The Aeneid (42 page)
But Lausus rages on, berserk as the savage fury
surges higher now in the Trojan captain’s heart.
The Fates bind up the last threads of Lausus’ life
as Aeneas drives his tempered sword through the youth,
plunging it home hilt-deep. The point impaled his shield,
a flimsy defense for the youngster’s brash threats,
and the shirt his mother wove him of soft gold mesh
and his lap filled up with blood, and then his life
slipped through the air, sorrowing down to the shades
and left his corpse behind.
Ah but then,
when the son of Anchises saw his dying look,
his face—that face so ashen, awesome in death—
he groaned from his depths in pity, reached out his hand
as this picture of love for a father pierced his heart,
and said: “Forlorn young soldier, what can Aeneas,
in all honor, give you to match your glory now?
What gifts are worthy of such a noble spirit?
Keep your armor that gave you so much joy.
I give you back to your fathers’ ash and shades
if it offers any solace. And this, at least,
may comfort you for a death so cruel, unlucky boy:
you went down under the hand of great Aeneas.”
surges higher now in the Trojan captain’s heart.
The Fates bind up the last threads of Lausus’ life
as Aeneas drives his tempered sword through the youth,
plunging it home hilt-deep. The point impaled his shield,
a flimsy defense for the youngster’s brash threats,
and the shirt his mother wove him of soft gold mesh
and his lap filled up with blood, and then his life
slipped through the air, sorrowing down to the shades
and left his corpse behind.
Ah but then,
when the son of Anchises saw his dying look,
his face—that face so ashen, awesome in death—
he groaned from his depths in pity, reached out his hand
as this picture of love for a father pierced his heart,
and said: “Forlorn young soldier, what can Aeneas,
in all honor, give you to match your glory now?
What gifts are worthy of such a noble spirit?
Keep your armor that gave you so much joy.
I give you back to your fathers’ ash and shades
if it offers any solace. And this, at least,
may comfort you for a death so cruel, unlucky boy:
you went down under the hand of great Aeneas.”
With that, he rounded hard on Lausus’ comrades,
slow to move, and lifted their captain’s body
off the ground where Lausus was defiling
his braided hair with blood.
But Lausus’ father
was just stanching his wounds in the Tiber’s waters,
leaning his body against a tree trunk, resting now.
Nearby, his brazen helmet swings from a branch
and his heavy armor lies on the grass, in peace.
Picked young soldiers stand in a ring around him.
His combed, flowing beard spreading across his chest,
he tries to limber his neck, panting, heaving in torment.
Time and again he asks for news of Lausus, again
he dispatches runners to recall him, bearing
a stricken father’s orders. Yes, but Lausus—
weeping comrades are bearing his lifeless body
home on his shield, a great soldier taken down
by a great wound. But his father hears their wails
far off and stirred by a grim foreboding, knows it all.
Soiling his gray hair with dust, flinging both hands
to the skies, he clings to his son’s body, crying:
“Was I so seized by the lust for life, my son,
I let you take my place before the enemy’s sword?
My own flesh and blood! What, your father saved
by your own wounds? Kept alive by your death?
Oh, now at last I know the griefs of exile—
I, in all my pain—at last a wound strikes home . . .
I’ve stained your name, my son, with my own crimes,
detested, drummed from my fathers’ scepter and their throne!
I owed a price to my land and people who despise me.
If only I’d paid in full with my own guilty life,
by any death on earth! But I live on, not yet
have I left the land of men and light of day
but I will leave it all!”
In the same breath
he struggles to stand erect on his damaged thigh
and though his strength is sapped by his deep wound,
his spirit is unbroken. He calls for his horse,
his pride, his mainstay, always the mount he rode
triumphant from every battle. Seeing it grieving,
he begins: “Long have we lived together, Rhaebus,
if anything in this mortal world lives long. Today,
either you’ll carry back those bloody arms we strip
in triumph, parade Aeneas’ head and avenge together
Lausus’ pains. Or if no force can clear our path,
you will go down with me.
