CHAPTER VIII.THE MUSTER OF THE LATIN TRIBES.

“Young Almo in his comely grace,And old Galæsus’ mangled face”—

and the appeal is answered by a universal cry for “War!”

Turnusarrives amongst them from Ardea at this critical moment, and shouts fiercely for instant battle. In vain does King Latinus quote the oracle, and refuse to fight against the destinies. He will be no party to a bloody and useless war. But the impetuosity of an angry populace is too strong for him. Powerless to stem the popular current, he nevertheless delivers his own soul, and abdicates his sovereignty. The guilt of the blood that shall be shed must rest on those who stir the war. He warns Turnus that he may yet live to rue the part he has taken, when too late: for himself, death will soon put an end to all troubles.

By an old tradition,—handed on, as the poet will have it, from these old days of Latium to the Rome of Augustus,—the powers of War were held to be confined within the gates of Janus, the porter of the Immortals, only to be let loose by solemn act of state authority.

“Two gates there stand of War—’twas soOur fathers named them long ago—The war-god’s terrors round them spreadAn atmosphere of sacred dread.A hundred bolts the entrance guard,And Janus there keeps watch and ward.These, when his peers on war decide,The consul, all in antique prideOf Gabine cincture deftly tiedAnd purple-striped attire,With grating noise himself unbars,And calls aloud on Father Mars:The warrior train takes up the cry,And horns with brazen symphonyTheir hoarse assent conspire.”

Since Latinus will not do his office, Juno in person—so the poet has it—descends from heaven, smites upon the barred portals, and “lets slip the dogs of war.”

“Ausonia, all inert before,Takes fire and blazes to the core:And some on foot their march essay,Some, mounted, storm along the way;To arms! cry one and all:With unctuous lard their shields they clean,And make their javelins bright and sheen,Their axes on the whetstone grind;Look how that banner takes the wind!Hark to yon trumpet’s call!Five mighty towns, with anvils set,In emulous haste their weapons whet:Crustumium, Tibur the renowned,And strong Atina there are found,And Ardea, and Antemnæ crownedWith turrets round her wall.Steel caps they frame their brows to fit,And osier twigs for bucklers knit:Or twist the hauberk’s brazen mailAnd mould them greaves of silver pale:To these has passed the homage paidErewhile to ploughshare, scythe, and spade:Each brings his father’s battered blade,And smelts in fire anew:And now the clarions pierce the skies:From rank to rank the watchword flies;This tears his helmet from the wall,That drags his war-horse from the stall,Dons three-piled mail and ample shield,And girds him for the embattled fieldWith falchion tried and true.”

The whole remaining portion of this seventh book is in Virgil’s most spirited style. And it is here that the harp of our northern minstrel answers best to Mr Conington’s touch. The gathering of the clans—for it is nothing else—the rapid sketches of the chiefs as they pass in succession with their array of followers—the details of costume—the legendary tale which the poet has to tell of more than one of them as he passes them in review—even the devices borne on the shields,—are all features in which Scott delighted as thoroughly as Virgil, and which his well-known rhythm suits better than any other which a translator could choose. Some few portions of this stirring warlike diorama must content the readers of these pages. The first who passes is the terrible chief of Agylla, who fears neither god nor man, and whose notorious cruelties have so exasperated his own people against him that he is now a refugee in the court of Turnus:—

“Mezentius first from Tyrrhene coast,Who mocks at heaven, arrays his host,And braves the battle’s storm;His son, young Lausus, at his side,Excelled by none in beauty’s pride,Save Turnus’ comely form:Lausus, the tamer of the steed,The conqueror of the silvan breed,Leads from Agylla’s towers in vainA thousand youths, a valiant train:Ah happy, had the son been blestIn hearkening to his sire’s behest,Or had the sire from whom he cameHad other nature, other name!”

In the description of the next leader we have some notice of early heraldry:—

“Next drives along the grassy meadsHis palm-crowned car and conquering steedsFair Aventinus, princely heirOf Hercules the brave and fair,And for his proud escutcheon takesHis father’s Hydra and her snakes.’Twas he that priestess Rhea bare,A stealthy birth, to upper air,’Mid shades of woody AventineMingling her own with heavenly blood,When triumph-flushed from Geryon slainAlcides touched the Latian plain,And bathed Iberia’s distant kineIn Tuscan Tiber’s flood.Long pikes and poles his bands uprear,The shapely blade, the Sabine spear.Himself on foot, with lion’s skin,Whose long white teeth with ghastly grinClasp like a helmet brow and chin,Joins the proud chiefs in rude attire,And flaunts the emblem of his sire.”

