BOOK XI.
ARGUMENT.
TRUCE IS MADE FOR THE BURYING OF THE DEAD: THE LATINS TAKE COUNSEL OF PEACE OR WAR. CAMILLA'S DEEDS AND DEATH.
Meanwhile Aurora risen up from bed of ocean wends,
And King Æneas, though his grief bids him in burying friends
To wear the day, and though his heart the death of men dismays,
Yet to the Gods of Dawning-tide the worship duly pays.
From a great oak on every side the branches doth he shear,
And setteth on a mound bedight in gleaming battle-gear
The spoils of King Mezentius: a gift to thee it stood,
O Might of War! Thereon he set the crest with blood bedewed,
The broken shafts, the mail-coat pierced amid the foughten field
With twice six dints: on the left arm he tied the brazen shield,10
And round about the neck he hung the ivory-hilted sword.
Then to his friends, a mighty hedge of duke and battle-lord,
He turned, and to their joyous hearts these words withal he said:
"The most is done, and for the rest let all your fears lie dead:
Lo here the first-fruits! battle-spoil won from a haughty king:
Lo this is all Mezentius now, mine own hands' fashioning.
Now toward the King and Latin walls all open lies the way;
Up hearts, for war! and let your hope foregrip the battle-day,
That nought of sloth may hinder you, or take you unaware,
When Gods shall bid the banners up, and forth with men ye fare20
From out of camp,—that craven dread clog not your spirits then:
Meanwhile give we unto the earth these our unburied men,
The only honour they may have in nether Acheron.
Come, fellows, to those noble souls who with their blood have won
A country for us, give those gifts, the last that they may spend.
And first unto Evander's town of sorrow shall I send
That Pallas, whom, in nowise poor of valour or renown,
The black day reft away from us in bitter death to drown."
With weeping eyes he drew aback, e'en as the word he said,
Unto the threshold of the place where Pallas, cold and dead,30
The old Acœtes watched, who erst of that Parrhasian King,
Evander, was the shield-bearer, but now was following
His well-belovèd foster-child in no such happy wise;
But round him were the homemen's band and Trojan companies,
And Ilian wives with loosened locks in guise of sorrow sore.
But when Æneas entereth now beneath the lofty door
From beaten breast great moan they cast up to the starry heaven;
And wailing of their woeful cheer through all the house is driven.
The King himself when he beheld the pillowed head at rest,39
The snow-white face, the open wound wrought on the smooth young breast
By that Ausonian spear, so spake amid his gathered tears:
"O boy bewept, despite the gifts my happy Fortune bears
Doth she still grudge it thee to see my kingdom glorious,
Or come a victor back again unto thy father's house?
Not such the promise that I gave on that departing day
Unto thy father, whose embrace then sped me on my way
To mighty lordship, while his fear gave forth the warning word
That with fierce folk I had to do, hard people of the sword.
Now he, deceived by empty hope, belike pours forth the prayer,
And pileth up the gifts for nought upon the altars fair,50
While we—in woe with honours vain—about his son we stand,
Dead now, and no more owing aught to any heavenly hand.
Unhappy, thou shalt look upon thy dead unhappy son!
Is this the coming back again? is this the triumph won?
Is this my solemn troth?—Yet thee, Evander, bides no sight
Of craven beat with shameful wounds, nor for the saved from fight
Shalt thou but long for dreadful death.—Woe's me, Ausonian land!
Woe's me, Iulus, what a shield is perished from thine hand!"
Such wise he wept him, and bade raise the hapless body dead,
And therewithal a thousand men, his war-hosts' flower, he sped60
To wait upon him on the way with that last help of all,
And be between his father's tears: forsooth a solace small
Of mighty grief; a debt no less to that sad father due.
But others speed a pliant bier weaving a wattle through,
Of limber twigs of berry-bush and boughs of oaken-tree,
And shadow o'er the piled-up bed with leafy canopy.
So there upon the wild-wood couch adown the youth is laid;
E'en as a blossom dropped to earth from fingers of a maid—
The gilliflower's bloom maybe, or jacinth's hanging head,
Whose lovely colour is not gone, nor shapely fashion fled,70
Although its mother feedeth not, nor earth its life doth hold.
Thereon two woven webs, all stiff with purple dye and gold,
Æneas bringeth forth, which erst with her own fingers fair
Sidonian Dido wrought for him, and, glad the toil to bear,
Had shot across the web thereof with thin and golden thread:
In one of these the youth he wrapped, last honour of the dead,
And, woeful, covered up the locks that fire should burn away.
And furthermore a many things, Laurentum's battle-prey,
He pileth up, and bids the spoil in long array be borne:
Horses and battle-gear he adds, late from the foemen torn:80
And men's hands had he bound aback whom shortly should he send
Unto the ghosts; whose blood should slake the fire that ate his friend.
And trunks of trees with battle-gear from foemen's bodies won
He bids the leaders carry forth, with foemen's names thereon.
Hapless Acœtes, spent with eld, is brought forth; whiles he wears
His bosom with the beat of fists, and whiles his face he tears:
Then forth he falls, and grovelling there upon the ground doth lie.
They bring the war-wain now, o'errained with blood of Rutuli:
Æthon his war-horse comes behind, stripped of his gear of state,
Mourning he goes, and wets his face with plenteous tear-drops great.90
Some bring the dead man's spear and helm: victorious Turnus' hand
Hath all the rest: then follow on the woeful Teucrian band,
All Tuscans, and Arcadian folk with weapons turned about.
But now, when all the following folk were got a long way out,
Æneas stood and groaned aloud, and spake these words withal:
"Us otherwhere to other tears the same dread war-fates call;
Undying greetings go with thee! farewell for evermore,
O mightiest Pallas!"
Ending so, to those high walls of war
He turned about, and went his ways unto his war-folks' home.