V I R G I L
Aeneid
Translated with Notes by
FREDERICK AHL
With an Introduction by
ELAINE FANTHAM
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Virgil.
[Aeneis. English]
The Aeneid / Virgil ; translated with notes by Frederick Ahl ; with an introduction by Elaine Fantham.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Epic poetry, Latin--Translations into English. 2. Aeneas (Legendary character)--Poetry. 3. Legends--Rome--Poetry. I. Ahl, Frederick, 1941– II. Title.
PA6807.A5A38 2007 873´.01--dc22 2007014605
Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India Printed in Great Britain
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ISBN 978-0-19-283206-1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Mpeople helped me in many ways to bring this work to completion, but none more than Elaine Fantham and Nicola Minott-Ahl, to whom I dedicate this volume. Dealing with an absent-minded recluse cannot have been easy. Judith Luna really belongs in the dedication too; her wisdom and clear judgement saved me from many errors. Elizabeth Stratford has also helped me catch many slips and infelicities.
and Sally Tong; and to friends now gone: Alan Ansen, Carol Buckley, Dan Booth, Robert Farrell, Lucianne Katzenberger, David Keller, and David Wyatt. Last, but not least, I thank Clayton and Lucia Minott, for whom this translation has a special importance, and Jordan and Olivia Cruger who, I hope, will some day read it.
Folkestone, Kent January
CONTENTS
Introduction xi
Translator’s Note xlvi
Select Bibliography liii
A Chronology of Virgil lvi
Maps lviii
AENEID
Ancestral Chart
Explanatory Notes
INTRODUCTION
The Aeneas Tradition
W the poet Propertius heard the anticipatory excitement about Virgil’s forthcoming Aeneid, he hailed the news: ‘something is coming to birth greater even than the Iliad’ (..). What sort of poem would Romans expect when they heard that Virgil was composing an epic about Aeneas? (Aeneid, like the title Odyssey, announces itself as a poem about a hero — the man whom Virgil himself introduces in his
first line ‘Arms and the man I sing . . .’)
Unless they were educated, Romans would have had little reason to know the name of Aeneas. Certainly they might have handled the silver denarii of or on which Caesar displayed Venus Genetrix (founder of the Julian clan) on the obverse with Aeneas on the reverse, carrying his father Anchises and the sacred image of Pallas Athena (known as the ‘Palladium’) from Troy; again, primitive terracottas of Aeneas carrying his father have been found in Etruria, as near to Rome as Veii. But it would be from literature, not religious cult, that they would know of this hero. Fragments of Rome’s first historical poet, Naevius, speak of Aeneas and his father leaving Troy with heads cov-ered, and someone asks Aeneas to tell the story of his escape.1 And Ennius’ more celebrated Annalesspeak more than once of Anchises’ ancestry and prophetic wisdom: although Aeneas is not named, Ennius has made him father of Ilia, and grandfather of Rome’s legendary founder, Romulus. Later poets like Accius and Lucretius would call the Romans ‘Children of Aeneas’. But if they knew of Aeneas it would be as an ancestor of the Julian clan or a Homeric founder of their city. Educated Romans would have met Aeneas far earlier in life and more directly when they learned to read the Iliadwith their elemen-tary teacher, the grammaticus.2It is from the Greek text of Homer that they would have formed their ideas of Aeneas as a prince and a warrior. Because Homer’s Aeneas is so different from Virgil’s, an outline of his
1 Naevius,Punic War, lines –and–,inRemains of Old Latin, vol. ii, ed. E. H. Warmington (Cambridge, Mass., ).
role in Homer’s battles provides a point of departure and shows just what Virgil chose to leave behind and what to develop. While Roman readers would have been embarrassed by any impression of weakness or vulnerability in their ancestral hero, Virgil could stress that the gods favoured Aeneas and destined him to become the founder of a mighty dynasty: he could replace mere prowess in battle with the long-term endurance and commitment of a national leader, and honour qualities that would implicitly honour Aeneas’ descendant Octavian, Rome’s powerful ruler and Virgil’s patron, soon to be the first citizen and commander-in-chief (princepsandimperator) Augustus.
Aeneas is prominent in two widely separated books of the Iliad, bookand book , both exceptional in the extent to which the gods participate in the combat: some gods support the Trojans, others the Greeks. When the Greek Diomedes enters battle in book Athena (who is Pallas or Minerva in Virgil) breathes into him strength three times greater than his own. Aeneas urges the Trojan archer Pandarus to help him attack this unknown warrior. Fighting from Aeneas’ chariot, Pandarus challenges Diomedes and casts a spear at him, but Diomedes’ counterthrust is more deadly and he kills Pandarus effortlessly. When Aeneas dismounts to defend his friend’s body he is seriously wounded by a rock cast by Diomedes and falls to the ground. Only the instant inter-vention of his mother Aphrodite (Virgil’s Venus) saves him from death. Diomedes takes possession of Aeneas’ horses, then chases Aphrodite and wounds her arm. Aphrodite drops her son, who is snatched up and covered in a dark cloud by Apollo. Even under Apollo’s charge Aeneas is not out of range; three times Diomedes leaps at Aeneas in rage, and three times Apollo repels him, but the fourth time Apollo rebukes him for trying to fight with a god. He raises Aeneas up to his sanctuary in Troy’s citadel where Aeneas is healed and made more splendid by Apollo’s divine mother, Leto (Virgil’s Latona), and sister Artemis (Virgil’s Diana). As a distraction Apollo creates a phantom Aeneas (a device which Virgil will adapt in Juno’s attempt to rescue Turnus in Aeneid), which becomes the target of the fighting for Trojans and Greeks alike. Aeneas makes one more appearance in this battle, when the Greek commander-in-chief Agamemnon kills one of his companions. Aeneas retaliates by killing two Greeks. When Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus is about to fight Aeneas and is joined by another warrior, Aeneas feels he cannot confront both men together.
Homer’s Aeneas is a warrior praised by the poet for his ancestry, but marked more by discretion than heroic courage. In book , Aeneas is
measured against the greatest Greek warrior, Achilles. Again, the gods are involved. Apollo, in disguise, prompts Aeneas to challenge Achilles and suggests that Aeneas’ divine mother is a reason for him to expect victory, since Achilles’ mother is only a minor goddess. When Aeneas and Achilles approach each other, Aeneas offers the first challenge, but Achilles speaks first. He jeers at Aeneas for daring to meet him. Is he prompted by ambition to take over Priam’s kingdom? Achilles reminds Aeneas that he had put Aeneas to flight once before, when Aeneas was herding on Mount Ida, and had only been rescued by Zeus (Virgil’s Jupiter) and the other gods (.–). When Achilles pierces Aeneas’ shield with a spear and draws his sword to finish him off, Aeneas is saved by divine decision. Although Poseidon (Virgil’s Neptune) is
fighting against Troy, he urges the other gods to rescue Aeneas, for a mixture of moral and prudential reasons; Aeneas has a moral claim because he is without guilt and always makes the gods welcome offerings. And the gods must save him in their own interest, so as to avoid Zeus’s anger if Achilles should kill him. Poseidon swoops down and casts a mist before Achilles’ eyes, uproots the spear from Aeneas’ shield, and lifts Aeneas above the battle, then scolds him for challenging a superior
fighter. (Homeric warriors are rated and handicapped like sporting champions.) Apollo now tells Aeneas he should not have challenged Achilles, but once Achilles has been killed he will be able to fight in the front ranks, for no other Greek will be able to kill him.
