Chapter V: Part 5

But lord Aeneas, ere yet the contest is sped, calls to him Epytides, guardian and attendant of ungrown Iülus, and thus speaks into his faithful ear: 'Up and away, and tell Ascanius, if he now holds his band of boys ready, and their horses arrayed for the charge, to defile his squadrons to his grandsire's honour in bravery of arms.' So says he, and himself bids all the crowding throng withdraw from the long racecourse and leave the lists free. The boys move in before their parents' faces, glittering in rank on their [554-590]bitted horses; as they go all the people of Troy and Trinacria murmur and admire. On the hair of them all rests a garland fitly trimmed; each carries two cornel spear-shafts tipped with steel; some have polished quivers on their shoulders; above their breast and round their neck goes a flexible circlet of twisted gold. Three in number are the troops of riders, and three captains gallop up and down; following each in equal command rides a glittering division of twelve boys. One youthful line goes rejoicingly behind little Priam, renewer of his grandsire's name, thy renowned seed, O Polites, and destined to people Italy; he rides a Thracian horse dappled with spots of white, showing white on his pacing pasterns and white on his high forehead. Second is Atys, from whom the Latin Atii draw their line, little Atys, boy beloved of the boy Iülus. Last and excellent in beauty before them all, Iülus rode in on a Sidonian horse that Dido the bright had given him for token and pledge of love. The rest of them are mounted on old Acestes' Sicilian horses. . . . The Dardanians greet their shy entrance with applause, and rejoice at the view, and recognise the features of their parents of old. When they have ridden merrily round all the concourse of their gazing friends, Epytides shouts from afar the signal they await, and sounds his whip. They gallop apart in equal numbers, and open their files three and three in deploying bands, and again at the call wheel about and bear down with levelled arms. Next they start on other charges and other retreats in corresponsive spaces, and interlink circle with circle, and wage the armed phantom of battle. And now they bare their backs in flight, now turn their lances to the charge, now plight peace and ride on side by side. As once of old, they say, the labyrinth in high Crete had a tangled path between blind walls, and a thousand ways of doubling treachery, where tokens to follow failed in the [591-625]maze unmastered and irrecoverable: even in such a track do the children of Troy entangle their footsteps and weave the game of flight and battle; like dolphins who, swimming through the wet seas, cut Carpathian or Libyan. . . .

This fashion of riding, these games Ascanius first revived, when he girt Alba the Long about with walls, and taught their celebration to the Old Latins in the way of his own boyhood, with the youth of Troy about him. The Albans taught it their children; on from them mighty Rome received it and kept the ancestral observance; and now it is called Troy, and the boys the Trojan troop.

Thus far sped the sacred contests to their holy lord. Just at this Fortune broke faith and grew estranged. While they pay the due rites to the tomb with diverse games, Juno, daughter of Saturn, sends Iris down the sky to the Ilian fleet, and breathes a gale to speed her on, revolving many a thought, and not yet satiate of the ancient pain. She, speeding her way along the thousand-coloured bow, runs swiftly, seen of none, down her maiden path. She discerns the vast concourse, and traverses the shore, and sees the haven abandoned and the fleet left alone. But far withdrawn by the solitary verge of the sea the Trojan women wept their lost Anchises, and as they wept gazed all together on the fathomless flood. 'Alas! after all those weary waterways, that so wide a sea is yet to come!' such is the single cry of all. They pray for a city, sick of the burden of their sea-sorrow. So she darts among them, not witless to harm, and lays by face and raiment of a goddess: she becomes Beroë, the aged wife of Tmarian Doryclus, who had once had birth and name and children, and in this guise goes among the Dardanian matrons. 'Ah, wretched we,' she cries, 'whom hostile Achaean hands did not drag to death beneath our native city! ah hapless race, for what destruction does Fortune hold thee back? The [626-660]seventh summer now declines since Troy's overthrow, while we pass measuring out by so many stars the harbourless rocks over every water and land, pursuing all the while over the vast sea an Italy that flies us, and tossing on the waves. Here are our brother Eryx' borders, and Acestes' welcome: who denies us to cast up walls and give our citizens a city? O country, O household gods vainly rescued from the foe! shall there never be a Trojan town to tell of? shall I nowhere see a Xanthus and a Simoïs, the rivers of Hector? Nay, up and join me in burning with fire these ill-ominous ships. For in sleep the phantom of Cassandra the soothsayer seemed to give me blazing brands: _Here seek your Troy_, she said; _here is your home_. Now is the time to do it; nor do these high portents allow delay. Behold four altars to Neptune; the god himself lends the firebrand and the nerve.' Speaking thus, at once she strongly seizes the fiery weapon, and with straining hand whirls it far upreared, and flings: the souls of the Ilian women are startled and their wits amazed. At this one of their multitude, and she the eldest, Pyrgo, nurse in the palace to all Priam's many children: 'This is not Beroë, I tell you, O mothers; this is not the wife of Doryclus of Rhoeteum. Mark the lineaments of divine grace and the gleaming eyes, what a breath is hers, what a countenance, and the sound of her voice and the steps of her going. I, I time agone left Beroë apart, sick and fretting that she alone must have no part in this our service, nor pay Anchises his due sacrifice.' So spoke she. . . . But the matrons at first, dubious and wavering, gazed on the ships with malignant eyes, between the wretched longing for the land they trod and the fated realm that summoned them: when the goddess rose through the sky on poised wings, and in her flight drew a vast bow beneath the clouds. Then indeed, amazed at the tokens and driven by madness, they raise a cry and snatch fire from the [661-694]hearths within; others plunder the altars, and cast on brushwood boughs and brands. The Fire-god rages with loose rein over thwarts and oars and hulls of painted fir. Eumelus carries the news of the burning ships to the grave of Anchises and the ranges of the theatre; and looking back, their own eyes see the floating cloud of dark ashes. And in a moment Ascanius, as he rode gaily before his cavalry, spurred his horse to the disordered camp; nor can his breathless guardians hold him back. 'What strange madness is this?' he cries; 'whither now hasten you, whither, alas and woe! O citizens? not on the foe nor on some hostile Argive camp; it is your own hopes you burn. Behold me, your Ascanius!' and he flung before his feet the empty helmet, put on when he roused the mimicry of war. Aeneas and the Trojan train together hurry to the spot. But the women scatter apart in fear all over the beach, and stealthily seek the woods and the hollow rocks they find: they loathe their deed and the daylight, and with changed eyes know their people, and Juno is startled out of their breast. But not thereby do the flames of the burning lay down their unconquered strength; under the wet oak the seams are alive, spouting slow coils of smoke; the creeping heat devours the hulls, and the destroyer takes deep hold of all: nor does the heroes' strength avail nor the floods they pour in. Then good Aeneas rent away the raiment from his shoulders and called the gods to aid, stretching forth his hands: 'Jupiter omnipotent, if thou hatest not Troy yet wholly to her last man, if thine ancient pity looks at all on human woes, now, O Lord, grant our fleet to escape the flame, and rescue from doom the slender Teucrian estate. Or do thou plunge to death this remnant, if I deserve it, with levelled thunderbolt, and here with thine own hand smite us down.' Scarce had he uttered this, when a black tempest rages in streaming showers; earth trembles [695-726]to the thunder on plain and steep; the water-flood rushes in torrents from the whole heaven amid black darkness and volleying blasts of the South. The ships are filled from overhead, the half-burnt timbers are soaking; till all the heat is quenched, and all the hulls, but four that are lost, are rescued from destruction.

