CHAPTER V.
THE FUNERAL GAMES.
Far off at sea, Æneas and his crew see the flames go up from Dido's palace.
"What cause has lit so fierce a flame
They know not; but the pangs of shame
From great love wronged, and what despair
Will make a baffled woman dare,—
All this they know; and knowing tread
The paths of presage vague and dread."
Not yet is their course clear for Italy. A storm comes on, and they make for refuge towards the friendly coast of Sicily, and run their vessels into a sheltered bay under Mount Eryx. Their return is gladly welcomed by their late host, Acestes, who receives the wanderers, as before, with princely hospitality, still mindful of his own Trojan blood. It chances that the morrow is the anniversary of the burial of Anchises; and Æneas, summoning an open-air council of his crews, announces to them his intention of commemorating his father by a solemn public sacrifice. It is a day which—wherever his lot may be hereafter cast—he will ever keep holy; and not without some providential guidance, as he deems, has this opportunity been afforded him, by his being driven back to Sicily, of celebrating it on friendly soil under the auspices of his kinsman. There shall be nine days of sacrifice and prayer; then shall follow funeral games, with prizes at his own cost.
The sacrificial oxen are duly slain, and the libations poured at the tomb of Anchises; the bowls of new milk, of wine, and of blood, and the fresh spring flowers, which were reckoned acceptable offerings to the dead. Then Æneas lifts his voice in prayer to the shade of the hero, and a startling omen follows the invocation. A serpent, dappled with green and gold, glides out of the tomb, tastes of the offerings, and disappears again. Æneas sees in the creature the tutelary genius of the spot, or, it may be, the special attendant of his father's shade. In either case, he accepts its appearance as a good omen, and joyfully redoubles his devotions.
In the funeral games which follow, the Roman poet no doubt had two models in his mind. He was ambitious to reproduce, or perhaps to rival, in Roman song, for an audience of his countrymen, the grand description which his great master Homer had given of the games which Achilles celebrates in honour of the dead Patroclus. He wished also, there can be little doubt, to pay a poet's best compliment to his imperial patron, and to weave into his song, with such licence of embellishment as is allowed to all poets, a record of those funeral games which Augustus had instituted in remembrance of his uncle, the great Dictator Julius. But Virgil is here very far from being a mere copyist from Homer. In lieu of the chariot-race, the great feature in the games of the Iliad, he has given us a galley-race, the incidents of which are quite as exciting, and to our modern comprehensions more thoroughly intelligible.
The day fixed for the great spectacle has arrived, and the Sicilians from far and near flock to it, some to take part in the games, and all to see. First of the various contests comes the galley-race, for which four of the fastest vessels in the fleet have entered—the Shark, the Centaur, the Chimæra, and the Scylla; each displaying, no doubt, as its figure-head, a representation of the monster whose name it bore. Their captains were men well known. Humouring a genealogical fancy of his Roman countrymen for tracing their descent to some one of the old Trojan colonists,—much after the fashion of English houses who try to find an ancestor on the Roll of Battle Abbey,—the poet tells us that three at least out of the four gave their names in due time to patrician houses in Rome. Mnestheus, who commands the Shark, left his name (certainly with considerable modification) to the gens or clan of Memmius. The captain of the Centaur, Sergestus, is in like manner the reputed ancestor of the Sergian clan, as Cloanthus, who sails the Scylla, is of the Cluentian. Only Gyas, the captain of the Chimæra, a bulky craft, "as big as a town," has no such genealogical honours assigned him.
The course lies out in the bay, and the competing vessels are to round a rock, covered at high tides, on which an oak has been set up, leaves and all, to serve as a mark for the steersmen. They take up their positions by lot, and await the signal, to be given by sound of trumpet. The picture of the start would suit, with wonderfully little alteration, the description of a modern University boat-race:—
"And now on rowing-bench they sit,
Bend to the oar their arms close knit,
And straining watch the sign to start,
While generous trembling fills each heart,
And thirst for victory.
Then, at the trumpet's piercing sound,
All from their stations onward bound:
Upsoars to heaven the oarsmen's shout,
The upturned billows froth and spout.
