Authors: Virgil
He had spoken. The noise of the fires was growing louder and
louder through the city and the tide of flame was rolling nearer.
‘Come then, dear father, up on my back. I shall take you on my
710 shoulders. Your weight will be nothing to me. Whatever may
come, danger or safety, it will be the same for both of us. Young
Iulus can walk by my side and my wife can follow in my footsteps
at a distance. And you, the slaves of our house, must pay
attention to what I am saying. As you leave the city there is a
mound with a lonely old temple of Ceres. Near it is an ancient
cypress preserved and revered for many long years by our ancestors.
We shall go to that one place by different routes. You,
father, take in your arms the sacraments and the ancestral gods
of our home. I am fresh from all the fighting and killing and it
720 is not right for me to touch them till I have washed in a running
stream.’
When I had finished speaking, I put on a tawny lion’s skin as
a covering for my neck and the breadth of my shoulders and
then I bowed down and took up my burden. Little Iulus twined
his fingers in my right hand and kept up with me with his short
steps. Creusa walked behind us and we moved along, keeping
to the shadows. This was the man who had been unmoved by
all the missiles of the Greeks and had long faced their serried
ranks without a tremor, but now every breath of wind frightened
me and I started at every sound, so anxious was I, so afraid both
for the man I carried and for the child at my side.
I was now coming near the gates and it seemed that our
730 journey was nearly over and we had escaped, when I suddenly
thought I heard the sound of many marching feet and my father
looking out through the darkness cried: ‘Run, my son, run. They
are coming this way. I can see the flames reflected on their shields
and the bronze glinting.’ At that moment some hostile power
confused me and robbed me of my wits. I ran where there was
no road, leaving the familiar area of the streets. Then it was that
my wife Creusa was torn from me by the cruelty of Fate –
740 whether she stopped or lost her way or sat down exhausted, no
one can tell. I never saw her again. Nor did I look behind me or
think of her or realize that she was lost till we arrived at the
mound and the ancient sanctuary of Ceres. But when at last
everyone had gathered there, she was the only one who was not
with us and neither her companions nor her son nor her husband
knew how she had been lost. I stormed and raged and blamed
every god and man that ever was. This was the cruellest thing I
saw in all the sack of the city. Leaving Ascanius, my father and
the gods of Troy with my companions and hiding them all away
in a winding valley, I put on my flashing armour and went back
750 to the city, resolved to face all its dangers again, to go back
through the whole of Troy and once more put my life at peril.
First I went back to the walls and the dark gateway by which I
had left the city. I found my route and retraced it, gazing all
around me through the darkness. Horror was everywhere and
the very silence chilled the blood. Then I went on to our house,
thinking it was possible, just possible, that she had gone there.
The Greeks had come flooding in and were everywhere. Consuming
flames, fanned by the winds, were soon rolling to the
760 top of the roof and leaping above it as their hot breath raged at
the sky. From there I went on to Priam’s palace and the citadel
where Phoenix and the terrible Ulixes, who had been chosen to
keep watch, were already guarding the loot in the empty porticos
of the shrine of Juno. Here Greeks were piling up the treasures
of Troy, pillaged from all the burning temples – the tables of the
gods, mixing bowls of solid gold and all the robes they had
plundered. Children and frightened mothers stood around in
long lines. I even dared to call her name into the darkness, filling
770
the streets with my shouts. Grief-stricken, I called her name
‘Creusa! Creusa!’ again and again, but there was no answer. I
would not give up the search but was still rushing around the
houses of the city when her likeness appeared in sorrow before
my eyes, her very ghost, but larger than she was in life. I was
paralysed. My hair stood on end. My voice stuck in my throat.
Then she spoke to me and comforted my sorrow with these
words: ‘O husband that I love, why do you choose to give
yourself to such wild grief? These things do not happen without
the approval of the gods. It is not their will that Creusa should
go with you when you leave this place. The King of High
780 Olympus does not allow it. Before you lies a long exile and a
vast expanse of sea to plough before you come to the land of
Hesperia where the Lydian river Thybris flows with smooth
advance through a rich land of brave warriors. There prosperity
is waiting for you, and a kingdom and a royal bride. Wipe away
the tears you are shedding for Creusa whom you loved. I shall
not have to see the proud palaces of the Myrmidons and Dolopians.
I am a daughter of Dardanus and my husband was the son
of Venus, and I shall never go to be a slave to any matron of
Greece. The Great Mother of the Gods keeps me here in this
land of Troy. Now fare you well. Do not fail in your love for
our son.’
790 She spoke and faded into the insubstantial air, leaving me
there in tears and longing to reply. Three times I tried to put my
arms around her neck. Three times her phantom melted in my
arms, as weightless as the wind, as light as the flight of sleep.
By now the night was over. I returned to my comrades without
her. Here I found that new companions had streamed in and I
was amazed at the numbers of them, men and women, an army
collected for exile, a pitiable crowd. They had come from all
directions ready to follow me with all their resources and all
800 their hearts to whatever land I should wish to lead them. And
now Lucifer was rising above the ridges of Mount Ida and
bringing on the day. The Greeks were on guard at the gates and
there was no hope of helping the city. I yielded. I lifted up my
father and set out for the mountains.