But lord Aeneas, dismayed by the bitter mischance, revolved at heart this way and that his shifting weight of care, whether, forgetting fate, he should rest in Sicilian fields, or reach forth to the borders of Italy. Then old Nautes, whom Tritonian Pallas taught like none other, and made famous in eminence of art--she granted him to reply what the gods' heavy anger menaced or what the order of fate claimed--he then in accents of comfort thus speaks to Aeneas:

'Goddess-born, follow we fate's ebb and flow, whatsoever it shall be; fortune must be borne to be overcome. Acestes is of thine own divine Dardanian race; take him, for he is willing, to join thee in common counsel; deliver to him those who are over, now these ships are lost, and those who are quite weary of thy fortunes and the great quest. Choose out the old men stricken in years, and the matrons sick of the sea, and all that is weak and fearful of peril in thy company. Let this land give a city to the weary; they shall be allowed to call their town Acesta by name.'

Then, indeed, kindled by these words of his aged friend, his spirit is distracted among all his cares. And now black Night rose chariot-borne, and held the sky; when the likeness of his father Anchises seemed to descend from heaven and suddenly utter thus:

'O son, more dear to me than life once of old while life was yet mine; O son, hard wrought by the destinies of Ilium! I come hither by Jove's command, who drove the [727-760]fire from thy fleets, and at last had pity out of high heaven. Obey thou the fair counsel aged Nautes now gives. Carry through to Italy thy chosen men and bravest souls; in Latium must thou war down a people hard and rough in living. Yet ere then draw thou nigh the nether chambers of Dis, and in the deep tract of hell come, O son, to meet me. For I am not held in cruel Tartarus among wailing ghosts, but inhabit Elysium and the sweet societies of the good. Hither with much blood of dark cattle shall the holy Sibyl lead thee. Then shalt thou learn of all thy line, and what city is given thee. And now farewell; dank Night wheels her mid-career, and even now I feel the stern breath of the panting horses of the East.' He ended, and retreated like a vapour into thin air. 'Ah, whither hurriest thou?' cries Aeneas; 'whither so fast away? From whom fliest thou? or who withholds thee from our embrace?' So speaking, he kindles the sleeping embers of the fire, and with holy meal and laden censer does sacrifice to the tutelar of Pergama and hoar Vesta's secret shrine.

Straightway he summons his crews and Acestes first of all, and instructs them of Jove's command and his beloved father's precepts, and what is now his fixed mind and purpose. They linger not in counsel, nor does Acestes decline his bidden duty: they enrol the matrons in their town, and plant a people there, souls that will have none of glory. The rest repair the thwarts and replace the ships' timbers that the flames had gnawed upon, and fit up oars and rigging, little in number, but alive and valiant for war. Meanwhile Aeneas traces the town with the plough and allots the homesteads; this he bids be Ilium, and these lands Troy. Trojan Acestes, rejoicing in his kingdom, appoints a court and gathers his senators to give them statutes. Next, where the crest of Eryx is neighbour to the stars, a dwelling is founded to Venus the Idalian; [761-793]and a priest and breadth of holy wood is attached to Anchises' grave.

