No More Learning

For heavy grief King Latinus himself
swoons away. The wrath of heaven and the fresh graves before his eyes
warn him that Aeneas is borne on by fate's evident will. So he sends
imperial summons to [235-269]his high council, the foremost of his
people, and gathers them within his lofty courts. They assemble, and
stream up the crowded streets to the royal dwelling. Latinus, eldest in
years and first in royalty, sits amid them with cheerless brow, and bids
the envoys sent back from the Aetolian city tell the news they bring,
and demands a full and ordered reply. Then tongues are hushed; and
Venulus, obeying his word, thus begins to speak:

'We have seen, O citizens, Diomede in his Argive camp, and outsped our
way and passed all its dangers, and touched the hand whereunder the land
of Ilium fell. He was founding a town, named Argyripa after his
ancestral people, on the conquered fields of Iapygian Garganus. After we
entered in, and licence of open speech was given, we lay forth our
gifts, we instruct him of our name and country, who are its invaders,
and why we are drawn to Arpi. He heard us, and replied thus with face
unstirred:

'"O fortunate races, realm of Saturn, Ausonians of old, how doth fortune
vex your quiet and woo you to tempt wars you know not? We that have
drawn sword on the fields of Ilium--I forbear to tell the drains of war
beneath her high walls, the men sunken in yonder Simois--have all over
the world paid to the full our punishment and the reward of guilt, a
crew Priam's self might pity; as Minerva's baleful star knows, and the
Euboic reefs and Caphereus' revenge. From that warfaring driven to alien
shores, Menelaus son of Atreus is in exile far as Proteus' Pillars,
Ulysses hath seen the Cyclopes of Aetna. Shall I make mention of the
realm of Neoptolemus, and Idomeneus' household gods overthrown? or of
the Locrians who dwell on the Libyan beach? Even the lord of Mycenae,
the mighty Achaeans' general, sank on his own threshold edge under his
accursed wife's hand, where the adulterer crouched over conquered Asia.
Aye, or that the gods grudged it me to return to [270-301]my ancestral
altars, to see the bride of my desire, and lovely Calydon!
Now likewise
sights of appalling presage pursue me; my comrades, lost to me, have
soared winging into the sky, and flit birds about the rivers--ah me,
dread punishment of my people! --and fill the cliffs with their
melancholy cries. This it was I had to look for even from the time when
I madly assailed celestial limbs with steel, and sullied the hand of
Venus with a wound. Do not, ah, do not urge me to such battles. Neither
have I any war with Troy since her towers are overthrown, nor do I
remember with delight the woes of old. Turn to Aeneas with the gifts you
bear to me from your ancestral borders. We have stood to face his grim
weapons, and met him hand to hand; believe one who hath proved it, how
mightily he rises over his shield, in what a whirlwind he hurls his
spear. Had the land of Ida borne two more like him, Dardanus had marched
to attack the towns of Inachus, and Greece were mourning fate's reverse.
In all our delay before that obstinate Trojan city, it was Hector and
Aeneas whose hand stayed the Grecian victory and bore back its advance
to the tenth year. Both were splendid in courage, both eminent in arms;
Aeneas was first in duty. Let your hands join in treaty as they may; but
beware that your weapons close not with his. "

'Thou hast heard, most gracious king, at once what is the king's answer,
and what his counsel for our great struggle. '

Scarcely thus the envoys, when a diverse murmur ran through the troubled
lips of the Ausonians; even as, when rocks delay some running river, it
plashes in the barred pool, and the banks murmur nigh to the babbling
wave. So soon as their minds were quieted, and their hurrying lips
hushed, the king, first calling on the gods, begins from his lofty
throne:

[302-336]'Ere now could I wish, O Latins, we had determined our course
of state, and it had been better thus; not to meet in council at such a
time as now, with the enemy seated before our walls. We wage an
ill-timed war, fellow-citizens, with a divine race, invincible, unbroken
in battle, who brook not even when conquered to drop the sword. If you
had hope in appeal to Aetolian arms, abandon it; though each man's hope
is his own, you discern how narrow a path it is.