For I can’t believe, my brave one, you could bend
to a stranger’s orders, bear a Trojan master.”
slow to move, and lifted their captain’s body
off the ground where Lausus was defiling
his braided hair with blood.
But Lausus’ father
was just stanching his wounds in the Tiber’s waters,
leaning his body against a tree trunk, resting now.
Nearby, his brazen helmet swings from a branch
and his heavy armor lies on the grass, in peace.
Picked young soldiers stand in a ring around him.
His combed, flowing beard spreading across his chest,
he tries to limber his neck, panting, heaving in torment.
Time and again he asks for news of Lausus, again
he dispatches runners to recall him, bearing
a stricken father’s orders. Yes, but Lausus—
weeping comrades are bearing his lifeless body
home on his shield, a great soldier taken down
by a great wound. But his father hears their wails
far off and stirred by a grim foreboding, knows it all.
Soiling his gray hair with dust, flinging both hands
to the skies, he clings to his son’s body, crying:
“Was I so seized by the lust for life, my son,
I let you take my place before the enemy’s sword?
My own flesh and blood! What, your father saved
by your own wounds? Kept alive by your death?
Oh, now at last I know the griefs of exile—
I, in all my pain—at last a wound strikes home . . .
I’ve stained your name, my son, with my own crimes,
detested, drummed from my fathers’ scepter and their throne!
I owed a price to my land and people who despise me.
If only I’d paid in full with my own guilty life,
by any death on earth! But I live on, not yet
have I left the land of men and light of day
but I will leave it all!”
In the same breath
he struggles to stand erect on his damaged thigh
and though his strength is sapped by his deep wound,
his spirit is unbroken. He calls for his horse,
his pride, his mainstay, always the mount he rode
triumphant from every battle. Seeing it grieving,
he begins: “Long have we lived together, Rhaebus,
if anything in this mortal world lives long. Today,
either you’ll carry back those bloody arms we strip
in triumph, parade Aeneas’ head and avenge together
Lausus’ pains. Or if no force can clear our path,
you will go down with me.
For I can’t believe, my brave one, you could bend
to a stranger’s orders, bear a Trojan master.”
Mezentius mounted up, his weight settling
onto the horse’s back in the old familiar way,
both hands holding the heft of well-honed spears,
his helmet aflash with bronze and bristling horsehair crest,
and into the surge of battle so he plunged, churning
with mighty shame, with grief and madness all aswirl
in that one fighting heart. Three times he shouted
out to Aeneas, a great resounding shout, and Aeneas
knew that voice and his prayer rose up in joy:
“So grant it, Father of Gods and high Apollo,
bring the battle on!”
That challenge made,
he closes on his enemy, spear poised for the kill
as Mezentius answers back: “Why, you king of cruelty,
now that you’ve killed my son, why try to make me cringe?
That was the only way you could destroy me. I never
flinch at death or bow to a single god. No more words.
I’m here to die, but I bring you these gifts first!”
And with that he flung a javelin at his enemy,
planting one shaft after another, racing round
in a sweeping ring but the golden boss of Aeneas’ shield
stands fast. Three times Mezentius rides around him,
hurling his weapons, keeping the Trojan on his left;
three times Aeneas wheels round with him, bearing
a grisly thicket of lances bristling on his shield.
Then, tired of all delays, of ripping out the shafts—
outmatched, on the defensive—Aeneas now at last,
at his wit’s end, bursts forth and hurls his spear
and it splits the temples of Mezentius’ warhorse.
Back it rears, flailing the air with flying hoofs
and throwing its rider, pitching headlong down
in a tangled mass, it’s shoulder-joint torn out,
it crushes Mezentius’ body to the ground.
Trojan and Latin war cries set the sky on fire as
Aeneas dashes up and wrenching his sword from its sheath,
he triumphs over him: “Where’s the fierce Mezentius now?
Where’s his murderous fury?”
