- The great Latin poet, Virgil, holding a volume on which is written the Aeneid. The mosaic, which dates from the 3rd Century A.D., was discovered in the Hadrumetum in Sousse, Tunisia and is now on display in the Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia. Author: Giorces
I have seen them repeating, so many times
Making deep grooves in their minds, replacing their lives,
implanting orders
with the will of others.
Around the corner, someone smiles satisfied.
And with the help from Lady Darnel, sophisticated she,
waving the arts of destruction
with invisible thrusts.
Virgil drew her with one of her feathers
to complete her stridencies,
candy to vicious tongues still spreading the venom so many times.
And there is always someone bleeding and someone smiling around the corner
for so many are ready to satisfy
the venom of others.
So said Virgil about her in The Aeneid:
“Then, swiftest of all evils, Rumor runs
straightway through Libya’s mighty cities – Rumor,
whose life is speed, whose going gives her force.
Timid and small at first, she soon lifts up
her body in the air. She Stalks the ground;
her head is hidden in the clouds. Provoked
to anger at the gods, her mother Earth
gave birth to her, last come – they say – as sister
to Coeus and Enceladaus; fast footed
and lithe of wing, she is a terrifying
enormoues monster with as many feathers
as she has sleepless eyes beneath each feather
(amazingly), as many sounding tongues
and mouths, and raises up as many ears.
Between the earth and skies she flies by night,
screeching across the darkness, and she never
closes her eyes in gentle sleep. By day
she sits as sentinel on some steep roof
or on high towers, frightening vast cities;
for she holds fast to falsehood and distortion
as often as to messages of truth.
Now she was glad. She filled the ears of all
with many tales. She snag of what was done
and what was fiction, chanting that Aeneas,
one born of Trojan blood, had come, that lovely
Dido has deigned to join herself to him,
that now, in lust, forgetful of their kingdom,
they take long pleasure, fondling through the winter
the slaves of squalid craving. Such reports
the filthy goddess scatters everywhere
upon the lips of men.”
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