Mourning for Palinurus, he drives the fleetTo Cumae’s coast-line; the prows are turned, the anchorsLet down, the beach is covered by the vessels.Young in their eagerness for the land in the west,They flash ashore; some seek the seeds of flameHidden in veins of flint, and others spoilThe woods of tinder, and show where water runs.Aeneas, in devotion, seeks the heightsWhere stands Apollo’s temple, and the caveWhere the dread Sibyl dwells, Apollo’s priestess,With the great mind and heart, inspired revealerOf things to come. They enter Diana’s grove,Pass underneath the roof of gold.The storyHas it that Daedalus fled from Minos’ kingdom,Trusting himself to wings he made, and travelledA course unknown to man, to the cold north,Descending on this very summit; here,Earth-bound again, he built a mighty temple,Paying Apollo homage, the dedicationOf the oarage of his wings. On the temple doorsHe carved, in bronze, Androgeos’ death, and the paymentEnforced on Cecrops’ children, seven sonsFor sacrifice each year: there stands the urn,The lots are drawn—facing this, over the sea,Rises the land of Crete: the scene portraysPasiphae in cruel love, the bullShe took to her by cunning, and their offspring,The mongrel Minotaur, half man, half monster,The proof of lust unspeakable; and the toilOf the house is shown, the labyrinthine mazeWhich no one could have solved, but DaedalusPitied a princess’ love, loosened the tangle,Gave her a skein to guide her way. His boy,Icarus, might have been here, in the picture,And almost was—his father had made the effortOnce, and once more, and dropped his hands; he could notMaster his grief that much. The story held them;They would have studied it longer, but AchatesCame from his mission; with him came the priestess,Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus, who tends the templeFor Phoebus and Diana; she warned Aeneas:“It is no such sights the time demands; far betterTo offer sacrifice, seven chosen bullocks,Seven chosen ewes, a herd without corruption.”They were prompt in their obedience, and the priestessSummoned the Trojans to the lofty temple.The rock’s vast side is hollowed into a cavern,With a hundred mouths, a hundred open portals,Whence voices rush, the answers of the Sibyl.They had reached the threshold, and the virgin cried:“It is time to seek the fates; the god is here,The god is here, behold him.” And as she spokeBefore the entrance, her countenance and colorChanged, and her hair tossed loose, and her heart was heaving,Her bosom swollen with frenzy; she seemed taller,Her voice not human at all, as the god’s presenceDrew nearer, and took hold on her. “Aeneas,”She cried, “Aeneas, are you praying?Are you being swift in prayer? Until you are,The house of the gods will not be moved, nor openIts mighty portals.” More than her speech, her silenceMade the Trojans cold with terror, and AeneasPrayed from the depth of his heart: “Phoebus Apollo,Compassionate ever, slayer of AchillesThrough aim of Paris’ arrow, helper and guideOver the seas, over the lands, the deserts,The shoals and quicksands, now at last we have comeTo Italy, we hold the lands which fled us:Grant that thus far, no farther, a Trojan fortuneAttend our wandering. And spare us now,All of you, gods and goddesses, who hatedTroy in the past, and Trojan glory. I beg you,Most holy prophetess, in whose foreknowingThe future stands revealed, grant that the Trojans—I ask with fate’s permission—rest in LatiumTheir wandering storm-tossed gods. I will build a temple,In honor of Apollo and Diana,Out of eternal marble, and ordainFestivals in their honor, and for the SibylA great shrine in our kingdom, and I will place thereThe lots and mystic oracles for my peopleWith chosen priests to tend them. Only, priestess,This once, I pray you, chant the sacred versesWith your own lips; do not trust them to the leaves,The mockery of the rushing wind’s disorder.”But the priestess, not yet subject to Apollo,Went reeling through the cavern, wild, and stormingTo throw the god, who presses, like a rider,With bit and bridle and weight, tames her wild spirit,Shapes her to his control. The doors fly open,The hundred doors, of their own will, fly open,And through the air the answer comes:—“O Trojans,At last the dangers of the sea are over;That course is run, but graver ones are waitingOn land. The sons of Dardanus will reachThe kingdom of Lavinia—be easyOn that account—the sons of Dardanus, also,Will wish they had not come there. War, I see,Terrible war, and the river Tiber foamingWith streams of blood. There will be another Xanthus,Another Simois, and Greek encampment,Even another Achilles, born in Latium,Himself a goddess’ son. And Juno furtherWill always be there: you will beg for mercy,Be poor, turn everywhere for help. A womanWill be the cause once more of so much evil,A foreign bride, receptive to the Trojans,A foreign marriage. Do not yield to evil,Attack, attack, more boldly even than fortuneSeems to permit. An offering of safety,—Incredible!—will come from a Greek city.”So, through the amplifiers of her cavern,The hollow vaults, the Sibyl cast her warnings,Riddles confused with truth; and Apollo rode her,Reining her rage, and shaking her, and spurringThe fierceness of her heart. The frenzy dwindled,A little, and her lips were still. AeneasBegan:—“For me, no form of trouble, maiden,Is new, or unexpected; all of thisI have known long since, lived in imagination.One thing I ask: this is the gate of the kingdom,So it is said, where Pluto reigns, the gloomyMarsh where the water of Acheron runs over.Teach me the way from here, open the portalsThat I may go to my belovèd father,Stand in his presence, talk with him. I brought him,Once, on these shoulders, through a thousand weaponsAnd following fire, and foemen. He shared with meThe road, the sea, the menaces of heaven,Things that an old man should not bear; he bore them,Tired as he was. And he it was who told meTo come to you in humbleness. I beg youPity the son, the father. You have power,Great priestess, over all; it is not for nothingHecate gave you this dominion overAvernus’ groves. If Orpheus could summonEurydice from the shadows with his music,If Pollux could save his brother, coming, going,Along this path,—why should I mention Theseus,Why mention Hercules? I, too, descendedFrom the line of Jupiter.” He clasped the altar,Making his prayer, and she made answer to him:“Son of Anchises, born of godly lineage,By night, by day, the portals of dark DisStand open: it is easy, the descendingDown to Avernus. But to climb again,To trace the footsteps back to the air above,There lies the task, the toil. A few, belovedBy Jupiter, descended from the gods,A few, in whom exalting virtue burned,Have been permitted. Around the central woodsThe black Cocytus glides, a sullen river;But if such love is in your heart, such longingFor double crossing of the Stygian lake,For double sight of Tartarus, learn firstWhat must be done. In a dark tree there hidesA bough, all golden, leaf and pliant stem,Sacred to Proserpine. This all the groveProtects, and shadows cover it with darkness.Until this bough, this bloom of light, is found,No one receives his passport to the darknessWhose queen requires this tribute. In succession,After the bough is plucked, another grows,Gold-green with the same metal. Raise the eyes,Look up, reach up the hand, and it will followWith ease, if fate is calling; otherwise,No power, no steel, can loose it. Furthermore,(Alas, you do not know this!), one of your menLies on the shore, unburied, a pollutionTo all the fleet, while you have come for counselHere to our threshold. Bury him with honor;Black cattle slain in expiation for himMust fall before you see the Stygian kingdoms,The groves denied to living men.”Aeneas,With sadness in his eyes, and downcast heart,Turned from the cave, and at his side AchatesAccompanied his anxious meditations.They talked together: who could be the comradeNamed by the priestess, lying there unburied?And they found him on dry sand; it was Misenus,Aeolus’ son, none better with the trumpetTo make men burn for warfare. He had beenGreat Hector’s man-at-arms; he was good in battleWith spear as well as horn, and after HectorHad fallen to Achilles, he had followedAeneas, entering no meaner service.Some foolishness came over him; he madeThe ocean echo to the blare of his trumpetThat day, and challenged the sea-gods to a contestIn martial music, and Triton, jealous, caught him,However unbelievable the story,And held him down between the rocks, and drowned himUnder the foaming waves. His comrades mourned,Aeneas most of all, and in their sorrowThey carry out, in haste, the Sibyl’s orders,Construct the funeral altar, high as heaven,They go to an old wood, and the pine-trees fallWhere wild beasts have their dens, and holm-oak ringsTo the stroke of the axe, and oak and ash are rivenBy the splitting wedge, and rowan-trees come rollingDown the steep mountain-side. Aeneas helps them,And cheers them on; studies the endless forest,Takes thought, and prays: “If only we might see it,That golden bough, here in the depth of the forest,Bright on some tree. She told the truth, our priestess,Too much, too bitter truth, about Misenus.”No sooner had he spoken than twin dovesCame flying down before him, and alightedOn the green ground. He knew his mother’s birds,And made his prayer, rejoicing,—“Oh, be leaders,Wherever the way, and guide me to the groveWhere the rich bough makes rich the shaded ground.Help me, O goddess-mother!” And he paused,Watching what sign they gave, what course they set.The birds flew on a little, just aheadOf the pursuing vision; when they cameTo the jaws of dank Avernus, evil-smelling,They rose aloft, then swooped down the bright air,Perched on the double tree, where the off-colorOf gold was gleaming golden through the branches.As mistletoe, in the cold winter, blossomsWith its strange foliage on an alien tree,The yellow berry gilding the smooth branches,Such was the vision of the gold in leafOn the dark holm-oak, so the foil was rustling,Rattling, almost, the bract in the soft windStirring like metal. Aeneas broke it offWith eager grasp, and bore it to the Sibyl.Meanwhile, along the shore, the Trojans mourned,Paying Misenus’ dust the final honors.A mighty pyre was raised, of pine and oak,The sides hung with dark leaves, and somber cypressAlong the front, and gleaming arms above.Some made the water hot, and some made readyBronze caldrons, shimmering over fire, and othersLave and anoint the body, and with weepingLay on the bier his limbs, and place above themFamiliar garments, crimson color; and someTake up the heavy burden, a sad office,And, as their fathers did, they kept their eyesAverted, as they brought the torches nearer.They burn gifts with him, bowls of oil, and viands,And frankincense; and when the flame is quietAnd the ashes settle to earth, they wash the embersWith wine, and slake the thirsty dust. The bonesAre placed in a bronze urn by Corynaeus,Who, with pure water, thrice around his comradesMade lustral cleansing, shaking gentle dewFrom the fruitful branch of olive; and they saidHail and farewell!And over him AeneasErects a mighty tomb, with the hero’s arms,His oar and trumpet, where the mountain risesMemorial for ever, and named Misenus.These rites performed, he hastened to the Sibyl.There was a cavern, yawning wide and deep,Jagged, below the darkness of the trees,Beside the darkness of the lake. No birdCould fly above it safely, with the vaporPouring from the black gulf (the Greeks have named itAvernus, or A-Ornos, meaningbirdless),And here the priestess for the slaughter setFour bullocks, black ones, poured the holy wineBetween the horns, and plucked the topmost bristlesFor the first offering to the sacred fire,Calling on Hecate, a power in heaven,A power in hell. Knives to the throat were driven,The warm blood caught in bowls. Aeneas offeredA lamb, black-fleeced, to Night and her great sister,A sterile heifer for the queen; for DisAn altar in the night, and on the flamesThe weight of heavy bulls, the fat oil pouringOver the burning entrails. And at dawn,Under their feet, earth seemed to shake and rumble,The ridges move, and bitches bay in darkness,As the presence neared. The Sibyl cried a warning,“Keep off, keep off, whatever is unholy,Depart from here! Courage, Aeneas; enterThe path, unsheathe the sword. The time is readyFor the brave heart.” She strode out boldly, leadingInto the open cavern, and he followed.Gods of the world of spirit, silent shadows,Chaos and Phlegethon, areas of silence,Wide realms of dark, may it be right and properTo tell what I have heard, this revelationOf matters buried deep in earth and darkness!Vague forms in lonely darkness, they were goingThrough void and shadow, through the empty realmLike people in a forest, when the moonlightShifts with a baleful glimmer, and shadow coversThe sky, and all the colors turn to blackness.At the first threshold, on the jaws of Orcus,Grief and avenging Cares have set their couches,And pale Diseases dwell, and sad Old Age,Fear, evil-counselling Hunger, wretched Need,Forms terrible to see, and Death, and Toil,And Death’s own brother, Sleep, and evil Joys,Fantasies of the mind, and deadly War,The Furies’ iron chambers, Discord, raving,Her snaky hair entwined in bloody bands.An elm-tree loomed there, shadowy and huge,The aged boughs outspread, beneath whose leaves,Men say, the false dreams cling, thousands on thousands.And there are monsters in the dooryard, Centaurs,Scyllas, of double shape, the beast of Lerna,Hissing most horribly, Briareus,The hundred-handed giant, a ChimaeraWhose armament is fire, Harpies, and Gorgons,A triple-bodied giant. In sudden panicAeneas drew his sword, the edge held forward,Ready to rush and flail, however blindly,Save that his wise companion warned him, sayingThey had no substance, they were only phantomsFlitting about, illusions without body.From here, the road turns off to Acheron,River of Hell; here, thick with muddy whirling,Cocytus boils with sand. Charon is here,The guardian of these mingling waters, Charon,Uncouth and filthy, on whose chin the hairIs a tangled mat, whose eyes protrude, are burning,Whose dirty cloak is knotted at the shoulder.He poles a boat, tends to the sail, unaided,Ferrying bodies in his rust-hued vessel.Old, but a god’s senility is awfulIn its raw greenness. To the bank come throngingMothers and men, bodies of great-souled heroes,Their life-time over, boys, unwedded maidens,Young men whose fathers saw their pyres burning,Thick as the forest leaves that fall in autumnWith early frost, thick as the birds to landfallFrom over the seas, when the chill of the year compels themTo sunlight. There they stand, a host, imploringTo be taken over first. Their hands, in longing,Reach out for the farther shore. But the gloomy boatmanMakes choice among them, taking some, and keepingOthers far back from the stream’s edge. Aeneas,Wondering, asks the Sibyl, “Why the crowding?What are the spirits seeking? What distinctionBrings some across the livid stream, while othersStay on the farther bank?” She answers, briefly:“Son of Anchises, this is the awful river,The Styx, by which the gods take oath; the boatmanCharon; those he takes with him are the buried,Those he rejects, whose luck is out, the graveless.It is not permitted him to take them overThe dreadful banks and hoarse-resounding watersTill earth is cast upon their bones. They hauntThese shores a hundred restless years of waitingBefore they end postponement of the crossing.”Aeneas paused, in thoughtful mood, with pityOver their lot’s unevenness; and saw there,Wanting the honor given the dead, and grieving,Leucaspis, and Orontes, the Lycian captain,Who had sailed from Troy across the stormy waters,And drowned off Africa, with crew and vessel,And there was Palinurus, once his pilot,Who, not so long ago, had been swept over,Watching the stars on the journey north from Carthage.The murk was thick; Aeneas hardly knew him,Sorrowful in that darkness, but made question:“What god, O Palinurus, took you from us?Who drowned you in the deep? Tell me. ApolloNever before was false, and yet he told meYou would be safe across the seas, and comeUnharmed to Italy; what kind of promiseWas this, to fool me with?” But PalinurusGave him assurance:—“It was no god who drowned me,No falsehood on Apollo’s part, my captain,But as I clung to the tiller, holding fastTo keep the course, as I should do, I felt itWrenched from the ship, and I fell with it, headlong.By those rough seas I swear, I had less fearOn my account than for the ship, with rudderAnd helmsman overboard, to drift at the mercyOf rising seas. Three nights I rode the waters,Three nights of storm, and from the crest of a wave,On the fourth morning, sighted Italy,I was swimming to land, I had almost reached it, heavyIn soaking garments; my cramped fingers struggledTo grasp the top of the rock, when barbarous people,Ignorant men, mistaking me for booty,Struck me with swords; waves hold me now, or windsRoll me along the shore. By the light of heaven,The lovely air, I beg you, by your father,Your hope of young Iulus, bring me rescueOut of these evils, my unconquered leader!Cast over my body earth—you have the power—Return to Velia’s harbor,—or there may beSome other way—your mother is a goddess,Else how would you be crossing this great river,This Stygian swamp?