The Aeneid (29 page)

                Aeneas took the lead in all this work, urging on his comrades
                and carrying at his side the same tools as they, but he was always
                gloomily turning one thought over in his mind as he looked at
                the measureless forest and he chanced to utter it in this prayer:
                ‘If only that golden bough would now show itself to us in this
                great grove, since everything the priestess said about Misenus
190         has proved only too true.’ No sooner had he spoken than two
                doves chanced to come flying out of the sky and settle there on
                the grass in front of him. Then the great Aeneas knew they were
                his mother’s birds and he was glad. ‘Be my guides,’ he prayed,
                ‘if there is a way, and direct your swift flight through the air
                into the grove where the rich branch shades the fertile soil.
                And you, goddess, my mother, do not fail me in my time of
                uncertainty.’ So he spoke and waited to see what signs they
                would give and in what direction they would move. They flew
200         and fed and flew again, always keeping in sight of those who
                followed. Then, when they came to the evil-smelling throat of
                Avernus, first they soared and then they swooped down through
                the clear air and settled where Aeneas had prayed they would
                
settle, on the top of the tree that was two trees, from whose
                green there gleamed the breath of gold along the branch. Just as
                the mistletoe, not sown by the tree on which it grows, puts out
                fresh foliage in the woods in the cold of winter and twines its
                yellow fruit round slender tree trunks, so shone the golden
                foliage on the dark ilex, so rustled the golden foil in the gentle
210         breeze. Aeneas seized the branch instantly. It resisted, but he
                broke it off impatiently and carried it into the house of the
                priestess, the Sibyl.

                All this time the Trojans on the shore did not cease to weep
                for Misenus and pay their last tributes to his ungrateful ashes.
                First they built a huge pyre with rich pine torches and oak logs,
                and wove dark-leaved branches into its sides, setting up funeral
                cypresses in front of it and crowning it with his shining armour.
                Some prepared hot water in cauldrons and when it was seething
                over the flames, they washed and anointed the cold body and
220         raised their lament. When they had wept their fill, they placed
                him on the bier and draped him in his familiar purple robes.
                Others then performed their sad duty of carrying the bier and
                held their torches to the bottom of the pyre with averted faces,
                after the practice of their ancestors. Then all the heaped-up
                offerings burned – the incense, the sacrificial food, the bowls
                filled with oil. After the embers had collapsed and the flames
                died down, they washed with wine the thirsty ashes that were
                all that remained of him and Corynaeus collected his bones and
                sealed them in a bronze casket. Three times he carried them in
230         solemn ritual round the comrades of Misenus and sprinkled the
                heroes lightly with pure water from the branch of a fruitful olive
                tree, uttering words of farewell as he performed the lustration.
                But dutiful Aeneas raised a great mound as a tomb and set on it
                the hero’s arms, the oars he rowed with and the trumpet he had
                blown, there near the airy top of Mount Misenus which bears
                his name now and for ever through all years to come.

                As soon as this was done he hastened to carry out the commands
                of the Sibyl. There was a huge, deep cave with jagged
                pebbles underfoot and a gaping mouth guarded by dark woods
240         and the black waters of a lake. No bird could wing its flight over
                this cave and live, so deadly was the breath that streamed out
                
