Aeneidos IX

And while these things are being done in a quarter far away,

Saturn's daughter Juno sent Iris down from the sky

to bold Turnus. In the grove of his forefather

Pilumnus, in a hallowed valley, Turnus happened then to be sitting.

To him the daughter of Thaumas spoke so, with rosy lips:

“Turnus, what none of the gods would have dared to promise you

for the asking, look, the rolling day has brought unasked.

Aeneas has left city and comrades and fleet behind

and gone after the scepter and the seat of Palatine Evander.

Nor is that enough: he has pushed on to the farthest towns of Corythus

and is arming a Lydian company, farmhands mustered together.

Why hang back? Now is the time to call for horses, for chariots.

Break off every delay and snatch the camp while it is in confusion.”

She spoke, and lifted herself into the sky on level wings

and in her flight cut a huge bow beneath the clouds.

The young man knew her, and raised both palms to the stars

and followed her going with a voice like this:

“Iris, glory of the sky, who has driven you through the clouds

and brought you down to me on the earth? Where does this weather come from,

so suddenly bright? I see the middle sky part open

and stars straying over the pole. I follow so great a sign,

whoever you are that call me to arms.” And so speaking he went forward

to the water and drew up a handful from the top of the flood,

praying much to the gods, and loaded the air with vows.

And now the whole army was moving over the open fields,

rich in horses, rich in embroidered cloth and in gold;

Messapus holds the front ranks, the young sons of Tyrrhus

the rear; in the middle of the column their leader Turnus,

moves under arms, and stands a whole head above them.

As when deep Ganges, swelling with his seven quieted streams,

goes on in silence, or the Nile, when with his rich flood he flows back

off the fields and has already buried himself in his channel.

Here the Teucrians look out and see a sudden cloud

balling up in black dust, and darkness rising over the plains.

Caicus first shouts out from the rampart that faces them:

“What mass is that, citizens, rolling in the black murk?

Bring iron, quick; hand up the spears; climb the walls;

the enemy is on us, up!” With a huge shout the Teucrians

pour in through every gate and fill the ramparts.

For so, as he left, the best of men in arms, Aeneas,

had ordered it: if anything should happen meanwhile,

they were not to dare draw up a line or trust the open field;

they were only to keep the camp and the walls safe behind the earthwork.

So, though shame and anger point them to close with him,

still they bar the gates and carry out the orders

and wait for the enemy under arms in the hollow towers.

Turnus, flying ahead, had outrun the slow column

with twenty picked horsemen for escort, and is at the town

before anyone looks for him; a Thracian horse dappled white

carries him, and a gold helmet with a red crest covers his head.

“Is there a man of you, young men, to go first at the enemy with me?

There,” he says, and, winding up, sends a javelin into the air,

the opening of the fight, and carries himself high onto the field.

His comrades take it up with a shout and follow him with a roar

that raises the hair: they marvel at the Teucrians' listless hearts,

that these men do not put themselves on level ground, do not carry

their arms out to meet them, but hug the camp. Wildly this way and that

he rides round the walls and hunts for a way in where there is none.

And as a wolf lying in wait at a full sheepfold

growls at the hurdles, having borne out the winds and the rain,

past the middle of the night; the lambs, safe under their mothers,

keep up their bleating; he, savage and past shame with anger,

rages at what he cannot reach; the long-gathered madness

for eating wears at him, and a throat dry of blood:

no otherwise, as the Rutulian looks at the walls and the camp,

his wrath takes fire, and the pain burns in his hard bones.

By what method should he try for a way in, what road

shake the shut-in Teucrians out of the stockade and spill them onto level ground?

The fleet, which lay hidden along the flank of the camp,

fenced round with earthworks and with the river's water,

he goes for; he calls for fire from his exulting comrades

and fills his own hand, burning, with a blazing pine-brand.

Then indeed they bend to it, Turnus being there presses them,

and all the young men gird themselves with black torches.

They stripped the hearths; the smoking splint of pine carries a pitchy

light, and Vulcan sends the ash up mingled with it to the stars.

What god, Muses, turned so cruel a burning away

from the Teucrians? Who drove such fires off from the ships?

Tell it. The warrant for the deed is old, but the story runs on forever.

At the time when Aeneas was first shaping his fleet

on Phrygian Ida and making ready to seek the deep sea,

the Berecyntian mother of the gods herself, they say, addressed

great Jove in these words: “Grant, my son, what she asks

who is your dear mother, and asks it of you now Olympus is tamed.

