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.

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More Poems by Virgil

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