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