Coras and Catillus, twin-brothers from the old town of Tibur; Cæculus, from the neighbouring Præneste—reputed son of Vulcan, because said to have been found as an infant lying amidst the forge embers—whose following take the field with slings and javelins, each man with his left foot bare to give him firmer stepping-hold; Clausus the Sabine, from whom sprang the great house of the Claudii—some of whom assuredly were listening to the poet’s recitation; Halæsus, of the seed of Agamemnon, sworn foe to all who bear the hated name of Trojan; and a host of chiefs of lesser name and inferior powers, join the march. Messapus, the “horse-tamer,” brings with him a powerful band of retainers from many a city, who chant the deeds of their leaders as they go—

“Like snow-white swans in liquid air,When homeward from their food they fare,And far and wide melodious notesCome rippling from their slender throats,While the broad stream and Asia’s fenReverberate to the sound again.Sure none had thought that countless crowdA mail-clad company;It rather seemed a dusky cloudOf migrant fowl, that, hoarse and loud,Press landward from the sea.. . . . . . . . . .“Came too from old Marruvia’s realm,An olive-garland round his helm,Bold Umbro, priest at once and knight,By king Archippus sent to fight:Who baleful serpents knew to steepBy hand and voice in charmèd sleep,Soothed their fierce wrath with subtlest skill,And from their bite drew oft the ill.But ah! his medicines could not healThe death-wound dealt by Dardan steel;His slumberous charms availed him nought,Nor herbs on Marsian mountains sought,And cropped with magic shears:For thee Anguitia’s woody cave,For thee the glassy Fucine wave,For thee the lake shed tears.”

Nearly last of the warlike array, who all acknowledge him as their leader, comes the prince of the Rutuli, Æneas’s rival and enemy:—

“In foremost rank see Turnus move,His comely head the rest above:On his tall helm with triple coneChimæra in relief is shown;The monster’s gaping jaws expireHot volumes of Ætnean fire:And still she flames and raves the moreThe deeper floats the field with gore.With bristling hide and lifted horns,Io, all gold, his shield adorns,E’en as in life she stood;There too is Argus, warder stern,And Inachus from graven urn,Her father, pours his flood.”

He brings with him the largest host of all—a cloud ofwell-armed footmen of various tribes, whose shields seem to cover the plain.

This pretty picture of Camilla, the Volscian huntress (whom Dryden very ungallantly terms a “virago”), vowed from her childhood to Diana—the prototype of Tasso’s Clorinda, but far more attractive—closes at once the warlike pageant and the book:—

“Last marches forth for Latium’s sakeCamilla fair, the Volscian maid,A troop of horsemen in her wakeIn pomp of gleaming steel arrayed;Stern warrior-queen! those tender handsNe’er plied Minerva’s ministries:A virgin in the fight she stands,Or wingèd winds in speed outvies;Nay, she could fly o’er fields of grainNor crush in flight the tapering wheat,Or skim the surface of the mainNor let the billows touch her feet.Where’er she moves, from house and landThe youths and ancient matrons throng,And fixed in greedy wonder stand,Beholding as she speeds along:In kingly dye that scarf was dipped:’Tis gold confines those tresses’ flow:Her pastoral wand with steel is tipped,And Lycian are her shafts and bow.”[40]

The story of Camilla’s infancy, which is given us subsequently, is quite in accordance with this description. Her father, driven from his territory, like Mezentius, by an angry people, had carried his infant daughter with him in his flight. Hard pressed by his pursuers, he came to the banks of a river. To swim across the stream, though swollen by winter torrents, were easy for himself: but how to carry his child? “With brief prayer and vow to the huntress Diana, he tied her to a spear, and threw her across. The child alighted safely on the other side, and the father followed. Fed on mares’ milk, and exercised from infancy in the use of the bow, Camilla had grown up in the forest, vowed to maidenhood and to Diana.

