Aeneid Book 6, lines 788 - 805

Aeneas’s vision of Augustus

by Virgil

As Aeneas continues his underworld journey, the spirit of his father, Anchises, shows him the Roman heroes of the future as father and son talk in the Elysian Fields. Now he comes to their culmination: the Emperor Augustus. Neither Anchises nor Virgil holds back.

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huc geminas nunc flecte acies, hanc aspice gentem
Romanosque tuos. hic Caesar et omnis Iuli
progenies magnum caeli ventura sub axem.
hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis,
Augustus Caesar, divi genus, aurea condet
saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva
Saturno quondam, super et Garamantas et Indos
proferet imperium; iacet extra sidera tellus,
extra anni solisque vias, ubi caelifer Atlas
axem umero torquet stellis ardentibus aptum.
huius in adventum iam nunc et Caspia regna
responsis horrent divum et Maeotia tellus,
et septemgemini turbant trepida ostia Nili.
nec vero Alcides tantum telluris obivit,
fixerit aeripedem cervam licet, aut Erymanthi
pacarit nemora et Lernam tremefecerit arcu;
nec qui pampineis victor iuga flectit habenis
Liber, agens celso Nysae de vertice tigris.
et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis,
aut metus Ausonia prohibet consistere terra?

Now look here, see this race of Romans of your own.
Here is Caesar, and all the descendants of Iulus to come
under the axis of the heavens. This, this is the man
you have so often heard promised you, Augustus Caesar,
son of a God, who will found a new golden age
in Latium in the land once ruled by Saturn, extend
his rule to Africans and Indians, and land that lies
beyond the stars and the paths of the year and Sun,
where Atlas, the bearer of the sky, turns its axis
on his shoulder, knit to the blazing stars.
For his coming, already Scythia and the Caspian
realms shudder at the oracles of their gods, and
the mouths of the sevenfold Nile shake in fear.
Nor did even Hercules travel so far over the world,
though he shot the bronze-hoofed stag, pacified
Erymanthus and made Lerna quail with his bow;
nor victorious Bacchus, who steers his chariot with
vine-reins, driving his tigers down the steeps of Nysa.
And do we hesitate still to proclaim our prowess by
deeds? Will fear prevent us settling on Italian lands?

`

More Poems by Virgil

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