The gates of song unfold,
What chiefs, what tribes to war came on
In those dim days of old,
What sons were then Italia’s pride, 10
And what the arms that blazed so wide:
For ye are goddesses: full well
Your mind takes note, your tongue can tell:
The far-off whisper of the years
Scarce reaches our bewildered ears. 15
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, 20
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: 25
Ah happy, had the son been blest
In harkening to his sire’s behest,
Or had the sire from whom he came
Had other nature, other name!
Next drives along the grassy meads 30
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. 35
’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
Aleides touched the Latian plain,
And bathed Iberia’s distant kine
In Tuscan Tiber’s flood. 5
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, 10
Joins the proud chiefs in rude attire,
And flaunts the emblem of his sire.
From Tiber’s walls twin brothers came,
The town that bears Tiburtus’ name,
Bold Coras and Catillus strong: 15
Through the thick-rained darts they storm along,
And foremost in the fray:
As when two cloud-born Centaurs leap
Down Homole or Othrys’ steep,
The forest parts before their sweep, 20
And crashing trees give way.
Nor lacked there to the embattled power
The founder of Præneste’s tower,
Brave Cæculus, by all renowned
As Vulcan’s son, ’mid embers found 25
And monarch of the rustics crowned.
Beneath him march his rural train,
Whom high Præneste’s walls contain,
Who dwell in Gabian Juno’s plain,
Whose haunt is Anio’s chilly flood 30
And Hernic rocks, by streams bedewed,
Who till Anagnia’s bosom green
Or drink of father Amasene.
Not all are furnished for the war
With ample shield or sounding car. 35
Some sling lead bullets o’er the field,
Some javelins twain in combat wield.
A cap of fur protects their head
By spoil of tawny wolf supplied;
Their left foot bare, on earth they tread, 40
The right is cased in raw bull-hide.
Messapus, tamer of the steed,
The Ocean-monarch’s mighty seed,
Whom none might harm, so willed his sire,
With force of iron or of fire,
Awakes his people’s slumbering zeal 5
Long time unused to war’s appeal,
And from the scabbard bares the steel.
With him Fescennia’s armed train,
The dwellers in Falerii’s plain,
Who hold Soracte’s lofty hill 10
Or fair Flavinia’s cornland till,
Capena’s woods their dwelling make
Or Ciminus, its mount and lake.
With measured pace they march along,
And make their monarch’s deeds their song; 15
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 20
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, 25
Press landward from the sea.
Lo! Clausus there, the Sabines’ boast,
Leads a great host, himself a host;
Whence spreads the Claudian race, since Rome
With Sabine burghers shared her home. 30
With him the Amiternians came
And Cures’ sons of ancient name,
The squadron that Eretum guards
And green Mutusca’s olive-yards.
Those whom Nomentum’s city yields, 35
Who till Velinus’ Rosean fields,
Who Tetrica’s rude summit climb
Or on Severus sits sublime,
Or dwell where runs Hemella by
Casperia’s walls and Foruli, 40
Who Tiber haunt and Fabaris’ banks,
Whom Nursia sends to battle down
From her cold home, Hortinian ranks
And Latian tribes of old renown,
With those whom Allia’s stream ill-starred
Flows through, dividing sward from sward: 5
Thick as the Libyan billows swarm
When fell Orion sets in storm,
Or as the sun-baked ears of grain
In Hæmus’ field or Lycia’s plain;
Their bucklers rattle, and the ground 10
Quakes, startled by their footfall’s sound.
Halæsus, Agamemnon’s mate,
Who hates all Troy with liegeman’s hate,
Yokes his swift horses to the car,
And brings his hosts to Turnus’ war, 15
The rustic tribes whose ploughshare tills
The vine-clad slopes of Massic hills,
Sent from Auruncan heights, or bound
From Sidicinian champaign-ground,
Who fertile Cales leave behind 20
Or where Vulturnian waters wind,
Saticule’s tenants, rough and rude,
And all the hardy Oscan brood.
Spiked truncheons they are wont to fling,
But fit them with a leathern string: 25
A target shields the good left hand,
And curved like primer’s hook the brand
They wield when foot to foot they stand.
Nor, Œbalus, shalt thou pass by
Unnamed in this our minstrelsy, 30
Born to old Telon, Capreæ’s king,
By Naiad of Sebethus’ spring;
The son contemned his sire’s domain,
And stretched o’er neighbouring lands his reign.
Sarrastes’ tribes his rule obey, 35
And fields where Sarnus’ waters play,
Who Batulum and Rufræ hold
Or till Celennæ’s fruitful mould,
Or those whom fair Abella sees
Down-looking through her apple-trees, 40
All wont in Teuton sort to throw
Nail-studded maces ’gainst the foe;
Their helm of bark from cork-tree peeled,
Of brass their sword, of brass their shield.
Thee too steep Nersæ sends to war 5
Brave Ufens, born ’neath happy star:
Hard as their clods the Æquian race,
Inured to labour in the chase;
In armour sheathed, they till their soil,
Heap foray up, and live by spoil. 10
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 15
By hand and voice in charmed 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; 20
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, 25
For thee the lake shed tears.
From green Aricia, bent on fame,
Hippolytus’ fair offspring came,
In lone Egeria’s forest reared,
Where Dian’s shrine is loved and feared. 30
For lost Hippolytus,’tis said,
By cruel stepdame’s cunning dead,
Dragged by his frightened steeds, to sate
His angry sire’s vindictive hate,
Was called once more to realms above, 35
By Pæon’s skill and Dian’s love.
Then Jove incensed that man should rise
From darkness to the upper skies,
The leech that wrought such healing hurled
With lightening down to Pluto’s world. 40
But Trivia kind her favourite hides
And to Egeria’s care confides,
To live in woods obscure and lone,
And lose in Virbius’ name his own.
’Tis thence e’en now from Trivia’s shrine 5
The horn-hoofed steeds are chased,
Since, scared by monsters of the brine,
The chariot and the youth divine
They tumbled on the waste,
Yet ne’ertheless with horse and car 10
His dauntless son essays the war.
In foremost rank see Turnus move,
His comely head the rest above:
On his tall helm the triple cone
Chimæra in relief is shown; 15
The monster’s gaping jaws expire
Hot volumes of Ætnæan fire:
And still she flames and raves the more
The deeper floats the field with gore.
With bristling hide and lifted horns 20
So, 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. 25
A cloud of footmen at his back
And shielded hosts the plain made black;
Auruncans, Argives, brave and bold,
Rutulians and Sicanians old,
Sacranians thirsting for the field, 30
Labici with enamelled shield;
Who Tiber’s lawns with furrow score
And pure Numicius’ sacred shore,
Subdue Rutulian slopes, and plough
Circeius’ steep reluctant brow: 35
Where Anxur boasts her guardian Jove
And greenly blooms Feronia’s grove;
Where Satura’s unlovely mere
In sullen quiet sleeps,
And Ufens gropes through marshland drear 40
And hides him in the deeps.
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 5
Ne’er plied Minerva’s ministries:
A virgin in the fight she stands,
Or winged winds in speed outvies.
Nay, she might fly o’er fields of grain
Nor crush in flight the tapering wheat, 10
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 15
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. 20