
The paths of honour, and a crown in view?
But what's the man, who from afar appears,
His head with olive crowned, his hand a censer bears?
His hoary beard and holy vestments bring
His lost idea back: I know the Roman king.
He shall to peaceful Rome new laws ordain,
Called from his mean abode, a sceptre to sustain.
Him Tullus next in dignity succeeds,
An active prince, and prone to martial deeds.
He shall his troops for fighting-fields prepare,
Disused to toils, and triumphs of the war.
By dint of sword his crown he shall increase,
And scour his armour from the rust of peace.
Whom Ancus follows, with a fawning air,
But vain within, and proudly popular.
Next view the Tarquin kings, the avenging sword
Of Brutus, justly drawn, and Rome restored.
He first renews the rods and axe severe,
And gives the consuls royal robes to wear.
His sons, who seek the tyrant to sustain,
And long for arbitrary lords again,
With ignominy scourged in open sight,
He dooms to death deserved, asserting public right.
Unhappy man! to break the pious laws
Of nature, pleading in his children's cause!
Howe'er the doubtful fact is understood, }
'Tis love of honour, and his country's good: }
The consul, not the father, sheds the blood. }
Behold Torquatus the same track pursue;
And, next, the two devoted Decii view—
The Drusian line, Camillus loaded home
With standards well redeemed, and foreign foes o'ercome.
The pair you see in equal armour shine,
Now, friends below, in close embraces join;
But, when they leave the shady realms of night,
And, clothed in bodies, breathe your upper light,
With mortal hate each other shall pursue;
What wars, what wounds, what slaughter shall ensue!
From Alpine heights the father first descends; }
His daughter's husband in the plain attends: }
His daughter's husband arms his eastern friends. }
Embrace again, my sons! be foes no more;
Nor stain your country with her children's gore!
And thou, the first, lay down thy lawless claim,
Thou, of my blood, who bear'st the Julian name![111]
Another comes, who shall in triumph ride,
And to the Capitol his chariot guide,
From conquered Corinth, rich with Grecian spoils.
And yet another, famed for warlike toils,
On Argos shall impose the Roman laws,
And, on the Greeks, revenge the Trojan cause;
Shall drag in chains their Achillean race;}
Shall vindicate his ancestors' disgrace, }
And Pallas, for her violated place. }
Great Cato there, for gravity renowned,[112]
And conquering Cossus goes with laurels crowned.
Who can omit the Gracchi? who declare
The Scipios' worth, those thunderbolts of war,
The double bane of Carthage? Who can see,
Without esteem for virtuous poverty,
Severe Fabricius, or can cease to admire
The ploughman consul in his coarse attire?
Tired as I am, my praise the Fabii claim;
And thou, great hero, greatest of thy name,
Ordained in war to save the sinking state,
And, by delays, to put a stop to fate!
Let others better mould the running mass }
Of metals, and inform the breathing brass,}
And soften into flesh a marble face; }
Plead better at the bar; describe the skies,
And when the stars descend, and when they rise.
But, Rome! 'tis thine alone, with awful sway, }
To rule mankind, and make the world obey, }
Disposing peace and war thy own majestic way; }
To tame the proud, the fettered slave to free:—
These are imperial arts, and worthy thee."
He paused—and, while with wondering eyes they viewed
The passing spirits, thus his speech renewed:—
"See great Marcellus! how, untired in toils,
He moves with manly grace, how rich with regal spoils!
He, when his country (threatened with alarms)
Requires his courage and his conquering arms,
Shall more than once the Punic bands affright;
Shall kill the Gaulish king in single fight;
Then to the Capitol in triumph move,
And the third spoils shall grace Feretrian Jove."
Æneas here beheld, of form divine,
A godlike youth in glittering armour shine,
With great Marcellus keeping equal pace;
But gloomy were his eyes, dejected was his face.
He saw, and, wondering, asked his airy guide,
What and of whence was he, who pressed the hero's side?
"His son, or one of his illustrious name?
How like the former, and almost the same!
Observe the crowds that compass him around;
All gaze, and all admire, and raise a shouting sound:
But hovering mists around his brows are spread,
And night, with sable shades, involves his head."
"Seek not to know (the ghost replied with tears)
The sorrows of thy sons in future years.
This youth (the blissful vision of a day)
Shall just be shown on earth, and snatched away.
The gods too high had raised the Roman state,
Were but their gifts as permanent as great.
What groans of men shall fill the Martian Field!
How fierce a blaze his flaming pile shall yield!
What funeral pomp shall floating Tyber see,
When, rising from his bed, he views the sad solemnity!
No youth shall equal hopes of glory give,
No youth afford so great a cause to grieve.
The Trojan honour, and the Roman boast,
Admired when living, and adored when lost!
Mirror of ancient faith in early youth!
Undaunted worth, inviolable truth!
No foe, unpunished, in the fighting-field
Shall dare thee, foot to foot, with sword and shield,
Much less in arms oppose thy matchless force,
When thy sharp spurs shall urge thy foaming horse.
Ah! couldst thou break through Fate's severe decree,
A new Marcellus shall arise in thee![113]
Full canisters of fragrant lilies bring,
Mixed with the purple roses of the spring;
Let me with funeral flowers his body strow; }
This gift which parents to their children owe, }
This unavailing gift, at least, I may bestow!" }
Thus having said, he led the hero round
The confines of the blest Elysian ground;
Which when Anchises to his son had shown,
And fired his mind to mount the promised throne,
He tells the future wars, ordained by Fate;
The strength and customs of the Latian state;
The prince, and people; and fore-arms his care
With rules, to push his fortune, or to bear.
Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;
Of polished ivory this, that of transparent horn;[114]
True visions through transparent horn arise;
Through polished ivory pass deluding lies.
Of various things discoursing as he passed,
Anchises hither bends his steps at last.
Then, through the gate of ivory, he dismissed
His valiant offspring, and divining guest.
Straight to the ships Æneas took his way, }
Embarked his men, and skimmed along the sea, }
Still coasting, till he gained Caieta's bay. }
At length on oozy ground his galleys moor;
Their heads are turned to sea, their sterns to shore.

FOOTNOTES:

[106] This blunder I do not venture to transfer from the poet to the printer, with Dr Carey, who reads prayers. But Dryden's rhymes are in general exceedingly accurate; and many of the examples to the contrary, quoted by Dr Carey, only seem less so to us, by the fluctuation of the mode of pronouncing. I strongly believe, for example, that the word sea was formerly pronounced somewhat like say; for all the poets, down to Pope inclusive, make it rhyme to way, array, &c.

[107] Early editions, he.

[108] Note I.

[109] Note II.

[110] Note III.

[111] Note V.

[112] Note IV.

[113] Note VI.

[114] Note VII.

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NOTES
ON
ÆNEÏS, BOOK VI.