Kitabı oku: «The Aeneid of Virgil», sayfa 19
Meanwhile the King of Heaven's omnipotence accosts Juno as she gazes on the battle from a sunlit cloud. 'What yet shall be the end, O wife? what remains at the last? Heaven claims Aeneas as his country's god, thou thyself knowest and avowest to know, and fate lifts him to the stars. With what device or in what hope hangest thou chill in cloudland? Was it well that a deity should be sullied by a mortal's wound? or that the lost sword—for what without thee could Juturna avail?—should be restored to Turnus and swell the force of the vanquished? Forbear now, I pray, and bend to our entreaties; let not the pain thus devour thee in silence, and distress so often flood back on me from thy sweet lips. The end is come. Thou hast had power to hunt the Trojans over land or wave, to kindle accursed war, to put the house in mourning, and plunge the bridal in grief: further attempt I forbid thee.' Thus Jupiter began: thus the goddess, daughter of Saturn, returned with looks cast down:
'Even because this thy will, great Jupiter, is known to me for thine, have I left, though loth, Turnus alone on earth; nor else wouldst thou see me now, alone on this skyey seat, enduring good and bad; but girt in flame I were standing by their very lines, and dragging the Teucrians into the deadly battle. I counselled Juturna, I confess it, to succour her hapless brother, and for his life's sake favoured a greater daring; yet not the arrow-shot, not the bending of the bow, I swear by the merciless well-head of the Stygian spring, the single ordained dread of the gods in heaven. And now I retire, and leave the battle in loathing. This thing I beseech thee, that is bound by no fatal law, for Latium and for the majesty of thy kindred. When now they shall plight peace with prosperous marriages (be it so!), when now they shall join in laws and treaties, bid thou not the native Latins change their name of old, nor become Trojans and take the Teucrian name, or change their language, or alter their attire: let Latium be, let Alban kings endure through ages, let Italian valour be potent in the race of Rome. Troy is fallen; let her and her name lie where they fell.'
To her smilingly the designer of men and things:
'Jove's own sister thou art, and second seed of Saturn, such surge of wrath tosses within thy breast! But come, allay this madness so vainly stirred. I give thee thy will, and yield thee ungrudged victory. Ausonia shall keep her native speech and usage, and as her name is, it shall be. The Trojans shall sink mingling into their blood; I will add their sacred law and ritual, and make all Latins and of a single speech. Hence shall spring a race of tempered Ausonian blood, whom thou shalt see outdo men and gods in duty; nor shall any nation so observe thy worship.' To this Juno assented, and in gladness withdrew her purpose; meanwhile she quits her cloud, and retires out of the sky.
This done, the Father revolves inly another counsel, and prepares to separate Juturna from her brother's arms. Twin monsters there are, called the Dirae by their name, whom with infernal Megaera the dead of night bore at one single birth, and wreathed them in like serpent coils, and clothed them in windy wings. They appear at Jove's throne and in the courts of the grim king, and quicken the terrors of wretched men whensoever the lord of heaven deals sicknesses and dreadful death, or sends terror of war upon guilty cities. One of these Jupiter sent swiftly down from heaven's height, and bade her meet Juturna for a sign. She wings her way, and darts in a whirlwind to earth. Even as an arrow through a cloud, darting from the string when Parthian hath poisoned it with bitter gall, Parthian or Cydonian, and sped the immedicable shaft, leaps through the swift shadow whistling and unknown; so sprung and swept to earth the daughter of Night. When she espies the Ilian ranks and Turnus' columns, suddenly shrinking to the shape of a small bird that often sits late by night on tombs or ruinous roofs, and vexes the darkness with her cry, in such change of likeness the monster shrilly passes and repasses before Turnus' face, and her wings beat restlessly on his shield. A strange numbing terror unnerves his limbs, his hair thrills up, and the accents falter on his tongue. But when his hapless sister knew afar the whistling wings of the Fury, Juturna unbinds and tears her tresses, with rent face and smitten bosom. 'How, O Turnus, can thine own sister help thee now? or what more is there if I break not under this? What art of mine can lengthen out thy day? can I contend with this ominous thing? Now, now I quit the field. Dismay not my terrors, disastrous birds; I know these beating wings, and the sound of death, nor do I miss high-hearted Jove's haughty ordinance. Is this his repayment for my maidenhood? what good is his gift of life for ever? why have I forfeited a mortal's lot? Now assuredly could I make all this pain cease, and go with my unhappy brother side by side into the dark. Alas mine immortality! will aught of mine be sweet to me without thee, my brother? Ah, how may Earth yawn deep enough for me, and plunge my godhead in the under world!'