*****
With plaudits loud and clamorous zeal
Echoes the woodland round;
The pent shores roll the thunder-peal,
The stricken hills resound."
[Our modern oarsmen would certainly be wiser in this, that they would reserve their own breath (of which they would find considerable need towards the end of the race), and leave the whole of the shouting to be done by enthusiastic spectators.]
"First Gyas issues from the rout,
And holds the foremost place:
Cloanthus next; his oarsmen row
More featly, but his bark is slow,
And checks him in the race.
Behind at equal distance strain
Centaur and Shark the lead to gain;
And now the Shark darts forth, and now
The Centaur has advanced her bow;
And now the twain move side by side,
Their long keels trailing through the tide."
So goes the race, until the galleys near the rock which they have to round. Gyas sees that his steersman, from over caution, is giving it too wide a berth, and that there is danger of the Scylla, more venturous, cutting in between. He shouts an order to keep closer in; but the old seaman is somewhat obstinate, and it is very soon too late. Cloanthus has seen his advantage, shot round the rock at very close quarters, and now leaves Gyas in the Chimæra behind. Burning with fury, Gyas turns on his steersman, and pitches him into the sea. Happily he can swim, and the rock is close at hand; he climbs upon it, and sits there dripping, to the considerable amusement of the spectators, who, like all lookers-on, seem unmercifully alive to the ludicrous element in any disaster.
Deprived of her helmsman, the huge Chimæra loses her course for a moment, and the two galleys in the rear are quick to take advantage of it. The Shark and Centaur are now rounding the rock almost side by side. But Sergestus, in his eagerness not to lose an inch of advantage, emulates the manœuvre of the Scylla too closely, and takes the Centaur too near. Her broadside of oars touch some of the jutting crags, the oars are broken, and the boat's head takes the rock, and hangs there hard and fast. All efforts of the crew to get her off are unavailing. Mnestheus makes the dangerous turn safely on the outside of his rival, and his men, encouraged by success, redouble their efforts. The Chimæra has no good steersman to re- place old Menœtes, who is still drying himself on the rock, and she is easily passed on the return course homewards. The struggle becomes now one of intense interest between Mnestheus and Cloanthus, who is still leading in the Scylla.
"The cheers redouble from the shore;
Heaven echoes with the wild uproar;
Those blush to lose a conquering game,
And fain would peril life for fame;
These bring success their zeal to fan—
They can, because they think they can."
The Shark has a stern chase, but the Scylla rows heavily, as we have been told, though she has the best crew, and the distance lessens at every stroke. Had the course been longer, the Shark would have made at least a dead heat of it. But as it is, amidst a storm of shouts, the Scylla wins. The turning-point of victory is one which does not approve itself to modern readers. The sea-deities interfere. Standing high upon his quarter-deck, Cloanthus lifts his prayer to the powers of ocean, not to permit his prize to be snatched from him at the last. He vows an offering: of a milk-white bull and libations of red wine if they will help him at his need.
"He said; there heard him 'neath the sea
The Nereid train and Panope;
And with his hand divinely strong,
Portunus[1] pushed the bark along."
Possibly, after all, the poet only means us to understand that this was Mnestheus's explanation of his defeat—that the luck was against him.[2]
Cloanthus is crowned with bays as the victor of the day, and receives as his prize an embroidered robe of rare device—one of those miracles of divers colours of needlework in which the classical age seems to have as far excelled us as the mediæval ladies certainly did. Each crew receives three oxen and a supply of wine, while a talent of silver is divided amongst the men of the victorious Scylla. Mnestheus, as second in the race, wins a shirt of mail whose scales are of gold, which two of his attendants bear off with difficulty. The third of the captains has a pair of brazen caldrons and chased silver bowls. But while the awards are being distributed, the crippled Centaur has got off the rock, and is brought into harbour; and a Cretan slave-woman, with her twin children, is allotted, by the liberality of Æneas, as a consolation to her captain.