The outcome of the encounter between Aeneas and Achilles is in some ways less important than what we are told of Aeneas’ genealogy. Before they join combat, Aeneas says he is the son of Anchises and Aphrodite and traces his descent from Zeus through Dardanus and Erichthonius. Erichthonius was father of Tros, who had three sons, Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymede. The eldest son, Ilus, was father of King Laomedon, and grandfather of King Priam, the ruler of Troy during the Trojan War. Assaracus, as father of Capys, was grandfather of Anchises. Later, as Achilles is about to kill Aeneas, Poseidon observes that he must be saved, ‘because he is fated to escape, so that Dardanus’ race shall not die out. For Zeus loves Dardanus above all his children by mortal women, but he has come to hate the descent of Priam and the mighty Aeneas will now become king of the Trojans, as will the sons of his sons who shall be born hereafter.’ Aeneas, then, is to be the restorer of the dynasty. And it is that dynasty that later Greek and Roman tradi-tion moves to Italy. Significantly, Aeneas’ first adversary, Diomedes, is also moved to Italy.
As Roman boys read or heard their Iliad they would receive the mixed message of Aeneas as a warrior less skilled than brave, who was saved from defeat at the hands of better fighters because the gods either loved him or recognized his destiny; defeated, he was nonethe-less spared the imputation of cowardice by the same divine concern which also gave him merit as a future leader, the man destined to revive Troy. Perhaps they understood Aeneas’ career as encourage-ment to go on fighting even in defeat, as Rome had fought on despite the victories of Hannibal in the Second Punic War. But when they read Poseidon’s argument they surely thought that Aeneas had the power of the gods behind him because he was to be the founder of Rome — or the Latin city from which Rome was settled.
From the lost cycle of epics composed by Homer’s successors, only Arctinus’Sack of Troymentions Aeneas, and that incidentally, when his followers retire from Troy after the serpents have killed Laocoön and his sons and the Trojans decide to bring the treacherous horse inside their city.3The Greek world knew many variants on the tale of Aeneas before and after the city’s fall: it was commonly said that when Paris had abducted Helen from her husband Menelaus and brought her to Troy, Aeneas and Antenor, the future founder of Padua men-tioned as Aeneas’ peer by both Virgil and Livy, had recommended returning Helen to the Greeks, and some versions even saw them as collaborators, even traitors, who had been allowed by the Greeks to leave Troy laden with treasure. Other versions had celebrated Aeneas as founder of various communities in the Troad, and across the Aegean, as also in Sicily. There were so many self-interested local traditions that when Virgil came to make this Trojan prince the hero of his poem he had numerous, often conflicting, myths to adapt to shape his hero’s westward journey and ultimate reception in Latium.
Of Rome, Virgil, and his Times
Two generations before Virgil’s birth Rome was becoming a sophisti-cated metropolis, commanding an empire which her senatorial govern-ment was no longer equipped to rule. The influx of wealth from conquered Asia Minor had swollen the discrepancy between the riches of the elite and the endangered farmsteads of the peasants who made
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up Rome’s citizen army. In Virgil’s youth the older generation (we may take Cicero as representative) saw the beginning of the threat to tradi-tional government with the Gracchus brothers, idealists from the heart of Rome’s aristocracy. First, Tiberius Gracchus tried to use the office of tribune to legislate redistribution of public land; ten years later his brother Gaius extended his proposals to embrace social legislation including colonies. Each time a combination of property owners and politicians who saw them as aiming at tyrannical power used violence to bring down each brother, massacring or prosecuting their supporters. When Rome was fighting offa Gallic invasion of north Italy the short-age of yeoman soldiers led Marius to open the ranks to propertiless men who would henceforth depend on their commander for their liveli-hood. Backed by their armies, Marius and his younger rival Cornelius Sulla would each ruthlessly turn his forces against their own city and its civilian inhabitants. The generation of Virgil’s father did not forget Sulla’s proscriptions, which outlawed first political antagonists, then anyone whose property was coveted by kin or neighbours. In the eyes of the governing class Sulla was an ambiguous figure: he had restored senatorial control (without remedying the economic plight of the under-privileged) but there was no one who did not recall the loss of friends or family among his victims.
About the time of Virgil’s birth in , it seemed that the two most successful generals, Crassus and Pompey, were prepared to accept the restored control of the Senate, at least until Pompey was offered legitimate commands, first against the rampant piracy infecting all the Mediterranean, then to carry through the war against Mithridates. In his absence, a corrupt aristocrat, Sergius Catilina, twice rejected in elections for the consulship, began to prepare for a coup at Rome and uprisings both in Etruria and southern Gaul against the elected consul Cicero. While Cicero may have exaggerated the danger to excuse the Senate’s unconstitutional decision to execute Catilina’s elite allies, Virgil himself makes a villain of Catilina when he places him among the great sinners of Hades (Aeneid.–) and sets in judgement over him Cato, thefiercest of Rome’s conservatives. What Sallust and Cicero tell us, but Virgil has no reason to mention, is that Caesar may have sympathized with the Catilinarians (he certainly spoke against their execution), and Cato was the most passionate and principled opponent of Caesar, dying by his own hand at Utica when Caesar’s victory was assured.
After his decisive defeat of Pompey and the Republicans at Pharsalus (in Thessaly) Caesar forgave many distinguished senators like Cicero
and Varro, and actively promoted younger ex-Republicans like Brutus and Cassius. When Caesar assumed the unlimited role of dictator for life, shortly before he planned to lead his expedition against Parthia in March, it was these men who killed him at the foot of Pompey’s statue in the Senate room of Pompey’s theatre. This was the state of Rome when Virgil was .
How, then, did Virgil come to contemplate writing an epic on the Trojan hero? This was not anything that could have been anticipated by those who knew the young Virgil or read his early poetry. According to the chief sources for his early life, the biographies attributed to Suetonius and Donatus ,4after his childhood as son of a prosperous farmer near Mantua, Virgil had been sent first to Milan, then to Rome for his education: we should bear in mind that the poems of Catullus and Lucretius would have begun to circulate about the time he came of age. We know that he was delicate, and continued his studies at Naples, where the Epicurean poet and critic Philodemus was teaching, as were Roman critics Siro and Valerius Cato. If there was money (and his health did not fit him for a military career or an active public life), he could have stayed on in Naples when Julius Caesar made himself master of Italy in and even after Caesar’s assassination. As a self-governing city, Naples would have been a safe place for neutrality.
In fact, Caesar’s assassination only led to political confusion. Mark Antony as consul was the chief source of authority at Rome when Caesar’s great-nephew Octavian acted to obtain public confirmation of his adoption as Caesar’s heir, and came south to Campania to rouse the support of the legions his great-uncle had planned to lead against the Parthians. The following year, , with the support of Caesar’s veter-ans, Octavian was first endorsed by the Senate with praetorian status as its champion against Mark Antony, then forced the Senate to recog-nize him as consul, turning around from his victory at Mutina to join with Antony and demand their recognition (with Lepidus) as triumvirs with power to reorganize the state. Brutus and Cassius had been amass-ing legions and finances in Syria and Asia Minor, but in the new triumvirs met and defeated them in two battles spread over three weeks at Philippi in Macedonia.