Theturn of events gives the Trojan chief much natural disquiet. All Latium is in arms against his little force of adventurers. He lies down within his lines to a disturbed and anxious rest, where he has a remarkable vision. A figure rises, wrapped in a grey mantle, with his brows crowned with reed. It is “Father Tiber,” the tutelary genius of the Rome that shall be. He bids his visitor be of good cheer: his coming has been long looked for. He renews, for his encouragement, the old oracle of Anchises:—

“On woody banks before your eyeA thirty-farrowed sow shall lie,Her whole white length on earth stretched out,Her young, as white, her teats about,Sign that when thirty years come round‘White Alba’ shall Ascanius found.”

He will find allies, too, within reach. A colony from Arcadia have migrated to Italy under their king Evander, and have founded in the neighbouring mountainsa city called Pallanteum. He will reach the place by sailing up the stream, and from them, ever at feud with their Latian neighbours, he will get the aid he requires.

Æneas wakes from sleep, arms the crews of two of his galleys, and begins his voyage up the course of the friendly Tiber, who purposely calms his waves and moderates his current. The sow with her thirty young is soon found, and duly sacrificed, as the river-genius has warned him, to propitiate the wrath of Juno. Evander, with his son Pallas and all his people, is keeping high festival to Hercules, when the masts of the Trojan galleys are suddenly seen among the trees as they turn a bend of the river. The strangers are hailed by Pallas; and Æneas, bearing in his hand the olive-bough of a suppliant, is led by the young chief before his father. In a well-studied speech he claims kindred with the Arcadian hero, albeit a Trojan and Greek might at first sight seem natural enemies. Dardanus of Troy traced his descent from Atlas—Evander’s genealogy goes back to the same great ancestor. Their mutual enmity with the Latians should be also a bond of union: and lo! Æneas has shown his goodwill and confidence in thus placing himself fearlessly in Evander’s power. Evander is the Nestor of the Æneid;—somewhat given to long stories and reminiscences of his own youth. He had known his present visitor’s father well, in the years gone by, when the Trojan court had visited the country of Priam’s sister Hesionè.

“A boy was I, a stripling lad,My cheek with youth’s first blossom clad;I gazed at Priam and his trainOf Trojan lords, and gazed again:But great Anchises, princely tall,Was more than Priam, more than all.With boyish zeal I schemed and plannedTo greet the chief, and grasp his hand.I ventured, and with eager zestTo Pheneus brought my honoured guest.A Lycian quiver he bestowedAt parting, with its arrowy load,A gold-wrought scarf, and bridle-reinsOf gold, which Pallas still retains.”

He tells his visitor also, at very considerable length, the story of Hercules slaying the monster Cacus, son of Vulcan, half man and half beast, whose breath was as flames of fire, and whose diet was human flesh—the prototype of the giants of later fiction. He points out also to his guest the local features of the country—for they are standing on the site which is to be Rome, and Pallanteum is to become the Palatine mount of future history. Whatever of mythical legend the poet mixed up in his topography, he knew the interest with which his patrician audience—for antiquarianism was almost as fashionable in the court of the Cæsars as it is now—would listen while, by the mouth of Evander, he dwelt on the old historic localities of the imperial city: the Carmental gate, named after the nymph who was Evander’s mother; the grove where Romulus in after-days made his first “Asylum” for the motley band whom he gathered round him; theTarpeian rock; the hill on which was to stand the Capitol; the Janiculum, with its Saturnian walls, the key of Rome’s defences. “Now”—says the poet, speaking in his own person of the glories of the great city in his own day,—

“Now all is golden—then ’twas allO’ergrown with trees and brushwood tall.E’en their rude hinds the spot revered:. . . . . . . . . .Here in this grove, these wooded steeps,Some god unknown his mansion keeps;Arcadia’s children deemTheir eyes have looked on Jove’s own form,When oft he summons cloud and storm,And seen his ægis gleam.”

A league is made between the Trojans and their new friends. King Evander confesses that his own power is small, but Æneas has arrived at a fortunate conjuncture. The Etruscans of Agylla, who have just expelled their tyrant Mezentius for his cruelties, have determined to pursue him to the death. But they have been warned by their soothsayer to choose a foreign leader; and here they are at the gates of Pallanteum, come to beseech Evander to head their expedition. He is himself too old—his son Pallas too inexperienced; he at once presents to them Æneas as a heaven-sent leader. The omens are all favourable, and both troops and commander are well pleased. Æneas selects the best of his crew, whom Evander furnishes with war-horses; the rest he sends back in the galleys to bear the tidings of his own movementsto his son Iulus, and to charge him and the Trojans to keep close within their rampart, in case of attack during his absence. Taking command of his Etruscan allies, and followed by four hundred Arcadian horse under the young Pallas, whom his father gladly sends, as the youths of noble houses were sent in the days of knighthood, to learn the art of war under so great a captain, Æneas sets out on his march for Turnus’s capital. The old king does not part from his son without sad misgivings; he has trusted Æneas with more than his life.

