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