Aeneidos V

Meanwhile Aeneas was already holding the mid-sea with his fleet,

sure of his course, and cutting the waves blackened by the North Wind,

looking back at the walls which now glow with the flames

of unhappy Elissa. What lit so great a fire, the cause of it,

lies hidden; but the hard griefs of a great love

defiled, and the known thing, what a woman in her fury can do,

draw the hearts of the Teucrians through a grim foreboding.

When the ships had the open water, and no land any longer

came to meet them, sea on every side and sky on every side,

a dark blue rain cloud took its stand above their heads,

carrying night and storm, and the water shuddered into dark.

The helmsman Palinurus himself, from the high stern:

“Ah! why have such storm clouds ringed the upper air?

What are you preparing, father Neptune?” Having said so much,

he orders them to gather in the tackle and lean on the strong oars,

and slants the sails against the wind, and speaks in this way:

“Great-hearted Aeneas, not if Jupiter himself should stand surety

would I hope to touch Italy under a sky like this.

The winds have shifted and roar across us; out of the black evening

they rise, and the air is packed together into cloud.

We are not enough to strain against them, nor to hold

so hard a course. Since Fortune has the better of us, let us follow,

and turn our way where she calls. Nor do I think the loyal

shores of your brother Eryx are far off, and the Sicanian harbors,

if only I measure back rightly the stars I have kept in mind.”

Then dutiful Aeneas: “Indeed I have seen for a long time now

that the winds demand this, and that you strain against them for nothing.

Turn your way with the sails. Could any land please me more,

or any where I would rather set my weary ships down,

than the one that keeps Dardanian Acestes for me

and holds the bones of my father Anchises in its lap?”

When this was said they make for harbor, and following west winds

fill the sails; the fleet is carried fast on the flood,

and at last, glad, they turn in to the sand they know.

But far off, wondering from the high top of a mountain

at their coming and at friendly ships, Acestes runs down to them,

bristling with javelins and in the hide of a Libyan bear,

a Trojan mother bore him, got by the river

Crinisus; and he, not forgetting his old parentage,

gives them joy of their return, and gladly takes them in

with a countryman's hoard, and comforts the weary with friendly stores.

When the next bright day had put the stars to flight at the first

rising of the east, Aeneas calls his companions into assembly

from the whole shore, and speaks from the raised earth of a mound:

“Great sons of Dardanus, a race out of the high blood of the gods,

the year's circle closes, the months are run out,

since we laid in the ground what was left of my father,

the bones of him, and hallowed the altars of our grief.

And now the day is here, unless I am wrong, that I shall always hold

bitter, always honored (so you gods have willed it).

Were I keeping it an exile among the Gaetulian Syrtes,

or caught on the Argive sea and in the city of Mycenae,

I would still carry through the yearly vows and the solemn

processions in their order, and pile the altars with their own gifts.

Now we stand of ourselves at the very ashes and the bones

of my father, not, I think, without a purpose, without the gods' will,

and, carried in, we enter a friendly harbor.

Come then, and let us all keep the glad rite together;

let us ask for winds; and may he grant that I bring him these offerings

year by year in a city founded, in temples given to his name.

Acestes, born out of Troy, gives you two head of cattle

by count for every ship; bring the household gods to the feast,

both our own fathers' and those our host Acestes keeps.

Besides, if the ninth Dawn lifts the kindly day for mortals

and unweaves the round world with her rays,

I will set the Teucrians a first contest, a race of swift ships;

and whoever has strength in the foot race, and whoever comes forward

bold in his force, or better with the javelin and the light arrows,

or trusts himself to join a fight with the raw-hide gauntlet,

let them all be here, and look for the prizes of a deserved palm.

Let every mouth speak well, and bind your brows with boughs.”

So he spoke, and veils his own brows with his mother's myrtle;

Helymus does the same, and Acestes ripe in years,

and the boy Ascanius, and the rest of the young men follow them.

He went from the gathering to the mound with many thousands

about him, in the middle of a great walking crowd.

Here, pouring as the rite requires, he spills two bowls

of unmixed wine on the ground, two of new milk, two of holy blood,

and throws down bright flowers, and speaks in this way:

“Hail, holy father: hail again, ashes recovered

for nothing, and my father's soul and shade.

It was not allowed me to look with you for the Italian borders,

the fields of fate, or the Ausonian Tiber, whatever that is.”

