The Aeneid (36 page)

                Now goddesses, it is time to open up Mount Helicon, to set
                your songs in motion and tell what kings were roused to war,
                what armies followed each of them to fill the plains, the heroes
                that flowered and the weapons that blazed in those far-off days
                in the bountiful land of Italy. You are the divine Muses. You
                remember, goddesses, and can utter what you remember. Our
                ears can barely catch the faintest whisper of the story.

                The first to enter upon the war and arm his columns was cruel
                Mezentius from Etruria, scorner of the gods. At his side was his
650         son Lausus, who for his beauty was second to none but the
                Laurentine Turnus. Lausus was a tamer of horses and a hunter
                of wild beasts, and he was at the head of a thousand men who
                had followed him and followed him in vain from the city of
                Agylla. He deserved a father whom it would have been more
                of a joy to obey, a father other than Mezentius.

                Behind them, driving over the grassland and displaying his
                victorious horses and his chariot which proudly bore the palm
                of victory, came Aventinus, son of Hercules, fair son of a fair
                
father, and on his shield he carried his father’s blazon, the Hydra
                and its snakes, the hundred snakes encircling it. His mother, the
660         priestess Rhea, had given birth to him in secret, bringing him
                into the land of light in the wood on the Aventine hill. She had
                lain with Hercules, a woman with a god, when he had come in
                triumph to the land of the Laurentines, the hero of Tiryns who
                had slain Geryon and washed the cattle of Spain in the river of
                the Etruscans. His men carried javelins and fearsome pikes
                into battle and used the Sabine throwing spear with its round
                tapering point. He himself was on foot, swinging a great lion
                skin about him as he walked. It was matted and bristling, and
                he had put it with its white teeth over his head and a fearsome
                sight he was as he came up to the palace with his father’s garb
                tied round his shoulders.

670         Next came two bold Argive warriors, the twin brothers Catillus
                and fierce Coras, leaving the walls of Tibur, which took its
                name from their brother Tiburtus. They would charge out in
                front of the first line of battle through showers of missiles, like
                two cloud-born Centaurs plunging down in wild career from the
                snow-clad tops of Mount Homole or Mount Othrys, crashing
                through the trees as the great forest opens to let them pass.

                The founder of the city of Praeneste was also there, a king
                who ruled among the herds and flocks of the countryside. Men
680         have always believed that he was the son of Vulcan, Caeculus,
                found as a baby on the burning hearth. His rustic legion came
                from far and wide to follow him: from Praeneste on its hilltop;
                from the fields round Juno’s city of Gabii, from the icy waters
                of the Anio and the streaming river rocks of the Hernici; men
                nurtured by the rich city of Anagnia and by your river, Father
                Amasenus. Not all of these came into battle with shields and
                arms and chariots sounding: most of them showered acorns of
                blue lead from slings; some carried a pair of hunting spears in
                one hand and wore on their heads tawny caps made from the
690         hides of wolves, their left foot leaving a naked print while a
                rawhide boot protected the right.

                Now Messapus, breaker of horses, son of Neptune, whom
                neither fire nor steel might lay low, suddenly took up his sword
                again and called to arms tribes that had long lived at ease and
                
armies that had lost the habit of war. These were the men who
                came from the ridges of Fescennium, from Aequum Faliscum,
                from the citadel of Soracte and the Flavinian fields, from the
                lake of Ciminius and its mountain and the groves of Capena.
                They marched in regular formations singing the praises of their
700         king like white swans flying back from their feeding grounds
                through wisps of cloud and pouring out the measured music
                from their long necks while far and wide the echo of their singing
                beats back from the river and the Asian marsh. This great
                mingled swarm of men seemed not like a bronze-clad army, but
                an aery cloud of clamorous birds on the wing, straining in from
                the high seas to the shore.

                There comes Clausus of the blood of the ancient Sabines,
                leading a great army, and a great army in himself. From Clausus
                are descended the tribe and family of the Claudii, spread all
                over Latium ever since the Sabines were given a share in Rome.
710         With him came a large contingent from Amiternum and the first
                Quirites, all the troops from Eretum and from olive-bearing
                Mutusca, all who lived in the city of Nomentum and the Rosean
                plains round Lake Velinus, on the bristling rocks of Tetrica and
                its gloomy mountain, in Casperia and Foruli and on the banks
                of the Himella, men who drank the Tiber and the Fabaris, men
                sent by chilly Nursia, levies from Orta, tribes from old Latium
                and the peoples whose lands are cut by the Allia, that river of
                ill-omened name. They were as many as the waves that roll in
                from the Libyan ocean when fierce Orion is sinking into the
720         winter sea, or as thick as the ears of corn scorched by the
                early sun on the plain of Hermus or the golden fields of Lycia.
                Their shields clanged and the earth quaked under the beat of
                their feet.

                Halaesus next, one of Agamemnon’s men and an enemy of
                all things Trojan, yoked his horses to his chariot and rushed a
                thousand fierce tribes to join Turnus: men whose mattocks turn
                the rich Massic soil for Bacchus; Auruncans sent by their fathers
                from their high hills; men sent from the nearby plains of Sidicinum;
                men who come from Cales and the banks of the Volturnus,
                river of many fords, and with them the tough Saticulan and
730         bands of Oscans. Their weapon was the aclys, a light spear, and
                
it was their practice to attach a supple thong to it. A leather
                shield protected their left side and for close fighting they used
                swords shaped like sickles.

