Aeneid Book 6, lines 637 - 659

Aeneas reaches the Elysian Fields

by Virgil

Leaving Tartarus and the torments of the damned behind in their underworld journey, and leaving the golden bough that has been their passport for living entry to Hades as the prescribed offering to Queen Proserpina at her door, Aeneas and the Sibyl come to the paradise of the Elysian fields

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His demum exactis, perfecto munere divae
devenere locos laetos et amoena virecta
fortunatorum nemorum sedesque beatas.
largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
pars in gramineis exercent membra palaestris,
contendunt ludo et fulva luctantur harena;
pars pedibus plaudunt choreas et carmina dicunt.
nec non Threicius longa cum veste sacerdos
obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum,
iamque eadem digitis, iam pectine pulsat eburno.
hic genus antiquum Teucri, pulcherrima proles,
magnanimi heroes nati melioribus annis,
Ilusque Assaracusque et Troiae Dardanus auctor.
arma procul currusque virum miratur inanis;
stant terra defixae hastae passimque soluti
per campum pascuntur equi. quae gratia currum
armorumque fuit vivis, quae cura nitentis
pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.
conspicit, ecce, alios dextra laevaque per herbam
vescentis laetumque choro paeana canentis
inter odoratum lauri nemus, unde superne
plurimus Eridani per silvam volvitur amnis.

This done, and the gift to the Goddess made,
they reached the happy land, the lovely sward
of the groves of the favoured and their blessed homes.
Here the air was more open, clothed the fields with
glowing light and beheld its own sun, its own stars.
Some train their limbs in the grassy rings, strive
in the contest and wrestle on the golden sand; some
beat the dance-floor with their feet and chant songs.
Thracian Orpheus, too, is there in his long robe, and
accompanies the line of the singers’ tune with seven
notes, plays now with fingers, now his ivory plectrum.
Here is the ancient race of Teucer, a handsome line,
high-minded heroes born in a greater age, Ilus,
Assaracus and Dardanus, founder of Troy. From a
distance he admires their phantom arms and chariots;
spears stand in the ground, while everywhere horses
graze, loose in the fields. The same pleasure they took,
alive, in arms, chariots and keeping horses
follows them under the earth. And look,
he sees others to left and right, feasting on
the grass and singing a joyful hymn under the
laurel-scented grove, from which, to Earth above,
the great river Po rolls through the wood.

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More Poems by Virgil

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