The Aeneid Read online

  And there is one reference to Virgil in Dante that echoes down the centuries to the twentieth. It is the passage in Canto I of Inferno (106-8, trans. Robert and Jean Hollander):

  Di quella umile Italia fia salute

  per cui morì la vergine Cammilla,

  Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute.

  “He shall be the salvation of low-lying Italy

  for which maiden Camilla, Euryalus,

  Turnus, and Nisus died of their wounds.”

  Why Italy is lowly and who her savior is are matters still disputed by scholars, but the phrase “umile Italia” is obviously a memory of Aeneid 3.522-23: “umilemque videmus / Italiam”—“and low-lying we see / Italy” (trans. Knox). It is Aeneas’ first sight of Italy, as indeed it looks still to the traveler coming from Greece—a low line on the horizon. And the heroes who have laid down their lives for this Italy fought on both sides. This ter cet of Dante’s, among the most copious of his references to Virgil’s text, was destined to echo down the ages until its appearance in a remarkable twentieth-century context in the Italy of Mussolini, who was trying to restore the warlike image of Roman Italy and make the Mediterranean once more mare nostrum, “our sea.”

  In this endeavor he made opponents and enemies whom he silenced and punished in various ways. One of his critics and opponents, Carlo Levi, was sent into a sort of exile in a small poverty-stricken town in Calabria, a town so poor that its inhabitants claimed that Christ, on his way through Italy, had stopped at Eboli, and never reached them. In Levi’s somber and beautiful account of his life there, published under the title Christ Stopped at Eboli (trs. 1947), he tells how the local Fascist official came to see him, and asked him why on earth he, an educated, talented man, did not support Mussolini’s regime, which aimed at restoring Italy to its old eminence as master of the Mediterranean. His reply was to say that his idea of Italy was different; it was

  “Di quella umile Italia . . .

  per cui morì la vergine Cammilla,

  Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute.”

  Carlo Levi’s reply brought Virgil through Dante into the realities of the modern world, and to compare small things to great, I too brought Virgil back to life in Italy some years later. I consulted the Virgilian lottery in April 1945. The year before, while a captain in the U.S. Army, I had worked with French partisans behind the lines against German troops in Brittany, and after a leave I was finally sent to Italy to work with partisans there. No doubt the OSS moguls in Washington figured that since I had studied Latin at Cambridge I would have no trouble picking up Italian. The partisans this time were on our side of the lines; things had got too difficult for them in the Po Valley and they had come through the mountains. The U.S. Army, very short of what the soldiers called “warm bodies,” since so many of its best units had been called in for the invasion of southern France, armed them and put them under the command of American officers to hold sections of the mountain line where no German breakthrough was expected. I had about twelve hundred of them, in various units ranging from Communist to officers of the crack corps of the Italian army, the Alpini; but they had two things in common—great courage and still greater hatred of Germans. For several months we held the sector, which contained the famous Passo dell’ Abettone, then impassable for wheeled vehicles since the German engineers had blown its sides down. We made frequent long patrols into enemy territory, sometimes bringing back prisoners for interrogation, sometimes passing civilian agents through the lines. In April we were given a small role in the final move north that brought about the German surrender of Italy. The main push was to the left and right of us, where tanks and wheeled vehicles could move—on the coast road to our left and on our right through the Futa Pass to Bologna. We were to attack German positions on the heights opposite us, take the town of Fanano, and then go on to Modena in the valley.

  We killed or captured the German troops holding the heights without too many losses, liberated Fanano, and started north on the road to Modena. As we marched along I could not help thinking that the legions of Octavian and Mark Antony had marched and countermarched in these regions in 43 B.C. Like them, we had no wheeled transport; like them, we had no communications (our walkie-talkies had a very short range); like them, we hoisted our weapons onto our shoulders when we forded the Reno River with the water up to our waists.

  Every now and then we met a German machine-gun crew holed up in a building that delayed our passage. Usually we too occupied a building to house our machine guns and keep the enemy under fire while we sent out a flanking party to dislodge them. On one of these occasions we occupied a villa off the road that had evidently been hit by one of our bombers; it had not much roof left and the inside was a shambles, but it would do. At one point in the sporadic exchanges of fire I handed over the gun to a sergeant and retreated into the debris of the room to smoke a cigarette. As I looked at the tangled wreckage on the floor I noticed what looked like a book, and investigation with my foot revealed part of its spine, on which I saw, in gold capitals, the letters “MARONIS.” It was a text of Virgil, published by the Roman Academy “IUSSU BENEDICTI MUSSOLINI,” “By Order of Benito Mussolini.” There were not many Italians who would call him “blessed” now; in fact, a few weeks later his blood-stained corpse, together with that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, and that of his right-hand man, Starace, would be hanging upside-down outside a gas station in Milan.

  And then I remembered the Sortes Virgilianae. I closed my eyes, opened the book at random and put my finger on the page. What I got was not so much a prophecy about my own future as a prophecy for Italy; it was from lines at the end of the first Georgic:

  . . . a world in ruins . . .

