The Aeneid (16 page)

                There I gazed in reverence at the god’s temple built high
                of ancient stone and made this prayer to Apollo: ‘O god of
                Thymbra, grant us a home of our own. We are weary. Grant us
                walls and descendants and a city that will endure. Preserve these
                remnants that have escaped the Greeks and pitiless Achilles, to
                be a second citadel for Troy. Whom are we to follow? Where
                do you bid us go? Where are we to settle? Send us a sign, O
                father, and steal into our hearts.’

90           I had scarcely spoken when everything seemed to begin to
                tremble. The threshold of the doors of the god, his laurel
                tree, and all the mountain round about were shaken. The sanctuary
                opened and a bellowing came from the bowl on the sacred
                tripod. We threw ourselves to the ground and these were the
                words that came to our ears: ‘O much-enduring sons of Dardanus,
                the land which first bore you from your parents’ stock
                
will be the land that will take you back to her rich breast. Seek
                out your ancient mother. For that is where the house of Aeneas
                and his sons’ sons and their sons after them will rule over the
                whole earth.’

100         So spoke Phoebus Apollo, and a great joy and tumult arose
                among us, all asking what city this was, where Apollo was
                directing us in our wanderings, what this land was to which we
                were to return. Then spoke my father Anchises who had been
                turning over in his mind what he had heard from the men of
                old: ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you leaders of Troy, and learn what you
                have to hope for. In the middle of the ocean lies Crete, the island
                of great Jupiter, where there is a Mount Ida, the cradle of our
                race, and where the Cretans live in a hundred great cities, the
                richest of kingdoms. If I remember rightly what I have heard,
                our first father Teucer sailed from there to Asia, landing at Cape
                Rhoeteum, and chose that place to found his kingdom. Troy
110         was not yet standing, nor was the citadel of Pergamum, and
                they lived low down in the valleys. This is the origin of the Great
                Mother of Mount Cybele, the bronze cymbals of the Corybants,
                our grove of Ida, the inviolate silence of our worship and the
                yoked lions that draw the chariot of the mighty goddess. Come
                then, let us follow where we are led by the bidding of the gods.
                Let us appease the winds and set forth for the kingdoms of
                Cnossus. It is not far to sail. If only Jupiter is with us, the third
                day will see our ships on the shores of Crete.’ So he spoke, and
120         made due sacrifice on the altars, a bull to Neptune and a bull to
                fair Apollo, a black lamb to the storms and a white lamb to
                favouring breezes.

                Rumour as she flew told the tale of the great Idomeneus, how
                he had been forced to leave his father’s kingdom and how the
                shores of Crete were now deserted. Here was a place empty of
                our enemies, their homes abandoned, waiting for us. We left the
                harbour of Ortygia and flew over the sea to Naxos where
                Bacchants dance on the mountain ridges and to green Donusa,
                to Olearos, to Paros marble-white and the Cyclades scattered
                on the face of the sea, skimming over an ocean churned up by
                the coasts of a hundred islands. The sailors raised all manner of
                shouts as they vied with one another in their rowing and my
                
comrades kept urging me to make for Crete and go back to the
130         home of their ancestors. The wind rising astern sped us on our
                way and we came to shore at last on the ancient land of the
                Curetes. Impatiently I set to work on walls for the city we all
                longed for. I called it Pergamea and the people rejoiced in the
                name. I urged them to love their hearths and homes and raise a
                citadel to protect them.

                Our ships were soon drawn up on dry land, our young men
                were busy with marrying and putting new land under plough
                and I was giving them homes and laws to live by, when suddenly
                from a polluted quarter of the sky there came a cruel, suppurating
                plague upon our bodies and upon the trees and crops. It was
140         a time of death. Men were losing the lives they loved or dragging
                around their sickly bodies. The Dogstar burned the fields and
                made them barren, the grass dried, the crops were infected and
                gave us no food. My father bade me retrace our course back
                across the sea to Phoebus Apollo and his oracle at Ortygia, to
                pray for his gracious favour and ask when he would put an end
                to our toil, where we were to look for help in our adversity and
                what course we were to steer.

                It was night and sleep held in its grasp all living things upon
                the earth. There as I lay, the holy images of the gods, the
150         Phrygian Penates whom I had rescued from the thick of the
                flames of the burning city of Troy, seemed to be standing bathed
                in clear light before my eyes, where the full moon streamed in
                through the unshuttered windows. At last they spoke to me and
                comforted my sorrow with these words: ‘Apollo here speaks the
                prophecy he will give you if you sail back to Ortygia. By his
                own will he has sent us here and we stand at your door. We
                followed you and your arms when Troy was burned to ashes.
                With you to lead us we have sailed across unmeasured tracts of
                swelling seas, and in time to come we shall raise your sons to
160         the stars and give dominion to your city. Your task is to build
                great walls to guard this great inheritance. You must never flag
                in the long toil of exile, and you must leave this place. Delian
                Apollo did not send you to these shores. Crete is not where he
                commanded you to settle. There is a place – Greeks call it
                Hesperia – an ancient land, strong in arms and in the richness
                
of her soil. The Oenotrians lived there, but the descendants of
                that race are now said to have taken the name of their king
                Italus and call themselves Italians. This is our true home. This
                is where Dardanus sprang from and his father Iasius from whom
                our race took its beginning. Rise then with cheerful heart and
170         pass on these words to Anchises your father, and let him be in
                no doubt. He must look for Corythus and the lands of Ausonia.
                Jupiter forbids you the Dictaean fields of Crete.’

