Authors: Virgil
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And now envoys appeared from the city of the Latins bearing
olive branches wreathed in wool and asking for a truce. The
bodies of their dead were all over the plain where the steel had
laid them, and they begged Aeneas to give them back and let
them go to their graves in the earth, for he could have no quarrel
with men who were defeated and had lost the light of life; he
must show mercy to those who had once been called his hosts
and the kinsmen of his bride. Good Aeneas could not refuse this
petition. He honoured the envoys, granted what they asked and
added these words: ‘What cruel Fortune is this, men of Latium,
that has embroiled you in war and made you run away from us,
110 who are your friends? You ask me for peace for the dead, whose
destiny has been to die in battle: I for my part would have been
willing to grant them peace when they were still alive. Nor
would I ever have come to this land if the Fates had not offered
me a place here to be my home. I do not wage war with your
people. It was your king who abandoned our sworn friendship
and preferred to put his trust in the weapons of Turnus. It is not
these men who should have risked their lives but Turnus. If it is
his plan to put an end to this war by the strength of his arm,
and drive out the Trojans, he should have faced me and these
weapons of mine in battle. One of us would have lived. God or
our own right hands would have seen to that. Go now and light
120 fires beneath the bodies of your unfortunate citizens.’ Aeneas
had spoken. They were astonished and stood looking at each
other in silence.
Then Drances, an older man who had always hated the young
warrior Turnus, and spoken against him, began to make his
reply: ‘O Trojan great in fame, and greater still in arms, what
words of mine could raise you to the skies? What shall I first
praise? Your justice, or your labours in war? Gratefully shall we
carry these words of yours back to our native city, and if Fortune
shows us a way, we shall reconcile you to our king Latinus.
130 Turnus can make his own treaties. We shall do more. We shall
delight to raise the massive walls Fate has decreed for you and
lift up the building stones of Troy on our shoulders!’
All to a man they murmured in agreement when he had
finished speaking. Twelve days they decided on, and during that
time, with peace as mediator between them, Trojans and Latins
were together in the hills and wandered the woods, and no man
harmed another. The iron axe rang upon tall ash trees and
brought down skyward-thrusting pines. They never rested from
their labours, splitting the oak and fragrant cedar with wedges
and carrying down the ash trees on carts from the mountains.
140 But Rumour was already on the wing, overwhelming Evander
and the house and city of Evander with the first warnings of
anguish. The talk was no longer of Pallas, conqueror of Latium.
The Arcadians rushed to the gates, snatching up funeral torches
according to their ancient practice. The road was lit by a long
line of flames which showed up the fields far on either side.
Nearer and nearer came the throng of Trojans till it joined the
columns of mourners. When the mothers of Pallanteum saw
them entering the walls, the stricken city was ablaze with their
cries. No power on earth could restrain Evander. Coming into
the middle of the throng where the bier had been laid on the
150 ground, he threw himself on the body of Pallas and clung to it
weeping and moaning until at last grief freed a path for his
voice: ‘O Pallas, this is not what you promised your father! You
said you would not be too rash in trusting yourself to the cruel
God of War. I well knew the glory of one’s first success in arms,
the joy above all other joys of one’s first battle. These are bitter
first fruits for a young man. A hard schooling it has been in war,
and you did not have far to go for it. None of the gods listened
to my vows and prayers. O my dear wife, most blessed of
women, you were fortunate in your death, in not living to see
160 this day. But I have outstayed my time. A father should not
survive his son. If only I had followed our Trojan allies into
battle and the Rutulians had buried me under their spears! If
only I had given up my own life and this procession was bringing
home my body and not the body of Pallas. I would not wish to
blame you, Trojans, nor our treaties, nor regret the joining of
our right hands in friendship. The death of my son was a debt I
was fated to pay in my old age. But if an early death was his
destiny, I shall rejoice to think that first he killed thousands of
Volscians and fell while leading the Trojans into Latium. Nor
would I wish you any other funeral than this, Pallas, given you
170
by good Aeneas and the great men from Phrygia, the leaders of
the Etruscans and all the soldiers of Etruria, bearing the great
trophies of the warriors your right hand has sent to their deaths.
And you too, Turnus, would now be standing in the fields, a
huge headless trophy, had Pallas been your equal in age, had
the years given you both equal strength. But why does my grief
keep the Trojans from their arms? Go now, take this charge to
your king and do not forget it. If I drag out my hated life now
that Pallas is killed, the reason, Aeneas, lies in your right arm.
You know it owes the life of Turnus to the son and to the father.
This is the one field where you must put your courage and your
180 fortune to the test. I seek no joy in life – that is not what the
gods have willed – only to take this satisfaction down to my son
among the dead.’
Aurora meanwhile had lifted up her life-giving light for miserable
mortals, bringing back their toil and sufferings. Both Tarchon
and Father Aeneas soon built funeral pyres on the curving
shore and carried there the bodies of their dead, each after the
fashion of their fathers. They then set black-burning torches to
the fires and the heights of heaven were plunged into pitchy
190 darkness. Three times they ran round the blazing pyres in gleaming
armour. Three times they rode in solemn procession round
the fires of the dead with wails of lamentation. Tears fell upon
their armour and fell upon the earth beneath. The clamour of
men and the clangour of trumpets rose to heaven as some threw
into the flames spoils torn from the corpses of the Latins, their
splendid swords and helmets, the bridles of horses and scorching
chariot wheels, while others burned the familiar possessions of
their dead friends, the shields and spears which Fortune had not
blessed. All around, oxen were being sacrificed and their bodies
offered to the God of Death, while bristling swine and flocks
carried off from the fields were slaughtered over the fires. All
200 along the shore they watched the bodies of their comrades burn
and tended the dying flames, nor would they be torn away till
dank Night turned over the heavens and showed a sky studded
with burning stars.
