The Aeneid (30 page)
As Ilioneus ends his appeal, Latinus keeps on
looking down at the ground, stock-still,
only his eyes moving, rapt in concentration.
The brocaded purple stirs him, king that he is,
and Priam’s scepter too, but he is stirred far more,
dwelling long on his daughter’s marriage, her wedding bed,
and mulling deeply over the vision of old Faunus. “So this,”
he thinks, “is the man foretold by Fate. That son-in-law
from a foreign home, and he’s called to share my throne
with equal power! His heirs will blaze in courage,
their might will sway the world.”
And at last he speaks out, filled with joy:
“May the gods speed the plans that we launch here,
their own omens too! Your wish will be my command,
Trojan, I embrace your gifts. While Latinus rules,
you’ll never lack rich plowland, bounty great as Troy’s.
Just let Aeneas—if he needs us so, and presses so
to join in alliance and take the name of comrade—
come in person and never shy from the eyes of friends.
Let this be part of our peace, to grasp your leader’s hand.
Take back to your king this answer I give you now.
I have a daughter. Signs from my father’s shrine
and a host of omens from the skies forbid me
to wed her to a bridegroom chosen from our race.
Our sons-in-law will arrive from foreign shores:
that is the fate in store for Latium, so the prophets say,
a stranger’s blood will raise our name to the stars.
This is the one the Fates demand. So I believe
and if I can read the future with any truth,
I welcome him as ours.”
On that warm note
Latinus picks out horses from his entire stable:
three hundred strong, standing sleek in their lofty stalls.
At once he orders them led out to the Trojans, one for each,
swift with their winging hoofs, decked in embroidered
purple saddle-blankets, golden medallions dangling
from their chests, their trappings gold, pure gold
the bridle bits they champ between their teeth.
For absent Aeneas, a chariot, twin chargers too,
sprung from immortal stock, their nostrils flaring fire,
born of the mixed breed that crafty Circe bred,
making off with one of her father’s stallions
to mate him with a mare.
Riding high with Latinus’ gifts and words,
Aeneas’ envoys bring back news of peace.
But look,
the merciless wife of Jove was winging back from Argos,
Inachus’ city, holding course through the heavens when,
from far in the air, as far as Sicily’s Cape Pachynus,
she spied Aeneas exulting, Trojan ships at anchor.
Men building their homes already, trusting the land
already, their fleet abandoned now. Juno stopped,
transfixed with anguish, then, shaking her head,
this exclamation came pouring from her heart:
“That cursed race I loathe—their Phrygian fate
that clashes with my own! So, couldn’t they die
on the plains of Troy? So, couldn’t they stay
defeated in defeat? Couldn’t the fires of Troy
cremate the Trojans? No, through the shocks of war,
through walls of fire, they’ve found a way! What,
am I to believe my powers broken down at last,
glutted with hatred, now I rest in peace? Oh no,
when they were flung loose from their native land
I dared to hunt those exiles through the breakers,
battle them down the ocean far and wide. I’ve spent
all power of sea and sky against those Trojans.
What good have the Syrtes been to me, or Scylla
or gaping Charybdis? The Trojans have settled down
secure in the Tiber channel they so craved,
safe from the waves—and me.
“Why, Mars had the force
to destroy the giant Lapith race! And Father Jove
in person gave old Calydon up to Diana’s rage,
and for what foul crimes did Calydon and the Lapiths
merit so much pain? Oh but I, powerful Juno,
wife of Jove, wretched Juno, I endured it all,
left nothing undared, I stooped to any tactic,
still he defeats me—Aeneas! But if my forces
are not enough, I am hardly the one to relent,
I’ll plead for the help I need, wherever it may be—
if I cannot sway the heavens, I’ll wake the powers of hell!
It’s not for me to deny him his Latin throne? So be it.
Let
Lavinia be his bride. An iron fact of Fate.
But I can drag things out, delay the whole affair:
that I can do, and destroy them root and branch,
the people of either king. What a price they’ll pay
for the father and son-in-law’s alliance here! Yes,
Latin and Trojan blood will be your dowry, princess—
Bellona, Goddess of War, your maid-of-honor! So,
Hecuba’s not the only one who spawned a firebrand,
who brought to birth a wedding torch of a son.
