Contents

Foreword

From Boy to Emperor

Death of Dido

The Allegory of the Bees

Odes for the Emperor

The Prophecy of Rome

The Arrival of Aeneas/ The Legend of Romulus and Remus

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Foreword

By Ben Potter

31 BC Greece - the decisive fight of the Roman Republic, the war that would transform Rome from an oligarchic democracy into a… ahem… “benevolent” dictatorship. It was the Battle of Actium.

The swell of the sea and the creak of the wooden galleys that carried the soldiers of Octavian and Mark Anthony must have left an icy chill in the veins of the protagonists on that tempestuous September day. For it was one of those key moments; one of the junctions when history rolls over the points and nothing is ever quite the same again.

Rome’s political future was up for grabs and, more specifically, so was the decision of who would be at the helm to steer her into Anno Domini…

Octavian has managed to establish himself as princeps (first citizen), pontifex maximus (high priest), tribunicia potestas (honorary tribune) and, most importantly, Augustus (revered one).

Known historically as the first emperor, Augustus had not got to where he was simply by defeating Anthony. He had worked hard to win over the people of Rome and, more importantly, the traditional seat of power – the Senate.

Whilst this partly came about through the judicious usage of carrot and stick, fortunate timing and ruthless opportunism, Augustus had another tool to help consolidate his power, one which had never been used on such a grand scale or quite so systematically before; propaganda.

For instance, when his power was consolidated following the battle of Actium in 31 BC, his actions were described as a victory over “Antony… with him also, a shameful thing, his Egyptian wife” (Cleopatra).

These words of the poet Virgil ring in harmony with so many from the time. This is because it was an era with so many highly gifted poets, ones who were universally full of praise for the leader of the state.

While we refer to the likes of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Webster as ‘Elizabethan’ or ‘Jacobean’, those adjectives merely denote the time periods during which these men of letters were active. The likes of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Propertius and Tibullus, however, were ‘Augustan’ in mind, body and soul, rather than solely in chronology.

But in a world where the leader is suddenly, brutally and absolutely in command, the question almost inevitably rises: to what extent can we rely on contemporary poets to express their true feelings about Augustus?

Well… the Augustan poets were certainly not backward in coming forward when it came to praising the Emperor.

Reams of paper (well… papyrus) were spent glorifying the new boss. Though ‘glorifying’ is perhaps not a strong enough word; much of the language used by the poets actually attempts to compare the object of their panegyrics to a god:

“Some council of the gods will soon receive you” – Virgil, Georgics.

“Jupiter rules the citadels of heaven and the realms of all the immense three-natured universe; the earth Augustus governs, each of them Father and Leader” – Ovid, Metamorphoses.

Likewise Horace’s Odes are littered with such allusions and Virgil’s Aeneid is a piece of epic propaganda which attempts to legitimize Augustus’ reign and prove his divinity.

The idea of equating a man to a god is a trifle hard to swallow in this day and age. However, this would not have been so at the time under discussion. Leaving aside the fact that Roman society was polytheistic and so the quota of gods could never be fully reached, Augustus was literally a god.

Upon conquering Egypt he became the Pharaoh, no mere leader, intermediary, or ruler by Divine Right, but an actual god.

In addition, Julius Caesar was posthumously deified – Haley’s Comet passing during his funeral games helped grease the wheels of this idea – and so in Rome too, Augustus was, at the very least, the son of a deity.

Divinity was not the only way in which the poets exalted the Emperor; his building works were also praised.

Suetonius famously reports that Augustus boasted he “found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble”.

In Propertius 2.31, the poet makes a reference to one such example, the mighty Temple of Apollo on the Palatine. However, this could also be interpreted as a reference to divinity, as Augustus’ residence adjoined the fantastic structure. What is more, the mention of the temple’s ‘Punic columns’ forces us to think of Augustus’ victory over Cleopatra (and thus Antony).

Indeed, the battle of Actium was another favoured topic the scribblers dwelt on. Epode 9 of Horace deals with the subject at length and states of the leader that “not even Africanus equalled him”. To be considered greater than the scourge of Hannibal was just about the highest praise one Roman could bestow on another.

So Augustus brought peace and prosperity to the Empire, he was literally a god on earth, and he rebuilt a decrepit and decaying Rome. Why then is there any doubt that the poets winged worship was anything other than genuine?

Well, one reason would be the client-patron relationship. The patron in question was, crucially, a close friend of Augustus. He was a man named Maecenas.

He had Virgil, Propertius and Horace all firmly under his patronage and pay. The true parameters of the relationship are not known, but it is likely Maecenas would have been able to dictate the topic and tone of much poetical output, if not the actual content.

However, there were a few notes of dissent and, being poets, these came in response to Augustus’ Leges Iulia, his laws championing a lifestyle of monogamy, sobriety and fecundity.

For example, in Propertius 2.7, the poet unequivocally repudiates the Augustan ideal by claiming that he is not going to marry and breed simply to swell the ranks of the dilapidated army: “there will be no soldier from my blood”.

A step further is Ovid’s Art of Love which is basically a handbook on how to seduce women!

How could Ovid get away with something like that in an absolutist regime? Well… he couldn’t. He was exiled from Rome in 8 AD.

Ovid himself described the causes of his exile as “carmen et error” – a poem and a mistake. The poem in question is obviously the Art of Love, but the mistake, intriguingly, remains unknown.

Scholars have enjoyed guessing what it may have been, but most conclude that he witnessed or participated in a sex scandal involving a member of the imperial family. There is, however, no evidence whatsoever to corroborate this.

Even after his exile, Ovid continued to write praiseworthy prosody from his Romanian sanctuary, meaning that, up until the end, Augustus still had every major poet in the empire singing and scribbling his praises.

The simple, but slightly unsatisfactory, reason for this is that the poets wanted to praise the emperor.

The lavish praise they heaped onto Augustus’ shoulders merely reflected his popularity with both the plebeians and aristocracy alike. As a matter of fact, the plaudits from Horace and Virgil began in the 30’s BC, before it was clear Augustus would be the undisputed future of Rome and long before he had absolute power.

This is hardly surprising… Augustus took Rome from being divided, demoralised, socially and religiously depraved, and on the brink of bankruptcy and famine. He transformed it into the commanding power of the ancient world, doubling its territory and winning massive favour with all classes.

True, as absolute ruler he was powerful, untouchable and often ruthless. Thus, the Augustan poets knew on which side their bread was buttered – but fortunately for all concerned, it was the side, given the choice, they probably would have spread it on anyway.

And so, please enjoy Classical Wisdom’s collection of the very best of Augustan literature. Including Ovid, Horace, Virgil, and more, this collection will give you an insight into how some of the greatest writers of the time (and indeed all of time) felt about the first emperor.

Enjoy.

-Ben Potter (August, 2016)

From Boy to Emperor

Suetonius

The Life of Augustus

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, often referred to as “Suetonius” was a Roman historian from the early years imperial Rome.

His most significant surviving works are The Twelve Caesars, which retell the life and times of the first twelve successive Roman rulers starting with Julius Caesar and ending with Domitian.

Suetonius gives us a unique insight into the lives of these historic men. Notably, he gives us our first account of Julius Caesar’s epileptic seizures.

In The Life of Augustus, Suetonius recounts the boy’s early life and describes how he was born to a wealthy equestrian family. Suetonius then retells the wars and political struggle between Augustus and Marc Antony. The segment concludes with the suicide of Antony and his lover, Cleopatra.

There are many indications that the Octavian family was in days of old a distinguished one at Velitrae; for not only was a street in the most frequented part of town long ago called Octavian, but an altar was shown there besides, consecrated by an Octavius. This man was leader in a war with a neighbouring town, and when news of a sudden onset of the enemy was brought to him just as he chanced to be sacrificing to Mars, he snatched the inwards of the victim from the fire and offered them up half raw; and thus he went forth to battle, and returned victorious. There was, besides, a decree of the people on record, providing that for the future too the inwards should be offered to Mars in the same way, and the rest of the victims be handed over to the Octavii.

The family was admitted to the senate by king Tarquinius Priscus among the lesser clans; was later enrolled by Servius Tullius among the patricians; in course of time returned to the ranks of the plebeians; and after a long interval was restored to patrician rank by the Deified Julius. The first of the house to be elected by the people to a magistracy was Gaius Rufus, who became quaestor.  He begot Gnaeus and Gaius, from whom two branches of the Octavian family were derived, of very different standing; for Gnaeus and all his scions in turn held the highest offices, but Gaius and his progeny, whether from chance or choice, remained in the equestrian order down to the father of Augustus. Augustus’s great-grandfather served in Sicily in the second Punic war as tribune of the soldiers under the command of Aemilius Papus. His grandfather, content with the offices of a municipal town and possessing an abundant income, lived to a peaceful old age. This is the account given by others; Augustus himself merely writes2 that he came of an old and wealthy equestrian family, in which his own father was the first to become a senator. Marcus Antonius taunts him with his great-grandfather, saying that he was a freedman and a rope-maker from the country about Thurii, while his grandfather was a money-changer. This is all that I have been able to learn about the paternal ancestors of Augustus.

His father Gaius Octavius was from the beginning of his life a man of wealth and repute, and I cannot but wonder that some have said that he too was a money-changer, and was even employed to distribute bribes at the elections and perform other services in the Campus; for as a matter of fact, being brought up in affluence, he readily attained to high positions and filled them with distinction. Macedonia fell to his lot at the end of his praetorship; on his way to the province, executing a special commission from the senate, he wiped out a band of runaway slaves, refugees from the armies of Spartacus and Catiline, who held possession of the country about Thurii. In governing his province he showed equal justice and courage; for besides routing the Bessi and the other Thracians in a great battle, his treatment of our allies was such, that Marcus Cicero, in letters which are still in existence,3 urges and admonishes his brother Quintus, who at the time was serving as proconsular governor of Asia with no great credit to himself, to imitate his neighbour Octavius in winning the favour of our allies.

While returning from Macedonia, before he could declare himself a candidate for the consulship, he died suddenly, survived by three children, an elder Octavia by Ancharia, and by Atia a younger Octavia and Augustus. Atia was the daughter of Marcus Atius Balbus and Julia, sister of Gaius Caesar. Balbus, a native of Aricia on his father’s side, and of a family displaying many senatorial portraits, was closely connected on his mother’s side with Pompey the Great. After holding the office of praetor, he was one of the commission of twenty appointed by the Julian law to distribute lands in Campania to the commons.  But Antonius again, trying to disparage the maternal ancestors of Augustus as well, twits him with having a great-grandfather of African birth, who kept first a perfumery shop and then a bakery at Aricia. Cassius of Parma also taunts Augustus with being the grandson both of a baker and of a money-changer, saying in one of his letters: “Your mother’s meal came from a vulgar bakeshop of Aricia; this a money-changer from Nerulum kneaded into shape with hands stained with filthy lucre.”

Augustus was born just before sunrise on the ninth day before the Kalends of Octobera in the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius, at the Ox-Heads in the Palatine quarter, where he now has a shrine, built shortly after his death. For it is recorded in the proceedings of the senate, that when Gaius Laetorius, a young man of patrician family, was pleading for a milder punishment for adultery because of his youth and position, he further urged upon the senators that he was the possessor and as it were the warden of the spot which the deified Augustus first touched at his birth, begged that he be pardoned for the sake of what might be called his own special god. Whereupon it was decreed that that part of his house should be consecrated.

A small room like a pantry is shown to this day as the emperor’s nursery in his grandfather’s country-house near Velitrae, and the opinion prevails in the neighbourhood that he was actually born there. No one ventures to enter this room except of necessity and after purification, since there is a conviction of long-standing that those who approach it without ceremony are seized with shuddering and terror; and what is more, this has recently been shown to be true. For when a new owner, either by chance or to test the matter, went to bed in that room, it came to pass that, after a very few hours of the night, he was thrown out by a sudden mysterious force, and was found bedclothes and all half-dead before the door.

In his infancy he was given the surname Thurinus in memory of the home of his ancestors, or else because it was near Thurii that his father Octavius, shortly after the birth of his son, had gained his victory over the runaway slaves. That he was surnamed Thurinus I may assert on very trustworthy evidence, since I once obtained a bronze statuette, representing him as a boy and inscribed with that name in letters of iron almost illegible from age. This I presented to the emperor, who cherishes it among the Lares of his bed-chamber. Furthermore, he is often called Thurinus in Mark Antony’s letters by way of insult; to which Augustus merely replied that he was surprised that his former name was thrown in his face as a reproach.  Later he took the name of Gaius Caesar and then the surname Augustus, the former by the will of his great-uncle, the latter on the motion of Munatius Plancus. For when some expressed the opinion that he ought to be called Romulus as a second founder of the city, Plancus carried the proposal that he should rather be named Augustus, on the ground that this was not merely a new title but a more honourable one, inasmuch as sacred places too, and those in which anything is consecrated by augural rites are called “august” (augusta), from the increase (auctus) in dignity, or front movements or feeding of the birds (avium gestus gustuve), as Ennius9 also shows when he writes:

“After by augury august illustrious Rome had been founded.”

At the age of four he lost his father. In his twelfth year he delivered a funeral oration to the assembled people in honour of his grandmother Julia. Four years later, after assuming the gown of manhood, he received military prizes at Caesar’s African triumph, although he had taken no part in the war on account of his youth. When his uncle presently went to Spain to engage the sons of Pompey, although Augustus had hardly yet recovered his strength after a severe illness, he followed over roads beset by the enemy with only a very few companions, and that too after suffering shipwreck, and thereby greatly endeared himself to Caesar, who soon formed a high opinion of his character over and above the energy with which he had made the journey.

When Caesar, after recovering the Spanish provinces, planned an expedition against the Dacians and then against the Parthians, Augustus, who had been sent on in advance to Apollonia, devoted his leisure to study. As soon as he learned that his uncle had been slain and that he was his heir, he was in doubt for some time whether to appeal to the nearest legions, but gave up the idea as hasty and premature. He did, however, return to the city and enter upon his inheritance, in spite of the doubts of his mother and the strong opposition of his stepfather, the ex-consul Marcius Philippus. Then he levied armies and henceforth ruled the State, at first with Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus, then with Antony alone for nearly twelve years, and finally by himself for forty-four.

Having given as it were a summary of his life, I shall now take up its various phases one by one, not in chronological order, but by classes, to make the account clearer and more intelligible.The civil wars which he waged were five, called by the names of Mutina, Philippi, Perusia, Sicily, and Actium; the first and last of these were against Marcus Antonius, the second against Brutus and Cassius, the third against Lucius Antonius, brother of the triumvir, and the fourth against Sextus Pompeius, son of Gnaeus.

The initial reason for all these wars was this: since he considered nothing more incumbent on him than to avenge his uncle’s death and maintain the validity of his enactments, immediately on returning from Apollonia he resolved to surprise Brutus and Cassius by taking up arms against them; and when they foresaw the danger and fled, to resort to law and prosecute them for murder in their absence. Furthermore, since those who had been appointed to celebrate Caesar’s victory by games did not dare to do so, he gave them himself. To be able to carry out his other plans with more authority, he announced his candidature for the position of one of the tribunes of the people, who happened to die; though he was a patrician, and not yet a senator. But when his designs were opposed by Marcus Antonius, who was then consul, and on whose help he had especially counted, and Antony would not allow him even common and ordinary justice without the promise of a heavy bribe, he went over to the aristocrats, who he knew detested Antony, especially because he was besieging Decimus Brutus at Mutina, and trying to drive him by force of arms from the province given him by Caesar and ratified by the senate. Accordingly at the advice of certain men he hired assassins to kill Antony, and when the plot was discovered, fearing retaliation he mustered veterans, by the use of all the money he could command, both for his own protection and that of the State. Put in command of the army which he had raised, with the rank of propraetor, and bidden to join with Hirtius and Pansa, who had become consuls, in lending aid to Decimus Brutus, he finished the war which had been entrusted to him within three months in two battles. In the former of these, so Antony writes, he took to flight and was not seen again until the next day, when he returned without his cloak and his horse; but in that which followed all agree that he played the part not only a leader, but of a soldier as well, and that, in the thick of the fight, when the eagle-bearer of his legion was sorely wounded, he shouldered the eagle and carried it for some time.

As Hirtius lost his life in battle during this war, and Pansa shortly afterwards from a wound, the rumour spread that he had caused the death of both, in order that after Antony had been put to flight and the state bereft of its consuls, he might gain sole control of the victorious armies. The circumstances of Pansa’s death in particular were so mysterious, that the physician Glyco was imprisoned on the charge of having applied poison to his wound. Aquilius Niger adds to this that Augustus himself slew the other consul Hirtius amid the confusion of the battle.

But when he learned that Antony after his flight had found a protector in Marcus Lepidus, and that the rest of the leaders and armies were coming to terms with them, he abandoned the cause of the nobles without hesitation, alleging as a pretext for his change of allegiance the words and acts of certain of their number, asserting that some had called him a boy, while others had openly said that he ought to be honoured and got rid of, to escape the necessity of making suitable recompense to him or to his veterans. To show more plainly that he regretted his connection with the former party, he imposed a heavy fine on the people of Nursia and banished them from their city when they were unable to pay it, because they had at public expense erected a monument to their citizens who were slain in the battles at Mutina and inscribed upon it: “they fell for liberty.”

Then, forming a league with Antony and Lepidus, he finished the war of Philippi also in two battles, although weakened by illness, being driven from his camp in the first battle and barely making his escape by fleeing to Antony’s division. He did not use his victory with moderation, but after sending Brutus’s head to Rome, to be cast at the feet of Caesar’s statue, he vented his spleen upon the most distinguished of his captives, not even sparing them insulting language. For instance, to one man who begged humbly for burial, he is said to have replied: “The birds will soon settle that question.” When two others, father and son, begged for their lives, he is said to have bidden them cast lots or play mora, to decide which should be spared, and then to have looked on while both died, since the father was executed because he offered to die for his son, and the latter thereupon took his own life. Because of this the rest, including Marcus Favonius, the well-known imitator of Cato, saluted Antony respectfully as Imperator, when they were led out in chains, but lashed Augustus to his face with the foulest abuse.

When the duties of administration were divided after the victory, Antony undertaking to restore order in the East, and Augustus to lead the veterans back to Italy and assign them lands in the municipalities, he could neither satisfy the veterans nor the landowners, since the latter complained that they were driven from their homes, and the former that they were not being treated as their services had led them to hope.

When Lucius Antonius at this juncture attempted a revolution, relying on his position as consul and his brother’s power, he forced him to take refuge in Perusia, and starved him into surrender, not, however, without great personal danger both before and during the war. For at an exhibition of games, when he had given orders that a common soldier who was sitting in the fourteen rows be put out by an attendant, the report was spread by his detractors that he had had the man killed later and tortured as well; whereupon he all but lost his life in a furious mob of soldiers, owing his escape to the sudden appearance of the missing man safe and sound. Again, when he was sacrificing near the walls of Perusia, he was well nigh cut off by a band of gladiators, who had made a sally from the town.

After the capture of Perusia he took vengeance on many, meeting all attempts to beg for pardon or to make excuses with the one reply, “You must die.” Some write that three hundred men of both orders were selected from the prisoners of war and sacrificed on the Ides of March like so many victims at the altar raised to the Deified Julius. Some have written that he took up arms of a set purpose, to unmask his secret opponents and those whom fear rather than good-will kept faithful to him, by giving them the chance to follow the lead of Lucius Antonius; and then by vanquishing them and confiscating their estates to pay the rewards promised to his veterans.

