Complete Works of Silius Italicus Page 7

  Then Astyr, the ill-starred squire of Eastern Memnon, came; wetted by Aurora’s tears, he had fled far from his native land to the opposite quarter of the world. The horses of the Astyrians are small and not notable in battle; yet they amble without shaking their rider, or with docile neck can draw a carriage with speed in time of peace. They were led by Cydnus, eager to scour the heights of the Pyrenees in the chase, or to fight from a distance with Moorish javelin.

  The Celts who have added to their name that of the Hiberi came also. To these men death in battle is glorious; and they consider it a crime to burn the body of such a warrior; for they believe that the soul goes up to the gods in heaven, if the body is devoured on the field by the hungry vulture.

  Rich Gallicia sent her people, men who have knowledge concerning the entrails of beasts, the flight of birds, and the lightnings of heaven; they delight, at one time, to chant the rude songs of their native tongue, at another to stamp the ground in the dance and clash their noisy shields in time to the music. Such is the relaxation and sport of the men, and such their solemn rejoicings. All other labour is done by the women: the men think it unmanly to throw seed into the furrow and turn the soil by pressure of the plough; but the wife of the Gallician is never still and performs every task but that of stern war. These men, and the Lusitanians drawn forth from their distant forests, were led by the young Viriathus — Viriathus, whose name was to win fame from Roman disasters at a later day.

  The Cerretani, who once fought for Hercules, were not slow now to bear arms; nor the Vascones, unused to wear helmets; nor Ilerda, that witnessed later the madness of Romans; nor the Concanian, who proves by his savagery his descent from the Massagetae, when he opens a vein of his horse to fill his own belly. Now Phoenician Ebusus rises in arms; and the Arbacians, fierce fighters with the dart or slender javelin; and the Balearic islanders, whose sire was Tlepolemus and Lindus their native land, waging war with the sling and flying bullet; and the men sent forth by the town of Oene and Aetolian Tyde, called Gravii by corruption of Graii, their former name. Carthago, founded by Teucer of old, supplied men; and also Emporiae, colony of Massilia, and Tarraco, the land of vines, which allows precedence to no vintage but that of Latium. Conspicuous among these by the sheen of their cuirasses were the Sedetanian soldiers, who came from the icy waters of the Sucro and the lofty citadel of their mother city, Saetabis — Saetabis which dares to despise the looms of the Arabs and to match her webs against the linen of Egypt. These peoples were commanded by Mandonius and by Caeso, famous tamer of horses; and their joint exertions kept the host together.

  The squadrons of the Vettones were reviewed on the open plain by Balarus. In that country, when spring is mild and airs are warm, the drove of mares stand still, mating in secret, and conceive a mysterious progeny begotten by the wind. But their stock is short-lived: old age comes quick upon them, and the life of these horses lasts but seven years at the longest.

  Less nimble on their feet are the horses from Uxama, a city whose walls are Sarmatian; but her steeds that came to war were tenacious of life; their lusty youth found it hard to endure the bit or obey the commands of the rider. These men were led by Rhyndacus and armed with spears; they add terror to their helmets by decking them with the open jaws of wild beasts; they pass their lives in hunting, or support themselves, as their fathers did, by violence and rapine.

  Bright beyond the rest shone the ensigns of Delphian Castulo; and of Hispalis, famous for commerce and for the ebb and flow of its tides; and of Nebrissa which knows the thyrsi of the Nysaean god — Nebrissa haunted by nimble Satyrs and nightly Maenads, who wear the sacred fawn-skin and the mystic vine-leaf. Carteia sent to war the children of Arganthonius; king over their ancestors, he surpassed all mankind in length of days and waged war for the space of three hundred years. Tartessus, that sees the sun to rest, sprang to arms; and likewise Munda, doomed to produce for Italy the suffering of Pharsalia; nor did Corduba hang back, the pride of a land rich in gold. These men were led by fairhaired Phorcys and by Arauricus whose arms were terrible to the corn-bearing lands; the two were of equal age, and were born on the fertile banks where the Baetis shelters his horns under the branches of the tree of Pallas.