From the shore of the bay the company now move off to a natural amphitheatre close at hand, where the rest of the games are to be exhibited. Æneas takes his place high in the midst on an extemporised throne. For the foot-race, which comes first on the list, a crowd of competitors enter, both of native Sicilians and of their Trojan guests. Among the Sicihans are Salius and Patron, of Greek families settled in the island, and Helymus and Panopes, friends and companions of Acestes. The favourites among the Trojans are Diores, one of the many sons of Priam, and Nisus and Euryalus, noted for their romantic friendship, of which we shall hear more hereafter. The prizes in this contest are a war-horse with full trappings for the first, an Amazonian quiver for the second, and a helmet—the spoil of some conquered Greek on the plain of Troy—for the third. Nisus goes off with a strong lead, and has the race easily in hand. Next him, but at a long interval, comes Salius, Euryalus lying third, Helymus and Diores, close together, fourth and fifth. But when within a short distance of the goal, Nisus slips up in the blood and filth which has been left uncleared at the spot where the oxen have been sacrificed, and falls heavily to the ground. Knowing himself to be out of the race, he determines that his dear Euryalus shall win. So, by a piece of most unjustifiable jockeyship, which ought to have led to his being warned off from all such contests for ever after, he rises up at the moment that Salius is passing, and brings him down upon him. Euryalus has thus an easy victory, Helymus and Diores coming in second and third. Very naturally, there is much dispute about the award. Salius complains loudly of unfair play; but young Euryalus is handsome and popular, and Diores backs his claim energetically; for it is very evident that if Salius is adjudged the first prize, Euryalus the second, and Helymus the third, then he—Diores—will be nowhere. So the result is accepted by the judges as it stands. But Æneas quiets the reasonable objections of Salius by the present of a lion's hide with gilded claws. Then Nisus makes appeal for compensation, pointing out to the laughing spectators the blood and dirt which are the very disagreeable evidences of his mishap, and protesting, with a consummate impudence which suits with the popular humour, that the whole thing was an accident, and that he, as the winner that would have been, is the real object of commiseration. If a fall deserves a prize, who has so good a claim as the man who fell first? Again the generosity of Æneas answers the appeal, and Nisus is presented with a shield of the finest workmanship, another Greek trophy. Successful knavery, if the knave be somewhat of a humourist withal, always wins a sort of sympathy from the public—in the Augustan epic as well as in modern comedy.
The prizes of the foot-race having been thus decided, the lists are cleared for the boxing-match. The boxing-match of the classical ancients was very different indeed from a modern set-to. The combatants certainly wore gloves; but these were meant to add weight and force to the blow, not to deaden it. The stoutest champion of the modern prize-ring might shrink from encountering an antagonist whose fists were bound round with strips of hardened ox-hide. But such was the "cæstus" which was worn by the pugilists of this heroic age. The prizes are displayed by Æneas; for the conqueror, a bull with gilded horns; a helmet and falchion for the loser. Up rises the Trojan Dares, whose strength and skill are well known. The only man whom he acknowledged as his superior in the ring was one whom we might have least expected—Paris, who certainly bears no such reputation in Homer. At the great games held in honour of the dead Hector, of which we have the very briefest note in the Iliad, Dares had defeated the huge champion Butes, sprung from a race of athletes, and so mangled him that he died on the spot. No wonder that when he now steps forth, and goes through some preparatory sparring with the air, no one is found bold enough to put on the gloves with him. So, after a glance of triumph round the admiring circle, he advances to where the bull stands in front of Æneas, lays his hand upon its horns, and claims it as his rightful property in default of an antagonist.
King Acestes is concerned for the honour of Sicily. There is lying beside him on the grass a grey-hauled chief named Entellus, sometime a pupil in this art of the great hero Eryx, who gave his name to the mountain which overhangs the place of assembly. Will he sit tamely by, Acestes asks, and see this Trojan boaster carry off the prize and the glory unchallenged? Entellus listens to his friend, and feels the old fire stir within him. He would willingly enter the ring once more for the honour of his native island,—
"But strength is slack in limbs grown old,
And aged blood runs dull and cold.
Had I the thing I once possessed,
Which makes yon braggart rear his crest,
Had I but youth, no need had been
Of gifts, to lure me to the green."
