Aeneidos VIII

When Turnus raised the war-signal from the Laurentian citadel

and the horns brayed with their hoarse song,

and when he lashed his keen horses and struck his weapons together,

at once minds were shaken; all Latium at one moment

swears itself together in trembling uproar, and the young men rage

savagely. The chief captains, Messapus and Ufens

and Mezentius, despiser of the gods, gather forces

from every side and strip the wide fields of their farmers.

Venulus too is sent to the city of great Diomedes,

to ask for help and to make plain that the Teucrians are settling in Latium,

that Aeneas has been carried in with a fleet and is bringing his beaten household gods

ashore and calling himself a king whom the fates demand,

that many nations are attaching themselves to the Dardanian

man, and that his name is growing loud far and wide through Latium.

What he is building with these beginnings, what outcome of the fight

he wants if Fortune follows him, is plainer to that man himself

than it can appear to king Turnus or to king Latinus.

So it went through Latium. Seeing all of it, the hero sprung from Laomedon

tosses on a great swell of cares,

And he divides his quick mind now this way, now that,

snatches it into different parts, and turns it through everything:

as when in bronze basins the trembling light of water,

struck back from the sun or from the image of the shining moon,

flits far over every place, and now lifts itself into the air

and strikes the panelled ceiling of the high roof.

It was night, and over all the lands deep sleep held

the tired creatures, the winged kind and the herds:

when the father, on the bank, under the axle of the cold sky,

Aeneas, troubled through the breast by the grim war,

lay down and gave his limbs their late rest.

To him the god of the place himself, Tiberinus of the pleasant stream,

seemed to lift himself, an old man, among the poplar leaves;

a thin linen veiled him in a grey-green wrap,

and shadowing reed covered his hair,

and then he spoke, and took his cares away with these words:

“O sown of the race of the gods, you who bring the Trojan city

back to us out of the enemy's hands and keep Pergamum everlasting,

awaited by Laurentian ground and by the fields of Latium,

here is your sure home, here your sure household gods, do not draw back;

and do not be frightened by the threats of war: all the swelling and the wrath

of the gods have given way.

And now, so that you may not think sleep has made this up out of nothing,

a huge sow shall be found lying under the holm-oaks of the shore,

having brought forth a litter of thirty head,

white, stretched on the ground, her white young about her teats.

This will be the place of the city, this the sure rest from your labors:

and from it, when thirty years have come round,

Ascanius will found Alba, a town of shining name.

I sing nothing uncertain. Now by what plan you may win your way

clear of what presses on you (attend), I will teach in a few words.

Arcadians on these shores, a race set out from Pallas,

who as companions followed king Evander, who followed his standards,

have chosen a place and set a city in the hills,

Pallanteum, from the name of Pallas their forefather.

These wage steady war with the Latin race;

take them into your camp as allies and join treaties with them.

I myself will lead you along my banks and straight up the water,

so that borne on oars you may beat the river that runs against you.

Rise up, goddess-born, and as the first stars are setting

carry prayers to Juno in due form, and put down her wrath and her threats

with suppliant vows. To me, when you have won, you will pay

the honor owed. I am he whom you see brimming the banks

with a full flood and cutting through the fat ploughland,

sky-blue Tiber, the river most pleasing to heaven.

Here is my great house; my head rises out among lofty cities.”

He spoke; then the river hid himself in a deep pool,

making for the bottom; night and sleep left Aeneas.

He rises, and looking at the rising lights of the sun

in heaven, in due form he lifts water from the river

in his hollow palms and pours out such words to the air:

“Nymphs, Laurentian nymphs, from whom rivers have their being,

and you, father Tiber, with your holy stream,

receive Aeneas and keep him from dangers at last.

In whatever pool, at whatever spring, holds you who pity

our troubles, from whatever soil you come out most beautiful,

always with honor of mine, always with gifts you will be kept in feast,

horned river, ruler of the waters of the west.

Only be near me, and set your will closer to mine.”

So he speaks, and picks two biremes out of the fleet

and fits them with oars, and arms his companions as well.

But look, a sudden thing, a marvel to the eyes:

white through the wood, and her litter of the same white color,

a sow lies down, and is seen on the green shore.

And dutiful Aeneas, to you, yes, to you, greatest Juno,

sacrifices her, bringing the rites, and sets her with her brood at the altar.