Venus has not been neglectful of her son. She has persuaded Vulcan to forge for him weapons and armour of such sort as only the immortal smith can make. The fire-god can never resist her blandishments; and he goes down to the forge where the Cyclops are ever at work, in the caverns beneath the Lipari Islands, off the coast of Sicily. There is much business in hand there already. Some of the one-eyed workmen are forging bolts for Jupiter, composed of four elements,—

“Three rays they took of forky hail,Of watery cloud three rays,Three of the wingèd southern gale,Three of the ruddy blaze.”[41]

Some are finishing a war-chariot for Mars; others are shaping an ægis for Minerva—a shield of dragon’s scales and rings of gold. But their master bids themput all these tasks aside; War, and Wisdom, and even Government itself, must be content to come to a standstill, until the behests of Beauty have been obeyed.

The idea of the Shield of Æneas, which Venus comes and lays before him while he sleeps, is of course borrowed directly from Homer’s Shield of Achilles. But the working out of it is quite original. Vulcan’s subject, in this case, is not, as in the Shield of the Iliad, an epitome of human life, but a prophetic history of Rome. The whole passage in which it is elaborately described is of remarkable beauty even to our modern taste, and upon a Roman’s ear and imagination must have had a wonderful effect. The story is told in eight (or perhaps nine) compartments, filled with the leading events in the great city’s existence. The two first contain the birth of Romulus, and the union of the Romans with the Sabines, which began with the seizure of the Sabine women:—

“There too the mother-wolf he madeIn Mars’s cave supinely laid:Around her udders undismayedThe gamesome infants hung,While she, her loose neck backward thrown,Caressed them fondly, one by one,And shaped them with her tongue.Hard by, the towers of Rome he drewAnd Sabine maids in public viewSnatched ’mid the Circus games:So ’twixt the fierce Romulean broodAnd Tatius with his Cures rudeA sudden war upflames.And now the kings, their conflict o’er,Stand up in arms Jove’s shrine before,From goblets pour the sacred wine,And make their peace o’er bleeding swine.”

The doom of Mettius the Alban, and the keeping of the Tiber bridge by Horatius against Lars Porsena, occupy the two next compartments. Next comes the defence of the Capitol against the Gauls by Manlius:—

“A silver goose in gilded wallsWith flapping wings announced the Gauls;And through the wood the invaders crept,And climbed the height while others slept.Golden their hair on head and chin:Gold collars deck their milk-white skin:Short cloaks with colours checkedShine on their backs: two spears each wieldsOf Alpine make: and oblong shieldsTheir brawny limbs protect.”

In the succeeding compartments are wrought the procession of the Salii with the sacred shields, and the regions of the world below, where Catiline lies in torment, while Cato has his portion with the just. And within the whole, round theumboor boss of the shield, there runs a sea of molten gold in which sport silver dolphins, framing the centre design—the glories of Augustus:—

“There in the midmost meet the sightThe embattled fleets, the Actian fight:Leucate flames with warlike show,And golden-red the billows glow.Here Cæsar, leading from their homeThe fathers, people, gods of Rome,Stands on the lofty stern:The constellation of his sireBeams o’er his head, and tongues of fireAbout his temples burn,With favouring Gods and winds to speedAgrippa forms his line:The golden beaks, war’s proudest meed,High on his forehead shine.There, with barbaric troops increased,Antonius, from the vanquished East,And distant Red-sea side,To battle drags the Bactrian bandsAnd Egypt; and behind him stands(Foul shame!) the Egyptian bride.”

There the gods of Rome—conspicuous amongst whom is the archer Apollo, the tutelary deity of the house of Cæsar—put to flight the dog-headed Anubis, and the other monstrous gods of Egypt. There, too, is blazoned the “triple triumph” of Augustus, graced by a long procession of captives of all tribes, from Scythia to the Euphrates.

“Such legends traced on Vulcan’s shieldThe wondering chief surveys:On truth in symbol half revealedHe feeds his hungry gaze,And high upon his shoulders rearsThe fame and fates of unborn years.”