Venus’ son will be the same—a Paris reborn,
a funeral torch to consume a second Troy!”
That said,
the terrible goddess swooped down to the earth and
stirred Allecto, mother of sorrows, up from her den
where nightmare Furies lurk in hellish darkness.
Allecto—a joy to her heart, the griefs of war,
rage, and murderous plots, and grisly crimes.
Even her father, Pluto, loathes the monster,
even her own infernal sisters loathe her since
she shifts into so many forms, their shapes so fierce,
the black snakes of her hair that coil so thickly.
Juno whips her on with a challenge like a lash:
“Do me this service, virgin daughter of Night,
a labor just for me! Don’t let my honor, my fame
be torn from its high place, or the sons of Aeneas
bring Latinus round with their lures of marriage,
besieging Italian soil. You can make brothers
bound by love gear up for mutual slaughter,
demolish a house with hatred, fill it to the roofs
with scourges, funeral torches. You have a thousand names,
a thousand deadly arts. Shake them out of your teeming heart,
sunder their pact of peace, sow crops of murderous war!
Now at a stroke make young men thirst for weapons,
demand them, grasp them—now!”
In the next breath,
bloated with Gorgon venom, Allecto launches out,
first for Latium, King Latinus’ lofty halls,
and squats down at the quiet threshold of Amata
seething with all a woman’s anguish, fire and fury
over the Trojans just arrived and Turnus’ marriage lost.
Allecto flings a snake from her black hair at the queen
and thrusts it down her breast, the very depths of her heart,
and the horror drives her mad to bring the whole house down.
It glides between her robes and her smooth breasts but she
feels nothing, no shudder of coils, senses nothing at all
as the viper breathes its fire through the frenzied queen.
The enormous snake becomes the gold choker around her throat,
the raveling end of a headband braiding through her hair,
writhing over her body.
At the fever’s first attack
with its clammy poison still stealing over the queen,
trickling through her wits and twining her bones with fire—
before her mind was seized by the flames within her spirit
she could still speak softly, a mother’s tender way,
sobbing over her daughter’s marriage to a Phrygian:
“So, Lavinia goes in wedlock to these Trojans—exiles?
You, her father, have you no pity for your daughter,
none for yourself? No pity for me, her mother? Wait,
with the first Northwind that lying pirate will desert us,
setting sail on the high seas, our virgin as his loot!
Isn’t that how the Phrygian shepherd breached Sparta
and carried Leda’s Helen off to the towns of Troy?
What of your sacred word? Your old affection
for your people? Your right hand pledged,
time and again, to Turnus,
your
blood kin?
Now, if the Latin people must seek a son
of strangers’ stock, if that is fixed in stone
and your father Faunus’ orders press you hard,
well then I’d say all countries free of our rule
are total strangers. That’s what the gods must mean.
And Turnus too: track down the roots of his house
and who are his forebears? Inachus and Acrisius,
Mycenae to the core!”
Desperate appeals—no use.
When she sees Latinus steeling himself against her,
when the serpent’s crazing venom has sunk into her flesh,
the fever raging through her entire body, then indeed
the unlucky queen, whipped insane by ghastly horrors,
raves in her frenzy all throughout the city.
Wild as a top, spinning under a twisted whip
when boys, obsessed with their play, drive it round
an empty court, the whip spinning it round in bigger rings
and the boys hovering over it, spellbound, wonderstruck—
the boxwood whirling, whip-strokes lashing it into life—
swift as a top Amata whirls through the midst of cities,
people fierce in arms. She even darts into forests,
feigning she’s in the grip of Bacchus’ power,
daring a greater outrage, rising to greater fury,
hiding her daughter deep in the mountains’ leafy woods
to rob the Trojans of marriage, delay the marriage torch.
“Bacchus, hail!” she shouts. “You alone,” she cries,
“you deserve the virgin! For you, I say, she lifts
the thyrsus twined with ivy, dancing in your honor,
letting her hair grow long, your sacred locks!”
looking down at the ground, stock-still,
only his eyes moving, rapt in concentration.
