Authors: Virgil
But at that very moment fierce Juno, wife of Jupiter, was
coming back from Argos, city of Inachus, holding her course
through the winds of the air, when from far away in the heavens,
as far as Cape Pachynus in Sicily, she caught sight of the jubilant
290 Aeneas and his Trojan fleet. When she saw that they were
already at work on their buildings, having abandoned their
ships and committed themselves to the land, she stopped in
mid-flight, pierced by bitter resentment. Then, shaking her head,
she poured out these words from the depths of her heart: ‘A
curse on that detested race of Phrygians and on their destiny, so
opposed to our own! Could they not have died on the Sigean
plains? They were defeated. Why could they not accept defeat?
Troy was set alight. Could they not have burned with it? But
no! They found a way through the press of the battle and the
thick of the flames. They must think my divine powers are
exhausted and discredited, or that I have glutted my appetite
for hatred and am now at peace. After all, when they were cast
300 out of their native land, I dared to hound them over the waves
and wherever they ran across the face of the ocean I was there
and set my face against them. I have used every resource of
sea and sky against these Trojans, and what use have the Syrtes
been to me? Or Scylla? Or the bottomless Charybdis? The
Trojans are where they wanted to be in the valley of the Thybris,
safe from the sea and safe from me. Mars had the strength to
destroy the monstrous race of Lapiths. The Father of the Gods
himself handed over the ancient kingdom of Calydon to the
wrath of Diana, and what great crime had the Lapiths or
Calydon committed? But here am I, great Juno, wife of Jupiter,
thwarted, though I have tried everything that could be tried.
310 Nothing has been too bold for me. And I am being defeated by
Aeneas! But if my own resources as a goddess are not enough, I
am not the one to hesitate. I shall appeal to whatever powers
there are. If I cannot prevail upon the gods above, I shall move
hell. I cannot keep him from his kingdom in Latium: so be it.
The decree of the Fates will stand and he will have Lavinia to
wife. But I shall be able to delay it all and drag it out, I shall be
able to cut the subjects of both those kings to pieces. This will
be the cost of the meeting between father-in-law and son-in-law,
and their peoples will bear it. Your dowry, Lavinia, will be the
blood of Rutulians and Trojans, and your matron-of-honour
will be the Goddess of War herself, Bellona. Hecuba, daughter
320 of Cisseus, was pregnant with a torch and gave birth to the
marriage torches of Paris and Helen. But she is not alone. Venus,
too, has a son, a second Paris, and torches will again be fatal,
for this second Troy.’
With these words the fearsome goddess flew down to the
earth and roused Allecto, bringer of grief, from the infernal
darkness of her home among the Furies. Dear to her heart were
the horrors of war, anger, treachery and vicious accusations.
Her own father Pluto hated his monstrous daughter. Her own
sisters in Tartarus loathed her. She had so many faces and such
fearsome shapes, and her head crawled with so many black
330 serpents. This was the creature Juno now roused to action with
these words: ‘Do this service for me, O virgin daughter of Night.
It is a task after your own heart. See to it that my fame and the
honour in which I am held are not impaired or slighted, and see
to it that Aeneas and his men do not win Latinus over with their
offers of marriage and are not allowed to settle on Italian soil.
You can take brothers who love each other and set them at each
other’s throats. You can turn a house against itself in hatred and
fill it with whips and funeral torches. You have a thousand
names and a thousand ways of causing hurt. Your heart is
teeming with them. Shake them all out. Shatter this peace they
have agreed between them and sow the seeds of recrimination
340
and war. Make their young men long for weapons, demand
them, seize them!’
In that moment Allecto, gorged with the poisons of the Gorgons,
went straight to Latium and the lofty palace of the king
of the Laurentines and settled on the quiet threshold of the
chamber of Amata. There the queen was seething with womanly
anger and disappointment at the arrival of the Trojans and the
loss of the wedding with Turnus. Taking one of the snakes from
her dark hair, the goddess Allecto threw it on Amata’s breast to
enter deep into her heart, a horror driving her to frenzy and
350 bringing down her whole house in ruin. It glided between her
dress and her smooth breasts and she felt no touch of its coils.
Without her knowing it, it breathed its viper’s breath into her
and made her mad. The serpent became a great necklace of
twisted gold round her neck. It became the trailing end of a long
ribbon twined round her hair. It slithered all over her body.
While the first infection of the liquid venom was still oozing
through all her senses and winding the fire about her bones,
before her mind in her breast had wholly consumed the fever of
it, she spoke with some gentleness, as a mother might, and wept
bitterly over the marriage of her daughter to a Phrygian: ‘Is
360 Lavinia being given in marriage to these Trojan exiles? You are
her father. Have you no feelings for your daughter or her mother
or yourself? When the first wind blows from the north, that
lying brigand will take to the high seas and carry off my daughter,
leaving me desolate. Is this not how the Phrygian shepherd
wormed his way into Sparta and carried Leda’s daughter Helen
off to the cities of Troy? Where is your sacred word of honour?