—help a poor fellow, take meOver the water with you, give a dead manAt least a place to rest in.” But the SibylBroke in upon him sternly:—“Palinurus,Whence comes this mad desire? No man, unburied,May see the Stygian waters, or Cocytus,The Furies’ dreadful river; no man may comeUnbidden to this bank. Give up the hopeThat fate is changed by praying, but hear this,A little comfort in your harsh misfortune:Those neighboring people will make expiation,Driven by signs from heaven, through their citiesAnd through their countryside; they will build a tomb,Thereto bring offerings yearly, and the placeShall take its name from you, Cape Palinurus.”So he was comforted a little, findingSome happiness in the promise.And they went on,Nearing the river, and from the stream the boatmanBeheld them cross the silent forest, nearer,Turning their footsteps toward the bank. He challenged:—“Whoever you are, O man in armor, comingIn this direction, halt where you are, and tell meThe reason why you come. This is the regionOf shadows, and of Sleep and drowsy Night;I am not allowed to carry living bodiesIn the Stygian boat; and I must say I was sorryI ever accepted Hercules and TheseusAnd Pirithous, and rowed them over the lake,Though they were sons of gods and great in courage.One of them dared to drag the guard of Hell,Enchained, from Pluto’s throne, shaking in terror,The others to snatch our queen from Pluto’s chamber.”The Sibyl answered briefly: “No such cunningIs plotted here; our weapons bring no danger.Be undisturbed: the hell-hound in his cavernMay bark forever, to keep the bloodless shadowsFrightened away from trespass; Proserpine,Untouched, in pureness guard her uncle’s threshold.Trojan Aeneas, a man renowned for goodness,Renowned for nerve in battle, is descendingTo the lowest shades; he comes to find his father.If such devotion has no meaning to you,Look on this branch at least, and recognize it!”And with the word she drew from under her mantleThe golden bough; his swollen wrath subsided.No more was said; he saw the bough, and marvelledAt the holy gift, so long unseen; came scullingThe dark-blue boat to the shore, and drove the spirits,Lining the thwarts, ashore, and cleared the gangway,And took Aeneas aboard; as that big manStepped in, the leaky skiff groaned under the weight,And the strained seams let in the muddy water,But they made the crossing safely, seer and soldier,To the far margin, colorless and shapeless,Grey sedge and dark-brown ooze. They heard the bayingOf Cerberus, that great hound, in his cavern crouching,Making the shore resound, as all three throatsBelled horribly; and serpents rose and bristledAlong the triple neck. The priestess threw himA sop with honey and drugged meal; he openedThe ravenous throat, gulped, and subsided, fillingThe den with his huge bulk. Aeneas, crossing,Passed on beyond the bank of the dread riverWhence none return.A wailing of thin voicesCame to their ears, the souls of infants crying,Those whom the day of darkness took from the breastBefore their share of living. And there were manyWhom some false sentence brought to death. Here MinosJudges them once again; a silent juryReviews the evidence. And there are others,Guilty of nothing, but who hated living,The suicides. How gladly, now, they would sufferPoverty, hardship, in the world of light!But this is not permitted; they are boundNine times around by the black unlovely river;Styx holds them fast.They came to the Fields of Mourning,So-called, where those whom cruel love had wastedHid in secluded pathways, under myrtle,And even in death were anxious. Procris, Phaedra,Eriphyle, displaying wounds her sonHad given her, Caeneus, Laodamia,Caeneus, a young man once, and now againA young man, after having been a woman.And here, new come from her own wound, was Dido,Wandering in the wood. The Trojan hero,Standing near by, saw her, or thought he saw her,Dim in the shadows, like the slender crescentOf moon when cloud drifts over. Weeping, he greets her:—“Unhappy Dido, so they told me trulyThat your own hand had brought you death. Was I—Alas!—the cause? I swear by all the stars,By the world above, by everything held sacredHere under the earth, unwillingly, O queen,I left your kingdom. But the gods’ commands,Driving me now through these forsaken places,This utter night, compelled me on. I could notBelieve my loss would cause so great a sorrow.Linger a moment, do not leave me; whither,Whom, are you fleeing? I am permitted onlyThis last word with you.”But the queen, unmovingAs flint or marble, turned away, her eyesFixed on the ground: the tears were vain, the words,Meant to be soothing, foolish; she turned away,His enemy forever, to the shadowsWhere Sychaeus, her former husband, took herWith love for love, and sorrow for her sorrow.And still Aeneas wept for her, being troubledBy the injustice of her doom; his pityFollowed her going.They went on. They cameTo the farthest fields, whose tenants are the warriors,Illustrious throng. Here Tydeus came to meet him,Parthenopaeus came, and pale Adrastus,A fighter’s ghost, and many, many others,Mourned in the world above, and doomed in battle,Leaders of Troy, in long array; AeneasSighed as he saw them: Medon; Polyboetes,The priest of Ceres; Glaucus; and IdaeusStill keeping arms and chariot; three brothers,Antenor’s sons; Thersilochus; a hostTo right and left of him, and when they see him,One sight is not enough; they crowd around him,Linger, and ask the reasons for his coming.But Agamemnon’s men, the Greek battalions,Seeing him there, and his arms in shadow gleaming,Tremble in panic, turn to flee for refuge,As once they used to, toward their ships, but whereAre the ships now? They try to shout, in terror;But only a thin and piping treble issuesTo mock their mouths, wide-open.One he knewWas here, Deiphobus, a son of Priam,With his whole body mangled, and his featuresCruelly slashed, and both hands cut, and earsTorn from his temples, and his nostrils slitBy shameful wounds. Aeneas hardly knew him,Shivering there, and doing his best to hideHis marks of punishment; unhailed, he hailed him:—“Deiphobus, great warrior, son of Teucer,Whose cruel punishment was this? Whose licenseAbused you so? I heard, it seems, a storyOf that last night, how you had fallen, wearyWith killing Greeks at last; I built a tomb,Although no body lay there, in your honor,Three times I cried, aloud, over your spirit,Where now your name and arms keep guard. I could not,Leaving my country, find my friend, to give himProper interment in the earth he came from.”And Priam’s son replied:—“Nothing, dear comrade,Was left undone; the dead man’s shade was givenAll ceremony due. It was my own fortuneAnd a Spartan woman’s deadliness that sunk meUnder these evils; she it was who left meThese souvenirs. You know how falsely happyWe were on that last night; I need not tell you.When that dread horse came leaping over our walls,Pregnant with soldiery, she led the dancing,A solemn rite, she called it, with Trojan womenScreaming their bacchanals; she raised the torchesHigh on the citadel; she called the Greeks.Then—I was worn with trouble, drugged in slumber,Resting in our ill-omened bridal chamber,With sleep as deep and sweet as death upon me—Then she, that paragon of helpmates, deftlyMoved all the weapons from the house; my sword,Even, she stole from underneath my pillow,Opened the door, and called in Menelaus,Hoping, no doubt, to please her loving husband,To win forgetfulness of her old sinning.It is quickly told: they broke into the chamber,The two of them, and with them, as accomplice,Ulysses came, the crime-contriving bastard.O gods, pay back the Greeks; grant the petitionIf goodness asks for vengeance! But you, Aeneas,A living man—what chance has brought you here?Vagrant of ocean, god-inspired,—which are you?What chance has worn you down, to come, in sadness,To these confusing sunless dwelling-places?”While they were talking, Aurora’s rosy carHad halfway crossed the heaven; all their timeMight have been spent in converse, but the SibylHurried them forward:—“Night comes on, Aeneas;We waste the hours with tears. We are at the cross-road,Now; here we turn to the right, where the pathway leadsOn to Elysium, under Pluto’s ramparts.Leftward is Tartarus, and retribution,The terminal of the wicked, and their dungeon.”Deiphobus left them, saying, “O great priestess,Do not be angry with me; I am going;I shall not fail the roll-call of the shadows.Pride of our race, go on; may better fortuneAttend you!” and, upon the word, he vanished.As he looked back, Aeneas saw, to his left,Wide walls beneath a cliff, a triple rampart,A river running fire, Phlegethon’s torrent,Rocks roaring in its course, a gate, tremendous,Pillars of adamant, a tower of iron,Too strong for men, too strong for even godsTo batter down in warfare, and behind themA Fury, sentinel in bloody garments,Always on watch, by day, by night. He heardSobbing and groaning there, the crack of the lash,The clank of iron, the sound of dragging shackles.The noise was terrible; Aeneas halted,Asking, “What forms of crime are these, O maiden?What harrying punishment, what horrible outcry?”She answered:—“O great leader of the Trojans,I have never crossed that threshold of the wicked;No pure soul is permitted entrance thither,But Hecate, by whose order I was givenCharge of Avernus’ groves, my guide, my teacher,Told me how gods exact the toll of vengeance.The monarch here, merciless Rhadamanthus,Punishes guilt, and hears confession; he forcesAcknowledgment of crime; no man in the world,No matter how cleverly he hides his evil,No matter how much he smiles at his own slyness,Can fend atonement off; the hour of deathBegins his sentence. Tisiphone, the Fury,Leaps at the guilty with her scourge; her serpentsAre whips of menace as she calls her sisters.Imagine the gates, on jarring hinge, rasp open,You would see her in the doorway, a shape, a sentry,Savage, implacable. Beyond, still fiercer,The monstrous Hydra dwells; her fifty throatsAre black, and open wide, and TartarusIs black, and open wide, and it goes downTo darkness, sheer deep down, and twice the distanceThat earth is from Olympus. At the bottomThe Titans crawl, Earth’s oldest breed, hurled underBy thunderbolts; here lie the giant twins,Aloeus’ sons, who laid their hands on heavenAnd tried to pull down Jove; Salmoneus hereAtones for high presumption,—it was heWho aped Jove’s noise and fire, wheeling his horsesTriumphant through his city in Elis, cheeringAnd shaking the torch, and claiming divine homage,The arrogant fool, to think his brass was lightning,His horny-footed horses beat out thunder!Jove showed him what real thunder was, what lightningSpoke from immortal cloud, what whirlwind furyCame sweeping from the heaven to overtake him.Here Tityos, Earth’s giant son, lies sprawlingOver nine acres, with a monstrous vultureGnawing, with crooked beak, vitals and liverThat grow as they are eaten; eternal anguish,Eternal feast. Over another hangsA rock, about to fall; and there are tablesSet for a banquet, gold with royal splendor,But if a hand goes out to touch the viands,The Fury drives it back with fire and yelling.Why name them all, Pirithous, the Lapiths,Ixion? The roll of crime would take forever.Whoever, in his lifetime, hated his brother,Or struck his father down; whoever cheatedA client, or was miserly—how manyOf these there seem to be!—whoever wentTo treasonable war, or broke a promiseMade to his lord, whoever perished, slainOver adultery, all these, walled in,Wait here their punishment. Seek not to knowToo much about their doom. The stone is rolled,The wheel keeps turning; Theseus foreverSits in dejection; Phlegyas, accursed,Cries through the halls forever:Being warned,Learn justice; reverence the gods!The manWho sold his country is here in hell; the manWho altered laws for money; and a fatherWho knew his daughter’s bed. All of them dared,And more than dared, achieved, unspeakableAmbitions. If I had a hundred tongues,A hundred iron throats, I could not tellThe fullness of their crime and punishment.”And then she added:—“Come: resume the journey,Fulfill the mission; let us hurry onward.I see the walls the Cyclops made, the portalsUnder the archway, where, the orders tell us,Our tribute must be set.” They went togetherThrough the way’s darkness, came to the doors, and halted,And at the entrance Aeneas, having sprinkledHis body with fresh water, placed the boughGolden before the threshold. The will of the goddessHad been performed, the proper task completed.They came to happy places, the joyful dwelling,The lovely greenery of the groves of the blessèd.Here ampler air invests the fields with light,Rose-colored, with familiar stars and sun.Some grapple on the grassy wrestling-groundIn exercise and sport, and some are dancing,And others singing; in his trailing robeOrpheus strums the lyre; the seven clear notesAccompany the dance, the song. And heroesAre there, great-souled, born in the happier years,Ilus, Assaracus; the city’s founder,Prince Dardanus. Far off, Aeneas wonders,Seeing the phantom arms, the chariots,The spears fixed in the ground, the chargers browsing,Unharnessed, over the plain. Whatever, living,The men delighted in, whatever pleasureWas theirs in horse and chariot, still holds themHere under the world. To right and left, they banquetIn the green meadows, and a joyful chorusRises through groves of laurel, whence the riverRuns to the upper world. The band of heroesDwell here, all those whose mortal wounds were sufferedIn fighting for the fatherland; and poets,The good, the pure, the worthy of Apollo;Those who discovered truth and made life nobler;Those who served others—all, with snowy filletsBinding their temples, throng the lovely valley.And these the Sibyl questioned, most of allMusaeus, for he towered above the centerOf that great throng:—“O happy souls, O poet,Where does Anchises dwell? For him we come here.For him we have traversed Erebus’ great rivers.”And he replied:—“It is all our home, the shadyGroves, and the streaming meadows, and the softnessAlong the river-banks. No fixed abodeIs ours at all; but if it is your pleasure,Cross over the ridge with me; I will guide you thereBy easy going.” And so Musaeus led themAnd from the summit showed them fields, all shining,And they went on over and down.Deep in a valley of green, father AnchisesWas watching, with deep earnestness, the spiritsWhose destiny was light, and counting them over,All of his race to come, his dear descendants,Their fates and fortunes and their works and ways,And as he saw Aeneas coming toward himOver the meadow, his hands reached out with yearning,He was moved to tears, and called:—“At last, my son,—Have you really come, at last? and the long road nothingTo a son who loves his father? Do I, truly,See you, and hear your voice? I was thinking so,I was hoping so, I was counting off the days,And I was right about it. O my son!What a long journey, over land and water,Yours must have been! What buffeting of danger!I feared, so much, the Libyan realm would hurt you.”And his son answered:—“It was your spirit, father,Your sorrowful shade, so often met, that led meTo find these portals. The ships ride safe at anchor,Safe in the Tuscan sea. Embrace me, father;Let hand join hand in love; do not forsake me.”And as he spoke, the tears streamed down. Three timesHe reached out toward him, and three times the imageFled like the breath of the wind or a dream on wings.He saw, in a far valley, a separate groveWhere the woods stir and rustle, and a river,The Lethe, gliding past the peaceful places,And tribes of people thronging, hovering over,Innumerable as the bees in summerWorking the bright-hued flowers, and the shiningOf the white lilies, murmuring and humming.Aeneas, filled with wonder, asks the reasonFor what he does not know, who are the peopleIn such a host, and to what river coming?Anchises answers:—“These are spirits, readyOnce more for life; they drink of Lethe’s waterThe soothing potion of forgetfulness.I have longed, for long, to show them to you, name them,Our children’s children; Italy discovered,So much the greater happiness, my son.”