Authors: Virgil
I pray to you, Calliope, and to your sister Muses, to breathe
upon me as I sing of the death and destruction wrought by the
sword of Turnus and to tell who sent down to Orcus each
warrior that died. Unroll with me now the mighty scroll of war.
530 There was a tower, well placed and of commanding height,
with high connecting bridges. The Latins were trying to take it
by main force, striving with all their powers to bring it down,
while the Trojans packed inside tried to defend it by throwing
rocks and sending a hail of weapons through the loopholes.
Turnus, who was leading the attack, hurled a blazing torch
which set fire to the side of the tower. Fanned by the wind, the
flames took hold of the planking and ate into the upright posts.
Inside all was confusion, terror and desperate attempts to escape
the heat. As everyone crowded together to take refuge on the
540 side away from the flames, all at once the whole sky seemed to
thunder and the tower toppled over with the weight, and men
plunged to the ground in their death throes with the massive
fabric following them down, impaling them on their own
weapons and driving the broken timbers through their breasts.
Only Helenor and Lycus were able to escape. Helenor was a
young man, son of the king of Maeonia and the slave girl
Licymnia, who had reared him in secret and sent him to Troy
under arms although this had been forbidden. His equipment
was light, a sword with no scabbard and an inglorious shield of
plain white, and he found himself caught in the middle of the
550 thousands of men who fought with Turnus, looking at the battle
lines of the Latins drawn up on all sides of him, like a wild beast
trapped in a dense ring of hunters; it rages against the steel, and
with full understanding it hurls itself to its death by springing
on to the hunting spears – just so did young Helenor leap into
the middle of his enemies, rushing to his death where he saw the
steel was thickest. But Lycus was far fleeter of foot. He ran the
gauntlet of the enemy and their weapons as far as the wall.
There as he was trying to take hold of the top of the outworks
and reach the outstretched hands of his comrades, Turnus, who
560 had been pursuing him with his javelin, came to gloat over him:
‘You fool! Did you think you could escape my hands?’ and even
as he shouted, he seized hold of him where he hung and tore
him down, taking a great section of the wall with him, like the
eagle, the armour-bearer of Jupiter, seizing in his hooked talons
a hare or the white body of a swan and soaring into the air with
it; or like the wolf of Mars tearing a lamb out of the sheep pen,
and loud and long will be the bleating of its mother, as she looks
for it.
The shouting rose on every side. The attackers levelled the
rampart, filled in the ditch and tossed blazing torches high on
570 to the roofs. Lucetius, who was coming to set fire to a gate, was
laid low by a rock thrown by Ilioneus, a huge block torn out of
a mountain. Liger felled Emathion with a javelin; Asilas brought
down Corynaeus with an arrow he never saw in all its long flight.
Caeneus slew Ortygius; Turnus slew the victorious Caeneus;
Turnus also slew Itys and Clonius, Dioxippus and Promolus,
then Sagaris and Idas, who was standing out in front of the
highest towers. Privernus was killed by Capys: Themillas had
first grazed him with a light spear and the fool had thrown his
shield away to put his hand to the wound. So the winged arrow
580 flew and, plunging deep into his left side, it broke the passages
of his life’s breath with a mortal wound. The son of Arcens
stood there in gorgeous armour, resplendent in his embroidered
cloak and Spanish purple, a noble sight to see. He had been sent
to war by his father, who had reared him in his mother’s grove
on the banks of the river Symaethus where the people of Sicily
made their offerings at the rich altar of the mild god Palicius.
Mezentius laid down his spears. Then, whirling his sling three
times round his head, he shot the hissing bolt and struck the son
of Arcens full in the middle of the forehead. Melting in its flight,
the lead bullet split his skull and stretched him full length on
the sand.
590 It was then, men say, that Ascanius first shot in war the swift
arrow which till this time had only driven wild animals to terror
and flight, and his was the hand that laid the brave Numanus
low. This was a warrior whose family name was Remulus, and
not long before he had been joined in marriage to the younger
sister of Turnus. His heart was swollen with pride at the royal
rank he had newly acquired, and he stepped out in front of the
battle line, swaggering and shouting abuse, some fit and some
unfit to be repeated: ‘You have been sacked twice already, you
Phrygians! Are you not ashamed to be cooped up again in a
siege behind ramparts with only a wall between yourselves and
600 death! Are you the men who came here to fight us for our brides?
Is it some god that has driven you to Italy? Or some madness?
You will not find here the sons of Atreus or the fictions and fine
words of Ulixes! We are men of a hardy stock. We take our
babies down to the river the moment they are born and harden
them in the icy water. Our boys stay awake all night and weary
the woods with their hunting. For games they ride horses and
stretch the bow to the arrow. Our men endure hard labour and
live spare, subduing the land with the mattock and shaking the
towns of their enemies with war. We are worn hard by iron all
610 our lives and turn our spears to goad our oxen. There is no
sluggish old age for us to impair the strength and vigour of our
minds. We crush our grey hair into the helmet, and our delight
is always to bring home new plunder and live off what we take.
But you like your clothes dyed with yellow saffron and the
bright juice of the purple fish. Your delight is in dancing and
idleness. You have sleeves to your tunics and ribbons to keep
your bonnets on. You are Phrygian women, not Phrygian men!
Away with you over the heights of Mount Dindymus, where
you can hear your favourite tunes on the double pipe. The
tambourines are calling you and the boxwood fifes of the Berecyntian
620 Mother of Mount Ida. Leave weapons to the men. Make
way for the iron of our swords.’