of that black throat and up into the vault of heaven. Hence the
                Greek name, ‘Aornos’, ‘the place without birds’. Here first of
                all the priestess stood four black-backed bullocks and poured
                wine upon their foreheads. She then plucked the bristles from
                the peak of their foreheads between their horns to lay upon the
                altar fires as a first offering and lifted up her voice to call on
                Hecate, mighty in the sky and mighty in Erebus. Attendants put
250         the knife to the throat and caught the warm blood in bowls.
                Aeneas himself took his sword and sacrificed a black-fleeced
                lamb to Night, the mother of the Furies, and her sister Earth,
                and to Proserpina a barren cow. Then he set up a night altar for
                the worship of the Stygian king and laid whole carcasses of bulls
                on its flames and poured rich oil on the burning entrails. Then
                suddenly, just before the sun had crossed his threshold in the
                sky and begun to rise, the earth bellowed underfoot, the wooded
                ridges quaked and dogs could be heard howling in the darkness.
                It was the arrival of the goddess. ‘Stand apart, all you who are
                unsanctified,’ cried the priestess. ‘Stand well apart. The whole
260         grove must be free of your presence. You, Aeneas, must enter
                upon your journey. Draw your sword from the sheath. Now
                you need your courage. Now let your heart be strong.’ With
                these words she moved in a trance into the open cave and step
                for step Aeneas strode fearlessly along behind her.

                You gods who rule the world of the spirits, you silent shades,
                and Chaos, and Phlegethon, you dark and silent wastes, let it be
                right for me to tell what I have been told, let it be with your
                divine blessing that I reveal what is hidden deep in the mists
                beneath the earth.

                They walked in the darkness of that lonely night with shadows
                all about them, through the empty halls of Dis and his desolate
270         kingdom, as men walk in a wood by the sinister light of a fitful
                moon when Jupiter has buried the sky in shade and black night
                has robbed all things of their colour. Before the entrance hall of
                Orcus, in the very throat of hell, Grief and Revenge have made
                their beds and Old Age lives there in despair, with white-faced
                Diseases and Fear and Hunger, corrupter of men, and squalid
                Poverty, things dreadful to look upon, and Death and Drudgery
                besides. Then there are Sleep, Death’s sister, perverted Pleasures,
280         
murderous War astride the threshold, the iron chambers of the
                Furies and raving Discord with blood-soaked ribbons binding
                her viperous hair. In the middle a huge dark elm spreads out its
                ancient arms, the resting-place, so they say, of flocks of idle
                dreams, one clinging under every leaf. Here too are all manner
                of monstrous beasts, Centaurs stabling inside the gate, Scyllas –
                half-dogs, half-women – Briareus with his hundred heads, the
                Hydra of Lerna hissing fiercely, the Chimaera armed in fire,
290         Gorgons and Harpies and the triple phantom of Geryon. Now
                Aeneas drew his sword in sudden alarm to meet them with
                naked steel as they came at him, and if his wise companion had
                not warned him that this was the fluttering of disembodied
                spirits, a mere semblance of living substance, he would have
                rushed upon them and parted empty shadows with steel.

                Here begins the road that leads to the rolling waters of
                Acheron, the river of Tartarus. Here is a vast quagmire of boiling
                whirlpools which belches sand and slime into Cocytus, and
                these are the rivers and waters guarded by the terrible Charon
300         in his filthy rags. On his chin there grows a thick grey beard,
                never trimmed. His glaring eyes are lit with fire and a foul cloak
                hangs from a knot at his shoulder. With his own hands he plies
                the pole and sees to the sails as he ferries the dead in a boat the
                colour of burnt iron. He is no longer young but, being a god,
                enjoys rude strength and a green old age. The whole throng of
                the dead was rushing to this part of the bank, mothers, men,
                great-hearted heroes whose lives were ended, boys, unmarried
310         girls and young men laid on the pyre before the faces of their
                parents, as many as are the leaves that fall in the forest at the
                first chill of autumn, as many as the birds that flock to land
                from deep ocean when the cold season of the year drives them
                over the sea to lands bathed in sun. There they stood begging to
                be allowed to be the first to cross and stretching out their arms
                in longing for the further shore. But the grim boatman takes
                some here and some there, and others he pushes away far back
                from the sandy shore.