“But, O my father, is it thinkableThat souls would leave this blessedness, be willingA second time to bear the sluggish body,Trade Paradise for earth? Alas, poor wretches,Why such a mad desire for light?” AnchisesGives detailed answer: “First, my son, a spiritSustains all matter, heaven and earth and ocean,The moon, the stars; mind quickens mass, and moves it.Hence comes the race of man, of beast, of wingèdCreatures of air, of the strange shapes which oceanBears down below his mottled marble surface.All these are blessed with energy from heaven;The seed of life is a spark of fire, but the bodyA clod of earth, a clog, a mortal burden.Hence humans fear, desire, grieve, and are joyful,And even when life is over, all the evilIngrained so long, the adulterated mixture,The plagues and pestilences of the bodyRemain, persist. So there must be a cleansing,By penalty, by punishment, by fire,By sweep of wind, by water’s absolution,Before the guilt is gone. Each of us suffersHis own peculiar ghost. But the day comesWhen we are sent through wide Elysium,The Fields of the Blessed, a few of us, to lingerUntil the turn of time, the wheel of ages,Wears off the taint, and leaves the core of spiritPure sense, pure flame. A thousand years pass overAnd the god calls the countless host to LetheWhere memory is annulled, and souls are willingOnce more to enter into mortal bodies.”The discourse ended; the father drew his sonAnd his companion toward the hum, the centerOf the full host; they came to rising groundWhere all the long array was visible,Anchises watching, noting, every comer.“Glory to come, my son, illustrious spiritsOf Dardan lineage, Italian offspring,Heirs of our name, begetters of our future!These I will name for you and tell our fortunes:First, leaning on a headless spear, and standingNearest the light, that youth, the first to riseTo the world above, is Silvius; his nameIs Alban; in his veins Italian bloodWill run with Trojan; he will be the sonOf your late age; Lavinia will bear him,A king and sire of kings; from him our raceWill rule in Alba Longa. Near him, Procas,A glory to the Trojan race; and Capys,And Numitor, and Silvius Aeneas,Resembling you in name, in arms, in goodness,If ever he wins the Alban kingdom over.What fine young men they are! What strength, what prowess!The civic oak already shades their foreheads.These will found cities, Gabii, Fidenae,Nomentum; they will crown the hills with towersAbove Collatia, Inuus fortress, Bola,Cora, all names to be, thus far ungiven.“And there will be a son of Mars; his motherIs Ilia, and his name is Romulus,Assaracus’ descendant. On his helmetSee, even now, twin plumes; his father’s honorConfers distinction on him for the world.Under his auspices Rome, that glorious city,Will bound her power by earth, her pride by heaven,Happy in hero sons, one wall surroundingHer seven hills, even as Cybele, ridingThrough Phrygian cities, wears her crown of towers,Rejoicing in her offspring, and embracingA hundred children of the gods, her children,Celestials, all of them, at home in heaven.Turn the eyes now this way; behold the Romans,Your very own. These are Iulus’ children,The race to come. One promise you have heardOver and over: here is its fulfillment,The son of a god, Augustus Caesar, founderOf a new age of gold, in lands where SaturnRuled long ago; he will extend his empireBeyond the Indies, beyond the normal measureOf years and constellations, where high AtlasTurns on his shoulders the star-studded world.Maeotia and the Caspian seas are tremblingAs heaven’s oracles predict his coming,And all the seven mouths of Nile are troubled.Not even Hercules, in all his travels,Covered so much of the world, from ErymanthusTo Lerna; nor did Bacchus, driving his tigersFrom Nysa’s summit. How can hesitationKeep us from deeds to make our prowess greater?What fear can block us from Ausonian land?“And who is that one yonder, wearing the olive,Holding the sacrifice? I recognize him,That white-haired king of Rome, who comes from Cures,A poor land, to a mighty empire, giverOf law to the young town. His name is Numa.Near him is Tullus; he will rouse to armsA race grown sluggish, little used to triumph.Beyond him Ancus, even now too boastful,Too fond of popular favor. And then the Tarquins,And the avenger Brutus, proud of spirit,Restorer of the balance. He shall beFirst holder of the consular power; his childrenWill stir up wars again, and he, for freedomAnd her sweet sake, will call down judgment on them,Unhappy, however future men may praise him,In love of country and intense ambition.“There are the Decii, and there the Drusi,A little farther off, and stern Torquatus,The man with the axe, and Camillus, the regainerOf standards lost. And see those two, resplendentIn equal arms, harmonious friendly spiritsNow, in the shadow of night, but if they everCome to the world of light, alas, what warfare,What battle-lines, what slaughter they will fashion,Each for the other, one from Alpine rampartsDescending, and the other ranged against himWith armies from the east, father and sonThrough marriage, Pompey and Caesar. O my children,Cast out the thoughts of war, and do not murderThe flower of our country. O my son,Whose line descends from heaven, let the swordFall from the hand, be leader in forbearing!“Yonder is one who, victor over Corinth,Will ride in triumph home, famous for carnageInflicted on the Greeks; near him another,Destroyer of old Argus and MycenaeWhere Agamemnon ruled; he will strike downA king descended from Achilles; PydnaShall be revenge for Pallas’ ruined temple,For Trojan ancestors. Who would pass over,Without a word, Cossus, or noble Cato,The Gracchi, or those thunderbolts of warfare,The Scipios, Libya’s ruin, or FabriciusMighty with little, or Serranus, ploughingThe humble furrow? My tale must hurry on:I see the Fabii next, and their great QuintusWho brought us back an empire by delaying.Others, no doubt, will better mould the bronzeTo the semblance of soft breathing, draw, from marble,The living countenance; and others pleadWith greater eloquence, or learn to measure,Better than we, the pathways of the heaven,The risings of the stars: remember, Roman,To rule the people under law, to establishThe way of peace, to battle down the haughty,To spare the meek. Our fine arts, these, forever.”Anchises paused a moment, and they marvelled.And he went on:—“See, how Marcellus triumphs,Glorious over all, with the great trophiesWon when he slew the captain of the Gauls,Leader victorious over leading foeman.When Rome is in great trouble and confusionHe will establish order, Gaul and CarthageGo down before his sword, and triple trophiesBe given Romulus in dedication.”There was a young man going with Marcellus,Brilliant in shining armor, bright in beauty,But sorrowful, with downcast eyes. AeneasBroke in, to ask his father: “Who is this youthAttendant on the hero? A son of his?One of his children’s children? How the crowdMurmurs and hums around him! what distinction,What presence, in his person! But dark nightHovers around his head with mournful shadow.Who is he, father?” And Anchises answered:—“Great sorrow for our people! O my son,Ask not to know it. This one fate will onlyShow to the world; he will not be permittedAny long sojourn. Rome would be too mighty,Too great in the gods’ sight, were this gift hers.What lamentation will the field of MarsRaise to the city! Tiber, gliding byThe new-built tomb, the funeral state, bear witness!No youth from Trojan stock will ever raiseHis ancestors so high in hope, no RomanBe such a cause for pride. Alas for goodness,Alas for old-time honor, and the armInvincible in war! Against him no one,Whether on foot or foaming horse, would comeIn battle and depart unscathed. Poor boy,If you should break the cruel fates; if only—You are to be Marcellus. Let me scatterLilies, or dark-red flowers, bringing honorTo my descendant’s shade; let the gift be offered,However vain the tribute.”So through the whole wide realm they went together,Anchises and his son; from fields of airLearning and teaching of the fame and glory,The wars to come, the toils to face, or flee from,Latinus’ city and the Latin peoples,The love of what would be.There are two portals,Twin gates of Sleep, one made of horn, where easyRelease is given true shades, the other gleamingWhite ivory, whereby the false dreams issueTo the upper air. Aeneas and the SibylPart from Anchises at the second portal.He goes to the ships, again, rejoins his comrades,Sails to Caieta’s harbor, and the vesselsRest on their mooring-lines.
Mourning for Palinurus, he drives the fleetTo Cumae’s coast-line; the prows are turned, the anchorsLet down, the beach is covered by the vessels.Young in their eagerness for the land in the west,They flash ashore; some seek the seeds of flameHidden in veins of flint, and others spoilThe woods of tinder, and show where water runs.Aeneas, in devotion, seeks the heightsWhere stands Apollo’s temple, and the caveWhere the dread Sibyl dwells, Apollo’s priestess,With the great mind and heart, inspired revealerOf things to come. They enter Diana’s grove,Pass underneath the roof of gold.The storyHas it that Daedalus fled from Minos’ kingdom,Trusting himself to wings he made, and travelledA course unknown to man, to the cold north,Descending on this very summit; here,Earth-bound again, he built a mighty temple,Paying Apollo homage, the dedicationOf the oarage of his wings. On the temple doorsHe carved, in bronze, Androgeos’ death, and the paymentEnforced on Cecrops’ children, seven sonsFor sacrifice each year: there stands the urn,The lots are drawn—facing this, over the sea,Rises the land of Crete: the scene portraysPasiphae in cruel love, the bullShe took to her by cunning, and their offspring,The mongrel Minotaur, half man, half monster,The proof of lust unspeakable; and the toilOf the house is shown, the labyrinthine mazeWhich no one could have solved, but DaedalusPitied a princess’ love, loosened the tangle,Gave her a skein to guide her way. His boy,Icarus, might have been here, in the picture,And almost was—his father had made the effortOnce, and once more, and dropped his hands; he could notMaster his grief that much. The story held them;They would have studied it longer, but AchatesCame from his mission; with him came the priestess,Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus, who tends the templeFor Phoebus and Diana; she warned Aeneas:“It is no such sights the time demands; far betterTo offer sacrifice, seven chosen bullocks,Seven chosen ewes, a herd without corruption.”They were prompt in their obedience, and the priestessSummoned the Trojans to the lofty temple.The rock’s vast side is hollowed into a cavern,With a hundred mouths, a hundred open portals,Whence voices rush, the answers of the Sibyl.They had reached the threshold, and the virgin cried:“It is time to seek the fates; the god is here,The god is here, behold him.” And as she spokeBefore the entrance, her countenance and colorChanged, and her hair tossed loose, and her heart was heaving,Her bosom swollen with frenzy; she seemed taller,Her voice not human at all, as the god’s presenceDrew nearer, and took hold on her. “Aeneas,”She cried, “Aeneas, are you praying?Are you being swift in prayer? Until you are,The house of the gods will not be moved, nor openIts mighty portals.” More than her speech, her silenceMade the Trojans cold with terror, and AeneasPrayed from the depth of his heart: “Phoebus Apollo,Compassionate ever, slayer of AchillesThrough aim of Paris’ arrow, helper and guideOver the seas, over the lands, the deserts,The shoals and quicksands, now at last we have comeTo Italy, we hold the lands which fled us:Grant that thus far, no farther, a Trojan fortuneAttend our wandering. And spare us now,All of you, gods and goddesses, who hatedTroy in the past, and Trojan glory. I beg you,Most holy prophetess, in whose foreknowingThe future stands revealed, grant that the Trojans—I ask with fate’s permission—rest in LatiumTheir wandering storm-tossed gods. I will build a temple,In honor of Apollo and Diana,Out of eternal marble, and ordainFestivals in their honor, and for the SibylA great shrine in our kingdom, and I will place thereThe lots and mystic oracles for my peopleWith chosen priests to tend them. Only, priestess,This once, I pray you, chant the sacred versesWith your own lips; do not trust them to the leaves,The mockery of the rushing wind’s disorder.”But the priestess, not yet subject to Apollo,Went reeling through the cavern, wild, and stormingTo throw the god, who presses, like a rider,With bit and bridle and weight, tames her wild spirit,Shapes her to his control. The doors fly open,The hundred doors, of their own will, fly open,And through the air the answer comes:—“O Trojans,At last the dangers of the sea are over;That course is run, but graver ones are waitingOn land. The sons of Dardanus will reachThe kingdom of Lavinia—be easyOn that account—the sons of Dardanus, also,Will wish they had not come there. War, I see,Terrible war, and the river Tiber foamingWith streams of blood. There will be another Xanthus,Another Simois, and Greek encampment,Even another Achilles, born in Latium,Himself a goddess’ son. And Juno furtherWill always be there: you will beg for mercy,Be poor, turn everywhere for help. A womanWill be the cause once more of so much evil,A foreign bride, receptive to the Trojans,A foreign marriage. Do not yield to evil,Attack, attack, more boldly even than fortuneSeems to permit. An offering of safety,—Incredible!