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I will provide safe passage, escorts and support to speed you on your way. Or would you rather settle here in my realm on equal terms with me?
He’d barely ended when all at once the mist around them parted, melting into the open air, and there Aeneas stood, clear in the light of day, his head, his shoulders, the man was like a god.
“Born of a goddess, even so what destiny hunts you down through such ordeals?
Schooled in suffering, now I learn to comfort those who suffer too.”
A wonderful quote from a foundational myth.
But now venus is mulling over some new schemes, new intrigues. Altered in face and figure, Cupid would go in place of the captivating Ascanius, using his gifts to fire the queen to madness, weaving a lover’s ardor through her bones.
So Venus makes an appeal to Love, her winged son: “You, my son, are my strength, my greatest power— you alone, my son, can scoff at the lightning bolts the high and mighty Father hurled against Typhoeus. Help me, I beg you. I need all your immortal force. Your brother Aeneas is tossed round every coast on earth, thanks to Juno’s ruthless hatred, as you well know, and time and again you’ve grieved to see my grief. But now Phoenician Dido has him in her clutches, 800 holding him back with smooth, seductive words, and I fear the outcome of Juno’s welcome here… She won’t sit tight while Fate is
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Superior images of an embodied metaphor.
Cupid leaps at once to his loving mother’s orders. Shedding his wings he masquerades as Iulus, prancing with his stride.
But once he’s embraced Aeneas, clung to his neck to sate the deep love of his father, deluded father, Cupid makes for the queen.
But he, recalling the wishes of his mother Venus, blots out the memory of Sychaeus bit by bit, trying to seize with a fresh, living love a heart at rest for long—long numb to passion.
The queen calls for a heavy golden bowl, studded with jewels and brimmed with unmixed wine, the bowl that Belus and all of Belus’ sons had brimmed, and the hall falls hushed as Dido lifts a prayer: “Jupiter, you, they say, are the god who grants the laws of host and guest. May this day be one of joy for Tyrians here and exiles come from Troy, a day our sons will long remember. Bacchus, giver of bliss, and Juno, generous Juno, bless us now. And come, my people, celebrate 880 with all good will this feast that makes us one!”
Then Iopas, long-haired bard, strikes up his golden lyre resounding through the halls.
So Dido, doomed, was lengthening out the night by trading tales 900 as she drank long draughts of love—asking Aeneas question on question, now about Priam, now Hector, what armor Memnon, son of the Morning, wore at Troy, how swift were the horses of Diomedes?
“Sorrow, unspeakable sorrow, my queen, you ask me to bring to life once more, how the Greeks uprooted Troy in all her power, our kingdom mourned forever. What horrors I saw, a tragedy where I played a leading role myself.
The common people are split into warring factions.
Trojans, never trust that horse. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, especially bearing gifts.’
Apollo’s oracle now, and back he comes from the god’s shrine with these bleak words: “With blood you appeased the winds, with a virgin’s sacrifice 150 when you, you Greeks, first sought the shores of Troy. With blood you must seek fair winds to sail you home, must sacrifice one more Greek life in return.”
“‘All the hopes of the Greeks, their firm faith in a war they’d launched themselves had always hinged on Pallas Athena’s help.
heavy hempen ropes
Even now Cassandra revealed the future, opening lips the gods had ruled no Trojan would believe.
stealthily loosing the pine bolts of the horse, he unleashes the Greeks shut up inside its womb.
“Wasting no words, no time on empty questions, heaving a deep groan from his heart he calls out: ‘Escape, son of the goddess, tear yourself from the flames! The enemy holds our walls. Troy is toppling from her heights. You have paid your debt to our king and native land.
“Urging so, with his own hands he carries Vesta forth from her inner shrine, her image clad in ribbons, filled with her power, her everlasting fire.
Troy’s no more. Ilium, gone—our awesome Trojan glory.
One hope saves the defeated: they know they can’t be saved!’ That fired their hearts with the fury of despair.
like a wolfpack out for blood on a foggy night, driven blindly on by relentless, rabid hunger, leaving cubs behind, waiting, jaws parched— so through spears, through enemy ranks we plow 450 to certain death, striking into the city’s heart, the shielding wings of the darkness beating round us.
Exchange shields with the Greeks and wear their emblems. Call it cunning or courage: who would ask in war? Our enemies will arm us to the hilt.’
“But, oh how wrong to rely on gods dead set against you! Watch: the virgin daughter of Priam, Cassandra, torn from the sacred depths of Minerva’s shrine, dragged by the hair, raising her burning eyes to the heavens, just her eyes, so helpless, shackles kept her from raising her gentle hands.