Æneashad been right in his forebodings of danger. Turnus has heard of the chief’s absence, and takes advantage of it to lead his force at once against the new-built fortification in which the rest of the Trojans lie. His first attempt is to burn their galleys, where they lie drawn ashore on the river-bank, close to their lines. But the ships are built of the sacred pines of Ida, the special favourites of the great goddess Cybele; and she has endued them, by favour of Jupiter, with the power of transformation into sea-nymphs when their work is done. No sooner do the torches of the enemy touch them than they slide off into the water, and in their new shape float out to sea. Even this portent does not scare the leader of the Rutuli. “Lo!” he cries—“Heaven takes from our enemies even their hopes of flight!” He does but draw his leaguer all the closer round the Trojan lines. Throughout the night the watch-fires blaze at close intervals, and captains of the guard, each with a hundred men, are set at their several posts to prevent the escape of the preybefore the general attack which is ordered for the morning.

But the Rutulian chieftains grow weary of a monotonous duty. They have store of wine in their camp, and they bring it out to cheer their night-watch. The sounds of noisy revelry soon rise from every station, until, as the revellers are gradually overpowered by sleep, all is lulled into unusual silence.

Two Trojan sentinels have watched anxiously every sound and movement in the enemy’s lines. They are Nisus and his young friend Euryalus,—late among the competitors in the foot-race—inseparable in peace or war. Nisus sees, as he thinks, an opportunity for stealing through the Rutulian guards, and bearing news to Æneas at Pallanteum of the peril in which his son and his companions lie. He is a keen sportsman, and knows the forest by-paths well. He confides his design to Euryalus, but has no notion of taking the youth with him to share the danger. He, on the other hand, insists upon accompanying his friend. The consent of Iulus and his elder counsellors is readily obtained. Let them but bring back Æneas to the rescue, and no rewards and honours shall be too great for the pair. Turnus’s horse and armour, Latinus’s royal demesne, captives of price, shall be the guerdon of Nisus: for Euryalus,—the prince will adopt him henceforth as his personal esquire and companion in arms. One only request the youth has to make. He has an aged mother in the camp—the only one of the elder matrons who refused to be left in safety with Acestes in Sicily, and whom no dangerscould separate from her son. Will the prince promise her solace and protection, should harm befall Euryalus on the way? The answer of Iulus is given in tears; he has no mother left, and the mother of Euryalus shall be to him as his own. He girds the youth with the sword from his own side, and the friends set out upon their perilous errand, escorted to the gates by the Trojan captains with prayers and blessings.

The enterprise might have succeeded, had not the two friends been tempted, by the helpless state in which they found the Rutulian camp, to slaughter their sleeping enemies as they passed. Rhamnes and Remus—names to be borne hereafter by more historic actors in the history of Rome—with a crowd of victims of lesser note, fall by the swords of Nisus and his companion. Euryalus even stops, with a young man’s vanity, to put on the glittering belt which he has stripped from one of his victims, and the helmet of the sleeping Messapus. Thus precious time is lost, and the moonlight streams upon them as they clear the Rutulian lines, and take the path, which Nisus knows, for Pallanteum.

A detachment of the enemy’s cavalry is on the march to join Turnus. The glimmer of the moonlight on Euryalus’s helmet—his new prize—betrays the friends as they try to steal by, and they are challenged at once by Volscens, the commander. They fly to the neighbouring wood; but the horsemen surround it, and though Nisus escapes them, it is only to find that his friend has fallen into their hands. He rushes back, and in the wild hope ofeffecting a rescue, hides himself in the thicket, whence he launches two spears with fatal effect upon the party who are dragging along their prisoner. Enraged at the sudden attack, and seeing no enemy in the darkness, Volscens lays hold upon Euryalus, and vows revenge. Nisus rushes from his cover, and implores them to turn their swords on him, and to spare a youth whose only crime has been his friendship.

“In vain he spoke: the sword, fierce driven,That alabaster breast had riven.Down falls Euryalus, and liesIn death’s enthralling agonies:Blood trickles o’er his limbs of snow;His head sinks gradually low:Thus, severed by the ruthless plough,Dim fades a purple flower:Their weary necks so poppies bow,O’erladen by the shower.But Nisus on the midmost flies,With Volscens, Volscens in his eyes:In clouds the warriors round him rise,Thick hailing blow on blow:Yet on he bears, no stint, no stay;Like thunderbolt his falchion’s sway:Till as for aid the Rutule shrieksPlunged in his throat the weapon reeks:The dying hand has reft awayThe lifeblood of its foe.Then, pierced to death, asleep he fellOn the dead breast he loved so well.”

