Aeneid Book 2 lines 707 - 746

Aeneas saves his son and father, but at a cost

by Virgil

We have already seen in lines 679 – 710 of Book 2 that Aeneas, with the help of divine portents, has persuaded his father Anchises to join him in escaping from the wreck of Troy. This extract takes up the story as Aeneas attempts to get his family out of the city alive. He succeeds, but suffers a tragic loss in the process. As dawn breaks, Aeneas will find himself free of pursuit at the head of an unexpectedly large band of Trojans who are ready to follow him across the seas, and Book 2 will end.

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“ergo age, care pater, cervici imponere nostrae;
ipse subibo umeris nec me labor iste gravabit;
quo res cumque cadent, unum et commune periclum,
una salus ambobus erit. Mihi parvus Iulus
sit comes, et longe servet vestigia coniunx.
vos, famuli, quae dicam animis advertite vestris.
est urbe egressis tumulus templumque vetustum
desertae Cereris, iuxtaque antiqua cupressus
religione patrum multos servata per annos,
hanc ex diverso sedem veniemus in unam.
tu, genitor,cape sacra manu patriosque penatis;
me bello e tanto digressum et caede recenti
attrectare nefas, donec me flumine vivo
abluero.”
haec fatus latos umeros subiectaque colla
veste super fulvique insternor pelle leonis,
succedoque oneri; dextrae se parvus Iulus
implicuit sequiturque patrem non passibus aequis;
pone subit coniunx. ferimur per opaca locorum,
et me, quem dudum non ulla iniecta movebant
tela, neque adverso glomerati ex agmine Grai,
nunc omnes terrent aurae, sonus excitat omnis
suspensum et pariter comitique onerique timentem.
iamque propinquabam portis omnemque videbar
evasisse viam, subito cum creber ad aures
visus adesse pedum sonitus, genitorque per umbram
prospiciens “nate” exclamat “fuge nate; propinquant.
ardentes clipeos atque aera micantia cerno.”
hic mihi nescio quod trepido male numen amicum
confusam eripuit mentem. namque avia cursu
dum sequor et nota excedo regione viarum,
heu misero coniunx fatone erepta Creusa
substitit, erravitne via seu lassa resedit,
incertum; nec post oculis est reddita nostris.
nec prius amissam respexi animumve reflexi
quam tumulum antiquae Cereris sedemque sacratam
venimus: hic demum collectis omnibus una
defuit, et comites natumque virumque fefellit.
quem non incusavi hominumque deorumque,
aut quid in eversa vidi crudelius urbe?

“Come, dear Father, climb on my back; I will bear you
on my shoulders, the task will be light;
come what may, for us there will be one shared danger,
one safety for us both. Let little Iulus come with me,
let my wife follow our steps at a distance.
Servants, attend to what I shall say. By the way out
of the city is a mound and an ancient temple
of abandoned Ceres, and by it an aged cypress, preserved
through many years by the religion of our fathers.
We shall go by different ways and meet at this spot.
Father, hold the sacred relics and ancestral home-gods
– coming from such slaughter and recent bloodshed,
they would be sinful to touch until I purify myself
in living water.”
Then I clothe my broad shoulders and bowed neck
with the skin of a tawny lion and take up
my burden.Little Iulus grips my right hand,
following his father with smaller steps:
then comes my wife. Through the dark we go;
no flying spears, or Greek bands from the enemy
army troubled me before, but every breeze frightens
and every sound alarms me now, tense and fearful equally
for my companion and my burden. Now near the gates,
I seemed to have made my escape entirely,
when suddenly we seem to hear running feet,
and my Father, peering through the dark, cries
“My son! Flee, my son, they are coming!
I see flashing shields and sparkling bronze!”
Now some malign god snatched away my shaken senses,
for as I missed the way in my flight,
following streets I did not know, alas, whether
my wife Creusa stopped, or was torn away by fate,
or missed her way, or sank exhausted, is unclear,but
we never saw her again. I did not miss her,
look back or think of her until we came
to the mound and the sacred seat of ancient Ceres:
here, when we were all together, only she was lacking to
her son and husband. In my frenzy,
whom did I not accuse of men or gods, or
what sight I saw in the fallen city was crueller?

`

More Poems by Virgil

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