The brocaded purple stirs him, king that he is,
and Priam’s scepter too, but he is stirred far more,
dwelling long on his daughter’s marriage, her wedding bed,
and mulling deeply over the vision of old Faunus. “So this,”
he thinks, “is the man foretold by Fate. That son-in-law
from a foreign home, and he’s called to share my throne
with equal power! His heirs will blaze in courage,
their might will sway the world.”
And at last he speaks out, filled with joy:
“May the gods speed the plans that we launch here,
their own omens too! Your wish will be my command,
Trojan, I embrace your gifts. While Latinus rules,
you’ll never lack rich plowland, bounty great as Troy’s.
Just let Aeneas—if he needs us so, and presses so
to join in alliance and take the name of comrade—
come in person and never shy from the eyes of friends.
Let this be part of our peace, to grasp your leader’s hand.
Take back to your king this answer I give you now.
I have a daughter. Signs from my father’s shrine
and a host of omens from the skies forbid me
to wed her to a bridegroom chosen from our race.
Our sons-in-law will arrive from foreign shores:
that is the fate in store for Latium, so the prophets say,
a stranger’s blood will raise our name to the stars.
This is the one the Fates demand. So I believe
and if I can read the future with any truth,
I welcome him as ours.”
On that warm note
Latinus picks out horses from his entire stable:
three hundred strong, standing sleek in their lofty stalls.
At once he orders them led out to the Trojans, one for each,
swift with their winging hoofs, decked in embroidered
purple saddle-blankets, golden medallions dangling
from their chests, their trappings gold, pure gold
the bridle bits they champ between their teeth.
For absent Aeneas, a chariot, twin chargers too,
sprung from immortal stock, their nostrils flaring fire,
born of the mixed breed that crafty Circe bred,
making off with one of her father’s stallions
to mate him with a mare.
Riding high with Latinus’ gifts and words,
Aeneas’ envoys bring back news of peace.
But look,
the merciless wife of Jove was winging back from Argos,
Inachus’ city, holding course through the heavens when,
from far in the air, as far as Sicily’s Cape Pachynus,
she spied Aeneas exulting, Trojan ships at anchor.
Men building their homes already, trusting the land
already, their fleet abandoned now. Juno stopped,
transfixed with anguish, then, shaking her head,
this exclamation came pouring from her heart:
“That cursed race I loathe—their Phrygian fate
that clashes with my own! So, couldn’t they die
on the plains of Troy? So, couldn’t they stay
defeated in defeat? Couldn’t the fires of Troy
cremate the Trojans? No, through the shocks of war,
through walls of fire, they’ve found a way! What,
am I to believe my powers broken down at last,
glutted with hatred, now I rest in peace? Oh no,
when they were flung loose from their native land
I dared to hunt those exiles through the breakers,
battle them down the ocean far and wide. I’ve spent
all power of sea and sky against those Trojans.
What good have the Syrtes been to me, or Scylla
or gaping Charybdis? The Trojans have settled down
secure in the Tiber channel they so craved,
safe from the waves—and me.
“Why, Mars had the force
to destroy the giant Lapith race! And Father Jove
in person gave old Calydon up to Diana’s rage,
and for what foul crimes did Calydon and the Lapiths
merit so much pain? Oh but I, powerful Juno,
wife of Jove, wretched Juno, I endured it all,
left nothing undared, I stooped to any tactic,
still he defeats me—Aeneas! But if my forces
are not enough, I am hardly the one to relent,
I’ll plead for the help I need, wherever it may be—
if I cannot sway the heavens, I’ll wake the powers of hell!
It’s not for me to deny him his Latin throne? So be it.
Let
Lavinia be his bride. An iron fact of Fate.
But I can drag things out, delay the whole affair:
that I can do, and destroy them root and branch,
the people of either king. What a price they’ll pay
for the father and son-in-law’s alliance here! Yes,
Latin and Trojan blood will be your dowry, princess—
Bellona, Goddess of War, your maid-of-honor! So,
Hecuba’s not the only one who spawned a firebrand,
who brought to birth a wedding torch of a son.
Venus’ son will be the same—a Paris reborn,
a funeral torch to consume a second Troy!”
That said,
the terrible goddess swooped down to the earth and
stirred Allecto, mother of sorrows, up from her den
where nightmare Furies lurk in hellish darkness.
