Part 2 (1/2)
”Now leave me: be your farewell said To this my corpse, and count me dead.”
CONINGTON, _AEneid_, BOOK II
Nor could all the entreaties of his son and wife move him from his resolution. Then AEneas, in grief and despair, was about to rush back to the battle, which still raged in the city, preferring to die rather than to go and leave his father behind. But at this moment a bright flame as if of fire was seen to play around the head of the boy Iulus, and send forth beams of light. Alarmed as well as surprised at the spectacle, AEneas was about to extinguish the flames by water, when Anchises cried out that it was a sign from heaven that he should accompany his family in their flight from the city.
This pretty story, it is said, was meant by Vergil as a compliment to Augustus, the idea intended to be conveyed being that the seal of sovereign power was thus early set upon the founder of the great house of Julius.
[Ill.u.s.tration: AEneas carrying his father out of Troy. (Drawn by Varian.)]
The G.o.ds seeming thus to ordain the immediate departure of the hero and his family, they all speedily set forth, AEneas carrying his father on his shoulders, while Iulus walked by his side, and Creusa followed at some distance. They had arranged to meet at a ruined temple outside the city, where they were to be joined by their servants, but when they reached the place, it was discovered that Creusa had disappeared. Great was the grief of Aeneas. In agony he hastened back to the city in search of his wife. Coming to his father's palace, he found it already in flames. Then he hurried on through the streets, in his distress calling aloud the name of Creusa.
Suddenly her figure started up before him, larger than when in life, for it was her spirit he saw. Appalled at the sight, Aeneas stood in silence gazing at the apparition while it thus spoke:
”Beloved husband, why do you give way to grief? What has happened is by the decree of heaven. It was not the will of the G.o.ds that I should accompany you. You have a long journey to make, and a wide extent of sea to cross, before you reach the sh.o.r.es of Hes-pe'ri-a, where the Ti'ber flows in gentle course through the rich fields of a warlike race. There prosperity awaits you, and you shall take to yourself a wife of a royal line. Weep not for me. The mother of the G.o.ds keeps me in this land to serve her. And now farewell, and fail not to love and watch over our son.”
Then the form of Creusa melted into air, and the sorrowing husband returned to the place where his father and son awaited him. There he found a number of his fellow-citizens prepared to follow him into exile. They first took refuge in the forests of Mount I'da, not far from the ruined city. In this place they spent the winter, and they built a fleet of s.h.i.+ps at An-tan'dros, a coast town at the foot of the mountain.
”Near old Antandros, and at Ida's foot, The timber of the sacred groves we cut, And build our fleet-uncertain yet to find What place the G.o.ds for our repose a.s.signed.”
DRYDEN, _AEneid_, BOOK III.
It is remarkable that Vergil does not tell how Creusa came by her death. Apparently we are left to infer that she was killed by the Greeks.
II. AENEAS LEAVES TROY--THE HARPIES--PROPHECY OF HELENUS-THE GIANT POLYPHEMUS.
In the early days of summer--the fleet being ready and all preparations complete--Anchises gave the order for departure, and so they set sail, piously carrying with them the images of their household G.o.ds and of the ”great G.o.ds” of their nation. The first land they touched was the coast of Thrace, not far from Troy. AEneas thought he would build a city and make a settlement here, as the country had been, from early times, connected by ties of friends.h.i.+p with his own. To obtain the blessing of heaven on an undertaking of such importance, he set about performing religious services in honor of his mother Venus and the other G.o.ds, sacrificing a snow-white bull as an offering to Jupiter. Close by the place there happened to be a little hill, on the top of which was a grove of myrtle, bristling with thick-cl.u.s.tering, spear-like shoots. Wis.h.i.+ng to have some of those plants to decorate his altars, AEneas pulled one up from the ground, whereupon he beheld drops of blood oozing from the torn roots. Though horrified at the sight he plucked another bough, and again blood oozed out as before. Then praying to the G.o.ds to save himself and his people from whatever evil there might be in the omen, he proceeded to tear up a third shoot, when from out the earth at his feet a voice uttered these words:
”O, AEneas! why do you tear an unhappy wretch? Spare me, now that I am in my grave; forbear to pollute your pious hands. It is from no tree- trunk that the blood comes. Quit this barbarous land with all speed.
Know that I am Pol-y-do'rus. Here I was slain by many arrows, which have taken root and grown into a tree.”
Deep was the horror of AEneas while he listened to this dreadful story, for he knew that Polydorus was one of the younger sons of Priam. Early in the war, his father, fearing that the Trojans might be defeated, had sent him for protection to the court of the king of Thrace. At the same time he sent the greater part of his treasures, including a large sum of money, to be taken care of by the king till the war should be over. But as soon as the Thracian monarch heard of the fall of Troy he treacherously slew the young prince and seized all his father's treasure.
False to divine and human laws, The traitor joins the conqueror's cause, Lays impious hands on Polydore, And grasps by force the golden store.
Fell l.u.s.t of gold! abhorred, accurst!
What will not men to slake such thirst?
CONINGTON, _AEneid_, BOOK III.
When AEneas related this story to his father and the other Trojan chiefs, they all agreed to depart forthwith from a land polluted by so black a crime. But first they performed funeral rites on the grave of Polydorus, erecting two altars which they decked with cypress wreaths, the emblem of mourning, and offering sacrifices to the G.o.ds.
Soon afterwards, the winds being favorable, they set sail, and in a few days reached De'los, one of the isles of Greece, where there was a famous temple of Apollo. A'ni-us, the king of the island, and a priest of Apollo, gave them a hospitable reception. In the great temple they made suitable offerings, and AEneas prayed to the G.o.d to tell them in what country they might find a resting place and a home. Scarcely had the prayer been finished when the temple and the earth itself seemed to quake, whereupon the Trojans prostrated themselves in lowly reverence upon the ground, and presently they heard a voice saying: ”Brave sons of Dar'da-nus, the land which gave birth to your ancestors shall again receive your race in its fertile bosom. Seek out your ancient mother. There the house of AEneas shall rule over every coast, and his children's children and their descendants.”
The answers or oracles of the G.o.ds were often given in mysterious words, as in the present case. AEneas and his companions did not know what land was meant by the ”ancient mother,” but Anchises, ”revolving in his mind the legends of the men of old,” remembered having heard that one of his ancestors, Teu'cer, (the father-in-law of Darda.n.u.s), had come from the island of Crete. Believing, therefore, that that was the land referred to in the words of the oracle, they set sail, having first sacrificed to Apollo, to Neptune, G.o.d of the ocean, and to the G.o.d of storms, that their voyage might be favorable.
A bull to Neptune, an oblation due, Another bull to bright Apollo slew; A milk-white ewe, the western winds to please And one coal-black, to calm the stormy seas.
DRYDEN, _AEneid_, BOOK III.
They arrived safely at Crete (now known as Can'di-a) where they remained a considerable time and built a city which AEneas called Per'ga-mus, the name of the famous citadel or fort of Troy. But here a new misfortune came upon the exiles in the shape of a plague, which threatened destruction to man and beast and the fruits of the field.
Sudden on man's feeble frame From tainted skies a sickness came, On trees and crops a poisonous breath, A year of pestilence and death.
CONINGTON, _AEneid_, BOOK III.
Anchises now proposed that they should return to Delos, and again seek the counsel and aid of Apollo, but that night AEneas had a dream in which the household G.o.ds whose images he had carried with him from Troy, appeared to him, and told him that Crete was not the land destined by the G.o.ds for him and his people. They also told him where that Hesperia was, of which he had heard from the shade of Creusa.