The fight at the Trojan encampment is renewed in the morning as
fiercely as ever. But succours are on their way. The ships of the
Etruscan leader Tarchon--the name which future kings of Rome were to
bear with little alteration--have been sailing all night down the
Tyrrhenian Sea, under their new-found chief Æneas. His galley leads the
van; and with him in the stern--for he takes the helm himself--sits
young Pallas, hearing him tell of the great deeds of old. The poet gives
us something like a muster-roll of the Etruscan chiefs and their
followings; more interesting perhaps to the ear of a Roman, who would
catch up here and there some historical allusion to a place or family
with which he claimed some connection, than to the modern reader, who
can have no such sympathies. He gives us, too, the figure-heads from
which the ships of the most noted captains took their names: the
Tiger--a favourite, it would seem, to our English nautical taste even
down to the present day--the Centaur, the Apollo, the Triton, the
Mincius--the last-named from the river that flowed by Virgil’s own town
of Mantua,--
“Fair town! her sons of high degree,
Though not unmixed their blood;
Three races swell the mingled stream:
Four states from each derive their birth:
Herself among them sits supreme,
Her Tuscan blood her chiefest worth.”
Æneas has a strange rencontre in his night-voyage. Suddenly there rises
round his galley a circle of water-nymphs--they are his own vessels,
thus transformed, and their errand is to warn him of the danger in
which Iulus and his people lie. The sight which meets his eyes as he
enters the Tiber at daybreak confirms their tidings: he sees the camp
surrounded by enemies. Standing high upon his deck, he raises aloft the
wondrous shield. The Trojans recognise in the signal the arrival of the
help they so sorely need, and welcome it with prolonged shouts. Then
their enemies note it also,--and the fight grows fiercer still.
Tarchon--who seems to act as captain of the fleet under Æneas as
admiral--looks out a good place to beach the galleys, bids the men give
way with a will, and runs them well up, the forepart high and dry--all,
except the gallant captain himself, whose vessel breaks her back and
goes to pieces.
Turnus has left the command of the storming-party to his lieutenants,
and gone down himself with a picked force to oppose Æneas’s landing. The
Arcadian contingent, unused to fighting on foot and half in the water,
get into confusion, and turn. Young Pallas gallantly rallies them, for
the honour of his countrymen. He himself wins his spurs, in this his
first field, by deeds which would become Æneas himself. One brief
episode in his exploits is pathetic enough. There are fighting on the
Rutulian side the twin-brothers Thymber and Larides:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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