Allecto—a joy to her heart, the griefs of war,
rage, and murderous plots, and grisly crimes.
Even her father, Pluto, loathes the monster,
even her own infernal sisters loathe her since
she shifts into so many forms, their shapes so fierce,
the black snakes of her hair that coil so thickly.
Juno whips her on with a challenge like a lash:
“Do me this service, virgin daughter of Night,
a labor just for me! Don’t let my honor, my fame
be torn from its high place, or the sons of Aeneas
bring Latinus round with their lures of marriage,
besieging Italian soil. You can make brothers
bound by love gear up for mutual slaughter,
demolish a house with hatred, fill it to the roofs
with scourges, funeral torches. You have a thousand names,
a thousand deadly arts. Shake them out of your teeming heart,
sunder their pact of peace, sow crops of murderous war!
Now at a stroke make young men thirst for weapons,
demand them, grasp them—now!”
In the next breath,
bloated with Gorgon venom, Allecto launches out,
first for Latium, King Latinus’ lofty halls,
and squats down at the quiet threshold of Amata
seething with all a woman’s anguish, fire and fury
over the Trojans just arrived and Turnus’ marriage lost.
Allecto flings a snake from her black hair at the queen
and thrusts it down her breast, the very depths of her heart,
and the horror drives her mad to bring the whole house down.
It glides between her robes and her smooth breasts but she
feels nothing, no shudder of coils, senses nothing at all
as the viper breathes its fire through the frenzied queen.
The enormous snake becomes the gold choker around her throat,
the raveling end of a headband braiding through her hair,
writhing over her body.
At the fever’s first attack
with its clammy poison still stealing over the queen,
trickling through her wits and twining her bones with fire—
before her mind was seized by the flames within her spirit
she could still speak softly, a mother’s tender way,
sobbing over her daughter’s marriage to a Phrygian:
“So, Lavinia goes in wedlock to these Trojans—exiles?
You, her father, have you no pity for your daughter,
none for yourself? No pity for me, her mother? Wait,
with the first Northwind that lying pirate will desert us,
setting sail on the high seas, our virgin as his loot!
Isn’t that how the Phrygian shepherd breached Sparta
and carried Leda’s Helen off to the towns of Troy?
What of your sacred word? Your old affection
for your people? Your right hand pledged,
time and again, to Turnus,
your
blood kin?
Now, if the Latin people must seek a son
of strangers’ stock, if that is fixed in stone
and your father Faunus’ orders press you hard,
well then I’d say all countries free of our rule
are total strangers. That’s what the gods must mean.
And Turnus too: track down the roots of his house
and who are his forebears? Inachus and Acrisius,
Mycenae to the core!”
Desperate appeals—no use.
When she sees Latinus steeling himself against her,
when the serpent’s crazing venom has sunk into her flesh,
the fever raging through her entire body, then indeed
the unlucky queen, whipped insane by ghastly horrors,
raves in her frenzy all throughout the city.
Wild as a top, spinning under a twisted whip
when boys, obsessed with their play, drive it round
an empty court, the whip spinning it round in bigger rings
and the boys hovering over it, spellbound, wonderstruck—
the boxwood whirling, whip-strokes lashing it into life—
swift as a top Amata whirls through the midst of cities,
people fierce in arms. She even darts into forests,
feigning she’s in the grip of Bacchus’ power,
daring a greater outrage, rising to greater fury,
hiding her daughter deep in the mountains’ leafy woods
to rob the Trojans of marriage, delay the marriage torch.
“Bacchus, hail!” she shouts. “You alone,” she cries,
“you deserve the virgin! For you, I say, she lifts
the thyrsus twined with ivy, dancing in your honor,
letting her hair grow long, your sacred locks!”
Rumor flies, and the hearts of Latian mothers
flare up with the same fury, the same frenzy
spurs them to seek new homes. Old homes deserted,
baring their necks, they loose their hair to the winds;
some fill the air with their high-pitched, trilling wails,
decked in fawnskins, brandishing lances wound with vines.
