Virgil (Collins)/Aeneid 8
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MUSTER OP THE LATIN TRIBES.
Turnus arrives amongst them from Ardea at this critical moment, and shouts fiercely for instant battle. In vain does King Latinus quote the oracle, and refuse to fight against the destinies. He will be no party to a bloody and useless war. But the impetuosity of an angry populace is too strong for him. Powerless to stem the popular current, he nevertheless delivers his own soul, and abdicates his sovereignty. The guilt of the blood that shall be shed must rest on those who stir the war. He warns Turnus that he may yet live to rue the part he has taken, when too late: for himself, death will soon put an end to all troubles.
By an old tradition,—handed on, as the poet will have it, from these old days of Latium to the Rome of Augustus,—the powers of War were held to be confined within the gates of Janus, the porter of the Immortals, only to be let loose by solemn act of state authority.
"Two gates there stand of War—'twas so
Our fathers named them long ago—
The war-god's terrors round them spread
An atmosphere of sacred dread.
A hundred bolts the entrance guard,
And Janus there keeps watch and ward.
These, when his peers on war decide,
The consul, all in antique pride
Of Gabine cincture deftly tied
And purple-striped attire,
With grating noise himself unbars,
And calls aloud on Father Mars:
The warrior train takes up the cry,
And horns with brazen symphony
Their hoarse assent conspire."
Since Latinus will not do his office, Juno in person—so the poet has it—descends from heaven, smites upon the barred portals, and "lets slip the dogs of war."
"Ausonia, all inert before,
Takes fire and blazes to the core:
And some on foot their march essay,
Some, mounted, storm along the way;
To arms! cry one and all:
With unctuous lard their shields they clean,
And make their javelins bright and sheen,
Their axes on the whetstone grind;
Look how that banner takes the wind!
Hark to yon trumpet's call!
Five mighty towns, with anvils set,
In emulous haste their weapons whet:
Crustumium, Tibur the renowned,
And strong Atina there are found,
And Ardea, and Antemnæ crowned
With turrets round her wall.
Steel caps they frame their brows to fit,
And osier twigs for bucklers knit:
Or twist the hauberk's brazen mail
And mould them greaves of silver pale:
To these has passed the homage paid
Erewhile to ploughshare, scythe, and spade:
Each brings his father's battered blade,
And smelts in fire anew:
And now the clarions pierce the skies:
From rank to rank the watchword flies;
This tears his helmet from the wall,
That drags his war-horse from the stall,
Dons three-piled mail and ample shield,
And girds him for the embattled field
With falchion tried and true."
The whole remaining portion of this seventh book is in Virgil's most spirited style. And it is here that the harp of our northern minstrel answers best to Mr Conington's touch. The gathering of the clans—for it is nothing else—the rapid sketches of the chiefs as they pass in succession with their array of followers—the details of costume—the legendary tale which the poet has to tell of more than one of them as he passes them in review—even the devices borne on the shields,—are all features in which Scott delighted as thoroughly as Virgil, and which his well-known rhythm suits better than any other which a translator could choose. Some few portions of this stirring war-like diorama must content the readers of these pages. The first who passes is the terrible chief of Agylla, who fears neither god nor man, and whose notorious cruelties have so exasperated his own people against him that he is now a refugee in the court of Turnus:—
"Mezentius first from Tyrrhene coast,
Who mocks at heaven, arrays his host,
And braves the battle's storm;
His son, young Lausus, at his side,
Excelled by none in beauty's pride,
Save Turnus' comely form:
Lausus, the tamer of the steed,
The conqueror of the silvan breed,
Leads from Agylla's towers in vain
A thousand youths, a valiant train;
Ah happy, had the son been blest
In hearkening to his sire's behest,
Or had the sire from whom he came
Had other nature, other name!"
In the description of the next leader we have some notice of early heraldry:—
"Next drives along the grassy meads
His palm-crowned car and conquering steeds
Fair Aventinus, princely heir
Of Hercules the brave and fair,
And for his proud escutcheon takes
His father's Hydra and her snakes.
'Twas he that priestess Rhea bare,
A stealthy birth, to upper air,
'Mid shades of woody Aventine
Mingling her own with heavenly blood,
When triumph-flushed from Geryon slain
Alcides touched the Latian plain,
And bathed Iberia's distant kine
In Tuscan Tiber's flood.
Long pikes and poles his bands uprear,
The shapely blade, the Sabine spear.
Himself on foot, with lion's skin,
Whose long white teeth with ghastly grin
Clasp like a helmet brow and chin,
Joins the proud chiefs in rude attire,
And flaunts the emblem of his sire."