In Italy, Octavian’s legates Pollio and Varus were sent to take over lands for veteran colonies from cities such as Cremona. Virgil’s first
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poetry book, the Eclogues, on which he spent three years, includes poems dedicated to and praising Pollio and Varus (Eclogues,, and ), and two poems (and) honouring his friend the elegist Gallus.5We seem to see the reflection of the land displacements of the late s in the laments of Virgil’s shepherds in two other poems. Both the rein-statement of the slave-shepherd Tityrus by the young leader at Rome in Eclogue , and the failure of the singer Menalcas to recover the expropriated land for his friends in Ecloguemust be evocations rather than literal reports of what happened in Virgil’s neighbourhood, but the divine young leader who restored Tityrus’ pastures is surely Octavian, and it is most likely that Virgil paid him this honour because of favour he extended to Virgil directly or through his subordinates.
The defeat of Brutus and Cassius did not end Octavian’s difficulties in maintaining relations with Mark Antony or opposing Pompey’s son Sextus Pompeius, who now controlled Sicily and the seaways for the supply of grain for the million people of the metropolis. With the aid of his great friend Agrippa, Octavian would finally defeat Sextus Pompey in the naval battle offNaulochus (offnorthern Sicily) in , but rela-tions with Antony had not yet come to a crisis. It was about this time that Virgil began his Georgics.
The opening of this poem in four books proudly invokes Octavian as Caesar, destined to become a god, urging him to help the poet bring comfort to the farmers, and the internal proem of book speaks of setting Caesar in his own temple in the midst of Virgil’s poetic celebra-tions and incorporates references (.–) to present and future imper-ial victories. Is this an undertaking to compose a poetic celebration of Caesar himself? The last lines of the poem, as Virgil signs off(.–), contrast the heroic Caesar flashing thunder by the Euphrates and bestow-ing justice on the nations, with the poet’s own bestow-inglorious leisure in peace-ful Parthenope; it seems, then, that he has kept his home at Naples.
Locating Caesar in the far East dates the closing lines of Georgicsto
– , after Octavian’s great naval victory at Actium over Antony
and Cleopatra, and we should place the conception of the Aeneidno later than this time. This would also fit the biographers’ claim that when the poet died in , he had devoted eleven years to the poem’s twelve books.
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What kind of pressure did Virgil feel to honour the victorious Caesar — soon to be renamed Augustus — with an epic? It had become a Roman tradition that poets composed epics around the victorious campaigns of generals; even Cicero, for example, had set to writing an epic on Caesar’s invasion of Britain. Dealing with contemporary warfare, such assignments left little room for inspiration, however. The fourth-century critic Servius6says Virgil’s object was to praise Augustus through his ancestry. It might be better to say that by choosing to construct a narrative of questing and struggle around the Roman ancestor who was known from Homer, but not known in too much detail, the poet gave himself the scope to construct an idealized founder and leader whose sufferings and moral decisions would be both a model to Augustus and to some extent a model of Augustus, suggesting to the Roman public an interpretation of their young leader’s achievements. Something of the same shift in emphasis can be seen in Caesar Octavian’s own choice of title, since Augustuscombined a quasi-religious reverence with an altogether new kind of authority — the more powerful because it was not constitutionally defined.
Yet although the immediate popularity of the Aeneid(it was used in schools a few years after its release was authorized by Augustus) was certainly fostered by the model it offered to the sons of the elite as future leaders, the epic would not have absorbed and kept the interest of even disillusioned generations like our own if it had not been rich with both moral and aesthetic complexity, with depth of implications and beauty of expression. Nor would it have much claim on our hearts and minds if its theme were limited to the destiny of Rome and its once and future leader. Certainly our age can no longer, as Roman boys and British nineteenth-century schoolboys did, read Virgil with confidence that Fate—or God—is on our side, because we use our power justly and benevolently. But the poem shows a concern for all humanity and its struggles to combine virtue and happiness.7As for the ‘man of destiny’, the charmed conduit of history, the chief undercurrent of Virgil’s narrative seems to be the cost of success, not just the cost of national
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6 On Servius and his commentary on the Aeneid, see Don Fowler, ‘The Virgil Commentary of Servius’, in C. R. Martindale, The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge,),–.
victory in casualties, the lives of officers and men, but the personal self-denial and hardship required of any leader, whether pioneering a new community or simply maintaining morale in an existing one.
The
Aeneid
Before turning to analysis of Virgil’s epic something should be said about the first Roman epics, and the rival claims of Aeneas and Romulus in Rome’s ostensibly double-foundation legend, which came from early ignorance of chronology and from the competing claims of Latin cities to have given Rome its founder. Naevius, the first poet of Roman history, made his focus the first war against Carthage, in which he is believed to have fought. To readers familiar with the Aeneid, a single fragment of Naevius’ retrospective narrative of Aeneas’ adventures suggests he too may have brought Aeneas to Carthage and had him converse with Dido, its queen, but it does not name the person who ‘with charm and learning asks how Aeneas had left the city of Troy’.8Scholars who are not prepared to speculate that this was Aeneas’ Carthaginian hostess make the speaker Latinus or an unidentified host.
The chief obstacle to introducing Dido into Naevius’ tale of Aeneas would be chronology, if Hellenistic Greek chronology had not been unknown to both Naevius and his close successor Ennius. The third-century chronographer Eratosthenes calculated the place of events in history in relation to the Trojan War, reckoning that Troy fell early in the twelfth century , but dated the foundations of both Rome and Carthage four centuries later: Carthage to and Rome either at the same time or two generations after. By the time Virgil was a young man, however, his older contemporaries Atticus and Varro had stabilized the foundation date of Rome to (the date still used by historians). So how could Aeneas share in the foundation of Rome? For Ennius, he was father of Ilia (and presumably ruler of Lavinium), grandfather of her sons Romulus and Remus. Once Romans realized the chronological gap between the Homeric age of Troy and Rome’s foundation, they needed king-lists to fill it, and so the tradition arose, fostered by the Julii and other families from Alba, that there were fourteen generations of Alban kings between Aeneas’ son and Numitor, the father of Romulus.
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Hence Virgil needed to give due importance to both Lavinium and Alba in his prologue (Aeneid.and.); hence Jupiter allows three hundred and thirty-three years in all from Aeneas’ foundation of Lavinium to the birth of Romulus (.–). Even so the numbers fall short!
In teaching the Aeneidin both Latin and English, I have found that the complexity of the epic causes students and other readers to pass over many details both of narrative continuity and of characterization. For this reason I have tried to combine three functions in the book-by-book summary that follows. Besides stressing where and how Virgil has shaped his narrative to recall the world and actions of Homer’s epics9 I have aimed to provide a summary of events that traces the interweaving threads of divine and human action; at the same time I have tried to bring out consistently aspects of the behaviour of Aeneas and others which seem to ask to be judged by different standards from our own. Scholars have long debated the apparent conflict between Virgil’s public and his private voice.10Perhaps the humane poet recog-nized the necessity for public figures to take actions that go against their private principles and personal choice.