                Aeneas, amazed and distressed by all this tumult, cried out:
                ‘Tell me, virgin priestess, what is the meaning of this crowding
320         to the river? What do the spirits want? Why are some pushed
                
away from the bank while others sweep the livid water with
                their oars?’ The aged Sibyl made this brief reply: ‘Son of
                Anchises, beyond all doubt the offspring of the gods, what you
                are seeing is the deep pools of the Cocytus and the swamp of
                the Styx, by whose divine power the gods are afraid to swear
                and lie. The throng you see on this side are the helpless souls of
                the unburied. The ferryman there is Charon. Those sailing the
                waters of the Styx have all been buried. No man may be ferried
                from fearful bank to fearful bank of this roaring current until
                his bones are laid to rest. Instead they wander for a hundred
330         years, fluttering round these shores until they are at last allowed
                to return to the pools they have so longed for.’ The son of
                Anchises checked his stride and stood stock still with many
                thoughts coursing through his mind as he pitied their cruel fate,
                when there among the sufferers, lacking all honour in death, he
                caught sight of Leucaspis, and Orontes, the captain of the Lycian
                fleet, men who had started with him from Troy, sailed the
                wind-torn seas and been overwhelmed by gales from the south
                that rolled them in the ocean, ships and crews.

                Next he saw coming towards him his helmsman Palinurus
                who had fallen from the ship’s stern and plunged into the sea
                while watching the stars on the recent crossing from Libya.
340         Aeneas recognized this sorrowing figure with difficulty in the
                dark shadow and was the first to speak: ‘What god was it,
                Palinurus, that took you from us and drowned you in mid-ocean?
                Come tell me, for this is the one response of Apollo
                that has misled me. I have never found him false before. He
                prophesied that you would be safe upon the sea and would
                reach the boundaries of Ausonia. Is this how he has kept his
                promise?’ ‘O great leader, son of Anchises,’ replied Palinurus,
                ‘the bowl on the tripod of Apollo has not deceived you and no
                god drowned me in the sea. While I was holding course and
350         gripping the tiller which it was my charge to guard, it was
                broken off by some mighty force and I dragged it down with me
                as I fell. I swear by the wild sea that I felt no fear for myself to
                equal my fear that your ship might come to grief, stripped of its
                steering and with its pilot pitched into the sea and that great
                swell rising. Three long winter nights the wind blew hard from
                
the south and carried me over seas I could not measure, till,
                when light came on the fourth day, and a wave lifted me to its
                crest, I could just make out the land of Italy. I swam slowly to
                shore and was on the point of reaching safety when a tribe of
                ruffians set upon me with their knives, weighed down as I was
360         by my wet clothes and clinging by my finger tips to the jagged
                rocks at the foot of a cliff. Knowing nothing of me they made
                me their plunder, and now I am at the mercy of the winds, and
                the waves are turning my body over at the water’s edge. But I
                beg of you, by the joyous light and winds of heaven, by your
                father, by your hopes of Iulus as he grows to manhood, you
                who have never known defeat, rescue me from this anguish.
                Either throw some earth on my body – you can do that. Just
                steer back to the harbours of Velia. Or else if there is a way and
                the goddess who gave you life shows it to you – for I do not
                believe you are preparing to sail these great rivers and the swamp
370         of the Styx unless the blessing of the gods is with you – take pity
                on me, give me your right hand, take me aboard and carry me
                with you over the waves, so that in death at least I can be at
                peace in a place of quiet.’ These were the words of Palinurus
                and this was the reply of the Sibyl: ‘How did you conceive this
                monstrous desire, Palinurus? How can you, who are unburied,
                hope to set eyes on the river Styx and the pitiless waters of the
                Furies? How can you come near the bank unbidden? You must
                cease to hope that the Fates of the gods can be altered by prayers.
                But hear my words, remember them and find comfort for your
                sad case. The people who live far and wide in all their cities
                round the place where you died, will be driven by signs from
380         heaven to consecrate your bones. They will raise a burial mound
                for you and to that mound will pay their annual tribute and the
                place will bear the name of Palinurus for all time to come.’ At
                these words his sorrows were removed and the grief was driven
                from that sad heart for a short time. He rejoiced in the land that
                was to bear his name.