And the Tuscan fighter,
gazing up at the sky and drinking in the air as he
returned to his senses, said: “My mortal enemy,
why do you ridicule me, threaten me with death?
Killing is no crime. I never engaged in combat
on such terms. No such pact did Lausus seal
between you and me that you would spare my life.
One thing is all I ask, if the vanquished
may ask a favor of the victor: let my body
be covered by the earth. Too well I know
how my people’s savage hatred swirls around me.
Shield me, I implore you, from their fury!
Let me rest in the grave beside my son,
in the comradeship of death.”
With those words,
fully aware, he offers up his throat to the sword
and across his armor pours his life in waves of blood.
onto the horse’s back in the old familiar way,
both hands holding the heft of well-honed spears,
his helmet aflash with bronze and bristling horsehair crest,
and into the surge of battle so he plunged, churning
with mighty shame, with grief and madness all aswirl
in that one fighting heart. Three times he shouted
out to Aeneas, a great resounding shout, and Aeneas
knew that voice and his prayer rose up in joy:
“So grant it, Father of Gods and high Apollo,
bring the battle on!”
That challenge made,
he closes on his enemy, spear poised for the kill
as Mezentius answers back: “Why, you king of cruelty,
now that you’ve killed my son, why try to make me cringe?
That was the only way you could destroy me. I never
flinch at death or bow to a single god. No more words.
I’m here to die, but I bring you these gifts first!”
And with that he flung a javelin at his enemy,
planting one shaft after another, racing round
in a sweeping ring but the golden boss of Aeneas’ shield
stands fast. Three times Mezentius rides around him,
hurling his weapons, keeping the Trojan on his left;
three times Aeneas wheels round with him, bearing
a grisly thicket of lances bristling on his shield.
Then, tired of all delays, of ripping out the shafts—
outmatched, on the defensive—Aeneas now at last,
at his wit’s end, bursts forth and hurls his spear
and it splits the temples of Mezentius’ warhorse.
Back it rears, flailing the air with flying hoofs
and throwing its rider, pitching headlong down
in a tangled mass, it’s shoulder-joint torn out,
it crushes Mezentius’ body to the ground.
Trojan and Latin war cries set the sky on fire as
Aeneas dashes up and wrenching his sword from its sheath,
he triumphs over him: “Where’s the fierce Mezentius now?
Where’s his murderous fury?”
And the Tuscan fighter,
gazing up at the sky and drinking in the air as he
returned to his senses, said: “My mortal enemy,
why do you ridicule me, threaten me with death?
Killing is no crime. I never engaged in combat
on such terms. No such pact did Lausus seal
between you and me that you would spare my life.
One thing is all I ask, if the vanquished
may ask a favor of the victor: let my body
be covered by the earth. Too well I know
how my people’s savage hatred swirls around me.
Shield me, I implore you, from their fury!
Let me rest in the grave beside my son,
in the comradeship of death.”
With those words,
fully aware, he offers up his throat to the sword
and across his armor pours his life in waves of blood.
BOOK ELEVEN
Camilla’s Finest Hour
Now as Dawn rose up and left her Ocean bed,
Aeneas, moved as he is by grief to pause and
bury comrades, desolate with their deaths, still
the victor pays his vows to the gods as first light breaks.
An enormous oak, its branches lopped and trunk laid bare,
he stakes on a mound and decks with the burnished arms
he stripped from Mezentius, that strong captain:
a trophy to you, Mars, the great god of war.
Aeneas fixes the crests still dripping blood,
the enemy’s splintered spears and breastplate
battered hard and pierced in a dozen places.
Fast to the left hand he straps the brazen shield
and down from the neck he hangs the ivory-hilted sword.
Then he turns to his comrades, bands of officers
pressing round him there, and Aeneas starts in
to stir their spirits flushed with recent triumph:
“What magnificent things we’ve done, my friends!
Dismiss all fears for what’s still left to do.
These are the spoils stripped from a proud king,
our first fruits of battle, this is Mezentius,
the work of my right hand!