And Amata mid them all, shaking a flaming brand of pine,
breaks into a marriage hymn for Turnus and her daughter—
rolling her bloodshot eyes she suddenly bursts out,
wildly: “Mothers of Latium, listen, wherever you are,
if any love for unlucky Amata still stirs your hearts,
your loyal hearts—if any care for a mother’s rights
still cuts you to the quick, loose your headbands,
seize on the orgies with me!”
Mad—while through the woods and deserted lairs
of wild beasts Allecto whips Amata on
with the lash that whips her Maenads.
Once Allecto
saw her first arrows of madness piercing home
and Latinus’ plans and his whole house overwhelmed,
the grim goddess takes flight on her black wings and
heads straight for the walls of bold Rutulian Turnus.
Danaë once, they say, swept ashore by a Southern gale,
built that town for her father’s settlers, King Acrisius.
Ardea, our forebears called the place in the old days,
and the mighty name of Ardea still stands firm
but its glory is gone forever.
Here, under steep roofs in the dark night,
Turnus, dead to the world, lay fast asleep . . .
and Allecto strips away her ghastly features,
her fury’s writhing limbs—transforms herself,
her face like an old crone’s, she furrows her brow
with hideous wrinkles now and takes on snowy hair,
binds it with ribbons, braids it with sprays of olive.
flare up with the same fury, the same frenzy
spurs them to seek new homes. Old homes deserted,
baring their necks, they loose their hair to the winds;
some fill the air with their high-pitched, trilling wails,
decked in fawnskins, brandishing lances wound with vines.
And Amata mid them all, shaking a flaming brand of pine,
breaks into a marriage hymn for Turnus and her daughter—
rolling her bloodshot eyes she suddenly bursts out,
wildly: “Mothers of Latium, listen, wherever you are,
if any love for unlucky Amata still stirs your hearts,
your loyal hearts—if any care for a mother’s rights
still cuts you to the quick, loose your headbands,
seize on the orgies with me!”
Mad—while through the woods and deserted lairs
of wild beasts Allecto whips Amata on
with the lash that whips her Maenads.
Once Allecto
saw her first arrows of madness piercing home
and Latinus’ plans and his whole house overwhelmed,
the grim goddess takes flight on her black wings and
heads straight for the walls of bold Rutulian Turnus.
Danaë once, they say, swept ashore by a Southern gale,
built that town for her father’s settlers, King Acrisius.
Ardea, our forebears called the place in the old days,
and the mighty name of Ardea still stands firm
but its glory is gone forever.
Here, under steep roofs in the dark night,
Turnus, dead to the world, lay fast asleep . . .
and Allecto strips away her ghastly features,
her fury’s writhing limbs—transforms herself,
her face like an old crone’s, she furrows her brow
with hideous wrinkles now and takes on snowy hair,
binds it with ribbons, braids it with sprays of olive.
Now she’s Calybe, aged priestess of Juno’s temple,
so she appears in the young king’s eyes and urges:
“Turnus, how can you lie back and let your labors
come to nothing? Your own scepter’s handed over
to settlers fresh from Troy! The king denies you
your bride, denies you your dowry earned in blood,
he seeks a stranger as heir to his royal throne.
Now go and offer yourself to thankless dangers,
you, you laughingstock! Go mow the Tuscans down,
armor your Latins well with pacts of peace!
This message mighty Juno in person ordered me
to give you here, asleep in the dead of night.
Action! In high spirits alert your men and arm them,
move them out through the gates to the field of battle!
Burn them to ash, those Phrygian chiefs encamped at ease
along our lovely river, and all their painted ships!
The great gods on high decree it so.
King Latinus—if he won’t yield your bride
and keep his word, then he must learn his lesson,
taste, at last, the force of Turnus’ sword!”
Laughing,
ready with his reply, the prince mocks the prophet:
“So, a fleet’s sailed into the Tiber. The tale’s
not failed—as you imagine—to reach my ears.
Stop concocting this panic for me, please.
Queen Juno has hardly wiped me from her mind.
It’s your dotage, mother—you, you doddering wreck
too spent to see the truth—that shakes you with anguish
all for nothing now. You and your warring kings,
your false alarms, you mockery of a prophet!
See to your own chores,
go tend the shrines and statues of the gods.
