When she had spoken these words, fearsome, she sought the earth;
and summoned Allecto, the grief-bringer,1 from the house
of the Fatal Furies, from the infernal shadows, in whose
mind are sad wars, angers and deceits, and guilty crimes.
A monster, hated by her own father Pluto, hateful
to her Tartarean sisters: she assumes so many forms,
her features are so savage, she sports so many black vipers.
Juno roused her with these words, saying:
“Grant me a favour of my own, virgin daughter of Night,
this service, so that my honour and glory are not weakened
and give way, and the people of Aeneas cannot woo
Latinus with intermarriage, or fill the bounds of Italy.
You’ve the power to rouse brothers who are one to conflict
and overturn homes with hatred, you bring the scourge
and the funeral torch into the house, you’ve a thousand names
and a thousand noxious arts. Search your fertile breast,
shatter the peace accord, sow accusations of war:
let men in a moment need, demand, and seize their weapons.”
So Allecto, steeped in the Gorgon’s poison, first searches out
Latium and the high halls of the Laurentine king,
and sits at the silent threshold of Queen Amata, whom
concerns and angers have troubled with a woman’s passion
concerning the Trojan’s arrival and Turnus’s marriage.
The goddess flings a snake at her from her dark locks,
and plunges it into the breast to her innermost heart, so that,
maddened by the creature, she might trouble the whole palace.
Sliding between her clothing and her polished breast,
it winds itself unfelt and unknown to the frenzied woman,
breathing its viperous breath; the powerful snake becomes her
twisted necklace of gold, becomes the loop of her long ribbon,
knots itself in her hair, and roves slithering down her limbs.
And while at first the sickness, sinking within as liquid venom,
pervades her senses and clasps her bones with fire,
and before her mind has felt the flame through all its thoughts,
she speaks, softly, and in a mother’s usual manner,
weeping greatly over the marriage of her daughter to the Trojan:
“O, have you, her father, no pity for your daughter or yourself?
Have you no pity for her mother, when the faithless seducer
will leave with the first north-wind, seeking the deep, with the girl
as prize? Wasn’t it so when Paris, that Phrygian shepherd,
entered Sparta and snatched Leda’s Helen off to the Trojan cities?
What of your sacred pledge? What of your former care for your own
people, and your right hand given so often to your kinsman Turnus?
If a son-in-law from a foreign tribe is sought for the Latins,
and it’s settled, and your father Faunus’s command weighs on you,
then I myself think that every land free of our rule
that is distant, is foreign: and so the gods declare.
And if the first origins of his house are traced, Inachus
and Acrisius are ancestors of Turnus, and Mycenae his heartland.”2
When, though trying in vain with words, she sees Latinus
stand firm against her, and when the snake’s maddening venom
has seeped deep into her flesh and permeated throughout,
then, truly, the unhappy queen, goaded by monstrous horrors,
rages madly unrestrainedly through the vast city.
As a spinning-top, sometimes, that boys intent on play thrash
in a circle round an empty courtyard, turns under the whirling lash
—driven with the whip it moves in curving tracks; and the childish crowd
marvel over it in innocence, gazing at the twirling boxwood;
and the blows grant it life: so she is driven through the heart
of cities and proud peoples, on a course that is no less swift.
Moreover, she runs to the woods, pretending Bacchic possession,
setting out on a greater sin and creating a wider frenzy,
and hides her daughter among the leafy mountains
to rob the Trojans of their wedding and delay the nuptials,
shrieking euhoe3 to Bacchus, crying, “You alone are worthy
of this virgin: it’s for you in truth she lifts the soft thyrsus,4
you she circles in the dance, for you she grows her sacred hair.”
Rumour travels, and the same frenzy drives all the women,
inflamed, with madness in their hearts, to seek strange shelter.
They leave their homes and bare their head and neck to the winds;
while others are already filling the air with vibrant howling,
carrying vine-wrapped spears and clothed in fawn-skins.
The wild queen herself brandishes a blazing pine-branch
in their midst, turning her bloodshot gaze on them, and sings
the wedding-song for Turnus and her daughter, and, suddenly
fierce, cries out: ‘O women of Latium, wherever you are, hear me:
if you still have regard for unhappy Amata in your pious hearts,
if you’re stung with concern for a mother’s rights,
loose the ties from your hair, join the rites with me.”5
So Allecto drives the Queen with Bacchic goad far and wide
through the woods, among the wild creatures’ lairs.