—will come from a Greek city.”So, through the amplifiers of her cavern,The hollow vaults, the Sibyl cast her warnings,Riddles confused with truth; and Apollo rode her,Reining her rage, and shaking her, and spurringThe fierceness of her heart. The frenzy dwindled,A little, and her lips were still. AeneasBegan:—“For me, no form of trouble, maiden,Is new, or unexpected; all of thisI have known long since, lived in imagination.One thing I ask: this is the gate of the kingdom,So it is said, where Pluto reigns, the gloomyMarsh where the water of Acheron runs over.Teach me the way from here, open the portalsThat I may go to my belovèd father,Stand in his presence, talk with him. I brought him,Once, on these shoulders, through a thousand weaponsAnd following fire, and foemen. He shared with meThe road, the sea, the menaces of heaven,Things that an old man should not bear; he bore them,Tired as he was. And he it was who told meTo come to you in humbleness. I beg youPity the son, the father. You have power,Great priestess, over all; it is not for nothingHecate gave you this dominion overAvernus’ groves. If Orpheus could summonEurydice from the shadows with his music,If Pollux could save his brother, coming, going,Along this path,—why should I mention Theseus,Why mention Hercules? I, too, descendedFrom the line of Jupiter.” He clasped the altar,Making his prayer, and she made answer to him:“Son of Anchises, born of godly lineage,By night, by day, the portals of dark DisStand open: it is easy, the descendingDown to Avernus. But to climb again,To trace the footsteps back to the air above,There lies the task, the toil. A few, belovedBy Jupiter, descended from the gods,A few, in whom exalting virtue burned,Have been permitted. Around the central woodsThe black Cocytus glides, a sullen river;But if such love is in your heart, such longingFor double crossing of the Stygian lake,For double sight of Tartarus, learn firstWhat must be done. In a dark tree there hidesA bough, all golden, leaf and pliant stem,Sacred to Proserpine. This all the groveProtects, and shadows cover it with darkness.Until this bough, this bloom of light, is found,No one receives his passport to the darknessWhose queen requires this tribute. In succession,After the bough is plucked, another grows,Gold-green with the same metal. Raise the eyes,Look up, reach up the hand, and it will followWith ease, if fate is calling; otherwise,No power, no steel, can loose it. Furthermore,(Alas, you do not know this!), one of your menLies on the shore, unburied, a pollutionTo all the fleet, while you have come for counselHere to our threshold. Bury him with honor;Black cattle slain in expiation for himMust fall before you see the Stygian kingdoms,The groves denied to living men.”Aeneas,With sadness in his eyes, and downcast heart,Turned from the cave, and at his side AchatesAccompanied his anxious meditations.They talked together: who could be the comradeNamed by the priestess, lying there unburied?And they found him on dry sand; it was Misenus,Aeolus’ son, none better with the trumpetTo make men burn for warfare. He had beenGreat Hector’s man-at-arms; he was good in battleWith spear as well as horn, and after HectorHad fallen to Achilles, he had followedAeneas, entering no meaner service.Some foolishness came over him; he madeThe ocean echo to the blare of his trumpetThat day, and challenged the sea-gods to a contestIn martial music, and Triton, jealous, caught him,However unbelievable the story,And held him down between the rocks, and drowned himUnder the foaming waves. His comrades mourned,Aeneas most of all, and in their sorrowThey carry out, in haste, the Sibyl’s orders,Construct the funeral altar, high as heaven,They go to an old wood, and the pine-trees fallWhere wild beasts have their dens, and holm-oak ringsTo the stroke of the axe, and oak and ash are rivenBy the splitting wedge, and rowan-trees come rollingDown the steep mountain-side. Aeneas helps them,And cheers them on; studies the endless forest,Takes thought, and prays: “If only we might see it,That golden bough, here in the depth of the forest,Bright on some tree. She told the truth, our priestess,Too much, too bitter truth, about Misenus.”No sooner had he spoken than twin dovesCame flying down before him, and alightedOn the green ground. He knew his mother’s birds,And made his prayer, rejoicing,—“Oh, be leaders,Wherever the way, and guide me to the groveWhere the rich bough makes rich the shaded ground.Help me, O goddess-mother!” And he paused,Watching what sign they gave, what course they set.The birds flew on a little, just aheadOf the pursuing vision; when they cameTo the jaws of dank Avernus, evil-smelling,They rose aloft, then swooped down the bright air,Perched on the double tree, where the off-colorOf gold was gleaming golden through the branches.As mistletoe, in the cold winter, blossomsWith its strange foliage on an alien tree,The yellow berry gilding the smooth branches,Such was the vision of the gold in leafOn the dark holm-oak, so the foil was rustling,Rattling, almost, the bract in the soft windStirring like metal. Aeneas broke it offWith eager grasp, and bore it to the Sibyl.Meanwhile, along the shore, the Trojans mourned,Paying Misenus’ dust the final honors.A mighty pyre was raised, of pine and oak,The sides hung with dark leaves, and somber cypressAlong the front, and gleaming arms above.Some made the water hot, and some made readyBronze caldrons, shimmering over fire, and othersLave and anoint the body, and with weepingLay on the bier his limbs, and place above themFamiliar garments, crimson color; and someTake up the heavy burden, a sad office,And, as their fathers did, they kept their eyesAverted, as they brought the torches nearer.They burn gifts with him, bowls of oil, and viands,And frankincense; and when the flame is quietAnd the ashes settle to earth, they wash the embersWith wine, and slake the thirsty dust. The bonesAre placed in a bronze urn by Corynaeus,Who, with pure water, thrice around his comradesMade lustral cleansing, shaking gentle dewFrom the fruitful branch of olive; and they saidHail and farewell!And over him AeneasErects a mighty tomb, with the hero’s arms,His oar and trumpet, where the mountain risesMemorial for ever, and named Misenus.These rites performed, he hastened to the Sibyl.There was a cavern, yawning wide and deep,Jagged, below the darkness of the trees,Beside the darkness of the lake. No birdCould fly above it safely, with the vaporPouring from the black gulf (the Greeks have named itAvernus, or A-Ornos, meaningbirdless),And here the priestess for the slaughter setFour bullocks, black ones, poured the holy wineBetween the horns, and plucked the topmost bristlesFor the first offering to the sacred fire,Calling on Hecate, a power in heaven,A power in hell. Knives to the throat were driven,The warm blood caught in bowls. Aeneas offeredA lamb, black-fleeced, to Night and her great sister,A sterile heifer for the queen; for DisAn altar in the night, and on the flamesThe weight of heavy bulls, the fat oil pouringOver the burning entrails. And at dawn,Under their feet, earth seemed to shake and rumble,The ridges move, and bitches bay in darkness,As the presence neared. The Sibyl cried a warning,“Keep off, keep off, whatever is unholy,Depart from here! Courage, Aeneas; enterThe path, unsheathe the sword. The time is readyFor the brave heart.” She strode out boldly, leadingInto the open cavern, and he followed.Gods of the world of spirit, silent shadows,Chaos and Phlegethon, areas of silence,Wide realms of dark, may it be right and properTo tell what I have heard, this revelationOf matters buried deep in earth and darkness!Vague forms in lonely darkness, they were goingThrough void and shadow, through the empty realmLike people in a forest, when the moonlightShifts with a baleful glimmer, and shadow coversThe sky, and all the colors turn to blackness.At the first threshold, on the jaws of Orcus,Grief and avenging Cares have set their couches,And pale Diseases dwell, and sad Old Age,Fear, evil-counselling Hunger, wretched Need,Forms terrible to see, and Death, and Toil,And Death’s own brother, Sleep, and evil Joys,Fantasies of the mind, and deadly War,The Furies’ iron chambers, Discord, raving,Her snaky hair entwined in bloody bands.An elm-tree loomed there, shadowy and huge,The aged boughs outspread, beneath whose leaves,Men say, the false dreams cling, thousands on thousands.And there are monsters in the dooryard, Centaurs,Scyllas, of double shape, the beast of Lerna,Hissing most horribly, Briareus,The hundred-handed giant, a ChimaeraWhose armament is fire, Harpies, and Gorgons,A triple-bodied giant. In sudden panicAeneas drew his sword, the edge held forward,Ready to rush and flail, however blindly,Save that his wise companion warned him, sayingThey had no substance, they were only phantomsFlitting about, illusions without body.From here, the road turns off to Acheron,River of Hell; here, thick with muddy whirling,Cocytus boils with sand. Charon is here,The guardian of these mingling waters, Charon,Uncouth and filthy, on whose chin the hairIs a tangled mat, whose eyes protrude, are burning,Whose dirty cloak is knotted at the shoulder.He poles a boat, tends to the sail, unaided,Ferrying bodies in his rust-hued vessel.Old, but a god’s senility is awfulIn its raw greenness. To the bank come throngingMothers and men, bodies of great-souled heroes,Their life-time over, boys, unwedded maidens,Young men whose fathers saw their pyres burning,Thick as the forest leaves that fall in autumnWith early frost, thick as the birds to landfallFrom over the seas, when the chill of the year compels themTo sunlight. There they stand, a host, imploringTo be taken over first. Their hands, in longing,Reach out for the farther shore. But the gloomy boatmanMakes choice among them, taking some, and keepingOthers far back from the stream’s edge. Aeneas,Wondering, asks the Sibyl, “Why the crowding?What are the spirits seeking? What distinctionBrings some across the livid stream, while othersStay on the farther bank?” She answers, briefly:“Son of Anchises, this is the awful river,The Styx, by which the gods take oath; the boatmanCharon; those he takes with him are the buried,Those he rejects, whose luck is out, the graveless.It is not permitted him to take them overThe dreadful banks and hoarse-resounding watersTill earth is cast upon their bones. They hauntThese shores a hundred restless years of waitingBefore they end postponement of the crossing.”Aeneas paused, in thoughtful mood, with pityOver their lot’s unevenness; and saw there,Wanting the honor given the dead, and grieving,Leucaspis, and Orontes, the Lycian captain,Who had sailed from Troy across the stormy waters,And drowned off Africa, with crew and vessel,And there was Palinurus, once his pilot,Who, not so long ago, had been swept over,Watching the stars on the journey north from Carthage.The murk was thick; Aeneas hardly knew him,Sorrowful in that darkness, but made question:“What god, O Palinurus, took you from us?Who drowned you in the deep? Tell me. ApolloNever before was false, and yet he told meYou would be safe across the seas, and comeUnharmed to Italy; what kind of promiseWas this, to fool me with?” But PalinurusGave him assurance:—“It was no god who drowned me,No falsehood on Apollo’s part, my captain,But as I clung to the tiller, holding fastTo keep the course, as I should do, I felt itWrenched from the ship, and I fell with it, headlong.By those rough seas I swear, I had less fearOn my account than for the ship, with rudderAnd helmsman overboard, to drift at the mercyOf rising seas. Three nights I rode the waters,Three nights of storm, and from the crest of a wave,On the fourth morning, sighted Italy,I was swimming to land, I had almost reached it, heavyIn soaking garments; my cramped fingers struggledTo grasp the top of the rock, when barbarous people,Ignorant men, mistaking me for booty,Struck me with swords; waves hold me now, or windsRoll me along the shore. By the light of heaven,The lovely air, I beg you, by your father,Your hope of young Iulus, bring me rescueOut of these evils, my unconquered leader!Cast over my body earth—you have the power—Return to Velia’s harbor,—or there may beSome other way—your mother is a goddess,Else how would you be crossing this great river,This Stygian swamp?—help a poor fellow, take meOver the water with you, give a dead manAt least a place to rest in.” But the SibylBroke in upon him sternly:—“Palinurus,Whence comes this mad desire? No man, unburied,May see the Stygian waters, or Cocytus,The Furies’ dreadful river; no man may comeUnbidden to this bank. Give up the hopeThat fate is changed by praying, but hear this,A little comfort in your harsh misfortune:Those neighboring people will make expiation,Driven by signs from heaven, through their citiesAnd through their countryside; they will build a tomb,Thereto bring offerings yearly, and the placeShall take its name from you, Cape Palinurus.”So he was comforted a little, findingSome happiness in the promise.And they went on,Nearing the river, and from the stream the boatmanBeheld them cross the silent forest, nearer,Turning their footsteps toward the bank. He challenged:—“Whoever you are, O man in armor, comingIn this direction, halt where you are, and tell meThe reason why you come. This is the regionOf shadows, and of Sleep and drowsy Night;I am not allowed to carry living bodiesIn the Stygian boat; and I must say I was sorryI ever accepted Hercules and TheseusAnd Pirithous, and rowed them over the lake,Though they were sons of gods and great in courage.One of them dared to drag the guard of Hell,Enchained, from Pluto’s throne, shaking in terror,The others to snatch our queen from Pluto’s chamber.”The Sibyl answered briefly: “No such cunningIs plotted here; our weapons bring no danger.Be undisturbed: the hell-hound in his cavernMay bark forever, to keep the bloodless shadowsFrightened away from trespass; Proserpine,Untouched, in pureness guard her uncle’s threshold.Trojan Aeneas, a man renowned for goodness,Renowned for nerve in battle, is descendingTo the lowest shades; he comes to find his father.If such devotion has no meaning to you,Look on this branch at least, and recognize it!”And with the word she drew from under her mantleThe golden bough; his swollen wrath subsided.No more was said; he saw the bough, and marvelledAt the holy gift, so long unseen; came scullingThe dark-blue boat to the shore, and drove the spirits,Lining the thwarts, ashore, and cleared the gangway,And took Aeneas aboard; as that big manStepped in, the leaky skiff groaned under the weight,And the strained seams let in the muddy water,But they made the crossing safely, seer and soldier,To the far margin, colorless and shapeless,Grey sedge and dark-brown ooze. They heard the bayingOf Cerberus, that great hound, in his cavern crouching,Making the shore resound, as all three throatsBelled horribly; and serpents rose and bristledAlong the triple neck. The priestess threw himA sop with honey and drugged meal; he openedThe ravenous throat, gulped, and subsided, fillingThe den with his huge bulk. Aeneas, crossing,Passed on beyond the bank of the dread riverWhence none return.A wailing of thin voicesCame to their ears, the souls of infants crying,Those whom the day of darkness took from the breastBefore their share of living. And there were manyWhom some false sentence brought to death. Here MinosJudges them once again; a silent juryReviews the evidence. And there are others,Guilty of nothing, but who hated living,The suicides. How gladly, now, they would sufferPoverty, hardship, in the world of light!But this is not permitted; they are boundNine times around by the black unlovely river;Styx holds them fast.They came to the Fields of Mourning,So-called, where those whom cruel love had wastedHid in secluded pathways, under myrtle,And even in death were anxious. Procris, Phaedra,Eriphyle, displaying wounds her sonHad given her, Caeneus, Laodamia,Caeneus, a young man once, and now againA young man, after having been a woman.And here, new come from her own wound, was Dido,Wandering in the wood. The Trojan hero,Standing near by, saw her, or thought he saw her,Dim in the shadows, like the slender crescentOf moon when cloud drifts over. Weeping, he greets her:—“Unhappy Dido, so they told me trulyThat your own hand had brought you death. Was I—Alas!