Now on we go to the Latian king, his city walls.
Sharpen your swords with heart and pin your hopes on war!
No taking us off guard, no hanging back, no dread
must cripple our steps with anxious second thoughts
when the gods allow us to pull our standards up,
strike camp, and move the army out. But now
commit our friends’ unburied bodies to the earth,
their only tribute down in the depths of hell. Go!”
he cries, “deck with funeral gifts those heroes’ souls.
They won this land for us with their own blood.
But first send Pallas home to Evander’s grieving city,
a soldier who never lost heart when the black day
swept him off and drowned him in bitter death.”
So
Aeneas says, in tears, turning back to his gates
where Pallas’ lifeless body lay outspread,
guarded by old Acoetes. He bore Evander’s arms
in Arcadia once, but the omens were less bright
when he marched out with Pallas, beloved foster-son.
Around them flocked a retinue, crowds of Trojans and
Trojan women, their hair unbound in the mourners’ way.
But then, as soon as Aeneas entered the high-built gates,
they beat their breasts and raised their cries to the sky
and the royal lodging groaned with wails of grief.
Aeneas, gazing at Pallas resting there, his head,
his face bled white, and his smooth chest splayed
apart by a Latin spear, the tears came welling up
with words of sorrow: “Child of heartbreak, was it you
whom Fortune denied me, coming to me all smiles?
Now you will never live to see our kingdom born,
never ride in triumph home to your father’s house.
A far cry from the pledge I made Evander for his son!
Embracing me as I left that day, he sent me out
to win ourselves an empire—fearful, warning that
we would face brave men, a battle-hardened people.
So even now, gripped by his own empty hopes,
he may be paying his vows,
perhaps, and loading the altars down with gifts
while we, with shows of grief and hollow tributes,
bring him a lifeless son who owes no more, now,
to any god on high.
“Unlucky man, you must
behold the agonizing burial of your son . . .
Is this how we return? Our longed-for triumph?
Is this my binding pledge? Ah, but Evander, you
will never see him retreat, hit by a shameful wound,
never pray for a father’s wretched death, disgraced
by a son who still lives safely on. Oh, Italy,
oh, what a rugged bastion you have lost,
how great your loss, my Iulus!”
Mourning done,
he commands his troops to lift the stricken body high
and sends a thousand men, picked from the whole corps
to escort the rites and join in the father’s tears.
A small comfort offered a grief so great but owed
to a father’s heartache. Others lost no time,
braiding with wickerwork a soft, pliant bier,
weaving shoots of arbutus, sprigs of oak,
shrouding the piled couch with shady leaves.
Here on his raised rustic bed they place the boy
and there he lies like a flower cut by a young girl’s hand,
some tender violet bloom or drooping hyacinth spray,
its glow and its lovely glory still not gone,
though Mother Earth no longer nurses it now
or gives it life. Then Aeneas carried out
twin robes, stiff with purple and gold braid,
that Dido of Sidon made with her own hands once,
just for Aeneas, loving every stitch of the work
and weaving into the weft a glinting mesh of gold.
Heartsick, he cloaks the boy with one as a final tribute,
covering locks that soon will face the fire.
Then,
heaping a mass of plunder seized in the Latin rout,
Aeneas orders it borne home in a long cortege,
adding the steeds and arms he stripped from foes.
Behind their backs he strapped their hands, the captives
he planned to send below as gifts to appease the shades,
sprinkling Latin blood on the pyre that burned their corpses.
He orders his own captains to carry tree-trunks clad
in enemy arms, with the hated names engraved.
Unlucky old Acoetes, weighed down with the years,
they help along as he beats his chest with fists,
claws his cheeks with his nails and stumbling on,
flings his full length to the ground. Chariots too
are rolled along, splashed to the rails with Latin blood.
And here comes Pallas’ warhorse, Blaze, regalia set aside,
weeping, ambling on, big tears rivering down his face.
And others bear the spear and helmet of Pallas.
