CHAPTER VII.
THE TROJANS LAND IN LATIUM.
It has been said that this poem combines in some degree the characters both of the Iliad and of the Odyssey. Up to this point we have had the wanderings and adventures of the Trojan hero: he has been the Ulysses of his own tale. Henceforth we have a tale of the camp and the battle-field, of siege and defence, and personal combat; and we are reminded, in almost every passage, of the stirring scenes of the Iliad.
Æneas, on his ascent into upper air, rejoins his crew, and the fleet, setting sail from Cumæ, enters the noble harbour of Caieta. Not that the place had any such name as yet; but there the hero buries his old nurse, and gives her name to the spot. Once more embarking, they pass the promontory of Circe, and hear, as they sail by, the roars and yells of the unhappy prisoners, changed by the spells of the sorceress into the shape of brutes, whom she holds in bondage there. They listen and shudder, and bless the favouring gale which bears them away from such perilous neighbourhood. Then, with the morrow's dawn, the fleet enters the mouth of the Tiber. The picture of the galleys going up the stream is very beautiful:—
"The sea was reddening with the dawn:
The queen of morn on high
Was seen in rosy chariot drawn
Against a saffron sky,
When on the bosom of the deep
The Zephyrs dropped at once to sleep,
And, struck with calm, the tired oars strain
Against the smooth unmoving main.
Now from the deep Æneas sees
A mighty grove of glancing trees.
Embowered amid the silvan scene
Old Tiber winds his banks between,
And in the lap of ocean pours
His gulfy stream, his sandy stores.
Around, gay birds of diverse wing,
Accustomed there to fly or sing,
Were fluttering on from spray to spray
And soothing ether with their lay.
He bids his comrades turn aside
And landward set each vessel's head,
And enters in triumphant pride
The river's shadowy bed."
War is now the subject, and Homer is the model. Yet the Roman poet never shows his individual genius more strongly than in his treatment of the external scenery amidst which his action lies. He is still the worshipper of Nature, even while he sets himself to sing of battles, as he was in his Pastorals and Georgics. Homer tells us of the rivers of the Troad, Simois and Scamander—but it is only as they affect Hector or Achilles; his heart is all the while with the combatants, not with the flowing river. Not so Virgil: with him we feel the cool breeze, we see the glancing shadow of the trees upon the river, we hear the flutter of the startled birds, and the long plash of the oars in the water: we sail with Æneas on a party of pleasure, rather than a voyage of conquest.
Latium is reached at last. They moor their galleys under the trees which fringe the river-banks, and land to make their morning meal. It is but a scant one. Such wild fruits as they can collect are laid upon the wheaten cakes which they have brought with them, and when the fruit is finished they attack the cakes themselves. "Lo!" exclaims Iulus—"we are eating our tables!" Joyfully Æneas recognises, in the boy's involuntary interpretation, the fulfilment of the curse of the Harpies,[1] and of certain strange words of his father Anchises, that when they were reduced to "eat their tables," then they had found their destined home, and might begin to build their city. This, then, is their promised rest. He pours libations and offers prayers to the gods of the land, and peals of thunder from a cloudless sky seem to announce that the invocation is accepted.
As soon as the moon rises, scouts are sent out to explore the country. The king of the land is old Latinus, whose palace is near at hand. He has one only daughter, Lavinia, for whose hand all the neighbouring princes have long been suitors. Turnus of Ardea, the gallant chief of the Rutuli, tallest and handsomest of all the rivals, has the goodwill of the queen-motlier; the maiden's own choice in such a matter being the last consideration which would enter into the thought of a Roman poet. When the Trojan chief has thus informed himself in some measure as to the localities, he sends a formal embassy to King Latinus's court, carrying presents in token of goodwill. Meanwhile he busies himself in hurriedly marking out the boundaries of his new town, and fencing it round with an earthen rampart and a palisade.
The strangers are ushered into the presence of Latinus, where he sits in his ancestral palace, surrounded by the cedar statues of the demi-gods and heroes of his line.
"There too were spoils of bygone wars
Hung on the portals,—captive cars,
Strong city-gates with massive bars,
And battle-axes keen,
And plumy cones from helmets shorn,
And beaks from vanquished vessels torn,
And darts, and bucklers sheen."
He knows at once who his visitors are. Strange portents had long disturbed his court, and had warned him that his daughter must wed with no prince of Latian race: that a foreign host and a stranger bridegroom will come to claim her, and that the kings who shall spring from this union will spread the Latian name from sea to sea. He inquires the strangers' errand courteously, and the Trojan Ilioneus, as spokesman of the embassy, thus makes reply:—
"We come not to your friendly coast
By random gale o'er ocean tost,
Nor land nor star has made us stray
From our determined line of way:
Of steady purpose one and all
We flock beneath your city wall,
Driven from an empire, greater none
Within the circuit of the sun.
Jove is our sire: to Jove's high race
We, Dardans born, our lineage trace:
Jove's seed, the monarch we obey,
Æneas, sends us here to-day.
How fierce a storm from Argos sent
On Ida's plains its fury spent,
How Fate in dire collision hurled
The eastern and the western world,
E'en he has heard, whom earth's last verge
Just separates from the circling surge,
And he who, to his kind unknown,
Dwells midmost 'neath the torrid zone.