—the cause? I swear by all the stars,By the world above, by everything held sacredHere under the earth, unwillingly, O queen,I left your kingdom. But the gods’ commands,Driving me now through these forsaken places,This utter night, compelled me on. I could notBelieve my loss would cause so great a sorrow.Linger a moment, do not leave me; whither,Whom, are you fleeing? I am permitted onlyThis last word with you.”But the queen, unmovingAs flint or marble, turned away, her eyesFixed on the ground: the tears were vain, the words,Meant to be soothing, foolish; she turned away,His enemy forever, to the shadowsWhere Sychaeus, her former husband, took herWith love for love, and sorrow for her sorrow.And still Aeneas wept for her, being troubledBy the injustice of her doom; his pityFollowed her going.They went on. They cameTo the farthest fields, whose tenants are the warriors,Illustrious throng. Here Tydeus came to meet him,Parthenopaeus came, and pale Adrastus,A fighter’s ghost, and many, many others,Mourned in the world above, and doomed in battle,Leaders of Troy, in long array; AeneasSighed as he saw them: Medon; Polyboetes,The priest of Ceres; Glaucus; and IdaeusStill keeping arms and chariot; three brothers,Antenor’s sons; Thersilochus; a hostTo right and left of him, and when they see him,One sight is not enough; they crowd around him,Linger, and ask the reasons for his coming.But Agamemnon’s men, the Greek battalions,Seeing him there, and his arms in shadow gleaming,Tremble in panic, turn to flee for refuge,As once they used to, toward their ships, but whereAre the ships now? They try to shout, in terror;But only a thin and piping treble issuesTo mock their mouths, wide-open.One he knewWas here, Deiphobus, a son of Priam,With his whole body mangled, and his featuresCruelly slashed, and both hands cut, and earsTorn from his temples, and his nostrils slitBy shameful wounds. Aeneas hardly knew him,Shivering there, and doing his best to hideHis marks of punishment; unhailed, he hailed him:—“Deiphobus, great warrior, son of Teucer,Whose cruel punishment was this? Whose licenseAbused you so? I heard, it seems, a storyOf that last night, how you had fallen, wearyWith killing Greeks at last; I built a tomb,Although no body lay there, in your honor,Three times I cried, aloud, over your spirit,Where now your name and arms keep guard. I could not,Leaving my country, find my friend, to give himProper interment in the earth he came from.”And Priam’s son replied:—“Nothing, dear comrade,Was left undone; the dead man’s shade was givenAll ceremony due. It was my own fortuneAnd a Spartan woman’s deadliness that sunk meUnder these evils; she it was who left meThese souvenirs. You know how falsely happyWe were on that last night; I need not tell you.When that dread horse came leaping over our walls,Pregnant with soldiery, she led the dancing,A solemn rite, she called it, with Trojan womenScreaming their bacchanals; she raised the torchesHigh on the citadel; she called the Greeks.Then—I was worn with trouble, drugged in slumber,Resting in our ill-omened bridal chamber,With sleep as deep and sweet as death upon me—Then she, that paragon of helpmates, deftlyMoved all the weapons from the house; my sword,Even, she stole from underneath my pillow,Opened the door, and called in Menelaus,Hoping, no doubt, to please her loving husband,To win forgetfulness of her old sinning.It is quickly told: they broke into the chamber,The two of them, and with them, as accomplice,Ulysses came, the crime-contriving bastard.O gods, pay back the Greeks; grant the petitionIf goodness asks for vengeance! But you, Aeneas,A living man—what chance has brought you here?Vagrant of ocean, god-inspired,—which are you?What chance has worn you down, to come, in sadness,To these confusing sunless dwelling-places?”While they were talking, Aurora’s rosy carHad halfway crossed the heaven; all their timeMight have been spent in converse, but the SibylHurried them forward:—“Night comes on, Aeneas;We waste the hours with tears. We are at the cross-road,Now; here we turn to the right, where the pathway leadsOn to Elysium, under Pluto’s ramparts.Leftward is Tartarus, and retribution,The terminal of the wicked, and their dungeon.”Deiphobus left them, saying, “O great priestess,Do not be angry with me; I am going;I shall not fail the roll-call of the shadows.Pride of our race, go on; may better fortuneAttend you!” and, upon the word, he vanished.As he looked back, Aeneas saw, to his left,Wide walls beneath a cliff, a triple rampart,A river running fire, Phlegethon’s torrent,Rocks roaring in its course, a gate, tremendous,Pillars of adamant, a tower of iron,Too strong for men, too strong for even godsTo batter down in warfare, and behind themA Fury, sentinel in bloody garments,Always on watch, by day, by night. He heardSobbing and groaning there, the crack of the lash,The clank of iron, the sound of dragging shackles.The noise was terrible; Aeneas halted,Asking, “What forms of crime are these, O maiden?What harrying punishment, what horrible outcry?”She answered:—“O great leader of the Trojans,I have never crossed that threshold of the wicked;No pure soul is permitted entrance thither,But Hecate, by whose order I was givenCharge of Avernus’ groves, my guide, my teacher,Told me how gods exact the toll of vengeance.The monarch here, merciless Rhadamanthus,Punishes guilt, and hears confession; he forcesAcknowledgment of crime; no man in the world,No matter how cleverly he hides his evil,No matter how much he smiles at his own slyness,Can fend atonement off; the hour of deathBegins his sentence. Tisiphone, the Fury,Leaps at the guilty with her scourge; her serpentsAre whips of menace as she calls her sisters.Imagine the gates, on jarring hinge, rasp open,You would see her in the doorway, a shape, a sentry,Savage, implacable. Beyond, still fiercer,The monstrous Hydra dwells; her fifty throatsAre black, and open wide, and TartarusIs black, and open wide, and it goes downTo darkness, sheer deep down, and twice the distanceThat earth is from Olympus. At the bottomThe Titans crawl, Earth’s oldest breed, hurled underBy thunderbolts; here lie the giant twins,Aloeus’ sons, who laid their hands on heavenAnd tried to pull down Jove; Salmoneus hereAtones for high presumption,—it was heWho aped Jove’s noise and fire, wheeling his horsesTriumphant through his city in Elis, cheeringAnd shaking the torch, and claiming divine homage,The arrogant fool, to think his brass was lightning,His horny-footed horses beat out thunder!Jove showed him what real thunder was, what lightningSpoke from immortal cloud, what whirlwind furyCame sweeping from the heaven to overtake him.Here Tityos, Earth’s giant son, lies sprawlingOver nine acres, with a monstrous vultureGnawing, with crooked beak, vitals and liverThat grow as they are eaten; eternal anguish,Eternal feast. Over another hangsA rock, about to fall; and there are tablesSet for a banquet, gold with royal splendor,But if a hand goes out to touch the viands,The Fury drives it back with fire and yelling.Why name them all, Pirithous, the Lapiths,Ixion? The roll of crime would take forever.Whoever, in his lifetime, hated his brother,Or struck his father down; whoever cheatedA client, or was miserly—how manyOf these there seem to be!—whoever wentTo treasonable war, or broke a promiseMade to his lord, whoever perished, slainOver adultery, all these, walled in,Wait here their punishment. Seek not to knowToo much about their doom. The stone is rolled,The wheel keeps turning; Theseus foreverSits in dejection; Phlegyas, accursed,Cries through the halls forever:Being warned,Learn justice; reverence the gods!The manWho sold his country is here in hell; the manWho altered laws for money; and a fatherWho knew his daughter’s bed. All of them dared,And more than dared, achieved, unspeakableAmbitions. If I had a hundred tongues,A hundred iron throats, I could not tellThe fullness of their crime and punishment.”And then she added:—“Come: resume the journey,Fulfill the mission; let us hurry onward.I see the walls the Cyclops made, the portalsUnder the archway, where, the orders tell us,Our tribute must be set.” They went togetherThrough the way’s darkness, came to the doors, and halted,And at the entrance Aeneas, having sprinkledHis body with fresh water, placed the boughGolden before the threshold. The will of the goddessHad been performed, the proper task completed.They came to happy places, the joyful dwelling,The lovely greenery of the groves of the blessèd.Here ampler air invests the fields with light,Rose-colored, with familiar stars and sun.Some grapple on the grassy wrestling-groundIn exercise and sport, and some are dancing,And others singing; in his trailing robeOrpheus strums the lyre; the seven clear notesAccompany the dance, the song. And heroesAre there, great-souled, born in the happier years,Ilus, Assaracus; the city’s founder,Prince Dardanus. Far off, Aeneas wonders,Seeing the phantom arms, the chariots,The spears fixed in the ground, the chargers browsing,Unharnessed, over the plain. Whatever, living,The men delighted in, whatever pleasureWas theirs in horse and chariot, still holds themHere under the world. To right and left, they banquetIn the green meadows, and a joyful chorusRises through groves of laurel, whence the riverRuns to the upper world. The band of heroesDwell here, all those whose mortal wounds were sufferedIn fighting for the fatherland; and poets,The good, the pure, the worthy of Apollo;Those who discovered truth and made life nobler;Those who served others—all, with snowy filletsBinding their temples, throng the lovely valley.And these the Sibyl questioned, most of allMusaeus, for he towered above the centerOf that great throng:—“O happy souls, O poet,Where does Anchises dwell? For him we come here.For him we have traversed Erebus’ great rivers.”And he replied:—“It is all our home, the shadyGroves, and the streaming meadows, and the softnessAlong the river-banks. No fixed abodeIs ours at all; but if it is your pleasure,Cross over the ridge with me; I will guide you thereBy easy going.” And so Musaeus led themAnd from the summit showed them fields, all shining,And they went on over and down.Deep in a valley of green, father AnchisesWas watching, with deep earnestness, the spiritsWhose destiny was light, and counting them over,All of his race to come, his dear descendants,Their fates and fortunes and their works and ways,And as he saw Aeneas coming toward himOver the meadow, his hands reached out with yearning,He was moved to tears, and called:—“At last, my son,—Have you really come, at last? and the long road nothingTo a son who loves his father? Do I, truly,See you, and hear your voice? I was thinking so,I was hoping so, I was counting off the days,And I was right about it. O my son!What a long journey, over land and water,Yours must have been! What buffeting of danger!I feared, so much, the Libyan realm would hurt you.”And his son answered:—“It was your spirit, father,Your sorrowful shade, so often met, that led meTo find these portals. The ships ride safe at anchor,Safe in the Tuscan sea. Embrace me, father;Let hand join hand in love; do not forsake me.”And as he spoke, the tears streamed down. Three timesHe reached out toward him, and three times the imageFled like the breath of the wind or a dream on wings.He saw, in a far valley, a separate groveWhere the woods stir and rustle, and a river,The Lethe, gliding past the peaceful places,And tribes of people thronging, hovering over,Innumerable as the bees in summerWorking the bright-hued flowers, and the shiningOf the white lilies, murmuring and humming.Aeneas, filled with wonder, asks the reasonFor what he does not know, who are the peopleIn such a host, and to what river coming?Anchises answers:—“These are spirits, readyOnce more for life; they drink of Lethe’s waterThe soothing potion of forgetfulness.I have longed, for long, to show them to you, name them,Our children’s children; Italy discovered,So much the greater happiness, my son.”“But, O my father, is it thinkableThat souls would leave this blessedness, be willingA second time to bear the sluggish body,Trade Paradise for earth? Alas, poor wretches,Why such a mad desire for light?” AnchisesGives detailed answer: “First, my son, a spiritSustains all matter, heaven and earth and ocean,The moon, the stars; mind quickens mass, and moves it.Hence comes the race of man, of beast, of wingèdCreatures of air, of the strange shapes which oceanBears down below his mottled marble surface.All these are blessed with energy from heaven;The seed of life is a spark of fire, but the bodyA clod of earth, a clog, a mortal burden.Hence humans fear, desire, grieve, and are joyful,And even when life is over, all the evilIngrained so long, the adulterated mixture,The plagues and pestilences of the bodyRemain, persist. So there must be a cleansing,By penalty, by punishment, by fire,By sweep of wind, by water’s absolution,Before the guilt is gone. Each of us suffersHis own peculiar ghost. But the day comesWhen we are sent through wide Elysium,The Fields of the Blessed, a few of us, to lingerUntil the turn of time, the wheel of ages,Wears off the taint, and leaves the core of spiritPure sense, pure flame. A thousand years pass overAnd the god calls the countless host to LetheWhere memory is annulled, and souls are willingOnce more to enter into mortal bodies.”The discourse ended; the father drew his sonAnd his companion toward the hum, the centerOf the full host; they came to rising groundWhere all the long array was visible,Anchises watching, noting, every comer.“Glory to come, my son, illustrious spiritsOf Dardan lineage, Italian offspring,Heirs of our name, begetters of our future!These I will name for you and tell our fortunes:First, leaning on a headless spear, and standingNearest the light, that youth, the first to riseTo the world above, is Silvius; his nameIs Alban; in his veins Italian bloodWill run with Trojan; he will be the sonOf your late age; Lavinia will bear him,A king and sire of kings; from him our raceWill rule in Alba Longa. Near him, Procas,A glory to the Trojan race; and Capys,And Numitor, and Silvius Aeneas,Resembling you in name, in arms, in goodness,If ever he wins the Alban kingdom over.What fine young men they are! What strength, what prowess!The civic oak already shades their foreheads.These will found cities, Gabii, Fidenae,Nomentum; they will crown the hills with towersAbove Collatia, Inuus fortress, Bola,Cora, all names to be, thus far ungiven.