So spoke she, and wrapping her head in her gray vesture, the goddess moaning sore sank in the river depth.
But Aeneas presses on, brandishing his vast tree-like spear, and fiercely speaks thus: 'What more delay is there now? or why, Turnus, dost thou yet shrink away? Not in speed of foot, in grim arms, hand to hand, must be the conflict. Transform thyself as thou wilt, and collect what strength of courage or skill is thine; pray that thou mayest wing thy flight to the stars on high, or that sheltering earth may shut thee in.' The other, shaking his head: 'Thy fierce words dismay me not, insolent! the gods dismay me, and Jupiter's enmity.' And no more said, his eyes light on a vast stone, a stone ancient and vast that haply lay upon the plain, set for a landmark to divide contested fields: scarcely might twelve chosen men lift it on their shoulders, of such frame as now earth brings to birth: then the hero caught it up with trembling hand and whirled it at the foe, rising higher and quickening his speed. But he knows not his own self running nor going nor lifting his hands or moving the mighty stone; his knees totter, his blood freezes cold; the very stone he hurls, spinning through the empty void, neither wholly reached its distance nor carried its blow home. And as in sleep, when nightly rest weighs down our languorous eyes, we seem vainly to will to run eagerly on, and sink faint amidst our struggles; the tongue is powerless, the familiar strength fails the body, nor will words or utterance follow: so the disastrous goddess brings to naught all Turnus' valour as he presses on. His heart wavers in shifting emotion; he gazes on his Rutulians and on the city, and falters in terror, and shudders at the imminent spear; neither sees he whither he may escape nor how rush violently on the enemy, and nowhere his chariot or his sister at the reins. As he wavers Aeneas poises the deadly weapon, and, marking his chance, hurls it in from afar with all his strength of body. Never with such a roar are stones hurled from some engine on ramparts, nor does the thunder burst in so loud a peal. Carrying grim death with it, the spear flies in fashion of some dark whirlwind, and opens the rim of the corslet and the utmost circles of the sevenfold shield. Right through the thigh it passes hurtling on; under the blow Turnus falls huge to earth with his leg doubled under him. The Rutulians start up with a groan, and all the hill echoes round about, and the width of high woodland returns their cry. Lifting up beseechingly his humbled eyes and suppliant hand: 'I have deserved it,' he says, 'nor do I ask for mercy; use thy fortune. If an unhappy parent's distress may at all touch thee, this I pray; even such a father was Anchises to thee; pity Daunus' old age, and restore to my kindred which thou wilt, me or my body bereft of day. Thou art conqueror, and Ausonia hath seen me stretch conquered hands. Lavinia is thine in marriage; press not thy hatred farther.'
Aeneas stood wrathful in arms, with rolling eyes, and lowered his hand; and now and now yet more the speech began to bend him to waver: when high on his shoulder appeared the sword-belt with the shining bosses that he knew, the luckless belt of the boy Pallas, whom Turnus had struck down with mastering wound, and wore on his shoulders the fatal ornament. The other, as his eyes drank in the plundered record of his fierce grief, kindles to fury, and cries terrible in anger: 'Mayest thou, thou clad in the spoils of my dearest, escape mine hands? Pallas it is, Pallas who now strikes the sacrifice, and exacts vengeance in thy guilty blood.' So saying, he fiercely plunges the steel full in his breast. But his limbs grow slack and chill, and the life with a moan flies indignantly into the dark.
THE END
NOTES
Book First
l. 123—Accipiunt inimicum imbrem. Inimica non tantum hostilia sed perniciosa.—Serv. on ix. 315. The word often has this latter sense in Virgil.
l. 396—Aut capere aut captas iam despectare videntur. Henry seems unquestionably right in explaining captas despectare of the swans rising and hovering over the place where they had settled, this action being more fully expressed in the next two lines. The parallelism between ll. 396 and 400 exists, but it is inverted, capere corresponding to subit, captas despectare to tenet.
l. 427—lata theatris with the balance of MS. authority.
l. 550—Arvaque after Med. and Pal.; armaque Con.
l. 636—Munera laetitiamque die ('ut multi legunt,' says Serv.), though it has little MS. authority, has been adopted because it is strongly probable on internal grounds, as giving a basis for the other two readings, dei and dii.
l. 722—The long-since-unstirred spirit.
And weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd woe.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XXX.
l. 726—dependent lychni laquearibus aureis. Serv. on viii. 25, summique ferit laquearia tecti, says 'multi lacuaria legunt. nam lacus dicuntur: unde est . . . lacunar. non enim a laqueis dicitur.' As Prof. Nettleship has pointed out, this seems to indicate that there are two words, laquear from laqueus, meaning chain or network, and lacuar or lacunar from lacus, meaning sunk work.
Book Second
l. 30—Classibus hic locus. Ad equites referre debemus.—Serv. Cf. also vii. 716.
l. 76—Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 234—moenia pandimus urbis. Moenia cetera urbis tecta vel aedes accipiendum.—Serv. This is the sense which the word generally has in Virgil: it is often used in contrast with muri, or as a synonym of urbs; and in most cases city is its nearest English equivalent.
l. 381—caerula colla tumentem. Caerulum est viride cum nigro.—Serv. on vii. 198. Cf. iii. 208, where it is used of the colour of the sea after a storm.
l. 616—nimbo effulgens. est fulgidum lumen quo deorum capita cinguntur. sic etiam pingi solet.—Serv. Cf. xii. 416.
Book Third
l. 127—freta concita terris with all the best MSS.; consita Con.
l. 152—qua se Plena per insertas fundebat Luna fenestras. The usual explanation, which makes insertas an epithet transferred by a sort of hypallage from Luna to fenestras, is extremely violent, and makes the word little more than a repetition of se fundebat. Servius mentions two other interpretations; non seratas, quasi inseratas, and clatratas; the last has been adopted in the translation.
In the passage of Lucretius (ii. 114) which Virgil has imitated here,
Contemplator enim cum solis lumina . . .
Inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum,
it is possible that clatris may be the lost word.
l. 684—
Contra iussa monent Heleni, Scyllam atque Charybdim
Inter, utramque viam leti discrimine parvo
Ni teneant cursus.
In this difficult passage it is probably best to take cursus as the subject to teneant (cursus teneant, id est agantur.—Serv. Cf. also l. 454 above, quamvis vi cursus in altum Vela vocet), viam being either the direct object of teneant, or in loose apposition to Scyllam atque Charybdim.
l. 708—tempestatibus actis with Rom. and Pal.; actus Con. after Med.
Book Fourth
Totus hic liber . . . in consiliis et subtilitatibus est. nam paene comicus stilus est. nec mirum, ubi de amore tractatur.—Serv.
l. 273—Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 528—Omitted with the best MSS.
Book Fifth
l. 595—iuduntque per undas, omitted with the preponderance of MS. authority.
Book Sixth
l. 242—Omitted with the balance of MS. authority.
l. 806—virtutem extendere factis with Med.; virtute extendere vires Con.
Book Eighth
l. 46—Omitted with the majority of the best MSS.
l. 383—Arma rogo. Genetrix nato te filia Nerei.
Arma rogo. hic distinguendum, ut cui petat non dicat, sed relinquat intellegi . . . Genetrix nato te filia Nerei. hoc est, soles hoc praestare matribus.—Serv.
Book Ninth
l. 29—Omitted with all the best MSS.
l. 122—Omitted with all the best MSS.
l. 281—
Me nulla dies tam fortibus ausis
Dissimilem arguerit tantum, Fortuna secunda
Aut adversa cadat.
With some hesitation I have adopted this reading as the one open to least objection, though the balance of authority is decidedly in favour of haud adversa. For the position of tantum cf. Ecl. x. 46, according to the 'subtilior explicatio' now generally adopted.
l. 412—
Et venit adversi in tergum Sulmonis ibique
Frangitur, et fisso transit praecordia ligno.
The phrase in tergum occurs twice elsewhere: ix. 764—meaning 'on the back'; and xi. 653—meaning 'backward'; and in x. 718 the uncertainty about the order of the lines makes it possible that tergo decutit hastas was meant to refer to the boar, not to Mezentius. But the passages quoted by the editors there shew that the word might be used in the sense of 'shield'; and this being so we are scarcely justified in reading aversi against all the good MSS.
l. 529—Omitted with most MSS.
Book Tenth
l. 278—Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 754—Insidiis, iaculo et longe fallente sagitta. The MS. authority is decidedly in favour of this, the more difficult reading; and the hendiadys is not more violent than those in Georg. ii. 192, Aen. iii. 223.
Book Twelfth
l. 218—Tum magis, ut propius cernunt non viribus aequis.
With Ribbeck I believe that there is a gap in the sense here, and have marked one in the translation.
l. 520—Limina with Med. Munera Con.
ll. 612, 613—Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 751—Venator cursu canis et latratibus instat. I take cursu canis as equivalent to currente cane, as in i. 324, spumantis apri cursum clamore prementem.