And now for nine days all the people hath feasted, and offering been paid at the altars; quiet breezes have smoothed the ocean floor, and the gathering south wind blows, calling them again to sea. A mighty weeping arises along the winding shore; a night and a day they linger in mutual embraces. The very mothers now, the very men to whom once the sight of the sea seemed cruel and the name intolerable, would go on and endure the journey's travail to the end. These Aeneas comforts with kindly words, and commends with tears to his kinsman Acestes' care. Then he bids slay three steers to Eryx and a she-lamb to the Tempests, and loose the hawser as is due. Himself, his head bound with stripped leaves of olive, he stands apart on the prow holding the cup, and casts the entrails into the salt flood and pours liquid wine. A wind rising astern follows them forth on their way. Emulously the crews strike the water, and sweep through the seas.

But Venus meanwhile, wrought upon with distress, accosts Neptune, and thus pours forth her heart's complaint: 'Juno's bitter wrath and heart insatiable compel me, O Neptune, to sink to the uttermost of entreaty: neither length of days nor any goodness softens her, nor doth Jove's command and fate itself break her to desistence. It is not enough that her accursed hatred hath devoured the Phrygian city from among the people, and exhausted on it the stores of vengeance; still she pursues this remnant, the bones and ashes of murdered Troy. I pray she know why her passion is so fierce. Thyself art my witness what a sudden stir she raised of late on the Libyan waters, flinging all the seas to heaven in vain reliance on Aeolus' blasts; this she dared in thy realm. . . . Lo too, driving the Trojan matrons into guilt, she hath foully [794-826]burned their ships, and forced them, their fleet lost, to leave the crews to an unknown land. Let the remnant, I beseech thee, give their sails to thy safe keeping across the seas; let them reach Laurentine Tiber; if I ask what is permitted, if fate grants them a city there.'

Then the son of Saturn, compeller of the ocean deep, uttered thus: 'It is wholly right, O Cytherean, that thy trust should be in my realm, whence thou drawest birth; and I have deserved it: often have I allayed the rage and full fury of sky and sea. Nor less on land, I call Xanthus and Simoïs to witness, hath been my care of thine Aeneas. When Achilles pursued the Trojan armies and hurled them breathless on their walls, and sent many thousands to death,--when the choked rivers groaned and Xanthus could not find passage or roll out to sea,--then I snatched Aeneas away in sheltering mist as he met the brave son of Peleus outmatched in strength and gods, eager as I was to overthrow the walls of perjured Troy that mine own hands had built. Now too my mind rests the same; dismiss thy fear. In safety, as thou desirest, shall he reach the haven of Avernus. One will there be alone whom on the flood thou shalt lose and require; one life shall be given for many. . . .'

With these words the goddess' bosom is soothed to joy. Then their lord yokes his wild horses with gold and fastens the foaming bits, and letting all the reins run slack in his hand, flies lightly in his sea-coloured chariot over the ocean surface. The waves sink to rest, and the swoln water-ways smooth out under the thundering axle; the storm-clouds scatter from the vast sky. Diverse shapes attend him, monstrous whales, and Glaucus' aged choir, and Palaemon, son of Ino, the swift Tritons, and Phorcus with all his army. Thetis and Melite keep the left, and maiden Panopea, Nesaea and Spio, Thalia and Cymodoce.

[827-860]At this lord Aeneas' soul is thrilled with soft counterchange of delight. He bids all the masts be upreared with speed, and the sails stretched on the yards. Together all set their sheets, and all at once slacken their canvas to left and again to right; together they brace and unbrace the yard-arms aloft; prosperous gales waft the fleet along. First, in front of all, Palinurus steered the close column; the rest under orders ply their course by his. And now dewy Night had just reached heaven's mid-cone; the sailors, stretched on their hard benches under the oars, relaxed their limbs in quiet rest: when Sleep, sliding lightly down from the starry sky, parted the shadowy air and cleft the dark, seeking thee, O Palinurus, carrying dreams of bale to thee who dreamt not of harm, and lit on the high stern, a god in Phorbas' likeness, dropping this speech from his lips: 'Palinurus son of Iasus, the very seas bear our fleet along; the breezes breathe steadily; for an hour rest is given. Lay down thine head, and steal thy worn eyes from their toil. I myself for a little will take thy duty in thy stead.' To whom Palinurus, scarcely lifting his eyes, returns: 'Wouldst thou have me ignorant what the calm face of the brine means, and the waves at rest? Shall I have faith in this perilous thing? How shall I trust Aeneas to deceitful breezes, and the placid treachery of sky that hath so often deceived me?' Such words he uttered, and, clinging fast to the tiller, slackened hold no whit, and looked up steadily on the stars. Lo! the god shakes over either temple a bough dripping with Lethean dew and made slumberous with the might of Styx, and makes his swimming eyes relax their struggles. Scarcely had sleep begun to slacken his limbs unaware, when bending down, he flung him sheer into the clear water, tearing rudder and half the stern away with him, and many a time crying vainly on his comrades: himself [861-871]he rose on flying wings into the thin air. None the less does the fleet run safe on its sea path, and glides on unalarmed in lord Neptune's assurance. Yes, and now they were sailing in to the cliffs of the Sirens, dangerous once of old and white with the bones of many a man; and the hoarse rocks echoed afar in the ceaseless surf; when her lord felt the ship rocking astray for loss of her helmsman, and himself steered her on over the darkling water, sighing often the while, and heavy at heart for his friend's mischance. 'Ah too trustful in sky's and sea's serenity, thou shalt lie, O Palinurus, naked on an alien sand!'