With the first dawn Turnus leads his forces to the attack—the heads of Nisus and Euryalus borne in front upon the points of spears, so savage is the Rutulian at the slaughter made by them amongst his sleeping comrades. The mother of Euryalus has heard the news, and sees the ghastly trophies from the ramparts, Iulus performs his promise, and the frantic woman is, under his personal directions, tenderly removed. He himself becomes the hero of the day. The archer’s craft, his love of which had led to the feud with the Latins, is turned to good service in the defence of the camp. Numanus, a brother-in-law of Turnus, is loudly taunting the Trojans in front of their lines:—

“Twice captured Phrygians! to be pentOnce more in leaguered battlement,And plant unblushingly betweenYourselves and death a stony screen!Lo, these the men that draw their swordsTo part our ladies from their lords!What god, what madness brings you hereTo taste of our Italian cheer?No proud Atridæ leads our vans:No false Ulysses talks and plans:E’en from the birth a hardy brood,We take our infants to the flood,And fortify their tender mouldWith icy wave and ruthless cold.Early and late our sturdy boysSeek through the woods a hunter’s joys:Their pastime is to tame the steed,To bend the bow and launch the reed.Our youth, to scanty fare inured,Made strong by labour oft endured,Subdue the soil with spade and rake,Or city walls with battle shake.Through life we grasp our trusty spear:It strikes the foe, it goads the steer:Age cannot chill our valour: no,The helmet sits on locks of snow;And still we love to store our prey,And eat the fruits our arms purvey.You flaunt your robes in all men’s eyes,Your saffron and your purple dyes,Recline on downy couch, or weaveThe dreamy dance from morn to eve:Sleeved tunics guard your tender skins,And ribboned mitres prop your chins.Phrygians!—nay rather Phrygian fair!Hence, to your Dindymus repair!Go where the flute’s congenial throatShrieks through two doors its slender note,Where pipe and cymbal call the crew;These are the instruments for you:Leave men, like us, in arms to deal,Nor bruise your lily hands with steel.”

Iulus, after brief prayer to Jupiter, sends an arrow through the boaster’s temples. But Apollo, taking the shape of the boy’s guardian, Butes, warns him to be content with this first triumph: such weapons, says he of the silver bow, with that jealousy of mortals common to all pagan divinities, are not for boys.

Attack and defence are maintained vigorously on either side. Turnus is everywhere, dealing death where he comes. Mezentius, the infidel, tries to fire the palisade: Messapus, “the horse-tamer,” calls for ladders to scale it. A detachment of Volscians form a “tortoise,” by linking their shields like a penthouse over their heads, and under this cover try to plant their ladders; but the Trojans hoist a huge rock aloft, and dash it down with murderous effect uponthe roof of shields, crushing the bearers underneath. A tall wooden flanking-tower is set on fire by Turnus, and falls over, with its defenders, among the enemy. Two only survive the fall, one of whom—a slave-born warrior, who bears a blank shield—flings himself into the Rutulian ranks, and dies there fighting against overwhelming numbers. The other, Lycus, a swift and active runner, reaches the rampart of the intrenchment, and nearly succeeds in climbing over amongst his friends, when Turnus grasps him and bears him off, in spite of the missiles showered down by his sympathising comrades.

Pandarus and Bitias, two brothers of gigantic stature, have charge of one of the gateways of the intrenched camp. They throw the double gates wide open, and take their stand, one on either side, within. Fast as the more venturous spirits among the enemy rush through, they are either felled by the giant warders, or, if they escape these first, are slain inside by the other Trojans, who even carry the battle outside the gates. Word comes to Turnus of the increasing boldness of the enemy. He rushes to the rescue, slays right and left, and brings Bitias to the ground by hurling at him a hugefalarica—a spear used in the great catapults which formed the artillery of those days. His brother Pandarus by main strength closes the great gates, shutting out some of his unfortunate friends as well as his enemies, and shutting in, to the dismay of the Trojans, their terrible enemy. When he sees Turnus, however, he rushes upon him to avenge his brother’s death; but the Rutulian cleaves him with his keenfalchion down to the chin. Then he turns on the dismayed defenders, and smites them right and left. Had he but bethought himself then to open the gates once more, and let his comrades in, so cowed were the Trojans at the moment that their defeat was certain. But all his heart is set on slaughter, and the Trojans, rallied by Mnestheus (the hero of the galley-race), soon find out that he is alone. Nevertheless he fights his way gallantly towards the river.