I had a pine wood, loved through many years,

a grove on the highest summit, where they brought me offerings,

dark with black spruce and with trunks of maple:

gladly I gave these to the Dardanian youth when he needed a fleet;

now an anxious fear grips me and will not let me rest.

Undo my fears; let a mother's prayers have this much power:

that no voyage may shake them to pieces, no whirl of wind

beat them down. Let it profit them that they grew on my mountains.”

Her son answered her, he who turns the stars of the world:

“Mother, where are you calling the fates? What are you asking for these?

Are keels made by a mortal hand to have an immortal

right, and is Aeneas to go safe through dangers that are not safe?

What god has ever been allowed so much power?

No: rather, when they are done with the sea and hold at last

their end and the Ausonian harbors, whichever has come through the waves

and carried the Dardanian leader to Laurentian fields,

I will take her mortal shape away, and order her to be a goddess

of the great water, as Doto the daughter of Nereus

and Galatea cut the foaming sea with their breasts.”

He had spoken; and he made it binding by the rivers of his Stygian brother,

by the banks that boil with pitch and by the black chasm,

he nodded, and with the nod made the whole of Olympus tremble.

So the promised day was here, and the Fates had filled out

the time that was owed, when Turnus' outrage warned the Mother

to drive the torches away from her sacred ships.

Here first a strange light flashed on their eyes, and a huge cloud

was seen running across the sky from the quarter of Dawn,

and the dancers of Ida with it; then a dreadful voice fell

through the air and filled the columns of Trojans and Rutulians:

“Do not rush to the defense of my ships, Teucrians,

and do not arm your hands: Turnus will be given the sea

to burn before he is given my holy pines. You, go free,

go, goddesses of the water: your mother orders it.” And at once

each ship breaks her own cables from the bank

and, dolphin-fashion, plunges her beak and makes for the lowest

floor of the sea. Then, in a girl's shape (a wonder to tell)

as many faces come back as there were bronze prows standing

before at the shore, and they are carried out over the deep.

The Rutulians stood stunned; Messapus himself was in terror,

his horses in panic; and the river checks, harsh-sounding,

and Tiberinus draws his foot back from the deep.

But confidence did not fail bold Turnus;

unasked he lifts their spirits with words, unasked he rebukes them:

“These portents are aimed at the Trojans; Jupiter himself

has torn from them the help they always had, the ships did not wait

for Rutulian spears or fire. So the seas are closed to the Teucrians,

and no hope of flight is left: half the world has been taken from them.

The land, though, is in our hands; so many thousand Italian peoples

are carrying arms. Whatever answers of the gods the Phrygians

brandish in front of themselves, they do not frighten me at all:

enough has been given to the fates and to Venus: the Trojans have touched

the fields of fertile Ausonia. I have fates of my own,

set against theirs: to cut a criminal race out with iron

for stealing my bride. That pain does not touch the sons of Atreus

alone, and Mycenae alone is not the only city allowed to take up arms.

‘But to have perished once is enough.’ To have sinned once before

should have been enough, for men who all but utterly loathe

the whole race of women. Men to whom this trust in the rampart between us,

and the ditches' delay, thin margins against death,

give courage. But did they not see the walls of Troy,

made by Neptune's own hand, go down into the fire?

But you, my chosen men, which of you is ready to cut the stockade open

with iron and rush that shaking camp at my side?

I have no need of Vulcan's armor against the Teucrians,

nor of a thousand keels; let every Etruscan join himself

to them as an ally this minute. Let them fear no darkness, no coward's

theft of the Palladium with the citadel's high guards cut down;

nor shall we be shut away in the blind belly of a horse:

it is settled: openly, in daylight, to put fire round their walls.

I will see to it that they do not say they have Danaans to deal with,

or Pelasgian boys, whom Hector held off to the tenth year.

Now then, since the better part of the day is spent,

for what is left of it, men, be glad, the work has gone well,

and see to your bodies, and look for the battle to be made ready.”

Meanwhile the charge of blockading the gates with sentry-watches

is given to Messapus, and of ringing the walls with fires.

Twice seven Rutulians are picked to hold the walls with soldiers,

and a hundred young men follow each of them,

crimson with crests and glittering with gold.

They run to and fro and change turns, and sprawled through the grass

they give themselves to wine and tip up the bronze bowls.