BOOK SIXTH

THE VISION OF THE UNDER WORLD

So speaks he weeping, and gives his fleet the rein, and at last glides in to Euboïc Cumae's coast. They turn the prows seaward; the ships grounded fast on their anchors' teeth, and the curving ships line the beach. The warrior band leaps forth eagerly on the Hesperian shore; some seek the seeds of flame hidden in veins of flint, some scour the woods, the thick coverts of wild beasts, and find and shew the streams. But good Aeneas seeks the fortress where Apollo sits high enthroned, and the lone mystery of the awful Sibyl's cavern depth, over whose mind and soul the prophetic Delian breathes high inspiration and reveals futurity.

Now they draw nigh the groves of Trivia and the roof of gold. Daedalus, as the story runs, when in flight from Minos' realm he dared to spread his fleet wings to the sky, glided on his unwonted way towards the icy northern star, and at length lit gently on the Chalcidian fastness. Here, on the first land he retrod, he dedicated his winged oarage to thee, O Phoebus, in the vast temple he built. On the doors is Androgeus' death; thereby the children of Cecrops, bidden, ah me! to pay for yearly ransom seven souls of their sons; the urn stands there, and the lots are drawn. Right [23-55]opposite the land of Gnosus rises from the sea; on it is the cruel love of the bull, the disguised stealth of Pasiphaë, and the mingled breed and double issue of the Minotaur, record of a shameful passion; on it the famous dwelling's laborious inextricable maze; but Daedalus, pitying the great love of the princess, himself unlocked the tangled treachery of the palace, guiding with the clue her lover's blind footsteps. Thou too hadst no slight part in the work he wrought, O Icarus, did grief allow. Twice had he essayed to portray thy fate in gold; twice the father's hands dropped down. Nay, their eyes would scan all the story in order, were not Achates already returned from his errand, and with him the priestess of Phoebus and Trivia, Deïphobe daughter of Glaucus, who thus accosts the king: 'Other than this are the sights the time demands: now were it well to sacrifice seven unbroken bullocks of the herd, as many fitly chosen sheep of two years old.' Thus speaks she to Aeneas; nor do they delay to do her sacred bidding; and the priestess calls the Teucrians into the lofty shrine.

A vast cavern is scooped in the side of the Euboïc cliff, whither lead an hundred wide passages by an hundred gates, whence peal forth as manifold the responses of the Sibyl. They had reached the threshold, when the maiden cries: _It is time to enquire thy fate: the god, lo! the god!_ And even as she spoke thus in the gateway, suddenly countenance nor colour nor ranged tresses stayed the same; her wild heart heaves madly in her panting bosom; and she expands to sight, and her voice is more than mortal, now the god breathes on her in nearer deity. 'Lingerest thou to vow and pray,' she cries, 'Aeneas of Troy? lingerest thou? for not till then will the vast portals of the spellbound house swing open.' So spoke she, and sank to silence. A cold shiver ran through the Teucrians' iron frames, and the king pours heart-deep supplication:

[56-89]'Phoebus, who hast ever pitied the sore travail of Troy, who didst guide the Dardanian shaft from Paris' hand full on the son of Aeacus, in thy leading have I pierced all these seas that skirt mighty lands, the Massylian nations far withdrawn, and the fields the Syrtes fringe; thus far let the fortune of Troy follow us. You too may now unforbidden spare the nation of Pergama, gods and goddesses to whomsoever Ilium and the great glory of Dardania did wrong. And thou, O prophetess most holy, foreknower of the future, grant (for no unearned realm does my destiny claim) a resting-place in Latium to the Teucrians, to their wandering gods and the storm-tossed deities of Troy. Then will I ordain to Phoebus and Trivia a temple of solid marble, and festal days in Phoebus' name. Thee likewise a mighty sanctuary awaits in our realm. For here will I place thine oracles and the secrets of destiny uttered to my people, and consecrate chosen men, O gracious one. Only commit not thou thy verses to leaves, lest they fly disordered, the sport of rushing winds; thyself utter them, I beseech thee.' His lips made an end of utterance.

But the prophetess, not yet tame to Phoebus' hand, rages fiercely in the cavern, so she may shake the mighty godhead from her breast; so much the more does he tire her maddened mouth and subdue her wild breast and shape her to his pressure. And now the hundred mighty portals of the house open of their own accord, and bring through the air the answer of the soothsayer:

'O past at length with the great perils of the sea! though heavier yet by land await thee, the Dardanians shall come to the realm of Lavinium; relieve thy heart of this care; but not so shall they have joy of their coming. Wars, grim wars I discern, and Tiber afoam with streams of blood. A Simoïs shall not fail thee, a Xanthus, a Dorian camp; another Achilles is already found for Latium, he too [90-123]goddess-born; nor shall Juno's presence ever leave the Teucrians; while thou in thy need, to what nations or what towns of Italy shalt thou not sue! Again is an alien bride the source of all that Teucrian woe, again a foreign marriage-chamber. . . . Yield not thou to distresses, but all the bolder go forth to meet them, as thy fortune shall allow thee way. The path of rescue, little as thou deemest it, shall first open from a Grecian town.'

