The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (42 page)

 

This said, he mix’d himself with night: but then
Æneas, at these visions sore aghast,
Starts out of sleep and cries, “Up, up, 0 men,
Hoist up your sails, fly to your oars, row fast;
Behold, a god from heaven again bids haste,
Cutting the wreathed cable. 0, whoe‘er,
We follow thee, obey’d as late thou wast
Most gladly. Aid what thou command’st, and steer
With prosperous stars bespoke as thou fly‘st through
their sphere.”

 

This said, whipt out his lightning sword, and strook
The fastening ropes. Like zeal his pattern bred
In all. They snatch‘d, they ran, the shores forsook,
Their sails like wings over the waves were spread:
They comb’d with oars great Neptune’s curled head.
And now Aurora scattered rosy light
Upon the earth from Tithon’s purple bed.
Whom Dido, having scouted all the night,
Discover’d from the watch-tower by her ensigns white.

 

Seeing the fleet sail smoothly on, she knocks
Three or four times her breast of ivory,
And tearing piteously her amber locks;
“0 Jove, but shall he then be gone,” said she,
“And shall a stranger mock my realm and me?
Shall not my powers pursue him from the shore,
And my tall galleys mann’d out instantly?
Arm, arm, ye men of Tyre, bring fire-balls store,
Hoise in a trice the sails, tug stoutly at the oar.

“What talk I? Or where am I? Do I rave?
Poor Dido, now you see his heart; before
Could you not see it, when your crown you gave
To his dispose? Behold the faith he swore,
Who sav’d his gods and his old father bore!
I’ll strow him on the waves, his men first kill‘d,
And spitted upon swords, and sauc’d in gore,
Ascanius to him his last meal shall yield,
The father’s yearning bowels with his bowels fill’d.

 

“But this would be a doubtful battle. Be ‘t,
What should she fear whose wishes are to die!
I will blow up the hatches, burn the fleet,
Son, sire, and nation in one bonfire fry,
And myself last to crown the tragedy.
O Sol, the index of whose purging light
Doth all the works of skilful Nature try;
And Juno, cause of this my woeful plight,
And Proserpine, cried through the towns in dead of
night.

 

“And your revenging powers, Gods which pertain
To dying Dido; all of you incline
Your deities to this my prayer; both deign
Gently to hear, and lend me your divine
Assistance, due to such high wrongs as mine.
If one so clogg’d with perjuries as he
Must needs attain the port he doth design,
And swim to shore, because his destiny
So wills, and such is Jove’s immutable decree;

 

“Yet vext by a warlike people, forc’d to fly,
Tom and divorc’d from his dear son’s embrace,
Let him beg foreign aid, see his men die
For crimes not theirs, and let him, when a peace
Shall be concluded by him with disgrace,
Enjoy nor crown nor life (then seeming good)
But be cut off in middle of his race,
And uninterr’d float on the restless flood:
Thus pray I, these last words I pour out with my blood.

 

“Then you, 0 Tyrians, breed your children in
Successive hate, so shall my wrong’d ghost rest;
Let peace or faith with these be held a sin;
Some one of ours with fire and sword infest
The proud Æneiades where‘er they nest,
And through the world once more the stragglers drive;
Now or hereafter, when your strength serves best;
Be shores opposed to shores, let our tides strive
With theirs, and our late sons keep endless war alive.”

This said, she cast to fly day’s loathed beams,
And called Sychæus’ nurse (her own was dead):
“Good Nurse, go bid my sister, dash’d with streams,
Come straight, and bring the beasts I ordered
For sacrifice: do thou too bind thy head
With holy fillet. I will consummate
Rites well begun to Dis, and fire the bed
Where the man’s portrait’s laid. t’ annihilate
All care.” So did she gallop at an old wives’ rate.

 

But Dido, fearing what she wish‘d, sad doom,
Rolling her bloodshot eyes, and in her face
The paleness of the death that was to come,
With trembling spots, rush’d to that secret place,
And climbing the high pile with furious pace,
The Dardan sword, not therefore given, unsheath’d.
Spying the clothes and well-known bed, a space
She paus’d, till some few tears she had bequeath‘d,
And leaning on that bed her latest speech she breath’d.

“Sweet pledges, whilst the Fates and Jove so will‘d,
Receive this soul, and free me from this woe:
I liv’d, and my good fortune’s circle fill‘d,
And now my great ghost to Elysium go:
I built a famous city, saw it grow
To the perfection which it boasts this day;
Reveng’d my husband on his brother-foe:
My too much happiness had lack’d allay,
If Ilium’s wandering fleet had never pass’d this way.”