Turnus, the victor, commandeered the rest.
There follows
an army of mourners, Trojans all, and all the Tuscans,
all the Arcadians march with arms reversed.
After the long cortege of Pallas’ friends
had moved on well ahead, Aeneas drew to a halt,
groaned from his depths and spoke these last words:
“The same dark fate of battle commands me back
to other tears. Hail forever, our great Pallas!
Hail forever and farewell!”
Aeneas said no more.
Back he strode to his ramparts, back to camp.
Aeneas, moved as he is by grief to pause and
bury comrades, desolate with their deaths, still
the victor pays his vows to the gods as first light breaks.
An enormous oak, its branches lopped and trunk laid bare,
he stakes on a mound and decks with the burnished arms
he stripped from Mezentius, that strong captain:
a trophy to you, Mars, the great god of war.
Aeneas fixes the crests still dripping blood,
the enemy’s splintered spears and breastplate
battered hard and pierced in a dozen places.
Fast to the left hand he straps the brazen shield
and down from the neck he hangs the ivory-hilted sword.
Then he turns to his comrades, bands of officers
pressing round him there, and Aeneas starts in
to stir their spirits flushed with recent triumph:
“What magnificent things we’ve done, my friends!
Dismiss all fears for what’s still left to do.
These are the spoils stripped from a proud king,
our first fruits of battle, this is Mezentius,
the work of my right hand!
Now on we go to the Latian king, his city walls.
Sharpen your swords with heart and pin your hopes on war!
No taking us off guard, no hanging back, no dread
must cripple our steps with anxious second thoughts
when the gods allow us to pull our standards up,
strike camp, and move the army out. But now
commit our friends’ unburied bodies to the earth,
their only tribute down in the depths of hell. Go!”
he cries, “deck with funeral gifts those heroes’ souls.
They won this land for us with their own blood.
But first send Pallas home to Evander’s grieving city,
a soldier who never lost heart when the black day
swept him off and drowned him in bitter death.”
So
Aeneas says, in tears, turning back to his gates
where Pallas’ lifeless body lay outspread,
guarded by old Acoetes. He bore Evander’s arms
in Arcadia once, but the omens were less bright
when he marched out with Pallas, beloved foster-son.
Around them flocked a retinue, crowds of Trojans and
Trojan women, their hair unbound in the mourners’ way.
But then, as soon as Aeneas entered the high-built gates,
they beat their breasts and raised their cries to the sky
and the royal lodging groaned with wails of grief.
Aeneas, gazing at Pallas resting there, his head,
his face bled white, and his smooth chest splayed
apart by a Latin spear, the tears came welling up
with words of sorrow: “Child of heartbreak, was it you
whom Fortune denied me, coming to me all smiles?
Now you will never live to see our kingdom born,
never ride in triumph home to your father’s house.
A far cry from the pledge I made Evander for his son!
Embracing me as I left that day, he sent me out
to win ourselves an empire—fearful, warning that
we would face brave men, a battle-hardened people.
So even now, gripped by his own empty hopes,
he may be paying his vows,
perhaps, and loading the altars down with gifts
while we, with shows of grief and hollow tributes,
bring him a lifeless son who owes no more, now,
to any god on high.
“Unlucky man, you must
behold the agonizing burial of your son . . .
Is this how we return? Our longed-for triumph?
Is this my binding pledge? Ah, but Evander, you
will never see him retreat, hit by a shameful wound,
never pray for a father’s wretched death, disgraced
by a son who still lives safely on. Oh, Italy,
oh, what a rugged bastion you have lost,
how great your loss, my Iulus!”
Mourning done,
he commands his troops to lift the stricken body high
and sends a thousand men, picked from the whole corps
to escort the rites and join in the father’s tears.
A small comfort offered a grief so great but owed
to a father’s heartache. Others lost no time,
braiding with wickerwork a soft, pliant bier,
weaving shoots of arbutus, sprigs of oak,
shrouding the piled couch with shady leaves.
