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