With him goes grim Abas, all his train in shining
armour, and a gilded Apollo glittering astern.
armour, and a gilded Apollo glittering astern.
Virgil - Aeneid
But the army of the
Aeneadae are held leaguered within their trenches, with no hope of
retreat. They stand helpless and disconsolate on their high towers, and
their thin ring girdles the walls,--Asius, son of Imbrasus, and
Thymoetes, son of Hicetaon, and the two Assaraci, and Castor, and old
Thymbris together in the front rank: by them Clarus and
[126-160]Themon, both full brothers to Sarpedon, out of high Lycia.
Acmon of Lyrnesus, great as his father Clytius, or his brother
Mnestheus, carries a stone, straining all his vast frame to the huge
mountain fragment. Emulously they keep their guard, these with javelins,
those with stones, and wield fire and fit arrows on the string. Amid
them he, Venus' fittest care, lo! the Dardanian boy, his graceful head
uncovered, shines even as a gem set in red gold on ornament of throat or
head, or even as gleaming ivory cunningly inlaid in boxwood or Orician
terebinth; his tresses lie spread over his milk-white neck, bound by a
flexible circlet of gold. Thee, too, Ismarus, proud nations saw aiming
wounds and arming thy shafts with poison,--thee, of house illustrious in
Maeonia, where the rich tilth is wrought by men's hands, and Pactolus
waters it with gold. There too was Mnestheus, exalted in fame as he who
erewhile had driven Turnus from the ramparts; and Capys, from whom is
drawn the name of the Campanian city.
They had closed in grim war's mutual conflict; Aeneas, while night was
yet deep, clove the seas. For when, leaving Evander for the Etruscan
camp, he hath audience of the king, and tells the king of his name and
race, and what he asks or offers, instructs him of the arms Mezentius is
winning to his side, and of Turnus' overbearing spirit, reminds him what
is all the certainty of human things, and mingles all with entreaties;
delaying not, Tarchon joins forces and strikes alliance. Then, freed
from the oracle, the Lydian people man their fleet, laid by divine
ordinance in the foreign captain's hand. Aeneas' galley keeps in front,
with the lions of Phrygia fastened on her prow, above them overhanging
Ida, sight most welcome to the Trojan exiles. Here great Aeneas sits
revolving the changing issues of war; and Pallas, clinging on his left
side, asks now [161-195]of the stars and their pathway through the dark
night, now of his fortunes by land and sea.
Open now the gates of Helicon, goddesses, and stir the song of the band
that come the while with Aeneas from the Tuscan borders, and sail in
armed ships overseas.
First in the brazen-plated Tiger Massicus cuts the flood; beneath him
are ranked a thousand men who have left Clusium town and the city of
Cosae; their weapons are arrows, and light quivers on the shoulder, and
their deadly bow.
With him goes grim Abas, all his train in shining
armour, and a gilded Apollo glittering astern. To him Populonia had
given six hundred of her children, tried in war, but Ilva three hundred,
the island rich in unexhausted mines of steel. Third Asilas, interpreter
between men and gods, master of the entrails of beasts and the stars in
heaven, of speech of birds and ominous lightning flashes, draws a
thousand men after him in serried lines bristling with spears, bidden to
his command from Pisa city, of Alphaean birth on Etruscan soil. Astyr
follows, excellent in beauty, Astyr, confident in his horse and glancing
arms. Three hundred more--all have one heart to follow--come from the
householders of Caere and the fields of Minio, and ancient Pyrgi, and
fever-stricken Graviscae.
Let me not pass thee by, O Cinyras, bravest in war of Ligurian captains,
and thee, Cupavo, with thy scant company, from whose crest rise the swan
plumes, fault, O Love, of thee and thine, and blazonment of his father's
form. For they tell that Cycnus, in grief for his beloved Phaethon,
while he sings and soothes his woeful love with music amid the shady
sisterhood of poplar boughs, drew over him the soft plumage of white old
age, and left earth and passed crying through the sky. His son, followed
on shipboard with a band of like age, sweeps the huge Centaur forward
with his oars; he leans over the water, and [196-227]threatens the
waves with a vast rock he holds on high, and furrows the deep seas with
his length of keel.
He too calls a train from his native coasts, Ocnus, son of prophetic
Manto and the river of Tuscany, who gave thee, O Mantua, ramparts and
his mother's name; Mantua, rich in ancestry, yet not all of one blood, a
threefold race, and under each race four cantons; herself she is the
cantons' head, and her strength is of Tuscan blood. From her likewise
hath Mezentius five hundred in arms against him, whom Mincius, child of
Benacus, draped in gray reeds, led to battle in his advancing pine.
Aulestes moves on heavily, smiting the waves with the swinging forest of
an hundred oars; the channels foam as they sweep the sea-floor. He sails
in the vast Triton, who amazes the blue waterways with his shell, and
swims on with shaggy front, in human show from the flank upward; his
belly ends in a dragon; beneath the monster's breast the wave gurgles
into foam. So many were the chosen princes who went in thirty ships to
aid Troy, and cut the salt plains with brazen prow.
And now day had faded from the sky, and gracious Phoebe trod mid-heaven
in the chariot of her nightly wandering: Aeneas, for his charge allows
not rest to his limbs, himself sits guiding the tiller and managing the
sails. And lo, in middle course a band of his own fellow-voyagers meets
him, the nymphs whom bountiful Cybele had bidden be gods of the sea, and
turn to nymphs from ships; they swam on in even order, and cleft the
flood, as many as erewhile, brazen-plated prows, had anchored on the
beach. From far they know their king, and wheel their bands about him,
and Cymodocea, their readiest in speech, comes up behind, catching the
stern with her right hand: her back rises out, and her left hand oars
her passage through the silent water.