The mourning Latins too had built countless pyres some
distance apart from the Trojans. Many bodies of men they
buried in the earth; many they took up and carried back to the
city or to their homes nearby in the countryside. The rest they
burned uncounted and unhonoured, a huge pile of jumbled
corpses, and all the wide land on every side was lit by fire upon
210 fire, each brighter than the other. When the third day had risen
and dispersed the chill darkness of the sky, the mourners levelled
on the pyres the deep ash in which the bones of the dead were
mingled, and weighed it down with mounds of warm earth.
That day in their homes in the city of king Latinus, famous for
his wealth, the noise of grief was at its loudest. That day their
long mourning reached its height. Here were the mothers and
heart-broken wives of the dead. Here were loving sisters beating
their breasts, and children who had lost their fathers, all cursing
this deadly war and Turnus’ marriage; he was the man who
should be deciding this matter with his own sword and shield
since he was the man who was claiming the kingdom of Italy
220 and the highest honours for himself. The bitter Drances heaped
fuel on the fire and swore that Turnus was the only man whose
name was being called; nobody else was being asked to fight.
But at the same time many voices were raised for Turnus and
much was said on his behalf. The great name of the queen cast
its protecting shadow and also in his favour was all the fame
and all the trophies he had won in his wars.
In the middle of this disturbance, while the dispute was still
raging, to crown all, the envoys suddenly arrived back with a
gloomy answer from the city of Diomede. They had achieved
nothing for all the efforts they had expended; their gifts, their
230 gold, their earnest prayers had failed; the Latins would have to
look elsewhere for reinforcements or plead for peace with the
Trojan king. At this bitter blow even king Latinus lost heart.
Aeneas was chosen by Fate and brought there by the express
will of heaven – this was what the anger of the gods was telling
them; this was the message of these tombs newly raised before
their eyes. With such thoughts in mind he summoned a great
council, commanding the leaders of his people to come within
his lofty doors. They duly gathered, filling the streets as they
streamed to the royal palace. Greatest in age and first of those
who carried the sceptre, Latinus sat in the middle with sadness
240
on his brow and asked the envoys who had returned from the
city of the Aetolians to tell what reply they brought, demanding
to hear every detail in due order. The assembly was called to
silence. Venulus obeyed the command and began to speak:
‘Fellow-citizens, we have seen Diomede and the Argive camp.
We have paced out the road and lived through all the chances
of the journey. We have touched the hand that brought down
the land of Ilium. There in the fields near Mount Garganus, in
the Apulian kingdom of Iapyx, the victorious Diomede was
founding his city called Argyripa after the home of his fathers
at Argos. After we were admitted to his presence and given leave
to speak, we offered our gifts, telling him our names and the
250 land from which we came, who had brought war among us and
what had taken us to Arpi. He heard us out and made this reply
in words of peace:
‘ “The peoples of your land are blest by Fortune. Yours are the
kingdoms of Saturn, the ancient Ausonians, but what Fortune is
it that disturbs your peace and persuades you to stir up wars
you do not understand? Those of us whose swords violated the
fields of Ilium – let me not speak of all we endured as we fought
beneath her walls or of our men drowned in her river Simois –
we are scattered over the round earth, paying unspeakable
penalties and suffering all manner of punishment for our crimes.
We are a band of men that even Priam might pity. The deadly
260 star of Minerva knows us well. So do the rocks of Euboea and
Caphereus, the cape of vengeance. From that campaign we have
been washed up on many a different shore: Menelaus, son of
Atreus, is in exile in distant Egypt at the pillars of Proteus; Ulixes
has seen the Cyclopes on Etna; shall I speak of the kingdom of
Neoptolemus in Epirus? Of the new home of Idomeneus in
Calabria? Of Locrians living on the shores of Libya? Even the
leader of the great Achivi from Mycenae was struck down by
the hand of his evil queen the moment he stepped over his own
threshold! The adulterous lover had been waiting for Asia to
fall. To think that the envious gods forbade me to return to the
270 altars of my fathers or to see the wife I longed for and my
beautiful homeland of Calydon. Even now I am pursued by the
sight of hideous portents. My lost comrades have taken to the
sky on wings. They have become birds and haunt the rivers – so
cruelly have my people been punished – weeping till the rocks
ring with the sound of their voices. From that moment of madness
when I attacked the body of a goddess and my spear defiled
the hand of Venus, I should have known that this was bound to
come. Do not, I beg you, do not urge me to take part in any
such battle. I have had no quarrel with the Trojans since the
280 uprooting of their citadel of Pergamum, and I do not remember
old wrongs or take any pleasure in them. As for the gifts you
bring me from your country, give them rather to Aeneas. We
have faced each other, spear against deadly spear, and closed in
battle. Believe me, for I have known it, how huge he rises behind
his shield, with what a whirr he spins his javelin. If the land of
Ilium had borne two other such heroes, the Trojan would have
come in war to the cities of the Greek, the Fates would have
changed and Greece would now be in mourning. As for all the
long delay before the stubborn walls of Troy, it was the hands
of Hector and Aeneas – both men noble in their courage, noble
290 in their skill in arms, but Aeneas the greater in piety – that held
back the victory of the Greeks and did not let it come till the
tenth year. Let your hands join in a treaty of peace while the
chance is offered, but take care not to let your weapons clash
on his!”