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