No More Learning

Mars availed to destroy the giant race of the Lapithae; the very father
of the gods gave over ancient Calydon to Diana's wrath: for forfeit of
what crime in the Lapithae, what in Calydon? But I, Jove's imperial
consort, who have borne, ah me! to leave naught undared, who have
shifted to every device, I am vanquished by Aeneas. If my deity is not
great enough, I will not assuredly falter to seek succour where it may
be; if the powers of heaven are inflexible, I will stir up Acheron. It
may not be to debar him of a Latin realm; well; and Lavinia is destined
his bride unalterably. But it may be yet to defer, to make all this
action linger; but it may be yet to waste away the nation of either
king; at such forfeit of their people may son-in-law and father-in-law
enter into union. Blood of Troy and Rutulia shall be thy dower, O
maiden, and Bellona is the bridesmaid who awaits thee. Nor did Cisseus'
daughter alone conceive a firebrand and travail of bridal flames. Nay,
even such a birth hath Venus of her own, a second Paris, another
balefire for Troy towers reborn. '

These words uttered, she descends to earth in all her terrors, and calls
dolorous Allecto from the home of the Fatal Sisters in nether gloom,
whose delight is in woeful wars, in wrath and treachery and evil feuds:
hateful to [327-360]lord Pluto himself, hateful and horrible to her
hell-born sisters; into so many faces does she turn, so savage the guise
of each, so thick and black bristles she with vipers. And her Juno spurs
on with words, saying thus:

'Grant me, virgin born of Night, this thy proper task and service, that
the rumour of our renown may not crumble away, nor the Aeneadae have
power to win Latinus by marriage or beset the borders of Italy. Thou
canst set brothers once united in armed conflict, and overturn families
with hatreds; thou canst launch into houses thy whips and deadly brands;
thine are a thousand names, a thousand devices of injury. Stir up thy
teeming breast, sunder the peace they have joined, and sow seeds of
quarrel; let all at once desire and demand and seize on arms. '

Thereon Allecto, steeped in Gorgonian venom, first seeks Latium and the
high house of the Laurentine monarch, and silently sits down before
Amata's doors, whom a woman's distress and anger heated to frenzy over
the Teucrians' coming and the marriage of Turnus. At her the goddess
flings a snake out of her dusky tresses, and slips it into her bosom to
her very inmost heart, that she may embroil all her house under its
maddening magic.
Sliding between her raiment and smooth breasts, it
coils without touch, and instils its viperous breath unseen; the great
serpent turns into the twisted gold about her neck, turns into the long
ribbon of her chaplet, inweaves her hair, and winds slippery over her
body. And while the gliding infection of the clammy poison begins to
penetrate her sense and run in fire through her frame, nor as yet hath
all her breast caught fire, softly she spoke and in mothers' wonted
wise, with many a tear over her daughter and the Phrygian bridal:

'Is it to exiles, to Teucrians, that Lavinia is proffered in marriage, O
father? and hast thou no compassion on [361-392]thy daughter and on
thyself? no compassion on her mother, whom with the first northern wind
the treacherous rover will abandon, steering to sea with his maiden
prize? Is it not thus the Phrygian herdsman wound his way to Lacedaemon,
and carried Leda's Helen to the Trojan towns? Where is thy plighted
faith? Where thine ancient care for thy people, and the hand Turnus thy
kinsman hath so often clasped? If one of alien race from the Latins is
sought for our son, if this stands fixed, and thy father Faunus'
commands are heavy upon thee, all the land whose freedom severs it from
our sway is to my mind alien, and of this is the divine word. And
Turnus, if one retrace the earliest source of his line, is born of
Inachus and Acrisius, and of the midmost of Mycenae. '

When in this vain essay of words she sees Latinus fixed against her, and
the serpent's maddening poison is sunk deep in her vitals and runs
through and through her, then indeed, stung by infinite horrors, hapless
and frenzied, she rages wildly through the endless city. As whilome a
top flying under the twisted whipcord, which boys busy at their play
drive circling wide round an empty hall, runs before the lash and spins
in wide gyrations; the witless ungrown band hang wondering over it and
admire the whirling boxwood; the strokes lend it life: with pace no
slacker is she borne midway through towns and valiant nations. Nay, she
flies into the woodland under feigned Bacchic influence, assumes a
greater guilt, arouses a greater frenzy, and hides her daughter in the
mountain coverts to rob the Teucrians of their bridal and stay the
marriage torches. 'Hail, Bacchus! ' she shrieks and clamours; 'thou only
art worthy of the maiden; for to thee she takes up the lissom wands,
thee she circles in the dance, to thee she trains and consecrates her
tresses. ' Rumour flies abroad; and the matrons, their breasts kindled by
the furies, run all at once [393-426]with a single ardour to seek out
strange dwellings. They have left their homes empty, they throw neck and
hair free to the winds; while others fill the air with ringing cries,
girt about with fawnskins, and carrying spears of vine.