If the proem of Bookopens by setting its theme in the longue durée of human history, ‘the man . . . of Troy, who . . . suffered profoundly in war to establish a city, | Settle his gods into Latium, making this land of the Latins | Future home to the Elders of Alba and Rome’s mighty ramparts’ (.and–), it swiftly moves beyond the human Aeneas to the divine instigator of his sufferings, the anger of savage Juno.11Virgil is setting both hero and goddess against a huge canvas of history: Juno is not, like Poseidon in the Odyssey, angry with Aeneas over any act he has committed—as Odysseus blinded Poseidon’s son Polyphemus— but has gathered her resentment against his race over past generations and many generations to come. Juno is angry because of what will happen after almost a thousand years: she loves Carthage above all
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9 Such intertextual allusion may work with Homer’s text as a model (of language, of imagery, etc.) or as generic norm for types of scene and action. See G. B. Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets(Ithaca, NY, and London,).
10The pioneering study is A. Parry, ‘The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid’, in S. Commager, Virgil: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, ),
cities, and has learned it will be overthrown by the descendants of this man. And she is angry because she hates the descendants of Dardanus, child of Jupiter’s mistress Electra, and Ganymede, his boy-favourite, and of Paris, who preferred Venus/Aphrodite’s beauty to her own.
When the action begins it is already seven years after the fall of Troy: tossed over land and sea Aeneas is beginning the relatively short voyage from western Sicily to Latium, when Juno provokes a violent storm that blows his fleet offcourse. Just as we first meet Odysseus in the despair of shipwreck when Poseidon sends the storm against him, so as its full force strikes the ship Aeneas wishes in his heart he was dead (and recalls to Virgil’s readers his Homeric defeat and escape): ‘O Tydeus’ son, Diomedes | Bravest Danaän of all, why could Inot have fallen on Ilium’s | Plains, spilled forth my soul under yourright hand?’ (.–). The divinely roused storm will be divinely calmed, and Virgil shows here and throughout the book how gods skew the human narra-tive. Aeneas is saved when Neptune observes the havoc Aeolus king of the winds has created to oblige Juno, and puts an end to it, restoring the ships, just as the authority of a wise citizen quells an incipient riot. Cast up on land Aeneas forces an expression of hope on his features, giving his men reassurance he does not himself feel.
Crewmates, by now we are hardly strangers to evil and hardship. We’ve suffered worse. God will grant us an end to these sufferings also. . . .
Take heart once again and dispel your fears and depression. Maybe the day’ll come when even this will be joy to remember.
(.–,–)
As the castaways share a makeshift feast from the deer which Aeneas has shot, Virgil moves to the divine level, and with Jupiter’s words of reassurance to Venus (.–) introduces the first of three great panoramas that reach across Roman history to Augustus and the pres-ent age (the others come from Anchises’ survey of the parade of heroes in Book and from the shield designed by Vulcan for Aeneas in Book ). Aeneas will win through and reign three years in Latium, then his son Ascanius will rule thirty years, transferring his city from Lavinium to Alba, then will come three hundred years of Alban kings before Romulus will found the city and Juno relent.12Agamemnon’s city of Mycenae will be subdued, and Aeneas’ descendant, Trojan Caesar, will create an
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empire limited only by the ocean and the stars. His era will bring justice and end all warfare, imprisoning savage fury within the gates of war. Is this Caesar, who is also called Iulius (the Julian), meant for the man we call Julius Caesar? More likely Virgil is evoking not the Julius who died with wars still to fight, but Caesar Augustus, the ‘son’ who took his name.
Narrative on the human level is blended with further divine inter-vention as Mercury flies down to win over the hearts of Dido and her Carthaginians, for fear that, ‘not knowing what’s fated’ (.) she should drive offAeneas and his men. In fact, Aeneas will openly declare to Dido his mission to Italy (.–,.–, etc.), but she blinds herself to his fate, and Venus intervenes so as to aggravate her self-deception. To accost her own son, the goddess disguises herself as a young virgin out hunting. It is Venus who provides our introduction to the tragic pre-history of Dido, widowed of a beloved husband, Sychaeus, and leader of a bold new colony grudgingly tolerated by the aboriginal Africans. And Venus’ speech should alert the readers to Dido’s susceptibility, stressing the details of her loving anxiety when her wicked brother conceals the killing of her husband (.–). But it is his mother’s disguise that troubles Aeneas. Reticent as he is,13 he gives a good account of himself and his mission to seek a homeland in Italy aided by his divine mother, but the goddess does not reveal her divine person before she has left him. We share his indignation that she will not let him clasp her hand, but why does he accuse her of so oftendeceiving him with disguises? She has not done so before, and when Aeneas as narrator of the fall of Troy in Book describes his mother’s previous appearance to him she holds nothing back in revealing herself, and the divine agency behind the city’s downfall.
From now on the human narrative which brings Aeneas to Carthage and its queen is infused with divine meddling. Venus conceals Aeneas and Achates in a mist while they observe and envy the newly founded city, until Dido herself appears and receives Ilioneus and other Trojans kindly. Through Aeneas’ eyes the readers see the story of Troy retold on the walls of Juno’s temple, chiefly in terms of Greek triumph, but with Aeneas himself depicted fighting in a kind of visual Homeric cycle.14 The warrior who greets the queen is already celebrated, and
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13Aeneas is characterized throughout the epic as speaking only what is necessary: see ibid.
the affinities between these two colonists with their personal bereave-ments are great enough to have generated love without Venus’ gratu-itous intervention, as she substitutes the contagious Cupid for Aeneas’ little son, and infects the hospitable queen with the affliction that will destroy her.
I have surveyed the first book at some length so as to convey the different levels of narrative.15Aeneas begins shipwrecked and despairing like Odysseus in Odyssey, and is kindly received just like Odysseus in Phaeacia (Odyssey–). But as with Odysseus’ inset reminiscences in Odyssey–, the next books do not move forward in time but go back to the crisis that drove Aeneas from Troy (Book ) and the years of wandering that he has endured since (Book ). In Bookthe hero who is so sparing of personal response elsewhere in Virgil’s narrative tells his own version of the fall of Troy, and one which seems to show the mature man as aware of his past youthful blunders. It may be helpful to read the book of Troy as in part an apology for Troy’s defeat, in part for his own flight. Repeatedly, Aeneas stresses Greek deceit, over the horse (.–) and the lying tale of Sinon (.–: ‘Mark how Danaäns set traps. From this one criminal instance | You’ll learn them all’, and more fully.–), but Sinon’s tale seems to be confirmed by the mon-strous serpents16which strangle Laocoön and his sons. Aeneas’ people, whom neither Diomedes nor Achilles could overcome, were betrayed by deceit. But when he is warned by Hector’s ghost (.–) Aeneas is too loyal and proud to take flight and squanders time in a useless guerrilla action. It is after this failure that Aeneas leaves his narrative to swear to his ancestral shades that: ‘Had mydeath been fated | My deeds done would have earned it’ (.–). This is not just the self-questioning of the survivor; it is necessary to obliterate any echoes of hostile tradition.