The Sicilian war was among the first that he began, but it was long drawn out by many interruptions, now for the purpose of rebuilding his fleets, which he twice lost by shipwreck due to storms, and that, too, in the summer; and again by making peace at the demand of the people, when supplies were cut off and there was a severe famine. Finally, after new ships had been built and twenty thousand slaves set free and trained as oarsmen, he made the Julian harbour at Baiae by letting the sea into the Lucrine lake and lake Avernus. After drilling his forces there all winter, he defeated Pompey between Mylae and Naulochus, though just before the battle he was suddenly held fast by so deep a sleep that his friends had to awaken him to give the signal. And it was this, I think, that gave Antony opportunity for the taunt: “He could not even look with steady eyes at the fleet when it was ready for battle, but lay in a stupor on his back, looking up at the sky, and did not rise or appear before the soldiers until the enemy’s ships had been put to flight by Marcus Agrippa.” Some censured an act and saying of his, declaring that when his fleets were lost in the storm, he cried out, “I will have the victory spite of sic: and this is in fact good usage, if antiquated Neptune,” and that on the day when games in the Circus next occurred, he removed the statue of the god from the sacred procession. And it is safe to say that in none of his wars did he encounter more dangers or greater ones. For when he had transported an army to Sicily and was on his way back to the rest of his forces on the mainland, he was surprised by Pompey’s admirals Demochares and Apollophanes and barely escaped with but a single ship. Again, as he was going on foot to Regium by way of Locri, he saw some of Pompey’s biremes coasting along the shore, and taking them for his own ships and going down to the beach, narrowly escaped capture. At that same time, too, as he was making his escape by narrow bypaths, a slave of his companion Aemilius Paulus, nursing a grudge because Augustus had proscribed his master’s father some time before, and thinking that he had an opportunity for revenge, attempted to slay him.

After Pompey’s flight, Augustus’ other colleague, Marcus Lepidus, whom he had summoned from Africa to help him, was puffed up by confidence in his twenty legions and claimed the first place with terrible threats; but Augustus stripped him of his army; and though he granted him his life when he sued for it, he banished him for all time to Circei.

At last he broke off his alliance with Marcus Antonius, which was always doubtful and uncertain, and with difficulty kept alive by various reconciliations; and the better to show that his rival had fallen away from conduct becoming a citizen, he had the will which Antony had left in Rome, naming his children by Cleopatra among his heirs, opened and read before the people. But when Antony was declared a public enemy, he sent back to him all his kinsfolk and friends, among others Gaius Sosius and Titus Domitius, who were still consuls at the time. He also excused the community of Bononia from joining in the rally of all Italy to his standards, since they had been from ancient days dependents of the Antonii. Not long afterwards he won the sea-fight at Actium, where the contest continued to so late an hour that the victor passed the night on board. Having gone into winter quarters at Samos after Actium, he was disturbed by the news of a mutiny of the troops that he had selected from every division of his army and sent on to Brundisium after the victory, who demanded their rewards and discharge; and on his way back to Italy he twice encountered storms at sea, first between the headlands of the Peloponnesus and Aetolia, and again off the Ceraunian mountains. In both places a part of his galleys were sunk, while the rigging of the ship in which he was sailing was carried away and its rudder broken. He delayed at Brundisium only twenty-seven days — just long enough to satisfy all the demands of the soldiers — and then went to Egypt by a roundabout way through Asia and Syria, laid siege to Alexandria, where Antony had taken refuge with Cleopatra, and soon took the city. Although Antony tried to make terms at the eleventh hour, Augustus forced him to commit suicide, and viewed his corpse. He greatly desired to save Cleopatra alive for his triumph, and even had Psylli brought to her, to suck the poison from her wound, since it was thought that she had died from the bite of an asp. He allowed them both the honour of burial, and in the same tomb, giving orders that the mausoleum which they had begun should be finished. The young Antony, the elder of Fulvia’s two sons, he dragged from the image of the Deified Julius, to which he had fled after many vain entreaties, and slew him. Caesarion, too, whom Cleopatra fathered on Caesar, he overtook in his flight, brought back, and put to death. But he spared the rest of the offspring of Antony and Cleopatra, and afterwards maintained and reared them according to their several positions, as carefully as if they were his own kin.

Death of Dido

Virgil

The Aeneid, Book IV

Translated by J.W. Mackail

Book IV of the Aeneid contains a story which has become so culturally significant that many people know it without ever having read the epic that birthed it. Though the story of Dido and Aeneas’s tragic love affair spans only one short book of the twelve, it made Dido of Carthage into something of a literary icon.

It’s in this book, more than perhaps any other book of the Aeneid, that we can see the consequences of Aeneas’s piety and obedience. Clearly, Aeneas does feel strongly for Dido—he may even love her (though some readers might disagree)—but the fact of the matter is that, when presented with a divine reminder of his ultimate purpose, Aeneas does not think twice about leaving Carthage, and Dido, behind.

This behavior may seem heartless to some modern readers, but the truth is that Aeneas proves himself capable of real Roman heroism when he chooses to leave. From Virgil’s point of view, the new heroic ideal had everything to do with suppressing one’s personal desires for the greater good. Aeneas’s long affair with Dido—during which his followers grow restless and unhappy, and during which many building projects in Carthage fail without Dido’s attention—is, to Virgil, a dangerous lapse in Aeneas’s typical ability to obey the gods and fate. Aeneas redeems himself, in a way, when he controls his desire to comfort Dido and turns his back.

Of course, this can’t mitigate our pity for Dido. Her pain and confusion when she realizes that Aeneas is leaving—and trying to leave secretly—is immense, enough to inspire complete despair. It is difficult not to feel pity for that kind of anguish, especially when we know, as readers, that she isn’t even to blame for her amorous feelings.

But the Queen, long ere now pierced with sore distress, feeds the wound with her life-blood, and catches the fire unseen. Again and again his own valiance and his line’s renown flood back upon her spirit; look and accent cling fast in her bosom, and the pain allows not rest or calm to her limbs. The morrow’s dawn bore the torch of Phoebus across the earth, and had rolled away the dewy darkness from the sky, when, scarce herself, she thus opens her confidence to her sister:

‘Anna, my sister, such dreams of terror thrill me through! What guest unknown is this who hath entered our dwelling? How high his mien! how brave in heart as in arms! I believe it well, with no vain assurance, his blood is divine. Fear proves the vulgar spirit. Alas, by what destinies is he driven! what wars outgone he chronicled! Were my mind not planted, fixed and immoveable, to ally myself to none in wedlock since my love of old was false to me in the treachery of death; were I not sick to the heart of bridal torch and chamber, to this temptation alone I might haply yield. Anna, I will confess it; since Sychaeus mine husband met his piteous doom, and our household was shattered by a brother’s murder, he only hath touched mine heart and stirred the balance of my soul. I know the prints of the ancient flame. But rather, I pray, may earth first yawn deep for me, or the Lord omnipotent hurl me with his thunderbolt into gloom, the pallid gloom and profound night of Erebus, ere I soil thee, mine honour, or unloose

thy laws. He took my love away who made me one with him long ago; he shall keep it with him, and guard it in the tomb.’ She spoke, and welling tears filled the bosom of her gown.

Anna replies: ‘O dearer than the daylight to thy sister, wilt thou waste, sad and alone, all thy length of youth, and know not the sweetness of motherhood, nor love’s bounty? Deemest thou the ashes care for that, or the ghost within the tomb? Be it so: in days gone by no wooers bent thy sorrow, not in Libya, not ere then in Tyre; Iarbas was slighted, and other princes nurtured by the triumphal land of Africa; wilt thou contend so with a love to thy liking? nor does it cross thy mind whose are these fields about thy dwelling? On this side are the Gaetulian towns, a race unconquerable in war; the reinless Numidian riders and the grim Syrtis hem thee in; on this lies a thirsty tract of desert, swept by the raiders of Barca. Why speak of the war gathering from Tyre, and thy brother’s menaces? … With gods’ auspices to my thinking, and with Juno’s favour, hath the Ilian fleet held on hither before the gale. What a city wilt thou discern here, O sister! what a realm will rise on such a union! the arms of Troy ranged with ours, what glory will exalt the Punic state! Do thou only, asking divine favour with peace-offerings, be bounteous in welcome and draw out reasons for delay, while the storm rages at sea and Orion is wet, and his ships are shattered and the sky unvoyageable.’ With these words she made the fire of love flame up in her spirit, put hope in her wavering soul, and let honour slip away.

First they visit the shrines, and desire grace from altar to altar; they sacrifice sheep fitly chosen to Ceres the Lawgiver, to Phoebus and lord Lyaeus, to Juno before all, guardian of the marriage bond. Dido herself, excellent in beauty, holds the cup in her hand, and pours libation between the horns of a milk-white cow, or moves in state to the rich altars before the gods’ presences, day

by day renewing her gifts, and gazing athirst into the breasts of cattle laid open to take counsel from the throbbing entrails. Ah, witless souls of soothsayers! how may vows or shrines help her madness? all the while the subtle flame consumes her inly, and deep in her breast the wound is silent and alive. Stung to misery, Dido wanders in frenzy all down the city, even as an arrow- stricken deer, whom, far and heedless amid the Cretan woodland, a shepherd archer hath pierced and left the flying steel in her unaware; she ranges in flight the Dictaean forest lawns; fast in her side clings the deadly reed. Now she leads Aeneas with her through the town, and displays her Sidonian treasure and ordered city; she essays to speak, and breaks off half-way in utterance. Now, as day wanes, she seeks the repeated banquet, and again madly pleads to hear the agonies of Ilium, and again hangs on the teller’s lips. Thereafter, when all are gone their ways, and the dim moon in turn quenches her light, and the setting stars counsel to sleep, alone in the empty house she mourns, and flings herself on the couch he left: distant she hears and sees him in the distance; or enthralled by the look he has of his father, she holds Ascanius on her lap, if so she may steal the love she may not utter. No more do the unfinished towers rise, no more do the people exercise in arms, nor work for safety in war on harbour or bastion; the works hang broken off, vast looming walls and engines towering into the sky.

So soon as she perceives her thus fast in the toils, and madly careless of her name, Jove’s beloved wife, daughter of Saturn, accosts Venus thus:

‘Noble indeed is the fame and splendid the spoils you win, thou and that boy of thine, and mighty the renown of deity, if two gods have vanquished one woman by treachery. Nor am I so blind to thy terror of our town, thine old suspicion of the high house of Carthage. But what shall be the end? or why all this contest now?

Nay, rather let us work an enduring peace and a bridal compact. Thou hast what all thy soul desired; Dido is on fire with love, and hath caught the madness through and through. Then rule we this people jointly in equal lordship; allow her to be a Phrygian husband’s slave, and to lay her Tyrians for dowry in thine hand.’

To her—for she knew the dissembled purpose of her words, to turn the Teucrian kingdom away to the coasts of Libya—Venus thus began in answer: ‘Who so mad as to reject these terms, or choose rather to try the fortune of war with thee? if only when done, as thou sayest, fortune follow. But I move in uncertainty of Jove’s ordinance, whether he will that Tyrians and wanderers from Troy be one city, or approve the mingling of peoples and the treaty of union. Thou art his wife, and thy prayers may essay his soul. Go on; I will follow.’

Then Queen Juno thus rejoined: ‘That task shall be mine. Now, by what means the present need may be fulfilled, attend and I will explain in brief. Aeneas and Dido (alas and woe for her!) are to go hunting together in the woodland when to-morrow’s rising sun goes forth and his rays unveil the world. On them, while the beaters run up and down, and the lawns are girt with toils, will I pour down a blackening rain-cloud mingled with hail, and startle all the sky in thunder. Their company will scatter for shelter in the dim darkness; Dido and the Trojan captain shall take refuge in the same cavern. I will be there, and if thy goodwill is assured me, I will unite them in wedlock, and make her wholly his; here shall Hymen be present.’ The Cytherean gave ready assent to her request, and laughed at the wily invention.

Meanwhile Dawn rises forth of ocean. 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 Iülus. 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.

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 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 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.’

He ended: his son made ready to obey his high command. And first he laces to his feet the shoes of gold that bear him high winging over seas or land as fleet as the gale; then takes the rod wherewith he calls wan souls forth of Orcus, or sends them again to the sad depth of hell, gives sleep and takes it away and unseals dead eyes; in whose strength he courses the winds and swims

across the tossing clouds. And now in flight he descries the peak and steep sides of toiling Atlas, whose crest sustains the sky; Atlas, whose pine-clad head is girt alway with black clouds and beaten by wind and rain; snow is shed over his shoulders for covering; rivers tumble over his aged chin; and his rough beard is stiff with ice. Here the Cyllenian, poised evenly on his wings, made a first stay; hence he shot himself sheer to the water. Like a bird that flies low, skirting the sea about the craggy shores of its fishery, even thus the brood of Cyllene left his mother’s father, and flew, cutting the winds between sky and land, along the sandy Libyan shore. So soon as his winged feet reached the settlement, he espies Aeneas founding towers and ordering new dwellings; his sword twinkled with yellow jasper, and a cloak hung from his shoulders ablaze with Tyrian sea-purple, a gift that Dido had made costly and shot the warp with thin gold. Straightway he breaks in: ‘Layest thou now the foundations of tall Carthage, and buildest up a fair city in dalliance? ah, forgetful of thine own kingdom and state! From bright Olympus I descend to thee at express command of heaven’s sovereign, whose deity sways sky and earth; expressly he bids me carry this charge through the fleet air: with what device or in what hope dost thou loiter idly on Libyan lands? if such glories kindle thee in nowise, yet cast an eye on growing Ascanius, on Iülus thine hope and heir, to whom the kingdom of Italy and the Roman land are due.’As these words left his lips the Cyllenian, yet speaking, quitted mortal sight and vanished into thin air away out of his eyes.

But Aeneas in truth gazed in dumb amazement, his hair thrilled up, and the accents faltered on his tongue. He burns to flee away and leave the pleasant land, aghast at the high warning and divine ordinance. Alas, what shall he do? how venture to smooth the tale to the frenzied queen? what prologue shall he find? and this way and that he rapidly throws his mind, and turns it on all hands in swift change of thought. In his perplexity this seemed the better

counsel; he calls Mnestheus and Sergestus, and brave Serestus, and bids them silently equip the fleet, gather their crews on shore, and order their armament, keeping the cause of the commotion hid; himself meanwhile, since Dido the gracious knows not nor looks for severance to so strong a love, will essay to approach her when she may be told most gently, and the way for it be fair. All at once gladly do as bidden, and obey his command.

But the Queen—who may delude a lover?—foreknew his devices, and at once caught the presaging stir. Safety’s self was fear; to her likewise had evil Rumour borne the maddening news that they equip the fleet and prepare for passage. Helpless at heart, she reels aflame with rage throughout the city, even as the startled Thyiad in her frenzied triennial orgies, when the holy vessels move forth and the cry of Bacchus re-echoes, and Cithaeron calls her with nightlong din. Thus at last she opens out upon Aeneas:

‘And thou didst hope, traitor, to mask the crime, and slip away in silence from my land? Our love holds thee not, nor the hand thou once gavest, nor the bitter death that is left for Dido’s portion? Nay, under the wintry star thou labourest on thy fleet, and hastenest to launch into the deep amid northern gales; ah, cruel! Why, were thy quest not of alien fields and unknown dwellings, did thine ancient Troy remain, should Troy be sought in voyages over tossing seas? Fliest thou from me? me who by these tears and thine own hand beseech thee, since naught else, alas! have I kept mine own—by our union and the marriage rites preparing; if I have done thee any grace, or aught of mine hath once been sweet in thy sight,—pity our sinking house, and if there yet be room for prayers, put off this purpose of thine. For thy sake Libyan tribes and Nomad kings are hostile; my Tyrians are estranged; for thy sake, thine, is mine honour perished, and the former fame, my one title to the skies. How leavest thou me to die, O my guest? since to this the name of husband is dwindled

down. For what do I wait? till Pygmalion overthrow his sister’s city, or Gaetulian Iarbas lead me to captivity? At least if before thy flight a child of thine had been clasped in my arms,—if a tiny Aeneas were playing in my hall, whose face might yet image thine,—I would not think myself ensnared and deserted utterly.’

She ended; he by counsel of Jove held his gaze unstirred, and kept his distress hard down in his heart. At last he briefly answers:

‘Never, O Queen, will I deny that thy goodness hath gone high as thy words can swell the reckoning; nor will my memory of Elissa be ungracious while I remember myself, and breath sways this body. Little will I say in this. I never hoped to slip away in stealthy flight; fancy not that; nor did I ever hold out the marriage torch or enter thus into alliance. Did fate allow me to guide my life by mine own government, and calm my sorrows as I would, my first duty were to the Trojan city and the dear remnant of my kindred; the high house of Priam should abide, and my hand had set up Troy towers anew for a conquered people. But now for broad Italy hath Apollo of Grynos bidden me steer, for Italy the oracles of Lycia. Here is my desire; this is my native country. If thy Phoenician eyes are stayed on Carthage towers and thy Libyan city, what wrong is it, I pray, that we Trojans find our rest on Ausonian land? We too may seek a foreign realm unforbidden. In my sleep, often as the dank shades of night veil the earth, often as the stars lift their fires, the troubled phantom of my father Anchises comes in warning and dread; my boy Ascanius, how I wrong one so dear in cheating him of an Hesperian kingdom and destined fields. Now even the gods’ interpreter, sent straight from Jove—I call both to witness—hath borne down his commands through the fleet air. Myself in broad daylight I saw the deity passing within the walls, and these ears drank his utterance. Cease to madden me and thyself alike with plaints. Not of my will do I follow Italy… .’

Long ere he ended she gazes on him askance, turning her eyes from side to side and perusing him with silent glances; then thus wrathfully speaks:

‘No goddess was thy mother, nor Dardanus founder of thy line, traitor! but rough Caucasus bore thee on his iron crags, and Hyrcanian tigresses gave thee suck. For why do I conceal it? For what further outrage do I wait? Hath our weeping cost him a sigh, or a lowered glance? Hath he broken into tears, or had pity on his lover? Where, where shall I begin? Now neither doth Queen Juno nor our Saturnian lord regard us with righteous eyes. Nowhere is trust safe. Cast ashore and destitute I welcomed him, and madly gave him place and portion in my kingdom; I found him his lost fleet and drew his crews from death. Alas, the fire of madness speeds me on. Now prophetic Apollo, now oracles of Lycia, now the very gods’ interpreter sent straight from Jove through the air carries these rude commands! Truly that is work for the gods, that a care to vex their peace! I detain thee not, nor gainsay thy words: go, follow thine Italy down the wind; seek thy realm overseas. Yet midway my hope is, if righteous gods can do aught at all, thou wilt drain the cup of vengeance on the rocks, and re-echo calls on Dido’s name. In murky fires I will follow far away, and when chill death hath severed body from soul, my ghost will haunt thee in every region. Wretch, thou shalt repay! I will hear; and the rumour of it shall reach me deep in the under world.’

Even on these words she breaks off her speech unfinished, and, sick at heart, escapes out of the air and sweeps round and away out of sight, leaving him in fear and much hesitance, and with much on his mind to say. Her women catch her in their arms, and carry her swooning to her marble chamber and lay her on her bed.

But good Aeneas, though he would fain soothe and comfort her grief, and talk away her distress, with many a sigh, and melted in soul by his great love, yet fulfils the divine commands and returns to his fleet. Then indeed the Teucrians set to work, and haul down their tall ships all along the shore. The hulls are oiled and afloat; they carry from the woodland green boughs for oars and massy logs unhewn, in hot haste to go… . One might descry them shifting their quarters and pouring out of all the town: even as ants, mindful of winter, plunder a great heap of wheat and store it in their house; a black column advances on the plain as they carry home their spoil on a narrow track through the grass. Some shove and strain with their shoulders at big grains, some marshal the ranks and chastise delay; all the path is aswarm with work. What then were thy thoughts, O Dido, as thou sawest it? What sighs didst thou utter, viewing from the fortress roof the broad beach aswarm, and seeing before thine eyes the whole sea stirred with their noisy din? Injurious Love, to what dost thou not compel mortal hearts! Again, she must needs break into tears, again essay entreaty, and bow her spirit down to love, not to leave aught untried and go to death in vain.