                Nor will you, Oebalus, go unmentioned in our song. Men say
                you were the son of Telon by the nymph of the river Sebethus,
                born when Telon was already an old man and ruling over
                Capreae, the island of the Teleboae. But the son no more than
                the father had been content with the lands he had inherited and
                by now he had long held sway over the tribes of the Sarrastes,
                the plains washed by the river Sarnus, men who lived in Rufrae,
740         Batulum and the fields of Celemna and those on whom the walls
                of apple-bearing Abella look down. Their missile was the catei
                a, a weapon thrown like the Teuton boomerang. Their heads were
                protected by helmets of bark stripped from the cork oak. They
                carried gleaming half-moon shields of plated bronze and their
                swords too were of gleaming bronze.

                You too, Ufens, famous for your feats of arms, were sent into
                battle from the mountains of Nersae. These Aequi live in a hard
                land and are the most rugged of races, schooled in hunting the
                forests. They work the soil with their armour on. Their delight
                is always to bring home fresh plunder and live off what they
                take.

750         Then came a priest from Marruvium, his helmet decorated
                by a sprig of fruitful olive, the bravest of men, Umbro by name,
                sent by king Archippus. By his spells and the touch of his hand
                he knew well how to sow the seed of sleep on nests of vipers
                and on water-snakes, for all their deadly breath. His arts could
                charm their anger and soothe their bites, but he had no antidote
                for the sting of a Trojan sword and not all his lullabies and
                herbs gathered in the Marsian hills could help him with his
                wounds. For you wept the grove of the goddess Angitia. For
760         you wept the glassy waves and clear pools of Lake Fucinus.

                There too, sent by his mother Aricia, glorious Virbius came
                to the war, the lovely son of Hippolytus. He had grown to
                manhood in the grove of Egeria around the dank lake-shores by
                the altar where rich sacrifices win the favour of Diana. For after
                Hippolytus had been brought to his death by the wiles of his
                stepmother Phaedra, torn to pieces by bolting horses and paying
                
with his blood the penalty imposed by his father, men say he
                came back under the stars of the sky and the winds of heaven,
770         restored by healing herbs and the love of Diana. Then the
                All-powerful Father was enraged that any mortal should rise
                from the shades below into the light of life and with his own
                hand he took the inventor of those healing arts, Asclepius, son
                of Apollo, and hurled him with his thunderbolt down into the
                wave of the river Styx. But Diana Trivia, in her loving care,
                found a secret refuge for Hippolytus and consigned him to the
                nymph Egeria and her grove, where, alone and unknown, his
                name changed to Virbius, he might live out his days. Thus it is
                that horn-hooved horses are not admitted to the sacred grove
780         of the temple of Trivia because in their terror at the monsters of
                the deep the horses of Hippolytus had overturned his chariot
                and thrown him on the shore. But none the less his son was
                driving fiery horses across the level plain as he rushed to the
                wars in a chariot.

                There, looking around him and moving among the leaders,
                was Turnus himself, in full armour, the fairest of them all, and
                taller by a head than all the others. On the towering top of his
                triple-plumed helmet there stood a Chimaera breathing from its
                throat a fire like Etna’s, and the fiercer and bloodier the battle,
                the more savagely she roared and belched the deadly flames.
                The blazon on his polished shield showed a mighty theme, a
790         golden figure of Io, raising her horned head, with rough hair on
                her hide, already changed into a heifer. And there was Argus,
                guarding her, and her father Inachus pouring his river from an
                urn embossed on the shield. Behind Turnus came a cloud of
                foot-soldiers and the whole plain was crowded with columns of
                men bearing shields, the youth of Argos, bands of Auruncans,
                Rutulians, Sicani, that ancient race, Sacrani in battle order and
                Labici with their painted shields; men who ploughed the Tiber
                valley and the sacred banks of the Numicus; men whose ploughshare
                worked the Rutulian hills and the ridge of Circeii; men
800         from the fields ruled by Jupiter of Anxur and the goddess Feronia
                delighting in her greenwood grove, and men from the black
                swamps of Satura where the icy river Ufens threads his way
                along his valley bottom to lose himself in ocean.

                
Last of all came Camilla, the warrior maiden of the Volsci,
                leading a cavalry squadron flowering in bronze. Not for her
                girlish hands the distaff and wool-basket of Minerva. She was a
                maid inured to battle, of a fleetness of foot to race the winds.
                She could have skimmed the tops of a standing crop without
                touching them and her passage would not have bruised the
810         delicate ears of grain. She could have run over the ocean, hovered
                over the swell and never wet her foot in the waves. Young men
                streamed from house and field and mothers came thronging to
                gaze at her as she went, lost in wonderment at the royal splendour
                of the purple veiling the smoothness of her shoulders, her
                hair weaving round its gold clasp, her Lycian quiver and the
                shepherd’s staff of myrtle wood with the head of a lance.

                When Turnus raised the flag of war above the Laurentine citadel
                and the shrill horns blared, when he whipped up his eager horses
                and clashed his sword on his shield, there was instant confusion.
                In that moment the whole of Latium rose in a frenzy to take the
                oath and young warriors were baying for blood. Their great
                leaders Messapus and Ufens and the scorner of the gods Mezentius
                were levying men everywhere, stripping the fields of those
                who tilled them. They also sent Venulus to the city of great
10           Diomede to ask for help and to let him know that Trojans were
                settling in Italy, that Aeneas had arrived with a fleet bringing
                the defeated household gods of Troy, claiming that he was being
                called by the Fates to be king; the tribes were flocking to join
                this Trojan, this descendant of Dardanus, and his name was on
                the lips of men all over Latium; what all this was leading up to,
                what Aeneas hoped to gain from the fighting if Fortune smiled
                upon him, Diomede himself would know better than king
                Turnus or than king Latinus.