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

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