“And there will be a son of Mars; his motherIs Ilia, and his name is Romulus,Assaracus’ descendant. On his helmetSee, even now, twin plumes; his father’s honorConfers distinction on him for the world.Under his auspices Rome, that glorious city,Will bound her power by earth, her pride by heaven,Happy in hero sons, one wall surroundingHer seven hills, even as Cybele, ridingThrough Phrygian cities, wears her crown of towers,Rejoicing in her offspring, and embracingA hundred children of the gods, her children,Celestials, all of them, at home in heaven.Turn the eyes now this way; behold the Romans,Your very own. These are Iulus’ children,The race to come. One promise you have heardOver and over: here is its fulfillment,The son of a god, Augustus Caesar, founderOf a new age of gold, in lands where SaturnRuled long ago; he will extend his empireBeyond the Indies, beyond the normal measureOf years and constellations, where high AtlasTurns on his shoulders the star-studded world.Maeotia and the Caspian seas are tremblingAs heaven’s oracles predict his coming,And all the seven mouths of Nile are troubled.Not even Hercules, in all his travels,Covered so much of the world, from ErymanthusTo Lerna; nor did Bacchus, driving his tigersFrom Nysa’s summit. How can hesitationKeep us from deeds to make our prowess greater?What fear can block us from Ausonian land?“And who is that one yonder, wearing the olive,Holding the sacrifice? I recognize him,That white-haired king of Rome, who comes from Cures,A poor land, to a mighty empire, giverOf law to the young town. His name is Numa.Near him is Tullus; he will rouse to armsA race grown sluggish, little used to triumph.Beyond him Ancus, even now too boastful,Too fond of popular favor. And then the Tarquins,And the avenger Brutus, proud of spirit,Restorer of the balance. He shall beFirst holder of the consular power; his childrenWill stir up wars again, and he, for freedomAnd her sweet sake, will call down judgment on them,Unhappy, however future men may praise him,In love of country and intense ambition.“There are the Decii, and there the Drusi,A little farther off, and stern Torquatus,The man with the axe, and Camillus, the regainerOf standards lost. And see those two, resplendentIn equal arms, harmonious friendly spiritsNow, in the shadow of night, but if they everCome to the world of light, alas, what warfare,What battle-lines, what slaughter they will fashion,Each for the other, one from Alpine rampartsDescending, and the other ranged against himWith armies from the east, father and sonThrough marriage, Pompey and Caesar. O my children,Cast out the thoughts of war, and do not murderThe flower of our country. O my son,Whose line descends from heaven, let the swordFall from the hand, be leader in forbearing!“Yonder is one who, victor over Corinth,Will ride in triumph home, famous for carnageInflicted on the Greeks; near him another,Destroyer of old Argus and MycenaeWhere Agamemnon ruled; he will strike downA king descended from Achilles; PydnaShall be revenge for Pallas’ ruined temple,For Trojan ancestors. Who would pass over,Without a word, Cossus, or noble Cato,The Gracchi, or those thunderbolts of warfare,The Scipios, Libya’s ruin, or FabriciusMighty with little, or Serranus, ploughingThe humble furrow? My tale must hurry on:I see the Fabii next, and their great QuintusWho brought us back an empire by delaying.Others, no doubt, will better mould the bronzeTo the semblance of soft breathing, draw, from marble,The living countenance; and others pleadWith greater eloquence, or learn to measure,Better than we, the pathways of the heaven,The risings of the stars: remember, Roman,To rule the people under law, to establishThe way of peace, to battle down the haughty,To spare the meek. Our fine arts, these, forever.”Anchises paused a moment, and they marvelled.And he went on:—“See, how Marcellus triumphs,Glorious over all, with the great trophiesWon when he slew the captain of the Gauls,Leader victorious over leading foeman.When Rome is in great trouble and confusionHe will establish order, Gaul and CarthageGo down before his sword, and triple trophiesBe given Romulus in dedication.”There was a young man going with Marcellus,Brilliant in shining armor, bright in beauty,But sorrowful, with downcast eyes. AeneasBroke in, to ask his father: “Who is this youthAttendant on the hero? A son of his?One of his children’s children? How the crowdMurmurs and hums around him! what distinction,What presence, in his person! But dark nightHovers around his head with mournful shadow.Who is he, father?” And Anchises answered:—“Great sorrow for our people! O my son,Ask not to know it. This one fate will onlyShow to the world; he will not be permittedAny long sojourn. Rome would be too mighty,Too great in the gods’ sight, were this gift hers.What lamentation will the field of MarsRaise to the city! Tiber, gliding byThe new-built tomb, the funeral state, bear witness!No youth from Trojan stock will ever raiseHis ancestors so high in hope, no RomanBe such a cause for pride. Alas for goodness,Alas for old-time honor, and the armInvincible in war! Against him no one,Whether on foot or foaming horse, would comeIn battle and depart unscathed. Poor boy,If you should break the cruel fates; if only—You are to be Marcellus. Let me scatterLilies, or dark-red flowers, bringing honorTo my descendant’s shade; let the gift be offered,However vain the tribute.”So through the whole wide realm they went together,Anchises and his son; from fields of airLearning and teaching of the fame and glory,The wars to come, the toils to face, or flee from,Latinus’ city and the Latin peoples,The love of what would be.There are two portals,Twin gates of Sleep, one made of horn, where easyRelease is given true shades, the other gleamingWhite ivory, whereby the false dreams issueTo the upper air. Aeneas and the SibylPart from Anchises at the second portal.He goes to the ships, again, rejoins his comrades,Sails to Caieta’s harbor, and the vesselsRest on their mooring-lines.
Mourning for Palinurus, he drives the fleetTo Cumae’s coast-line; the prows are turned, the anchorsLet down, the beach is covered by the vessels.Young in their eagerness for the land in the west,They flash ashore; some seek the seeds of flameHidden in veins of flint, and others spoilThe woods of tinder, and show where water runs.Aeneas, in devotion, seeks the heightsWhere stands Apollo’s temple, and the caveWhere the dread Sibyl dwells, Apollo’s priestess,With the great mind and heart, inspired revealerOf things to come. They enter Diana’s grove,Pass underneath the roof of gold.
The storyHas it that Daedalus fled from Minos’ kingdom,Trusting himself to wings he made, and travelledA course unknown to man, to the cold north,Descending on this very summit; here,Earth-bound again, he built a mighty temple,Paying Apollo homage, the dedicationOf the oarage of his wings. On the temple doorsHe carved, in bronze, Androgeos’ death, and the paymentEnforced on Cecrops’ children, seven sonsFor sacrifice each year: there stands the urn,The lots are drawn—facing this, over the sea,Rises the land of Crete: the scene portraysPasiphae in cruel love, the bullShe took to her by cunning, and their offspring,The mongrel Minotaur, half man, half monster,The proof of lust unspeakable; and the toilOf the house is shown, the labyrinthine mazeWhich no one could have solved, but DaedalusPitied a princess’ love, loosened the tangle,Gave her a skein to guide her way. His boy,Icarus, might have been here, in the picture,And almost was—his father had made the effortOnce, and once more, and dropped his hands; he could notMaster his grief that much. The story held them;They would have studied it longer, but AchatesCame from his mission; with him came the priestess,Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus, who tends the templeFor Phoebus and Diana; she warned Aeneas:“It is no such sights the time demands; far betterTo offer sacrifice, seven chosen bullocks,Seven chosen ewes, a herd without corruption.”They were prompt in their obedience, and the priestessSummoned the Trojans to the lofty temple.
The rock’s vast side is hollowed into a cavern,With a hundred mouths, a hundred open portals,Whence voices rush, the answers of the Sibyl.They had reached the threshold, and the virgin cried:“It is time to seek the fates; the god is here,The god is here, behold him.” And as she spokeBefore the entrance, her countenance and colorChanged, and her hair tossed loose, and her heart was heaving,Her bosom swollen with frenzy; she seemed taller,Her voice not human at all, as the god’s presenceDrew nearer, and took hold on her. “Aeneas,”She cried, “Aeneas, are you praying?Are you being swift in prayer? Until you are,The house of the gods will not be moved, nor openIts mighty portals.” More than her speech, her silenceMade the Trojans cold with terror, and AeneasPrayed from the depth of his heart: “Phoebus Apollo,Compassionate ever, slayer of AchillesThrough aim of Paris’ arrow, helper and guideOver the seas, over the lands, the deserts,The shoals and quicksands, now at last we have comeTo Italy, we hold the lands which fled us:Grant that thus far, no farther, a Trojan fortuneAttend our wandering. And spare us now,All of you, gods and goddesses, who hatedTroy in the past, and Trojan glory. I beg you,Most holy prophetess, in whose foreknowingThe future stands revealed, grant that the Trojans—I ask with fate’s permission—rest in LatiumTheir wandering storm-tossed gods. I will build a temple,In honor of Apollo and Diana,Out of eternal marble, and ordainFestivals in their honor, and for the SibylA great shrine in our kingdom, and I will place thereThe lots and mystic oracles for my peopleWith chosen priests to tend them. Only, priestess,This once, I pray you, chant the sacred versesWith your own lips; do not trust them to the leaves,The mockery of the rushing wind’s disorder.”
But the priestess, not yet subject to Apollo,Went reeling through the cavern, wild, and stormingTo throw the god, who presses, like a rider,With bit and bridle and weight, tames her wild spirit,Shapes her to his control. The doors fly open,The hundred doors, of their own will, fly open,And through the air the answer comes:—“O Trojans,At last the dangers of the sea are over;That course is run, but graver ones are waitingOn land. The sons of Dardanus will reachThe kingdom of Lavinia—be easyOn that account—the sons of Dardanus, also,Will wish they had not come there. War, I see,Terrible war, and the river Tiber foamingWith streams of blood. There will be another Xanthus,Another Simois, and Greek encampment,Even another Achilles, born in Latium,Himself a goddess’ son. And Juno furtherWill always be there: you will beg for mercy,Be poor, turn everywhere for help. A womanWill be the cause once more of so much evil,A foreign bride, receptive to the Trojans,A foreign marriage. Do not yield to evil,Attack, attack, more boldly even than fortuneSeems to permit. An offering of safety,—Incredible!—will come from a Greek city.”
So, through the amplifiers of her cavern,The hollow vaults, the Sibyl cast her warnings,Riddles confused with truth; and Apollo rode her,Reining her rage, and shaking her, and spurringThe fierceness of her heart. The frenzy dwindled,A little, and her lips were still. AeneasBegan:—“For me, no form of trouble, maiden,Is new, or unexpected; all of thisI have known long since, lived in imagination.One thing I ask: this is the gate of the kingdom,So it is said, where Pluto reigns, the gloomyMarsh where the water of Acheron runs over.Teach me the way from here, open the portalsThat I may go to my belovèd father,Stand in his presence, talk with him. I brought him,Once, on these shoulders, through a thousand weaponsAnd following fire, and foemen. He shared with meThe road, the sea, the menaces of heaven,Things that an old man should not bear; he bore them,Tired as he was. And he it was who told meTo come to you in humbleness. I beg youPity the son, the father. You have power,Great priestess, over all; it is not for nothingHecate gave you this dominion overAvernus’ groves. If Orpheus could summonEurydice from the shadows with his music,If Pollux could save his brother, coming, going,Along this path,—why should I mention Theseus,Why mention Hercules? I, too, descendedFrom the line of Jupiter.” He clasped the altar,Making his prayer, and she made answer to him:“Son of Anchises, born of godly lineage,By night, by day, the portals of dark DisStand open: it is easy, the descendingDown to Avernus. But to climb again,To trace the footsteps back to the air above,There lies the task, the toil. A few, belovedBy Jupiter, descended from the gods,A few, in whom exalting virtue burned,Have been permitted. Around the central woodsThe black Cocytus glides, a sullen river;But if such love is in your heart, such longingFor double crossing of the Stygian lake,For double sight of Tartarus, learn firstWhat must be done. In a dark tree there hidesA bough, all golden, leaf and pliant stem,Sacred to Proserpine. This all the groveProtects, and shadows cover it with darkness.Until this bough, this bloom of light, is found,No one receives his passport to the darknessWhose queen requires this tribute. In succession,After the bough is plucked, another grows,Gold-green with the same metal. Raise the eyes,Look up, reach up the hand, and it will followWith ease, if fate is calling; otherwise,No power, no steel, can loose it. Furthermore,(Alas, you do not know this!), one of your menLies on the shore, unburied, a pollutionTo all the fleet, while you have come for counselHere to our threshold. Bury him with honor;Black cattle slain in expiation for himMust fall before you see the Stygian kingdoms,The groves denied to living men.”
Aeneas,With sadness in his eyes, and downcast heart,Turned from the cave, and at his side AchatesAccompanied his anxious meditations.They talked together: who could be the comradeNamed by the priestess, lying there unburied?And they found him on dry sand; it was Misenus,Aeolus’ son, none better with the trumpetTo make men burn for warfare. He had beenGreat Hector’s man-at-arms; he was good in battleWith spear as well as horn, and after HectorHad fallen to Achilles, he had followedAeneas, entering no meaner service.Some foolishness came over him; he madeThe ocean echo to the blare of his trumpetThat day, and challenged the sea-gods to a contestIn martial music, and Triton, jealous, caught him,However unbelievable the story,And held him down between the rocks, and drowned himUnder the foaming waves. His comrades mourned,Aeneas most of all, and in their sorrowThey carry out, in haste, the Sibyl’s orders,Construct the funeral altar, high as heaven,They go to an old wood, and the pine-trees fallWhere wild beasts have their dens, and holm-oak ringsTo the stroke of the axe, and oak and ash are rivenBy the splitting wedge, and rowan-trees come rollingDown the steep mountain-side. Aeneas helps them,And cheers them on; studies the endless forest,Takes thought, and prays: “If only we might see it,That golden bough, here in the depth of the forest,Bright on some tree. She told the truth, our priestess,Too much, too bitter truth, about Misenus.”No sooner had he spoken than twin dovesCame flying down before him, and alightedOn the green ground. He knew his mother’s birds,And made his prayer, rejoicing,—“Oh, be leaders,Wherever the way, and guide me to the groveWhere the rich bough makes rich the shaded ground.Help me, O goddess-mother!” And he paused,Watching what sign they gave, what course they set.The birds flew on a little, just aheadOf the pursuing vision; when they cameTo the jaws of dank Avernus, evil-smelling,They rose aloft, then swooped down the bright air,Perched on the double tree, where the off-colorOf gold was gleaming golden through the branches.As mistletoe, in the cold winter, blossomsWith its strange foliage on an alien tree,The yellow berry gilding the smooth branches,Such was the vision of the gold in leafOn the dark holm-oak, so the foil was rustling,Rattling, almost, the bract in the soft windStirring like metal. Aeneas broke it offWith eager grasp, and bore it to the Sibyl.