‘Anna, thou seest the bustle that fills the shore. They have gathered round from every quarter; already their canvas woos the breezes, and the merry sailors have garlanded the sterns. This great pain, my sister, I shall have strength to bear, as I have had strength to foresee. Yet this one thing, Anna, for love and pity’s sake—for of thee alone was the traitor fain, to thee even his secret thoughts were confided, alone thou knewest his moods and tender fits—go, my sister, and humbly accost the haughty stranger: I did not take the Grecian oath in Aulis to root out the race of Troy; I sent no fleet against her fortresses; neither have I disentombed his father Anchises’ ashes and ghost, that he should refuse my words entrance to his stubborn ears. Whither does he run? let him grant this grace—alas, the last!—to his lover, and

await fair winds and an easy passage. No more do I pray for the old delusive marriage, nor that he give up fair Latium and abandon a kingdom. A breathing-space I ask, to give my madness rest and room, till my very fortune teach my grief submission. This last favour I implore: sister, be pitiful; grant this to me, and I will restore it in full measure when I die.’

So she pleaded, and so her sister carries and recarries the piteous tale of weeping. But by no weeping is he stirred, inflexible to all the words he hears. Fate withstands, and lays divine bars on unmoved mortal ears. Even as when the eddying blasts of northern Alpine winds are emulous to uproot the secular strength of a mighty oak, it wails on, and the trunk quivers and the high foliage strews the ground; the tree clings fast on the rocks, and high as her top soars into heaven, so deep strike her roots to hell; even thus is the hero buffeted with changeful perpetual accents, and distress thrills his mighty breast, while his purpose stays unstirred, and tears fall in vain.

Then indeed, hapless and dismayed by doom, Dido prays for death, and is weary of gazing on the arch of heaven. The more to make her fulfil her purpose and quit the light, she saw, when she laid her gifts on the altars alight with incense, awful to tell, the holy streams blacken, and the wine turn as it poured into ghastly blood. Of this sight she spoke to none—no, not to her sister. Likewise there was within the house a marble temple of her ancient lord, kept of her in marvellous honour, and fastened with snowy fleeces and festal boughs. Forth of it she seemed to hear her husband’s voice crying and calling when night was dim upon earth, and alone on the house-tops the screech-owl often made moan with funeral note and long-drawn sobbing cry. Therewithal many a warning of wizards of old terrifies her with appalling presage. In her sleep fierce Aeneas drives her wildly, and ever she seems being left by herself alone, ever going

uncompanioned on a weary way, and seeking her Tyrians in a solitary land: even as frantic Pentheus sees the arrayed Furies and a double sun, and Thebes shows herself twofold to his eyes: or Agamemnonian Orestes, renowned in tragedy, when his mother pursues him armed with torches and dark serpents, and the Fatal Sisters crouch avenging in the doorway.

So when, overcome by her pangs, she caught the madness and resolved to die, she works out secretly the time and fashion, and accosts her sorrowing sister with mien hiding her design and hope calm on her brow.

‘I have found a way, mine own—wish me joy, sisterlike—to restore him to me or release me of my love for him. Hard by the ocean limit and the set of sun is the extreme Aethiopian land, where ancient Atlas turns on his shoulders the starred burning axletree of heaven. Out of it hath been shown to me a priestess of Massylian race, warder of the temple of the Hesperides, even she who gave the dragon his food, and kept the holy boughs on the tree, sprinkling clammy honey and slumberous poppy-seed. She professes with her spells to relax the purposes of whom she will, but on others to bring passion and pain; to stay the river- waters and turn the stars backward: she calls up ghosts by night; thou shalt see earth moaning under foot and mountain-ashes descending from the hills. I take heaven, sweet, to witness, and thee, mine own darling sister, I do not willingly arm myself with the arts of magic. Do thou secretly raise a pyre in the inner court, and let them lay on it the arms that the accursed one left hanging in our chamber, and all the dress he wore, and the bridal bed where I fell. It is good to wipe out all the wretch’s traces, and the priestess orders thus.’ So speaks she, and is silent, while pallor overruns her face. Yet Anna deems not her sister veils death behind these strange rites, and grasps not her wild purpose, nor

fears aught deeper than at Sychaeus’ death. So she makes ready as bidden… .

But the Queen, the pyre being built up of piled faggots and sawn ilex in the inmost of her dwelling, hangs the room with chaplets and garlands it with funeral boughs: on the pillow she lays the dress he wore, the sword he left, and an image of him, knowing what was to come. Altars are reared around, and the priestess, with hair undone, thrice peals from her lips the hundred gods of Erebus and Chaos, and the triform Hecate, the triple-faced maidenhood of Diana. Likewise she had sprinkled pretended waters of Avernus’ spring, and rank herbs are sought mown by moonlight with brazen sickles, dark with milky venom, and sought is the talisman torn from a horse’s forehead at birth ere the dam could snatch it… . Herself, the holy cake in her pure hands, hard by the altars, with one foot unshod and garments flowing loose, she invokes the gods ere she die, and the stars that know of doom; then prays to whatsoever deity looks in righteousness and remembrance on lovers ill allied.

Night fell; weary creatures took quiet slumber all over earth, and woodland and wild waters had sunk to rest; now the stars wheel midway on their gliding path, now all the country is silent, and beasts and gay birds that haunt liquid levels of lake or thorny rustic thicket lay couched asleep under the still night. But not so the distressed Phoenician, nor does she ever sink asleep or take the night upon eyes or breast; her pain redoubles, and her love swells to renewed madness, as she tosses on the strong tide of wrath. Even so she begins, and thus revolves with her heart alone:

‘See, what do I? Shall I again make trial of mine old wooers that will scorn me? and stoop to sue for a Numidian marriage among those whom already over and over I have disdained for

husbands? Then shall I follow the Ilian fleets and the uttermost bidding of the Teucrians? because it is good to think they were once raised up by my succour, or the grace of mine old kindness is fresh in their remembrance? And how should they let me, if I would? or take the odious woman on their haughty ships? art thou ignorant, ah me, even in ruin, and knowest not yet the forsworn race of Laomedon? And then? shall I accompany the triumphant sailors, a lonely fugitive? or plunge forth girt with all my Tyrian train? so hardly severed from Sidon city, shall I again drive them seaward, and bid them spread their sails to the tempest? Nay die thou, as thou deservest, and let the steel end thy pain. With thee it began; overborne by my tears, thou, O my sister, dost load me with this madness and agony, and layest me open to the enemy. I could not spend a wild life without stain, far from a bridal chamber, and free from touch of distress like this! O faith ill kept, that was plighted to Sychaeus’ ashes!’ Thus her heart broke in long lamentation.

Now Aeneas was fixed to go, and now, with all set duly in order, was taking hasty sleep on his high stern. To him as he slept the god appeared once again in the same fashion of countenance, and thus seemed to renew his warning, in all points like to Mercury, voice and hue and golden hair and limbs gracious in youth. ‘Goddess-born, canst thou sleep on in such danger? and seest not the coming perils that hem thee in, madman! nor hearest the breezes blowing fair? She, fixed on death, is revolving craft and crime grimly in her bosom, and swells the changing surge of wrath. Fliest thou not hence headlong, while headlong flight is yet possible? Even now wilt thou see ocean weltering with broken timbers, see the fierce glare of torches and the beach in a riot of flame, if dawn break on thee yet dallying in this land. Up ho! linger no more! Woman is ever a fickle and changing thing.’ So spoke he, and melted in the black night.

Then indeed Aeneas, startled by the sudden phantom, leaps out of slumber and bestirs his crew. ‘Haste and awake, O men, and sit down to the thwarts; shake out sail speedily. A god sent from high heaven, lo! again spurs us to speed our flight and cut the twisted cables. We follow thee, holy one of heaven, whoso thou art, and again joyfully obey thy command. O be favourable; give gracious aid and bring fair sky and weather.’ He spoke, and snatching his sword like lightning from the sheath, strikes at the hawser with the drawn steel. The same zeal catches all at once; rushing and tearing they quit the shore; the sea is hidden under their fleets; strongly they toss up the foam and sweep the blue water.

And now Dawn broke, and, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, shed her radiance anew over the world; when the Queen saw from her watch-tower the first light whitening, and the fleet standing out under squared sail, and discerned shore and haven empty of all their oarsmen. Thrice and four times she struck her hand on her lovely breast and rent her yellow hair: ‘God!’ she cries, ‘shall he go? shall an alien make mock of our realm? Will they not issue in armed pursuit from all the city, and some launch ships from the dockyards? Go; bring fire in haste, serve weapons, swing out the oars! What do I talk? or where am I? what mad change is on my purpose? Alas, Dido! now thou dost feel thy wickedness; that had graced thee once, when thou gavest away thy crown. Behold the faith and hand of him! who, they say, carries his household’s ancestral gods about with him! who stooped his shoulders to a father outworn with age! Could I not have riven his body in sunder and strewn it on the waves? and slain with the sword his comrades and his dear Ascanius, and served him for the banquet at his father’s table? But the chance of battle had been dubious. If it had! whom did I fear with my death upon me? I should have borne firebrands into his camp and filled his decks with flame, blotted out father and son and race together, and flung myself

atop of all. Sun, whose fires lighten all the works of the world, and thou, Juno, mediatress and witness of these my distresses, and Hecate, cried on by night in crossways of cities, and you, fatal avenging sisters and gods of dying Elissa, hear me now; bend your just deity to my woes, and listen to our prayers. If it must needs be that the accursed one touch his haven and float up to land, if thus Jove’s decrees demand, and this is the appointed term,—yet, distressed in war by an armed and gallant nation, driven homeless from his borders, rent from Iülus’ embrace, let him sue for succour and see death on death untimely on his people; nor when he hath yielded him to the terms of a harsh peace, may he have joy of his kingdom or the pleasant light; but let him fall before his day and without burial on a waste of sand. This I pray; this and my blood with it I pour for the last utterance. And you, O Tyrians, hunt his seed with your hatred for all ages to come; send this guerdon to our ashes. Let no kindness nor truce be between the nations. Arise out of our dust, O unnamed avenger, to pursue the Dardanian settlement with firebrand and steel. Now, then, whensoever strength shall be given, I invoke the enmity of shore to shore, wave to water, sword to sword; let their battles go down to their children’s children.’

So speaks she as she kept turning her mind round about, seeking how soonest to break away from the hateful light. Thereon she speaks briefly to Barce, nurse of Sychaeus; for a heap of dusky ashes held her own, in her country of long ago:

‘Sweet nurse, bring Anna my sister hither to me. Bid her haste and sprinkle river water over her body, and bring with her the beasts ordained for expiation: so let her come: and thou likewise veil thy brows with a pure chaplet. I would fulfil the rites of Stygian Jove that I have fitly ordered and begun, so to set the limit to my distresses and give over to the flames the funeral pyre of the Dardanian.’

So speaks she; the old woman went eagerly with quickened pace. But Dido, fluttered and fierce in her awful purpose, with bloodshot restless gaze, and spots on her quivering cheeks burning through the pallor of imminent death, bursts into the inner courts of the house, and mounts in madness the high funeral pyre, and unsheathes the sword of Dardania, a gift asked for no use like this. Then after her eyes fell on the Ilian raiment and the bed she knew, dallying a little with her purpose through her tears, she sank on the pillow and spoke the last words of all:

‘Dress he wore, sweet while doom and deity allowed! receive my spirit now, and release me from my distresses. I have lived and fulfilled Fortune’s allotted course; and now shall I go a queenly phantom under the earth. I have built a renowned city; I have seen my ramparts rise; by my brother’s punishment I have avenged my husband of his enemy; happy, ah me! and over happy, had but the keels of Dardania never touched our shores!’ She spoke; and burying her face in the pillow, ‘Death it will be,’ she cries, ‘and unavenged; but death be it. Thus, thus is it good to pass into the dark. Let the pitiless Dardanian’s gaze drink in this fire out at sea, and my death be the omen he carries on his way.’

She ceased; and even as she spoke her people see her sunk on the steel, and blood reeking on the sword and spattered on her hands. A cry rises in the high halls; Rumour riots down the quaking city. The house resounds with lamentation and sobbing and bitter crying of women; heaven echoes their loud wails; even as though all Carthage or ancient Tyre went down as the foe poured in, and the flames rolled furious over the roofs of house and temple. Swooning at the sound, her sister runs in a flutter of dismay, with torn face and smitten bosom, and darts through them all, and calls the dying woman by her name. ‘Was it this, mine own? Was my summons a snare? Was it this thy pyre, ah me, this thine

altar fires meant? How shall I begin my desolate moan? Didst thou disdain a sister’s company in death? Thou shouldst have called me to share thy doom; in the self-same hour, the self-same pang of steel had been our portion. Did these very hands build it, did my voice call on our father’s gods, that with thee lying thus I should be away as one without pity? Thou hast destroyed thyself and me together, O my sister, and the Sidonian lords and people, and this thy city. Give her wounds water: I will bathe them and catch on my lips the last breath that haply yet lingers.’ So speaking she had climbed the high steps, and, wailing, clasped and caressed her half-lifeless sister in her bosom, and stanched the dark streams of blood with her gown. She, essaying to lift her heavy eyes, swoons back; the deep-driven wound gurgles in her breast. Thrice she rose, and strained to lift herself on her elbow; thrice she rolled back on the pillow, and with wandering eyes sought the light of high heaven, and moaned as she found it.

Then Juno omnipotent, pitying her long pain and difficult decease, sent Iris down from heaven to unloose the struggling life from the body where it clung. For since neither by fate did she perish, nor as one who had earned her death, but woefully before her day, and fired by sudden madness, not yet had Proserpine taken her lock from the golden head, nor sentenced her to the Stygian under world. So Iris on dewy saffron pinions flits down through the sky athwart the sun in a trail of a thousand changing dyes, and stopping over her head: ‘This hair, sacred to Dis, I take as bidden, and release thee from that body of thine.’ So speaks she, and cuts it with her hand. And therewith all the warmth ebbed forth from her, and the life passed away upon the winds.

-Translated by J.W. Mackail

The Allegory of the Bees

Virgil

The Georgics, Book IV

Virgil, active during the 1st century B.C., experienced very tumultuous times in Roman history. Virgil saw Rome through its many years of civil wars and its transition to an Empire under Augustus. As a result of living during this politically charged portion of Roman history, Virgil’s works have underlying political significance.

The political influence is apparent in his work The Georgics, which he wrote before the Aeneid. In this four-book poem, Vigil focuses on the topic of agriculture, as indicated by the title, with a noticeable similarity to Hesiod’s works Works and Days and the Theogony written around 700 B.C.. However, the work goes much deeper than just the topic of agriculture, using it as a way to describe the nature of man as well as his constant struggle against the natural world. The work as a whole was written to help bolster Augustus’ agricultural policies by showing the importance of agriculture and glorifying a country lifestyle.

Virgil’s famous allegory of the bees comes in the final book of this work portraying the lifestyle of bees as a model for human life. Bees work and toil and are devoted to a monarch and their community, much like man.

Of air-born honey, gift of heaven, I now

Take up the tale. Upon this theme no less

Look thou, Maecenas, with indulgent eye.

A marvellous display of puny powers,

High-hearted chiefs, a nation’s history,

Its traits, its bent, its battles and its clans,

All, each, shall pass before you, while I sing.

Slight though the poet’s theme, not slight the praise,

So frown not heaven, and Phoebus hear his call.

First find your bees a settled sure abode,

Where neither winds can enter (winds blow back

The foragers with food returning home)

Nor sheep and butting kids tread down the flowers,

Nor heifer wandering wide upon the plain

Dash off the dew, and bruise the springing blades.

Let the gay lizard too keep far aloof

His scale-clad body from their honied stalls,

And the bee-eater, and what birds beside,

And Procne smirched with blood upon the breast

From her own murderous hands. For these roam wide

Wasting all substance, or the bees themselves

Strike flying, and in their beaks bear home, to glut

Those savage nestlings with the dainty prey.

But let clear springs and moss-green pools be near,

And through the grass a streamlet hurrying run,

Some palm-tree o’er the porch extend its shade,

Or huge-grown oleaster, that in Spring,

Their own sweet Spring-tide, when the new-made chiefs

Lead forth the young swarms, and, escaped their comb,

The colony comes forth to sport and play,

The neighbouring bank may lure them from the heat,

Or bough befriend with hospitable shade.

O’er the mid-waters, whether swift or still,

Cast willow-branches and big stones enow,

Bridge after bridge, where they may footing find

And spread their wide wings to the summer sun,

If haply Eurus, swooping as they pause,

Have dashed with spray or plunged them in the deep.

And let green cassias and far-scented thymes,

And savory with its heavy-laden breath

Bloom round about, and violet-beds hard by

Sip sweetness from the fertilizing springs.

For the hive’s self, or stitched of hollow bark,

Or from tough osier woven, let the doors

Be strait of entrance; for stiff winter’s cold

Congeals the honey, and heat resolves and thaws,

To bees alike disastrous; not for naught

So haste they to cement the tiny pores

That pierce their walls, and fill the crevices

With pollen from the flowers, and glean and keep

To this same end the glue, that binds more fast

Than bird-lime or the pitch from Ida’s pines.

Oft too in burrowed holes, if fame be true,

They make their cosy subterranean home,

And deeply lodged in hollow rocks are found,

Or in the cavern of an age-hewn tree.

Thou not the less smear round their crannied cribs

With warm smooth mud-coat, and strew leaves above;

But near their home let neither yew-tree grow,

Nor reddening crabs be roasted, and mistrust

Deep marish-ground and mire with noisome smell,

Or where the hollow rocks sonorous ring,

And the word spoken buffets and rebounds.

What more? When now the golden sun has put

Winter to headlong flight beneath the world,

And oped the doors of heaven with summer ray,

Forthwith they roam the glades and forests o’er,

Rifle the painted flowers, or sip the streams,

Light-hovering on the surface. Hence it is

With some sweet rapture, that we know not of,

Their little ones they foster, hence with skill

Work out new wax or clinging honey mould.

So when the cage-escaped hosts you see

Float heavenward through the hot clear air, until

You marvel at yon dusky cloud that spreads

And lengthens on the wind, then mark them well;

For then ‘tis ever the fresh springs they seek

And bowery shelter: hither must you bring

The savoury sweets I bid, and sprinkle them,

Bruised balsam and the wax-flower’s lowly weed,

And wake and shake the tinkling cymbals heard

By the great Mother: on the anointed spots

Themselves will settle, and in wonted wise

Seek of themselves the cradle’s inmost depth.

But if to battle they have hied them forth-

For oft ‘twixt king and king with uproar dire

Fierce feud arises, and at once from far

You may discern what passion sways the mob,

And how their hearts are throbbing for the strife;

Hark! the hoarse brazen note that warriors know

Chides on the loiterers, and the ear may catch

A sound that mocks the war-trump’s broken blasts;

Then in hot haste they muster, then flash wings,

Sharpen their pointed beaks and knit their thews,

And round the king, even to his royal tent,

Throng rallying, and with shouts defy the foe.

So, when a dry Spring and clear space is given,

Forth from the gates they burst, they clash on high;

A din arises; they are heaped and rolled

Into one mighty mass, and headlong fall,

Not denselier hail through heaven, nor pelting so

Rains from the shaken oak its acorn-shower.

Conspicuous by their wings the chiefs themselves

Press through the heart of battle, and display

A giant’s spirit in each pigmy frame,

Steadfast no inch to yield till these or those

The victor’s ponderous arm has turned to flight.