 

Then grovelling on the bed, “But shall I die,
And not reveng’d? Yes, die. What, so present
Myself to Dis? Even so. Drink with thine eye,
Fierce Trojan, this flame’s comet-like portent
And let my death bode thee a dire event.”
Here her maids saw her with spread hands fall down
Upon the reeking blade: a shrill cry went
To the high roofs, and through th’ astonish’d town,
Swift as a thunderbolt, the raging news was blown.

 

With sighs, laments, shrieks and a female yell
Earth sounds, and Heav‘n’s high battlements resound,
As if, the foe let in, all Carthage fell,
Or mother walls of Tyre were brought to ground,
And fanes and houses one flame did confound.
Her frighted sister hears the baleful noise:
She thumps her bosom, and with nails doth wound
Her face, distracted through the press she flies,
And “Dido, Dido, O my sister Dido,” cries.

“Was this the business? Wouldst thou cozen me?
Those fires, piles, altars, hid they this beneath?
Scorn‘dst thou in fate thy sister’s company?
I might have been invited to thy death;
One sword and one hour should have reft our breath.
Must I too build the pile, and Heav’n invoke
For this? Thy cruel hand extinguisheth
Thyself and me, senate and common folk,
And thy new-raised town, with one all-murthering
stroke.

 

 

“Tears, bathe her wounds; suck her last breath, my
lips,
If any about hers yet hovering stays.”
This said, she passes the high stairs and clips
Her half-dead sister, whom she fostering lays
To her warm breasts, and as the breath decays,
Sighs new, the gore-blood with her garment dried.
She, striving her eyes’ heavy lids to raise,
Fainted again, her wound’s mouth gaping wide
Vents by a nearer way her heart’s groans through her
side.

 

 

Thrice on her arm she did her body stay,
Thrice tumbled backward, and with rolling eyes
Grop’d for and sigh’d to find the glaring day.
Then Juno pitying her long agonies
And pangs of death, sent Iris from the skies,
Her wrestling soul from twisting limbs t’ untwine:
For since of age nor malady she dies,
But by despair nipt early, Proserpine
Had not yet cut her hair, and said, “This head is mine.”

 

So Iris her great mistress’ will obeys,
Descending to the earth immediately
On curious wings, which the sun’s oblique rays
With water-colours painted variously:
And standing right over her head, said she,
“As I am bid, these vowed locks I bear
To Hell’s black prince, and do pronounce thee free
From body’s bonds.” This said, cut off her hair;
Heat left her, and th’ uncaged soul flew through the
air.

(Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B.C.—8 B.C.)

Translated by John Milton

 

What slender youth, bedew’d with liquid odours,
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha? For whom bind‘st thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,

 

Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he
On faith and changed gods complain, and seas
Rough with black winds, and storms
Unwonted shall admire!

Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who always vacant, always amiable,
Hopes thee, of fluttering gales
Unmindful. Hapless they

 

T‘whom thou untried seem’st fair. Me in my vowed
Picture the sacred wall declares to have hung
My dank and dripping weeds
To the stem god of sea.

 

Others than I will sing of Rhodes’ renown,
Of Mitylene or of Ephesus,
Or Corinth ‘twixt her seas, Thebes, Bacchus’ town,
Or Delphi, for Apollo glorious,
Or of Thessalian Tempe. Others sing
The city of unmated Pallas; long
They sing of it, and before everything
Gathered from trees they put the olive. Strong
In numbers those are that for Juno’s sake
Give honour most to Argos, where they rear
The horses, or of rich Mycenæ make
Their eulogies. But not to me so dear
Hard Lacedæmon, or Larissa’s plain,
With all its wealth, as loud Albunea seems,
And headlong Anio, Tibur’s woodland fane,
And orchards watered with swift-running streams.
Often the bright south wind drives clouds away
From the dark sky; so, wisely, Plancus, end
The cares of life with wine, whether you stay
Where the camp gleams with ensigns, or where
bend
The woods above your Tibur. When he fled
From Salamis and from his father’s house
Teucer yet bound for Bacchus round his head
A wreath of foliage from the poplar’s boughs.
To his sad friends, “Where Fortune leads,” he said,
“More kindly than my father, we shall follow.
Never despair with Teucer at your head,
For we are promised, and by sure Apollo,

In a new land another Salamis Like to the old. Brave comrades, who with me

Have often been through things as bad as this, Drink now. Tomorrow to the open sea.“