Aeneid Book 7, lines 116- 147

Aeneas arrives in Italy

by Virgil

Aeneas and the Trojans anchor at long last in Italy at the mouth of the Tiber, in the realm of King Latinus. The King is old and has no male heirs: his succession depends on his daughter, Lavinia. His Queen, Amata, favours a marriage with Turnus, King of the neighbouring Rutuli, but Latinus has doubts because, as we have already seen, omens have been contrary, with Lavinia’s hair set alight in an eerie accident which a seer has interpreted as foretelling that Lavinia will wed and found a famous race, but with a foreign, not an Italian, bridegroom.

Meanwhile an oracle is fulfilled which leads Aeneas to prepare to found his new city. The Harpy Celaeno (not Aeneas’s father, Anchises, as Virgil says here) has foretold that the Trojans will be reduced by hunger to gnawing their tables. The Trojans have just ended a meal by eating the wheaten platters it has been served on.

You can see the Harpy’s prophecy here, and the illustrated blog post here.

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“Heus! etiam mensas consumimus,” inquit Iulus,
nec plura adludens. ea vox audita laborum
prima tulit finem, primamque loquentis ab ore
eripuit pater ac stupefactus numine pressit.
continuo: “Salve fatis mihi debita tellus
vosque,” ait, “O fidi Troiae salvete penates:
hic domus, haec patria est. genitor mihi talia namque
(nunc repeto) Anchises fatorum arcana reliquit:
‘cum te, nate, fames ignota ad litora vectum
accisis coget dapibus consumere mensas,
tum sperare domos defessus ibique memento
prima locare manu molirique aggere tecta.’
haec erat illa fames; haec nos suprema manebat,
exiliis positura modum.
quare agite et primo laeti cum lumine solis
quae loca, quive habeant homines, ubi moenia gentis,
vestigemus et a portu diversa petamus.
nunc pateras libate Iovi precibusque vocate
Anchisen genitorem, et vina reponite mensis.”
sic deinde effatus frondenti tempora ramo
implicat et geniumque loci primamque deorum
Tellurem nymphasque et adhuc ignota precatur
flumina, tum Noctem Noctisque orientia signa
Idaeumque Iovem Phrygiamque ex ordine matrem
invocat et duplicis caeloque ereboque parentis.
hic pater omnipotens ter caelo clarus ab alto
intonuit radiisque ardentem lucis et auro
ipse manu quatiens ostendit ab aethere nubem.
diditur hic subito Troiana per agmina rumor
advenisse diem, quo debita moenia condant.
certatim instaurant epulas atque omine magno
crateras laeti statuunt et vina coronant.

“Well, we’re even eating the tables!” said Iulus
as a brief joke. Hearing that speech first brought an
end to their troubles, and his father snatched it from
his lips even as he spoke and took it up, stunned by the
omen. At once, “Hail, land promised by the fates,
and hail you loyal household Gods of Troy!” he said:
This is our home, this our fatherland. Now I remember,
my father Anchises left me these secrets from the fates:
‘son, when you are brought to unknown lands and food
runs short and hunger makes you eat your tables, then,
though exhausted, hope for homes, and remember to set
your hand for the first time to building a city
and rampart. This was that hunger, the culmination
destined to put an end to our exile. So come, and
at the first light of the sun, in gladness let us spread
out from the anchorage, find out what place this is,
who possesses it and where their city is.
But now pour libations to Jove, call on my father
Anchises in prayer, and put wine again on the tables.”
With that he bound his temples with a branch in leaf,
and prayed in due order to the spirit of the place,
Gaea, first of the Gods, the nymphs, the rivers, till now
unknown, then Night, and the signs Night gives of dawn,
Idaean Jove and Cybele, the Phrygian Mother, and both
his own parents, in heaven and the netherworld.
The almighty Father thundered clearly three times,
and showed in the golden heavens a cloud, blazing with rays of light, brandishing it in his own hand.
At once the news spreads through the Trojan lines that
the day has come to found their promised city walls. They
race to prepare the feast and, joyful at the great
portent, set up the mixing-bowls and pour out the wine.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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