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