Meanwhile, along the shore, the Trojans mourned,Paying Misenus’ dust the final honors.A mighty pyre was raised, of pine and oak,The sides hung with dark leaves, and somber cypressAlong the front, and gleaming arms above.Some made the water hot, and some made readyBronze caldrons, shimmering over fire, and othersLave and anoint the body, and with weepingLay on the bier his limbs, and place above themFamiliar garments, crimson color; and someTake up the heavy burden, a sad office,And, as their fathers did, they kept their eyesAverted, as they brought the torches nearer.They burn gifts with him, bowls of oil, and viands,And frankincense; and when the flame is quietAnd the ashes settle to earth, they wash the embersWith wine, and slake the thirsty dust. The bonesAre placed in a bronze urn by Corynaeus,Who, with pure water, thrice around his comradesMade lustral cleansing, shaking gentle dewFrom the fruitful branch of olive; and they saidHail and farewell!And over him AeneasErects a mighty tomb, with the hero’s arms,His oar and trumpet, where the mountain risesMemorial for ever, and named Misenus.
These rites performed, he hastened to the Sibyl.There was a cavern, yawning wide and deep,Jagged, below the darkness of the trees,Beside the darkness of the lake. No birdCould fly above it safely, with the vaporPouring from the black gulf (the Greeks have named itAvernus, or A-Ornos, meaningbirdless),And here the priestess for the slaughter setFour bullocks, black ones, poured the holy wineBetween the horns, and plucked the topmost bristlesFor the first offering to the sacred fire,Calling on Hecate, a power in heaven,A power in hell. Knives to the throat were driven,The warm blood caught in bowls. Aeneas offeredA lamb, black-fleeced, to Night and her great sister,A sterile heifer for the queen; for DisAn altar in the night, and on the flamesThe weight of heavy bulls, the fat oil pouringOver the burning entrails. And at dawn,Under their feet, earth seemed to shake and rumble,The ridges move, and bitches bay in darkness,As the presence neared. The Sibyl cried a warning,“Keep off, keep off, whatever is unholy,Depart from here! Courage, Aeneas; enterThe path, unsheathe the sword. The time is readyFor the brave heart.” She strode out boldly, leadingInto the open cavern, and he followed.
Gods of the world of spirit, silent shadows,Chaos and Phlegethon, areas of silence,Wide realms of dark, may it be right and properTo tell what I have heard, this revelationOf matters buried deep in earth and darkness!
Vague forms in lonely darkness, they were goingThrough void and shadow, through the empty realmLike people in a forest, when the moonlightShifts with a baleful glimmer, and shadow coversThe sky, and all the colors turn to blackness.At the first threshold, on the jaws of Orcus,Grief and avenging Cares have set their couches,And pale Diseases dwell, and sad Old Age,Fear, evil-counselling Hunger, wretched Need,Forms terrible to see, and Death, and Toil,And Death’s own brother, Sleep, and evil Joys,Fantasies of the mind, and deadly War,The Furies’ iron chambers, Discord, raving,Her snaky hair entwined in bloody bands.An elm-tree loomed there, shadowy and huge,The aged boughs outspread, beneath whose leaves,Men say, the false dreams cling, thousands on thousands.And there are monsters in the dooryard, Centaurs,Scyllas, of double shape, the beast of Lerna,Hissing most horribly, Briareus,The hundred-handed giant, a ChimaeraWhose armament is fire, Harpies, and Gorgons,A triple-bodied giant. In sudden panicAeneas drew his sword, the edge held forward,Ready to rush and flail, however blindly,Save that his wise companion warned him, sayingThey had no substance, they were only phantomsFlitting about, illusions without body.
From here, the road turns off to Acheron,River of Hell; here, thick with muddy whirling,Cocytus boils with sand. Charon is here,The guardian of these mingling waters, Charon,Uncouth and filthy, on whose chin the hairIs a tangled mat, whose eyes protrude, are burning,Whose dirty cloak is knotted at the shoulder.He poles a boat, tends to the sail, unaided,Ferrying bodies in his rust-hued vessel.Old, but a god’s senility is awfulIn its raw greenness. To the bank come throngingMothers and men, bodies of great-souled heroes,Their life-time over, boys, unwedded maidens,Young men whose fathers saw their pyres burning,Thick as the forest leaves that fall in autumnWith early frost, thick as the birds to landfallFrom over the seas, when the chill of the year compels themTo sunlight. There they stand, a host, imploringTo be taken over first. Their hands, in longing,Reach out for the farther shore. But the gloomy boatmanMakes choice among them, taking some, and keepingOthers far back from the stream’s edge. Aeneas,Wondering, asks the Sibyl, “Why the crowding?What are the spirits seeking? What distinctionBrings some across the livid stream, while othersStay on the farther bank?” She answers, briefly:“Son of Anchises, this is the awful river,The Styx, by which the gods take oath; the boatmanCharon; those he takes with him are the buried,Those he rejects, whose luck is out, the graveless.It is not permitted him to take them overThe dreadful banks and hoarse-resounding watersTill earth is cast upon their bones. They hauntThese shores a hundred restless years of waitingBefore they end postponement of the crossing.”Aeneas paused, in thoughtful mood, with pityOver their lot’s unevenness; and saw there,Wanting the honor given the dead, and grieving,Leucaspis, and Orontes, the Lycian captain,Who had sailed from Troy across the stormy waters,And drowned off Africa, with crew and vessel,And there was Palinurus, once his pilot,Who, not so long ago, had been swept over,Watching the stars on the journey north from Carthage.The murk was thick; Aeneas hardly knew him,Sorrowful in that darkness, but made question:“What god, O Palinurus, took you from us?Who drowned you in the deep? Tell me. ApolloNever before was false, and yet he told meYou would be safe across the seas, and comeUnharmed to Italy; what kind of promiseWas this, to fool me with?” But PalinurusGave him assurance:—“It was no god who drowned me,No falsehood on Apollo’s part, my captain,But as I clung to the tiller, holding fastTo keep the course, as I should do, I felt itWrenched from the ship, and I fell with it, headlong.By those rough seas I swear, I had less fearOn my account than for the ship, with rudderAnd helmsman overboard, to drift at the mercyOf rising seas. Three nights I rode the waters,Three nights of storm, and from the crest of a wave,On the fourth morning, sighted Italy,I was swimming to land, I had almost reached it, heavyIn soaking garments; my cramped fingers struggledTo grasp the top of the rock, when barbarous people,Ignorant men, mistaking me for booty,Struck me with swords; waves hold me now, or windsRoll me along the shore. By the light of heaven,The lovely air, I beg you, by your father,Your hope of young Iulus, bring me rescueOut of these evils, my unconquered leader!Cast over my body earth—you have the power—Return to Velia’s harbor,—or there may beSome other way—your mother is a goddess,Else how would you be crossing this great river,This Stygian swamp?—help a poor fellow, take meOver the water with you, give a dead manAt least a place to rest in.” But the SibylBroke in upon him sternly:—“Palinurus,Whence comes this mad desire? No man, unburied,May see the Stygian waters, or Cocytus,The Furies’ dreadful river; no man may comeUnbidden to this bank. Give up the hopeThat fate is changed by praying, but hear this,A little comfort in your harsh misfortune:Those neighboring people will make expiation,Driven by signs from heaven, through their citiesAnd through their countryside; they will build a tomb,Thereto bring offerings yearly, and the placeShall take its name from you, Cape Palinurus.”So he was comforted a little, findingSome happiness in the promise.
And they went on,Nearing the river, and from the stream the boatmanBeheld them cross the silent forest, nearer,Turning their footsteps toward the bank. He challenged:—“Whoever you are, O man in armor, comingIn this direction, halt where you are, and tell meThe reason why you come. This is the regionOf shadows, and of Sleep and drowsy Night;I am not allowed to carry living bodiesIn the Stygian boat; and I must say I was sorryI ever accepted Hercules and TheseusAnd Pirithous, and rowed them over the lake,Though they were sons of gods and great in courage.One of them dared to drag the guard of Hell,Enchained, from Pluto’s throne, shaking in terror,The others to snatch our queen from Pluto’s chamber.”The Sibyl answered briefly: “No such cunningIs plotted here; our weapons bring no danger.Be undisturbed: the hell-hound in his cavernMay bark forever, to keep the bloodless shadowsFrightened away from trespass; Proserpine,Untouched, in pureness guard her uncle’s threshold.Trojan Aeneas, a man renowned for goodness,Renowned for nerve in battle, is descendingTo the lowest shades; he comes to find his father.If such devotion has no meaning to you,Look on this branch at least, and recognize it!”And with the word she drew from under her mantleThe golden bough; his swollen wrath subsided.No more was said; he saw the bough, and marvelledAt the holy gift, so long unseen; came scullingThe dark-blue boat to the shore, and drove the spirits,Lining the thwarts, ashore, and cleared the gangway,And took Aeneas aboard; as that big manStepped in, the leaky skiff groaned under the weight,And the strained seams let in the muddy water,But they made the crossing safely, seer and soldier,To the far margin, colorless and shapeless,Grey sedge and dark-brown ooze. They heard the bayingOf Cerberus, that great hound, in his cavern crouching,Making the shore resound, as all three throatsBelled horribly; and serpents rose and bristledAlong the triple neck. The priestess threw himA sop with honey and drugged meal; he openedThe ravenous throat, gulped, and subsided, fillingThe den with his huge bulk. Aeneas, crossing,Passed on beyond the bank of the dread riverWhence none return.
A wailing of thin voicesCame to their ears, the souls of infants crying,Those whom the day of darkness took from the breastBefore their share of living. And there were manyWhom some false sentence brought to death. Here MinosJudges them once again; a silent juryReviews the evidence. And there are others,Guilty of nothing, but who hated living,The suicides. How gladly, now, they would sufferPoverty, hardship, in the world of light!But this is not permitted; they are boundNine times around by the black unlovely river;Styx holds them fast.
They came to the Fields of Mourning,So-called, where those whom cruel love had wastedHid in secluded pathways, under myrtle,And even in death were anxious. Procris, Phaedra,Eriphyle, displaying wounds her sonHad given her, Caeneus, Laodamia,Caeneus, a young man once, and now againA young man, after having been a woman.And here, new come from her own wound, was Dido,Wandering in the wood. The Trojan hero,Standing near by, saw her, or thought he saw her,Dim in the shadows, like the slender crescentOf moon when cloud drifts over. Weeping, he greets her:—“Unhappy Dido, so they told me trulyThat your own hand had brought you death. Was I—Alas!—the cause? I swear by all the stars,By the world above, by everything held sacredHere under the earth, unwillingly, O queen,I left your kingdom. But the gods’ commands,Driving me now through these forsaken places,This utter night, compelled me on. I could notBelieve my loss would cause so great a sorrow.Linger a moment, do not leave me; whither,Whom, are you fleeing? I am permitted onlyThis last word with you.”
But the queen, unmovingAs flint or marble, turned away, her eyesFixed on the ground: the tears were vain, the words,Meant to be soothing, foolish; she turned away,His enemy forever, to the shadowsWhere Sychaeus, her former husband, took herWith love for love, and sorrow for her sorrow.And still Aeneas wept for her, being troubledBy the injustice of her doom; his pityFollowed her going.
They went on. They cameTo the farthest fields, whose tenants are the warriors,Illustrious throng. Here Tydeus came to meet him,Parthenopaeus came, and pale Adrastus,A fighter’s ghost, and many, many others,Mourned in the world above, and doomed in battle,Leaders of Troy, in long array; AeneasSighed as he saw them: Medon; Polyboetes,The priest of Ceres; Glaucus; and IdaeusStill keeping arms and chariot; three brothers,Antenor’s sons; Thersilochus; a hostTo right and left of him, and when they see him,One sight is not enough; they crowd around him,Linger, and ask the reasons for his coming.But Agamemnon’s men, the Greek battalions,Seeing him there, and his arms in shadow gleaming,Tremble in panic, turn to flee for refuge,As once they used to, toward their ships, but whereAre the ships now? They try to shout, in terror;But only a thin and piping treble issuesTo mock their mouths, wide-open.
One he knewWas here, Deiphobus, a son of Priam,With his whole body mangled, and his featuresCruelly slashed, and both hands cut, and earsTorn from his temples, and his nostrils slitBy shameful wounds. Aeneas hardly knew him,Shivering there, and doing his best to hideHis marks of punishment; unhailed, he hailed him:—“Deiphobus, great warrior, son of Teucer,Whose cruel punishment was this? Whose licenseAbused you so? I heard, it seems, a storyOf that last night, how you had fallen, wearyWith killing Greeks at last; I built a tomb,Although no body lay there, in your honor,Three times I cried, aloud, over your spirit,Where now your name and arms keep guard. I could not,Leaving my country, find my friend, to give himProper interment in the earth he came from.”And Priam’s son replied:—“Nothing, dear comrade,Was left undone; the dead man’s shade was givenAll ceremony due. It was my own fortuneAnd a Spartan woman’s deadliness that sunk meUnder these evils; she it was who left meThese souvenirs. You know how falsely happyWe were on that last night; I need not tell you.When that dread horse came leaping over our walls,Pregnant with soldiery, she led the dancing,A solemn rite, she called it, with Trojan womenScreaming their bacchanals; she raised the torchesHigh on the citadel; she called the Greeks.Then—I was worn with trouble, drugged in slumber,Resting in our ill-omened bridal chamber,With sleep as deep and sweet as death upon me—Then she, that paragon of helpmates, deftlyMoved all the weapons from the house; my sword,Even, she stole from underneath my pillow,Opened the door, and called in Menelaus,Hoping, no doubt, to please her loving husband,To win forgetfulness of her old sinning.It is quickly told: they broke into the chamber,The two of them, and with them, as accomplice,Ulysses came, the crime-contriving bastard.O gods, pay back the Greeks; grant the petitionIf goodness asks for vengeance! But you, Aeneas,A living man—what chance has brought you here?Vagrant of ocean, god-inspired,—which are you?What chance has worn you down, to come, in sadness,To these confusing sunless dwelling-places?”
While they were talking, Aurora’s rosy carHad halfway crossed the heaven; all their timeMight have been spent in converse, but the SibylHurried them forward:—“Night comes on, Aeneas;We waste the hours with tears. We are at the cross-road,Now; here we turn to the right, where the pathway leadsOn to Elysium, under Pluto’s ramparts.Leftward is Tartarus, and retribution,The terminal of the wicked, and their dungeon.”Deiphobus left them, saying, “O great priestess,Do not be angry with me; I am going;I shall not fail the roll-call of the shadows.Pride of our race, go on; may better fortuneAttend you!” and, upon the word, he vanished.