In such words the Sibyl of Cumae chants from the shrine her perplexing terrors, echoing through the cavern truth wrapped in obscurity: so does Apollo clash the reins and ply the goad in her maddened breast. So soon as the spasm ceased and the raving lips sank to silence, Aeneas the hero begins: 'No shape of toil, O maiden, rises strange or sudden on my sight; all this ere now have I guessed and inly rehearsed in spirit. One thing I pray; since here is the gate named of the infernal king, and the darkling marsh of Acheron's overflow, be it given me to go to my beloved father, to see him face to face; teach thou the way, and open the consecrated portals. Him on these shoulders I rescued from encircling flames and a thousand pursuing weapons, and brought him safe from amid the enemy; he accompanied my way over all the seas, and bore with me all the threats of ocean and sky, in weakness, beyond his age's strength and due. Nay, he it was who besought and enjoined me to seek thy grace and draw nigh thy courts. Have pity, I beseech thee, on son and father, O gracious one! for thou art all-powerful, nor in vain hath Hecate given thee rule in the groves of Avernus. If Orpheus could call up his wife's ghost in the strength of his Thracian lyre and the music of the strings,--if Pollux redeemed his brother by exchange of death, and passes and repasses so often,--why make mention of great Theseus, why of Alcides? I too am of Jove's sovereign race.'

[124-157]In such words he pleaded and clasped the altars; when the soothsayer thus began to speak:

'O sprung of gods' blood, child of Anchises of Troy, easy is the descent into hell; all night and day the gate of dark Dis stands open; but to recall thy steps and issue to upper air, this is the task and burden. Some few of gods' lineage have availed, such as Jupiter's gracious favour or virtue's ardour hath upborne to heaven. Midway all is muffled in forest, and the black coils of Cocytus circle it round. Yet if thy soul is so passionate and so desirous twice to float across the Stygian lake, twice to see dark Tartarus, and thy pleasure is to plunge into the mad task, learn what must first be accomplished. Hidden in a shady tree is a bough with leafage and pliant shoot all of gold, consecrate to nether Juno, wrapped in the depth of woodland and shut in by dim dusky vales. But to him only who first hath plucked the golden-tressed fruitage from the tree is it given to enter the hidden places of the earth. This hath beautiful Proserpine ordained to be borne to her for her proper gift. The first torn away, a second fills the place in gold, and the spray burgeons with even such ore again. So let thine eyes trace it home, and thine hand pluck it duly when found; for lightly and unreluctant will it follow if thine is fate's summons; else will no strength of thine avail to conquer it nor hard steel to cut it away. Yet again, a friend of thine lies a lifeless corpse, alas! thou knowest it not, and defiles all the fleet with death, while thou seekest our counsel and lingerest in our courts. First lay him in his resting-place and hide him in the tomb; lead thither black cattle; be this first thine expiation; so at last shalt thou behold the Stygian groves and the realm untrodden of the living.' She spoke, and her lips shut to silence.

Aeneas goes forth, and leaves the cavern with fixed eyes and sad countenance, his soul revolving inly the unseen [158-194]issues. By his side goes faithful Achates, and plants his footsteps in equal perplexity. Long they ran on in mutual change of talk; of what lifeless comrade spoke the soothsayer, of what body for burial? And even as they came, they see on the dry beach Misenus cut off by untimely death, Misenus the Aeolid, excelled of none other in stirring men with brazen breath and kindling battle with his trumpet-note. He had been attendant on mighty Hector; in Hector's train he waged battle, renowned alike for bugle and spear: after victorious Achilles robbed him of life the valiant hero had joined Dardanian Aeneas' company, and followed no meaner leader. But now, while he makes his hollow shell echo over the seas, ah fool! and calls the gods to rival his blast, jealous Triton, if belief is due, had caught him among the rocks and sunk him in the foaming waves. So all surrounded him with loud murmur and cries, good Aeneas the foremost. Then weeping they quickly hasten on the Sibyl's orders, and work hard to pile trees for the altar of burial, and heap it up into the sky. They move into the ancient forest, the deep coverts of game; pitch-pines fall flat, ilex rings to the stroke of axes, and ashen beams and oak are split in clefts with wedges; they roll in huge mountain-ashes from the hills. Aeneas likewise is first in the work, and cheers on his crew and arms himself with their weapons. And alone with his sad heart he ponders it all, gazing on the endless forest, and utters this prayer: 'If but now that bough of gold would shew itself to us on the tree in this depth of woodland! since all the soothsayer's tale of thee, Misenus, was, alas! too truly spoken.' Scarcely had he said thus, when twin doves haply came flying down the sky, and lit on the green sod right under his eyes. Then the kingly hero knows them for his mother's birds, and joyfully prays: 'Ah, be my guides, if way there be, and direct your aëry passage into the groves [195-230]where the rich bough overshadows the fertile ground! and thou, O goddess mother, fail not our wavering fortune.' So spoke he and stayed his steps, marking what they signify, whither they urge their way. Feeding and flying they advance at such distance as following eyes could keep them in view; then, when they came to Avernus' pestilent gorge, they tower swiftly, and sliding down through the liquid air, choose their seat and light side by side on a tree, through whose boughs shone out the contrasting flicker of gold. As in chill mid-winter the woodland is wont to blossom with the strange leafage of the mistletoe, sown on an alien tree and wreathing the smooth stems with burgeoning saffron; so on the shadowy ilex seemed that leafy gold, so the foil tinkled in the light breeze. Immediately Aeneas seizes it and eagerly breaks off its resistance, and carries it beneath the Sibyl's roof.