Here on his raised rustic bed they place the boy
and there he lies like a flower cut by a young girl’s hand,
some tender violet bloom or drooping hyacinth spray,
its glow and its lovely glory still not gone,
though Mother Earth no longer nurses it now
or gives it life. Then Aeneas carried out
twin robes, stiff with purple and gold braid,
that Dido of Sidon made with her own hands once,
just for Aeneas, loving every stitch of the work
and weaving into the weft a glinting mesh of gold.
Heartsick, he cloaks the boy with one as a final tribute,
covering locks that soon will face the fire.
Then,
heaping a mass of plunder seized in the Latin rout,
Aeneas orders it borne home in a long cortege,
adding the steeds and arms he stripped from foes.
Behind their backs he strapped their hands, the captives
he planned to send below as gifts to appease the shades,
sprinkling Latin blood on the pyre that burned their corpses.
He orders his own captains to carry tree-trunks clad
in enemy arms, with the hated names engraved.
Unlucky old Acoetes, weighed down with the years,
they help along as he beats his chest with fists,
claws his cheeks with his nails and stumbling on,
flings his full length to the ground. Chariots too
are rolled along, splashed to the rails with Latin blood.
And here comes Pallas’ warhorse, Blaze, regalia set aside,
weeping, ambling on, big tears rivering down his face.
And others bear the spear and helmet of Pallas.
Turnus, the victor, commandeered the rest.
There follows
an army of mourners, Trojans all, and all the Tuscans,
all the Arcadians march with arms reversed.
After the long cortege of Pallas’ friends
had moved on well ahead, Aeneas drew to a halt,
groaned from his depths and spoke these last words:
“The same dark fate of battle commands me back
to other tears. Hail forever, our great Pallas!
Hail forever and farewell!”
Aeneas said no more.
Back he strode to his ramparts, back to camp.
Now in came envoys sent from the Latin city,
bearing olive branches and pleading for a truce . . .
“Those bodies felled by the sword and strewn about the field:
return them, let them lie with mounds of earth for cover.
There is no fighting defeated men, robbed of the light.
Spare them now. You called them your hosts, once,
and the fathers of your brides!”
bearing olive branches and pleading for a truce . . .
“Those bodies felled by the sword and strewn about the field:
return them, let them lie with mounds of earth for cover.
There is no fighting defeated men, robbed of the light.
Spare them now. You called them your hosts, once,
and the fathers of your brides!”
Good Aeneas grants the appeal he’d never shun.
He treats them kindly and adds these gracious words:
“What unmerited stroke of fortune, men of Latium,
traps you so in war that you flee from us, your friends?
Peace for the dead, cut down by the lots of battle,
that’s your plea? I’d grant that to the living too.
I’d never have come if Fate had not ordained me here
a house and home. Nor do I make war with your people.
It’s your king, who renounced our pact of friendship,
choosing to trust to Turnus’ force of arms. Why,
it would have been fairer for Turnus to meet this death!
If the soldier means to finish off our war by force,
to rout the Trojans now, he should have clashed
with me and my weapon then, in combat man to man.
One of us would have lived, the one whom Mars—
or his own right arm—had granted life. Go now.
Ignite the pyre beneath your luckless dead.”
He treats them kindly and adds these gracious words:
“What unmerited stroke of fortune, men of Latium,
traps you so in war that you flee from us, your friends?
Peace for the dead, cut down by the lots of battle,
that’s your plea? I’d grant that to the living too.
I’d never have come if Fate had not ordained me here
a house and home. Nor do I make war with your people.
It’s your king, who renounced our pact of friendship,
choosing to trust to Turnus’ force of arms. Why,
it would have been fairer for Turnus to meet this death!
If the soldier means to finish off our war by force,
to rout the Trojans now, he should have clashed
with me and my weapon then, in combat man to man.
One of us would have lived, the one whom Mars—
or his own right arm—had granted life. Go now.
Ignite the pyre beneath your luckless dead.”
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