  Such was the host which the Carthaginian captain led on at speed over the dust-darkened plains; he reviewed their glittering ensigns in the field, as far as the eye could see, and rode on in triumph, leaving a shadow on all the land he traversed. Even so, when Neptune glides over the deep in his chariot and drives his bitted coursers to the outermost Ocean where the sun sinks to rest, all the train of Nereids issue from their caves and, as is their wont, swim in rivalry, tossing their white arms in the transparent water.

  But now Hannibal, throwing a peaceful world into confusion, made for the leafy summits of the Pyrenees. From the eminence of their rain-swept peaks they command a wide prospect and divide Spain from Gaul, making an eternal barrier between two great countries. These mountains took their name from Pyrene, daughter of Bebryx and victim of Hercules. For Hercules, in the course of his appointed Labours, was travelling to the distant land of threebodied Geryon, when he was mastered by wine in the savage court of Bebryx, and left Pyrene robbed of her maidenhood; her beauty was a cause for mourning. The god (if it is not sinful to believe it), the god was the cause of the poor maiden’s death. For when she gave birth to a serpent she fled at once from the home she loved, in horror and dread of her father’s wrath. Then in lonely caves she mourned for the night when she lay with Alcides, and told his promises to the dark forests; till at last, as she mourned the ingratitude of her ravisher, and stretched forth her hands, imploring the aid of her guest, she was torn in pieces by wild beasts. When! Hercules came back victorious, he wetted the mangled; limbs with his tears; and when he found the head of the maid he had loved, he turned pale, distraught with grief. Then the high mountain-tops, smitten by his cries, were shaken; with loud lament he, called Pyrene by name; and all the cliffs and haunts of wild beasts echoed the name of Pyrene. Then, with a last tribute of tears, he laid her body in the grave. And time shall never eclipse her fame; for the mountains retain for ever the name that caused such grief.

  And now, marching through hills and dense pine-woods, Hannibal had crossed the territory of the Bebrycian king. Thence he boldly forced his way through the land of the inhospitable Volcae, and ravaged it, till he came with rapid march to the formidable banks of the swollen Rhone. That river, taking its rise in the Alpine heights and snow-covered rocks, flows into Gaul, expanding into a mighty stream, cleaving the plains with its foaming waters, and rushing with utmost speed into the sea in a broad estuary. The Arar, whose noiseless stream seems to stand still, joins the Rhone and swells it; and the Rhone, embracing the reluctant Arar with its restless waters, plunges it into the sea, and forbids it, as it is hurried through the land, to carry its own name to the neighbouring shore. The river will bear no bridges, and the soldiers eagerly plunged in; some protect their weapons by holding their head and shoulders high, while others in keen rivalry stem the flood with stout arms. The horses were haltered and taken across in barges; nor did the terror of the Libyan beasts delay or hinder the crossing; for they contrived to throw rafts over the stream and to conceal the line of rafts beneath a covering of soil; then they led the elephants out on to the deep, loosing little by little the cables on the high bank. Scared by this invasion of trumpeting elephants, and fearing the dusky monsters, the Rhone turned back his stream and sent up ominous rumblings from his sandy depths.

  Now Hannibal moved on through the territory of the Tricastini, and made an easy march through the land of the Vocontii. But here the Druentia, rough with rocks and trunks of trees, turned his pleasant march to rack and ruin; for, rising in the Alps, it carries along with a roar uprooted ash-trees and boulders washed away from the mountains, and rushes on with raging waters, often shifting its channel, and changing its deceitful fords. The foot-passenger cannot trust it; no broad ship is safe upon it. Now, swollen by recent rains, it sei
zed many of the armed men, and whirled them round in its foaming eddies, and buried in its depths their mutilated bodies and mangled limbs.

  But now all memory of past hardships was dispelled by terror, when they saw the Alps close at hand. All that region is covered with rime and hail that never thaws, and imprisons the ice of ages; the steep face of the lofty mountain rises stiffly up, and, though it faces the rising sun, can never melt its hardened crust in his rays. Deep as the chasm that divides the upper world from the pale kingdom of Tartarus, and descends to the dead below and the pools of the black marsh, so high does the earth here rise towards heaven and shut out the sky by its shadow. There is no spring anywhere and no beauty of summer; unsightly winter alone inhabits the gruesome heights and dwells for ever there; from every quarter winter drives hither black clouds and rain mixed with hail. All winds and storms, moreover, have set up their furious dominion in the Alps. The gaze turns giddy on the high cliffs, and the mountains are lost in the clouds. Athos added to Mount Taurus, Rhodope united to Mimas, Pelion piled on Ossa and Othrys on Mount Haemus — all these must bow before the Alps. Hercules was the first to set foot on these virgin fortresses; he was a sight for the gods as he cleft the clouds, mastered the steep ascent, and with main force tamed the rocks that no foot had ever trodden during the long ages that followed their birth.

