Aeneid Book 7, Lines 511 - 528

The Fury Allecto blows the alarm

by Virgil

In another development engineered by Juno and the Fury Allecto to set the Italians and Aeneas’s Trojans at odds, Aeneas’s son Iulus has in his ignorance unwisely shot a beloved pet stag belonging to King Latinus’s steward and his daughter. They are outraged: now the Fury Allecto herself calls the country people to arms with a superhumanly powerful horn-blast. Aeneas’s prospects of peaceful settlement and an alliance by marriage to King Latinus are beginning to recede rapidly.

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At saeva e speculis tempus dea nacta nocendi
ardua tecta petit stabuli et de culmine summo
pastorale canit signum cornuque recurvo
Tartaream intendit vocem, qua protinus omne
contremuit nemus et silvae insonuere profundae;
audiit et Triviae longe lacus, audiit amnis
sulfurea Nar albus aqua fontesque Velini,
et trepidae matres pressere ad pectora natos.
tum vero ad vocem celeres, qua bucina signum
dira dedit, raptis concurrunt undique telis
indomiti agricolae; nec non et Troia pubes
Ascanio auxilium castris effundit apertis.
direxere acies. non iam certamine agresti,
stipitibus duris agitur sudibusve praeustis,
sed ferro ancipiti decernunt atraque late
horrescit strictis seges ensibus aeraque fulgent
sole lacessita et lucem sub nubila iactant.

Seeing from her vantage the time for mischief come,
the savage Goddess lights on the steep stable roof, and
right at the top sounds the shepherds’ alarm, shrills
a hellish note on the curved horn, at which at once
the whole grove shakes and the woods ring to their
very roots; the lake of Trivia heard far away, river Nar,
white with sulphurous water, heard, and the springs of Velinus: fearful mothers held their sons to their breast.
Swiftly, from all sides, snatching up weapons, the fearless
countryfolk converge on the note, where the dire horn
sounded the alarm: the youth of Troy, too, pours
to Ascanius’s aid through the camp’s open gates.
Both formed their lines. This was no rustic brawl,
fought with stout sticks and fire-hardened stakes;
they settle things with two-edged steel, and a dark
crop of drawn swords bristles wide: challenged by the sun,
bronze shines and flings its light to the clouds above.

`

More Poems by Virgil

  1. The journey to Hades begins
  2. The Trojans reach Carthage
  3. The Aeneid begins
  4. Turnus the wolf
  5. Love is the same for all
  6. Aeneas reaches the Elysian Fields
  7. Juno throws open the gates of war
  8. The death of Euryalus and Nisus
  9. How Aeneas will know the site of his city
  10. Aeneas and Dido meet
  11. Mourning for Pallas
  12. The death of Pallas
  13. Aeneas finds Dido among the shades
  14. Palinurus the helmsman is lost
  15. Jupiter’s prophecy
  16. Charon, the ferryman
  17. Aeneas’s ships are transformed
  18. Dido and Aeneas: royal hunt and royal affair
  19. Signs of bad weather
  20. The natural history of bees
  21. In King Latinus’s hall
  22. More from Virgil’s farming Utopia
  23. Aeneas saves his son and father, but at a cost
  24. Aeneas sees Marcellus, Augustus’s tragic heir
  25. The Trojans prepare to set sail from Carthage
  26. Virgil begins the Georgics
  27. Aristaeus’s bees
  28. Dido’s story
  29. The farmer’s happy lot
  30. Dido’s release
  31. Hector visits Aeneas in a dream
  32. Fire strikes Aeneas’s fleet
  33. Laocoon warns against the Trojan horse
  34. Aeneas is wounded
  35. Laocoon and the snakes
  36. The farmer’s starry calendar
  37. Aeneas’s oath
  38. Virgil’s poetic temple to Caesar
  39. Dido falls in love
  40. The Harpy’s prophecy
  41. Anchises’s ghost invites Aeneas to visit the underworld
  42. Aeneas joins the fray
  43. The death of Dido.
  44. Omens for Princess Lavinia
  45. Help for Father Aeneas from Father Tiber
  46. King Latinus grants the Trojans’ request
  47. Juno’s anger
  48. The Trojan Horse enters the city
  49. Turnus is lured away from battle
  50. A Fury rouses Turnus to war
  51. Turnus at bay
  52. Rumour
  53. Aeneas comes to the Hell of Tartarus
  54. Aeneas rescues his Father Anchises
  55. The infant Camilla
  56. The Syrian hostess
  57. Virgil predicts a forthcoming birth and a new golden age
  58. Aeneas’s vision of Augustus
  59. Catastrophe for Rome?
  60. Rites for the allies’ dead
  61. Storm at sea!
  62. The portals of sleep
  63. Sea-nymphs
  64. Aeneas learns the way to the underworld
  65. Mercury’s journey to Carthage
  66. The death of Priam
  67. Aeneas tours the site of Rome
  68. King Mezentius meets his match
  69. Souls awaiting punishment in Tartarus, and the crimes that brought them there.
  70. Vulcan’s forge
  71. Dido and Aeneas: Hell hath no fury …
  72. Aeneas arrives in Italy
  73. Aeneas prepares to tell Dido his story
  74. Juno is reconciled
  75. New allies for Aeneas
  76. Virgil’s perils on the sea