The Æneids of Virgil, Done into English Verse

by Virgil

"Friends, we have looked on Diomede and on the Argive home,
And all the road and every hap thereby have overcome:
Yea, soothly, we have touched the hand that wracked the Ilian earth:
Argyripa he buildeth there, named from his land of birth,
In Iapygian Garganus, where he hath conquered place.
Where, entered in, and leave being given to speak before his face,
We gave our gifts, and told our names, and whence of lands we were,
Who waged us war, and for what cause to Arpi we must fare.250
He hearkened and from quiet mouth gave answer thus again:

"'O happy folk of Saturn's land, time-old Ausonian men,
What evil hap hath turmoiled you amid your peaceful life,
Beguiling you to stir abroad the doubtfulness of strife?
All we who on the Ilian fields with sword-edge compassed guilt,
—Let be the war-ills we abode before the wall high built;
Let be the men whom Simoïs hides—we o'er the wide world driven,
Have wrought out pain and punishment for ill deed unforgiven,
Till Priam's self might pity us. Witness the star of bane
Minerva sent; Euboea's cliffs, Caphereus' vengeful gain!260
'Scaped from that war, and driven away to countries sundered wide,
By Proteus' Pillars exiled now, must Menelaüs bide;
And those Ætnæan Cyclop-folk Ulysses look upon:
Of Pyrrhus's land why tell, or of Idomeneus, that won
To ruined house; of Locrian men cast on the Libyan shore?
Mycenæ's lord, the duke and king of all the Argive war,
There, on the threshold of his house, his wicked wife doth slay.
—Asia o'ercome—and in its stead Adultery thwart the way!—
Ah, the Gods' hate, that so begrudged my yearning eyes to meet
My father's hearth, my longed-for wife, and Calydon the sweet!270
Yea, and e'en now there followeth me dread sight of woeful things:
My lost companions wend the air with feathery beat of wings,
Or wander, fowl on river-floods: O woe's me for their woe!
The voices of their weeping wail about the sea-cliffs go.
But all these things might I have seen full surely for me stored
Since then, when on the flesh of God I fell with maddened sword,
And on the very Venus' hand a wicked wound I won.
Nay, nay, to no such battles more I pray you drive me on!
No war for me with Teucrian men since Pergamus lies low;
Nor do I think or joy at all in ills of long ago.280
The gifts, that from your fatherland unto my throne ye bear,
Turn toward Æneas. We have stood, time was, spear meeting spear,
Hand against hand: trust me, who tried, how starkly to the shield
He riseth up, how blows the wind when he his spear doth wield.
If two such other men had sprung from that Idæan home,
Then Dardanus with none to drive to Inachus had come,
And seen our walls, and Greece had mourned reversal of her day.
About the walls of stubborn Troy, whatso we found of stay,
By Hector's and Æneas' hands the Greekish victory
Was tarried, and its feet held back through ten years wearing by.290
Both these in heart and weapon-skill were full of fame's increase,
But this one godlier: let your hands meet in the plighted peace
E'en as ye may: but look to it if sword to sword ye bring.'

"Thus have ye heard, most gracious one, the answer of the King,
And therewithal what thought he had about this heavy war."

Scarce had he said, when diverse voice of murmuring ran all o'er
Those troubled mouths of Italy: as when the rocks refrain
The rapid streams, and sounds arise within the eddies' chain,
And with the chatter of the waves the neighbouring banks are filled.
But when their minds were soothed and all the wildering voices stilled,
The King spake first unto the Gods, then thus began to say:301