Such fiery passions and such fierce assaults

A little sprinkled dust controls and quells.

And now, both leaders from the field recalled,

Who hath the worser seeming, do to death,

Lest royal waste wax burdensome, but let

His better lord it on the empty throne.

One with gold-burnished flakes will shine like fire,

For twofold are their kinds, the nobler he,

Of peerless front and lit with flashing scales;

That other, from neglect and squalor foul,

Drags slow a cumbrous belly. As with kings,

So too with people, diverse is their mould,

Some rough and loathly, as when the wayfarer

Scapes from a whirl of dust, and scorched with heat

Spits forth the dry grit from his parched mouth:

The others shine forth and flash with lightning-gleam,

Their backs all blazoned with bright drops of gold

Symmetric: this the likelier breed; from these,

When heaven brings round the season, thou shalt strain

Sweet honey, nor yet so sweet as passing clear,

And mellowing on the tongue the wine-god’s fire.

But when the swarms fly aimlessly abroad,

Disport themselves in heaven and spurn their cells,

Leaving the hive unwarmed, from such vain play

Must you refrain their volatile desires,

Nor hard the task: tear off the monarchs’ wings;

While these prove loiterers, none beside will dare

Mount heaven, or pluck the standards from the camp.

Let gardens with the breath of saffron flowers

Allure them, and the lord of Hellespont,

Priapus, wielder of the willow-scythe,

Safe in his keeping hold from birds and thieves.

And let the man to whom such cares are dear

Himself bring thyme and pine-trees from the heights,

And strew them in broad belts about their home;

No hand but his the blistering task should ply,

Plant the young slips, or shed the genial showers.

And I myself, were I not even now

Furling my sails, and, nigh the journey’s end,

Eager to turn my vessel’s prow to shore,

Perchance would sing what careful husbandry

Makes the trim garden smile; of Paestum too,

Whose roses bloom and fade and bloom again;

How endives glory in the streams they drink,

And green banks in their parsley, and how the gourd

Twists through the grass and rounds him to paunch;

Nor of Narcissus had my lips been dumb,

That loiterer of the flowers, nor supple-stemmed

Acanthus, with the praise of ivies pale,

And myrtles clinging to the shores they love.

For ‘neath the shade of tall Oebalia’s towers,

Where dark Galaesus laves the yellowing fields,

An old man once I mind me to have seen-

From Corycus he came- to whom had fallen

Some few poor acres of neglected land,

And they nor fruitful’ neath the plodding steer,

Meet for the grazing herd, nor good for vines.

Yet he, the while his meagre garden-herbs

Among the thorns he planted, and all round

White lilies, vervains, and lean poppy set,

In pride of spirit matched the wealth of kings,

And home returning not till night was late,

With unbought plenty heaped his board on high.

He was the first to cull the rose in spring,

He the ripe fruits in autumn; and ere yet

Winter had ceased in sullen ire to rive

The rocks with frost, and with her icy bit

Curb in the running waters, there was he

Plucking the rathe faint hyacinth, while he chid

Summer’s slow footsteps and the lagging West.

Therefore he too with earliest brooding bees

And their full swarms o’erflowed, and first was he

To press the bubbling honey from the comb;

Lime-trees were his, and many a branching pine;

And all the fruits wherewith in early bloom

The orchard-tree had clothed her, in full tale

Hung there, by mellowing autumn perfected.

He too transplanted tall-grown elms a-row,

Time-toughened pear, thorns bursting with the plum

And plane now yielding serviceable shade

For dry lips to drink under: but these things,

Shut off by rigorous limits, I pass by,

And leave for others to sing after me.

Come, then, I will unfold the natural powers

Great Jove himself upon the bees bestowed,

The boon for which, led by the shrill sweet strains

Of the Curetes and their clashing brass,

They fed the King of heaven in Dicte’s cave.

Alone of all things they receive and hold

Community of offspring, and they house

Together in one city, and beneath

The shelter of majestic laws they live;

And they alone fixed home and country know,

And in the summer, warned of coming cold,

Make proof of toil, and for the general store

Hoard up their gathered harvesting. For some

Watch o’er the victualling of the hive, and these

By settled order ply their tasks afield;

And some within the confines of their home

Plant firm the comb’s first layer, Narcissus’ tear,

And sticky gum oozed from the bark of trees,

Then set the clinging wax to hang therefrom.

Others the while lead forth the full-grown young,

Their country’s hope, and others press and pack

The thrice repured honey, and stretch their cells

To bursting with the clear-strained nectar sweet.

Some, too, the wardship of the gates befalls,

Who watch in turn for showers and cloudy skies,

Or ease returning labourers of their load,

Or form a band and from their precincts drive

The drones, a lazy herd. How glows the work!

How sweet the honey smells of perfumed thyme

Like the Cyclopes, when in haste they forge

From the slow-yielding ore the thunderbolts,

Some from the bull’s-hide bellows in and out

Let the blasts drive, some dip i’ the water-trough

The sputtering metal: with the anvil’s weight

Groans Etna: they alternately in time

With giant strength uplift their sinewy arms,

Or twist the iron with the forceps’ grip-

Not otherwise, to measure small with great,

The love of getting planted in their breasts

Goads on the bees, that haunt old Cecrops’ heights,

Each in his sphere to labour. The old have charge

To keep the town, and build the walled combs,

And mould the cunning chambers; but the youth,

Their tired legs packed with thyme, come labouring home

Belated, for afar they range to feed

On arbutes and the grey-green willow-leaves,

And cassia and the crocus blushing red,

Glue-yielding limes, and hyacinths dusky-eyed.

One hour for rest have all, and one for toil:

With dawn they hurry from the gates- no room

For loiterers there: and once again, when even

Now bids them quit their pasturing on the plain,

Then homeward make they, then refresh their strength:

A hum arises: hark! they buzz and buzz

About the doors and threshold; till at length

Safe laid to rest they hush them for the night,

And welcome slumber laps their weary limbs.

But from the homestead not too far they fare,

When showers hang like to fall, nor, east winds nigh,

Confide in heaven, but ‘neath the city walls

Safe-circling fetch them water, or essay

Brief out-goings, and oft weigh-up tiny stones,

As light craft ballast in the tossing tide,

Wherewith they poise them through the cloudy vast.

This law of life, too, by the bees obeyed,

Will move thy wonder, that nor sex with sex

Yoke they in marriage, nor yield their limbs to love,

Nor know the pangs of labour, but alone

From leaves and honied herbs, the mothers, each,

Gather their offspring in their mouths, alone

Supply new kings and pigmy commonwealth,

And their old court and waxen realm repair.

Oft, too, while wandering, against jagged stones

Their wings they fray, and ‘neath the burden yield

Their liberal lives: so deep their love of flowers,

So glorious deem they honey’s proud acquist.

Therefore, though each a life of narrow span,

Ne’er stretched to summers more than seven, befalls,

Yet deathless doth the race endure, and still

Perennial stands the fortune of their line,

From grandsire unto grandsire backward told.

Moreover, not Aegyptus, nor the realm

Of boundless Lydia, no, nor Parthia’s hordes,

Nor Median Hydaspes, to their king

Do such obeisance: lives the king unscathed,

One will inspires the million: is he dead,

Snapt is the bond of fealty; they themselves

Ravage their toil-wrought honey, and rend amain

Their own comb’s waxen trellis. He is the lord

Of all their labour; him with awful eye

They reverence, and with murmuring throngs surround,

In crowds attend, oft shoulder him on high,

Or with their bodies shield him in the fight,

And seek through showering wounds a glorious death.

Led by these tokens, and with such traits to guide,

Some say that unto bees a share is given

Of the Divine Intelligence, and to drink

Pure draughts of ether; for God permeates all-

Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault of heaven-

From whom flocks, herds, men, beasts of every kind,

Draw each at birth the fine essential flame;

Yea, and that all things hence to Him return,

Brought back by dissolution, nor can death

Find place: but, each into his starry rank,

Alive they soar, and mount the heights of heaven.

If now their narrow home thou wouldst unseal,

And broach the treasures of the honey-house,

With draught of water first toment thy lips,

And spread before thee fumes of trailing smoke.

Twice is the teeming produce gathered in,

Twofold their time of harvest year by year,

Once when Taygete the Pleiad uplifts

Her comely forehead for the earth to see,

With foot of scorn spurning the ocean-streams,

Once when in gloom she flies the watery Fish,

And dips from heaven into the wintry wave.

Unbounded then their wrath; if hurt, they breathe

Venom into their bite, cleave to the veins

And let the sting lie buried, and leave their lives

Behind them in the wound. But if you dread

Too rigorous a winter, and would fain

Temper the coming time, and their bruised hearts

And broken estate to pity move thy soul,

Yet who would fear to fumigate with thyme,

Or cut the empty wax away? for oft

Into their comb the newt has gnawed unseen,

And the light-loathing beetles crammed their bed,

And he that sits at others’ board to feast,

The do-naught drone; or ‘gainst the unequal foe

Swoops the fierce hornet, or the moth’s fell tribe;

Or spider, victim of Minerva’s spite,

Athwart the doorway hangs her swaying net.

The more impoverished they, the keenlier all

To mend the fallen fortunes of their race

Will nerve them, fill the cells up, tier on tier,

And weave their granaries from the rifled flowers.

Now, seeing that life doth even to bee-folk bring

Our human chances, if in dire disease

Their bodies’ strength should languish- which anon

By no uncertain tokens may be told-

Forthwith the sick change hue; grim leanness mars

Their visage; then from out the cells they bear

Forms reft of light, and lead the mournful pomp;

Or foot to foot about the porch they hang,

Or within closed doors loiter, listless all

From famine, and benumbed with shrivelling cold.

Then is a deep note heard, a long-drawn hum,

As when the chill South through the forests sighs,

As when the troubled ocean hoarsely booms

With back-swung billow, as ravening tide of fire

Surges, shut fast within the furnace-walls.

Then do I bid burn scented galbanum,

And, honey-streams through reeden troughs instilled,

Challenge and cheer their flagging appetite

To taste the well-known food; and it shall boot

To mix therewith the savour bruised from gall,

And rose-leaves dried, or must to thickness boiled

By a fierce fire, or juice of raisin-grapes

From Psithian vine, and with its bitter smell

Centaury, and the famed Cecropian thyme.

There is a meadow-flower by country folk

Hight star-wort; ‘tis a plant not far to seek;

For from one sod an ample growth it rears,

Itself all golden, but girt with plenteous leaves,

Where glory of purple shines through violet gloom.

With chaplets woven hereof full oft are decked

Heaven’s altars: harsh its taste upon the tongue;

Shepherds in vales smooth-shorn of nibbling flocks

By Mella’s winding waters gather it.

The roots of this, well seethed in fragrant wine,

Set in brimmed baskets at their doors for food.

But if one’s whole stock fail him at a stroke,

Nor hath he whence to breed the race anew,

‘Tis time the wondrous secret to disclose

Taught by the swain of Arcady, even how

The blood of slaughtered bullocks oft has borne

Bees from corruption. I will trace me back

To its prime source the story’s tangled thread,

And thence unravel. For where thy happy folk,

Canopus, city of Pellaean fame,

Dwell by the Nile’s lagoon-like overflow,

And high o’er furrows they have called their own

Skim in their painted wherries; where, hard by,

The quivered Persian presses, and that flood

Which from the swart-skinned Aethiop bears him down,

Swift-parted into sevenfold branching mouths

With black mud fattens and makes Aegypt green,

That whole domain its welfare’s hope secure

Rests on this art alone. And first is chosen

A strait recess, cramped closer to this end,

Which next with narrow roof of tiles atop

‘Twixt prisoning walls they pinch, and add hereto

From the four winds four slanting window-slits.

Then seek they from the herd a steer, whose horns

With two years’ growth are curling, and stop fast,

Plunge madly as he may, the panting mouth

And nostrils twain, and done with blows to death,

Batter his flesh to pulp i’ the hide yet whole,

And shut the doors, and leave him there to lie.

But ‘neath his ribs they scatter broken boughs,

With thyme and fresh-pulled cassias: this is done

When first the west winds bid the waters flow,

Ere flush the meadows with new tints, and ere

The twittering swallow buildeth from the beams.

Meanwhile the juice within his softened bones

Heats and ferments, and things of wondrous birth,

Footless at first, anon with feet and wings,

Swarm there and buzz, a marvel to behold;

And more and more the fleeting breeze they take,

Till, like a shower that pours from summer-clouds,

Forth burst they, or like shafts from quivering string

When Parthia’s flying hosts provoke the fray.

Say what was he, what God, that fashioned forth

This art for us, O Muses? of man’s skill

Whence came the new adventure? From thy vale,

Peneian Tempe, turning, bee-bereft,

So runs the tale, by famine and disease,

Mournful the shepherd Aristaeus stood

Fast by the haunted river-head, and thus

With many a plaint to her that bare him cried:

“Mother, Cyrene, mother, who hast thy home

Beneath this whirling flood, if he thou sayest,

Apollo, lord of Thymbra, be my sire,

Sprung from the Gods’ high line, why barest thou me

With fortune’s ban for birthright? Where is now

Thy love to me-ward banished from thy breast?

O! wherefore didst thou bid me hope for heaven?

Lo! even the crown of this poor mortal life,

Which all my skilful care by field and fold,

No art neglected, scarce had fashioned forth,

Even this falls from me, yet thou call’st me son.

Nay, then, arise! With thine own hands pluck up

My fruit-plantations: on the homestead fling

Pitiless fire; make havoc of my crops;

Burn the young plants, and wield the stubborn axe

Against my vines, if there hath taken the

Such loathing of my greatness.” But that cry,

Even from her chamber in the river-deeps,

His mother heard: around her spun the nymphs

Milesian wool stained through with hyaline dye,

Drymo, Xantho, Ligea, Phyllodoce,

Their glossy locks o’er snowy shoulders shed,

Cydippe and Lycorias yellow-haired,

A maiden one, one newly learned even then

To bear Lucina’s birth-pang. Clio, too,

And Beroe, sisters, ocean-children both,

Both zoned with gold and girt with dappled fell,

Ephyre and Opis, and from Asian meads

Deiopea, and, bow at length laid by,

Fleet-footed Arethusa. But in their midst

Fair Clymene was telling o’er the tale

Of Vulcan’s idle vigilance and the stealth

Of Mars’ sweet rapine, and from Chaos old

Counted the jostling love-joys of the Gods.

Charmed by whose lay, the while their woolly tasks

With spindles down they drew, yet once again

Smote on his mother’s ears the mournful plaint

Of Aristaeus; on their glassy thrones

Amazement held them all; but Arethuse

Before the rest put forth her auburn head,

Peering above the wave-top, and from far

Exclaimed, “Cyrene, sister, not for naught

Scared by a groan so deep, behold! ‘tis he,

Even Aristaeus, thy heart’s fondest care,

Here by the brink of the Peneian sire

Stands woebegone and weeping, and by name

Cries out upon thee for thy cruelty.”

To whom, strange terror knocking at her heart,

“Bring, bring him to our sight,” the mother cried;

“His feet may tread the threshold even of Gods.”

So saying, she bids the flood yawn wide and yield

A pathway for his footsteps; but the wave

Arched mountain-wise closed round him, and within

Its mighty bosom welcomed, and let speed

To the deep river-bed. And now, with eyes

Of wonder gazing on his mother’s hall

And watery kingdom and cave-prisoned pools

And echoing groves, he went, and, stunned by that

Stupendous whirl of waters, separate saw

All streams beneath the mighty earth that glide,

Phasis and Lycus, and that fountain-head

Whence first the deep Enipeus leaps to light,

Whence father Tiber, and whence Anio’s flood,

And Hypanis that roars amid his rocks,

And Mysian Caicus, and, bull-browed

‘Twixt either gilded horn, Eridanus,

Than whom none other through the laughing plains

More furious pours into the purple sea.

Soon as the chamber’s hanging roof of stone

Was gained, and now Cyrene from her son

Had heard his idle weeping, in due course

Clear water for his hands the sisters bring,

With napkins of shorn pile, while others heap

The board with dainties, and set on afresh

The brimming goblets; with Panchaian fires

Upleap the altars; then the mother spake,

“Take beakers of Maconian wine,” she said,

“Pour we to Ocean.” Ocean, sire of all,

She worships, and the sister-nymphs who guard

The hundred forests and the hundred streams;

Thrice Vesta’s fire with nectar clear she dashed,

Thrice to the roof-top shot the flame and shone:

Armed with which omen she essayed to speak:

“In Neptune’s gulf Carpathian dwells a seer,

Caerulean Proteus, he who metes the main

With fish-drawn chariot of two-footed steeds;

Now visits he his native home once more,

Pallene and the Emathian ports; to him

We nymphs do reverence, ay, and Nereus old;

For all things knows the seer, both those which are

And have been, or which time hath yet to bring;

So willed it Neptune, whose portentous flocks,

And loathly sea-calves ‘neath the surge he feeds.

Him first, my son, behoves thee seize and bind

That he may all the cause of sickness show,

And grant a prosperous end. For save by force

No rede will he vouchsafe, nor shalt thou bend

His soul by praying; whom once made captive, ply

With rigorous force and fetters; against these

His wiles will break and spend themselves in vain.

I, when the sun has lit his noontide fires,

When the blades thirst, and cattle love the shade,

Myself will guide thee to the old man’s haunt,

Whither he hies him weary from the waves,

That thou mayst safelier steal upon his sleep.

But when thou hast gripped him fast with hand and gyve,

Then divers forms and bestial semblances

Shall mock thy grasp; for sudden he will change

To bristly boar, fell tigress, dragon scaled,

And tawny-tufted lioness, or send forth

A crackling sound of fire, and so shake of

The fetters, or in showery drops anon

Dissolve and vanish. But the more he shifts

His endless transformations, thou, my son,

More straitlier clench the clinging bands, until

His body’s shape return to that thou sawest,

When with closed eyelids first he sank to sleep.”

So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew

She sheds around, and all his frame therewith

Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks

Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt

Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast

Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave

By the wind’s stress is driven, and breaks far up

Its inmost creeks- safe anchorage from of old

For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin,

Behind a rock’s huge barrier, Proteus hides.

Here in close covert out of the sun’s eye

The youth she places, and herself the while

Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof.

And now the ravening dog-star that burns up

The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course

The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades

Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws

Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray,

When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave

Strode from the billows: round him frolicking

The watery folk that people the waste sea

Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide.

Along the shore in scattered groups to feed

The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself,

Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids

The steers from pasture to their stall repair,

And the lambs’ bleating whets the listening wolves,

Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale.

But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch,

Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs,

With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose

Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless,

All unforgetful of his ancient craft,

Transforms himself to every wondrous thing,

Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream.

But when no trickery found a path for flight,

Baffled at length, to his own shape returned,

With human lips he spake, “Who bade thee, then,

So reckless in youth’s hardihood, affront

Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?”- But he,

“Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest;

For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou

To practise upon me: at heaven’s behest

I for my fainting fortunes hither come

An oracle to ask thee.” There he ceased.

Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained,

Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes

Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth

Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven:

“Doubt not ‘tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus,

Nor light the debt thou payest; ‘tis Orpheus’ self,

Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his,

So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires,

Yet madly raging for his ravished bride.

She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit

Along the stream, saw not the coming death,

Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank

In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake.

But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers

Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks:

Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope,

And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars,

The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less

With Hebrus’ stream; and Orithyia wept,

Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus’ self,

Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell,

Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone,

Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang.

Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came,

Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove

Grim with a horror of great darkness- came,

Entered, and faced the Manes and the King

Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame.

Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus,

Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades

Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms

Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie

To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour

Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;

Matrons and men, and great heroic frames

Done with life’s service, boys, unwedded girls,

Youths placed on pyre before their fathers’ eyes.

Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,

Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp

Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast,

Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.

Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death

Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides,

Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined;

Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,

And, the wind hushed, Ixion’s wheel stood still.

And now with homeward footstep he had passed

All perils scathless, and, at length restored,

Eurydice to realms of upper air

Had well-nigh won, behind him following-

So Proserpine had ruled it- when his heart

A sudden mad desire surprised and seized-

Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.

For at the very threshold of the day,

Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,

He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice

His own once more. But even with the look,

Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond

Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard

Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.

‘Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought

On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again

The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep

Closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell:

Girt with enormous night I am borne away,

Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,

These helpless hands.’ She spake, and suddenly,

Like smoke dissolving into empty air,

Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him

Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,

Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time

Hell’s boatman brooks he pass the watery bar.

What should he do? fly whither, twice bereaved?

Move with what tears the Manes, with what voice

The Powers of darkness? She indeed even now

Death-cold was floating on the Stygian barge!

For seven whole months unceasingly, men say,

Beneath a skyey crag, by thy lone wave,

Strymon, he wept, and in the caverns chill

Unrolled his story, melting tigers’ hearts,

And leading with his lay the oaks along.

As in the poplar-shade a nightingale

Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain,

Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she

Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray

With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,

Till all the region with her wrongs o’erflows.

No love, no new desire, constrained his soul:

By snow-bound Tanais and the icy north,

Far steppes to frost Rhipaean forever wed,

Alone he wandered, lost Eurydice

Lamenting, and the gifts of Dis ungiven.

Scorned by which tribute the Ciconian dames,

Amid their awful Bacchanalian rites

And midnight revellings, tore him limb from limb,

And strewed his fragments over the wide fields.

Then too, even then, what time the Hebrus stream,

Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled,

Rent from the marble neck, his drifting head,

The death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry

‘Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!’

With parting breath he called her, and the banks

From the broad stream caught up ‘Eurydice!’”

So Proteus ending plunged into the deep,

And, where he plunged, beneath the eddying whirl

Churned into foam the water, and was gone;

But not Cyrene, who unquestioned thus

Bespake the trembling listener: “Nay, my son,

From that sad bosom thou mayst banish care:

Hence came that plague of sickness, hence the nymphs,

With whom in the tall woods the dance she wove,

Wrought on thy bees, alas! this deadly bane.

Bend thou before the Dell-nymphs, gracious powers:

Bring gifts, and sue for pardon: they will grant

Peace to thine asking, and an end of wrath.

But how to approach them will I first unfold-

Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,

That browse to-day the green Lycaean heights,

Pick from thy herds, as many kine to match,

Whose necks the yoke pressed never: then for these

Build up four altars by the lofty fanes,

And from their throats let gush the victims’ blood,

And in the greenwood leave their bodies lone.

Then, when the ninth dawn hath displayed its beams,

To Orpheus shalt thou send his funeral dues,

Poppies of Lethe, and let slay a sheep

Coal-black, then seek the grove again, and soon

For pardon found adore Eurydice

With a slain calf for victim.”

No delay:

The self-same hour he hies him forth to do

His mother’s bidding: to the shrine he came,

The appointed altars reared, and thither led

Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,

With kine to match, that never yoke had known;

Then, when the ninth dawn had led in the day,

To Orpheus sent his funeral dues, and sought

The grove once more. But sudden, strange to tell

A portent they espy: through the oxen’s flesh,

Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum

Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil

In endless clouds they spread them, till at last

On yon tree-top together fused they cling,

And drop their cluster from the bending boughs.

So sang I of the tilth of furrowed fields,

Of flocks and trees, while Caesar’s majesty

Launched forth the levin-bolts of war by deep

Euphrates, and bare rule o’er willing folk

Though vanquished, and essayed the heights of heaven.

I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope

The nursling, wooed the flowery walks of peace

Inglorious, who erst trilled for shepherd-wights

The wanton ditty, and sang in saucy youth

Thee, Tityrus, ‘neath the spreading beech tree’s shade.

Odes for the Emperor

Horace

The Odes

Translated by A.S. Kline

Horace, a Roman poet in the 1st century B.C., was the leading lyrical poet in the time of Augustus. Like Virgil, Horace also experienced first hand the transition from Republic to Empire in Rome. Horace was befriended by Maecenas, Augustus’ right hand man, and became the spokes person for the new regime.

In his Odes Horace addressed a wide range of aspects of Roman life including love, religion, morality and patriotism. The odes are conscious imitations of traditional Greek lyrical poetry, which dealt mainly with the personal life of individuals. Through using this style, Horace intertwines personal, political and poetic realms at once showing the private and political as separate as well as connected.

In “Ode to Augustus”, “A Toast to Actium” and “Carmen Saeculare”, Horace shows the importance of Augustus to the Roman people. Often setting Augustus on the level of a god or demigod, Horace attributes the greatness of Rome and the peace within the Empire to Augustus. “Ode to Augustus” serves as a eulogy to Augustus, emphasizing him as a protector of the Roman people, their customs and their morals. He also emphasizes how grateful the Roman people are for Augustus and worship him as a god after his death.

“A Toast to Actium” praises Augustus for his victory at the Battle of Actium, which was the decisive battle in the civil war between Augustus and Marc Antony. Horace celebrates Augustus’ victory and its role in ushering in an era of peace in Rome. “Carmen Saeculare” was commissioned by Augustus himself to celebrate the end of one saeculum, roughly understood as a generation, and the beginning of a new one. It focuses on the twin gods Diana and Apollo with Apollo serving as a representation of Augustus himself.

Ode to Augustus

Son of the blessed gods, and greatest defender

of Romulus’ people, you’ve been away too long:

make that swift return you promised, to the sacred

councils of the City Fathers,

Blessed leader, bring light to your country again:

when your face shines on the people, like the shining

springtime, then the day itself is more welcoming,

and the sun beams down more brightly.

As a mother, with vows and omens and prayers,

calls to the son whom a southerly wind’s envious

gales have kept far from his home, for more than a year,

lingering there, beyond the waves

of the Carpathian Sea: she who never turns

her face away from the curving line of the shore:

so, smitten with the deep longing of loyalty,

the country yearns for its Caesar.

Then the ox will wander the pastures in safety,

Ceres, and kindly Increase, will nourish the crops,

our sailors will sail across the waters in peace,

trust will shrink from the mark of shame,

the chaste house will be unstained by debauchery,

law and morality conquer the taint of sin,

mothers win praise for new-born so like their fathers,

and punishment attend on guilt.

Who’ll fear the Parthians, or the cold Scythians,

and who’ll fear the offspring savage Germany breeds,

if Caesar’s unharmed? Who’ll worry about battles

in the wilds of Iberia?

Every man passes the day among his own hills,

as he fastens his vines to the waiting branches:

from there he gladly returns to his wine, calls on

you, as god, at the second course:

He worships you with many a prayer, with wine

poured out, joins your name to those of his household gods,

as the Greeks were accustomed to remembering

Castor and mighty Hercules.

‘O blessed leader, bring Italy endless peace!’

That’s what we say, mouths parched, at the start of the day,

that’s what we say, lips wetted with wine, when the sun

sinks to rest under the Ocean.

A Toast to Actium

Dear Maecenas, when in your noble house, as is

Jove’s pleasure, shall I delight

With you in Caesar’s triumph, drinking Caecuban

Cellared for festive banquets,

While lyre and flutes sound, mingling their melodies,

That Dorian, and these Italian?

As lately, when Pompey, driven from the sea,

Had fled, with his ships destroyed,

Having threatened the city with shackles he’d taken

From those faithless slaves, his friends.

A Roman, – you’ll not credit it, posterity –

Sadly, ups sticks and arms himself,

For a woman’s sake, and though a soldier, deigns

To serve the withered eunuchs,

While the sun looks down on her shameful pavilion,

Among the warlike standards.

At this sight two thousand Gauls, chanting Caesar,

Turned their snorting steeds aside,

And the opposing fleet, when ordered to larboard,

Remained there in the harbour.

Hail, Triumph! Why delay the golden chariots

And the unblemished steers?

Hail, Triumph! In the war with Jugurtha, you never

Returned such a general to us,

Nor was Africanus, whose courage made a tomb

For himself of Carthage, such.

The enemy, beaten at sea and on land,

Changes his scarlet cloak for black.

Against opposing winds, he either heads for Crete,

Famed for her hundred cities,

Or tries for Syrtes, blown by the northerlies,

Or is borne over unknown seas.

Bring more spacious bowls, lad, and pour the Chian,

Lesbian, or Caecuban wine

That’s designed to prevent all seasick qualms.

Let’s delight in banishing fear and anxiety

For Caesar’s affairs, with sweet wine.

Carmen Saeculare

O Phoebus, Diana queen of the woodlands,

Bright heavenly glories, both worshipped forever

And cherished forever, now grant what we pray for

At this sacred time,

When Sybilline verses have issued their warning

To innocent boys, and the virgins we’ve chosen,

To sing out their song to the gods, who have shown their

Love for the Seven Hills.

O kindly Sun, in your shining chariot, who

Herald the day, then hide it, to be born again

New yet the same, you will never know anything

Mightier than Rome!

O gentle Ilithyia, duly revealing

The child at full term, now protect gentle mothers,

Whether you’d rather be known as Lucina,

Or Genitalis.

Goddess, nurture our offspring, bring to fruition

The Senate’s decrees concerning the wedlock

Of women who’ll bear us more of our children,

The laws of marriage,

So the fixed cycle of years, ten times eleven,

Will bring back the singing again, bring back the games

We crowd to three times by daylight, as often,

By beautiful night.

And you, the Fates, who are truthful in prophecy,

Link happy destinies, as has once been ordained

And let the certain course of events confirm it,

To those that are past.

Let Earth that is fruitful in crops, and in cattle,

Adorn our Ceres with garlands of wheat-ears:

And may Jupiter’s life-giving rain and breezes

Ripen the harvest.

Gentle and peaceful Apollo, lay down your arms,

And listen now to the young lads’ supplications:

Luna, crescent-horned queen of the constellations,

Give ear to the girls.

If Rome is your doing, and if from far Ilium

Came that band of people who reached the Tuscan shore,

Those commanded to change their home and their city,

On a lucky course,

Those for whom pious Aeneas, the survivor,

Who passed without injury through the flames of Troy,

Prepared a path to freedom, destined to grant him

Much more than he’d lost:

Then, you divinities, show our receptive youth

Virtue, grant peace and quiet to the old, and give

Children and wealth to the people of Romulus,

And every glory.

Whatever a noble descendant of Venus

And Anchises, asks, with a white steer’s sacrifice,

Let him obtain: a winner in war, merciful

To our fallen foe.

Now the Parthians fear our forces, powerful

On land, and on sea: they fear the Alban axes,

Now the once proud Indians, now the Scythians

Beg for an answer.

Now Faith and Peace, Honour, and ancient Modesty,

Dare to return once more, with neglected Virtue,

And blessed Plenty dares to appear again, now,

With her flowing horn.

May Phoebus, the augur, decked with the shining bow,

Phoebus who’s dear to the Nine Muses, that Phoebus

Who can offer relief to a weary body

With his healing art,

May he, if he favours the Palatine altars,

Extend Rome’s power, and Latium’s good-fortune,

Through the fresh ages, show, always, improvement,

Lustra ever new.

And may Diana, to whom is the Aventine,

And Mount Algidus, accept the entreaties

Of the Fifteen, and attend, and lend a fond ear,

To these children’s prayers.

We bear to our home the fine hope, and certain,

That such is Jupiter’s, and all the gods’ purpose:

We’re taught, we, the chorus, to sing praise of Phoebus,

Praise of Diana.

The Prophecy of Rome

Ovid

Metamorphoses, Book XV

Translated by John Dryden

After Romulus is taken up into the sky by the god Mars, Rome is in need of a new leader, and the city chooses a man by the name of Numa Pompilius.

In Book XV of Metamorphoses, Numa decides that to be a proper king, he has to temporarily leave Rome in order to better understand the laws of Nature. It is with this goal in mind that he travels to the city of Croton and meets a great philosophical thinker by the name of Pythagoras.

Roughly half of this book is dedicated to Pythagoras’ teachings, which feature everything from the mutability of the universe to reincarnation all the way to vegetarianism. His belief that the entire universe is always changing, in flux, is particularly interesting in relation to human societies. Cities, he says, continually rise and fall—and he tells Numa that Rome, while young and unknown now, will eventually grow to rule the world.

Feeling as if he’s learned what he set out to learn, Numa returns to Rome, transforms the city into a peaceful community, and lives out his days beloved by all its citizens.

After Ovid recounts a few more tales and transformations (Egeria’s transformation into a spring, Hippolytus’s transformation into an old man, the story of Cipus and his horns, the Roman plague, etc.) he gives an account of the rise and fall of Caesar, and the eventual success of his adoptive son, Augustus.

Ovid’s glowing account of these Roman rulers is, in a way, a fulfillment of Pythagoras’s earlier prophecy—Rome did indeed come to rule the world. However, we cannot forget that Pythagoras’s teachings emphasized the mutability of the universe. While he never mentioned Rome’s fall to Numa, we are meant to understand that, as the world changes, Rome may crumble.

Ovid himself, however, ends his magnum opus on a defiant note—though the world is always in flux, he claims immortality for himself. As long as his fame—the “nobler part” of him—spreads, and people continue to recite (or read) Metamorphoses, he will never truly die, though his mortal body may give up.

As long as Metamorphosis survives, he says, “one half of round eternity is mine.”

A KING is sought to guide the growing state,

One able to support the publick weight

And fill the throne where Romulus had sate.

Renown, which oft bespeaks the publick voice,

Had recommended Numa to their choice:

A peaceful, pious prince; who not content

To know the Sabine rites, his study bent

To cultivate his mind; to learn the laws

Of Nature, and explore their hidden cause.

Urg’d by this care, his country he forsook,

And to Crotona thence his journey took.

Arriv’d, he first enquir’d the founder’s name

Of this new colony; and whence he came.

Then thus a senior of the place replies

(Well read, and curious of antiquities):

’Tis said, Alcides hither took his way

From Spain, and drove along his conquer’d prey;

Then, leaving in the fields his grazing cows,

He sought himself some hospitable house:

Good Croton entertain’d his godlike guest;

While he repair’d his weary limbs with rest.

The hero, thence departing, bless’d the place;

And here, he said, in time’s revolving race,

A rising town shall take his name from thee.

Revolving time fulfill’d the prophecy:

For Myscelos, the justest man on Earth,

Alemon’s son, at Argos had his birth:

Him Hercules, arm’d with his club of oak,

O’ershadow’d in a dream, and thus bespoke:

Go, leave thy native soil, and make abode,

Where Aesaris rowls down his rapid flood:

He said; and sleep forsook him, and the God.

Trembling he wak’d, and rose with anxious heart;

His country laws forbad him to depart:

What shou’d he do? ’Twas death to go away,

And the God menac’d, if he dar’d to stay.

All day he doubted, and when night came on,

Sleep, and the same forewarning dream, begun:

Once more the God stood threatning o’er his head;

With added curses if he disobey’d.

Twice warn’d, he study’d flight; but wou’d convey,

At once, his person, and his wealth away:

Thus while he linger’d, his design was heard;

A speedy process form’d, and death declar’d.

Witness there needed none of his offence;

Against himself the wretch was evidence:

Condemn’d, and destitute of human aid,

To him, for whom he suffer’d, thus he pray’d.

O Pow’r, who hast deserv’d in Heav’n a throne,

Not giv’n, but by thy labours made thy own,

Pity thy suppliant, and protect his cause,

Whom thou hast made obnoxious to the laws.

A custom was of old, and still remains,

Which life, or death by suffrages ordains:

White stones, and black within an urn are cast;

The first absolve, but Fate is in the last.

The judges to the common urn bequeath

Their votes, and drop the sable signs of death;

The box receives all black, but, pour’d from thence,

The stones came candid forth; the hue of innocence.

Thus Alemonides his safety won,

Preserv’d from death by Alcumena’s son:

Then to his kinsman-God his vows he pays,

And cuts with prosp’rous gales th’ Ionian seas:

He leaves Tarentum favour’d by the wind,

And Thurine bays, and Ternises, behind;

Soft Sybaris, and all the capes that stand

Along the shore, he makes in sight of land;

Still doubling, and still coasting, ’till he found

The mouth of Aesaris, and promis’d ground;

Then saw, where, on the margin of the flood,

The tomb, that held the bones of Croton stood:

Here, by the Gods’ command, he built, and wall’d

The place predicted; and Crotona call’d.

Thus Fame, from time to time, delivers down

The sure tradition of th’ Italian town.

Here dwelt the man divine, whom Samos bore,

But now self-banish’d from his native shore,

Because he hated tyrants, nor cou’d bear

The chains, which none but servile souls will wear.

He, tho’ from Heav’n remote, to Heav’n cou’d move,

With strength of mind, and tread th’ abyss above;

And penetrate, with his interior light,

Those upper depths, which Nature hid from sight:

And what he had observ’d, and learnt from thence,

Lov’d in familiar language to dispence.

The crowd with silent admiration stand,

And heard him, as they heard their God’s command;

While he discours’d of Heav’n’s mysterious laws,

The world’s original, and Nature’s cause;

And what was God; and why the fleecy snows

In silence fell, and rattling winds arose;

What shook the stedfast Earth, and whence begun

The dance of planets round the radiant sun;

If thunder was the voice of angry Jove,

Or clouds, with nitre pregnant, burst above:

Of these, and things beyond the common reach,

He spoke, and charm’d his audience with his speech.

He first the taste of flesh from tables drove,

And argu’d well, if arguments cou’d move:

O mortals, from your fellows’ blood abstain,

Nor taint your bodies with a food profane:

While corn, and pulse by Nature are bestow’d,

And planted orchards bend their willing load;

While labour’d gardens wholesom herbs produce,

And teeming vines afford their gen’rous juice;

Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost,

But tam’d with fire, or mellow’d by the frost;

While kine to pails distended udders bring,

And bees their hony redolent of Spring;

While Earth not only can your needs supply,

But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury;

A guiltless feast administers with ease,

And without blood is prodigal to please.

Wild beasts their maws with their slain brethren fill;

And yet not all, for some refuse to kill;

Sheep, goats, and oxen, and the nobler steed,

On browz, and corn, and flow’ry meadows, feed.

Bears, tygers, wolves, the Lyon’s angry brood,

Whom Heav’n endu’d with principles of blood,

He wisely sundred from the rest, to yell

In forests, and in lonely caves to dwell;

Where stronger beasts oppress the weak by might,

And all in prey, and purple feasts delight.

O impious use! to Nature’s laws oppos’d,

Where bowels are in other bowels clos’d:

Where fatten’d by their fellow’s fat, they thrive;

Maintain’d by murder, and by death they live.

’Tis then for nought, that Mother Earth provides

The stores of all she shows, and all she hides,

If men with fleshy morsels must be fed,

And chaw with bloody teeth the breathing bread:

What else is this, but to devour our guests,

And barb’rously renew Cyclopean feasts!

We, by destroying life, our life sustain;

And gorge th’ ungodly maw with meats obscene.

Not so the Golden Age, who fed on fruit,

Nor durst with bloody meals their mouths pollute.

Then birds in airy space might safely move,

And tim’rous hares on heaths securely rove:

Nor needed fish the guileful hooks to fear,

For all was peaceful; and that peace sincere.

Whoever was the wretch (and curs’d be he)

That envy’d first our food’s simplicity,

Th’ essay of bloody feasts on brutes began,

And after forg’d the sword to murder Man.

Had he the sharpen’d steel alone employ’d

On beasts of prey; that other beasts destroy’d,

Or Man invaded with their fangs and paws,

This had been justify’d by Nature’s laws,

And self-defence: but who did feasts begin

Of flesh, he stretch’d necessity to sin.