And therewithal the Teucrians on the beach wept Misenus, and bore the last rites to the thankless ashes. First they build up a vast pyre of resinous billets and sawn oak, whose sides they entwine with dark leaves and plant funereal cypresses in front, and adorn it above with his shining armour. Some prepare warm water in cauldrons bubbling over the flames, and wash and anoint the chill body, and make their moan; then, their weeping done, lay his limbs on the pillow, and spread over it crimson raiment, the accustomed pall. Some uplift the heavy bier, a melancholy service, and with averted faces in their ancestral fashion hold and thrust in the torch. Gifts of frankincense, food, and bowls of olive oil, are poured and piled upon the fire. After the embers sank in and the flame died away, they soaked with wine the remnant of thirsty ashes, and Corynaeus gathered the bones and shut them in an urn of brass; and he too thrice encircled his comrades with fresh water, and cleansed them with light spray sprinkled from a [231-267]bough of fruitful olive, and spoke the last words of all. But good Aeneas heaps a mighty mounded tomb over him, with his own armour and his oar and trumpet, beneath a skyey mountain that now is called Misenus after him, and keeps his name immortal from age to age.

This done, he hastens to fulfil the Sibyl's ordinance. A deep cave yawned dreary and vast, shingle-strewn, sheltered by the black lake and the gloom of the forests; over it no flying things could wing their way unharmed, such a vapour streamed from the dark gorge and rose into the overarching sky. Here the priestess first arrays four black-bodied bullocks and pours wine upon their forehead; and plucking the topmost hairs from between the horns, lays them on the sacred fire for first-offering, calling aloud on Hecate, mistress of heaven and hell. Others lay knives beneath, and catch the warm blood in cups. Aeneas himself smites with the sword a black-fleeced she-lamb to the mother of the Eumenides and her mighty sister, and a barren heifer, Proserpine, to thee. Then he uprears darkling altars to the Stygian king, and lays whole carcases of bulls upon the flames, pouring fat oil over the blazing entrails. And lo! about the first rays of sunrise the ground moaned underfoot, and the woodland ridges began to stir, and dogs seemed to howl through the dusk as the goddess came. 'Apart, ah keep apart, O ye unsanctified!' cries the soothsayer; 'retire from all the grove; and thou, stride on and unsheath thy steel; now is need of courage, O Aeneas, now of strong resolve.' So much she spoke, and plunged madly into the cavern's opening; he with unflinching steps keeps pace with his advancing guide.

Gods who are sovereign over souls! silent ghosts, and Chaos and Phlegethon, the wide dumb realm of night! as I have heard, so let me tell, and according to your will unfold things sunken deep under earth in gloom.

[268-303]They went darkling through the dusk beneath the solitary night, through the empty dwellings and bodiless realm of Dis; even as one walks in the forest beneath the jealous light of a doubtful moon, when Jupiter shrouds the sky in shadow and black night blots out the world. Right in front of the doorway and in the entry of the jaws of hell Grief and avenging Cares have made their bed; there dwell wan Sicknesses and gloomy Eld, and Fear, and ill-counselling Hunger, and loathly Want, shapes terrible to see; and Death and Travail, and thereby Sleep, Death's kinsman, and the Soul's guilty Joys, and death-dealing War full in the gateway, and the Furies in their iron cells, and mad Discord with bloodstained fillets enwreathing her serpent locks.

Midway an elm, shadowy and high, spreads her boughs and secular arms, where, one saith, idle Dreams dwell clustering, and cling under every leaf. And monstrous creatures besides, many and diverse, keep covert at the gates, Centaurs and twy-shaped Scyllas, and the hundredfold Briareus, and the beast of Lerna hissing horribly, and the Chimaera armed with flame, Gorgons and Harpies, and the body of the triform shade. Here Aeneas snatches at his sword in a sudden flutter of terror, and turns the naked edge on them as they come; and did not his wise fellow-passenger remind him that these lives flit thin and unessential in the hollow mask of body, he would rush on and vainly lash through phantoms with his steel.

Hence a road leads to Tartarus and Acheron's wave. Here the dreary pool swirls thick in muddy eddies and disgorges into Cocytus with its load of sand. Charon, the dread ferryman, guards these flowing streams, ragged and awful, his chin covered with untrimmed masses of hoary hair, and his glassy eyes aflame; his soiled raiment hangs knotted from his shoulders. Himself he plies the pole and trims the sails of his vessel, the steel-blue galley with freight [304-336]of dead; stricken now in years, but a god's old age is lusty and green. Hither all crowded, and rushed streaming to the bank, matrons and men and high-hearted heroes dead and done with life, boys and unwedded girls, and children laid young on the bier before their parents' eyes, multitudinous as leaves fall dropping in the forests at autumn's earliest frost, or birds swarm landward from the deep gulf, when the chill of the year routs them overseas and drives them to sunny lands. They stood pleading for the first passage across, and stretched forth passionate hands to the farther shore. But the grim sailor admits now one and now another, while some he pushes back far apart on the strand. Moved with marvel at the confused throng: 'Say, O maiden,' cries Aeneas, 'what means this flocking to the river? of what are the souls so fain? or what difference makes these retire from the banks, those go with sweeping oars over the leaden waterways?'

To him the long-lived priestess thus briefly returned: 'Seed of Anchises, most sure progeny of gods, thou seest the deep pools of Cocytus and the Stygian marsh, by whose divinity the gods fear to swear falsely. All this crowd thou discernest is helpless and unsepultured; Charon is the ferryman; they who ride on the wave found a tomb. Nor is it given to cross the awful banks and hoarse streams ere the dust hath found a resting-place. An hundred years they wander here flitting about the shore; then at last they gain entrance, and revisit the pools so sorely desired.'

