Aeneid Book 2, lines 1-13

Aeneas prepares to tell Dido his story

by Virgil

As Book 2 begins, Queen Dido of Carthage has asked Aeneas to tell the story of his wanderings and the fall of Troy. Aeneas dominates the scene: The company cannot take their eyes off him in his elevated place of honour, spellbound by his presence and the dignified emotion with which he speaks. The poem’s audience were no doubt meant to think of Aeneas’s descendant, the Emperor Augustus. The Myrmidons were the followers of Achilles, and Ulixes is Homer’s Odysseus, the trickster-king who thought of the Trojan Horse.

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Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant.
inde toro pater Aeneas sic orsus ab alto:
“infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem,
Troianas ut opes et lamentabile regnum
eruerint Danai, quaeque ipse miserrima vidi
et quorum pars magna fui. quis talia fando
Myrmidonum Dolopumve aut duri miles Ulixi
temperet a lacrimis? et iam nox umida caelo
praecipitat suadentque cadentia sidera somnos.
sed si tantus amor casus cognoscere nostros
et breviter Troiae supremum audire laborem,
quamquam animus meminisse horret luctuqe refugit,
incipiam.”

All fell silent and kept their gaze intently on him. From his high couch Father Aeneas began to speak: “Inexpressible, O Queen, is the pain you bid me revive, how Trojan wealth and its lamented kingdom were annihilated by Greeks, terrible events I witnessed and was great part of. Who, telling of such things,even a Myrmidon, Dolopian, or one of cruel Ulysses’s men, would not weep? Already, night and dew fall swiftly from the heavens, and setting stars call us to sleep. Yet if you would so love to know our disasters and briefly hear the final agony of Troy, though my mind, shuddering to recall, shies away in pain, I shall attempt it.”

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More Poems by Virgil

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