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