"Latins, that ye had counselled you hereon before today
Was both my will, and had been good: no time is this to fall
To counsel now, when as we speak the foe besets the wall.
With folk of God ill war we wage, lords of the Latin town,
With all-unconquerable folk; no battles wear them down;
Yea, beaten never have they heart to cast the sword away.
Lay down the hope ye had to gain Ætolian war-array;
Let each man be his proper hope. Lo ye, the straits are sore.
How all things lie about us now by ruin all toppled o'er,310
Witness of this the eyes of you, the hands of you have won.
No man I blame, what valour could hath verily been done:
With all the manhood of our land the battle hath been fought:
But now what better way herein my doubtful mind hath thought
Will I set forth, and shortly tell the rede that is in me:
Hearken! beside the Tuscan stream I own an ancient lea,
Which, toward the sunset stretching far, yea o'er Sicanian bounds,
Aruncans and Rutulians sow, working the rough hill grounds
With draught of plough, but feeding down the roughest with their sheep.
Let all this land, and piny place upon the mountain-steep,320
Be yielded for the Teucrian peace: the laws let us declare
For plighted troth, and bid the men as friends our realm to share.
There let them settle and build walls, if thitherward they yearn;
But if unto another land their minds are set to turn,
And other folk, and all they ask is from our shore to flee,
Then let us build them twice ten ships from oak of Italy,
Or more if they have men thereto: good store of ship-stuff lies
Hard by the waves; and they shall show their number and their guise;
But toil of men, and brass and gear we for their needs will find.
And now to carry these our words, and fast the troth-plight bind,330
Send we an hundred speech-masters, the best of Latin land,
To seek them thither, stretching forth the peace-bough in the hand,
And bearing gifts; a talent's weight of gold and ivory,
The throne therewith and welted gown, signs of my lordship high.
Take open counsel; stay the State so faint and weary grown."

Then Drances, ever full of hate, whom Turnus' great renown
With bitter stings of envy thwart goaded for evermore;
Lavish of wealth and fair of speech, but cold-hand in the war;
Held for no unwise man of redes, a make-bate keen enow;
The lordship of whose life, forsooth, from well-born dam did flow,340
His father being of no account—upriseth now this man,
And piles a grievous weight of words with all the wrath he can.
"A matter dark to none, and which no voice of mine doth need,
Thou counsellest on, sweet King: for all confess in very deed
They wot whereto our fortune drives; but fear their speech doth hide:
Let him give liberty of speech, and sink his windy pride,
Because of whose unhappy fate, and evil life and will—
Yea, I will speak, despite his threats to smite me and to kill—
So many days of dukes are done, and all the city lies349
O'erwhelmed with grief, the while his luck round camps of Troy he tries,
Trusting to flight, and scaring heaven with clashing of his sword.
One gift meseems thou shouldest add, most gracious king and lord,
Unto the many gifts thou bid'st bear to the Dardan folk,
Nor bow thyself to violence, nor lie beneath its yoke.
Father, thy daughter nobly wed unto a glorious son,
And knit the bonds of peace thereby in troth-plight never done.
Or if such terror and so great upon our hearts doth lie,
Let us adjure the man himself, and pray him earnestly
To yield up this his proper right to country and to king:—
—O why into the jaws of death wilt thou so often fling360
Thine hapless folk, O head and fount of all the Latin ill?
No safety is in war; all we, for peace we pray thee still,
O Turnus,—for the only pledge of peace that may abide.
I first, whom thou call'st foe (and nought that name I thrust aside),
Lo, suppliant to thy feet I come! Pity thy people then!
Sink thine high heart, and, beaten, yield; surely we broken men
Have seen enough of deaths, laid waste enough of field and fold.
But if fame stir thee, if thine heart such dauntless valour hold,
If such a longing of thy soul a kingly dowry be,
Dare then, and trust thee in thy might, and breast the enemy.370
Forsooth all we, that Turnus here a queenly wife might gain—
We common souls—a heap unwept, unburied, strew the plain.
And now for thy part, if in thee some valour hath a place
Or memory of the ancient wars, go look him in the face
Who calleth thee to come afield."