As he looked back, Aeneas saw, to his left,Wide walls beneath a cliff, a triple rampart,A river running fire, Phlegethon’s torrent,Rocks roaring in its course, a gate, tremendous,Pillars of adamant, a tower of iron,Too strong for men, too strong for even godsTo batter down in warfare, and behind themA Fury, sentinel in bloody garments,Always on watch, by day, by night. He heardSobbing and groaning there, the crack of the lash,The clank of iron, the sound of dragging shackles.The noise was terrible; Aeneas halted,Asking, “What forms of crime are these, O maiden?What harrying punishment, what horrible outcry?”She answered:—“O great leader of the Trojans,I have never crossed that threshold of the wicked;No pure soul is permitted entrance thither,But Hecate, by whose order I was givenCharge of Avernus’ groves, my guide, my teacher,Told me how gods exact the toll of vengeance.The monarch here, merciless Rhadamanthus,Punishes guilt, and hears confession; he forcesAcknowledgment of crime; no man in the world,No matter how cleverly he hides his evil,No matter how much he smiles at his own slyness,Can fend atonement off; the hour of deathBegins his sentence. Tisiphone, the Fury,Leaps at the guilty with her scourge; her serpentsAre whips of menace as she calls her sisters.Imagine the gates, on jarring hinge, rasp open,You would see her in the doorway, a shape, a sentry,Savage, implacable. Beyond, still fiercer,The monstrous Hydra dwells; her fifty throatsAre black, and open wide, and TartarusIs black, and open wide, and it goes downTo darkness, sheer deep down, and twice the distanceThat earth is from Olympus. At the bottomThe Titans crawl, Earth’s oldest breed, hurled underBy thunderbolts; here lie the giant twins,Aloeus’ sons, who laid their hands on heavenAnd tried to pull down Jove; Salmoneus hereAtones for high presumption,—it was heWho aped Jove’s noise and fire, wheeling his horsesTriumphant through his city in Elis, cheeringAnd shaking the torch, and claiming divine homage,The arrogant fool, to think his brass was lightning,His horny-footed horses beat out thunder!Jove showed him what real thunder was, what lightningSpoke from immortal cloud, what whirlwind furyCame sweeping from the heaven to overtake him.Here Tityos, Earth’s giant son, lies sprawlingOver nine acres, with a monstrous vultureGnawing, with crooked beak, vitals and liverThat grow as they are eaten; eternal anguish,Eternal feast. Over another hangsA rock, about to fall; and there are tablesSet for a banquet, gold with royal splendor,But if a hand goes out to touch the viands,The Fury drives it back with fire and yelling.Why name them all, Pirithous, the Lapiths,Ixion? The roll of crime would take forever.Whoever, in his lifetime, hated his brother,Or struck his father down; whoever cheatedA client, or was miserly—how manyOf these there seem to be!—whoever wentTo treasonable war, or broke a promiseMade to his lord, whoever perished, slainOver adultery, all these, walled in,Wait here their punishment. Seek not to knowToo much about their doom. The stone is rolled,The wheel keeps turning; Theseus foreverSits in dejection; Phlegyas, accursed,Cries through the halls forever:Being warned,Learn justice; reverence the gods!The manWho sold his country is here in hell; the manWho altered laws for money; and a fatherWho knew his daughter’s bed. All of them dared,And more than dared, achieved, unspeakableAmbitions. If I had a hundred tongues,A hundred iron throats, I could not tellThe fullness of their crime and punishment.”And then she added:—“Come: resume the journey,Fulfill the mission; let us hurry onward.I see the walls the Cyclops made, the portalsUnder the archway, where, the orders tell us,Our tribute must be set.” They went togetherThrough the way’s darkness, came to the doors, and halted,And at the entrance Aeneas, having sprinkledHis body with fresh water, placed the boughGolden before the threshold. The will of the goddessHad been performed, the proper task completed.
They came to happy places, the joyful dwelling,The lovely greenery of the groves of the blessèd.Here ampler air invests the fields with light,Rose-colored, with familiar stars and sun.Some grapple on the grassy wrestling-groundIn exercise and sport, and some are dancing,And others singing; in his trailing robeOrpheus strums the lyre; the seven clear notesAccompany the dance, the song. And heroesAre there, great-souled, born in the happier years,Ilus, Assaracus; the city’s founder,Prince Dardanus. Far off, Aeneas wonders,Seeing the phantom arms, the chariots,The spears fixed in the ground, the chargers browsing,Unharnessed, over the plain. Whatever, living,The men delighted in, whatever pleasureWas theirs in horse and chariot, still holds themHere under the world. To right and left, they banquetIn the green meadows, and a joyful chorusRises through groves of laurel, whence the riverRuns to the upper world. The band of heroesDwell here, all those whose mortal wounds were sufferedIn fighting for the fatherland; and poets,The good, the pure, the worthy of Apollo;Those who discovered truth and made life nobler;Those who served others—all, with snowy filletsBinding their temples, throng the lovely valley.And these the Sibyl questioned, most of allMusaeus, for he towered above the centerOf that great throng:—“O happy souls, O poet,Where does Anchises dwell? For him we come here.For him we have traversed Erebus’ great rivers.”And he replied:—“It is all our home, the shadyGroves, and the streaming meadows, and the softnessAlong the river-banks. No fixed abodeIs ours at all; but if it is your pleasure,Cross over the ridge with me; I will guide you thereBy easy going.” And so Musaeus led themAnd from the summit showed them fields, all shining,And they went on over and down.
Deep in a valley of green, father AnchisesWas watching, with deep earnestness, the spiritsWhose destiny was light, and counting them over,All of his race to come, his dear descendants,Their fates and fortunes and their works and ways,And as he saw Aeneas coming toward himOver the meadow, his hands reached out with yearning,He was moved to tears, and called:—“At last, my son,—Have you really come, at last? and the long road nothingTo a son who loves his father? Do I, truly,See you, and hear your voice? I was thinking so,I was hoping so, I was counting off the days,And I was right about it. O my son!What a long journey, over land and water,Yours must have been! What buffeting of danger!I feared, so much, the Libyan realm would hurt you.”And his son answered:—“It was your spirit, father,Your sorrowful shade, so often met, that led meTo find these portals. The ships ride safe at anchor,Safe in the Tuscan sea. Embrace me, father;Let hand join hand in love; do not forsake me.”And as he spoke, the tears streamed down. Three timesHe reached out toward him, and three times the imageFled like the breath of the wind or a dream on wings.
He saw, in a far valley, a separate groveWhere the woods stir and rustle, and a river,The Lethe, gliding past the peaceful places,And tribes of people thronging, hovering over,Innumerable as the bees in summerWorking the bright-hued flowers, and the shiningOf the white lilies, murmuring and humming.Aeneas, filled with wonder, asks the reasonFor what he does not know, who are the peopleIn such a host, and to what river coming?Anchises answers:—“These are spirits, readyOnce more for life; they drink of Lethe’s waterThe soothing potion of forgetfulness.I have longed, for long, to show them to you, name them,Our children’s children; Italy discovered,So much the greater happiness, my son.”“But, O my father, is it thinkableThat souls would leave this blessedness, be willingA second time to bear the sluggish body,Trade Paradise for earth? Alas, poor wretches,Why such a mad desire for light?” AnchisesGives detailed answer: “First, my son, a spiritSustains all matter, heaven and earth and ocean,The moon, the stars; mind quickens mass, and moves it.Hence comes the race of man, of beast, of wingèdCreatures of air, of the strange shapes which oceanBears down below his mottled marble surface.All these are blessed with energy from heaven;The seed of life is a spark of fire, but the bodyA clod of earth, a clog, a mortal burden.Hence humans fear, desire, grieve, and are joyful,And even when life is over, all the evilIngrained so long, the adulterated mixture,The plagues and pestilences of the bodyRemain, persist. So there must be a cleansing,By penalty, by punishment, by fire,By sweep of wind, by water’s absolution,Before the guilt is gone. Each of us suffersHis own peculiar ghost. But the day comesWhen we are sent through wide Elysium,The Fields of the Blessed, a few of us, to lingerUntil the turn of time, the wheel of ages,Wears off the taint, and leaves the core of spiritPure sense, pure flame. A thousand years pass overAnd the god calls the countless host to LetheWhere memory is annulled, and souls are willingOnce more to enter into mortal bodies.”
The discourse ended; the father drew his sonAnd his companion toward the hum, the centerOf the full host; they came to rising groundWhere all the long array was visible,Anchises watching, noting, every comer.“Glory to come, my son, illustrious spiritsOf Dardan lineage, Italian offspring,Heirs of our name, begetters of our future!These I will name for you and tell our fortunes:First, leaning on a headless spear, and standingNearest the light, that youth, the first to riseTo the world above, is Silvius; his nameIs Alban; in his veins Italian bloodWill run with Trojan; he will be the sonOf your late age; Lavinia will bear him,A king and sire of kings; from him our raceWill rule in Alba Longa. Near him, Procas,A glory to the Trojan race; and Capys,And Numitor, and Silvius Aeneas,Resembling you in name, in arms, in goodness,If ever he wins the Alban kingdom over.What fine young men they are! What strength, what prowess!The civic oak already shades their foreheads.These will found cities, Gabii, Fidenae,Nomentum; they will crown the hills with towersAbove Collatia, Inuus fortress, Bola,Cora, all names to be, thus far ungiven.
“And there will be a son of Mars; his motherIs Ilia, and his name is Romulus,Assaracus’ descendant. On his helmetSee, even now, twin plumes; his father’s honorConfers distinction on him for the world.Under his auspices Rome, that glorious city,Will bound her power by earth, her pride by heaven,Happy in hero sons, one wall surroundingHer seven hills, even as Cybele, ridingThrough Phrygian cities, wears her crown of towers,Rejoicing in her offspring, and embracingA hundred children of the gods, her children,Celestials, all of them, at home in heaven.Turn the eyes now this way; behold the Romans,Your very own. These are Iulus’ children,The race to come. One promise you have heardOver and over: here is its fulfillment,The son of a god, Augustus Caesar, founderOf a new age of gold, in lands where SaturnRuled long ago; he will extend his empireBeyond the Indies, beyond the normal measureOf years and constellations, where high AtlasTurns on his shoulders the star-studded world.Maeotia and the Caspian seas are tremblingAs heaven’s oracles predict his coming,And all the seven mouths of Nile are troubled.Not even Hercules, in all his travels,Covered so much of the world, from ErymanthusTo Lerna; nor did Bacchus, driving his tigersFrom Nysa’s summit. How can hesitationKeep us from deeds to make our prowess greater?What fear can block us from Ausonian land?
“And who is that one yonder, wearing the olive,Holding the sacrifice? I recognize him,That white-haired king of Rome, who comes from Cures,A poor land, to a mighty empire, giverOf law to the young town. His name is Numa.Near him is Tullus; he will rouse to armsA race grown sluggish, little used to triumph.Beyond him Ancus, even now too boastful,Too fond of popular favor. And then the Tarquins,And the avenger Brutus, proud of spirit,Restorer of the balance. He shall beFirst holder of the consular power; his childrenWill stir up wars again, and he, for freedomAnd her sweet sake, will call down judgment on them,Unhappy, however future men may praise him,In love of country and intense ambition.
“There are the Decii, and there the Drusi,A little farther off, and stern Torquatus,The man with the axe, and Camillus, the regainerOf standards lost. And see those two, resplendentIn equal arms, harmonious friendly spiritsNow, in the shadow of night, but if they everCome to the world of light, alas, what warfare,What battle-lines, what slaughter they will fashion,Each for the other, one from Alpine rampartsDescending, and the other ranged against himWith armies from the east, father and sonThrough marriage, Pompey and Caesar. O my children,Cast out the thoughts of war, and do not murderThe flower of our country. O my son,Whose line descends from heaven, let the swordFall from the hand, be leader in forbearing!
“Yonder is one who, victor over Corinth,Will ride in triumph home, famous for carnageInflicted on the Greeks; near him another,Destroyer of old Argus and MycenaeWhere Agamemnon ruled; he will strike downA king descended from Achilles; PydnaShall be revenge for Pallas’ ruined temple,For Trojan ancestors. Who would pass over,Without a word, Cossus, or noble Cato,The Gracchi, or those thunderbolts of warfare,The Scipios, Libya’s ruin, or FabriciusMighty with little, or Serranus, ploughingThe humble furrow? My tale must hurry on:I see the Fabii next, and their great QuintusWho brought us back an empire by delaying.Others, no doubt, will better mould the bronzeTo the semblance of soft breathing, draw, from marble,The living countenance; and others pleadWith greater eloquence, or learn to measure,Better than we, the pathways of the heaven,The risings of the stars: remember, Roman,To rule the people under law, to establishThe way of peace, to battle down the haughty,To spare the meek. Our fine arts, these, forever.”
Anchises paused a moment, and they marvelled.And he went on:—“See, how Marcellus triumphs,Glorious over all, with the great trophiesWon when he slew the captain of the Gauls,Leader victorious over leading foeman.When Rome is in great trouble and confusionHe will establish order, Gaul and CarthageGo down before his sword, and triple trophiesBe given Romulus in dedication.”
There was a young man going with Marcellus,Brilliant in shining armor, bright in beauty,But sorrowful, with downcast eyes. AeneasBroke in, to ask his father: “Who is this youthAttendant on the hero? A son of his?One of his children’s children? How the crowdMurmurs and hums around him! what distinction,What presence, in his person! But dark nightHovers around his head with mournful shadow.Who is he, father?” And Anchises answered:—“Great sorrow for our people! O my son,Ask not to know it. This one fate will onlyShow to the world; he will not be permittedAny long sojourn. Rome would be too mighty,Too great in the gods’ sight, were this gift hers.What lamentation will the field of MarsRaise to the city! Tiber, gliding byThe new-built tomb, the funeral state, bear witness!No youth from Trojan stock will ever raiseHis ancestors so high in hope, no RomanBe such a cause for pride. Alas for goodness,Alas for old-time honor, and the armInvincible in war! Against him no one,Whether on foot or foaming horse, would comeIn battle and depart unscathed. Poor boy,If you should break the cruel fates; if only—You are to be Marcellus. Let me scatterLilies, or dark-red flowers, bringing honorTo my descendant’s shade; let the gift be offered,However vain the tribute.”
So through the whole wide realm they went together,Anchises and his son; from fields of airLearning and teaching of the fame and glory,The wars to come, the toils to face, or flee from,Latinus’ city and the Latin peoples,The love of what would be.
There are two portals,Twin gates of Sleep, one made of horn, where easyRelease is given true shades, the other gleamingWhite ivory, whereby the false dreams issueTo the upper air. Aeneas and the SibylPart from Anchises at the second portal.He goes to the ships, again, rejoins his comrades,Sails to Caieta’s harbor, and the vesselsRest on their mooring-lines.