After Aeneas has described the brutal end of Troy’s king as the palace is sacked, he reaches the turning point with Venus’ epiphany. This may have been the stimulus for a passage which many scholars reject as post-Virgilian (in part because it is preserved only in Servius’ commentary), the so-called ‘Helen episode’, where Aeneas sees Helen lurking in sanctuary and longs to kill her as cause of Troy’s ruin.
xxiii
15On Virgilian variations of ‘order duration and frequency’ see Don Fowler, in Martindale,Cambridge Companion,–.
Certainly Venus opens her rebuke to her son by insisting that Helen is not to blame, but the gods themselves. In order to convince her son it is his duty to flee, she now strips the mist of human ignorance from his eyes to show him the forces of the gods (Neptune, Juno, Athena, Jupiter himself ) in battle array physically destroying the city. Lucretius had praised Epicurus for lifting the mist from men’s eyes to show them the true serenity of the gods, and their freedom from intervention in human affairs. Venus affirms the opposite, stressing with a rare word, inclementia, the ruthless nature of the gods.
The vision is unforgettable:
. . . in her place, there appeared the appalling faces and mighty Forces divine that detested Troy.
That’s when my eyes really saw all Ilium slowly subsiding Into the fires. . .
(.–)
But when Aeneas obeys her command to escape (.) and seeks out his family, a new obstacle arises as Anchises, who also tells his son to
flee (.–), refuses to go with them. It takes a divine portent — the harmless flame crowning young Iulus — to change his mind and release them. In one last episode, as he carries Anchises and leads little Iulus, his wife Creusa is lost. (In Naevius’ epic she had left Troy safely, but she needed to die for Aeneas to be free for his destined wife Lavinia and his undestined lover Dido.) Creusa is the source of Aeneas’ last authorization to escape: she has been taken up to heaven by Cybele, the Mother Goddess, but he will finally reach Hesperia and the river Tiber where royal power and a royal wife await him. Grieving, he joins his followers as they retreat to Mount Ida and prepare a fleet.
Virgil continues Aeneas’ narrative in Bookwithout returning to the banquet-scene. The adventures which he describes (the blood of murdered Polydorus in Thrace, the plague in Crete, the nauseating Harpies on the Strophades islands, and Odysseus’ hazards, Scylla, Charybdis, and the cannibal Cyclops) are beset with horrors on land and sea. But Aeneas gives more prominence to the divinely prompted messages of encouragement for the future and the warning against cherishing the past. While the vision of his household gods urges him on to leave Crete for Italy and Corythus’ city, the true homeland of Dardanus (.–), the Harpy Celaeno threatens them with a hunger that will drive them to eat their tables before they can settle in Italy (.–). Sailing on to Epirus, they are welcomed to Buthrotum
by lost kin, Helenus and Andromache, who have created a replica of Troy, but Andromache lives only in the past, and the prophetic Helenus contrasts their retirement from life’s struggles with Aeneas’ onward voyage; Italy may be near, but its nearer (eastern and southern) shores are full of Greek settlements: Aeneas and his men must travel further, even visiting the lakes of the underworld (.), before they come to the region of Italy, where the portent of a white sow with thirty young will mark their destination. And when they approach Sicily, they must follow its east and south coast, to avoid Scylla and Charybdis. Religious instructions constitute an important element in Helenus’ long speech of guidance (parallel to that of Circe in Odyssey): to cover the head in sacrifice (.–) and give reverence to Juno (.–).17The last part of Helenus’ advice foreshadows Book , warning Aeneas to demand the personal guidance of the Cumaean Sibyl instead of the unreliable lots cast by fluttering leaves.
For the remainder of this book Aeneas sails in the wake of Odysseus’ adventures, steering away from Scylla and Charybdis along the east coast of Sicily, past the volcano of Mount Etna, and rescues Odysseus’ marooned comrade Achaemenides, escaping before the Cyclops can sink their ship. Aeneas ends his narrative (we must not forget that he is telling his experiences to Dido) with a rapid cruise westwards past the Sicilian Greek cities, breaking offwith an outcry of grief at the death of his father Anchises, a loss none of his prophetic interlocutors had foretold.
Book, where Aeneas portrays himself as a questing colonist, skil-fully selects legends and landscapes to convey the length and variety of Aeneas’ travels. It also provides the best illustrations of what James O’Hara has called the optimistic prophecy — for true as they are, the prophecies are always partial, and mislead by omission.18
In the defence of his love poetry addressed to Augustus, Ovid would insist that even Virgil took his arms and the man into a Carthaginian bed, and that no part of the Aeneidwas more famous than this unlaw-ful love affair.19In Roman Africa four hundred years later, according to his Confessions, the young Augustine wept over Dido, and it is Virgil’s achievement to have created a noble heroine and worthy queen, destroyed by the gods like the hero of a Euripidean tragedy.
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17On the constantly recurring details of ritual in the epic (quite distinct from the role of the gods in the action), see C. Bailey, Religion in Virgil(Oxford,).
BOOK ONE
I’m the same man*who once coaxed music from slenderest reed pipes, Then, upon leaving the forests, I worked in the neighbouring ploughlands, Making them yield their resources to even the greediest settler:
Farmers all loved this work. Now I turn to the horrors of battle,
A
and the man I sing of Troy,* whofirst from its seashores, Italy-bound, fate’s refugee, arrived at Lavinia’sCoastlands. How he was battered about over land, over high deep Seas by the powers above! Savage Juno’s anger remembered
Him, and he suffered profoundly in war to establish a city,
Settle his gods into Latium, making this land of the Latins Future home to the Elders of Alba and Rome’s mighty ramparts. Muse, let the memories spill through me. What divine will was
wounded,
What deep hurt made the queen of the gods thrust a famously righteous
Man into so many spirals of chance to face so many labours?
Anger so great: can it really reside in the spirits of heaven?
Once, an old city existed, and Tyrian settlers controlled it: Carthage,*a distant menace to Italy, facing the Tiber’s Estuary, rich in resources, ferocious in practice of warfare.
Juno reportedly cherished this one land more than all others,
Even than Samos. In Carthage she kept both her chariot and weapons.
This was her candidate city to rule as the king of all nations If fate allowed. For this role she was grooming it even in those days. But there was being produced, she’d heard, from the bloodline of
Trojans,
Offspring that would one day overturn her Tyrian fortress,
People who’d rule far and wide like kings, full of pride in their war skills,
Sure to arrive and cut Libya’s thread spun on Destiny’s spindles. Fearing this, haunted by memories, too, of a war from the deep
past,
Juno had never let fall from her mind these causes of anger,
Savaging pains. For they stuck, stored fast in her mind’s deep awareness.
One was the Judgement of Paris*that bypassed, insulted her beauty. Hate for Troy evilled her eye. Add Ganymede,*raped and exalted. Burning with these thoughts too, she battered all over the high
seas
Remnants of Troy that the Greeks and their never-gentle Achilles
Missed. She relentlessly kept them at bay, far distant from Latium. Many the years, fate-driven, they strayed over sea after salt sea. Planting the Roman nation’s roots was a task of immense scale.
Scarcely had Sicily faded from view. They were setting their canvas, Spirits high, on the deep. Bronze prows ploughed brine into foam
spray.