So he hurled his abuse and threats till Ascanius could endure
it no longer. Turning to face him, he drew his bow and stretched
the horsegut string, and as he stood there with his arms straining
wide apart, he prayed first to Jupiter with this vow: ‘All powerful
Jupiter, bless now this my first trial of arms, and with
my own hands I shall bring yearly offerings to your temple and
set before your altar a milk-white bullock, with gilded horns,
holding its head as high as its mother’s, already butting with its
630 horns and kicking up the sand with its hooves.’ The Father
heard and thundered on the left from a clear sky, and the sound
of the death-dealing bow of Ascanius mingled with the sound
of the thunder. The arrow had been drawn back, and it flew
with a fearful hiss straight through the head of Remulus, its iron
point piercing his hollow temples. ‘Go, Remulus!’ he cried, ‘and
mock brave men with proud words! This is the reply to the
Rutulians from the twice-sacked Phrygians!’ Ascanius said no
more than this, but the Trojans followed it with a shout of joy,
their spirits raised to the skies.
At that moment Apollo, the youthful god, whose hair is never
cut, chanced to be seated on a cloud, looking down from the
640 expanse of heaven on the armies and cities of Italy, and he
addressed these words to the victorious Iulus: ‘You have become
a man, young Iulus, and we salute you! This is the way that
leads to the stars. You are born of the gods and will live to be
the father of gods. Justice demands that all the wars that Fate
will bring will come to an end under the offspring of Assaracus.
Troy is not large enough for you.’ At these words he plunged
down from the heights of heaven, parting the breathing winds,
and made for Ascanius, taking on the features of old Butes.
Butes had once been armour-bearer to the Dardan Anchises and
the trusted guard of his door, and Aeneas had then appointed
him as companion to his son Ascanius. This was the guise in
650 which Apollo came, the old man Butes to the life – voice,
colouring, white hair, weapons grimly clanking – and these were
the words he spoke to Iulus in the flush of his victory: ‘Let that
be enough, son of Aeneas. Numanus has fallen to your arms
and you are unhurt. Great Apollo has granted you this first taste
of glory and does not grudge you arrows as sure as his own.
You must ask for no more, my boy, in this war.’ So began
Apollo, but while speaking, he left the sight of men, fading
from their eyes into the insubstantial air. The Trojan leaders
660 recognized the god. They knew his divine arrows and the quiver
that sounded as he flew. So, although Ascanius was thirsting for
battle, they held him back, urging upon him the words of
Phoebus Apollo and the will of the god. But they themselves
went back into battle and put their lives into naked danger. The
shouting rang round the ramparts all along the walls. They bent
their deadly bows and twisted their spear thongs till the ground
was strewn with missiles. Shield and round helmet rang with
the blows as fiercer and fiercer raged the battle. It was like a
great shower from the west drumming on the earth in the rainy
season when the Kids are rising, or like hailstones dropping
670 from the clouds into the sea when the south wind is blowing
and Jupiter hurls down squalls of rain in his fury and bursts the
hollow thunderclouds in the sky.
Pandarus and Bitias, sons of Alcanor of Mount Ida, had been
brought up by the wood nymph Iaera in the grove of Jupiter
and they were built like the pines and mountains of their fatherland.
So sure were they of their weapons that they now flung
open the gate that had been entrusted to them by their leader’s
commands, and took it upon themselves to invite the enemy to
come within the walls. They themselves stood inside at the
ready, like twin towers, one on the right and one on the left,
armed in steel, with their crests flashing high on their heads.
They were like a pair of tall oaks by a flowing river, on the
680 banks of the Po or by the lovely Adige, holding their unshorn
heads up to the sky with their high tops nodding in the breeze.
As soon as they saw the gate open, the Rutulians came bursting
in. Quercens and Aquiculus in splendid armour, impetuous
Tmarus and Haemon, son of Mars, but instantly with all their
men they either turned and ran or gave up their lives on the very
threshold of the gate. The fury mounted in all their hearts as
they fought. Trojans now came crowding to the spot and not
690 only joined in the fray but also dared to sally out further and
further in front of the gate.
Meanwhile Turnus, the Rutulian commander, was raging and
storming and creating havoc in another part of the field, when
a message arrived to say that the enemy were hot with the
Rutulian blood they were now spilling and that open gates were
on offer. Turnus instantly abandoned the work he had in hand
and rushed to the Trojan gate in a savage rage to meet these
arrogant brothers. The first man to fall to his javelin was Antiphates
– for he was the first to confront him. Antiphates was the
bastard son of great Sarpedon by a Theban mother. The spear
of Italian cornel wood flew through the unresisting air, went in
700 by his belly and twisted upwards deep into his chest. A wave of
frothing blood welled out of the black hole of the wound, and
the steel grew warm where it had lodged in the lung. Then
Erymas and Meropes fell to his hand; then Aphidnus; then Bitias
himself for all the fire that flashed from his eyes and the roaring
fury of his heart. No javelin for him. He was not the man to
yield his life to a javelin. It was an artillery spear with an iron
head a cubit long and a ball of lead at its butt which came rifling
through the air with a loud hiss and the force of a thunderbolt.
The two bull-hides of his shield did not resist it, nor did his
trusty breastplate with its overlapping scales of gold. His huge
body collapsed and fell. The earth groaned and the mighty shield
710 thundered as it came down on top of him. It was like the fall of
a stone pile by the shore at Euboean Baiae; men first build it to
its massive height and then they let it down into the sea, and it
spreads ruin all along its length, grinding the sea-bed as it settles
in the shallows; the water boils, the black sand rises, the high
rock of Procida is shaken, and Inarime with it, the hard bed laid
for Typhoeus at Jupiter’s command.