Authors: Virgil
There I gazed in reverence at the god’s temple built high
of ancient stone and made this prayer to Apollo: ‘O god of
Thymbra, grant us a home of our own. We are weary. Grant us
walls and descendants and a city that will endure. Preserve these
remnants that have escaped the Greeks and pitiless Achilles, to
be a second citadel for Troy. Whom are we to follow? Where
do you bid us go? Where are we to settle? Send us a sign, O
father, and steal into our hearts.’
90 I had scarcely spoken when everything seemed to begin to
tremble. The threshold of the doors of the god, his laurel
tree, and all the mountain round about were shaken. The sanctuary
opened and a bellowing came from the bowl on the sacred
tripod. We threw ourselves to the ground and these were the
words that came to our ears: ‘O much-enduring sons of Dardanus,
the land which first bore you from your parents’ stock
will be the land that will take you back to her rich breast. Seek
out your ancient mother. For that is where the house of Aeneas
and his sons’ sons and their sons after them will rule over the
whole earth.’
100 So spoke Phoebus Apollo, and a great joy and tumult arose
among us, all asking what city this was, where Apollo was
directing us in our wanderings, what this land was to which we
were to return. Then spoke my father Anchises who had been
turning over in his mind what he had heard from the men of
old: ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you leaders of Troy, and learn what you
have to hope for. In the middle of the ocean lies Crete, the island
of great Jupiter, where there is a Mount Ida, the cradle of our
race, and where the Cretans live in a hundred great cities, the
richest of kingdoms. If I remember rightly what I have heard,
our first father Teucer sailed from there to Asia, landing at Cape
Rhoeteum, and chose that place to found his kingdom. Troy
110 was not yet standing, nor was the citadel of Pergamum, and
they lived low down in the valleys. This is the origin of the Great
Mother of Mount Cybele, the bronze cymbals of the Corybants,
our grove of Ida, the inviolate silence of our worship and the
yoked lions that draw the chariot of the mighty goddess. Come
then, let us follow where we are led by the bidding of the gods.
Let us appease the winds and set forth for the kingdoms of
Cnossus. It is not far to sail. If only Jupiter is with us, the third
day will see our ships on the shores of Crete.’ So he spoke, and
120 made due sacrifice on the altars, a bull to Neptune and a bull to
fair Apollo, a black lamb to the storms and a white lamb to
favouring breezes.
Rumour as she flew told the tale of the great Idomeneus, how
he had been forced to leave his father’s kingdom and how the
shores of Crete were now deserted. Here was a place empty of
our enemies, their homes abandoned, waiting for us. We left the
harbour of Ortygia and flew over the sea to Naxos where
Bacchants dance on the mountain ridges and to green Donusa,
to Olearos, to Paros marble-white and the Cyclades scattered
on the face of the sea, skimming over an ocean churned up by
the coasts of a hundred islands. The sailors raised all manner of
shouts as they vied with one another in their rowing and my
comrades kept urging me to make for Crete and go back to the
130 home of their ancestors. The wind rising astern sped us on our
way and we came to shore at last on the ancient land of the
Curetes. Impatiently I set to work on walls for the city we all
longed for. I called it Pergamea and the people rejoiced in the
name. I urged them to love their hearths and homes and raise a
citadel to protect them.
Our ships were soon drawn up on dry land, our young men
were busy with marrying and putting new land under plough
and I was giving them homes and laws to live by, when suddenly
from a polluted quarter of the sky there came a cruel, suppurating
plague upon our bodies and upon the trees and crops. It was
140 a time of death. Men were losing the lives they loved or dragging
around their sickly bodies. The Dogstar burned the fields and
made them barren, the grass dried, the crops were infected and
gave us no food. My father bade me retrace our course back
across the sea to Phoebus Apollo and his oracle at Ortygia, to
pray for his gracious favour and ask when he would put an end
to our toil, where we were to look for help in our adversity and
what course we were to steer.
It was night and sleep held in its grasp all living things upon
the earth. There as I lay, the holy images of the gods, the
150 Phrygian Penates whom I had rescued from the thick of the
flames of the burning city of Troy, seemed to be standing bathed
in clear light before my eyes, where the full moon streamed in
through the unshuttered windows. At last they spoke to me and
comforted my sorrow with these words: ‘Apollo here speaks the
prophecy he will give you if you sail back to Ortygia. By his
own will he has sent us here and we stand at your door. We
followed you and your arms when Troy was burned to ashes.
With you to lead us we have sailed across unmeasured tracts of
swelling seas, and in time to come we shall raise your sons to
160 the stars and give dominion to your city. Your task is to build
great walls to guard this great inheritance. You must never flag
in the long toil of exile, and you must leave this place. Delian
Apollo did not send you to these shores. Crete is not where he
commanded you to settle. There is a place – Greeks call it
Hesperia – an ancient land, strong in arms and in the richness
of her soil. The Oenotrians lived there, but the descendants of
that race are now said to have taken the name of their king
Italus and call themselves Italians. This is our true home. This
is where Dardanus sprang from and his father Iasius from whom
our race took its beginning. Rise then with cheerful heart and
170 pass on these words to Anchises your father, and let him be in
no doubt. He must look for Corythus and the lands of Ausonia.
