Aeneidos I

Arms and the man I sing, who first from the shores of Troy

came to Italy, an exile by fate, and to the Lavinian

shores: much buffeted, he, on land and on the deep

by the violence of the gods above, for cruel Juno's unforgetting wrath;

and much he suffered in war as well, until he should found a city

and bring his gods into Latium, whence the Latin race,

the fathers of Alba, and the walls of high Rome.

Muse, tell me the causes: what divine will was wounded,

or grieving at what, that the queen of the gods drove a man

renowned for duty to turn through so many disasters, to face

so many labors. Is there such wrath in heavenly hearts?

There was an ancient city, held by settlers out of Tyre,

Carthage, facing Italy and far off the Tiber's

mouths, rich in wealth and fiercest in the pursuits of war;

which Juno is said to have cherished above all other lands,

Samos itself set second. Here were her arms,

here her chariot; that this should be the kingdom of the nations,

if in any way the fates allowed, even then she strove and nursed the hope.

But she had heard that a stock was being drawn from Trojan blood

to overturn the Tyrian citadels one day;

that from it a people ruling far and wide, and proud in war,

would come for Libya's ruin: so the Fates were spinning it.

Fearing that, and remembering the old war, Saturn's daughter,

which she had waged at Troy long since for her beloved Argos.

nor had the causes of her wrath and her cruel griefs

fallen yet from her mind: there stays, stored deep,

the judgment of Paris, and the insult to her beauty scorned,

and the hated race, and the honors of Ganymede carried off.

Inflamed by these on top of all that, the Trojans, tossed

over the whole sea, the leavings of the Danaans and of merciless

Achilles, she kept far from Latium; and for many years

they wandered, driven by the fates, around every sea.

So vast a labor it was to found the Roman race!

Scarcely out of sight of Sicily's land they were setting sail

gladly for the deep, driving the salt foam with bronze,

when Juno, keeping the everlasting wound beneath her breast,

said this to herself: “Am I to give up what I began, beaten,

and unable to turn the king of the Teucrians away from Italy?

The fates forbid me, of course. Could Pallas burn the fleet

of the Argives and drown the men themselves in the sea,

for the crime and the madness of one man, Ajax son of Oileus?

She herself hurled Jove's swift fire from the clouds,

scattered the ships and overturned the seas with winds,

and him, breathing out flames from his transfixed chest,

she caught up in a whirlwind and impaled on a sharp rock.

But I, who walk as queen of the gods, and of Jove

both sister and wife, wage war so many years

against one race! And will anyone worship Juno's power

after this, or lay an offering on her altars as a suppliant?”

Turning such things over in her kindled heart, the goddess

came into the homeland of storm clouds, a land teeming with raging south winds,

came to Aeolia. Here in a huge cavern king Aeolus

presses down the struggling winds and the roaring storms

with his command, and curbs them with chains and prison.

They, resentful, with a great rumbling of the mountain,

roar around their bars; Aeolus sits in his high citadel

holding his scepter, and softens their spirits and tempers their rages.

Did he not, they would surely carry seas and lands

and the deep sky away with them in their rush, and sweep them through the air.

But the all-powerful father hid them in black caverns,

fearing this, and laid a mass of high mountains over them,

and gave them a king who, by a fixed covenant,

would know how to tighten and, when ordered, to give loose rein.

To him Juno then, a suppliant, used these words:

“Aeolus, for to you the father of gods and king of men

has given both to calm the waves and to lift them with wind,

a race hateful to me sails the Tyrrhenian sea,

carrying Ilium into Italy, and its conquered household gods:

strike force into the winds, sink the ships and overwhelm them,

or drive them apart and scatter their bodies over the sea.

I have twice seven nymphs of outstanding form,

and the loveliest of them in beauty, Deiopea,

I will join to you in lasting marriage and name your own,

so that for such services she may live out all her years

with you, and make you the father of beautiful children.”

Aeolus answered this: “Your task, queen, is to search out

what you wish; for me it is right to take up the orders.

You win me this kingdom, such as it is, you win me the scepter

and Jove's favor, you give me a place at the feasts of the gods,

and you make me lord of the storm clouds and the tempests.”

When this was said, he turned his spear and drove it into the side

of the hollow mountain: and the winds, as if in column formed,

rush where a gate is given, and blast the lands with whirlwind.

