The Aeneid (46 page)

                As Juno was making her plea, all the gods began to murmur
                in support or in dissent. It was like the murmuring of a storm
                when the first breeze is caught in a wood and the rustling rolls
                through the trees unseen, warning sailors that winds are on the
100         way. Then the All-powerful Father, the highest power in all the
                universe, began to speak, and at his voice the lofty palace of
                the gods fell silent, the earth trembled to its foundations and the
                heights of heaven were hushed. The winds in that moment were
                stilled and the sea kept its waves at peace. ‘So be it,’ he said.
                ‘Hear my words and lay them to your hearts. Since you have
                not allowed the people of Ausonia to be joined in a treaty with
                the Trojans, and since there is no end to this discord of yours,
                this day let each man face his own fortune and set his course by
                his own hopes. Trojan and Rutulian I shall treat alike. Whether
110         this camp is blockaded by the destiny of Italy or because of the
                folly and wickedness of the Trojans and false prophecies they
                have received, as each man has set up his loom, so will he endure
                the labour and the fortune of it – I do not exempt the Rutulians.
                Jupiter is the same king to all men. The Fates will find their
                way.’ Then, swearing an oath by the waves of the Styx, his
                brother’s river, by the banks and dark whirlpools of that pitch-black
                torrent, he nodded and his nod shook the whole of
                Olympus. There were no more words. He rose from his golden
                throne, and the heavenly gods thronged around him and
                escorted him to the threshold.

                The Rutulians meanwhile were fighting hard round each of
                the gates to bring down their enemies in blood and ring their
120         walls with fire, while Aeneas’ legion was trapped inside its own
                ramparts with no hope of escape. Helpless and desperate, they
                stood on their high towers and manned the circle of their walls
                with a thin line of defenders. Asius, son of Imbrasus, Thymoetes,
                son of Hicetaon, the two Assaraci and old Thymbris alongside
                Castor were there in the forefront of the battle, and the two
                
brothers of Sarpedon were with them, Clarus and Thaemon
                from the mountains of Lycia. Acmon of Lyrnesus, as great a
                warrior as his father Clytius or his brother Mnestheus, was
                putting out all his strength to carry a boulder, no small part of
130         a mountain, while they strove to defend their camp by throwing
                rocks and javelins, or hurling fire and fitting arrows to the string.
                There in the middle of them, with his noble head bared, stood
                the boy Ascanius for whom the goddess Venus cares above all
                others, and rightly cares. He was like a gem sparkling in its gold
                setting, an adornment for a head or neck, or like glowing ivory
                skilfully inlaid in boxwood or Orician terebinth, and his long
                hair lay on his milk-white neck, held in place by a circlet of soft
                gold. There too was Ismarus. The warriors of those great-hearted
140         peoples could see him tipping his arrows with poison
                and aiming them at the enemy. He was the offshoot of a noble
                house in Maeonia where men worked the rich lands and the
                river Pactolus watered them with gold. Mnestheus also was
                there, raised to the heights of glory for his recent repulse of
                Turnus out of the ring of the walls; Capys, too, who gives his
                name to the city of Capua in Campania.

                These were the men who clashed that day in bitter fighting.
                In the middle of the night that followed, Aeneas was ploughing
                the waves of the ocean. After leaving king Evander, he had
                entered the Etruscan camp and gone to their king to tell him his
150         name and nation, what he wanted, what he offered and what
                armed forces Mezentius was winning to his support. He told
                him too of the violent passions of Turnus and reminded him
                that in human affairs there is no room for certainty, and to all
                this he added his appeal for help. Tarchon instantly joined forces
                with him and made a treaty. Then these Etruscans, these men
                of Lydian stock, having paid their debts to destiny, put to sea
                and committed themselves to a foreign leader in accordance
                with the will of the gods. Aeneas’ ship took the lead. Phrygian
                lions were yoked to it for a beak, and above them the figurehead
                was Mount Ida, a sight most dear to the Trojan exiles. Here sat
160         great Aeneas, turning over in his mind the varied chances of
                war, and all the while young Pallas stayed close by his left side,
                asking him now about the stars and the course they were steering
                
through the darkness of the night, now about all he had suffered
                by land and sea.

                Now goddesses, it is time to open up Mount Helicon, to set
                your songs in motion and tell of the army which came that night
                with Aeneas from the shores of Etruria, to say who fitted out
                the ships and who sailed in them across the ocean.

                Massicus was the first, cutting through the water on the
                bronze-plated
Tiger
. Under him sailed a band of a thousand
                warriors who had left behind them the walls of Clusium and the
                city of Cosae. Their weapons were arrows carried in light quivers
                on their shoulders, and death-dealing bows.

170         With them sailed grim Abas, whose whole troop shone in
                brilliant armour, and a gilded Apollo gleamed on the stern of
                his ship. Populonia, his motherland, had given him six hundred
                fighting men, skilful in the wars, while three hundred came from
                Ilua, the island of the Chalybes, teeming with its inexhaustible
                ores.

                The third ship was sailed by Asilas, the great mediator
                between gods and men, master of the stars of the sky and the
                entrails of the beasts of the field, of bird cries and the prescient
                fires of lightning. He sped along leading a thousand men in close
                formation with their spears bristling. Pisa put them under his
180         command, a city on Etruscan soil but founded by men from the
                Alpheus, the river of Olympia.