When the gods had seen fit to lay low the power of Asia and the
innocent people of Priam, when proud Ilium had fallen and all
Neptune’s Troy lay smoking on the ground, we were driven by
signs from heaven into distant exile to look for a home in some
deserted land. There, hard by Antandros under the Phrygian
mountain range of Ida, we were mustering men and building a
fleet without knowing where the Fates were leading us or where
we would be allowed to settle. The summer had barely started
and Father Anchises was bidding us hoist sail and put ourselves
10 in the hands of the Fates. I wept as I left the shores of my native
land and her harbours and the plains where once had stood the
city of Troy. I was an exile taking to the high seas with my
comrades and my son, with the gods of our house and the great
gods of our people.
At some distance from Troy lay the land of Mars, a land
of vast plains farmed by Thracians, once ruled by the savage
Lycurgus. This people had ancient ties with Troy, while the
fortunes of Troy remained, and our household gods were linked
in alliance. Here I sailed, and using the name Aeneadae, formed
after my own, I laid out my first walls on the curved shore. But
the Fates frowned on these beginnings. I was worshipping my
20 mother Venus, the daughter of Dione, and the gods who preside
over new undertakings, and sacrificing a gleaming white bull to
the Most High King of the Heavenly Gods. Close by there
happened to be a mound on top of which there grew a thicket
bristling with spears of cornel and myrtle wood. I had gone
there and was beginning to pull green shoots out of the ground
to cover the altar with leafy branches, when I saw a strange and
horrible sight. As soon as I broke the roots of a tree and was
pulling it out of the ground dark gouts of blood dripped from it
30 and stained the earth with gore. The horror of it chiled me to
the bone, I trembled and my blood congealed with fear.
I went on, pulling up more tough shoots from another tree,
searching for the cause, however deep it might lie, and the dark
blood flowed from the bark of this second tree. With my mind
in turmoil I began to pray to the country nymphs and to Father
Mars Gradivus who rules over the fields of the Getae, begging
them to turn what I was seeing to good and to make the omen
blessed, but after I had set about the spear-like shoots of a third
shrub with greater vigour and was on my knees struggling to
40 free it from the sandy soil (shall I speak? Or shall I be silent?) I
heard a heart-rending groan emerge from deep in the mound
and a voice rose into the air: ‘Why do you tear my poor flesh,
Aeneas?’ it cried. ‘Take pity now on the man who is buried here
and do not pollute your righteous hands. I am no stranger to
you. It was Troy that bore me and this is no tree that is oozing
blood. Escape, I beg you, from these cruel shores, from this land
of greed. It is Polydorus that speaks. This is where I was struck
down and an iron crop of weapons covered my body. Their
sharp points have rooted and grown in my flesh.’ At this, fear
and doubt oppressed me. My hair stood on end with horror and
the voice stuck in my throat.
50 This was the Polydorus the doomed Priam had once sent in
secret with a great mass of gold, to be brought up by the king
of Thrace, when at last he was losing faith in the arms of
Troy and saw his city surrounded by besiegers. When Fortune
deserted the Trojans and their wealth was in ruins, the king
went over to the side of the victors and joined the armies
of Agamemnon. Breaking all the laws of God, he murdered
Polydorus and seized the gold. Greed for gold is a curse. There
is nothing to which it does not drive the minds of men. When
the fear had left my bones, I told the chosen leaders of the people
and first of all my father about this portent sent by the gods and
60 asked what should be done. They were of one mind. We must
leave this accursed land where the laws of hospitality had been
violated and let our ships run before the wind. So we gave
Polydorus a second burial, heaping the earth high in a mound
and raising to his shade an altar dark with funeral wreaths and
black cypress, while the women of Troy stood all around with
their hair unbound in mourning. With offerings of foaming cups
of warm milk and bowls of sacrificial blood we committed his
soul to the grave and lifted up our voices to call his name for
the last time.
Then as soon as we could trust ourselves to the waves, when
70 the winds had calmed the swell and a gentle breeze was rattling
the rigging to call us out to sea, my comrades drew the ships
down to the water and crowded the shore. We sailed out of the
harbour, and the land and its cities soon fell away behind us. In
the middle of the ocean lies a beautiful island dear to Aegean
Neptune and the mother of the Nereids. It used to float from
shore to shore until in gratitude the Archer God Apollo moored
it to Gyaros and high Myconos, allowing it to stand firm and
be inhabited and mock the winds. Here I sailed, and in this
peaceful haven of Delos we came safe to land, weary from the
sea. We went ashore and were admiring Apollo’s city when its
80 king Anius, king of men and priest of the god, came to meet
us, his forehead garlanded with ribbons and the sacred laurel.
Recognizing Anchises as an old friend, he gave us his hand in
hospitality and we entered his house.