Authors: Virgil
‘But who is this at a distance resplendent in his crown of olive
and carrying holy emblems? I know that white hair and beard.
810 This is the man who will first found our city on laws, the Roman
king called from the little town of Cures in the poor land of the
Sabines into a mighty empire. Hard on his heels will come Tullus
to shatter the leisure of his native land and rouse to battle men
that have settled into idleness and armies that have lost the habit
of triumph. Next to him, and more boastful, comes Ancus, too
fond even now of the breath of popular favour. Do you wish to
see now the Tarquin kings, the proud spirit of avenging Brutus
820 and the rods of office he will retrieve? He will be the first to be
given authority as consul and the stern axes of that office. When
his sons raise again the standards of war, it is their own father
that will call them to account in the glorious name of liberty.
He is not favoured by Fortune, however future ages may judge
these actions – love of his country will prevail with him and his
limitless desire for glory. Look too at the Decii and the Drusi
over there and cruel Torquatus with his axe and Camillus carrying
back the standards. Those two spirits you see gleaming there
in their well-matched armour are in harmony now while they
are buried in night, but if once they reach the light of life, what
a terrible war they will stir up between them! What battles!
830 What carnage when the father-in-law swoops from the ramparts
of the Alps and his citadel of Monaco and his son-in-law leads
against him the embattled armies of the East! O my sons, do not
harden your hearts to such wars. Do not turn your strong hands
against the flesh of your motherland. You who are sprung from
Olympus, you must be the first to show clemency. Throw down
your weapons. O blood of my blood! Here is the man who will
triumph over Corinth, slaughtering the men of Achaea, and will
ride his chariot in triumph to the hill of the Capitol. Here is
the man who will raze Argos and Agamemnon’s Mycenae to
the ground, and will kill Perseus the Aeacid, descendant of the
840 mighty warrior Achilles, avenging his Trojan ancestors and
the violation of the shrine of Minerva. Who would leave you
unmentioned, great Cato? Or you, Cossus? Who would be
without the Gracchi? Or the two Scipios, both of them thunderbolts
of war, the bane of Libya? Or Fabricius, who will find
power in poverty? Or you, Serranus, sowing your seed in the
furrow? Where are you rushing that weary spirit along to, you
Fabii? You there are the great Fabius Maximus, the one man
who restores the state by delaying. Others, I do not doubt it,
will beat bronze into figures that breathe more softly. Others
will draw living likenesses out of marble. Others will plead cases
850 better or describe with their rod the courses of the stars across
the sky and predict their risings. Your task, Roman, and do not
forget it, will be to govern the peoples of the world in your
empire. These will be your arts – and to impose a settled pattern
upon peace, to pardon the defeated and war down the proud.’
Aeneas and the Sibyl wondered at what they heard, and Father
Anchises continued: ‘Look there at Marcellus marching in glory
in spoils torn from the enemy commander he will fight and
defeat. There he is, victorious and towering above all others.
This is the man who will ride into battle and quell a great
uprising, steadying the ranks of Rome and laying low the
Carthaginian and the rebellious Gaul. He will be the third to
dedicate the supreme spoils to Father Quirinus.’
860 At this Aeneas addressed his father, for he saw marching with
Marcellus a young man, noble in appearance and in gleaming
armour, but his brow was dark and his eyes downcast. ‘Who is
that, father, marching at the side of Marcellus? Is it one of his
sons or one of the great line of his descendants? What a stir his
escort makes! And himself, what a presence! But round his head
there hovers a shadow dark as night.’
Then his father Anchises began to speak through his tears: ‘O
my son, do not ask. This is the greatest grief that you and yours
870 will ever suffer. Fate will just show him to the earth – no more.
The gods in heaven have judged that the Roman race would
become too powerful if this gift were theirs to keep. What a
noise of the mourning of men will come from the Field of Mars
to Mars’ great city. What a corteège will Tiber see as he glides
past the new Mausoleum on his shore! No son of Troy will ever
so raise the hopes of his Latin ancestors, nor will the land of
Romulus so pride itself on any of its young. Alas for his goodness!
Alas for his old-fashioned truthfulness and that right hand
880 undefeated in war! No enemies could ever have come against
him in war and lived, whether he was armed to fight on foot or
spurring the flanks of his foaming warhorse. Oh the pity of it!
If only you could break the harsh laws of Fate! You will be
Marcellus. Give lilies from full hands. Leave me to scatter red
roses. These at least I can heap up for the spirit of my descendant
and perform the rite although it will achieve nothing.’
So did they wander all over the broad fields of air and saw all
there was to see, and after Anchises had shown each and every
sight to his son and kindled in his mind a love for the glory that
890 was to come, he told them then of the wars he would in due
course have to fight and of the Laurentine peoples, of the city of
Latinus and how he could avoid or endure all the trials that lay
before him.
There are two gates of sleep: one is called the Gate of Horn
and it is an easy exit for true shades; the other is made all in
gleaming white ivory, but through it the powers of the underworld
send false dreams up towards the heavens. There on that
night did Anchises walk with his son and with the Sibyl and
spoke such words to them as he sent them on their journey
through the Gate of Ivory.
900 Aeneas made his way back to his ships and his comrades, then
steered a straight course to the harbour of Caieta. The anchors
were thrown from the prows and the ships stood along the
shore.
1
You too, Caieta, nurse of Aeneas, have given by your death
eternal fame to our shores; the honour paid you there even now
protects your resting-place, and your name marks the place
where your bones lie in great Hesperia, if that glory is of any
value.