To kill man-killers, Man has lawful pow’r,

But not th’ extended licence, to devour.

Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,

As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.

The sow, with her broad snout, for rooting up

Th’ intrusted seed, was judg’d to spoil the crop,

And intercept the sweating farmer’s hope:

The covetous churl, of unforgiving kind,

Th’ offender to the bloody priest resign’d:

Her hunger was no plea: for that she dy’d.

The goat came next in order to be try’d:

The goat had cropt the tendrils of the vine:

In vengeance laity, and clergy join,

Where one had lost his profit, one his wine.

Here was, at least, some shadow of offence;

The sheep was sacrific’d on no pretence,

But meek, and unresisting innocence.

A patient, useful creature, born to bear

The warm, and wooly fleece, that cloath’d her murderer;

And daily to give down the milk she bred,

A tribute for the grass on which she fed.

Living, both food and rayment she supplies,

And is of least advantage, when she dies.

How did the toyling ox his death deserve,

A downright simple drudge, and born to serve?

O tyrant! with what justice canst thou hope

The promise of the year, a plenteous crop;

When thou destroy’st thy lab’ring steer, who till’d,

And plough’d with pains, thy else ungrateful field?

From his yet reeking neck, to draw the yoke,

That neck, with which the surly clods he broke;

And to the hatchet yield thy husbandman,

Who finish’d Autumn, and the Spring began!

Nor this alone! but Heav’n it self to bribe,

We to the Gods our impious acts ascribe:

First recompence with death their creatures’ toil;

Then call the bless’d above to share the spoil:

The fairest victim must the Pow’rs appease

(So fatal ’tis sometimes too much to please!),

A purple fillet his broad brows adorns,

With flow’ry garlands crown’d, and gilded horns:

He hears the murd’rous pray’r the priest prefers,

But understands not, ’tis his doom he hears:

Beholds the meal betwixt his temples cast

(The fruit and product of his labours past);

And in the water views perhaps the knife

Uplifted, to deprive him of his life;

Then broken up alive, his entrails sees

Torn out, for priests t’ inspect the Gods’ decrees.

From whence, o mortal men, this gust of blood

Have you deriv’d, and interdicted food?

Be taught by me this dire delight to shun,

Warn’d by my precepts, by my practice won:

And when you eat the well-deserving beast,

Think, on the lab’rour of your field you feast!

Now since the God inspires me to proceed,

Be that, whate’er inspiring Pow’r, obey’d.

For I will sing of mighty mysteries,

Of truths conceal’d before, from human eyes,

Dark oracles unveil and open all the skies.

Pleas’d as I am to walk along the sphere

Of shining stars, and travel with the year,

To leave the heavy Earth, and scale the height

Of Atlas, who supports the heav’nly weight;

To look from upper light, and thence survey

Mistaken mortals wand’ring from the way,

And wanting wisdom, fearful for the state

Of future things, and trembling at their Fate!

Those I would teach; and by right reason bring

To think of death, as but an idle thing.

Why thus affrighted at an empty name,

A dream of darkness, and fictitious flame?

Vain themes of wit, which but in poems pass,

And fables of a world, that never was!

What feels the body, when the soul expires,

By time corrupted, or consum’d by fires?

Nor dies the spirit, but new life repeats

In other forms, and only changes seats.

Ev’n I, who these mysterious truths declare,

Was once Eupborbus in the Trojan war;

My name, and lineage I remember well,

And how in fight by Sparta’s king I fell.

In Argive Juno’s fane I late beheld

My buckler hung on high, and own’d my former shield.

Then, death, so call’d, is but old matter dress’d

In some new figure, and a vary’d vest:

Thus all things are but alter’d, nothing dies;

And here, and there th’ unbody’d spirit flies.

By time, or force, or sickness dispossest,

And lodges, where it lights, in man or beast;

Or hunts without, ’till ready limbs it find,

And actuates those according to their kind;

From tenement to tenement is toss’d,

The soul is still the same, the figure only lost:

And, as the soften’d wax new seals receives,

This face assumes, and that impression leaves;

Now call’d by one, now by another name;

The form is only chang’d, the wax is still the same:

So death, so call’d, can but the form deface;

Th’ immortal soul flies out in empty space,

To seek her fortune in some other place.

Then let not piety be put to flight,

To please the taste of glutton appetite;

But suffer inmate souls secure to dwell,

Lest from their seats your parents you expel;

With rabid hunger feed upon your kind,

Or from a beast dislodge a brother’s mind.

And since, like Typhis parting from the shore,

In ample seas I sail, and depths untry’d before,

This let me further add, that Nature knows

No stedfast station, but, or ebbs, or flows:

Ever in motion; she destroys her old,

And casts new figures in another mold.

Ev’n times are in perpetual flux, and run,

Like rivers from their fountain, rowling on,

For time, no more than streams, is at a stay;

The flying hour is ever on her way:

And as the fountain still supplies her store,

The wave behind impels the wave before;

Thus in successive course the minutes run,

And urge their predecessor minutes on,

Till moving, ever new: for former things

Are set aside, like abdicated kings:

And every moment alters what is done,

And innovates some act, ’till then unknown.

Darkness we see emerges into light,

And shining suns descend to sable night;

Ev’n Heav’n it self receives another dye,

When weary’d animals in slumbers lie

Of midnight ease: another, when the gray

Of morn preludes the splendor of the day.

The disk of Phoebus, when he climbs on high,

Appears at first but as a bloodshot eye;

And when his chariot downwards drives to bed.

His ball is with the same suffusion red;

But mounted high in his meridian race

All bright he shines, and with a better face:

For there, pure particles of Aether flow,

Far from th’ infection of the world below.

Nor equal light th’ unequal Moon adorns,

Or in her waxing, or her waning horns,

For ev’ry day she wanes, her face is less;

But gath’ring into globe, she fattens at increase.

Perceiv’st thou not the process of the year,

How the four seasons in four forms appear,

Resembling human life in ev’ry shape they wear?

Spring first, like infancy, shoots out her head,

With milky juice requiring to be fed:

Helpless, tho’ fresh, and wanting to be led.

The green stem grows in stature, and in size,

But only feeds with hope the farmer’s eyes;

Then laughs the childish year with flowrets crown’d,

And lavishly perfumes the fields around,

But no substantial nourishment receives;

Infirm the stalks, unsolid are the leaves.

Proceeding onward whence the year began,

The Summer grows adult, and ripens into Man.

This season, as in men, is most repleat

With kindly moisture, and prolifick heat.

Autumn succeeds, a sober tepid age,

Not froze with fear, nor boiling into rage;

More than mature, and tending to decay,

When our brown locks repine to mix with odious gray.

Last, Winter creeps along with tardy pace,

Sour is his front, and furrow’d is his face;

His scalp if not dishonour’d quite of hair,

The ragged fleece is thin; and thin is worse than bare.

Ev’n our own bodies daily change receive,

Some part of what was theirs before, they leave;

Nor are to-day, what yesterday they were;

Nor the whole same to-morrow will appear.

Time was, when we were sow’d, and just began,

From some few fruitful drops, the promise of a man:

Then Nature’s hand (fermented as it was)

Moulded to shape the soft, coagulated mass;

And when the little man was fully form’d,

The breathless embrio with a spirit warm’d;

But when the mother’s throws begin to come,

The creature, pent within the narrow room,

Breaks his blind prison, pushing to repair

His stifled breath, and draw the living air;

Cast on the margin of the world he lies,

A helpless babe, but by instinct he cries.

He next essays to walk, but downward press’d

On four feet imitates his brother beast:

By slow degrees he gathers from the ground

His legs, and to the rowling chair is bound;

Then walks alone; a horseman now become,

He rides a stick, and travels round the room.

In time he vaunts among his youthful peers,

Strong-bon’d, and strung with nerves, in pride of years,

He runs with mettle his first merry stage,

Maintains the next, abated of his rage,

But manages his strength, and spares his age.

Heavy the third, and stiff, he sinks apace,

And tho’ tis down hill all, but creeps along the race.

Now sapless on the verge of death he stands,

Contemplating his former feet and hands;

And, Milo-like, his slacken’d sinews sees,

And wither’d arms, once fit to cope with Hercules,

Unable now to shake, much less to tear, the trees.

So Helen wept, when her too faithful glass

Reflected on her eyes the ruins of her face:

Wondring, what charms her ravishers cou’d spy,

To force her twice, or ev’n but once t’ enjoy!

Thy teeth, devouring time, thine, envious age,

On things below still exercise your rage:

With venom’d grinders you corrupt your meat,

And then, at lingring meals, the morsels eat.

Nor those, which elements we call, abide,

Nor to this figure, nor to that are ty’d;

For this eternal world is said, of old,

But four prolifick principles to hold,

Four different bodies; two to Heav’n ascend,

And other two down to the center tend:

Fire first with wings expanded mounts on high,

Pure, void of weight, and dwells in upper sky;

Then air, because unclog’d in empty space,

Flies after fire, and claims the second place:

But weighty water, as her nature guides,

Lies on the lap of Earth; and Mother Earth subsides.

All things are mix’d of these, which all contain,

And into these are all resolv’d again:

Earth rarifies to dew; expanded more,

The subtil dew in air begins to soar;

Spreads, as she flies, and weary of her name

Extenuates still, and changes into flame;

Thus having by degrees perfection won,

Restless they soon untwist the web, they spun,

And fire begins to lose her radiant hue,

Mix’d with gross air, and air descends to dew;

And dew condensing, does her form forego,

And sinks, a heavy lump of Earth below.

Thus are their figures never at a stand,

But chang’d by Nature’s innovating hand;

All things are alter’d, nothing is destroy’d,

The shifted scene for some new show employ’d.

Then, to be born, is to begin to be

Some other thing we were not formerly:

And what we call to die, is not t’ appear,

Or be the thing, that formerly we were.

Those very elements, which we partake

Alive, when dead some other bodies make:

Translated grow, have sense, or can discourse;

But death on deathless substance has no force.

That forms are chang’d, I grant; that nothing can

Continue in the figure it began:

The golden age, to silver was debas’d:

To copper that; our metal came at last.

The face of places, and their forms, decay;

And that is solid Earth, that once was sea:

Seas in their turn retreating from the shore,

Make solid land, what ocean was before;

And far from strands are shells of fishes found,

And rusty anchors fix’d on mountain-ground:

And what were fields before, now wash’d and worn

By falling floods from high, to valleys turn,

And crumbling still descend to level lands;

And lakes, and trembling bogs, are barren sands.

And the parch’d desart floats in streams unknown;

Wondring to drink of waters not her own.

Here Nature living fountains opes; and there

Seals up the wombs, where living fountains were;

Or earthquakes stop their ancient course, and bring

Diverted streams to feed a distant spring.

So Licus, swallow’d up, is seen no more,

But far from thence knocks out another door.

Thus Erasinus dives; and blind in Earth

Runs on, and gropes his way to second birth,

Starts up in Argos’ meads, and shakes his locks

Around the fields, and fattens all the flocks.

So Mysus by another way is led,

And, grown a river, now disdains his head:

Forgets his humble birth, his name forsakes,

And the proud title of Caïcus takes.

Large Amenane, impure with yellow sands,

Runs rapid often, and as often stands,

And here he threats the drunken fields to drown;

And there his dugs deny to give their liquor down.

Anigros once did wholsome draughts afford,

But now his deadly waters are abhorr’d:

Since, hurt by Hercules, as Fame resounds,

The centaurs in his current wash’d their wounds.

The streams of Hypanis are sweet no more,

But brackish lose the taste they had before.

Antissa, Pharos, Tyre, in seas were pent,

Once isles, but now increase the continent;

While the Leucadian coast, main land before,

By rushing seas is sever’d from the shore.

So Zancle to th’ Italian earth was ty’d,

And men once walk’d, where ships at anchor ride.

’Till Neptune overlook’d the narrow way,

And in disdain pour’d in the conqu’ring sea.

Two cities that adorn’d th’ Achaian ground,

Buris, and Helice, no more are found,

But whelm’d beneath a lake, are sunk and drown’d;

And boatsmen through the crystal water show,

To wond’ring passengers, the walls below.

Near Traten stands a hill, expos’d in air

To winter-winds, of leafy shadows bare:

This once was level ground: but (strange to tell)

Th’ included vapours, that in caverns dwell,

Lab’ring with cholick pangs; and close confin’d,

In vain sought issue for the rumbling wind:

Yet still they heav’d for vent, and heaving still

Inlarg’d the concave, and shot up the hill;

As breath extends a bladder, or the skins

Of goats are blown t’ inclose the hoarded wines:

The mountain yet retains a mountain’s face,

And gather’d rubbish heals the hollow space.

Of many wonders, which I heard, or knew,

Retrenching most, I will relate but few:

What, are not springs with qualities oppos’d,

Endu’d at seasons, and at seasons lost?

Thrice in a day thine, Ammon, change their form,

Cold at high noon, at morn, and evening warm:

Thine, Athaman, will kindle wood, if thrown

On the pil’d earth, and in the waning moon.

The Thracians have a stream, if any try

The taste, his harden’d bowels petrify;

Whate’er it touches, it converts to stones,

And makes a marble pavement, where it runs.

Crathis, and Sybaris her sister flood,

That slide through our Calabrian neighbour wood,

With gold, and amber dye the shining hair,

And thither youth resort (for who would not be fair?).

But stranger virtues yet in streams we find,

Some change not only bodies, but the mind:

Who has not heard of Salmacis obscene,

Whose waters into women soften men?

Or Aethiopian lakes, which turn the brain

To madness, or in heavy sleep constrain?

Clytorian streams the love of wine expel

(Such is the virtue of th’ abstemious well),

Whether the colder nymph that rules the flood

Extinguishes, and balks the drunken God;

Or that Melampus (so have some assur’d)

When the mad Proetides with charms he cur’d,

And pow’rful herbs, both charms, and simples cast

Into the sober spring, where still their virtues last.

Unlike effects Lyncestis will produce;

Who drinks his waters, tho’ with mod’rate use,

Reels as with wine, and sees with double sight:

His heels too heavy, and his head too light.

Ladon, once Pheneos, an Arcadian stream

(Ambiguous in th’ effects, as in the name),

By day is wholsome bev’rage; but is thought

By night infected, and a deadly draught.

Thus running rivers, and the standing lake,

Now of these virtues, now of those partake:

Time was (and all things time, and Fate obey)

When fast Ortygia floated on the sea;

Such were Cyanean isles, when Typhis steer’d

Betwixt their streights, and their collision fear’d;

They swam, where now they sit; and firmly join’d

Secure of rooting up, resist the wind.

Nor Aetna vomiting sulphureous fire

Will ever belch; for sulphur will expire

(The veins exhausted of the liquid store):

Time was, she cast no flames; in time will cast no more.

For whether Earth’s an animal, and air

Imbibes; her lungs with coolness to repair,

And what she sucks remits; she still requires

Inlets for air, and outlets for her fires;

When tortur’d with convulsive fits she shakes,

That motion choaks the vent, ’till other vent she makes:

Or when the winds in hollow caves are clos’d,

And subtle spirits find that way oppos’d,

They toss up flints in air; the flints that hide

The seeds of fire, thus toss’d in air, collide,

Kindling the sulphur, ’till the fewel spent

The cave is cool’ d, and the fierce winds relent.

Or whether sulphur, catching fire, feeds on

Its unctuous parts, ’till all the matter gone

The flames no more ascend; for Earth supplies

The fat that feeds them; and when Earth denies

That food, by length of time consum’d, the fire

Famish’d for want of fewel must expire.

A race of men there are, as Fame has told,

Who shiv’ring suffer Hyperborean cold,

’Till nine times bathing in Minerva’s lake,

Soft feathers, to defend their naked sides, they take.

’Tis said, the Scythian wives (believe who will)

Transform themselves to birds by magick skill;

Smear’d over with an oil of wond’rous might,

That adds new pinions to their airy flight.

But this by sure experiment we know,

That living creatures from corruption grow:

Hide in a hollow pit a slaughter’d steer,

Bees from his putrid bowels will appear;

Who, like their parents, haunt the fields, and bring

Their hony-harvest home, and hope another Spring.

The warlike-steed is multiply’d, we find,

To wasps, and hornets of the warrior kind.

Cut from a crab his crooked claws, and hide

The rest in Earth, a scorpion thence will glide,

And shoot his sting, his tail in circles toss’d

Refers the limbs his backward father lost:

And worms, that stretch on leaves their filmy loom,

Crawl from their bags, and butterflies become.

Ev’n slime begets the frog’s loquacious race:

Short of their feet at first, in little space

With arms, and legs endu’d, long leaps they take

Rais’d on their hinder part, and swim the lake,

And waves repel: for Nature gives their kind,

To that intent, a length of legs behind.

The cubs of bears a living lump appear,

When whelp’d, and no determin’d figure wear.

Their mother licks ’em into shape, and gives

As much of form, as she her self receives.

The grubs from their sexangular abode

Crawl out unfinish’d, like the maggot’s brood:

Trunks without limbs; ’till time at leisure brings

The thighs they wanted, and their tardy wings.

The bird who draws the carr of Juno, vain

Of her crown’d head, and of her starry train;

And he that bears th’ Artillery of Jove,

The strong-pounc’d eagle, and the billing dove;

And all the feather’d kind, who cou’d suppose

(But that from sight, the surest sense, he knows)

They from th’ included yolk, not ambient white, arose.

There are, who think the marrow of a man,

Which in the spine, while he was living, ran;

When dead, the pith corrupted will become

A snake, and hiss within the hollow tomb.

All these receive their birth from other things;

But from himself the Phoenix only springs:

Self-born, begotten by the parent flame

In which he burn’d, another, and the same;

Who not by corn, or herbs his life sustains,

But the sweet essence of Amomum drains:

And watches the rich gums Arabia bears,

While yet in tender dew they drop their tears.

He (his five centuries of life fulfill’d)

His nest on oaken boughs begins to build,

Or trembling tops of palm, and first he draws

The plan with his broad bill, and crooked claws,

Nature’s artificers; on this the pile

Is form’d, and rises round, then with the spoil

Of Casia, Cynamon, and stems of Nard

(For softness strew’d beneath) his fun’ral bed is rear’d:

Fun’ral and bridal both; and all around

The borders with corruptless myrrh are crown’d,

On this incumbent; ’till aetherial flame

First catches, then consumes the costly frame:

Consumes him too, as on the pile he lies;

He liv’d on odours, and in odours dies.

An infant Phoenix from the former springs,

His father’s heir, and from his tender wings

Shakes off his parent dust, his method he pursues,

And the same lease of life on the same terms renews.

When grown to manhood he begins his reign,

And with stiff pinions can his flight sustain,

He lightens of its load the tree that bore

His father’s royal sepulcher before,

And his own cradle: this (with pious care

Plac’d on his back) he cuts the buxome air,

Seeks the Sun’s city, and his sacred church,

And decently lays down his burden in the porch.

A wonder more amazing wou’d we find?

Th’ Hyaena shows it, of a double kind,

Varying the sexes in alternate years,

In one begets, and in another bears.

The thin Camelion fed with air, receives

The colour of the thing, to which he cleaves.

India when conquer’d, on the conqu’ring God

For planted vines the sharp-ey’d Lynx bestow’d,

Whose urine, shed before it touches Earth,

Congeals in air, and gives to gems their birth.

So Coral soft, and white in ocean’s bed,

Comes harden’d up in air, and glows with red.

All changing species should my song recite;

Before I ceas’d, wou’d change the day to night.

Nations, and empires flourish, and decay,

By turns command, and in their turns obey;

Time softens hardy people, time again

Hardens to war a soft, unwarlike train.