Men will make war and peace. War’s their work.”
Enough—
Allecto ignited in rage. The challenge still on his lips,
a sudden shuddering seized him, eyes fixed in terror,
the Fury was looming up with so many serpents hissing,
so monstrous her features now revealed. Rolling
her eyes, fiery as he faltered, struggling
to say more, she hurled the man back and
reared twin snakes from her coiling hair and
cracked her whips and raved in her rabid words:
“So, I’m in my dotage, am I? A doddering wreck
too spent to see the truth? I and my warring kings—
a mockery of a prophet, am I? False alarms?
Well, look at these alarms!
I come to you from the nightmare Furies’ den,
I brandish war and death in my right hand!”
With that
she flung a torch at the prince and drove it home
in his chest to smoke with a hellish black glare.
A nightmare broke his sleep and the sweat poured
from all over his body, drenched him to the bone.
He shouts for armor, frenzied, cries for his armor,
rifling through his bed and the whole house to find it.
He burns with lust for the sword, the cursed madness of war
and rage to top it off. He roars like blazing brush
piled under the ribs of a billowing bronze cauldron—
the water seethes in the heat and a river boils inside it,
bubbling up in spume—the bowl can’t hold it, it overflows
and a thick cloud of steam goes shooting into the air.
So, violating the peace, he tells his captains:
“March on King Latinus—gear up for war!
Defend Italy! Hurl the enemy from the borders!
Turnus comes, a match for Trojans and Latins both!”
so she appears in the young king’s eyes and urges:
“Turnus, how can you lie back and let your labors
come to nothing? Your own scepter’s handed over
to settlers fresh from Troy! The king denies you
your bride, denies you your dowry earned in blood,
he seeks a stranger as heir to his royal throne.
Now go and offer yourself to thankless dangers,
you, you laughingstock! Go mow the Tuscans down,
armor your Latins well with pacts of peace!
This message mighty Juno in person ordered me
to give you here, asleep in the dead of night.
Action! In high spirits alert your men and arm them,
move them out through the gates to the field of battle!
Burn them to ash, those Phrygian chiefs encamped at ease
along our lovely river, and all their painted ships!
The great gods on high decree it so.
King Latinus—if he won’t yield your bride
and keep his word, then he must learn his lesson,
taste, at last, the force of Turnus’ sword!”
Laughing,
ready with his reply, the prince mocks the prophet:
“So, a fleet’s sailed into the Tiber. The tale’s
not failed—as you imagine—to reach my ears.
Stop concocting this panic for me, please.
Queen Juno has hardly wiped me from her mind.
It’s your dotage, mother—you, you doddering wreck
too spent to see the truth—that shakes you with anguish
all for nothing now. You and your warring kings,
your false alarms, you mockery of a prophet!
See to your own chores,
go tend the shrines and statues of the gods.
Men will make war and peace. War’s their work.”
Enough—
Allecto ignited in rage. The challenge still on his lips,
a sudden shuddering seized him, eyes fixed in terror,
the Fury was looming up with so many serpents hissing,
so monstrous her features now revealed. Rolling
her eyes, fiery as he faltered, struggling
to say more, she hurled the man back and
reared twin snakes from her coiling hair and
cracked her whips and raved in her rabid words:
“So, I’m in my dotage, am I? A doddering wreck
too spent to see the truth? I and my warring kings—
a mockery of a prophet, am I? False alarms?
Well, look at these alarms!
I come to you from the nightmare Furies’ den,
I brandish war and death in my right hand!”
With that
she flung a torch at the prince and drove it home
in his chest to smoke with a hellish black glare.
A nightmare broke his sleep and the sweat poured
from all over his body, drenched him to the bone.
He shouts for armor, frenzied, cries for his armor,
rifling through his bed and the whole house to find it.
He burns with lust for the sword, the cursed madness of war
and rage to top it off. He roars like blazing brush
piled under the ribs of a billowing bronze cauldron—
the water seethes in the heat and a river boils inside it,
bubbling up in spume—the bowl can’t hold it, it overflows
and a thick cloud of steam goes shooting into the air.
So, violating the peace, he tells his captains:
“March on King Latinus—gear up for war!
Defend Italy! Hurl the enemy from the borders!