  The soldiers moved slow with lagging steps, thinking that they were marching over the world into a forbidden land, in defiance of Nature and in opposition to Heaven. But their general would have none of it — he was not terrified by the Alps or all the horror of the place; and his words raised the courage of his men and revived their energy when they were faint with fear. “Shame on you,” he cried, “to grow weary of success and Heaven’s favour, and, after glorious victories in the field, to retreat now before snow-clad mountains, cowed and beaten by cliffs! Now, comrades, now — believe that you are even now scaling the walls of imperial Rome and the lofty hill of Jupiter. Our present toil shall make Italy and the Tiber our prisoners.” Straightway he led the army uphill, persuading them by his rich promises. He ordered the troops to abandon the track beaten by great Hercules, to march over fresh ground, and climb up by a path of their own. He forced a passage where no man had passed; he was the first to master heights and from the crag’s top called on his men to follow. Where the ascent was stiff with frozen ice and the slippery path over the snow-slopes baffled them, he cut steps with the steel in the resisting ice. When the snow thawed, it swallowed down the men in its opened jaws, and, as it rushed down from a height, buried whole companies beneath an avalanche. At times the North-west wind, menacing with dark wings, drove the snow, packed tight by the opposing gale, full in their faces; or again, the fury of the raging storm stripped the men of their shields, and, rolling them round and round, whirled them aloft into the clouds with its circling blast. The higher they climbed in their struggle to reach the top, the harder grew their toil. When one height had been mastered, a second opens and springs up before their aching sight; and from it they cared not even to look back at the difficulties they had already mastered by their sweat; with such dread did the monotonous even landscape strike their sight; and, as far as their eyes could reach, the same scene of frozen snow forced itself upon them. So the sailor in mid-ocean, when he has left behind the land he loves, and the flapping sails on his idle mast can find no wind, looks forth upon a boundless waste of water, and turns wearily to the sky, to refresh his eyes that cannot endure the sight of the deep any longer.

  And now, on the top of the disasters and difficulties of the ascent, half-savage men peeped out from the rocks, showing faces hideous with filth and with the matted dirt of bristling locks. Pouring forth from caves in the hollow rock, the natives of the Alps attacked them; with the ease of habit they sped through thorn-brakes and their familiar snow-drifts and pathless places; and soon the army was hemmed in and assailed by the nimble mountaineers. And now the place bore a different aspect. For here the snow turned red, deeply dyed with blood; and here the ice, unwilling to give way, yielded by degrees, when the hot blood thawed it; and where the horse stamps his horny feet, the hoof sticks fast in the ice he has bored through. Nor is a fall the only danger; for men leave arms and legs behind, severed by the frost, and the cruel cold cuts off the limbs already broken. Twelve days and as many dreadful nights they spent in such suffering, before they rested on the longed-for summit, and hung their camp aloft on precipitous cliffs.

  But now Venus, her heart shaken with doubt and fear, addressed her sire and broke into sorrowful complaint. “What limit of their punishment will the Aeneadae ever reach, I ask, or what end to their destruction? When wilt thou grant them a fixed abode, after all their wanderings over land and sea? Why does the Carthaginian essay to drive my descendants from the city which thou didst grant them? He has planted Libya upon the Alps and threatens an end to Roman power. Rome now dreads the fate of Saguntum. Grant us a resting-place, O Father, whither we may bear at last the ashes and sacred relics of fallen Troy, with the house of Assaracus and the mysteries of Vesta. Grant us safety in our overthrow. Is it not enough that we have wandered over the whole earth, seeking a place of exile? Or shall Rome be taken and the doom of Troy be repeated once more?”