He rises from his seat, however, and throws down in the arena, by way of challenge, a pair of ancient gloves of a most murderous pattern. Seven folds of tough bull-hide have knobs of lead and iron sewn inside them. They are the gloves in which the hero Eryx fought his fatal battle with Hercules, whom he had rashly challenged, and they still bear the blood-stains of Eryx's previous victories. Dares, stout champion as he is, starts back in dismay when he sees them, and Æneas himself takes them up and handles them with wonder. Entellus, however, will not insist on using these; and two pair of less formidable manufacture and of equal weight are produced, with which the two heroes engage. Virgil's description of this ancient prize-fight is highly spirited. It may remind some readers, who are old enough to remember such things, of the bulletins of similar encounters between a "light-weight" and a "heavy-weight," furnished in past days by sporting writers to our own newspapers—with the happy omission of the slang of the ring:—
"Raised on his toes each champion stands,
And fearless lifts in air his hands.
Their heads thrown back avoid the stroke;
Their mighty arms the tight provoke.
That on elastic youth relies,
This on vast limbs and giant size;
But the huge knees with age are slack,
And fitful gasps the deep chest rack.
Full many a blow the heroes rain
Each on the other, still in vain:
Their hollow sides return the sound,
Their battered chests the shock rebound:
'Mid ears and temples come and go
The wandering gauntlets to and fro:
The jarred teeth chatter 'neath the blow.
Firm stands Entellus in his place,
A column rooted on its base;
His watchful eye and shrinking frame
Alone avoid the gauntlet's aim.
Like leaguer who invests a town,
Or sits before a hill-fort down,
The younger champion tasks his art
To find the bulwark's weakest part;
This way and that unwearied scans,
And vainly tries a thousand plans.
Entellus, rising to the blow,
Puts forth his hand: the wary foe
Midway in air the mischief spied,
And, deftly shifting, slipped aside.
Entellus' force on air is spent:
Heavily down with prone descent
He falls, as from its roots uprent
A pine falls hollow, on the side
Of Erymanth or lofty Ide."
Acestes rushes in, like an attentive second, to raise his friend; and Entellus, roused to fury by his fall, renews the fight savagely:—
"Ablaze with fury he pursues
The Trojan o'er the green,
And now his right hand deals the bruise,
And now his left as keen.
No pause, no respite: fierce and fast
As hailstones rattle down the blast
On sloping roofs, with blow on blow,
He buffets Dares to and fro."
The unhappy Dares is borne off by his friends in miserable plight,—with half his teeth knocked out, blood streaming from his face, and hardly able to stand. All the savage has been roused in Entellus's nature by the fight. He is not half satisfied that his victim has escaped him. He would gladly have sacrificed him to the memory of his great master Eryx,—here, on the spot where that hero fought his own last fight. He lays his hand upon the bull, the prize of battle, and addresses Æneas and the spectators. Dryden's version of this passage, though it contains as much of Dryden as of Virgil, has justly been praised as very noble:—
"O goddess-born, and ye Dardanian host,
Mark with attention, and forgive my boast;
Learn what I was by what remains, and know
From what impending fate you saved my foe!
Sternly he spoke, and then confronts the bull;
And on his ample forehead aiming full,
The deadly stroke descending pierced the skull.
Down drops the beast, nor needs a second wound,
But sprawls in pangs of death, and spurns the ground.
'Then thus, in Dares' stead, I offer this:
Eryx, accept a nobler sacrifice;
Take the last gift my withered arms can yield—
Thy gauntlets I resign, and here renounce the field.'"
Mr Conington has well remarked that here we have, no doubt, "the veteran combatant's feelings as conceived by the veteran poet." He wrote the lines in his sixty-second year, and they harmonise pathetically with the words in his dedication: "What I now offer to your lordship is the wretched remainder of a sickly age." We are not obliged to take this self-depreciation too literally: whatever may be the shortcomings of Dryden's translation, the hand of the old poet had no more lost its vigour than that of Entellus.
