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