Enej v Laciju

Besedilo

Enej v Laciju

Macareus had finished. The urn of Aeneas’s nurse, laid in a marble tomb, bore this brief inscription: HERE MY FOSTER-SON, FAMED FOR HIS DEVOTION, BURNED ME, CAIETA, WITH THE FIRE HE OWED ME, HAVING SAVED ME FROM THE ARGIVE FLAMES. The rope that held the ship to the grassy bank is loosed, and they leave far behind the snares and dwelling of the ill-famed goddess, making for the groves where, dark with shade, the Tiber pours into the sea, laden with yellow sand.

Aeneas wins the home and daughter of Latinus, son of Faunus, though not without warfare: he must take up arms against a fierce people, and Turnus rages for his promised bride. All Etruria joins the struggle in Latium, and long they strive for a hard-won victory with anxious arms. Each side increases its strength with foreign forces, and many defend the Rutulian camp, many the Trojan. Nor had Aeneas gone in vain to Evander’s walls, but Venulus had come in vain to the city of the exiled Diomedes: under Iapygian Daunus, that hero had founded a mighty city and held the lands given with his bride.

But when Venulus had delivered Turnus’s message and asked for help, the Aetolian hero pleaded lack of strength: he would not commit his father-in-law’s people to battle, and had none of his own countrymen left to arm. “And lest you think these mere excuses, though recalling them renews my bitter grief, I will endure the telling. After lofty Ilium was burned and Pergamum fed the Grecian flames, and the hero of Narycus, who stole a maiden from the virgin goddess, spread among us all the punishment he alone deserved, we Greeks were scattered, swept by winds over hostile seas, enduring lightning, darkness, rain, the wrath of heaven

and ocean, and Caphereus to crown our ruin. Not to delay you with each sorrowful disaster in turn, Greece then might have moved even Priam to tears. Yet the care of warlike Minerva saved me, snatching me from the waves; but once again I was driven from my native fields, and gracious Venus, remembering her ancient wound, exacted vengeance. Such hardships I endured upon the deep seas, such hardships in warfare on land, that I often called those men fortunate whom the storm we all shared and cruel Caphereus drowned in the waves, and wished I had been among them.

My companions, having suffered the worst in war and at sea, lost heart and begged for an end to our wandering. But Acmon, fiery by nature, and now embittered by disaster, said, ‘What is left, men, that our endurance would now refuse to bear? What more can Cytherea do to us—even if she wishes it? While we fear worse things, we leave ourselves open to wounds; but when our lot is at its worst, fear lies beneath our feet: the height of misery is free from care.

Let her herself hear me, and hate, as she does, every man under Diomedes: we all despise her hatred, and her mighty power costs us dear indeed!’ With words like these Acmon of Pleuron provoked the angry Venus, goading her wrath to life again. A few approved his speech; the greater number of us, his friends, rebuked Acmon. As he tried to answer, his voice grew thin, and so did the passage of his voice; his hair turned into feathers, and feathers covered his altered neck, his breast and back. His arms received longer plumes, and his elbows curved into weightless wings.

Most of each foot became toes; his mouth hardened into horn and narrowed to a point. Lycus marvelled at him, and Idas, Nycteus with Rhexenor, and Abas; and while they marvelled, they assumed the same shape, and most of my company rose into the air and wheeled about the oars on beating wings. If you ask the shape of these birds of uncertain kind, though not swans, they closely resemble white swans.

With barely a handful of my men, I hold this home and the parched fields of Iapygian Daunus, as his son-in-law.” So far spoke the descendant of Oeneus. Venulus left the Calydonian realm, the bays of the Peucetians, and the fields of Messapia. There he saw caves, shaded by thick woods and dripping among slender reeds, which goat-legged Pan now inhabits, though once they belonged to nymphs.

An Apulian shepherd in that country frightened them, driving them away and startling them at first with sudden terror. But soon, recovering their wits and scorning their pursuer, they moved their feet in time and formed a dance. The shepherd mocked them, aping their movements with rustic leaps, and added coarse abuse and obscene words. His mouth did not fall silent until a tree enclosed his throat: for by the tree and its sap you may know his character.

The wild olive’s bitter berries preserve the mark of his tongue: into them passed the harshness of his words. When the envoys returned from there, bringing word that Aetolian aid had been denied them, the Rutulians fought the war they had begun without those forces, and much blood was shed on either side. And now Turnus brought ravenous torches against the pine-built ships: what the waves had spared feared fire.

Already Mulciber was burning pitch and wax and all else that fed the flames, climbing the tall mast towards the sails; the benches of the curving hulls were smoking, when the holy Mother of the Gods, remembering that these pines had been felled on Ida’s summit, filled the air with the clang of beaten bronze and the droning of boxwood pipes. Riding her tamed lions through the airy heavens, she cried, “In vain, Turnus, does your sacrilegious hand hurl fire! I shall rescue them: never with my consent shall devouring flames consume these limbs and portions of my woods.”

As the goddess spoke, thunder sounded, and after the thunder heavy rain poured down with bouncing hail. The sons of Astraeus stirred the air and swollen sea with sudden clashes, and the brothers went to battle. With the strength of one of them, the gracious Mother snapped the hempen moorings of the Phrygian fleet, carried the ships headlong out, and sank them beneath the sea.

Their timbers softened, their wood turned into flesh; the curving sterns were changed to the shapes of heads, the oars became toes and swimming legs. What had been their sides remained their sides; the keel beneath the centre of each ship became a backbone. The rigging turned to flowing hair, the yardarms into arms; their colour remained sea-blue. The waters they had feared they now stirred in their maiden games, sea-nymphs born upon the rugged mountains, sporting in the gentle sea, untroubled by their origins.

Yet they did not forget how many dangers they had so often suffered on the deep, and often held out their hands beneath storm-tossed ships—unless a ship bore Greeks. Still mindful of the Phrygian catastrophe, they hated the Pelasgians, and looked with delight upon the wreckage of the Neritian ship, and with delight they saw Alcinous’s vessel stiffen, and stone grow over its wooden frame.

There was hope that, once the fleet had come alive as sea-nymphs, fear of the marvel might make the Rutulian abandon the war. He persisted. Each side had gods to aid it, and each possessed courage to match the gods. No longer was it a kingdom given in marriage, nor a father-in-law’s sceptre, nor you, maiden Lavinia, they sought, but victory alone; ashamed to lay down their arms, they fought on. At last Venus saw her son’s weapons triumph: Turnus fell, and Ardea fell, called mighty while Turnus lived. After a foreign sword had taken him and her houses lay buried in warm ash, from the midst of the ruins a bird, unknown till then, rose into the air and beat the ashes with its wings.

Its cry, its leanness, its pallor—all befitted a captured city; even the city’s name remained in the bird, and Ardea mourns herself with her own wings.