Juno, who kept her wound eternally fresh in her bosom, Said to herself: ‘Am I beaten, my plans all dead? Is preventing Teucer’s descendant from landing as Italy’s king beyond mypower? Granted, the Fates are opposed. But if so, how was Pallas
empowered,
Just for the insane crime of a single man, son of Oileus,
Ajax, to burn an entire Greek navy and drown all its sailors? Out of the clouds she herself hurled Jupiter’s lightning; she
scattered
Vessels, her storm winds churned calm seas. And, so much for Ajax, Lungs thunderbolted, he vomited fire: she dispatched a tornado, Whirled him away as he died and impaled him upon a sharp
reef rock.
I, meanwhile, who rank as the queen of gods, Jupiter’s sister, Jupiter’s wife, have been waging war with this one single nation All these years. Will anyone now still pray for my favour, Offering humbly, on bended knee, his gifts at my altars?’
Inwardly spinning such thoughts, heart blazing with anger, the
goddess
Comes to Aeolia, storm-cloud land, ever raging with tempests. Aeolus rules here as king and restrains with imperial power, Deep in a cavern’s vastness, the struggling winds and the howling Hurricanes, bridling their rage with a prison’s chains and portcullis. Hating restraint, they seethe all round their bolted escape
routes,
Making the mountain roar. Here Aeolus, holding a sceptre, Sits on a high peak, soothes winds’ fury, tempers their anger. If he did not, they would tear straight out and swirl away with them Oceans, land, vast sky, swept offlike dust upon breezes.
Fearing precisely this, the Almighty Father confined them
Deep within caves, then superimposed high mountainous masses, Gave them a ruler who’d understand, from a well-defined contract, How to restrain and, upon his command, give rein to their
movements.
Juno came humbly begging his help, and addressed him as follows:
‘Aeolus, I come to you since the father of gods and men’s ruler
Granted you power both to quieten waves and to raise them with windstorms.
Sailing the Tuscan Sea is a people unfriendly towards me, Ferrying Ilium and already conquered gods of its households Over to Italy. Make your winds hurricanes! Shatter their navy! Sink them, or split their forces and litter the waves with their
bodies!
I, by the way, have fourteen nymphs with simply outstanding Bodies. The one with the prettiest figure is Deiopea.
I’ll designate her as yours, join you both in a durable marriage. Thus she can spend all time with you, in return for your service Rendered, and make you the father, as well, of some beautiful
children.’
Aeolus answered: ‘My ruler, your task is but this: to discover What you desire to achieve. My duty’s obedience to orders. You ensure Jupiter’s backing for my control of this kingdom, Such as it is. And youassign seats at the banquets of heaven. You make decisions on who has control over storm clouds and
tempests.’
This said, he pointed his spearhead down, then pierced through the hollow
Flank of the mountain. The winds, like legions marshalled for battle,
Stream through the portal supplied, blast out across earth in tornadoes,
East wind and south wind together, and storm-packed African tempests
Sweep upon seas, churn waters up from the bottommost seabeds,
Curling immense and destructive wave-crests over the coastlands. Then follow roars: men’s shouts; rasped screeches of hawsers
protesting.
Billowing up in a trice, clouds tear away heaven and daylight, Blinding Teucrians’ eyes; dark night settles ghastly on ocean. Sky roars thunder above, air flashes and flashes with lightning.
All signs menace the men with immediate death and destruction.
Now, in a flash, shivers send all Aeneas’ limbs into spasm.
Groaning aloud, he extends both palms, reaches upwards to heaven Uttering these cries: ‘Greater by three, even four times, the
blessing
Chance gave those with the fortune to die beneath Troy’s mighty
ramparts
Under their fathers’ gaze! O Tydeus’ son, Diomedes,
Bravest Danaän of all,*why could Inot have fallen on Ilium’s Plains, spilled forth my soul under yourright hand? That’s where
savage
Hector was killed by Achilles’ spear, where the mighty Sarpedon Died, where the Simoïs snatched up and rolled in the swirl of its
waters
So many warriors’ shields, men’s helmets, and valiant bodies!’ While he is bellowing this, fierce, screaming gusts of the north wind Batter his sail head-on, thrust waves star-high to the heavens. Oars split, the bow yaws sharply, the ship veers broadside to sea’s
swell
Just as the surge curves up, in a mountain of water, a huge Alp.
Some hang high on the crest, others see, as the trough opens vastly, Land disclosed between waves where tempests rage upon dry sand. Southerlies toss onto lurking reefs three ships they have snatched up, Reefs the Italians call Altars, exposed in the sea when it’s choppy Like some monstrous spine hidden under the surface. The east
wind
Blasts three more into shallows and sandbanks (a sad sight to witness), Slithers them onto the shoals, then walls them in among sand dunes.
Right before his own eyes, one vessel carrying Lycians, Trusty Orontes too, is battered by huge breakers cresting Over her aft deck. The helmsman, wrenched from his oar, is sent
spinning
Headlong. Three times round that same surge spirals the vessel,
Spinning it down through its suctioning throat, and devours it completely.
Up bobs a swimmer afloat, here and there, in this drain of destruction, Arms of the men, planks, paintings, and treasure from Troy fleck
the waters.
Now Ilioneus’ well-built galley, now valiant Achates’,
Abas’ vessel, the ship that is carrying agèd Aletes
Storm lashed, start to go down; in their hulls’ seams, dowelling and tendons
Snap, locked joints split apart, springing murderous leaks shipping water.
Meanwhile, Neptune perceived that an unleashed tempest was raging,
Sensed that the sea was a thunderously massive upheaval of salt
brine
Churned from its still, calm depths; and he found it deeply disturbing.
So, looking up, he lifted his tranquil head to the surface. Scattered on ocean’s expanse he observed Aeneas’s navy, Trojans beleaguered by high-running seas and the heavens’
implosion.
Juno’s plots and her anger in no way eluded her brother.
Summoning east wind and zephyr to him he addressed them as follows:
‘Could you have so much trust in your family connections, you mere winds,
That, without my consent, you dare make earth and the heavens Chaos again and create so monstrous a mass of confusion? You, that I . . . Wait! First business must be to bring calm to the
waters.
Then you will pay for your crimes. Yourlashing won’t be just verbal.
Get on your way and be quick. And relay these words to your ruler: Ocean’s High Command and the savage Trident of Office
Weren’t allotted to himbut to me. His province is large rocks, Homes, east wind, for your kind. That’s the right court for
Aeolus’ bluster,
Playing at king. But the winds must be kept in their cells with the doors locked!’
This said, more quickly in fact than he spoke, he levels the swelling
Seas, rounds up, then disperses the clouds, re-establishes sunshine. Cymothoë (Triton helps her) does hard work levering vessels Up from the jagged reefs. The god prises them free with his trident,
Opens the quicksands’ vastness, levels the seas back to flatness Skimming the wave-tops on feather-light wheels in his
swift-running chariot.
Much the same happens*within a great nation, where lawlessness often
Bursts into riots, where people become mobs savage with passion, Firebrands, stones start flying through air (fury furnishes weapons)
Then, if they happen to glimpse a man worth their respect for his righteous
Conduct, they’re silenced. They prick up their ears and await his instructions.
He, with his words, brings passions to heel, lulls panting to calmness. So all the crash of the sea died down, as soon as the Father Looked at the surface, cleared up the skies, and with only a guiding
Flick to his horses, established his course, and flew on under free rein.