Aeneadae are held leaguered within their trenches, with no hope of
retreat. They stand helpless and disconsolate on their high towers, and
their thin ring girdles the walls,--Asius, son of Imbrasus, and
Thymoetes, son of Hicetaon, and the two Assaraci, and Castor, and old
Thymbris together in the front rank: by them Clarus and
[126-160]Themon, both full brothers to Sarpedon, out of high Lycia.
Acmon of Lyrnesus, great as his father Clytius, or his brother
Mnestheus, carries a stone, straining all his vast frame to the huge
mountain fragment. Emulously they keep their guard, these with javelins,
those with stones, and wield fire and fit arrows on the string. Amid
them he, Venus' fittest care, lo! the Dardanian boy, his graceful head
uncovered, shines even as a gem set in red gold on ornament of throat or
head, or even as gleaming ivory cunningly inlaid in boxwood or Orician
terebinth; his tresses lie spread over his milk-white neck, bound by a
flexible circlet of gold. Thee, too, Ismarus, proud nations saw aiming
wounds and arming thy shafts with poison,--thee, of house illustrious in
Maeonia, where the rich tilth is wrought by men's hands, and Pactolus
waters it with gold. There too was Mnestheus, exalted in fame as he who
erewhile had driven Turnus from the ramparts; and Capys, from whom is
drawn the name of the Campanian city.
They had closed in grim war's mutual conflict; Aeneas, while night was
yet deep, clove the seas. For when, leaving Evander for the Etruscan
camp, he hath audience of the king, and tells the king of his name and
race, and what he asks or offers, instructs him of the arms Mezentius is
winning to his side, and of Turnus' overbearing spirit, reminds him what
is all the certainty of human things, and mingles all with entreaties;
delaying not, Tarchon joins forces and strikes alliance. Then, freed
from the oracle, the Lydian people man their fleet, laid by divine
ordinance in the foreign captain's hand. Aeneas' galley keeps in front,
with the lions of Phrygia fastened on her prow, above them overhanging
Ida, sight most welcome to the Trojan exiles. Here great Aeneas sits
revolving the changing issues of war; and Pallas, clinging on his left
side, asks now [161-195]of the stars and their pathway through the dark
night, now of his fortunes by land and sea.
Open now the gates of Helicon, goddesses, and stir the song of the band
that come the while with Aeneas from the Tuscan borders, and sail in
armed ships overseas.
First in the brazen-plated Tiger Massicus cuts the flood; beneath him
are ranked a thousand men who have left Clusium town and the city of
Cosae; their weapons are arrows, and light quivers on the shoulder, and
their deadly bow.
With him goes grim Abas, all his train in shining
armour, and a gilded Apollo glittering astern. To him Populonia had
given six hundred of her children, tried in war, but Ilva three hundred,
the island rich in unexhausted mines of steel. Third Asilas, interpreter
between men and gods, master of the entrails of beasts and the stars in
heaven, of speech of birds and ominous lightning flashes, draws a
thousand men after him in serried lines bristling with spears, bidden to
his command from Pisa city, of Alphaean birth on Etruscan soil. Astyr
follows, excellent in beauty, Astyr, confident in his horse and glancing
arms. Three hundred more--all have one heart to follow--come from the
householders of Caere and the fields of Minio, and ancient Pyrgi, and
fever-stricken Graviscae.
Let me not pass thee by, O Cinyras, bravest in war of Ligurian captains,
and thee, Cupavo, with thy scant company, from whose crest rise the swan
plumes, fault, O Love, of thee and thine, and blazonment of his father's
form. For they tell that Cycnus, in grief for his beloved Phaethon,
while he sings and soothes his woeful love with music amid the shady
sisterhood of poplar boughs, drew over him the soft plumage of white old
age, and left earth and passed crying through the sky. His son, followed
on shipboard with a band of like age, sweeps the huge Centaur forward
with his oars; he leans over the water, and [196-227]threatens the
waves with a vast rock he holds on high, and furrows the deep seas with
his length of keel.
He too calls a train from his native coasts, Ocnus, son of prophetic
Manto and the river of Tuscany, who gave thee, O Mantua, ramparts and
his mother's name; Mantua, rich in ancestry, yet not all of one blood, a
threefold race, and under each race four cantons; herself she is the
cantons' head, and her strength is of Tuscan blood. From her likewise
hath Mezentius five hundred in arms against him, whom Mincius, child of
Benacus, draped in gray reeds, led to battle in his advancing pine.
Aulestes moves on heavily, smiting the waves with the swinging forest of
an hundred oars; the channels foam as they sweep the sea-floor. He sails
in the vast Triton, who amazes the blue waterways with his shell, and
swims on with shaggy front, in human show from the flank upward; his
belly ends in a dragon; beneath the monster's breast the wave gurgles
into foam. So many were the chosen princes who went in thirty ships to
aid Troy, and cut the salt plains with brazen prow.
And now day had faded from the sky, and gracious Phoebe trod mid-heaven
in the chariot of her nightly wandering: Aeneas, for his charge allows
not rest to his limbs, himself sits guiding the tiller and managing the
sails. And lo, in middle course a band of his own fellow-voyagers meets
him, the nymphs whom bountiful Cybele had bidden be gods of the sea, and
turn to nymphs from ships; they swam on in even order, and cleft the
flood, as many as erewhile, brazen-plated prows, had anchored on the
beach. From far they know their king, and wheel their bands about him,
and Cymodocea, their readiest in speech, comes up behind, catching the
stern with her right hand: her back rises out, and her left hand oars
her passage through the silent water.