Anchises' son stood still, and ponderingly stayed his footsteps, pitying at heart their cruel lot. There he discerns, mournful and unhonoured dead, Leucaspis and Orontes, captains of the Lycian squadron, whom, as they sailed together from Troy over gusty seas, the south wind overwhelmed and wrapped the waters round ship and men.

[337-369]Lo, there went by Palinurus the steersman, who of late, while he watched the stars on their Libyan passage, had slipped from the stern and fallen amid the waves. To him, when he first knew the melancholy form in that depth of shade, he thus opens speech: 'What god, O Palinurus, reft thee from us and sank thee amid the seas? forth and tell. For in this single answer Apollo deceived me, never found false before, when he prophesied thee safety on ocean and arrival on the Ausonian coasts. See, is this his promise-keeping?'

And he: 'Neither did Phoebus on his oracular seat delude thee, O prince, Anchises' son, nor did any god drown me in the sea. For while I clung to my appointed charge and governed our course, I pulled the tiller with me in my fall, and the shock as I slipped wrenched it away. By the rough seas I swear, fear for myself never wrung me so sore as for thy ship, lest, the rudder lost and the pilot struck away, those gathering waves might master it. Three wintry nights in the water the blustering south drove me over the endless sea; scarcely on the fourth dawn I descried Italy as I rose on the climbing wave. Little by little I swam shoreward; already I clung safe; but while, encumbered with my dripping raiment, I caught with crooked fingers at the jagged needles of mountain rock, the barbarous people attacked me in arms and ignorantly deemed me a prize. Now the wave holds me, and the winds toss me on the shore. By heaven's pleasant light and breezes I beseech thee, by thy father, by Iülus thy rising hope, rescue me from these distresses, O unconquered one! Either do thou, for thou canst, cast earth over me and again seek the haven of Velia; or do thou, if in any wise that may be, if in any wise the goddess who bore thee shews a way,--for not without divine will do I deem thou wilt float across these vast rivers and the Stygian pool,--lend me a pitying [370-403]hand, and bear me over the waves in thy company, that at least in death I may find a quiet resting-place.'

Thus he ended, and the soothsayer thus began: 'Whence, O Palinurus, this fierce longing of thine? Shalt thou without burial behold the Stygian waters and the awful river of the Furies? Cease to hope prayers may bend the decrees of heaven. But take my words to thy memory, for comfort in thy woeful case: far and wide shall the bordering cities be driven by celestial portents to appease thy dust; they shall rear a tomb, and pay the tomb a yearly offering, and for evermore shall the place keep Palinurus' name.' The words soothed away his distress, and for a while drove grief away from his sorrowing heart; he is glad in the land of his name.

So they complete their journey's beginning, and draw nigh the river. Just then the waterman descried them from the Stygian wave advancing through the silent woodland and turning their feet towards the bank, and opens on them in these words of challenge: 'Whoso thou art who marchest in arms towards our river, forth and say, there as thou art, why thou comest, and stay thine advance. This is the land of Shadows, of Sleep, and slumberous Night; no living body may the Stygian hull convey. Nor truly had I joy of taking Alcides on the lake for passenger, nor Theseus and Pirithoüs, born of gods though they were and unconquered in might. He laid fettering hand on the warder of Tartarus, and dragged him cowering from the throne of my lord the King; they essayed to ravish our mistress from the bridal chamber of Dis.' Thereto the Amphrysian soothsayer made brief reply: 'No such plot is here; be not moved; nor do our weapons offer violence; the huge gatekeeper may bark on for ever in his cavern and affright the bloodless ghosts; Proserpine may keep her honour within her uncle's gates. Aeneas of Troy, renowned [404-437]in goodness as in arms, goes down to meet his father in the deep shades of Erebus. If the sight of such affection stirs thee in nowise, yet this bough' (she discovers the bough hidden in her raiment) 'thou must know.' Then his heaving breast allays its anger, and he says no more; but marvelling at the awful gift, the fated rod so long unseen, he steers in his dusky vessel and draws to shore. Next he routs out the souls that sate on the long benches, and clears the thwarts, while he takes mighty Aeneas on board. The galley groaned under the weight in all her seams, and the marsh-water leaked fast in. At length prophetess and prince are landed unscathed on the ugly ooze and livid sedge.

This realm rings with the triple-throated baying of vast Cerberus, couched huge in the cavern opposite; to whom the prophetess, seeing the serpents already bristling up on his neck, throws a cake made slumberous with honey and drugged grain. He, with threefold jaws gaping in ravenous hunger, catches it when thrown, and sinks to earth with monstrous body outstretched, and sprawling huge over all his den. The warder overwhelmed, Aeneas makes entrance, and quickly issues from the bank of the irremeable wave.

