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