The Tiber calmed his swelling stream that whole night long,

and flowing backward stood still in a silent wave,

gentle, so that after the manner of a pond and a quiet marsh

he spread his surface smooth for the water, and the oar had no fight.

So they hurry the journey they had begun, with a following cheer;

the oiled fir glides through the shallows; the waves marvel,

and the wood marvels, unused to the shields of men flashing far

on the river, and to the painted keels swimming there.

They wear out night and day alike with rowing

and get past the long bends, and are covered by trees

of every kind, and cut through green woods on quiet water.

The fiery sun had climbed the middle circle of the sky

when they see walls and a citadel far off, and the scattered

roofs of houses, which Roman power has now raised level with the sky,

but which then Evander held as a poor thing:

quickly they turn their prows and draw near the city.

It happened that on that day the Arcadian king was paying the yearly honor

to the great son of Amphitryon and to the gods,

before the city, in a grove. Pallas his son was there with him,

with him all the foremost of the young men and the poor senate,

offering incense, and warm blood was steaming at the altars.

When they saw the tall ships, and saw them gliding in

through the shaded wood and leaning on silent oars,

they are frightened by the sudden sight, and all of them rise

and leave the tables. Bold Pallas forbids them to break off

the rites, snatches a spear and flies out to meet them himself,

and from a mound, at a distance: “Young men, what has driven you

to try roads you do not know? Where are you making for?” he says.

“What is your family? Where is your home? Do you bring peace here, or arms?”

Then father Aeneas speaks so from the high stern

and holds out in his hand a branch of peace-bearing olive:

“You see men born of Troy, and weapons hostile to the Latins,

who drove us out in an arrogant war and made us exiles.

We are looking for Evander. Carry that word, and say that chosen

captains of Dardania have come asking for allied arms.”

Pallas stood amazed, struck by so great a name:

“Come out, whoever you are,” he says, “and speak to my father

face to face, and come in as a guest under our household gods.”

And he took him by the hand, and held the right hand he had clasped.

They go forward, enter the grove, and leave the river behind.

Then Aeneas addresses the king with friendly words:

“Best of the Greek-born, to whom Fortune has willed that I pray

and hold out boughs dressed with wool,

I felt no fear at all that you were a Danaan captain and an Arcadian

and joined by descent to the two sons of Atreus;

but my own worth, and the holy oracles of the gods,

and fathers we share, and your fame spread over the earth,

have joined me to you and driven me here by the fates, willing.

Dardanus, the first father of the city of Ilium and its founder,

born, as the Greeks tell it, of Electra the daughter of Atlas,

came over to the Teucrians; Electra was brought forth by greatest Atlas,

who holds the spheres of heaven on his shoulder.

Your father is Mercury, whom white Maia conceived

and bore on the cold peak of Cyllene;

but Maia, if we believe anything we have heard, was got by Atlas,

the same Atlas who lifts the stars of the sky.

So the line of us both splits away from one blood.

Trusting in that, I sent no envoys, and made no first

cautious soundings of you by craft: myself, my own self, my own

head I have put forward, and I have come to your door as a suppliant.

The same people that hunts you, the Daunian, hunts us

with a cruel war; if they drive us out, they believe nothing will stand

in the way of their putting the whole of Hesperia under their yoke

and holding the sea above and the sea that washes below.

Take faith and give it: we have hearts brave in war,

we have spirit, and young men proved in the doing.”

Aeneas had spoken. The other had long been going over

the face and eyes of the speaker with his gaze, and his whole body.

Then he answers briefly: “How gladly, bravest of the Teucrians,

I take you in and know you again! How I remember the words

and the voice and the face of your father, great Anchises!

For I remember Priam, son of Laomedon, going to see the kingdom

of his sister Hesione, making for Salamis,

and going straight on to visit the cold borders of Arcadia.

Then my first youth was clothing my cheeks with down,

and I wondered at the Teucrian captains, and wondered at

Laomedon's son himself; but taller than all of them walked

Anchises: my heart burned with a young man's love

to speak to the man and to join my right hand to his.

I went up to him, and eagerly led him under the walls of Pheneus.

Leaving, he gave me a fine quiver and Lycian arrows,

and a cloak with gold woven through it,