“The Trojans follow, shouting loud,And closer still and closer crowd.So when the gathering swains assailA lion with their brazen hail,He, glaring rage, begins to quail,And sullenly departs:For shame his back he will not turn,Yet dares not, howsoe’er he yearn,To charge their serried darts:So Turnus lingeringly retires,And glows with ineffectual fires.Twice on the foe e’en then he falls,Twice routs and drives them round the walls:But from the camp in swarms they pour,Nor Juno dares to help him more.. . . . . . . . . .At length, accoutred as he stood,Headlong he plunged into the flood.The yellow flood the charge received,With buoyant tide his weight upheaved,And cleansing off the encrusted gore,Returned him to his friends once more.”

Thescene changes to Olympus, where Jupiter holds a council of the gods. He is as much troubled as in the Iliad with the dissensions in his own court, and holds the balance with difficulty between his queen and his daughter, each unscrupulous in their partisanship. Venus complains to him bitterly of the peril in which her son Æneas stands, by reason of Juno’s machinations. That goddess replies, with considerable show of reason, that Æneas has brought his troubles upon himself; that Latinus and Turnus and Lavinia were all going on peacefully before he came; and that—if the whole history of the Trojans must needs be discussed again—Venus herself, by her instrument Helen, was the mother of all the mischief. The king of the gods somewhat loses patience, and swears by the great river of Styx, with the awful nod which shakes Olympus, that Trojan and Rutulian shall even fight it out, and the Fates shall decide the question. So he dissolves the Olympian convocation.

The fight at the Trojan encampment is renewed inthe morning as fiercely as ever. But succours are on their way. The ships of the Etruscan leader Tarchon—the name which future kings of Rome were to bear with little alteration—have been sailing all night down the Tyrrhenian Sea, under their new-found chief Æneas. His galley leads the van; and with him in the stern—for he takes the helm himself—sits young Pallas, hearing him tell of the great deeds of old. The poet gives us something like a muster-roll of the Etruscan chiefs and their followings; more interesting perhaps to the ear of a Roman, who would catch up here and there some historical allusion to a place or family with which he claimed some connection, than to the modern reader, who can have no such sympathies. He gives us, too, the figure-heads from which the ships of the most noted captains took their names: the Tiger—a favourite, it would seem, to our English nautical taste even down to the present day—the Centaur, the Apollo, the Triton, the Mincius—the last-named from the river that flowed by Virgil’s own town of Mantua,—

“Fair town! her sons of high degree,Though not unmixed their blood;Three races swell the mingled stream:Four states from each derive their birth:Herself among them sits supreme,Her Tuscan blood her chiefest worth.”

Æneas has a strange rencontre in his night-voyage. Suddenly there rises round his galley a circle of water-nymphs—they are his own vessels, thus transformed, and their errand is to warn him of the danger in whichIulus and his people lie. The sight which meets his eyes as he enters the Tiber at daybreak confirms their tidings: he sees the camp surrounded by enemies. Standing high upon his deck, he raises aloft the wondrous shield. The Trojans recognise in the signal the arrival of the help they so sorely need, and welcome it with prolonged shouts. Then their enemies note it also,—and the fight grows fiercer still. Tarchon—who seems to act as captain of the fleet under Æneas as admiral—looks out a good place to beach the galleys, bids the men give way with a will, and runs them well up, the forepart high and dry—all, except the gallant captain himself, whose vessel breaks her back and goes to pieces.

Turnus has left the command of the storming-party to his lieutenants, and gone down himself with a picked force to oppose Æneas’s landing. The Arcadian contingent, unused to fighting on foot and half in the water, get into confusion, and turn. Young Pallas gallantly rallies them, for the honour of his countrymen. He himself wins his spurs, in this his first field, by deeds which would become Æneas himself. One brief episode in his exploits is pathetic enough. There are fighting on the Rutulian side the twin-brothers Thymber and Larides:—

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