He had said this, when from the deep of the shrine a gliding snake

drew out seven huge coils, seven rolling folds,

clasping the mound quietly and sliding among the altars,

his back marked with blue, and a mottled brightness

of gold set his scales on fire, as a rainbow in the clouds

throws a thousand shifting colors against the sun.

Aeneas stood stunned at the sight. The snake, in his long train,

creeping at last among the shallow bowls and the smooth cups,

tasted the feast, and again, doing no harm,

went back under the mound and left the altars grazed.

The more for this he begins his father's rites over,

unsure whether to think it the spirit of the place

or an attendant of his father: he kills two sheep by custom,

as many swine, as many bullocks with black backs,

and he poured wine from the bowls, and called on the soul

of great Anchises, and the Shade let go from Acheron.

And his companions too, each as his means allowed, gladly

bring gifts, load the altars, and slaughter bullocks;

others set the bronze pots in a row, and stretched along the grass

they lay coals under the spits and roast the flesh.

The looked-for day was here, and the horses of Phaethon were bringing

the ninth Dawn on now in a clear light,

and rumor, and the name of famous Acestes, had stirred

the neighboring people; they had filled the shores with a glad crowd

to see the followers of Aeneas, and some of them ready to compete.

First the prizes are set out before their eyes in the middle

of the ring: holy tripods, green garlands,

and palms, the winners' reward, and arms, and clothing

steeped in purple, talents of silver and of gold;

and from the mound in the middle a trumpet sings the games begun.

First, evenly matched, four hulls picked out of the whole fleet

come into the contest with their heavy oars.

Mnestheus drives the swift Pristis with a fierce crew,

Mnestheus, Italian soon, from whose name the house of Memmius comes;

and Gyas the huge Chimaera in her huge bulk,

a city's worth of work, which the Dardanian crew drive

in a triple bank, the oars rising in three tiers;

and Sergestus, from whom the Sergian house holds its name,

rides in the great Centaur, and Cloanthus in the sea-green

Scylla, from which your own line comes, Roman Cluentius.

Far out at sea there is a rock over against the foaming

shore, which at times lies drowned and beaten by the swollen

water, when the northwesters of winter bury the stars;

in calm it says nothing, and rises out of the still surface

a level field, a station most welcome to cormorants in the sun.

Here father Aeneas set up a green turning-post

of leafy oak, a mark for the sailors, so they would know

where to come back from, and where to bend their long courses round.

Then they draw their stations by lot, and the captains themselves

shine out far off on the sterns, splendid in gold and purple;

the rest of the young men are veiled in poplar leaves

and glisten with oil on their bared shoulders.

They settle on the benches, their arms stretched to the oars;

stretched too, they wait for the signal, and a hammering dread

drains their leaping hearts, and the raised hunger for praise.

Then, when the clear trumpet gave its note, all of them,

with no delay, sprang from their marks; the sailors' shout

strikes the sky, and the water, hauled by their arms, turns and foams.

Level, they cut their furrows, and the whole plain gapes open,

torn apart by oars and by the three-toothed beaks.

Not so headlong in the two-horse race do the chariots seize

the field and rush out, poured from the starting gate,

nor do the drivers so shake the rippling reins

over the loosed teams, and hang forward into the lash.

Then with the clapping and the roar of men and the heat of their taking sides

the whole wood rings, and the shut-in shore rolls the noise

about, and the hills, struck with the shouting, throw it back.

Gyas breaks clear of the others and slips out first on the water

through the crush and the roar; Cloanthus comes after him,

better in the rowing, but the weight of his pine holds him

back and slow. Behind these, at an even gap, the Pristis

and the Centaur strain to take the place in front;

and now the Pristis has it, now the huge Centaur passes her

and beats her, now the two run as one, prow level with prow,

and furrow the salt shallows with their long keels.

And now they were nearing the rock and had the turning-post,

when Gyas, in the lead and winning in mid-water,

calls out to Menoetes, who steered his ship:

“Where are you going, so far to my right? Bring her head in here;

hug the shore, and let the blades graze the rocks on the left;

let the others keep the deep.” He spoke; but Menoetes, afraid

of blind reefs, twists the prow away toward open water.

“Where are you going, off course?” again, “Make for the rocks, Menoetes!”

Gyas kept shouting him back; and look, he sees Cloanthus

pressing on his back and holding the nearer line.

Between Gyas' ship and the sounding rocks, on the inside,