  For right and wrong change places; everywhere

  So many wars, so many shapes of crime

  Confront us; no due honor attends the plow.

  The fields, bereft of tillers, are all unkempt . . .

  . . . throughout the world

  Impious War is raging.

  (1.500-11)

  “A world in ruins.” It was an exact description of the Italy we were fighting in—its railroads and its ancient buildings shattered by Allied aircraft, its elegant bridges blown into the water by the retreating Germans, and its fields sown not with seed by the farmers but with mines by the German engineers.

  The fighting stopped; it was time to move on. I tried to get the Virgil into my pack, but it was too big, and I threw it back to the cluttered floor. But I remember thinking: “If I get out of this alive, I’ll go back to the classics, and Virgil especially.” And I did. My first scholarly article, written when I was an assistant professor at Yale, was about the imagery of Book 2 of the Aeneid, entitled “The Serpent and the Flame.”

  BOOK ONE

  Safe Haven After Storm

  Wars and a man I sing—an exile driven on by Fate,

  he was the first to flee the coast of Troy,

  destined to reach Lavinian shores and Italian soil,

  yet many blows he took on land and sea from the gods above—

  thanks to cruel Juno’s relentless rage—and many losses

  he bore in battle too, before he could found a city,

  bring his gods to Latium, source of the Latin race,

  the Alban lords and the high walls of Rome.

  Tell me,

  Muse, how it all began. Why was Juno outraged?

  What could wound the Queen of the Gods with all her power?

  Why did she force a man, so famous for his devotion,

  to brave such rounds of hardship, bear such trials?

  Can such rage inflame the immortals’ hearts?

  There was an ancient city held by Tyrian settlers,

  Carthage, facing Italy and the Tiber River’s mouth

  but far away—a rich city trained and fierce in war.

  Juno loved it, they say, beyond all other lands

  in the world, even beloved Samos, second best.

  Here she kept her armor, here her
chariot too,

  and Carthage would rule the nations of the earth

  if only the Fates were willing. This was Juno’s goal

  from the start, and so she nursed her city’s strength.

  But she heard a race of men, sprung of Trojan blood,

  would one day topple down her Tyrian stronghold,

  breed an arrogant people ruling far and wide,

  proud in battle, destined to plunder Libya.

  So the Fates were spinning out the future . . .

  This was Juno’s fear

  and the goddess never forgot the old campaign

  that she had waged at Troy for her beloved Argos.

  No, not even now would the causes of her rage,

  her bitter sorrows drop from the goddess’ mind.

  They festered deep within her, galled her still:

  the Judgment of Paris, the unjust slight to her beauty,

  the Trojan stock she loathed, the honors showered on Ganymede

  ravished to the skies. Her fury inflamed by all this,

  the daughter of Saturn drove over endless oceans

  Trojans left by the Greeks and brute Achilles.

  Juno kept them far from Latium, forced by the Fates

  to wander round the seas of the world, year in, year out.

  Such a long hard labor it was to found the Roman people.

  Now, with the ridge of Sicily barely out of sight,

  they spread sail for the open sea, their spirits buoyant,

  their bronze beaks churning the waves to foam as Juno,

  nursing deep in her heart the everlasting wound,

  said to herself: “Defeated, am I? Give up the fight?

  Powerless now to keep that Trojan king from Italy?

  Ah but of course—the Fates bar my way.

  And yet Minerva could burn the fleet to ash

  and drown my Argive crews in the sea, and all for one,

  one mad crime of a single man, Ajax, son of Oileus!

  She hurled Jove’s all-consuming bolt from the clouds,

  she shattered a fleet and whipped the swells with gales.

  And then as he gasped his last in flames from his riven chest

  she swept him up in a cyclone, impaled the man on a crag.

  But I who walk in majesty, I the Queen of the Gods,

  the sister and wife of Jove—I must wage a war,

  year after year, on just one race of men!

  Who will revere the power of Juno after this—

  lay gifts on my altar, lift his hands in prayer?”

  With such anger seething inside her fiery heart

  the goddess reached Aeolia, breeding-ground of storms,

  their home swarming with raging gusts from the South.

  Here in a vast cave King Aeolus rules the winds,

  brawling to break free, howling in full gale force

  as he chains them down in their dungeon, shackled fast.

  They bluster in protest, roaring round their prison bars

  with a mountain above them all, booming with their rage.

  But high in his stronghold Aeolus wields his scepter,

  soothing their passions, tempering their fury.

  Should he fail, surely they’d blow the world away,

  hurling the land and sea and deep sky through space.

  Fearing this, the almighty Father banished the winds

  to that black cavern, piled above them a mountain mass

  and imposed on all a king empowered, by binding pact,

  to rein them back on command or let them gallop free.

  Now Juno made this plea to the Lord of Winds:

  “Aeolus, the Father of Gods and King of Men gave you

  the power to calm the waves or rouse them with your gales.

