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