They fell upon the sea, and from its lowest depths they heave

the whole of it up, East Wind and South together, and the Southwester

thick with squalls, and roll huge waves toward the shores.

There follows the shouting of men and the shrieking of ropes.

All at once the clouds tear the sky and the daylight away

from the eyes of the Teucrians; black night settles on the sea.

The heavens thundered, and the upper air flashes with crowding fires,

and everything threatens the men with death at hand.

At once Aeneas' limbs go slack with cold:

he groans, and stretching both palms toward the stars

he says this aloud: “Three times and four times blessed,

those to whom it fell, before their fathers' faces, under the high walls

of Troy, to meet their death! O bravest of the Danaan race,

son of Tydeus! Could I not have gone down on the plains of Ilium

and poured out this life by your right hand,

where fierce Hector lies by the spear of Aeacus' son, where huge

Sarpedon lies, where the Simois has caught up and rolls under its waves

so many shields of men, and helmets, and strong bodies?”

As he flung out such words, a squall shrieking out of the North

struck the sail head-on, and lifted the waves to the stars.

The oars are broken; then the prow swings away and gives the side

to the water; a sheer mountain of sea comes on in a heap.

Some hang on the wave's crest; for others the water gapes open

and shows the ground between the waves; the surge rages with sand.

Three ships the South Wind snatches and hurls onto hidden rocks:

rocks in mid-sea that the Italians call the Altars,

a vast ridge at the surface; three the East Wind drives from the deep

onto shoals and the Syrtes, a pitiful thing to watch,

dashes them on the shallows and rings them with a bank of sand.

One ship, which was carrying the Lycians and faithful Orontes,

before his very eyes a huge sea strikes from overhead

full on the stern: the steersman is shaken loose and pitched

head first; but the wave twists that hull three times

in the same place, and a quick whirlpool swallows it in the sea.

Here and there a few appear, swimming in the vast swell,

and weapons of men, and planks, and Trojan treasure through the water.

Now the strong ship of Ilioneus, now brave Achates',

and the one Abas sailed in, and the one aged Aletes,

the storm has beaten; with the joints of their sides sprung, every one

takes in the water it fought, and gapes open at the seams.

Meanwhile Neptune felt the sea being churned with a great rumble,

the storm let loose, and the still water flung back from its

lowest bed, heavily shaken; and gazing out over the deep

he lifted his calm head above the top of the wave.

He sees Aeneas' fleet broken apart over the whole sea,

the Trojans crushed by the waves and by the sky's collapse,

and his sister's tricks and her wrath were not hidden from him.

He calls East Wind and West Wind to him, then speaks:

“Has such confidence in your own birth got hold of you?

So now, winds, without my will, do you dare to throw sky

and earth together, and to raise such masses of water?

Whom I … but it is better to settle the waves that are stirred.

Later you will pay me for this, and not with a penalty like it.

Hurry your flight, and say this to your king:

not to him was the rule of the sea and the cruel trident

given by lot, but to me. He holds the monstrous rocks,

your house, East Wind; let Aeolus swagger in that hall

and be king in the shut prison of the winds.”

So he speaks, and quicker than the word he settles the swollen sea,

puts the massed clouds to flight, and brings the sun back.

Cymothoe and Triton together, straining, push the ships

off the sharp reef; he himself lifts them with the trident,

and opens the vast quicksands, and levels the water,

and glides on light wheels over the tops of the waves.

And as often happens, when rioting has broken out in a great

people, and the base crowd rages in its heart,

and now torches and stones are flying: fury supplies the weapons;

then, if by chance they have caught sight of a man weighty

in duty and in service, they fall silent and stand with ears up;

he rules their spirits with words and gentles their breasts,

so the whole uproar of the sea fell, once the father, gazing

out over the water and carried along under an open sky,

wheels his horses and, flying on, gives rein to his willing car.

Worn out, the followers of Aeneas strain to make for the nearest

shores in their course, and turn toward the coast of Libya.

There is a place in a long inlet: an island makes a harbor

by the barrier of its flanks, on which every wave out of the deep

is broken and parts itself into the coves it withdraws into.

On this side and that, huge cliffs and twin crags threaten

up into the sky, under whose peak far and wide