Aeneidos VI

So he speaks, weeping, and gives the fleet its head,

and at last glides in to the Euboean shores of Cumae.

They turn their prows to the sea; then with its gripping tooth

the anchor was holding the ships fast, and the curved

sterns fringe the beaches. A band of young men flashes out, burning,

onto the Hesperian shore; some hunt the seeds of flame

hidden in the veins of flint, some raid the woods, the thick

coverts of wild beasts, and point out the rivers they have found.

But dutiful Aeneas makes for the heights over which high Apollo

presides, and, far off, the retreat of the terrible Sibyl,

her huge cave, into whom the Delian seer breathes a great

mind and spirit, and lays the future open.

Now they come up under Trivia's groves and her roofs of gold.

Daedalus, as the story goes, fleeing the kingdom of Minos,

daring on swift wings to trust himself to the sky,

swam out by an unaccustomed road toward the cold Bears,

and at last stood light above the Chalcidian height.

Given back first to these lands, he made holy to you, Phoebus,

the oarage of his wings, and set up an enormous temple.

On the doors, the death of Androgeos; then the sons of Cecrops

ordered to pay (the pity of it) seven of their children's

bodies every year; the urn stands there, the lots drawn.

Opposite, lifted out of the sea, the land of Cnossos answers:

here the cruel love of the bull, and Pasiphae put under him

by stealth, and the mixed breed, the two-shaped offspring,

the Minotaur, is set there, the record of an unspeakable love;

here that labor of the house, and the wandering that has no way out;

but Daedalus himself, pitying the great love of the queen,

unknotted the tricks and the windings of the building,

guiding blind footsteps with a thread. You too would have had a great

part in so great a work, Icarus, if grief allowed.

Twice he had tried to shape your fall in gold;

twice the father's hands fell. They would have gone straight on

reading it all with their eyes, had not Achates, sent ahead,

come up by then, and with him the priestess of Phoebus and Trivia,

Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus, who says this to the king:

“The hour does not ask these sights of you now;

it would be better to slaughter seven bullocks from a herd

never yoked, and as many ewes, chosen as the rite requires.”

When she had said such things to Aeneas (nor do the men delay

the rites she ordered), the priestess calls the Teucrians into the high temple.

The huge flank of the Euboean cliff is cut out into a cavern,

to which a hundred wide approaches lead, a hundred mouths;

out of them rush as many voices, the Sibyl's answers.

They had reached the threshold, when the maiden: “It is time

to ask the fates,” she says; “the god, look, the god!” As she said this

before the doors, all at once her face was not one face, nor her color one,

nor did her hair stay dressed; but her breast heaves,

and her wild heart swells with frenzy; she is taller to look at,

and does not sound mortal, since the power of the god breathes

on her, nearer now. “Do you hang back from your vows and prayers,

Trojan Aeneas?” she says. “Do you hang back? For not before that

will the great mouths of this stunned house gape open.” Having said so

she fell silent. A cold shudder ran through the hard bones

of the Teucrians, and the king pours out prayers from the bottom of his heart:

“Phoebus, who have always pitied Troy's heavy labors,

you who steered the Dardan spear and the hands of Paris

into the body of Aeacus' grandson: with you to lead I have entered

so many seas that go round great lands, and the far withdrawn

nations of the Massyli, and the fields the Syrtes front;

now at last we lay hold of the shores of a fleeing Italy;

let Troy's fortune have followed us only this far.

You too may rightly spare the race of Pergamum now,

all you gods and goddesses whom Ilium offended, and the great

glory of Dardania. And you, most holy prophetess,

who know beforehand what is coming: grant (I ask no kingdom

not owed to my fates) that the Teucrians settle in Latium,

and their wandering gods, and the harried powers of Troy.

Then I will set up to Phoebus and to Trivia a temple

of solid marble, and feast days named for Phoebus.

A great sanctuary waits for you as well in my kingdom:

for here I will lay up your lots and the secret fates

spoken to my people, and I will consecrate chosen men,

kind one, to you. Only do not entrust your songs to leaves,

lest they fly disordered, the playthings of quick winds;

sing them yourself, I beg.” He made an end of speaking.

But the prophetess, not yet bearing Phoebus, rages huge

in the cave, trying whether she can shake the great god

out of her breast; so much the more he tires

her raving mouth, breaking her wild heart, and shapes her by pressure.

