Part 20 (1/2)
How could he disobey the voice of the G.o.d? How could he bring himself to desert the Queen whose heart he had won, and break his troth?
But what were the closest of human ties when the G.o.d had spoken? So he called to him his comrades and bade them in secret make ready the s.h.i.+ps for departure. But lovers' ears are keen, and rumors of the preparation reached the Queen in her palace. She raved like a madwoman, and called down curses on the perjured traitor. Grown calmer, she sought aeneas and, with mingled reproaches and appeals to his pity, besought him at least to delay his departure. The lover's heart was touched, but the hero was unmoved; and with the gentlest words he could frame, he told the Queen that he had no choice but to follow his weird as Heaven ordained. He could never forget her lovingkindness, and would cherish her memory to his dying day.
Then the Queen knew that she was betrayed, and flatteries and soft words served but to rekindle her rage. She bade the perjured wretch begone; she cursed his false G.o.ds and their lying message, and swore that she would pursue him with black flames, and that after death her ghost would haunt him in every place. This said, she turned and left him, and he saw her nevermore.
aeneas would fain have stayed to calm her grief and soothe her rage, but duty bade him go, and he urged on his men to equip the fleet for departure. They, nothing loath, set to, and the harbor was like an ant-hill, with the sailors shaping new oars and loading the beached vessels. Soon the black keels rode the waters all along the sh.o.r.e.
Dido, perceiving this from her tower, sent her sister Anna with a last message imploring aeneas yet a little to delay. But aeneas, steadfast as a rock, turned to her a deaf ear, and into the heart of the unhappy Dido came despair and thoughts of death.
To death, indeed, dark omens turned her mind. For when she offered sacrifice, the wine which she poured upon the smoking incense turned to blood; and at night, when kneeling before the shrine of her dead husband, she heard his voice bidding her arise and come to him.
So the Queen, interpreting these dark signs as her sick heart dictated, made ready to die.
Calling her sister Anna, she declared that she would now make use of a magic charm given to her by a priestess to bring back faithless lovers or make the love-sick whole. To work this spell it was necessary to collect and burn all tokens of the light of love.
”Do you, therefore,” said Dido to Anna, ”gather together the arms and garments which aeneas in his haste to be gone has left behind him, and lay these upon a vast funeral pile, which I beseech you to erect secretly in the inner court of the palace, under the open sky.”
As she spoke, a deadly pallor overspread the face of Dido. But her sister Anna, suspecting nothing, made haste to obey the Queen. The great pile was quickly erected, with torches and f.a.gots of oak, and crowned with funeral boughs. On it were placed the weapons and raiment of aeneas, while the Queen offered sacrifices, and herbs cut by moonlight with brazen sickles.
Next morning, before daybreak, aeneas called upon his comrades to set sail. With his own sword he cut the hawsers, and his men, pus.h.i.+ng off, smote the sounding waves with their oars, and the wind filling their unfurled sails, they swept out into the open sea as the sun rose over the waters.
From the tower of her palace Queen Dido saw them depart. And lifting up her voice she laid a curse upon them, prophesying that for ages to come dire enmity should rage between the race of aeneas and the Carthaginian people.
Then, very pale, she entered the inner court and mounted the funeral pile. A little while she paused, musing and shedding her last tears.
Anon she spoke, and bade farewell to the light of the sun: ”I have lived my life; I have finished the course ordained to me by Fate. I have raised a glorious city. I descend ill.u.s.trious to the shades below.”
She paused, and her voice fell to a low wail as she added: ”Happy, ah, too happy, my lot had the Trojan s.h.i.+ps never touched my sh.o.r.es!”
Then, unsheathing the sword, she plunged it into her bosom and fell down upon the pyre.
Her handmaidens, seeing her fall, rent the air with their cries. And Anna, rus.h.i.+ng in, raised her dying sister in her arms, striving in vain to stanch the flowing blood, and crying with tears: ”Oh, sister, was it for this that you bade me raise the pyre? Ah, would that you had let me be your companion in death!”
But the last words of Dido, Queen of Carthage, had been spoken.
Far out at sea, aeneas saw a great smoke rising from Carthage, as it were from a funeral pyre. And a sore pang smote him, and bitterly he divined what had pa.s.sed. But he held upon his destined way, nor looked he back again, but turned his eyes towards the promised land of Latium.
aeNEAS IN HADES
BY V. C. TURNBULL
”The journey down to the abyss Is prosperous and light; The palace gates of gloomy Dis Stand open day and night; But upward to retrace the way, And pa.s.s into the light of day,-- There comes the stress of labor--this May task a hero's might.”
VIRGIL.--_Conington's Translation._
aeneas, in the course of his wanderings, landed on the sh.o.r.es of c.u.mae in Italy. Here he sought out the Sibyl, the inspired prophetess who dwelt in a cave behind the temple of Apollo, and gave forth to inquirers the answers of the G.o.d. High destinies she promised aeneas, but not without many further trials.
aeneas, undismayed, besought the Sibyl to guide him on his way: ”O Priestess, it has been told that here are the gates of the lower world. Open for me, I beg of you, that portal, for I long greatly to speak once more with my dear father. I bore him on my shoulders from flaming Troy, and in all my voyages he accompanied me, facing, though infirm, the terrors of sea and sky. Nay, more, it was at his bidding that I came a suppliant to thy temple. Have pity upon us both, O Sybil, and enable us to meet once more.”