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