Authors: Virgil
Aeneas took the lead in all this work, urging on his comrades
and carrying at his side the same tools as they, but he was always
gloomily turning one thought over in his mind as he looked at
the measureless forest and he chanced to utter it in this prayer:
‘If only that golden bough would now show itself to us in this
great grove, since everything the priestess said about Misenus
190 has proved only too true.’ No sooner had he spoken than two
doves chanced to come flying out of the sky and settle there on
the grass in front of him. Then the great Aeneas knew they were
his mother’s birds and he was glad. ‘Be my guides,’ he prayed,
‘if there is a way, and direct your swift flight through the air
into the grove where the rich branch shades the fertile soil.
And you, goddess, my mother, do not fail me in my time of
uncertainty.’ So he spoke and waited to see what signs they
would give and in what direction they would move. They flew
200 and fed and flew again, always keeping in sight of those who
followed. Then, when they came to the evil-smelling throat of
Avernus, first they soared and then they swooped down through
the clear air and settled where Aeneas had prayed they would
settle, on the top of the tree that was two trees, from whose
green there gleamed the breath of gold along the branch. Just as
the mistletoe, not sown by the tree on which it grows, puts out
fresh foliage in the woods in the cold of winter and twines its
yellow fruit round slender tree trunks, so shone the golden
foliage on the dark ilex, so rustled the golden foil in the gentle
210 breeze. Aeneas seized the branch instantly. It resisted, but he
broke it off impatiently and carried it into the house of the
priestess, the Sibyl.
All this time the Trojans on the shore did not cease to weep
for Misenus and pay their last tributes to his ungrateful ashes.
First they built a huge pyre with rich pine torches and oak logs,
and wove dark-leaved branches into its sides, setting up funeral
cypresses in front of it and crowning it with his shining armour.
Some prepared hot water in cauldrons and when it was seething
over the flames, they washed and anointed the cold body and
220 raised their lament. When they had wept their fill, they placed
him on the bier and draped him in his familiar purple robes.
Others then performed their sad duty of carrying the bier and
held their torches to the bottom of the pyre with averted faces,
after the practice of their ancestors. Then all the heaped-up
offerings burned – the incense, the sacrificial food, the bowls
filled with oil. After the embers had collapsed and the flames
died down, they washed with wine the thirsty ashes that were
all that remained of him and Corynaeus collected his bones and
sealed them in a bronze casket. Three times he carried them in
230 solemn ritual round the comrades of Misenus and sprinkled the
heroes lightly with pure water from the branch of a fruitful olive
tree, uttering words of farewell as he performed the lustration.
But dutiful Aeneas raised a great mound as a tomb and set on it
the hero’s arms, the oars he rowed with and the trumpet he had
blown, there near the airy top of Mount Misenus which bears
his name now and for ever through all years to come.
As soon as this was done he hastened to carry out the commands
of the Sibyl. There was a huge, deep cave with jagged
pebbles underfoot and a gaping mouth guarded by dark woods
240 and the black waters of a lake. No bird could wing its flight over
this cave and live, so deadly was the breath that streamed out
of that black throat and up into the vault of heaven. Hence the
Greek name, ‘Aornos’, ‘the place without birds’. Here first of
all the priestess stood four black-backed bullocks and poured
wine upon their foreheads. She then plucked the bristles from
the peak of their foreheads between their horns to lay upon the
altar fires as a first offering and lifted up her voice to call on
Hecate, mighty in the sky and mighty in Erebus. Attendants put
250 the knife to the throat and caught the warm blood in bowls.
Aeneas himself took his sword and sacrificed a black-fleeced
lamb to Night, the mother of the Furies, and her sister Earth,
and to Proserpina a barren cow. Then he set up a night altar for
the worship of the Stygian king and laid whole carcasses of bulls
on its flames and poured rich oil on the burning entrails. Then
suddenly, just before the sun had crossed his threshold in the
sky and begun to rise, the earth bellowed underfoot, the wooded
ridges quaked and dogs could be heard howling in the darkness.
It was the arrival of the goddess. ‘Stand apart, all you who are
unsanctified,’ cried the priestess. ‘Stand well apart. The whole
260 grove must be free of your presence. You, Aeneas, must enter
upon your journey. Draw your sword from the sheath. Now
you need your courage. Now let your heart be strong.’ With
these words she moved in a trance into the open cave and step
for step Aeneas strode fearlessly along behind her.
You gods who rule the world of the spirits, you silent shades,
and Chaos, and Phlegethon, you dark and silent wastes, let it be
right for me to tell what I have been told, let it be with your
divine blessing that I reveal what is hidden deep in the mists
beneath the earth.
They walked in the darkness of that lonely night with shadows
all about them, through the empty halls of Dis and his desolate
270 kingdom, as men walk in a wood by the sinister light of a fitful
moon when Jupiter has buried the sky in shade and black night
has robbed all things of their colour. Before the entrance hall of
Orcus, in the very throat of hell, Grief and Revenge have made
their beds and Old Age lives there in despair, with white-faced
Diseases and Fear and Hunger, corrupter of men, and squalid
Poverty, things dreadful to look upon, and Death and Drudgery
besides. Then there are Sleep, Death’s sister, perverted Pleasures,
280
murderous War astride the threshold, the iron chambers of the
Furies and raving Discord with blood-soaked ribbons binding
her viperous hair. In the middle a huge dark elm spreads out its
ancient arms, the resting-place, so they say, of flocks of idle
dreams, one clinging under every leaf. Here too are all manner
of monstrous beasts, Centaurs stabling inside the gate, Scyllas –
half-dogs, half-women – Briareus with his hundred heads, the
Hydra of Lerna hissing fiercely, the Chimaera armed in fire,
290 Gorgons and Harpies and the triple phantom of Geryon. Now
Aeneas drew his sword in sudden alarm to meet them with
naked steel as they came at him, and if his wise companion had
not warned him that this was the fluttering of disembodied
spirits, a mere semblance of living substance, he would have
rushed upon them and parted empty shadows with steel.
