“In vain she strives with dying hands
To wrench away the blade:
Fixed in her ribs the weapon stands,
Closed by the wound it made.
Bloodless and faint, she gasps for breath;
Her heavy eyes sink down in death;
Her cheek’s bright colours fade.”
So dies Camilla; and the Volscian horse are so disheartened by her loss that they turn and fly to the city, so closely pursued by the Trojans that the gates have to be hastily closed, shutting out in many cases friends as well as foes. Turnus leaves the cover of the wood to attack Æneas, but night falls on the plain before their forces meet.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LAST COMBAT.
The spirit of the Latins is wellnigh broken—they feel that their cause is a failing one. And Turnus sees angry eyes bent upon him, as the cause of this ill-fated war. He will take all hazards, then, upon himself: there shall be no more blood shed of Latin or Rutulian—unless it be his own. He declares his intention to Latinus—he will meet Æneas in single combat. The old king is reluctant to allow it: Queen Amata, with tears and prayers, begs him to forego his resolution. Lavinia herself—such is the entire reticence of the maiden nature in epic story—speaks no word throughout the whole. But, as modern critics have long discovered, there is no question but that she has a sentiment for Turnus. She hardly could have a thought of Æneas, whom she had never seen. When she hears her mother’s appeal to the Rutulian prince, she does almost more than speak—she blushes, through her tears.
“Deep crimson glows the sudden flame,
And dyes her tingling cheek with shame.
So blushes ivory’s Indian grain,
When sullied with vermilion stain:
So lilies set in roseate bed
Enkindle with contagious red.”
These last four lines, in Mr Conington’s version, read like a bit of Waller or Lovelace—and yet they are a fairly close translation of the original.
The challenge is sent to Æneas, and by him joyfully accepted. There shall be solemn truce between Trojan and Rutulian, while the rival champions do battle for the princess and the kingdom. Turnus, too, has one weapon of Vulcan’s forging—his father’s sword. But now, in his haste for the combat, he snatches up and girds on a blade of less divine temper. The lists are set between the two lines, and the oaths duly sworn. Æneas calls the gods to witness, that if the victory falls to Turnus, the Trojans on their part shall retire at once to Evander’s colony, and make war no more on Latium. Or even if he himself be the conqueror, he will not treat the Latins as a conquered race:—
“I will not force Italia’s land
To Teucrian rule to bow;
I seek no sceptre for my hand,
No diadem for my brow:
Let race and race, unquelled and free,
Join hands in deathless amity.”
But at once, before the rivals meet, by the instigation of Juno the truce is broken on the part of the Rutulians. They have a strong fear that their own champion, young and gallant as he is, is no equal match in arms for the great Æneas: he is but moving to his death. So speaks the seer Tolumnius, and points to an omen on the river-bank: an eagle swooping down upon a flock of swans, and bearing one off in his talons, but put to flight when they turn in a body and pursue him. Æneas is the bird of prey—they are the unwarlike swans; let them but turn on him, and he too will fly. The seer is not content with the mere exposition of auguries; at once he hurls his own javelin into the Trojan ranks, and brings down his man. The fight speedily becomes general. Æneas, unarmed and bareheaded, rushes between the ranks, and is wounded by an arrow while he calls loudly on his own men to keep the truce. None knew, or cared to know, from whose hand the arrow came: for no man, says the poet, was ever heard to boast of such a coward’s shot.
Then, while Æneas is led to the camp, faint and bleeding, by his son lulus and his faithful Achates,—while the aged leech, Iapis, vainly tries all his skill upon the wound—for the barb will not quit the flesh,—Turnus spreads slaughter among the Trojan ranks. But only for a while. Venus drops a healing balsam into the water with which her son’s wound is being bathed; at once the arrow-head drops out, and the hero stands up sound and whole. Again he dons the Vulcanian armour, and re-enters the battle. The Rutulians give way before him, but he scorns to smite the fugitives, and seeks out only Turnus. And Turnus, pale and unnerved—for the presage of his fate lies heavy upon his soul—has no longer any mind to meet him. It is very strange, to our modern notions of heroism, to see this infirmity of resolution in a tried soldier and captain like Turnus. But the heroes of these elder days lose heart at once when they feel their star is no longer in the ascendant. Turnus, like Hector in the Iliad, shrinks from the fate which he foresees.