“There was a secret door, a hidden passage linking the wings of Priam’s house—remote, far to the rear. Long as our realm still stood, Andromache, poor woman, would often go this way, 570 unattended, to Hector’s parents, taking the boy Astyanax by the hand to see grandfather Priam.
gaping maw,
“Perhaps you wonder how Priam met his end. 630 When he saw his city stormed and seized, his gates wrenched apart, the enemy camped in his palace depths, the old man dons his armor long unused, he clamps it round his shoulders shaking with age and, all for nothing, straps his useless sword to his hip, then makes for the thick of battle, out to meet his death.
Here, flocking the altar, Hecuba and her daughters huddled, blown headlong down like doves by a black storm— clutching, all for nothing, the figures of their gods.
The thought of my own dear father filled my mind when I saw the old king gasping out his life with that raw wound—both men were the same age— and the thought of my Creusa, alone, abandoned, our house plundered, our little Iulus’ fate.
No fame, no memory to be won for punishing a woman: such victory reaps no praise but to stamp this abomination out as she deserves, to punish her now, they’ll sing my praise for that.
‘My son, what grief could incite such blazing anger? Why such fury?
Think: it’s not that beauty, Helen, you should hate, not even Paris, the man that you should blame, no, it’s the gods, the ruthless gods who are tearing down the wealth of Troy, her toppling crown of towers.
Run for your life, my son. Put an end to your labors. I will never leave you, I will set you safe at your father’s door.’
“Then at last I saw it all, all Ilium settling into her embers,
Venus leading, down from the roof I climb and win my way through fires and massing foes.
“Now buckling on my sword again and working my left arm through the shieldstrap, grasping it tightly, just as I was rushing out, right at the doors my wife, Creusa, look, flung herself at my feet and hugged my knees and raised our little Iulus up to his father. ‘If you are going off to die,’ she begged, 840 ‘then take us with you too, to face the worst together. But if your battles teach you to hope in arms, the arms you buckle on, your first duty should be to guard our house. Desert us, leave us now—to whom? Whom? Little Iulus, your father and your wife, so I once was called.’ “So
But Father Anchises lifts his eyes to the stars in joy and stretching his hands toward the sky, sings out: ‘Almighty Jove! If any prayer can persuade you now, look down on us—that’s all I ask—if our devotion 860 has earned it, grant us another omen, Father, seal this first clear sign.’
“No sooner said than an instant peal of thunder crashes on the left and down from the sky a shooting star comes gliding, trailing a flaming torch to irradiate the night as it comes sweeping down. We watch it sailing over the topmost palace roofs to bury itself, still burning bright, in the forests of Mount Ida, blazing its path with light, leaving a broad furrow, a fiery wake, and miles around the smoking sulfur fumes.
Won over at last, my father rises to his full height and prays to the gods and reveres that holy star: ‘No more delay, not now! You gods of my fathers, now I follow wherever you lead me, I am with you. Safeguard our house, safeguard my grandson Iulus! This sign is yours: Troy rests in your po...
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‘So come, dear father, climb up onto my shoulders! I will carry you on my back. This labor of love will never wear me down. Whatever falls to us now, we both will share one peril, one path to safety.
But then as I madly rushed from house to house, no end in sight, abruptly, right before my eyes I saw her stricken ghost, my own Creusa’s shade.
But the gods forbid you to take Creusa with you, bound from Troy together. The king of lofty Olympus won’t allow it. A long exile is your fate… the vast plains of the sea are yours to plow until you reach Hesperian land, where Lydian Tiber 970 flows with its smooth march through rich and loamy fields, a land of hardy people. There great joy and a kingdom are yours to claim, and a queen to make your wife.
They had come together from every quarter, belongings, spirits ready for me to lead them over the sea to whatever lands I’d choose.
So I gave way at last and lifting my father, headed toward the mountains.”
I begged Apollo: ‘Grant us our own home, god of Thymbra! Grant us weary men some walls of our own, some sons, a city that will last. Safeguard this second Troy, this remnant left by the Greeks and cruel Achilles.
There your house, the line of Aeneas, will rule all parts of the world— your sons’ sons and all their descendants down the years.’
“Our ships were no sooner hauled onto dry land, our young crewmen busy with weddings, plowing the fresh soil while I was drafting laws and assigning homes, when suddenly, no warning, out of some foul polluted quarter of the skies a plague struck now, a heartrending scourge 170 attacking our bodies, rotting trees and crops, one whole year of death…