                Next in line sailed fair Astyr, whose trust was in his horse and
                his iridescent armour. To him were joined three hundred men,
                and all were as one in their zeal to follow him, men whose home
                was Caere, men from the fields of Minio, from ancient Pyrgi
                and the unwholesome swamps of Graviscae.

                Nor could I pass over Cunarus, so brave in war, the leader of
                the Ligurians, nor Cupavo with his small band of fighting men.
                High above his head tossed the swan feathers that were a token
                of his father’s change of form – all the fault of the God of Love.
                They say that Cycnus sought comfort from the Muse for the
                sadness of his love, by singing of the loss of his dear Phaethon
190         in the green shade of the poplars that had been Phaethon’s
                sisters. There, when he grew old, he put on soft white plumage
                and rose from the earth, singing as he flew towards the stars. It
                
was his son who now commanded the huge
Centaur
, driving it
                along under oar, and with him in his fleet he took a throng
                of his peers. The Centaur figurehead loomed over the water,
                threatening to hurl down a massive rock into the waves from its
                dizzy height, and the long keel ploughed its furrow deep in the
                sea.

                There too was Ocnus, driving on an army from his fatherland.
                He was the son of Manto the prophetess and the Tuscan river
200         Tiber. To you, Mantua, he gave your walls and the name of his
                mother – Mantua, rich in the roll of its forefathers, and not all
                of one race, but of three, and in each race four peoples. Of all
                these peoples Mantua is the head, and its strength comes from
                its Etruscan blood. From here too, Mezentius had roused five
                hundred men to fight against him, and these the river Mincius,
                veiled in blue-green reeds, led down to the sea in their ships of
                war from his father, Lake Benacus. There sailed Aulestes, heavy
                in the water, but rising as his hundred oars thrashed the waves
                and churned the marble of the sea to foam. He sailed the
210         monstrous
Triton
, which terrified the blue sea with its horn. As
                it swam along, its figurehead showed a shaggy front like a man
                as far as its flanks, but its belly ended in a monster of the deep,
                while under the breast of this creature, half-man half-beast, the
                waves foamed and murmured.

                These were the chosen leaders who went to the help of Troy
                in their thirty ships, and ploughed the plains of salt with bronze.

                By now the day had left the sky and Phoebe, the kindly
                Goddess of the Moon, was pounding the middle of Olympus
                with the hooves of her night-wandering horses. Duty allowed
                no rest to the limbs of Aeneas. As he sat controlling the tiller
220         and seeing to the sails, a band of his old comrades came suddenly
                towards him in mid-voyage. They were nymphs, the nymphs
                into whom his ships had been changed at the bidding of the
                kindly Mother Goddess Cybele, and they now held divine power
                over the sea. There they were, swimming in line, as many of
                them now cleaving the waves as had then stood to the shore
                with bronze-plated prows. They recognized their king from a
                distance and danced around him in the water, and Cymodocea,
                the best speaker among them, came behind his ship and putting
                
her right hand on its stern, raised her back out of the water,
                while her left hand was below the surface, oaring silently along.
                Aeneas was still bewildered when she began to speak to him:
                ‘Are you awake, Aeneas,’ she asked, ‘son of the gods? Wake
230         then and let out the sail-ropes. We are the pines from the sacred
                top of Mount Ida, now sea nymphs. We are your fleet. When
                the treacherous Rutulian was pressing us hard with fire and
                sword, against our wishes we had to break the moorings you
                gave us, and now we have been looking for you all over the
                ocean. Mother Cybele took pity on us and gave us this new
                form, allowing us to become goddesses and spend our lives
                beneath the waves. But the boy Ascanius is trapped behind a
                wall and ditches, surrounded by missiles and by Latins bristling
                with war. The Arcadian cavalry from Pallanteum are now in
                their places as ordered, along with the brave Etruscans, and
240         Turnus has firmly resolved to prevent them joining forces with
                the Trojan camp by taking up position between them with his
                own troops. Up with you then, and at the first coming of dawn,
                order your allies to arms and then take up the invincible shield
                with its rim of gold given you by the God of Fire himself.
                Tomorrow’s light, unless you think these are empty words of
                mine, will see the field of battle heaped high with Rutulian
                dead.’ So she spoke, and as she left him she gave the high stern
                a push with her right hand – and well she knew the art of it. The
                ship flew through the waves faster than a javelin or wind-swift
                arrow, and the others sped along behind it. The leader of the
250         Trojans, the son of Anchises, was struck dumb with bewilderment,
                but his heart lifted at the omen, and looking up to the
                vault of heaven, he uttered this short prayer: ‘Kindly Mother of
                the Gods, dweller on Ida, who takes delight in Mount
                Dindymus, in cities crowned with towers and in the lion pair
                responsive to your chariot reins, be now my leader in this battle.
                Bring near to us the due fulfilment of your omen. Stand by the
                side of your Phrygians and give us your divine blessing.’ These
                were his words, and even as he spoke them the revolving day
                was already rushing back in its full brightness and had put the
                darkness to flight. His first thought was to order his allies to
                
follow the standards, to fit their minds for the use of their
                weapons and prepare themselves for battle.