Swept by that deluge o'er the foam
For our lorn gods we ask a home:
A belt of sand is all we crave,
And man's free birthright, air and wave.
We shall not shame your Latin crown,
Nor light shall be your own renown,
Nor time obliterate the debt,
Nor Italy the hour regret
When Troy with outstretched arms she met.
I swear it by Æneas' fate,
By that right hand which makes him great,
In peace and war approved alike
A friend to aid, a foe to strike,
Full oft have mighty nations—nay,
Disdain not that unsought we pray,
Nor deem that wreaths and lowly speech
The grandeur of our name impeach—
Full oft with zeal and earnest prayers
Have nations wooed us to be theirs;
But Heaven's high fate, with stern command,
Impelled us still to this your land.
Here Dardanus was born, and here
Apollo bids our race return:
To Tyrrhene Tiber points the seer
And pure Numicius' hallowed urn.
These presents too our hands convey,
Scant relics of a happier day,
From burning Ilium snatched away.
From this bright gold before the shrine
His sire Anchises poured the wine:
With these adornments Priam sate
'Mid gathering crowds in kingly state,
The sceptre and the diadem:
Troy's women wrought the vesture's hem."
The king muses thoughtfully for a while: but he recognises the fulfilment of the auguries. Let Æneas come—he is welcome. If this be the bridegroom sent by heaven, he shall be more welcome still. He sends back the ambassadors in right royal fashion, all mounted on choice horses from his own stud, and with a chariot of honour to convey their chief to an interview.
Juno's relentless hatred is stirred once more. Will neither fire nor sword kill, nor water drown, these accursed Trojans? Shall she, the Queen of Heaven, "be baffled by a mortal like Æneas? If it be written in the fates that he is to wed Lavinia, her marriage-dower shall be paid in Trojan and Latian blood. Venus shall find that she, like Hecuba, has borne a firebrand—that Æneas, like Paris, shall light a flame that shall consume his nation. If the powers of heaven will not take her part, she will seek aid from hell. She summons the Fury Alecto from the shades below, and bids her sow strife between the people of Latinus and their foreign visitors.
The Fury, rejoicing in her errand, seeks the chamber of Latinus's queen, and darts into her breast one of the living serpents that serve her for coils of hair. Straightway the queen is seized with madness, and, after vainly trying to rouse her husband to oppose this foreign marriage, she rushes like a Bacchanal through the neighbouring villages, and calls upon the mothers of Latium to avenge her wrongs and rescue her daughter.
Next the Fury instils the same venom into the heart of Turnus, where he lies in his town of Ardea. He has been the champion of Latium against their enemies the Tuscans, and this is their gratitude—to give his promised bride to another! The young chief leaps from his couch, calls madly for his arms, and orders an instant march upon Latinus's capital. He will expel these intruders at once, and demand the princess from her father by force of arms.
Meanwhile—still at the instigation of Alecto—the seeds of quarrel have been sown between the men of Latium and their Trojan guests. There is a tame deer which has been nursed in the house of Tyrrheus, the ranger of the royal forest,—a pet and favourite with all the country-folk.
"Fair Sylvia, daughter of the race,
Its horns with leaves would interlace,
Comb smooth its shaggy coat, and lave
Its body in the crystal wave.
Tame and obedient, it would stray
Free through the woods a summer's day,
And home again at night repair,
E'en of itself, how late soe'er."
In evil hour Ascanius, riding out with a hunting-party, gets his hounds upon the scent, and shoots the poor animal as it floats quietly down the river in the noon-day heat. It has just strength to carry the Trojan arrow in its body to its mistress's door, and die moaning at her feet.[2] Tyrrheus and his household are mad with rage, and rouse the whole country-side against this wanton outrage, as they hold it, on the part of the strangers. The shepherd's horn sounds out its summons to the whole neighbourhood; and the angry rustics, when they hear the story, seize axes, staves, and such rude weapons as come first to hand, and attack the young prince and his hunting-party. The Trojans come out from their intrenchment to rescue their friends, and the fray now becomes a regular battle, no longer fought with stakes and hunting implements, but with sword and spear. Blood is soon shed; the rustic weapons are no match for the Trojan steel; and young Almo, the ranger's son, is carried home dead, amongst others. Almost a sadder loss is that of the good old yeoman Galæsus, who yokes a hundred ploughs, and whose character gives him even more influence than his wealth. He is slain as he stands between the combatants, vainly pleading for peace.
The bodies are carried through the city streets, as in a modern revolution, by way of demonstration. There they make their dumb appeal to the passions of the people—
"Young Almo in his comely grace,
And old Galæsus' mangled face "—
and the appeal is answered by a universal cry for "War!"
- ↑ See p. 66.
- ↑ Andrew Marvell most likely borrowed his thought from the Roman poet in his graceful hues, "The Nymph's Complaint:"—
"The wanton troopers, riding by,
Have shot my fawn, and it will die.
Ungentle men! they cannot thrive
Who killed thee. Thou ne'er didst alive
Them any harm, alas! nor could
Thy death yet do them any good."