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