Where is the care you used to have for your kinsmen? And what
of all the pledges you have given Turnus, your own flesh and
blood? But if you are searching for a son-in-law among strangers
and that is decided, if the commands of your father Faunus
370 weigh so heavily upon you, then I maintain that all peoples who
are not subject to our sceptre are strangers. That is what the
gods are saying. Besides, if you were to trace the house of Turnus
back to its first beginnings, his forefathers were Inachus and
Acrisius of Argos and his home is in the heart of Mycenae.’
When with these words she had tried in vain to move Latinus
and seen that he held firm, when the maddening poison of the
serpent had soaked deep into her flesh and oozed all through
her body, the unhappy Amata, driven out of her mind by her
monstrous affliction, raged in a wild frenzy through the length
and breadth of the city like a spinning top flying under the
380 plaited whip when boys are engrossed in their play and make it
go in great circles round an empty hall; the whip drives it on its
curved course and the boys look down, puzzled and fascinated
as they lash the spinning boxwood into life – as swift as any top
Amata ran through the middle of the cities of the fierce Latian
people. Not content with this, she flew into the forests, pretending
that she was possessed by Bacchus, and rose to greater
impieties and greater madness by hiding her daughter in the
leafy woods, hoping to cheat the Trojans out of the marriage or
390 delay the lighting of the torches. ‘Euhoe, Bacchus!’ she screamed.
‘Only you are worthy of the virgin. For you she takes up the
soft-leaved thyrsus. Round you she moves in ritual dance. She
grows her hair to consecrate it to you.’ Rumour flew fast. The
same passion kindled in the hearts of all the mothers of Latium
and drove them out to search for new homes. They left their
houses, their throats bare and their hair streaming in the winds.
Others, clad in animal skins and carrying vine shoots sharpened
into spears, made the heavens ring with whimpering and wailing.
Amata herself, in the fever of her madness, held high a
burning torch in the midst of them and sang a wedding hymn
for Turnus and her daughter, rolling her bloodshot eyes. Suddenly
400 she gave a dreadful cry: ‘Io, Io, all you mothers of Latins
wherever you may be, if in your faithful hearts there remains
any regard for unhappy Amata, if your minds are troubled by
the thought of what is due to a mother, untie the ribbons of
your hair and take to the secret rites with me.’ This, then, was
the queen whom Allecto drove with the lash of Bacchus through
the forests and the desolate haunts of wild beasts.
After she saw that this first madness was well under way, and
that she had subverted Latinus’ plans and all his house, the
deadly goddess rose on her dark wings and flew straight to the
walls of the bold prince of the Rutulians. Danae is said to
have been driven on to this coast by southern gales and to have
410
founded this city for settlers who were subjects of her father
Acrisius, king of Argos. Our ancestors long ago gave it the name
of Ardea, and Ardea still keeps its great name though its fortune
lies in the past. Here in his lofty palace in the darkness of
midnight Turnus was lying deep in sleep. Allecto changed her
appearance. No longer wild and raving, she took on the face of
an old woman, with her brow furrowed by horrible wrinkles
and her white hair tied in a sacred ribbon and bound in a chaplet
of olive leaves. She became Calybe, the aged priestess of Juno
420 and her temple, and appeared before the eyes of young Turnus
saying: ‘Are you going to stand by and see all your labours go
for nothing, Turnus, and your crown made over to these
incomers from Troy? The king is refusing to give you the marriage
and the dowry you have earned in blood and is searching
for a stranger to inherit his kingdom. So now, Turnus, go and
expose yourself to danger! Your reward is to be laughed at. Go
and cut down these Etruscans in their battle lines! Go and cover
the Latins with the shield of peace. These are the very words
which the daughter of Saturn, All-powerful Juno, has commanded
me to say and say clearly to you as you lie in the peace
430 of night. So up with you, and with a light heart prepare to arm
your young warriors and move them from inside the city gates
and out to the fields to burn the Phrygian captains and their
painted ships where they have made themselves at home on our
lovely river. The mighty power of heaven demands it. If king
Latinus does not agree to obey this command and allow you
this marriage, he must learn, he must in the end face Turnus
with his armour on.’
Turnus was laughing as he made his reply to the priestess:
‘You are wrong. The report has not failed to reach my ears. I
know a fleet has sailed into the waters of the Thybris. Do not
invent these fears for me. Royal Juno has not entirely forgotten
440 us. It is old age and decay that cause you all this futile agitation
and distress and make you barren of truth, taking a prophetess
among warring kings and making a fool of her with false fears.
Your duty is to guard the statues of the gods and their temples.
Leave peace and war to men. War is the business of men.’
When she heard the warrior’s words Allecto burst into blazing
anger, and while he was still replying, a sudden trembling came
over his limbs and the eyes stared in his head as the Fury revealed
herself in her full size and set all her hydras hissing. As he
450 faltered and tried to go on speaking, she flung him back with
her eyes flashing fire, two snakes stood up on her head and she
cracked her whips as she spoke again from her now maddened
lips: ‘So I am old and decayed and barren of truth and old age
is taking me among warring kings and making a fool of me with
false fears! Have a look at these! I come here from the home of
the dread Furies, my sisters, and in my hands I carry war and
death.’