  A race I loathe is crossing the Tuscan sea, transporting

  Troy to Italy, bearing their conquered household gods—

  thrash your winds to fury, sink their warships, overwhelm them

  or break them apart, scatter their crews, drown them all!

  I happen to have some sea-nymphs, fourteen beauties,

  Deiopea the finest of all by far . . .

  I’ll join you in lasting marriage, call her yours

  and for all her years to come she will live with you

  and make you the proud father of handsome children.

  Such service earns such gifts.”

  Aeolus warmed

  to Juno’s offer: “Yours is the task, my queen,

  to explore your heart’s desires. Mine is the duty

  to follow your commands. Yes, thanks to you

  I rule this humble little kingdom of mine.

  You won me the scepter, Jupiter’s favors too,

  and a couch to lounge on, set at the gods’ feasts—

  you made me Lord of the Stormwind, King of Cloudbursts.”

  With such thanks, swinging his spear around he strikes home

  at the mountain’s hollow flank and out charge the winds

  through the breach he’d made, like armies on attack

  in a blasting whirlwind tearing through the earth.

  Down they crash on the sea, the Eastwind, Southwind,

  all as one with the Southwest’s squalls in hot pursuit,

  heaving up from the ocean depths huge killer-breakers

  rolling toward the beaches. The crews are shouting,

  cables screeching—suddenly cloudbanks blotting out

  the sky, the light of day from the Trojans’ sight

  as pitch-black night comes brooding down on the sea

  with thunder crashing pole to pole, bolt on bolt

  blazing across the heavens—death, everywhere

  men facing instant death.

  At once Aeneas, limbs limp in the chill of fear,

  groans and lifting both his palms toward the stars

  cries out: “Three, four times blest, my comrades

  lucky to die beneath the soaring walls of Troy—

  before their parents’ eyes! If only I’d gone down

  under your right hand—Diomedes, strongest Greek afield—

  and poured out my life on the battlegrounds of Troy!

  Where raging Hector lies, pierced by Achilles’ spear,

  where mighty Sarpedon lies, where the Simois River

  swallows down and churns beneath its tides so many

  shields and helmets and corpses of the brave!”

  Flinging cries

  as a screaming gust of the Northwind pounds against his sail,

  raising waves sky-high. The oars shatter, prow twists round,

  taking the breakers broadside on and over Aeneas’ decks

  a mountain of water towers, massive, steep.

  Some men hang on billowing crests, some as the sea

  gapes, glimpse through the waves the bottom waiting,

  a surge aswirl with sand.

  Three ships the Southwind grips

  and spins against those boulders lurking in mid-ocean—

  rocks the Italians call the Altars, one great spine

  breaking the surface—three the Eastwind sweeps

  from open sea on the Syrtes’ reefs, a grim sight,

  girding them round with walls of sand.

  One ship

  that carried the Lycian units led by staunch Orontes—

  before Aeneas’ eyes a toppling summit of water

  strikes the stern and hurls the helmsman overboard,

  pitching him headfirst, twirling his ship three times,

  right on the spot till the ravenous whirlpool gulps her down.

  Here and there you can sight some sailors bobbing in heavy seas,

  strewn in the welter now the weapons, men, stray spars

  and treasures saved from Troy.

  Now Ilioneus’ sturdy ship,

  now brave Achates’, now the galley that carried Abas,

  another, aged Aletes, yes, the storm routs them all,

  down to the last
craft the joints split, beams spring

  and the lethal flood pours in.

  All the while Neptune

  sensed the furor above him, the roaring seas first and

  the storm breaking next—his standing waters boiling up

  from the sea-bed, churning back. And the mighty god,

  stirred to his depths, lifts his head from the crests

  and serene in power, gazing out over all his realm,

  he sees Aeneas’ squadrons scattered across the ocean,

  Trojans overwhelmed by the surf and the wild crashing skies.

  Nor did he miss his sister Juno’s cunning wrath at work.

  He summons the East- and Westwind, takes them to task:

  “What insolence! Trusting so to your lofty birth?

  You winds, you dare make heaven and earth a chaos,

  raising such a riot of waves without my blessings.

  You—what I won’t do! But first I had better set

  to rest the flood you ruffled so. Next time, trust me,

  you will pay for your crimes with more than just a scolding.

  Away with you, quick! And give your king this message:

  Power over the sea and ruthless trident is mine,

  not his—it’s mine by lot, by destiny. His place,

  Eastwind, is the rough rocks where you are all at home.

  Let him bluster there and play the king in his court,

  let Aeolus rule his bolted dungeon of the winds!”

  Quicker than his command he calms the heaving seas,

  putting the clouds to rout and bringing back the sun.

  Struggling shoulder-to-shoulder, Triton and Cymothoë

  hoist and heave the ships from the jagged rocks

  as the god himself whisks them up with his trident,

  clearing a channel through the deadly reefs, his chariot