But Turnus' fury at the word outbrake in sudden flame.
He groaned, and from his inmost soul this speech of his outpoured:
"O Drances, when the battle-day calleth for hand and sword,
Great words good store thou givest still, and first thou comest still
When so the Sires are called: but why with words the council fill?380
Big words aflying from thee safe, while yet the walls hold good
Against the foe, nor yet the ditch is swimming with our blood.
Go, thunder out thy wonted words! lay craven fear on me,
O Drances, thou, whose hand has heaped the Teucrian enemy
Dead all about, and everywhere has glorified the meads
With war-spoil! Thou thyself may'st try how lively valour speeds!
'Tis well the time: forsooth the road lieth no long way out
To find the foe! on every side they hedge the wall about
Go we against them!—tarriest thou? and is thy Mars indeed
A dweller in the windy tongue and feet well learned in speed,390
The same today as yesterday?
—I beaten! who of right, O beast! shall brand me beaten man,
That seeth the stream of Ilian blood swelling the Tiber's flow,
Who seeth all Evander's house uprooted, laid alow;
Who seeth those Arcadian men stripped of their battle-gear?
Big Pandarus, stout Bitias, found me no craven there,
Or all the thousand whom that day to Tartarus I sent,
When I was hedged by foeman's wall and mound's beleaguerment
No health in war? Fool, sing such song to that Dardanian head,399
And thine own day! cease not to fright all things with mighty dread.
Cease not to puff up with thy pride the poor twice-conquered folk,
And lay upon the Latin arms the weight of wordy yoke.
Yea, sure the chiefs of Myrmidons quake at the Phrygian sword,
Tydides and Achilles great, the Larissæan lord;
And Aufidus the flood flees back unto the Hadriac sea.
But now whereas this guile-smith fains to dread mine enmity,
And whetteth with a fashioned fear the bitter point of strife—
Nay, quake no more! for this mine hand shall spill no such a life;
But it shall dwell within thy breast and have thee for a mate.—
Now, Father, unto thee I turn, and all thy words of weight;410
If every hope of mending war thou verily lay'st down;
If we are utterly laid waste, and, being once overthrown,
Have fallen dead; if Fate no more may turn her feet about,
Then pray we peace, and deedless hands, e'en as we may, stretch out.
Yet if of all our ancient worth some little yet abide,
I deem him excellent of men, craftsmaster of his tide,
A noble heart, who, lest his eyes should see such things befall,
Hath laid him down in death, and bit the earth's face once for all.
And if we still have store of force, and crop of youth unlaid,
And many a town, and many a folk of Italy to aid;420
And if across a sea of blood the Trojan glory came,
And they too died, and over all with one blast and the same
The tempest swept; why shameless thus do our first footsteps fail?
Why quake our limbs, yea e'en before they feel the trumpet's gale?
A many things the shifting time, the long laborious days,
Have mended oft: a many men hath Fortune's wavering ways
Made sport of, and brought back again to set on moveless rock.
The Ætolian and his Arpi host help not our battle-shock.
Yet is Messapus ours, and ours Tolumnius fortunate,
And many a duke and many a folk; nor yet shall tarry late430
The glory of our Latin lords and this Laurentian lea.
Here too Camilla, nobly born of Volscian stock, shall be,
Leading her companies of horse that blossom brass all o'er.
But if the Teucrians me alone are calling to the war,
And thus 'tis doomed, and I so much the common good withstand—
Well, victory hath not heretofore so fled my hated hand
That I should falter from the play with such a prize in sight:
Fain shall I face him, yea, though he outgo Achilles' might,
And carry battle-gear as good of Vulcan's fashioning,
For you, and for Latinus here, my father and my king,440
I, Turnus, second unto none in valour of old years,
Devote my life. Æneas calls me only of the peers?
—O that he may!—not Drances here—the debt of death to pay
If God be wroth, or if Fame win, to bear the prize away."

But while amid their doubtful fate the ball of speech they tossed,
Contending sore, Æneas moved his camp and battle-host;
And lo, amid the kingly house there runs a messenger
Mid tumult huge, who all the town to mighty dread doth stir,
With tidings how the Teucrian host and Tuscan men of war
Were marching from the Tiber flood, the meadows covering o'er.450
Amazèd are the minds of men; their hearts with tremor shake,
And anger stirred by bitter stings is presently awake:
In haste and heat they crave for arms; the youth cries on the sword,
The Fathers mutter sad and weep: with many a wrangling word
A mighty tumult goeth up, and toward the sky doth sweep:
Not otherwise than when the fowl amid the thicket deep
Sit down in hosts; or when the swans send forth their shrilling song
About Padusa's fishy flood, the noisy pools among.

"Come, fellow-folk," cries Turnus then, for he the time doth seize,
"Call ye to council even now, and sit and praise the peace,460
And let the armed foe wrack the realm!"
Nor more he said withal,
But turned about and went his ways from that high-builded hall.
Said he: "Volusus, lead away the Volscian ranks to fight,
And Rutuli! Messapus, thou, afield with horse and knight!
Thou, Coras, with thy brother duke sweep down the level mead.
Let some make breaches good, and some man the high towers with heed;
And let the rest bear arms with me whereso my bidding sends."

Then straightway, running in all haste, to wall the city wends.
Sore shaken in his very heart, by that ill tide undone,
His council Sire Latinus leaves and those great redes begun:470
Blaming himself that he took not Æneas of free will,
Nor gave the town that Dardan lord the place of son to fill.