  Thus Venus spoke, and then her sire made answer thus: “Fear not, Cytherea, nor be disturbed by the ambition of the Tyrian people. Your descendants hold the Tarpeian rock and long shall hold it. But I mean to test their manhood by this great conflict and to try them in war. A people, once steadfast in battle and triumphant over hardships, are forgetting by degrees the ancient glory of their sires. Then they never spared their blood in honour’s cause, and ever thirsted for fame; but now they pass their time in obscurity and inaction, and spend their lives amid inglorious silence, though my blood is in their veins; and their manliness is slowly sapped and weakened by the seductive poison of indolence. But it is a mighty enterprise that must cost intense effort, to claim power for themselves alone among so many nations. Thou shalt see a time come, when Rome, mistress of the world, shall be more glorious for her calamities. Thus suffering shall produce famous men, worthy to dwell with us in heaven; thou shalt see a Paulus, a Fabius, and a Marcellus who has pleased me by honourable spoils. These men, by their defeats, will gain for Latium an empire so great, that their descendants will be unable to overthrow it, for all their luxury and degenerate hearts. Already the man is born who shall drive Hannibal back from Latium to his own land, and strip him of his arms before the walls of his native Carthage. Thereafter thy descendants, Cytherea, shall reign for ages. Later still, godlike excellence shall come from Cures and soar to heaven; and a warrior family, reared on the berry that grows in the Sabine land, shall increase the fame of the deified Julii. The father of that family shall give Rome victory over Thule, unknown till then, and shall be the first to lead an army against the Caledonian forests; he shall set banks to restrain the Rhine, he shall rule Africa with vigour, and, in his old age, he shall subdue in war the palm-groves of Idume. Nor shall he descend to the pools of the Styx and the realm deprived of light; but he shall attain to the habitation of the gods and the honours we enjoy. Then his son, unrivalled in mighty strength of mind, shall take up his father’s task and move on in majesty, raising his head as high as his power. While yet a youth, he shall put an end to war with the fierce people of Palestine. But thou, Conqueror of Germany, shalt outdo the exploits of thy father and brother; even in boyhood thou wert dreaded by the yellow-haired Batavians. The burning of the Tarpeian temple cannot alarm thee; but in the midst of the impious flames thou shalt be saved, for the sake of mankind; for in the distant future thou shalt share with me the kingdom of the sky. The people of the Ganges shall one day lower their unbent bows before him, and Bactra’ display its empty quivers. He shall drive the triumphal car through Rome after conquering the North; he shall triumph over the East, and Bacchus give place to him. When the Danube refuses a passage to the Roman legions, he shall be victorious and retain the river in the land
of the Sarmatians. Moreover, his oratory shall surpass all the sons of Romulus who have gained glory by their eloquence; the Muses shall bring him offerings, and Phoebus shall marvel at his song — a sweeter strain than his whose music made the Hebrus stand still and Mount Rhodope move on. He shall also erect a golden Capitol on the Tarpeian rock, where, as thou seest, my ancient palace now stands, and raise the summit of the temple to reach our abode in the sky. Then, O son of gods and father of gods to be, rule the happy earth with paternal sway. Heaven shall welcome thee at last, in thy old age, and Quirinus give up his throne to thee; thy father and brother shall place thee between them; and hard by the head of thy deified son shall send forth rays.”

  While Jupiter thus revealed the sequence of future events, the Carthaginian leader, descending the dangerous heights, tried with uncertain effort to get a firm foothold, as he slid down pathless slopes and trod on dripping rocks. No hostile army detained him; but he was troubled by the dreadful steepness of the descent and by rocks confronting cliffs. The men stand still, as if shut in, and lament the obstacles and difficulties of the way. Nor can they sleep and so revive their frozen bodies; but they work on all night in haste, forced to carry wood on their shoulders and to tear up ash-trees from the hills. Then after stripping the mountain where the trees grew thickest, they piled the timber in a heap; and the rock, set on fire all round, was melted by the devouring flames. Then demolished by the axe, the heavy mass crumbled and parted asunder with a rumbling sound and opened up to the weary soldiers the land of old Latinus. At last, after all these The name given to Romulus when deified. sufferings, Hannibal crossed the untrodden Alps and pitched his camp on the plains of the Taurini.