Haec ubi dicta dedit, terras horrenda petivit;
luctificam Allecto dirarum ab sede dearum
infernisque ciet tenebris, cui tristia bella 325
iraeque insidiaeque et crimina noxia cordi.
odit et ipse pater Pluton, odere sorores
Tartareae monstrum: tot sese vertit in ora,
tam saevae facies, tot pullulat atra colubris.
quam Iuno his acuit verbis ac talia fatur: 330
'hunc mihi da proprium, virgo sata Nocte, laborem,
hanc operam, ne noster honos infractave cedat
fama loco, neu conubiis ambire Latinum
Aeneadae possint Italosve obsidere finis.
tu potes unanimos armare in proelia fratres 335
atque odiis versare domos, tu verbera tectis
funereasque inferre faces, tibi nomina mille,
mille nocendi artes. fecundum concute pectus,
dissice compositam pacem, sere crimina belli;
arma velit poscatque simul rapiatque iuventus.' 340
Exim Gorgoneis Allecto infecta venenis
principio Latium et Laurentis tecta tyranni
celsa petit, tacitumque obsedit limen Amatae,
quam super adventu Teucrum Turnique hymenaeis
femineae ardentem curaeque iraeque coquebant. 345
huic dea caeruleis unum de crinibus anguem
conicit, inque sinum praecordia ad intima subdit,
quo furibunda domum monstro permisceat omnem.
ille inter vestis et levia pectora lapsus
volvitur attactu nullo, fallitque furentem 350
vipeream inspirans animam; fit tortile collo
aurum ingens coluber, fit longae taenia vittae
innectitque comas et membris lubricus errat.
ac dum prima lues udo sublapsa veneno
pertemptat sensus atque ossibus implicat ignem 355
necdum animus toto percepit pectore flammam,
mollius et solito matrum de more locuta est,
multa super natae lacrimans Phrygiisque hymenaeis:
'exsulibusne datur ducenda Lavinia Teucris,
o genitor, nec te miseret nataeque tuique? 360
nec matris miseret, quam primo Aquilone relinquet
perfidus alta petens abducta virgine praedo?
at non sic Phrygius penetrat Lacedaemona pastor,
Ledaeamque Helenam Troianas vexit ad urbes?
quid tua sancta fides? quid cura antiqua tuorum 365
et consanguineo totiens data dextera Turno?
si gener externa petitur de gente Latinis,
idque sedet, Faunique premunt te iussa parentis,
omnem equidem sceptris terram quae libera nostris
dissidet externam reor et sic dicere divos. 370
et Turno, si prima domus repetatur origo,
Inachus Acrisiusque patres mediaeque Mycenae.'
His ubi nequiquam dictis experta Latinum
contra stare videt, penitusque in viscera lapsum
serpentis furiale malum totamque pererrat, 375
tum vero infelix ingentibus excita monstris
immensam sine more furit lymphata per urbem.
ceu quondam torto volitans sub verbere turbo,
quem pueri magno in gyro vacua atria circum
intenti ludo exercent—ille actus habena 380
curvatis fertur spatiis; stupet inscia supra
impubesque manus mirata volubile buxum;
dant animos plagae: non cursu segnior illo
per medias urbes agitur populosque ferocis.
quin etiam in silvas simulato numine Bacchi 385
maius adorta nefas maioremque orsa furorem
evolat et natam frondosis montibus abdit,
quo thalamum eripiat Teucris taedasque moretur,
euhoe Bacche fremens, solum te virgine dignum
vociferans: etenim mollis tibi sumere thyrsos, 390
te lustrare choro, sacrum tibi pascere crinem.
fama volat, furiisque accensas pectore matres
idem omnis simul ardor agit nova quaerere tecta.
deseruere domos, ventis dant colla comasque;
ast aliae tremulis ululatibus aethera complent 395
pampineasque gerunt incinctae pellibus hastas.
ipsa inter medias flagrantem fervida pinum
sustinet ac natae Turnique canit hymenaeos
sanguineam torquens aciem, torvumque repente
clamat: 'io matres, audite, ubi quaeque, Latinae: 400
si qua piis animis manet infelicis Amatae
gratia, si iuris materni cura remordet,
solvite crinalis vittas, capite orgia mecum.'
talem inter silvas, inter deserta ferarum
reginam Allecto stimulis agit undique Bacchi. 405
Find the glossary for Aeneid Daily here; subscribe to receive daily posts.
a Fury
Inachus and Acrisius were both kings of Argos; the latter’s daughter, Danaë, was banished by her father and founded Ardea, the home of Turnus.
the cry of worship used by Bacchus’s worshipers
c.f. the burning of the ships in Aeneid 5, also framed as an appeal to the trials of women and mothers.