No More Learning

A chosen company issue from the
gates while the morning star is high; they pour forth with meshed nets,
toils, broad-headed hunting spears, Massylian horsemen and sinewy
sleuth-hounds. At her doorway the chief of Carthage await their queen,
who yet lingers in her chamber, and her horse stands splendid in gold
and purple with clattering feet and jaws champing on the foamy bit. At
last she comes forth amid a great thronging train, girt in a Sidonian
mantle, broidered with needlework; her quiver is of gold, her tresses
knotted into gold, a golden buckle clasps up her crimson gown.
Therewithal the Phrygian train advances with joyous Iulus. Himself first
and foremost of all, Aeneas joins her company and unites his party to
hers: even as Apollo, when he leaves wintry Lycia and the streams of
Xanthus to visit his mother's Delos, and renews the dance, while Cretans
and Dryopes and painted Agathyrsians mingle clamorous about his altars:
himself he treads the Cynthian ridges, and plaits his flowing hair with
soft heavy sprays and entwines it with gold; the arrows rattle on his
shoulder: as lightly as he went Aeneas; such glow and beauty is on his
princely face. When they are come to the mountain heights and pathless
coverts, lo, wild goats driven from the cliff-tops run down the ridge;
in another quarter stags speed over the open plain and gather their
flying column in a cloud of dust as they leave the hills. But the boy
Ascanius is in the valleys, exultant on his fiery horse, and gallops
past one and another, praying that among the unwarlike herds a foaming
boar may issue or a tawny lion descend the hill.

[160-194]Meanwhile the sky begins to thicken and roar aloud. A
rain-cloud comes down mingled with hail; the Tyrian train and the men of
Troy, and the Dardanian boy of Venus' son scatter in fear, and seek
shelter far over the fields. Streams pour from the hills. Dido and the
Trojan captain take refuge in the same cavern. Primeval Earth and Juno
the bridesmaid give the sign; fires flash out high in air, witnessing
the union, and Nymphs cry aloud on the mountain-top. That day opened the
gate of death and the springs of ill. For now Dido recks not of eye or
tongue, nor sets her heart on love in secret: she calls it marriage, and
with this name veils her fall.

Straightway Rumour runs through the great cities of Libya,--Rumour, than
whom none other is more swift to mischief; she thrives on restlessness
and gains strength by going: at first small and timorous; soon she lifts
herself on high and paces the ground with head hidden among the clouds.
Her, one saith, Mother Earth, when stung by wrath against the gods, bore
last sister to Coeus and Enceladus, fleet-footed and swift of wing,
ominous, awful, vast; for every feather on her body is a waking eye
beneath, wonderful to tell, and a tongue, and as many loud lips and
straining ears. By night she flits between sky and land, shrilling
through the dusk, and droops not her lids in sweet slumber; in daylight
she sits on guard upon tall towers or the ridge of the house-roof, and
makes great cities afraid; obstinate in perverseness and forgery no less
than messenger of truth. She then exultingly filled the countries with
manifold talk, and blazoned alike what was done and undone: one Aeneas
is come, born of Trojan blood; on him beautiful Dido thinks no shame to
fling herself; now they hold their winter, long-drawn through mutual
caresses, regardless of their realms and enthralled by passionate
dishonour. This the pestilent goddess [195-227]spreads abroad in the
mouths of men, and bends her course right on to King Iarbas, and with
her words fires his spirit and swells his wrath.

He, the seed of Ammon by a ravished Garamantian Nymph, had built to Jove
in his wide realms an hundred great temples, an hundred altars, and
consecrated the wakeful fire that keeps watch by night before the gods
perpetually, where the soil is fat with blood of beasts and the courts
blossom with pied garlands. And he, distracted and on fire at the bitter
tidings, before his altars, amid the divine presences, often, it is
said, bowed in prayer to Jove with uplifted hands:

'Jupiter omnipotent, to whom from the broidered cushions of their
banqueting halls the Maurusian people now pour Lenaean offering, lookest
thou on this? or do we shudder vainly when our father hurls the
thunderbolt, and do blind fires in the clouds and idle rumblings appal
our soul? The woman who, wandering in our coasts, planted a small town
on purchased ground, to whom we gave fields by the shore and laws of
settlement, she hath spurned our alliance and taken Aeneas for lord of
her realm. And now that Paris, with his effeminate crew, his chin and
oozy hair swathed in the turban of Maeonia, takes and keeps her; since
to thy temples we bear oblation, and hallow an empty name. '

In such words he pleaded, clasping the altars; the Lord omnipotent
heard, and cast his eye on the royal city and the lovers forgetful of
their fairer fame. Then he addresses this charge to Mercury:

'Up and away, O son! call the breezes and slide down them on thy wings:
accost the Dardanian captain who now loiters in Tyrian Carthage and
casts not a look on destined cities; carry down my words through the
fleet air. Not such an one did his mother most beautiful vouch him to
[228-264]us, nor for this twice rescue him from Grecian arms; but he
was to rule an Italy teeming with empire and loud with war, to transmit
the line of Teucer's royal blood, and lay all the world beneath his law.
If such glories kindle him in nowise, and he take no trouble for his own
honour, does a father grudge his Ascanius the towers of Rome? with what
device or in what hope loiters he among a hostile race, and casts not a
glance on his Ausonian children and the fields of Lavinium? Let him set
sail: this is the sum: thereof be thou our messenger.