Tired out, Aeneas’ men put all their strength into gaining Landfall as close as they can, setting course for the Libyan coastline. Deep in an inlet there’s somewhere to beach, where the flanks of an
island
Jutting across force breakers to crash and to channel their fury
Into its various coves. It’s a natural port,*and around it
Vast cliffs shield both sides, dual rock-masses surge towards heaven. Sheltered beneath these menacing peaks are silent, expansive Stretches of safe, calm water, around which a backdrop of shuddering Woods loom down from above, dark forests bristling shadows.
Under the seaward face, there’s a cave where rocks dangle in long tusks.
Fresh running water within and ledges of still-living limestone Fashion a dwelling for Nymphs. No cables are needed for mooring Vessels, no grappling anchors to grasp onto land with a firm bite. Here, with a squadron of seven ships left from his navy, Aeneas
Puts ashore. Trojans, ecstatic with joy at regaining the dry land, Leap from the ships and establish themselves on the sand-covered
coastline,
Stretch out brine-encrusted limbs full-length on the beaches. First action came from Achates, who struck out a spark from a
flintstone,
Caught it in leaves, made a flame which he nurtured with kindling
of dry wood,
Fanned it to blazing life by waving the smouldering tinder. Next, though exhausted by what had occurred, they salvaged their
wheat stores —
Ceres,*swollen with brine — found equipment for processing cereals, Started to dry out the grains over fire and to grind them with
millstones.
Meanwhile, Aeneas is climbing a cliffto survey the horizon
Far and wide out to sea for a glimpse of the Phrygian biremes, Seeking a sign that, say, Antheus or Capys has weathered the tempest. Maybe he might even see Caïcus’ arms on his tall ships.
Though not a vessel’s in sight, he detects, down below, by the seashore,
Three buck deer straying freely; behind them, straggling through
valleys,
Whole herds follow in single file cropping grass as they amble. Halting, he stands very still. And his hands grab the bow and the
arrows,
Weapons that faithful Achates is carrying strapped to his shoulders. First shots lay low the leaders, their tall heads crested with antlers Branching like trees; then his shafts create havoc by routing the
common
Herd and dispersing disordered ranks into leaf-sheltered woodlands. He doesn’t stop his victorious onslaught till seven enormous Carcasses lie on the ground: one for each of the ships in his squadron. Then, heading back to the harbour, he shares them among all his
crewmen.
Next, he distributes the wine jars, the ones that the generous hero,
Noble Acestes, loaded as gifts when they sailed from Trinacrian Sicily. Last, he adds soothing words, lulling hearts full of sorrow: ‘Crewmates, by now we are hardly strangers to evil and hardship. We’ve suffered worse. God will grant us an end to these sufferings also. You’ve been close to the rabid rage and the deep-bellied thunder
Roaring from Scylla’s cliffs, you’ve experienced boulders the Cyclops Hurled. Take heart once again and dispel your fears and depression.
Maybe the day’ll come when even this will be joy to remember. Through all these varied events, these many critical junctures, We’re reaching out towards Latium, where fate reaches out to us,
offering
Homes where we’ll settle in peace, where Troy has the right to reburgeon.
Just hold firm, conserving your strength for the good days to follow.’ Such were the words that he voiced. He, sick as he was with his
worries,
Masked his expression with hope, kept gloom in his heart, deeply buried.
Clothes hitched up, they tackle the spoils, make ready for
feasting,
Ripping the hides from the ribs, pulling out and exposing the raw
flesh.
Some hack meat into chunks and impale them, pulsing, on skewers; Others set cauldrons of bronze on the beaches and stoke up the fires. Then they revitalize vigour with vittles and, spilling all over
Meadowlands, fill up on vintage Bacchus and succulent wild game.
After they’ve feasted their hunger away and removed all the tables, Comrades lost are the grief-stricken quest of their long conversations; Wondering, poised between hope and fear, whether they should
believe them
Still living or now dead and unable to hear voices calling,
Most of all, righteous Aeneas, who now mourns fiery Orontes
Lost, now Amycus, lost — though he keeps it all silent within him — Lycus’ fate too, and Gyas the steadfast and steadfast Cloanthus.
Now that the crisis was past, lord Jupiter, high in the bright air, Looked down below on the sail-billowed sea and the motionless
dry land,
Looked on its shores and its far-flung peoples, and paused upon
heaven’s
Summit. He focused the light of his glance*on the Libyan kingdoms. And, as he tossed round, deep in his heart, such anxious reflections, Venus, her shining eyes full of tears and grimmer than usual, Spoke to him: ‘Lord who controls the affairs both of gods and of
mortals,
Ruling, eternal in power, bringing terror with flashes of lightning,
What could myson Aeneas have done to offend you so greatly,
What could the Trojans have done, that they should, after deaths in their thousands,
Find that, to keep them from Italy now, the whole world has been sealed off?
From them Roman commanders were sure, some day in the future’s Rolling years, to arise. There’d be born, from restored blood of
Teucer,
Men who would hold all lands, all seas, under their jurisdiction. Thatwas your promise.
So whose is the mind*that has changed you, dear father? This vow was my consolation as Troy slid down to destruction: Destined success counterpoising destined doom in the balance. Now it’s the same old fortune pursuing men driven by countless
Random disasters. What end will you set to their troubles, great ruler? Antenor slipped through the midst of Achaeans, successfully, safely Thrusting on up through the lap of Illyria’s coves and Liburnia’s Deepest recesses and mounting his way to the source of Timavus. Down comes the flow as the peak moans mightily, out through its
nine mouths
Bursting, a sea with the roar of an ocean, all over the ploughlands. This man has made it. He’s founded his city, his home for the
Teucrians,
Padua, given his people a name, he has put up his Trojan
Weapons. Now peacefully settled, he basks in tranquillity’s calmness. ‘We, your own children, to whom you accord full access to
heaven,
Have, a disgrace beyond words, and through one individual’s anger, Lost our ships, been betrayed, held far from Italy’s coastline. Thisis your way of rewarding the righteous, restoring our power?’
Smiling at her, the begetter of life for mankind and immortals, Showing the face that he uses to clear skies, pacify tempests,
Offers his daughter some kisses and speaks to her much in this manner:
‘Spare these personal fears, Cytherea!*Your own and your children’s Fate that I’ve stated stays unchanged. You willsee Lavinium’s City and promised walls, and you willraise great-souled Aeneas Up to the stars of the skies. No one’s mind has changed my
opinion.
Since this anxiety constantly gnaws you, I’ll make my pronouncements.
I will unwind rather more of my scroll of the fates and their secrets. He’ll wage widespread war throughout Italy, crushing ferocious Peoples; he’ll give men civilized ways and fortified ramparts,
Till the third summer has seen him reigning as ruler in Latium,
Till he’s camped three times in the winter and conquered Rutulians. Youthful Ascanius, who’ll now be known by a new name, “Iulus”,— “Ilus” it was while the Ilian state still ruled in the Troad — Hewill go on to complete full thirty cycles of rolling
Months in command. Then he’ll transfer the centre of power from
Lavinium
And, with a huge show of force, make Alba Longa his fortress. Over the next three centuries, then, this will be the command post Ruled by the people of Hector, until such time as a royal
Priestess named Ilia, pregnant by Mars, gives birth to her twin boys.*
Romulus, happy to wear the tan hide from the she-wolf who
nursed him,
Then will inherit the line. And, in Mars’ honour, he’ll found a city,
Giving its people a name he derives from his own name: the Romans. Iam imposing no bounds on his realm, no temporal limits.