Here begins the road that leads to the rolling waters of
Acheron, the river of Tartarus. Here is a vast quagmire of boiling
whirlpools which belches sand and slime into Cocytus, and
these are the rivers and waters guarded by the terrible Charon
300 in his filthy rags. On his chin there grows a thick grey beard,
never trimmed. His glaring eyes are lit with fire and a foul cloak
hangs from a knot at his shoulder. With his own hands he plies
the pole and sees to the sails as he ferries the dead in a boat the
colour of burnt iron. He is no longer young but, being a god,
enjoys rude strength and a green old age. The whole throng of
the dead was rushing to this part of the bank, mothers, men,
great-hearted heroes whose lives were ended, boys, unmarried
310 girls and young men laid on the pyre before the faces of their
parents, as many as are the leaves that fall in the forest at the
first chill of autumn, as many as the birds that flock to land
from deep ocean when the cold season of the year drives them
over the sea to lands bathed in sun. There they stood begging to
be allowed to be the first to cross and stretching out their arms
in longing for the further shore. But the grim boatman takes
some here and some there, and others he pushes away far back
from the sandy shore.
Aeneas, amazed and distressed by all this tumult, cried out:
‘Tell me, virgin priestess, what is the meaning of this crowding
320 to the river? What do the spirits want? Why are some pushed
away from the bank while others sweep the livid water with
their oars?’ The aged Sibyl made this brief reply: ‘Son of
Anchises, beyond all doubt the offspring of the gods, what you
are seeing is the deep pools of the Cocytus and the swamp of
the Styx, by whose divine power the gods are afraid to swear
and lie. The throng you see on this side are the helpless souls of
the unburied. The ferryman there is Charon. Those sailing the
waters of the Styx have all been buried. No man may be ferried
from fearful bank to fearful bank of this roaring current until
his bones are laid to rest. Instead they wander for a hundred
330 years, fluttering round these shores until they are at last allowed
to return to the pools they have so longed for.’ The son of
Anchises checked his stride and stood stock still with many
thoughts coursing through his mind as he pitied their cruel fate,
when there among the sufferers, lacking all honour in death, he
caught sight of Leucaspis, and Orontes, the captain of the Lycian
fleet, men who had started with him from Troy, sailed the
wind-torn seas and been overwhelmed by gales from the south
that rolled them in the ocean, ships and crews.
Next he saw coming towards him his helmsman Palinurus
who had fallen from the ship’s stern and plunged into the sea
while watching the stars on the recent crossing from Libya.
340 Aeneas recognized this sorrowing figure with difficulty in the
dark shadow and was the first to speak: ‘What god was it,
Palinurus, that took you from us and drowned you in mid-ocean?
Come tell me, for this is the one response of Apollo
that has misled me. I have never found him false before. He
prophesied that you would be safe upon the sea and would
reach the boundaries of Ausonia. Is this how he has kept his
promise?’ ‘O great leader, son of Anchises,’ replied Palinurus,
‘the bowl on the tripod of Apollo has not deceived you and no
god drowned me in the sea. While I was holding course and
350 gripping the tiller which it was my charge to guard, it was
broken off by some mighty force and I dragged it down with me
as I fell. I swear by the wild sea that I felt no fear for myself to
equal my fear that your ship might come to grief, stripped of its
steering and with its pilot pitched into the sea and that great
swell rising. Three long winter nights the wind blew hard from
the south and carried me over seas I could not measure, till,
when light came on the fourth day, and a wave lifted me to its
crest, I could just make out the land of Italy. I swam slowly to
shore and was on the point of reaching safety when a tribe of
ruffians set upon me with their knives, weighed down as I was
360 by my wet clothes and clinging by my finger tips to the jagged
rocks at the foot of a cliff. Knowing nothing of me they made
me their plunder, and now I am at the mercy of the winds, and
the waves are turning my body over at the water’s edge. But I
beg of you, by the joyous light and winds of heaven, by your
father, by your hopes of Iulus as he grows to manhood, you
who have never known defeat, rescue me from this anguish.
Either throw some earth on my body – you can do that. Just
steer back to the harbours of Velia. Or else if there is a way and
the goddess who gave you life shows it to you – for I do not
believe you are preparing to sail these great rivers and the swamp
370 of the Styx unless the blessing of the gods is with you – take pity
on me, give me your right hand, take me aboard and carry me
with you over the waves, so that in death at least I can be at
peace in a place of quiet.’ These were the words of Palinurus
and this was the reply of the Sibyl: ‘How did you conceive this
monstrous desire, Palinurus? How can you, who are unburied,
hope to set eyes on the river Styx and the pitiless waters of the
Furies? How can you come near the bank unbidden? You must
cease to hope that the Fates of the gods can be altered by prayers.
But hear my words, remember them and find comfort for your
sad case. The people who live far and wide in all their cities
round the place where you died, will be driven by signs from
380 heaven to consecrate your bones. They will raise a burial mound
for you and to that mound will pay their annual tribute and the
place will bear the name of Palinurus for all time to come.’ At
these words his sorrows were removed and the grief was driven
from that sad heart for a short time. He rejoiced in the land that
was to bear his name.