The archers are next to try their skill. In this contest Acestes himself takes part. The other competitors are Mnestheus, whose crew were just now second in the race; Eurytion, a brother of Pandarus, the great archer of the Iliad, whose treacherous arrow, launched against Menelaus during the truce, had well-nigh turned the fate of Troy; and Hippocoon, of whom we know nothing more. He draws the first lot, and his arrow strikes the mast on which the mark, a live dove, is perched. Mnestheus shoots next, and cuts the cord which fetters her; and as she flies away a shaft from Eurytion's bow follows and kills her. There is nothing left for Acestes to do, but to shoot an arrow high in the air to show the strength of his hand and his bow. To the astonishment of the gazers, the arrow takes fire, and, leaving a trail of light on its path like a shooting-star, vanishes in the sky. It is an omen, as Æneas declares; it must be that the gods, in spite of facts, will him to be the real victor. So the prize—an embossed bowl, a present from the father of Hecuba to Anchises—is awarded to the Sicilian prince, even Eurytion, the actual winner, acquiescing heartily in the arrangement. Yet the omen, as the poet tells us, really boded disaster; though whether to Sicily or to the Trojans, or how it was afterwards fulfilled, he does not stop to explain. Commentators have, as a matter of duty, done so for him; but it is hardly worth while to vex ourselves with their conjectures on a point on which Æneas himself was mistaken.
The games are over—at least, so far as the public programme seems to have gone. But Æneas has a surprise in store for his hosts. He whispers privately to the governor or tutor of his son Iulus, while he requests the company once more to clear the amphitheatre. Soon there sweeps into the ring the young chivalry of Troy—a goodly company of mounted youths, all of noble blood, who are to play out their play before their assembled seniors.
"They enter, glittering side by side,
And rein their steeds with youthful pride,
As 'neath their fathers' eyes they ride,
While all Trinacria's host and Troy's
With plaudits greet the princely boys.
Each has his hair by rule confined
With stripped-off leaves in garland twined:
Some ride with shapely bows equipped:
Two cornel spears they bear, steel-tipped:
And wreaths of twisted gold invest
The neck, and sparkle on the breast.
Three are the companies of horse,
And three the chiefs that scour the course:
Twelve gallant boys each chief obey,
And shine in tripartite array.
Young Priam first, Polites' heir,
Well pleased his grandsire's name to bear,
Leads his gay troop, himself decreed
To raise up an Italian seed:
He prances forth, all dazzling bright,
On Thracian steed with spots of white:
White on its fetlock's front is seen,
And white the space its brows between.
Then Atys, next in place, from whom
The Atian family descend:
Young Atys, fresh with life's first bloom.
The boy Iulus' sweet boy-friend:
Iulus last, in form and face
Pre-eminent his peers above,
A courser rides of Tyrian race,
Memorial gift of Dido's love.
Sicilian steeds the rest bestride
From old Acestes' stalls supplied.
The Dardanids with mingling cheers
Relieve the young aspirants' fears,
And gaze delighted, as they trace
A parent's mien in each fair face.
"And now, when all from first to last
Beneath their kinsfolk's eyes had past,
Before the assembled crowd,
Epytides shrills forth from far
His signal-shout, as if for war,
And cracks his whip aloud.
In equal parts the bands divide,
And gallop off on either side:
Then wheeling round in full career
Charge at a call with levelled spear
Again, again they come and go,
Through adverse spaces to and fro;
Circles in circles interlock,
And, sheathed in arms, the gazers mock
With mimicry of battle-shock.
And now they turn their backs in flight,
Now put their spears in rest,
And now in amity unite,
And ride the field abreast."
Such was the Ludus Trojæ—"The Game of Troy"—introduced, according to the poet, by Iulus in after-days into his new-built town of Alba, and borrowed from Alba by the Romans. Whatever its origin may have been, it was revived at Rome by Augustus, in his zeal for restorations of all kinds, as "an ancient and honourable institution." Princes of the imperial house—young Marcellus, and Tiberius the future emperor—rode, like Iulus, in the show; the emperor himself took a warm interest in it; and the eagerness of the young patricians to distinguish themselves in the various manœuvres before his eyes and those of their friends led to serious accidents. To one young horseman who was crippled by his fall Augustus gave a golden torque, and granted to him and his family permission to bear the name of "Torquatus"—renowned in the early annals of Rome. But other accidents happened, and led to such loud complaints that the sport was discontinued.
