Virgil

by W. Lucas Collins

The advice suits with the queen’s new mood too well to be rejected. Together the sisters offer pious sacrifices to the gods—to Juno especially, as the goddess of marriage—to give their sanction to the hoped-for alliance. The restless feelings of the enamoured woman are described in one of the finest and most admired passages of the poem:—

“E’en as a deer whom from afar
A swain, in desultory war,
Where Cretan woods are thick,
Has pierced, as ’mid the trees she lies,
And, all unknowing of his prize,
Has left the dart to stick:
She wanders lawn and forest o’er,
While the fell shaft still drinks her gore.[25]
Now through the city of her pride
She walks, Æneas at her side,
Displays the stores of Sidon’s trade,
And stately homes already made:
Begins, but stops she knows not why,
And lets the imperfect utterance die.
Now, as the sunlight wears away,
She seeks the feast of yesterday,
Inquires once more of Troy’s eclipse,
And hangs once more upon his lips;
Then, when the guests have gone their ways,
And the dim moon withdraws her rays,
And setting stars to slumber call,
Alone she mourns in that lone hall,
Clasps the dear couch where late he lay,
Beholds him, hears him far away;
Or keeps Ascanius on her knees,
And in the son the father sees,
Might she but steal one peaceful hour
From love’s ungovernable power.
No more the growing towers arise,
No more in martial exercise
The youth engage, make strong the fort,
Or shape the basin to a port.”

The powers of Olympus here come again upon the scene. Juno sees, not without a secret satisfaction, the prospect of an entanglement between Æneas and Dido, which may detain these hated Trojans in Africa, and so prevent their settlement and dominion in Italy. So Carthage, and not the Rome of the future, may yet be the mistress of the world. She addresses herself at once to the goddess of love—not without a sneer at the success of her snares in poor Dido’s case; a sorry triumph it is indeed—two divinities pitted against a weak woman! But come—suppose in this matter they agree to act in concert; let there be a union between the two nations, and let Carthage be the seat of their joint power; its citizens shall pay equal honours to the queen of heaven and the queen of love. Venus understands perfectly well that Juno’s motive is at any cost to prevent the foundation of Rome; but, having a clearer vision (we must presume) than her great rival of the probable results, she agrees to the terms. There is to be a hunting-party on the morrow, and Juno will take care that opportunity shall be given for the furtherance of Dido’s passion. The royal hunt is again a striking picture, almost mediæval in its rich colouring:—

“The morn meantime from ocean rose:
Forth from the gates with daybreak goes
The silvan regiment:
Thin nets are there, and spears of steel,
And there Massylian riders wheel,
And dogs of keenest scent.
Before the chamber of her state
Long time the Punic nobles wait
The appearing of the queen:
With gold and purple housings fit
Stands her proud steed, and champs the bit
His foaming jaws between.
At length with long attendant train
She comes: her scarf of Tyrian grain,[26]
With broidered border decked:
Of gold her quiver: knots of gold
Confine her hair: her vesture’s fold
By golden clasp is checked.
The Trojans and Iulus gay
In glad procession take their way.
Æneas, comeliest of the throng,
Joins their proud ranks, and steps along,
As when from Lycia’s wintry airs
To Delos’ isle Apollo fares;
The Agathyrsian, Dryop, Crete,
In dances round his altar meet:
He on the heights of Cynthus moves,
And binds his hair’s loose flow
With cincture of the leaf he loves:
Behind him sounds his bow;—
So firm Æneas’ graceful tread,
So bright the glories round his head.
. . . . . . . . . .
But young Ascanius on his steed
With boyish ardour glows,
And now in ecstacy of speed
He passes these, now those:
For him too peaceful and too tame
The pleasure of the hunted game:
He longs to see the foaming boar,
Or hear the tawny lion’s roar.

Meantime, loud thunder-peals resound,
And hail and rain the sky confound:
And Tyrian chiefs and sons of Troy,
And Venus’ care, the princely boy,
Seek each his shelter, winged with dread,
While torrents from the hills run red.
Driven haply to the same retreat,
The Dardan chief and Dido meet.
Then Earth, the venerable dame,
And Juno, give the sign:
Heaven lightens with attesting flame,
And bids its torches shine,
And from the summit of the peak
The nymphs shrill out the nuptial shriek.

That day she first began to die;
That day first taught her to defy
The public tongue, the public eye.
No secret love is Dido’s aim:
She calls it marriage now; such name
She chooses to conceal her shame.”

A rejected suitor of the Carthaginian queen,—Iarbas, king of Gætulia,—hears the news amongst the rest. He is a reputed son of Jupiter; and now, furious at seeing this wanderer from Troy—“this second Paris,” as he calls him—preferred to himself, he appeals for vengeance to his Olympian parent. The appeal is heard, and Mercury is despatched to remind Æneas of his high destinies, which he is forgetting in this dalliance at Carthage. If he has lost all ambition for himself, let him at least remember the rights of his son Ascanius, which he is thus sacrificing to the indulgence of his own wayward passions. The immortal messenger finds the Trojan chief busied in planning the extension of the walls and streets of the new city which he has already adopted as his home. He delivers his message briefly and emphatically, and vanishes. Thus recalled to a full sense of his false position, Æneas is at first horror-struck and confounded. How to disobey the direct commands of Heaven, and run counter to the oracles of fate; how, on the other hand, to break his faith with Dido, and ungratefully betray the too confiding love of his hostess and benefactress; how even to venture to hint to her a word of parting, and how to escape the probable vengeance of the Carthaginian people;—all these considerations crowd into his mind, and perplex him terribly. On the main point, however, his resolution is soon taken. He will obey the mandate of the gods, at any cost. He summons the most trusted of his comrades, and bids them make secret preparations to set sail once more in quest of their home in Italy. He promises himself that he will either find or make some opportunity of breaking the news of his departure to Dido.

This is the turning-point of the poem; and here it is that the interest to a modern reader, so far as the mere plot of the story is concerned, is sadly marred by the way in which the hero thus cuts himself off from all our sympathies. His most ingenious apologists—and he has found many—appeal to us in vain. Upon the audience or the readers of his own time, no doubt, the effect might have been different. To the critics of Augustus’s court, love—or what they understood by it—was a mere weakness in the hero. The call which Heaven had conveyed to him was to found the great empire of the future; and because he obeys the call at the expense of his tenderest feelings, the poet gives him always his distinctive epithet—the “pious” Æneas. The word “pious,” it must be remembered, implies in the Latin the recognition of all duties to one’s country and one’s parents, as well as to the gods. And in all these senses Æneas would deserve it. But to an English mind, the “piety” which pleads the will of Heaven as an excuse for treachery to a woman, only adds a deeper hue of infamy to the transaction. It

“Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.”

But our story must not wait for us to discuss too curiously the morals of the hero. Æneas has thought to make his preparations without the knowledge of the queen—while she