Turnus comes, a match for Trojans and Latins both!”
Commands given, he called the gods to witness.
His keen Rutulians spur each other to arms,
some moved by his matchless build and youth,
some by his royal bloodline,
some by his sword-arm’s shining work in war.
While Turnus
fills his Rutulian troops with headlong daring,
Allecto flies to the Trojan camp on Stygian wings—
a fresh plot in the air—to scout out the place
where handsome Iulus was hunting along the shore,
coursing, netting game. Here the infernal Fury throws
an instant frenzy into the hounds, she daubs their nostrils
wet with a well-known scent, and they burn to chase a stag.
This was the first cause of all the pain and struggle,
this first kindled the country people’s lust for war.
There was a stag, a rare beauty, antlers branching,
torn from his mother’s dugs. And the sons of Tyrrhus
nursed it with father Tyrrhus, who kept the royal herds,
charged with tending the broad, spreading pastures.
Their sister, Silvia, trained the stag to take
the commands she gave with love,
wreathed its horns with tender, fresh-cut garlands,
curried the wild creature, bathed it in running springs.
Tame to the touch, it liked to frequent its master’s table.
Roving the forests, home to the well-known door it came,
all on its own, even at dead of night.
This fine beast,
straying from home, chanced to be floating down a stream,
cooling off on a grassy bank when the frenzied hounds
of the hunter Iulus started it—Iulus himself, fired
with a love of glory, aimed a shaft from his tensed bow
and Allecto steadied his trembling hand and the arrow shot
with a whirring rush and pierced through womb and loins.
Back to its well-known home the wounded creature fled,
struggled into its stall and groaning, bleeding,
filling the long halls with cries of pain,
it seemed to plead for help.
The sister,
Silvia, she is the first to call for rescue,
hands beating her arms, summoning hardy rustics.
Unexpectedly in they come, for savage Allecto stalks
the silent forests—some with torches charred to a point,
some with heavy knotted clubs, whatever they find to hand
their anger hones to weapons. Tyrrhus rallies his troops,
he’s just been splitting an oak in four with wedges;
now, breathing fury, he seizes a woodsman’s axe.
His keen Rutulians spur each other to arms,
some moved by his matchless build and youth,
some by his royal bloodline,
some by his sword-arm’s shining work in war.
While Turnus
fills his Rutulian troops with headlong daring,
Allecto flies to the Trojan camp on Stygian wings—
a fresh plot in the air—to scout out the place
where handsome Iulus was hunting along the shore,
coursing, netting game. Here the infernal Fury throws
an instant frenzy into the hounds, she daubs their nostrils
wet with a well-known scent, and they burn to chase a stag.
This was the first cause of all the pain and struggle,
this first kindled the country people’s lust for war.
There was a stag, a rare beauty, antlers branching,
torn from his mother’s dugs. And the sons of Tyrrhus
nursed it with father Tyrrhus, who kept the royal herds,
charged with tending the broad, spreading pastures.
Their sister, Silvia, trained the stag to take
the commands she gave with love,
wreathed its horns with tender, fresh-cut garlands,
curried the wild creature, bathed it in running springs.
Tame to the touch, it liked to frequent its master’s table.
Roving the forests, home to the well-known door it came,
all on its own, even at dead of night.
This fine beast,
straying from home, chanced to be floating down a stream,
cooling off on a grassy bank when the frenzied hounds
of the hunter Iulus started it—Iulus himself, fired
with a love of glory, aimed a shaft from his tensed bow
and Allecto steadied his trembling hand and the arrow shot
with a whirring rush and pierced through womb and loins.
Back to its well-known home the wounded creature fled,
struggled into its stall and groaning, bleeding,
filling the long halls with cries of pain,
it seemed to plead for help.
The sister,
Silvia, she is the first to call for rescue,
hands beating her arms, summoning hardy rustics.
Unexpectedly in they come, for savage Allecto stalks
the silent forests—some with torches charred to a point,
some with heavy knotted clubs, whatever they find to hand
their anger hones to weapons. Tyrrhus rallies his troops,
he’s just been splitting an oak in four with wedges;
now, breathing fury, he seizes a woodsman’s axe.
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