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.

See the illustrated blog post here.

To follow the story of Aeneas in sequence, use this link to the full Pantheon Poets selection of extracts from the Aeneid. See the next episode here.

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