Juno’s relentless hatred is stirred once more. Will neither fire nor
sword kill, nor water drown, these accursed Trojans? Shall she, the
Queen of Heaven, be baffled by a mortal like Æneas? If it be written in
the fates that he is to wed Lavinia, her marriage-dower shall be paid in
Trojan and Latian blood. Venus shall find that she, like Hecuba, has
borne a firebrand--that Æneas, like Paris, shall light a flame that
shall consume his nation. If the powers of heaven will not take her
part, she will seek aid from hell. She summons the Fury Alecto from the
shades below, and bids her sow strife between the people of Latinus and
their foreign visitors.
The Fury, rejoicing in her errand, seeks the chamber of Latinus’s queen,
and darts into her breast one of the living serpents that serve her for
coils of hair. Straightway the queen is seized with madness, and, after
vainly trying to rouse her husband to oppose this foreign marriage, she
rushes like a Bacchanal through the neighbouring villages, and calls
upon the mothers of Latium to avenge her wrongs and rescue her daughter.
Next the Fury instils the same venom into the heart of Turnus, where he
lies in his town of Ardea. He has been the champion of Latium against
their enemies the Tuscans, and this is their gratitude--to give his
promised bride to another! The young chief leaps from his couch, calls
madly for his arms, and orders an instant march upon Latinus’s capital.
He will expel these intruders at once, and demand the princess from her
father by force of arms.
Meanwhile--still at the instigation of Alecto--the seeds of quarrel have
been sown between the men of Latium and their Trojan guests. There is a
tame deer which has been nursed in the house of Tyrrheus, the ranger of
the royal forest,--a pet and favourite with all the country-folk.
“Fair Sylvia, daughter of the race,
Its horns with leaves would interlace,
Comb smooth its shaggy coat, and lave
Its body in the crystal wave.
Tame and obedient, it would stray
Free through the woods a summer’s day,
And home again at night repair,
E’en of itself, how late soe’er.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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