Immediately wailing voices are loud in their ears, the souls of babies crying on the doorway sill, whom, torn from the breast and portionless in life's sweetness, a dark day cut off and drowned in bitter death. Hard by them are those condemned to death on false accusation. Neither indeed are these dwellings assigned without lot and judgment; Minos presides and shakes the urn; he summons a council of the silent people, and inquires of their lives and charges. Next in order have these mourners their place whose own innocent hands dealt them death, who flung away their souls in hatred of the day. How fain were they now in upper air to endure their poverty and [438-472]sore travail! It may not be; the unlovely pool locks them in her gloomy wave, and Styx pours her ninefold barrier between. And not far from here are shewn stretching on every side the Wailing Fields; so they call them by name. Here they whom pitiless love hath wasted in cruel decay hide among untrodden ways, shrouded in embosoming myrtle thickets; not death itself ends their distresses. In this region he discerns Phaedra and Procris and woeful Eriphyle, shewing on her the wounds of her merciless son, and Evadne and Pasiphaë; Laodamia goes in their company, and she who was once Caeneus and a man, now woman, and again returned by fate into her shape of old. Among whom Dido the Phoenician, fresh from her death-wound, wandered in the vast forest; by her the Trojan hero stood, and knew the dim form through the darkness, even as the moon at the month's beginning to him who sees or thinks he sees her rising through the vapours; he let tears fall, and spoke to her lovingly and sweet:

'Alas, Dido! so the news was true that reached me; thou didst perish, and the sword sealed thy doom! Ah me, was I cause of thy death? By the stars I swear, by the heavenly powers and all that is sacred beneath the earth, unwillingly, O queen, I left thy shore. But the gods, at whose orders now I pass through this shadowy place, this land of mouldering overgrowth and deep night, the gods' commands drove me forth; nor could I deem my departure would bring thee pain so great as this. Stay thy footstep, and withdraw not from our gaze. From whom fliest thou? the last speech of thee fate ordains me is this.'

In such words and with starting tears Aeneas soothed the burning and fierce-eyed soul. She turned away with looks fixed fast on the ground, stirred no more in countenance by the speech he essays than if she stood in iron flint or Marpesian stone. At length she started, and fled wrathfully [473-508]into the shadowy woodland, where Sychaeus, her ancient husband, responds to her distresses and equals her affection. Yet Aeneas, dismayed by her cruel doom, follows her far on her way with pitying tears.

Thence he pursues his appointed path. And now they trod those utmost fields where the renowned in war have their haunt apart. Here Tydeus meets him; here Parthenopaeus, glorious in arms, and the pallid phantom of Adrastus; here the Dardanians long wept on earth and fallen in the war; sighing he discerns all their long array, Glaucus and Medon and Thersilochus, the three children of Antenor, and Polyphoetes, Ceres' priest, and Idaeus yet charioted, yet grasping his arms. The souls throng round him to right and left; nor is one look enough; lingering delighted, they pace by his side and enquire wherefore he is come. But the princes of the Grecians and Agamemnon's armies, when they see him glittering in arms through the gloom, hurry terror-stricken away; some turn backward, as when of old they fled to the ships; some raise their voice faintly, and gasp out a broken ineffectual cry.

And here he saw Deïphobus son of Priam, with face cruelly torn, face and both hands, and ears lopped from his mangled temples, and nostrils maimed by a shameful wound. Barely he knew the cowering form that hid its dreadful punishment; then he springs to accost it in familiar speech:

'Deïphobus mighty in arms, seed of Teucer's royal blood, whose wantonness of vengeance was so cruel? who was allowed to use thee thus? Rumour reached me that on that last night, outwearied with endless slaughter, thou hadst sunk on the heap of mingled carnage. Then mine own hand reared an empty tomb on the Rhoetean shore, mine own voice thrice called aloud upon thy ghost. Thy name and armour keep the spot; thee, O my friend, I could not see nor lay in the native earth I left.'

[509-541]Whereto the son of Priam: 'In nothing, O my friend, wert thou wanting; thou hast paid the full to Deïphobus and the dead man's shade. But me my fate and the Laconian woman's murderous guilt thus dragged down to doom; these are the records of her leaving. For how we spent that last night in delusive gladness thou knowest, and must needs remember too well. When the fated horse leapt down on the steep towers of Troy, bearing armed infantry for the burden of its womb, she, in feigned procession, led round our Phrygian women with Bacchic cries; herself she upreared a mighty flame amid them, and called the Grecians out of the fortress height. Then was I fast in mine ill-fated bridal chamber, deep asleep and outworn with my charge, and lay overwhelmed in slumber sweet and profound and most like to easeful death. Meanwhile that crown of wives removes all the arms from my dwelling, and slips out the faithful sword from beneath my head: she calls Menelaus into the house and flings wide the gateway: be sure she hoped her lover would magnify the gift, and so she might quench the fame of her ill deeds of old. Why do I linger? They burst into the chamber, they and the Aeolid, counsellor of crime, in their company. Gods, recompense the Greeks even thus, if with righteous lips I call for vengeance! But come, tell in turn what hap hath brought thee hither yet alive. Comest thou driven on ocean wanderings, or by promptings from heaven? or what fortune keeps thee from rest, that thou shouldst draw nigh these sad sunless dwellings, this disordered land?'

In this change of talk Dawn had already crossed heaven's mid axle on her rose-charioted way; and haply had they thus drawn out all the allotted time; but the Sibyl made brief warning speech to her companion: 'Night falls, Aeneas; we waste the hours in weeping. Here is the place where the road disparts; by this that runs to the right [542-574]under great Dis' city is our path to Elysium; but the leftward wreaks vengeance on the wicked and sends them to unrelenting hell.' But Deïphobus: 'Be not angered, mighty priestess; I will depart, I will refill my place and return into darkness. Go, glory of our people, go, enjoy a fairer fate than mine.' Thus much he spoke, and on the word turned away his footsteps.