But while the eyes of Trojans and Sicilians are engaged with this spectacle, a terrible proceeding has taken place down on the shore. The ships, as usual, are drawn up there hard and fast upon the sand. The Trojan matrons are gathered near them, making moan for the good Anchises—for the games are a spectacle for men. They are looking wistfully, too, across the sea, thinking how far they have sailed already, and how far they may yet have to sail. The watchful hate of Juno sees her opportunity. She despatches Iris down to them in the shape of one of their number—Beroe. She harangues them eloquently. How long will they be content to live this wandering life, in search of a distant home—which possibly has no existence but in deceitful prophecies?
The disguised Iris seizes a brand and rushes towards the ships. While the rest hesitate, one of their number detects the star-like eyes and celestial gait. It is not old Beroe—nay, she, to the witness's own knowledge, lies at this very moment sick in bed. It is no less than a visitor from heaven. They hesitate no longer: they snatch the embers from the altars, and in a moment the deed is done, and the galleys are in flames. The news is brought to Æneas just as the gay parade of youths is ending; and Ascanius gallops at once down to the shore, dashes his helmet on the ground that all may know him, and implores the furious women to stay their hands. Do they fancy they are burning the war-ships of the Greeks? His voice recalls them to themselves, and in guilty fear and shame they fly to hide themselves among the rocks and woods, Æneas rends his clothes, and appeals to Jupiter. The ruler of the sky hears, and sends down a thunder-shower which drenches everything on sea and shore, so that all but four galleys escape with little damage.
But Æneas is troubled at heart. May not this mad instinct of the women be right, after all? Were it not better to rest here in Sicily, than wander on again over the weary ocean in quest of this Western Land? He takes counsel with the Nestor of the fleet—the aged Nautes—to whom the goddess of wisdom has given an understanding spirit beyond his fellows. The old seaman's motto is one of the poet's noblest utterances[3]—
"Whate'er betides, he only cures
The stroke of fortune who endures."
He bids his chief take counsel, too, with Acestes. In the visions of the night the shade of his father Anchises once more appears to him, and gives the same advice as Nautes. It is settled that the women and the old men, and all that are weary and faint-hearted, shall be left behind in Sicily, while the picked band of good men and true sail on with their leader into the west; thus their reduced number of ships will yet suffice them.[4] The damaged galleys are hastily repaired, and the foundations of a new town are marked out for the Trojan settlers: it is to be called Acesta, in honour of their kind host. The parting of the wanderers from their friends is a fine passage, finely rendered:—
"With kindliness of gentle speech
The good Æneas comforts each,
And to their kinsman prince commends
With tears his subjects and his friends.
Three calves to Eryx next he kills;
A lambkin's blood to Tempest spills,
And bids them loose from land:
With olive-leaves he binds his brow,
Then takes his station on the prow,
A charger in his hand,
Flings out the entrails on the brine,
And pours a sacred stream of wine.
Fair winds escort them o'er the deep:
With emulous stroke the waves they sweep."
- ↑ One of the Roman sea-deities.
- ↑ Such explanations of an unfavourable result are not entirely unknown in the annals of modern boat-races. Reasons of a very apocryphal kind, if not so boldly mythological, have been assigned by modern captains of crews for their having been beaten. When an unsuccessful oarsman recounts his deeds to a sympathetic audience, and "tells how fields were" not won, he is apt to complain that, in some form or other, the river-gods were unjust. The state of the tide, or an intruding barge, or an imprudent supper on the part of "No. 7," takes the place of Panope and Portunus.
- ↑ "Superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est."
- ↑ Virgil himself has no word of reproach for these weaker spirits, who thus preferred the rest of Sicily to the far-off hopes of Hesperia. But his impassioned pupil Dante is less merciful: he classes them in his "Purgatory" with the murmuring Israelites:—
"First they died, to whom the sea
Opened, or ever Jordan saw his heirs;
And they who with Æneas to the end
Endured not suffering, for their portion chose
Life without glory."
—Purg. xviii. (Cary.)