Good Aeneas duly performed the funeral rites and heaped up
a barrow for the tomb, and when there was calm on the high
seas, he set sail and left the port behind him. A fair breeze kept
blowing as night came on, the white moon lit their course and
10 the sea shone in its shimmering rays. Keeping close inshore, they
skirted the land where Circe, the daughter of the Sun, lives
among her riches. There she sets the untrodden groves ringing
with never-ending singing and burns the fragrant cedar wood
in her proud palace to lighten the darkness of the night as her
sounding shuttle runs across the delicate warp. From her palace
could be heard growls of anger from lions fretting at their chains
and roaring late into the night, the raging of bristling boars and
penned bears and howling from huge creatures in the shape of
20 wolves. These had all been men, but with her irresistible herbs
the savage goddess had given them the faces and hides of wild
beasts. To protect the devout Trojans from suffering these monstrous
changes, Neptune kept them from sailing into the harbour
or coming near that deadly shore. He filled their sails with
favouring winds and took them past the boiling breakers to
safety.
And now the waves were beginning to be tinged with red
from the rays of the sun and Aurora on her rosy chariot glowed
in gold from the heights of heaven, when of a sudden the wind
fell, every breath was still and the oars toiled in a sluggish sea.
30 Here it was that Aeneas, still well off shore, sighted a great forest
and the river Tiber in all its beauty bursting through it into the
sea with its racing waves and their burden of yellow sand.
Around it and above it all manner of birds that haunted the
banks and bed of the river were flying through the trees and
sweetening the air with their singing. Aeneas gave the order to
change course and turn the prows to the land, and he came into
the dark river rejoicing.
40 Come now, Erato, and I shall tell of the kings of ancient
Latium, of its history, of the state of this land when first the
army of strangers beached their ships on the shores of Ausonia.
I shall recall too, the cause of the first battle – come, goddess,
come and instruct your prophet. I shall speak of fearsome fighting,
I shall speak of wars and of kings driven into the ways of
death by their pride of spirit, of a band of fighting men from
Etruria and the whole land of Hesperia under arms. For me this
is the birth of a higher order of things. This is a greater work I
now set in motion.
King Latinus was by this time an old man and he had reigned
over the countryside and the cities for many peaceful years. We
are told that he was the son of Faunus and the Laurentine nymph
Marica. The father of Faunus was Picus, and the father claimed
by Picus was Saturn. Saturn then was the first founder of the
50 line. By divine Fate Latinus had no male offspring. His son had
been snatched from him as he was rising into the first bloom of
his youth. An only daughter tended his home and preserved
the succession for this great palace. She was now grown to
womanhood and at the age for marriage and many were seeking
her hand from great Latium and the whole of Ausonia, Turnus
the handsomest of them all, his claim supported by the long line
of his forebears. The queen Amata longed above all things to
see him married to her daughter, but many frightening portents
from the gods forbade it.
60 Deep in the innermost courtyard of the palace there stood a
laurel tree. Its foliage was sacred and it had been preserved and
held in awe for many years, ever since Father Latinus himself
had found it, so the story went, when he was building his first
citadel, and dedicated it to Phoebus Apollo, naming the settlers
after it, the Laurentines. To this tree there came by some miracle
a cloud of bees, buzzing loudly as they floated through the liquid
air till suddenly they formed a swarm and settled on its very top,
hanging there from a leafy branch with their feet intertwined. A
prophet thus interpreted: ‘What we see is a stranger arriving,
70 and an army coming from the same direction, making for the
same place and gaining mastery over the heights of the citadel.’
Then again when Lavinia was standing by her father’s side
tending the altar with her chaste torches, another fearful sight
was seen. Her long hair caught fire and all its adornment was
crackling in the flames. The princess’s hair was blazing, her
crown with all its lovely jewels was blazing, and soon she was
wrapped in smoke and a yellow glare, and scattering fire all
over the palace. The horror and miracle of it were on everyone’s
80 lips, and it was prophesied that her own fate and fame would
be bright, but that a great war would come upon the people.
Troubled by such portents, the king consulted the oracle of
his prophetic father Faunus, visiting the grove under Mount
Albunea, a huge forest sounding with the waters of its sacred
fountain and breathing thick clouds of sulphurous vapour. Here
the Italian tribes and the whole land of Oenotria came to consult
the oracle in their times of doubt. Here the priest brought his
offerings, and when he lay down to sleep in the silence of the
night on a bed of the fleeces of slaughtered sheep, he would see
90 many strange fleeting visions, hear all manner of voices, enjoy
the converse of the gods and speak to Acheron in the depths of
Avernus. Here too on that day Father Latinus himself came to
consult the oracle, and after sacrificing a hundred unshorn
yearling sheep as ritual prescribes, he was lying propped on a
bed of their hides and fleeces, when suddenly a voice was heard
from the depths of the forest: ‘Do not seek to join your daughter
in marriage to a Latin. O my son, do not place your trust in
any union that lies to hand. Strangers will come to be your
sons-in-law and by their blood to raise our name to the stars.
100 The descendants of that stock will see the whole world turning
under their feet and guided by their will, from where the rising
Sun looks down on the streams of Ocean to where he sees them
as he sets.’ This was the reply of his father Faunus, the warning
that came in the silence of the night. Latinus did not keep it
locked in his heart, and Rumour as she flew had already spread
it far and wide through the cities of Ausonia when the young
warriors from Laomedon’s Troy tied up their ships to the grassy
ramparts of the river bank.