Mezentius takes his place, and seconded by his son Lausus, spreads slaughter amongst the Trojan ranks. But a spear cast by the strong hand of Æneas lodges in the groin of the father, and the son gallantly rushes forward to cover his retreat. Æneas warns the youth to stand back—some thought, it may be, of Pallas makes him unwilling to take the younger life; but Lausus dares his fate, and the Trojan falchion, driven home through his light shield and broidered vest—
“The vest his mother wove with gold”—
reaches the young chief’s heart. Æneas can be generous too. He will not strip the body; nay, he chides the cowardice of Lausus’s comrades, who hesitate to lift the dying youth, and himself raises him carefully from the ground, and gives him what comfort may be gathered from the fact that he has met his death “at Æneas’s hand.”
Mezentius hears of the death of his son as he lies by the river-bank bathing his wound. “With a cry of agony the father bewails his own crimes, which had thus brought death upon his innocent son. Crippled as he is, he calls for his good horse Rhæbus, who has ever hitherto borne him home victor from the battle. To-day they two will carry home the head of Æneas, or fall together. He charges desperately upon the Trojan, who is right glad to meet him. Thrice he wheels his horse round his wary enemy, hurling javelin after javelin, which the Vulcanian shield receives on its broad circumference, and retains until it looks, in the poet’s language, like a grove of steel. At last Æneas launches a spear which strikes Mezentius’s horse full in the forehead, and poor Rhæbus rears, and rolling over in his dying agonies, pins his master to the ground. Æneas rushes in upon the fallen champion, who, disdaining to ask quarter, bares his throat to the sword, and dies as fearlessly as he has lived.
CHAPTER XII.
THE DEATH OF CAMILLA.
Æneas’s first care, after raising a trophy crowned with the arms of the slain Mezentius, is to send home to Evander the body of his son. A picked detachment escort it to Laurentum with all honour, wrapped in robes of gold—embroidered robes, wrought by the hands of the unfortunate Dido. The youth’s charger, Æthon, is led behind the bier, and his lance and helm are also borne in the procession; a custom which we have borrowed from the Romans, and retain to this day in our military funerals. Æthon weeps copious tears for his dead master; an incident not so entirely due to a poet’s imagination as it may seem, since the historian Suetonius tells us that some favourite horses of Julius Cæsar showed the same tokens of grief, and refused their food, just before his death. Another feature in the obsequies of Pallas is happily obsolete; the prisoners whom Æneas had taken alive with this express object follow behind the corpse, to be sacrificed at the funeral pile. There was nothing horrible to the polished courtiers of Augustus in such a thought. Even in that age of refinement and civilisation, the emperor himself, after the defeat of Antony’s party at Perusia, was said to have slaughtered three hundred prisoners in honour of the great Julius, to whom altars were raised as a demi-god. True, the story was probably an invention of political opponents; but the mere fact that such a story could be invented and believed, marks strongly the cruel temper of the age. The old king receives back, in bitter grief, all that remains to him of the gallant son whom he had so lately sent forth to his first fatal field: and he charges Æneas, by the mouth of the envoys, to avenge him on his son’s murderer—for this he only waits to close his own eyes.
A truce of twelve days is agreed upon between the armies for the burial of their dead. The Latins have meanwhile sent an embassy to ask aid from Diomed, the hero of the Trojan war, who has come home and settled in Italy. He is paying the penalty of having wounded Venus in the battle before Troy, and is not allowed to reach his native Argolis. He warns the ambassadors that it is not good to war against the race from which Æneas comes—he, for his part, will have no more of it. At this crisis the Latins hold a council of war. Their king advises a compromise with the enemy—a grant of land on which to settle, or a new equipped fleet to carry the fortunes of Troy yet further on. Then there rises in the council one Drances, a better orator than warrior, who boldly proposes to give the princess Lavinia to the bridegroom whom the gods have sent. Or, let Turnus meet Æneas in single combat—why are the rest to suffer for his pride? Is all Latium to be steeped in blood that Turnus may have a princess to wife? Turnus is not slow to reply. He will go forth to meet the Trojan willingly—will Drances follow him?
Even while they thus debate, Æneas has left his intrenchments by the Tiber, and is marching on the city. The queen with her daughter and the terrified women betake themselves to the temples, while Turnus sets himself to marshal his allies for the defence. While some are left to guard the walls, the whole force of cavalry ride out to meet the enemy. His best lieutenant for this service is the huntress Camilla. She leads her light Volscian horse, supported by Messapus with his heavier Latins, to meet the cavalry of Æneas, while Turnus with his squadron lays an ambuscade for him in a wooded valley. Camilla, with her fair staff of followers, Tulla and Tarpeia—names of ominous sound to Roman ears—deals slaughter in the enemy’s ranks in no feminine fashion.
“A Phrygian mother mourned her son
For every dart that flew.”
But, fierce Amazon as she is, she is tempted by a woman’s love of ornament. There is a Trojan, one Chlorus, priest as well as man-at-arms, conspicuous for the brilliant accoutrements of his charger and himself. His horse is covered with chain-armour clasped with gold; and purple and saffron, and gold embroidery—the full splendours of Asiatic costume which he affects—mark him out as a tempting prey. It might have been, the poet suggests, a desire to deck some of her national temples with such distinguished spoils,—or it might have been, he admits, only a woman’s fancy to wear them herself,—but she singles him out and chases him over the field, regardless of her own safety. Arruns the Tuscan has long sought his opportunity, and his spear reaches Camilla as she gallops in headlong pursuit of her gay enemy.