And now the hundred huge mouths of the house stood open

of their own accord, and carry the seer's answers through the air:

“O you, done at last with the great dangers of the sea!

But heavier ones wait on land. The sons of Dardanus

will come into the kingdom of Lavinium; put that care out of your breast;

but they will not want to have come. Wars, terrible wars,

and the Tiber foaming with a great deal of blood, I see.

You will not go without a Simois, nor a Xanthus, nor a Dorian camp;

another Achilles is already got for Latium,

he too born of a goddess; nor will Juno, fastened on the Teucrians,

be anywhere absent, while you, a suppliant in your want,

what peoples of Italy, what cities will you not have begged!

The cause of so great an evil is once more a foreign wife for the Teucrians,

once more a marriage from outside.

Do not you give way to evils, but go on against them the bolder,

as far as your fortune will let you. The first road to safety,

(and you would think it least) will open from a Greek city.”

With such words out of her shrine the Cumaean Sibyl

sings her dreadful riddles and bellows back through the cave,

wrapping true things in the dark: so Apollo shakes the reins

on her raving, and turns the goad under her breast.

As soon as the frenzy left her and the raving mouth grew quiet,

the hero Aeneas begins: “No shape of hardship,

maiden, rises new to me or unlooked for;

I have taken it all in beforehand and gone through it in my mind.

One thing I ask: since here, they say, is the doorway of the king

below, and the shadowed marsh where Acheron floods back,

let it fall to me to go to the sight and the face

of my dear father; teach me the road, and open the holy gates.

Him I snatched out through the flames and a thousand spears

behind us, on these shoulders, and got him clear of the enemy's middle;

he kept company with my road, bore with me all the seas

and every threat of the deep and of the sky,

sick as he was, beyond the strength and the lot of old age.

More: he was the one who prayed and laid the charge on me

to come to you as a suppliant and reach your threshold. Of the son and of the father,

kind one, I beg you, have pity; for you can do all things, and Hecate

did not set you over the groves of Avernus for nothing.

If Orpheus could fetch back the Shades of his wife,

trusting to his Thracian lyre and its singing strings;

if Pollux redeemed his brother by dying turn for turn,

and goes and comes back that road so often. Why speak of Theseus,

why of great Hercules? My own line too is from Jove at the top.”

With such words he was praying, and holding on to the altar,

when the prophetess began: “Sown from the blood of the gods,

Trojan son of Anchises, the going down to Avernus is easy;

night and day the door of black Dis stands open;

but to call the step back, to get out to the air above,

this is the work, this is the labor. A few, whom fair Jupiter

loved, or whose blazing worth carried them up to the sky,

sons of gods, have done it. Woods hold all the middle ground,

and Cocytus slides round and shuts it in with a black fold.

But if there is such love in your mind, such longing

to swim the Stygian lakes twice, twice to look on black

Tartarus, and it pleases you to give in to a mad labor,

hear what has to be done first. Hidden in a shaded tree

is a bough, gold in its leaves and in its pliant stem,

called sacred to the Juno below; the whole grove roofs it,

and shadows shut it in with dark valleys.

But it is not granted to go under the earth's covered places

until a man has plucked the gold-haired growth from the tree.

Beautiful Proserpina has laid it down that this be carried

to her as her own due. When the first is torn away, a second

gold one is not wanting, and the twig leafs out in the same metal.

So search high with your eyes, and when you have found it in due form,

take it in your hand; for it will come willing and easy of itself,

if the fates call you; otherwise you will not master it

by any strength, nor tear it off with hard iron.

Besides, the body of a friend of yours lies dead,

(you do not know it) and fouls the whole fleet with a funeral,

while you look for my counsel and hang about my threshold.

Carry him back first to a place of his own and lay him in a grave.

Lead up black cattle; let those be the first offerings for cleansing:

so at the end you will look on the groves of Styx and the kingdoms

closed to the living.” She spoke, and her lips shut and were silent.

Aeneas, his eyes fixed down in a grieving face,

walks out, leaving the cave, and turns over with himself

the blind outcome of it. Faithful Achates goes with him

as companion, and plants his steps under the same cares.

They wove much back and forth between them in changing talk:

what dead companion, what body to be buried,

the prophetess had meant. And they, when they came, see Misenus

on the dry beach, cut off by an unworthy death,