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