Aeneid Book 6, lines 450 - 476

Aeneas finds Dido among the shades

by Virgil

On his journey in the underworld, Aeneas finds his lost steersman, Palinurus, among the unburied souls who are unable to cross over the river Styx. Aeneas’s guide, the Sibyl, comforts him by prophesying that he will soon be given a splendid tomb and be allowed to make the voyage. Persuading an initially reluctant Charon to ferry them across, Aeneas and the Sibyl sneak past Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog, by giving him a drugged titbit and press on to the Fields of Mourning, the home of those who have suffered from sorrow in love.

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inter quas Phoenissa recens a vulnere Dido
errabat silva in magna; quam Troius heros
ut primum iuxta stetit agnovitque per umbras
obscuram, qualem primo qui surgere mense
aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila lunam,
demisit lacrimas dulcique adfatus amore est:
‘infelix Dido, verus mihi nuntius ergo
venerat exstinctam ferroque extrema secutam?
funeris heu tibi causa fui? per sidera iuro,
per superos et si qua fides tellure sub ima est,
invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi.
sed me iussa deum, quae nunc has ire per umbras,
per loca senta situ cogunt noctemque profundam,
imperiis egere suis; nec credere quivi
hunc tantum tibi me discessu ferre dolorem.
siste gradum teque aspectu ne subtrahe nostro.
quem fugis? extremum fato quod te adloquor hoc est.’
talibus Aeneas ardentem et torva tuentem
lenibat dictis animum lacrimasque ciebat.
illa solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat
nec magis incepto vultum sermone movetur
quam si dura silex aut stet Marpesia cautes.
tandem corripuit sese atque inimica refugit
in nemus umbriferum, coniunx ubi pristinus illi
respondet curis aequatque Sychaeus amorem.
nec minus Aeneas casu percussus iniquo
prosequitur lacrimis longe et miseratur euntem.

Among them Phoenician Dido was wandering in
the great wood, fresh from her death-wound, whom
Aeneas, as he stopped nearby, recognised dimly in
the dark, as one at the start of the month sees, or thinks
he has seen the moon rise through the clouds.
He shed tears and spoke to her in tender love:
“unhappy Dido, so the news was true that you
were no more and had met your end by the sword?
Was I, alas, the cause of your death? By the stars
and Gods I swear, if any trust exists here in the depths
of earth, unwillingly, my Queen, I left your shores.
Orders from the Gods, which force me now to fare
through this shadow, wilderness and darkest night,
made me obey their power, nor could I have thought
that I would bring you such great pain by leaving.
Stop, and do not avoid my sight. Who do you run from?
Fate decrees that what I say to you now will be the last.”
So Aeneas tried to soothe her mind, as she looked askance,
burning in anger, and his tears began to flow.
She, turned away, kept her eyes fixed on the ground, nor
was her expression more changed by what he said than
if she had stood there hard flint or Marpesian stone.
Finally she tore herself away and, still in enmity, fled
into the dark grove, where her first husband, Sychaeus,
responds to her cares and gives her mutual love.
All the same, Aeneas, struck by her unjust fate,
follows her afar with tears and pities her as she goes.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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