Thus Troy for ten long years her foes withstood,

And daily bleeding bore th’ expence of blood:

Now for thick streets it shows an empty space,

Or only fill’d with tombs of her own perish’d race,

Her self becomes the sepulcher of what she was.

Mycené, Sparta, Thebes of mighty fame,

Are vanish’d out of substance into name.

And Dardan Rome that just begins to rise,

On Tiber’s banks, in time shall mate the skies:

Widening her bounds, and working on her way;

Ev’n now she meditates imperial sway:

Yet this is change, but she by changing thrives,

Like moons new-born, and in her cradle strives

To fill her infant-horns; an hour shall come,

When the round world shall be contain’d in Rome.

For thus old saws foretel, and Helenus

Anchises’ drooping son enliven’d thus:

When Ilium now was in a sinking state;

And he was doubtful of his future fate:

O Goddess-born, with thy hard fortune strive,

Troy never can be lost, and thou alive.

Thy passage thou shalt free through fire, and sword,

And Troy in foreign lands shall be restor’d.

In happier fields a rising town I see

Greater, than what e’er was, or is, or e’er shall be:

And Heav’n yet owes the world a race deriv’d from thee.

Sages, and chiefs, of other lineage born,

The city shall extend, extended shall adorn:

But from lulus he must draw his breath,

By whom thy Rome shall rule the conquer’d Earth:

Whom Heav’n will lend Mankind on Earth to reign,

And late require the precious pledge again.

This Helenus to great Aeneas told,

Which I retain, e’er since in other mould

My soul was cloath’d; and now rejoice to view

My country walls rebuilt, and Troy reviv’d anew,

Rais’d by the fall, decreed by loss to gain;

Enslav’d but to be free, and conquer’d but to reign.

’Tis time my hard-mouth’d coursers to controul,

Apt to run riot, and transgress the goal:

And therefore I conclude, Whatever lies,

In Earth, or flits in air, or fills the skies,

All suffer change; and we, that are of soul

And body mix’d, are members of the whole.

Then when our sires, or grandsires, shall forsake

The forms of men, and brutal figures take,

Thus hous’d, securely let their spirits rest,

Nor violate thy father in the beast,

Thy friend, thy brother, any of thy kin,

If none of these, yet there’s a man within:

O spare to make a Thyestaean meal,

T’ inclose his body, and his soul expel.

Ill customs by degrees to habits rise,

Ill habits soon become exalted vice:

What more advance can mortals make in sin

So near perfection, who with blood begin?

Deaf to the calf, that lyes beneath the knife,

Looks up, and from her butcher begs her life:

Deaf to the harmless kid, that ere he dies

All methods to procure thy mercy tries,

And imitates in vain thy children’s cries.

Where will he stop, who feeds with houshold bread,

Then eats the poultry, which before he fed?

Let plough thy steers; that when they lose their breath,

To Nature, not to thee, they may impute their death.

Let goats for food their loaded udders lend,

And sheep from winter-cold thy sides defend;

But neither sprindges, nets, nor snares employ,

And be no more ingenious to destroy.

Free as in air, let birds on Earth remain,

Nor let insidious glue their wings constrain;

Nor opening hounds the trembling stag affright,

Nor purple feathers intercept his flight:

Nor hooks conceal’d in baits for fish prepare,

Nor lines to heave ’em twinkling up in air.

Take not away the life you cannot give,

For all things have an equal right to live.

Kill noxious creatures, where ’tis sin to save;

This only just prerogative we have:

But nourish life with vegetable food,

And shun the sacrilegious taste of blood.

These precepts by the Samian sage were taught,

Which God-like Numa to the Sabines brought,

And thence transferr’d to Rome, by gift his own:

A willing people, and an offer’d throne.

O happy monarch, sent by Heav’n to bless

A salvage nation with soft arts of peace,

To teach religion, rapine to restrain,

Give laws to lust, and sacrifice ordain:

Himself a saint, a Goddess was his bride,

And all the Muses o’er his acts preside.

Advanc’d in years he dy’d; one common date

His reign concluded, and his mortal state.

Their tears plebeians, and patricians shed,

And pious matrons wept their monarch dead.

His mournful wife, her sorrows to bewail,

Withdrew from Rome, and sought th’ Arician vale.

Hid in thick woods, she made incessant moans,

Disturbing Cinthia’s sacred rites with groans.

How oft the nymphs, who rul’d the wood and lake,

Reprov’d her tears, and words of comfort spice!

How oft (in vain) the son of Theseus said,

Thy stormy sorrows be with patience laid;

Nor are thy fortunes to be wept alone,

Weigh others’ woes, and learn to bear thine own,

Be mine an instance to asswage thy grief:

Would mine were none! — yet mine may bring relief.

You’ve heard, perhaps, in conversation told,

What once befel Hippolytus of old;

To death by Theseus’ easie faith betray’d,

And caught in snares his wicked step-dame laid.

The wondrous tale your credit scarce may claim,

Yet (strange to say) in me behold the same,

Whom lustful Phaedra oft had press’d in vain,

With impious joys, my father’s bed to stain;

’Till seiz’d with fear, or by revenge inspir’d,

She charg’d on me the crimes herself desir’d.

Expell’d by Theseus, from his home I fled

With heaps of curses on my guiltless head.

Forlorn, I sought Pitthëan Troezen’s land,

And drove my chariot o’er Corinthus’ strand;

When from the surface of the level main

A billow rising, heav’d above the plain;

Rolling, and gath’ring, ’till so high it swell’d,

A mountain’s height th’ enormous mass excell’d;

Then bellowing, burst; when from the summit cleav’d,

A horned bull his ample chest upheav’d.

His mouth, and nostrils, storms of briny rain,

Expiring, blew. Dread horror seiz’d my train.

I stood unmov’d. My father’s cruel doom

Claim’d all my soul, nor fear could find a room.

Amaz’d, awhile my trembling coursers stood

With prick’d up ears, contemplating the flood;

Then starting sudden, from the dreadful view,

At once, like lightning, from the seas they flew,

And o’er the craggy rocks the rattling chariot drew.

In vain to stop the hot-mouth’d steeds I try’d,

And bending backward all my strength apply’d;

The frothy foam in driving flakes distains

The bits, and bridles, and bedews the reins.

But tho’, as yet untam’d they run, at length

Their heady rage had tir’d beneath my strength,

When in the spokes, a stump intangling, tore

The shatter’d wheel, and from its axle bore.

The shock impetuous tost me from the seat,

Caught in the reins beneath my horse’s feet.

My reeking guts drag’d out alive, around

The jagged strump, my trembling nerves were wound,

Then stretch’d the well-knit limbs, in pieces hal’d,

Part stuck behind, and part the chariot trail’d;

’Till, midst my cracking joints, and breaking bones,

I breath’d away my weary’d soul in groans.

No part distinguish’d from the rest was found,

But all my parts an universal wound.

Now say, self-tortur’d nymph, can you compare

Our griefs as equal, or in justice dare?

I saw besides the darksome realms of woe,

And bath’d my wounds in smoking streams below.

There I had staid, nor second life injoy’d,

But Poean’s son his wondrous art imploy’d.

To light restor’d, by medicinal skill,

In spight of Fate, and rigid Pluto’s will,

Th’ invidious object to preserve from view,

A misty cloud around me Cynthia threw;

And lest my sight should stir my foes to rage,

She stamp’d my visage with the marks of age.

My former hue was chang’d, and for it shown

A set of features, and a face unknown.

A-while the Goddess stood in doubt, or Crete,

Or Delos’ isle, to chuse for my retreat.

Delos, and Crete refus’d, this wood she chose,

Bad me my former luckless name depose,

Which kept alive the mem’ry of my woes;

Then said, Immortal life be thine; and thou,

Hippolytus once call’d, be Virbius now.

Here then a God, but of th’ inferior race,

I serve my Goddess, and attend her chace.

But others’ woes were useless to appease

Egeria’s grief, or set her mind at ease.

Beneath the hill, all comfortless she laid,

The dropping tears her eyes incessant shed,

’Till pitying Phoebe eas’d her pious woe,

Thaw’d to a spring, whose streams for ever flow.

The nymphs, and Virbius, like amazement fill’d,

As seiz’d the swains, who Tyrrhene furrows till’d;

When heaving up, a clod was seen to roll,

Untouch’d, self-mov’d, and big with human soul.

The spreading mass in former shape depos’d,

Began to shoot, and arms and legs disclos’d,

’Till form’d a perfect man, the living mold

Op’d its new mouth, and future truths foretold;

And Tages nam’d by natives of the place,

Taught arts prophetic to the Tuscan race.

Or such as once by Romulus was shown,

Who saw his lance with sprouting leaves o’er-grown,

When fix’d in Earth the point began to shoot,

And growing downward turn’d a fibrous root;

While spread aloft the branching arms display’d,

O’er wondring crowds, an unexpected shade.

Or as when Cippus in the current view’d

The shooting horns that on his forehead stood,

His temples first he feels, and with surprize

His touch confirms th’ assurance of his eyes.

Streight to the skies his horned front he rears,

And to the Gods directs these pious pray’rs.

If this portent be prosp’rous, O decree

To Rome th’ event; if otherwise, to me.

An altar then of turf he hastes to raise,

Rich gums in fragrant exhalations blaze;

The panting entrails crackle as they fry,

And boding fumes pronounce a mystery,

Soon as the augur saw the holy fire,

And victims with presaging signs expire,

To Cippus then he turns his eyes with speed,

And views the horny honours of his head:

Then cry’d, Hail conqueror! thy call obey,

Those omens I behold presage thy sway.

Rome waits thy nod, unwilling to be free,

And owns thy sov’reign pow’r as Fate’s decree.

He said — and Cippus, starting at th’ event,

Spoke in these words his pious discontent.

Far hence, ye Gods, this execration send,

And the great race of Romulus defend.

Better that I in exile live abhorr’d,

Than e’er the Capitol shou’d style me lord.

This spoke, he hides with leaves his omen’d head.

Then prays, the senate next convenes, and said:

If augurs can foresee, a wretch is come,

Design’d by destiny the bane of Rome.

Two horns (most strange to tell) his temples crown;

If e’er he pass the walls, and gain the town,

Your laws are forfeit, that ill-fated hour;

And liberty must yield to lawless pow’r.

Your gates he might have enter’d; but this arm

Seiz’d the usurper, and with-held the harm.

Haste, find the monster out, and let him be

Condemn’d to all the senate can decree;

Or ty’d in chains, or into exile thrown;

Or by the tyrant’s death prevent your own.

The crowd such murmurs utter as they stand,

As swelling surges breaking on the strand;

Or as when gath’ring gales sweep o’er the grove,

And their tall heads the bending cedars move.

Each with confusion gaz’d, and then began

To feel his fellow’s brows, and find the man.

Cippus then shakes his garland off, and cries,

The wretch you want, I offer to your eyes.

The anxious throng look’d down, and sad in thought,

All wish’d they had not found the sign they sought:

In haste with laurel wreaths his head they bind;

Such honour to such virtue was assign’d.

Then thus the senate — Hear, o Cippus, hear;

So god-like is thy tutelary care,

That since in Rome thy self forbids thy stay,

For thy abode those acres we convey

The plough-share can surround, the labour of a day.

In deathless records thou shalt stand inroll’d,

And Rome’s rich posts shall shine with horns of gold.

Melodious maids of Pindus, who inspire

The flowing strains, and tune the vocal lyre;

Tradition’s secrets are unlock’d to you,

Old tales revive, and ages past renew;

You, who can hidden causes best expound,

Say, whence the isle, which Tiber flows around,

Its altars with a heav’nly stranger grac’d,

And in our shrines the God of physic plac’d.

A wasting plague infected Latium’s skies;

Pale, bloodless looks were seen, with ghastly eyes;

The dire disease’s marks each visage wore,

And the pure blood was chang’d to putrid gore:

In vain were human remedies apply’d;

In vain the pow’r of healing herbs was try’d:

Weary’d with death, they seek celestial aid,

And visit Phoebus in his Delphic shade;

In the world’s centre sacred Delphos stands,

And gives its oracles to distant lands:

Here they implore the God, with fervent vows,

His salutary pow’r to interpose,

And end a great afflicted city’s woes.

The holy temple sudden tremors prov’d;

The laurel grove and all its quivers mov’d;

In hollow sounds the priestess, thus, began,

And thro’ each bosom thrilling horrors ran.

“Th’ assistance, Roman, which you here implore,

Seek from another, and a nearer shore;

Relief must be implor’d, and succour won,

Not from Apollo, but Apollo’s son;

My son, to Latium born, shall bring redress:

Go with good omens, and expect success.”

When these clear oracles the senate knew;

The sacred tripod’s counsels they pursue,

Depute a pious and a chosen band,

Who sail to Epidaurus’ neighb’ring land:

Before the Graecian elders when they stood,

They pray ’em to bestow the healing God:

“Ordain’d was he to save Ausonia’s state;

So promis’d Delphi, and unerring Fate.”

Opinions various their debates enlarge:

Some plead to yield to Rome the sacred charge;

Others, tenacious of their country’s wealth,

Refuse to grant the pow’r, who guards its health.

While dubious they remain’d, the wasting light

Withdrew before the growing shades of night;

Now, Roman, clos’d in sleep were mortal eyes,

When health’s auspicious God appears to thee,

And thy glad dreams his form celestial see:

In his left hand, a rural staff preferr’d,

His right is seen to stroke his decent beard.

“Dismiss,” said he, with mildness all divine,

“Dismiss your fears; I come, and leave my shrine;

This serpent view, that with ambitious play

My staff encircles, mark him ev’ry way;

His form, tho’ larger, nobler, I’ll assume,

And chang’d, as Gods should be, bring aid to Rome.”

Here fled the vision, and the vision’s flight

Was follow’d by the chearful dawn of light.

Now was the morn with blushing streaks o’erspread,

And all the starry fires of Heav’n were fled;

The chiefs perplex’d, and fill’d with doubtful care,

To their protector’s sumptuous roofs repair,

By genuin signs implore him to express,

What seats he deigns to chuse, what land to bless:

Scarce their ascending pray’rs had reach’d the sky;

Lo, the serpentine God, erected high!

Forerunning hissings his approach confest;

Bright shone his golden scales, and wav’d his lofty crest;

The trembling altar his appearance spoke;

The marble floor, and glittering ceiling shook;

The doors were rock’d; the statue seem’d to nod;

And all the fabric own’d the present God:

His radiant chest he taught aloft to rise,

And round the temple cast his flaming eyes:

Struck was th’ astonish’d crowd; the holy priest,

His temples with white bands of ribbon drest,

With rev’rent awe the Power divine confest!

The God! the God! he cries; all tongues be still!

Each conscious breast devoutest ardour fill!

O beauteous! O divine! assist our cares,

And be propitious to thy vot’ries prayers!

All with consenting hearts, and pious fear,

The words repeat, the deity revere:

The Romans in their holy worship join’d,

With silent awe, and purity of mind:

Gracious to them, his crest is seen to nod,

And, as an earnest of his care, the God,

Thrice hissing, vibrates thrice his forked tongue;

And now the smooth descent he glides along:

Still on the ancient seats he bends his eyes,

In which his statue breaths, his altars rise;

His long-lov’d shrine with kind concern he leaves,

And to forsake th’ accustom’d mansion grieves:

At length, his sweeping bulk in state is born

Thro’ the throng’d streets, which scatter’d flowers adorn;

Thro’ many a fold he winds his mazy course,

And gains the port and moles, which break the ocean’s force.

’Twas here he made a stand, and having view’d

The pious train, who his last steps pursu’d,

Seem’d to dismiss their zeal with gracious eyes,

While gleams of pleasure in his aspect rise.

And now the Latian vessel he ascends;

Beneath the weighty God the vessel bends:

The Latins on the strand great Jove appease,

Their cables loose, and plough the yielding seas:

The high-rear’d serpent from the stern displays

His gorgeous form, and the blue deep surveys;

The ship is wafted on with gentle gales,

And o’er the calm Ionian smoothly sails;

On the sixth morn th’ Italian coast they gain,

And touch Lacinia, grac’d with Juno’s fane;

Now fair Calabria to the sight is lost,

And all the cities on her fruitful coast;

They pass at length the rough Sicilian shore,

The Brutian soil, rich with metalic ore,

The famous isles, where Aeolus was king,

And Paestum blooming with eternal Spring:

Minerva’s cape they leave, and Capreae’s isle,

Campania, on whose hills the vineyards smile,

The city, which Alcides’ spoils adorn,

Naples, for soft delight and pleasure born;

Fair Stabiae, with Cumean Sibyl’s seats,

And Baia’s tepid baths, and green retreats;

Linternum next they reach, where balmy gums

Distil from mastic trees, and spread perfumes:

Caieta, from the nurse so nam’d, for whom

With pious care Aeneas rais’d a tomb,

Vulturne, whose whirlpools suck the numerous sands,

And Trachas, and Minturnea’s marshy lands,

And Formia’s coast is left, and Circe’s plain,

Which yet remembers her enchanting reign;

To Antium, last, his côurse the pilot guides.

Here, while the anchor’d vessel safely rides

(For now the rufled deep portends a storm),

The spiry God unfolds his spheric form,

Thro’ large indentings draws his lubric train,

And seeks the refuge of Apollo’s fane;

The fane is situate on the yellow shore:

When the sea smil’d, and the winds rag’d no more,

He leaves his father’s hospitable lands,

And furrows, with his rattling scales, the sands

Along the coast; at length the ship regains,

And sails to Tibur, and Lavinum’s plains.

Here mingling crowds to meet their patron came,

Ev’n the chast guardians of the Vestal flame,

From every part tumultuous they repair,

And joyful acclamations rend the air:

Along the flowry banks, on either side,

Where the tall ship floats on the swelling tide,

Dispos’d in decent order altars rise,

And crackling incense, as it mounts the skies,

The air with sweets refreshes; while the knife,

Warm with the victim’s blood, lets out the streaming life.

The world’s great mistress, Rome, receives him now;

On the mast’s top reclin’d he waves his brow,

And from that height surveys the great abodes,

And mansions, worthy of residing Gods.

The land, a narrow neck, it self extends,

Round which his course the stream divided bends;

The stream’s two arms, on either side, are seen,

Stretch’d out in equal length; the land between.

The isle, so call’d from hence derives its name:

’Twas here the salutary serpent came;

Nor sooner has he left the Latian pine,

But he assumes again his form divine,

And now no more the drooping city mourns,

Joy is again restor’d, and health returns.

But Aesculapius was a foreign power:

In his own city Caesar we adore:

Him arms, and arts alike renown’d beheld,

In peace conspicuous, dreadful in the field;

His rapid conquest, and swift-finish’d wars,

The hero justly fix’d among the stars;

Yet is his progeny his greatest fame:

The son immortal makes the father’s name.

The sea-girt Britons, by his courage tam’d,

For their high rocky cliffs, and fierceness fam’d;

His dreadful navies, which victorious rode

O’er Nile’s affrighted waves and seven-sourc’d flood;

Numidia, and the spacious realms regain’d;

Where Cinyphis or flows, or Juba reign’d;

The powers of titled Mithridates broke,

And Pontus added to the Roman yoke;

Triumphal shows decreed, for conquests won,

For conquests, which the triumphs still outshone;

These are great deeds; yet less, than to have giv’n

The world a lord, in whom, propitious Heav’n,

When you decreed the sov’reign rule to place,

You blest with lavish bounty human race.

Now lest so great a prince might seem to rise

Of mortal stem, his sire much reach the skies;

The beauteous Goddess, that Aeneas bore,

Foresaw it, and foreseeing did deplore;

For well she knew her hero’s fate was nigh,

Devoted by conspiring arms to die.