Coras and Catillus, twin-brothers from the old town of Tibur; Cæculus, from the neighbouring Præneste—reputed son of Vulcan, because said to have been found as an infant lying amidst the forge embers—whose following take the field with slings and javelins, each man with his left foot bare to give him firmer stepping-hold; Clausus the Sabine, from whom sprang the great house of the Claudii—some of whom assuredly were listening to the poet's recitation; Halæsus, of the seed of Agamemnon, sworn foe to all who bear the hated name of Trojan; and a host of chiefs of lesser name and inferior powers, join the march. Messapus, the "horse-tamer," brings with him a powerful band of retainers from many a city, who chant the deeds of their leaders as they go—
"Like snow-white swans in liquid air,
When homeward from their food they fare,
And far and wide melodious notes
Come rippling from their slender throats,
While the broad stream and Asia's fen
Reverberate to the sound again.
Sure none had thought that countless crowd
A mail-clad company;
It rather seemed a dusky cloud
Of migrant fowl, that, hoarse and loud,
Press landward from the sea.
******
"Came too from old Marruvia's realm,
An olive-garland round his helm,
Bold Umbro, priest at once and knight,
By king Archippus sent to fight:
Who baleful serpents knew to steep
By hand and voice in charmèd sleep,
Soothed their fierce wrath with subtlest skill,
And from their bite drew off the ill.
But ah! his medicines could not heal
The death-wound dealt by Dardan steel;
His slumberous charms availed him nought,
Nor herbs on Marsian mountains sought,
And cropped with magic shears:
For thee Anguitia's woody cave,
For thee the glassy Fucine wave,
For thee the lake shed tears."
Nearly last of the warlike array, who all acknowledge him as their leader, comes the prince of the Rutuli, Æneas's rival and enemy:—
"In foremost rank see Turnus move,
His comely head the rest above:
On his tall helm with triple cone
Chimæra in relief is shown;
The monster's gaping jaws expire
Hot volumes of Ætnean fire:
And still she flames and raves the more
The deeper floats the field with gore.
With bristling hide and lifted horns,
Io, all gold, his shield adorns,
E'en as in life she stood;
There too is Argus, warder stern,
And Inachus from graven urn,
Her father, pours his flood."
He brings with him the largest host of all—a cloud of well-armed footmen of various tribes, whose shields seem to cover the plain.
This pretty picture of Camilla, the Volscian huntress (whom Dryden very ungallantly terms a "virago "), vowed from her childhood to Diana—the prototype of Tasso's Clorinda, but far more attractive—closes at once the warlike pageant and the book:—
"Last marches forth for Latium's sake
Camilla fair, the Volscian maid,
A troop of horsemen in her wake
In pomp of gleaming steel arrayed;
Stern warrior-queen! those tender hands
Ne'er plied Minerva's ministries:
A virgin in the fight she stands,
Or wingèd winds in speed outvies;
Nay, she could fly o'er fields of grain
Nor crush in flight the tapering wheat,
Or skim the surface of the main
Nor let the billows touch her feet.
Where'er she moves, from house and land
The youths and ancient matrons throng,
And fixed in greedy wonder stand,
Beholding as she speeds along:
In kingly dye that scarf was dipped:
'Tis gold confines those tresses' flow:
Her pastoral wand with steel is tipped,
And Lycian are her shafts and bow."[1]
The story of Camilla's infancy, which is given us subsequently, is quite in accordance with this description. Her father, driven from his territory, like Mezentius, by an angry people, had carried his infant daughter with him in his flight. Hard pressed by his pursuers, he came to the banks of a river. To swim across the stream, though swollen by winter torrents, were easy for himself: but how to carry his child? With brief prayer and vow to the huntress Diana, he tied her to a spear, and threw her across. The child alighted safely on the other side, and the father followed. Fed on mares' milk, and exercised from infancy in the use of the bow, Camilla had grown up in the forest, vowed to maidenhood and to Diana.
- ↑ No doubt the Camilla of the Roman poet is a reminiscence of the Amazon Penthesilea in Homer, just as the fairy footstep, that left no trace on sea or land, is borrowed from those wondrous mares of Ericthonius to whom Homer assigns the same performance. But the copy far surpasses the original in grace and beauty. Our English poets have made free use of this fancy of the footsteps of beauty: none more sweetly than Jonson in his 'Sad Shepherd,' where Æglamour laments his lost Earinè:—
"Here she was wont to go, and here, and here—
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow;
The world may find the spring by following her,
For other print her airy steps ne'er left.
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-bell from his stalk:
But like the south-west wind she shot along,
And where she went the flowers took thickest root,
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot."
—The 'Sad Shepherd,' Act I. sc. 1.