Jupiter forbids you the Dictaean fields of Crete.’
I was astounded by this vision and by the words of the gods.
This was no sleep. I seemed to be face to face with them and to
recognize their features and the garlands on their heads, and at
the sight my whole body was bathed in cold sweat. Leaping
from my bed, I raised my hands palms upward to the sky and
lifted up my voice in prayer, making pure offerings at the hearth.
Having performed these rites, I went with joyful heart to
180 Anchises and told him everything in order. He remembered that
our race had two founders, Dardanus and Teucer, a double
ancestry. He realized that he had fallen into a new mistake about
these ancient places. ‘O my son,’ he said, ‘you who have been
so tested by the Fates of Troy, only Cassandra made such a
prophecy to me. Now I remember how she used to foretell that
this is what Fate had in store for us and she kept talking about
Hesperia and about the kingdoms of Italy. But who would have
believed that Trojans would land on the shores of Hesperia?
Who in those days would have believed the prophecies of Cassandra?
Let us yield to Phoebus Apollo. We have been advised.
Let us follow the better course.’ We all accepted his command
190 with cries of joy and abandoned this second settlement, leaving
only a few of our number behind, and set sail upon our hollow
ships to run before the wind over the vast ocean.
When we were out at sea and no longer in sight of land, and
all around was sky and all around was sea, I saw a dark cloud
come over our heads bringing storm and black night, and the
waves shivered in the darkness. The wind soon whipped up a
great swell and the storm rose and scattered us all over the
ocean. A pall of cloud obscured the light, rain fell from a sky
we could not see, and lightning tore the clouds, flash upon flash.
200 We were thrown off course and drifted blindly in the waves.
Under that sky even Palinurus said he had lost his bearings in
mid-ocean and could not tell day from night. For three long
days, if days they were, of darkness, and three starless nights we
ran before the storm, until at last on the fourth day we saw the
first land rising before us and there opened a clear view of
distant mountains and curling smoke. Down came the sails and
we sprang to the oars. The sailors were not slow to sweep the
210 blue sea and churn it into foam. I was saved from the ocean and
the shores of the Strophades were the first to receive me.
This is the Greek name for islands in the great Ionian sea.
This is where the deadly Celaeno and the other Harpies have
lived ever since the house of Phineus was barred to them and
they were frightened away from the tables where they used to
feed. These are the vilest of all monsters. No plague or visitation
of the gods sent up from the waves of the river Styx has ever
been worse than these. They are birds with the faces of girls,
with filth oozing from their bellies, with hooked claws for hands
and faces pale with a hunger that is never satisfied.
As soon as we reached the Strophades and entered the harbour,
220 there we saw on every side rich herds of cattle on the level
ground and flocks of goats unguarded on the grass. We drew
our swords and rushed upon them, calling on the gods and on
Jupiter himself to share our plunder. Then we raised couches
along the shore of the bay and were feasting on this rich fare
when suddenly the Harpies were among us, swooping down
from the mountains with a fearful clangour of their wings,
tearing the food to pieces and polluting everything with their
foul contagion. The stench was rank, and through all this we
229 heard their hideous screeching. Once again, in a sheltered spot
far back under an overhanging rock, we relaid our tables and
relit the altar fires. Once again the noisy flock came from some
hidden roost in a different quarter of the sky and fluttered round
their prey, clutching it in their hooked claws and fouling it in
their mouths. Then it was I ordered my men to arm themselves
to make war against this fearsome tribe. They did as ordered,
hiding swords and shields here and there in the grass. And so
when Misenus in his high lookout heard the sound of them
swooping down along the whole curved shore of the bay, he
240
raised the alarm by blowing on the hollow bronze of his trumpet
and my comrades attacked. This was a new kind of battle –
swords against filthy sea birds. But these were feathers that felt
no violence and backs that could receive no wounds. They
soared in swift flight up towards the stars, leaving behind them
the half-eaten food and their filthy droppings, all but one who
remained, perched high on a pinnacle of rock (Celaeno was her
name), and from her breast there burst this dire prophecy: ‘Is it
war you offer us now, sons of Laomedon, for the slaughter of
our bullocks and the felling of our oxen? Is it your plan to make
war against the innocent Harpies and drive us from the kingdom
250 of our ancestors? Listen to what I have to say and fix it in your
minds. These words were spoken by the Almighty Father of the
Gods to Phoebus Apollo, and Phoebus Apollo spoke them to
me, and now I, the greatest of the Furies, speak them to you.
You are calling upon the winds and trying to sail to Italy. To
Italy you will go and you will be allowed to enter its harbours,
but you will not be given a city, and you will not be allowed to
build walls around it before a deadly famine has come upon
you, and the guilt of our blood drives you to gnaw round the
edges of your tables, to put them between your teeth and eat
them.’