Empire that has no end*is my gift. Even Juno, whose harshness Now is exhausting the sea and the earth and the heavens with
terror,
Will, one day, change plans for the better, and, with me, she’ll nurture
Romans, that people in togas, the masters of all in existence. That’s my decree. And an age will come, as festivals glide by, When Assaracus’ house sets Phthia in slavery’s shackles,
Famous Mycenae, too. It will conquer and master the Argives.
There will be born of this splendid lineage a Caesar, a Trojan. He’ll make Ocean the bounds of his power, and the stars of his glory, He will be Julius — a name that derives from the mighty Iulus. One day, anxiety gone, you’ll take him up to the heavens
Loaded with spoils from the East. He too will be called on in prayer.
Then all wars will cease. These Ages of Harshness will soften. Vesta and white-haired Trust, Quirinus, along with his brother Remus, will make laws together. The merciless, reinforced iron Portals of War*will be closed. Unrighteous Madness within them, Sitting on weapons of murder, his hands bound back by a hundred
Bronze-locked chains, face bathed in blood, will rage in contortions.’
This said, he sends Maia’s son from on high to the newly built stronghold,
Carthage, so he can ensure that the land and the city keep open Welcome for Teucer’s men, so that Dido,*not knowing what’s fated, Doesn’t just keep them clear of her boundaries. Mercury, flying
Over expanses of air, wings serving as oars, arrives quickly Down on the Libyan coast, does as ordered. Phoenicians abandon, As god wills, all fierceness of heart; and, above all, their ruler Takes on a calmness of soul and a kind disposition to Teucrians.
Righteous Aeneas, whose thoughts spanned night in countless
gyrations,
Took a decision, at dawn’s first comforting light, to go outside, Scout out the new terrain, figure out what shores they’d been
blown to
And who controlled them, humans or beasts (he’d seen no cultivation). Once he had answered these questions, he’d bring back news to his
comrades.
So, camouflaging the fleet under cliff-tops eroded and hollow
Covered above with a woodland canopy — trees and their bristling Damp shade circled the ships — he set off, having only Achates’ Company, clasping a matched pair of spears tipped stoutly in iron.
Deep in the forest, his mother approached him, assuming a virgin’s Face and attire, bearing arms, like an unmarried virgin from
Sparta
Or like Harpalyce (thatgirl from Thrace can tire out a racehorse And, in a sprint, run faster than Hebrus, a swift-flowing torrent!). She, as if hunting for venison, slung, in their style from her shoulders, Strung for quick action, a bow, and she’d let her hair blow in the
breezes,
Gathered her flowing dress up in a knot, thus exposing a bare
knee.
‘Hey!’ she spoke first. ‘You lads! If you’ve seen, perhaps, one of my sisters
Wandering here, tell me where! She’d be wearing a quiver about her, Over the hide of a dappled lynx. She could also be hunting,
Hot in pursuit of a foaming boar, and raising a loud cry.’
So Venus spoke; Venus’ son then responded to her in this manner:
‘I haven’t heard, and I’m sure I’ve not seen, any one of your sisters —
What shall I call you, O virgin? For neither your face nor expression Seems merely human and, further, your voice doesn’t sound like a
mortal’s.
Surely you mustbe a god. Phoebus’ sister? Related to some Nymph? Bring us fulfilment, whoever you are, please lighten our struggle!
Please inform us, at least, where under the sun we are stranded, Where in the world are these shores? We know neither the place
nor the people;
We are just wandering lost, driven here by the winds and the wild seas;
Many a victim will fall by our hands to show thanks at your altars.’ Venus said: ‘I don’t think I deserve any honours of that sort.
Wearing the quiver is normal style for us Tyrian virgins, As are the calf-high costume boots laced tight, and in purple. Tyrians live here. Phoenician settlements: Agenor’s city, That’s what you see, but on Libyan soil among war-toughened
peoples.
Dido’s the ruler in charge. She came here to escape from her
brother,
Sailing from Tyre. It’s a long tale of wrong and injustice, a long tale:
Twists, turns, full of deceit. But I’ll summarize most of the main points.
Dido had married Sychaeus, the richest of all the Phoenician Landowners. She, poor girl, loved him deeply. For she was a virgin Child-bride, betrothed the first time that her father had checked
wedding omens.
Ruling Tyre, in those days, was Pygmalion.*He was her brother, And quite a monster of crime, far surpassing all possible rivals. Conflict arose among in-laws. Pygmalion, secure in his sister’s Love for them both, lusting blindly for gold, killed Sychaeus in
cold blood
Secretly, catching him quite offguard and in front of an altar.
Evil, unrighteous man, he concealed what he’d done for a long time, Toyed with the lovesick bride, raised false hopes, crafted illusions. But in her dreams, the true form of her unburied husband
approached her,
Raising before her a face that was wasted with terrible pallor,
Baring the truth of the brutal crime at the altar, the daggered
Breast, and disclosing each unseen crime concealed in the palace.
Then the dream urges her on to craft speedy escape from her homeland, And, as resources for travel, reveals where there’s long-buried treasure, Massive ingots, silver and gold. No one knew they existed.
Dido, moved by all this, made her plans, sought allies in exile.
All those who felt cruel hate for the tyrant, all people who feared him Keenly, assembled; then, pirating ships which, by chance, were already Outfitted, loaded the gold. So greedy Pygmalion’s riches
Take to the open seaways — a bold coup, led by a woman.
‘Putting in here, at this very place where you now see enormous
Ramparts, the rising castle of Carthage’s new town, they purchased Land, just as much as one could mark offwith the hide of a single Ox. And they called it Byrsa, “The Hide”,*to recall the transaction. What about you? Who are you? What part of the world have you
come from?
Where are you travelling to?’ In response to her various enquiries,
He gave a sigh, reached into his heart, gave a genuine answer: ‘Goddess, were I to retrace the whole tale from its very beginning, If you had free time to hear our chronicles, all of our troubles, Venus, the Evening Star,*would end daylight and close up Olympus.
‘Ancient Troy was our home, though I wonder if Troy’s name
has ever
Passed through the ears of you gods. We’ve been blown over various seaways;
Now, some self-willed tempest has beached us on Libya’s coastline. I am Aeneas the Righteous. I carry with me on my vessel
Household gods that I saved from the foe. My fame reaches heaven. Seeking a homeland in Italy, I, mighty Jupiter’s offspring,
Had, when I launched upon Phrygian seas, two squadrons of ten ships.
My goddess mother showed me my course. Fate commanded. I followed.
Just seven ships have survived, all damaged by high seas and east winds.
Nobody knows me, I’ve nothing, I’m wandering Libyan deserts. Europe and Asia reject me.’
But Venus would suffer no further
Lists of complaints. So she spoke, interrupting his pain and his sorrow:
‘You, I believe, whoever you are, are not hated by heaven. You’re still alive, still breathe; and you’ve come to a Tyrian city.