Trembling, and pale, to every God, she cry’d,

Behold, what deep and subtle arts are try’d,

To end the last, the only branch that springs

From my lulus, and the Dardan kings!

How bent they are! how desp’rate to destroy

All that is left me of unhappy Troy!

Am I alone by Fate ordain’d to know

Uninterrupted care, and endless woe!

Now from Tydides’ spear I feel the wound:

Now Ilium’s tow’rs the hostile flames surround:

Troy laid in dust, my exil’d son I mourn,

Thro’ angry seas, and raging billows born;

O’er the wide deep his wandring course he bends;

Now to the sullen shades of Styx descends,

With Turnus driv’n at last fierce wars to wage,

Or rather with unpitying Juno’s rage.

But why record I now my ancient woes?

Sense of past ills in present fears I lose;

On me their points the impious daggers throw;

Forbid it, Gods, repel the direful blow:

If by curs’d weapons Numa’s priest expires,

No longer shall ye burn, ye Vestal fires.

While such complainings Cypria’s grief disclose;

In each celestial breast compassion rose:

Not Gods can alter Fate’s resistless will;

Yet they foretold by signs th’ approaching ill.

Dreadful were heard, among the clouds, alarms

Of ecchoing trumpets, and of clashing arms;

The Sun’s pale image gave so faint a light,

That the sad Earth was almost veil’d in night;

The Aether’s face with fiery meteors glow’d;

With storms of hail were mingled drops of blood;

A dusky hue the morning star o’erspread,

And the Moon’s orb was stain’d with spots of red;

In every place portentous shrieks were heard,

The fatal warnings of th’ infernal bird;

In ev’ry place the marble melts to tears;

While in the groves, rever’d thro’ length of years,

Boding, and awful sounds the ear invade;

And solemn music warbles thro’ the shade;

No victim can attone the impious age,

No sacrifice the wrathful Gods asswage;

Dire wars and civil fury threat the state;

And every omen points out Caesar’s fate:

Around each hallow’d shrine, and sacred dome,

Night-howling dogs disturb the peaceful gloom;

Their silent seats the wandring shades forsake,

And fearful tremblings the rock’d city shake.

Yet could not, by these prodigies, be broke

The plotted charm, or staid the fatal stroke;

Their swords th’ assassins in the temple draw;

Their murth’ring hands nor Gods nor temples awe;

This sacred place their bloody weapons stain,

And Virtue falls, before the altar slain.

’Twas now fair Cypria, with her woes opprest,

In raging anguish smote her heav’nly breast;

Wild with distracting fears, the Goddess try’d

Her hero’ in th’ etherial cloud to hide,

The cloud, which youthful Paris did conceal,

When Menelaus urg’d the threatning steel;

The cloud, which once deceiv’d Tydides’ sight,

And sav’d Aeneas in th’ unequal fight.

When Jove — In vain, fair daughter, you assay

To o’er-rule destiny’s unconquer’d sway:

Your doubts to banish, enter Fate’s abode;

A privilege to heav’nly powers allow’d;

There shall you see the records grav’d, in length,

On ir’n and solid brass, with mighty strength;

Which Heav’n’s and Earth’s concussion shall endure,

Maugre all shocks, eternal, and secure:

There, on perennial adamant design’d,

The various fortunes of your race you’ll find:

Well I have mark’d ’em, and will now relate

To thee the settled laws of future Fate.

He, Goddess, for whose death the Fates you blame,

Has finish’d his determin’d course with Fame:

To thee ’tis giv’n at length, that he shall shine

Among the Gods, and grace the worship’d shrine:

His son to all his greatness shall be heir,

And worthily succeed to empire’s care:

Our self will lead his wars, resolv’d to aid

The brave avenger of his father’s shade:

To him its freedom Mutina shall owe,

And Decius his auspicious conduct know;

His dreadful powers shall shake Pharsalia’s plain,

And drench in gore Philippi’s fields again:

A mighty leader, in Sicilia’s flood,

Great Pompey’s warlike son, shall be subdu’d:

Aegypt’s soft queen, adorn’d with fatal charms,

Shall mourn her soldier’s unsuccessful arms:

Too late shall find her swelling hopes were vain,

And know, that Rome o’er Memphis still must reign:

What name I Afric, or Nile’s hidden head?

Far as both oceans roll, his power shall spread:

All the known Earth to him shall homage pay,

And the seas own his universal sway:

When cruel war no more disturbs Mankind;

To civil studies shall he bend his mind,

With equal justice guardian laws ordain,

And by his great example vice restrain:

Where will his bounty or his goodness end?

To times unborn his gen’rous views extend;

The virtues of his heir our praise engage,

And promise blessings to the coming age:

Late shall he in his kindred orbs be placed,

With Pylian years, and crowded honours graced.

Mean-time, your hero’s fleeting spirit bear,

Fresh from his wounds, and change it to a star:

So shall great Julius rites divine assume,

And from the skies eternal smile on Rome.

This spoke, the Goddess to the senate flew;

Where, her fair form conceal’d from mortal view,

Her Caesar’s heav’nly part she made her care,

Nor left the recent soul to waste to air;

But bore it upwards to its native skies:

Glowing with new-born fires she saw it rise;

Forth springing from her bosom up it flew,

And kindling, as it soar’d, a comet grew:

Above the lunar sphere it took its flight,

And shot behind it a long trail of light.

Thus rais’d, his glorious off-spring Julius view’d,

Beneficently great, and scattering good,

Deeds, that his own surpass’d, with joy beheld,

And his large heart dilates to be excell’d.

What tho’ this prince refuses to receive

The preference, which his juster subjects give;

Fame uncontroll’d, that no restraint obeys,

The homage, shunn’d by modest virtue, pays,

And proves disloyal only in his praise.

Tho’ great his sire, him greater we proclaim:

So Atreus yields to Agamemnon’s fame;

Achilles so superior honours won,

And Peleus must submit to Peleus’ son;

Examples yet more noble to disclose,

So Saturn was eclips’d, when Jove to empire rose;

Jove rules the Heav’ns, the Earth Augustus sways;

Each claims a monarch’s, and a father’s praise.

Celestials, who for Rome your cares employ;

Ye Gods, who guarded the remains of Troy;

Ye native Gods, here born, and fix’d by Fate;

Quirinus, founder of the Roman state;

O parent Mars, from whom Quirinus sprung;

Chaste Vesta, Caesar’s household Gods among,

Most sacred held; domestic Phoebus, thou,

To whom with Vesta chaste alike we bow;

Great guardian of the high Tarpeian rock;

And all ye Pow’rs, whom poets may invoke;

O grant, that day may claim our sorrows late,

When lov’d Augustus shall submit to Fate,.

Visit those seats, where Gods and heroes dwell,

And leave, in tears, the world he rul’d so well!

The work is finish’d, which nor dreads the rage

Of tempests, fire, or war, or wasting age;

Come, soon or late, death’s undetermin’d day,

This mortal being only can decay;

My nobler part, my fame, shall reach the skies,

And to late times with blooming honours rise:

Whate’er th’ unbounded Roman power obeys,

All climes and nations shall record my praise:

If ’tis allow’d to poets to divine,

One half of round eternity is mine.

-Translated by John Dryden

The Arrival of Aeneas/ The Legend of Romulus and Remus

Livy

The History of Rome, Book I

Translated by Canon Roberts

The historian Livy lived in the time of Augustus and was in fact a friend to Augustus himself. He is most known for his extensive history of Rome and its people, covering the span of time from Rome’s earliest myths and legends to the time of Augustus, amounting to nearly eight centuries. Of the 142 books of the work the only surviving books are Books 1 through 10 and Books 21 through 45 in addition to some fragments of other books.

Livy has often been criticized for being more concerned with myths and stories than telling the actual truth, but the work achieved its ultimate goal of portraying the glory of Rome. The work was incredibly well received in Rome and Livy became a celebrity of his time.

The History of Rome was published in volumes, the first of which was published around the time Virgil was writing his Aeneid. The first book of the history begins with an account of Aeneas coming to Italy and his deeds. Livy then tells the story of Romulus and Remus. The account links the people of Rome to a divine origin and implies that the gods themselves ordained the greatness of Rome from the very beginning of its history. The intermingling of the origins of Rome and the divine serves to instill in the Roman people a sense of importance. Not only are they related to the divine through Aeneas, but it was also the gods’ will for them to be a great nation.

To begin with, it is generally admitted that after the capture of Troy, whilst the rest of the Trojans were massacred, against two of them - Aeneas and Antenor - the Achivi refused to exercise the rights of war, partly owing to old ties of hospitality, and partly because these men had always been in favour of making peace and surrendering Helen. Their subsequent fortunes were different. Antenor sailed into the furthest part of the Adriatic, accompanied by a number of Enetians who had been driven from Paphlagonia by a revolution, and after losing their king Pylaemenes before Troy were looking for a settlement and a leader. The combined force of Enetians and Trojans defeated the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps and occupied their land. The place where they disembarked was called Troy, and the name was extended to the surrounding district; the whole nation were called Veneti. Similar misfortunes led to Aeneas becoming a wanderer, but the Fates were preparing a higher destiny for him. He first visited Macedonia, then was carried down to Sicily in quest of a settlement; from Sicily he directed his course to the Laurentian territory. Here, too, the name of Troy is found, and here the Trojans disembarked, and as their almost infinite wanderings had left them nothing but their arms and their ships, they began to plunder the neighbourhood. The Aborigines, who occupied the country, with their king Latinus at their head, came hastily together from the city and the country districts to repel the inroads of the strangers by force of arms.

From this point there is a twofold tradition. According to the one, Latinus was defeated in battle, and made peace with Aeneas, and subsequently a family alliance. According to the other, whilst the two armies were standing ready to engage and waiting for the signal, Latinus advanced in front of his lines and invited the leader of the strangers to a conference. He inquired of him what manner of men they were, whence they came, what had happened to make them leave their homes, what were they in quest of when they landed in Latinus’ territory. When he heard that the men were Trojans, that their leader was Aeneas, the son of Anchises and Venus, that their city had been burnt, and that the homeless exiles were now looking for a place to settle in and build a city, he was so struck with the noble bearing of the men and their leader, and their readiness to accept alike either peace or war, that he gave his right hand as a solemn pledge of friendship for the future. A formal treaty was made between the leaders and mutual greetings exchanged between the armies. Latinus received Aeneas as a guest in his house, and there, in the presence of his tutelary deities, completed the political alliance by a domestic one, and gave his daughter in marriage to Aeneas. This incident confirmed the Trojans in the hope that they had reached the term of their wanderings and won a permanent home. They built a town, which Aeneas called Lavinium after his wife. In a short time a boy was born of the new marriage, to whom his parents gave the name of Ascanius.

In a short time the Aborigines and Trojans became involved in war with Turnus, the king of the Rutulians. Lavinia had been betrothed to him before the arrival of Aeneas, and, furious at finding a stranger preferred to him, he declared war against both Latinus and Aeneas. Neither side could congratulate themselves on the result of the battle; the Rutulians were defeated, but the victorious Aborigines and Trojans lost their leader Latinus. Feeling their need of allies, Turnus and the Rutulians had recourse to the celebrated power of the Etruscans and Mezentius, their king, who was reigning at Caere, a wealthy city in those days. From the first he had felt anything but pleasure at the rise of the new city, and now he regarded the growth of the Trojan state as much too rapid to be safe to its neighbours, so he welcomed the proposal to join forces with the Rutulians. To keep the Aborigines from abandoning him in the face of this strong coalition and to secure their being not only under the same laws, but also the same designation, Aeneas called both nations by the common name of Latins. From that time the Aborigines were not behind the Trojans in their loyal devotion to Aeneas. So great was the power of Etruria that the renown of her people had filled not only the inland parts of Italy but also the coastal districts along the whole length of the land from the Alps to the Straits of Messina. Aeneas, however, trusting to the loyalty of the two nations who were day by day growing into one, led his forces into the field, instead of awaiting the enemy behind his walls. The battle resulted in favour of the Latins, but it was the last mortal act of Aeneas. His tomb - whatever it is lawful and right to call him - is situated on the bank of the Numicius. He is addressed as “Jupiter Indiges.”

His son, Ascanius, was not old enough to assume the government; but his throne remained secure throughout his minority. During that interval - such was Lavinia’s force of character - though a woman was regent, the Latin State, and the kingdom of his father and grandfather, were preserved unimpaired for her son. I will not discuss the question - for who could speak decisively about a matter of such extreme antiquity? - whether the man whom the Julian house claim, under the name of Iulus, as the founder of their name, was this Ascanius or an older one than he, born of Creusa, whilst Ilium was still intact, and after its fall a sharer in his father’s fortunes. This Ascanius, where ever born, or of whatever mother - it is generally agreed in any case that he was the son of Aeneas - left to his mother (or his stepmother) the city of Lavinium, which was for those days a prosperous and wealthy city, with a superabundant population, and built a new city at the foot of the Alban hills, which from its position, stretching along the side of the hill, was called “Alba Longa.” An interval of thirty years elapsed between the foundation of Lavinium and the colonisation of Alba Longa. Such had been the growth of the Latin power, mainly through the defeat of the Etruscans, that neither at the death of Aeneas, nor during the regency of Lavinia, nor during the immature years of the reign of Ascanius, did either Mezentius and the Etruscans or any other of their neighbours venture to attack them. When terms of peace were being arranged, the river Albula, now called the Tiber, had been fixed as the boundary between the Etruscans and the Latins.

Ascanius was succeeded by his son Silvius, who by some chance had been born in the forest. He became the father of Aeneas Silvius, who in his turn had a son, Latinus Silvius. He planted a number of colonies: the colonists were called Prisci Latini. The cognomen of Silvius was common to all the remaining kings of Alba, each of whom succeeded his father. Their names are Alba, Atys, Capys, Capetus, Tiberinus, who was drowned in crossing the Albula, and his name transferred to the river, which became henceforth the famous Tiber. Then came his son Agrippa, after him his son Romulus Silvius. He was struck by lightning and left the crown to his son Aventinus, whose shrine was on the hill which bears his name and is now a part of the city of Rome. He was succeeded by Proca, who had two sons, Numitor and Amulius. To Numitor, the elder, he bequeathed the ancient throne of the Silvian house. Violence, however, proved stronger than either the father’s will or the respect due to the brother’s seniority; for Amulius expelled his brother and seized the crown. Adding crime to crime, he murdered his brother’s sons and made the daughter, Rea Silvia, a Vestal virgin; thus, under the presence of honouring her, depriving her of all hopes of issue.

But the Fates had, I believe, already decreed the origin of this great city and the foundation of the mightiest empire under heaven. The Vestal was forcibly violated and gave birth to twins. She named Mars as their father, either because she really believed it, or because the fault might appear less heinous if a deity were the cause of it. But neither gods nor men sheltered her or her babes from the king’s cruelty; the priestess was thrown into prison, the boys were ordered to be thrown into the river. By a heaven-sent chance it happened that the Tiber was then overflowing its banks, and stretches of standing water prevented any approach to the main channel. Those who were carrying the children expected that this stagnant water would be sufficient to drown them, so under the impression that they were carrying out the king’s orders they exposed the boys at the nearest point of the overflow, where the Ficus Ruminalis (said to have been formerly called Romularis) now stands. The locality was then a wild solitude. The tradition goes on to say that after the floating cradle in which the boys had been exposed had been left by the retreating water on dry land, a thirsty she-wolf from the surrounding hills, attracted by the crying of the children, came to them, gave them her teats to suck and was so gentle towards them that the king’s flock-master found her licking the boys with her tongue. According to the story, his name was Faustulus. He took the children to his hut and gave them to his wife Larentia to bring up. Some writers think that Larentia, from her unchaste life, had got the nickname of “She-wolf” amongst the shepherds, and that this was the origin of the marvellous story. As soon as the boys, thus born and thus brought up, grew to be young men they did not neglect their pastoral duties, but their special delight was roaming through the woods on hunting expeditions. As their strength and courage were thus developed, they used not only to lie in wait for fierce beasts of prey, but they even attacked brigands when loaded with plunder. They distributed what they took amongst the shepherds, with whom, surrounded by a continually increasing body of young men, they associated themselves in their serious undertakings and in their sports and pastimes.

It is said that the festival of the Lupercalia, which is still observed, was even in those days celebrated on the Palatine hill. This hill was originally called Pallantium from a city of the same name in Arcadia; the name was afterwards changed to Palatium. Evander, an Arcadian, had held that territory many ages before, and had introduced an annual festival from Arcadia in which young men ran about naked for sport and wantonness, in honour of the Lycaean Pan, whom the Romans afterwards called Inuus. The existence of this festival was widely recognised, and it was while the two brothers were engaged in it that the brigands, enraged at losing their plunder, ambushed them. Romulus successfully defended himself, but Remus was taken prisoner and brought before Amulius, his captors impudently accusing him of their own crimes. The principal charge brought against them was that of invading Numitor’s lands with a body of young men whom they had got together, and carrying off plunder as though in regular warfare. Remus accordingly was handed over to Numitor for punishment. Faustulus had from the beginning suspected that it was royal offspring that he was bringing up, for he was aware that the boys had been exposed at the king’s command and the time at which he had taken them away exactly corresponded with that of their exposure. He had, however, refused to divulge the matter prematurely, until either a fitting opportunity occurred or necessity demanded its disclosure. The necessity came first. Alarmed for the safety of Remus he revealed the state of the case to Romulus. It so happened that Numitor also, who had Remus in his custody, on hearing that he and his brother were twins and comparing their ages and the character and bearing so unlike that of one in a servile condition, began to recall the memory of his grandchildren, and further inquiries brought him to the same conclusion as Faustulus; nothing was wanting to the recognition of Remus. So the king Amulius was being enmeshed on all sides by hostile purposes. Romulus shrunk from a direct attack with his body of shepherds, for he was no match for the king in open fight. They were instructed to approach the palace by different routes and meet there at a given time, whilst from Numitor’s house Remus lent his assistance with a second band he had collected. The attack succeeded and the king was killed.

At the beginning of the fray, Numitor gave out that an enemy had entered the City and was attacking the palace, in order to draw off the Alban soldiery to the citadel, to defend it. When he saw the young men coming to congratulate him after the assassination, he at once called a council of his people and explained his brother’s infamous conduct towards him, the story of his grandsons, their parentage and bringing up, and how he recognised them. Then he proceeded to inform them of the tyrant’s death and his responsibility for it. The young men marched in order through the midst of the assembly and saluted their grandfather as king; their action was approved by the whole population, who with one voice ratified the title and sovereignty of the king. After the government of Alba was thus transferred to Numitor, Romulus and Remus were seized with the desire of building a city in the locality where they had been exposed. There was the superfluous population of the Alban and Latin towns, to these were added the shepherds: it was natural to hope that with all these Alba would be small and Lavinium small in comparison with the city which was to be founded. These pleasant anticipations were disturbed by the ancestral curse - ambition - which led to a deplorable quarrel over what was at first a trivial matter. As they were twins and no claim to precedence could be based on seniority, they decided to consult the tutelary deities of the place by means of augury as to who was to give his name to the new city, and who was to rule it after it had been founded. Romulus accordingly selected the Palatine as his station for observation, Remus the Aventine.

Remus is said to have been the first to receive an omen: six vultures appeared to him. The augury had just been announced to Romulus when double the number appeared to him. Each was saluted as king by his own party. The one side based their claim on the priority of the appearance, the other on the number of the birds. Then followed an angry altercation; heated passions led to bloodshed; in the tumult Remus was killed. The more common report is that Remus contemptuously jumped over the newly raised walls and was forthwith killed by the enraged Romulus, who exclaimed, “So shall it be henceforth with every one who leaps over my walls.” Romulus thus became sole ruler, and the city was called after him, its founder.

-Translated by Canon Roberts

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