                I was astounded by this vision and by the words of the gods.
                This was no sleep. I seemed to be face to face with them and to
                recognize their features and the garlands on their heads, and at
                the sight my whole body was bathed in cold sweat. Leaping
                from my bed, I raised my hands palms upward to the sky and
                lifted up my voice in prayer, making pure offerings at the hearth.
                Having performed these rites, I went with joyful heart to
180         Anchises and told him everything in order. He remembered that
                our race had two founders, Dardanus and Teucer, a double
                ancestry. He realized that he had fallen into a new mistake about
                these ancient places. ‘O my son,’ he said, ‘you who have been
                so tested by the Fates of Troy, only Cassandra made such a
                prophecy to me. Now I remember how she used to foretell that
                this is what Fate had in store for us and she kept talking about
                Hesperia and about the kingdoms of Italy. But who would have
                believed that Trojans would land on the shores of Hesperia?
                Who in those days would have believed the prophecies of Cassandra?
                Let us yield to Phoebus Apollo. We have been advised.
                Let us follow the better course.’ We all accepted his command
190         with cries of joy and abandoned this second settlement, leaving
                only a few of our number behind, and set sail upon our hollow
                ships to run before the wind over the vast ocean.

                When we were out at sea and no longer in sight of land, and
                all around was sky and all around was sea, I saw a dark cloud
                come over our heads bringing storm and black night, and the
                waves shivered in the darkness. The wind soon whipped up a
                great swell and the storm rose and scattered us all over the
                ocean. A pall of cloud obscured the light, rain fell from a sky
                we could not see, and lightning tore the clouds, flash upon flash.
200         We were thrown off course and drifted blindly in the waves.
                
Under that sky even Palinurus said he had lost his bearings in
                mid-ocean and could not tell day from night. For three long
                days, if days they were, of darkness, and three starless nights we
                ran before the storm, until at last on the fourth day we saw the
                first land rising before us and there opened a clear view of
                distant mountains and curling smoke. Down came the sails and
                we sprang to the oars. The sailors were not slow to sweep the
210         blue sea and churn it into foam. I was saved from the ocean and
                the shores of the Strophades were the first to receive me.

                This is the Greek name for islands in the great Ionian sea.
                This is where the deadly Celaeno and the other Harpies have
                lived ever since the house of Phineus was barred to them and
                they were frightened away from the tables where they used to
                feed. These are the vilest of all monsters. No plague or visitation
                of the gods sent up from the waves of the river Styx has ever
                been worse than these. They are birds with the faces of girls,
                with filth oozing from their bellies, with hooked claws for hands
                and faces pale with a hunger that is never satisfied.

                As soon as we reached the Strophades and entered the harbour,
220         there we saw on every side rich herds of cattle on the level
                ground and flocks of goats unguarded on the grass. We drew
                our swords and rushed upon them, calling on the gods and on
                Jupiter himself to share our plunder. Then we raised couches
                along the shore of the bay and were feasting on this rich fare
                when suddenly the Harpies were among us, swooping down
                from the mountains with a fearful clangour of their wings,
                tearing the food to pieces and polluting everything with their
                foul contagion. The stench was rank, and through all this we
229         heard their hideous screeching. Once again, in a sheltered spot
                far back under an overhanging rock, we relaid our tables and
                relit the altar fires. Once again the noisy flock came from some
                hidden roost in a different quarter of the sky and fluttered round
                their prey, clutching it in their hooked claws and fouling it in
                their mouths. Then it was I ordered my men to arm themselves
                to make war against this fearsome tribe. They did as ordered,
                hiding swords and shields here and there in the grass. And so
                when Misenus in his high lookout heard the sound of them
                swooping down along the whole curved shore of the bay, he
240         
raised the alarm by blowing on the hollow bronze of his trumpet
                and my comrades attacked. This was a new kind of battle –
                swords against filthy sea birds. But these were feathers that felt
                no violence and backs that could receive no wounds. They
                soared in swift flight up towards the stars, leaving behind them
                the half-eaten food and their filthy droppings, all but one who
                remained, perched high on a pinnacle of rock (Celaeno was her
                name), and from her breast there burst this dire prophecy: ‘Is it
                war you offer us now, sons of Laomedon, for the slaughter of
                our bullocks and the felling of our oxen? Is it your plan to make
                war against the innocent Harpies and drive us from the kingdom
250         of our ancestors? Listen to what I have to say and fix it in your
                minds. These words were spoken by the Almighty Father of the
                Gods to Phoebus Apollo, and Phoebus Apollo spoke them to
                me, and now I, the greatest of the Furies, speak them to you.
                You are calling upon the winds and trying to sail to Italy. To
                Italy you will go and you will be allowed to enter its harbours,
                but you will not be given a city, and you will not be allowed to
                build walls around it before a deadly famine has come upon
                you, and the guilt of our blood drives you to gnaw round the
                edges of your tables, to put them between your teeth and eat
                them.’