Aeneid Book 6, lines 860 - 886

Aeneas sees Marcellus, Augustus’s tragic heir

by Virgil

Aeneas asks his father Anchises about the spirit of a splendid young warrior-to-be, who nevertheless has a tragic air. This is Marcellus, Augustus’s nephew, whom he adopted as his son and prospective successor in 25 BCE, only for him to die two years later at the age of 19. The spirit with whom Marcellus is walking is another famous Marcellus, a great Roman general of the third century BCE.

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Atque hic Aeneas (una namque ire videbat
egregium forma iuvenem et fulgentibus armis,
sed frons laeta parum et deiecto lumina vultu)
‘quis, pater, ille, virum qui sic comitatur euntem?
filius, anne aliquis magna de stirpe nepotum?
qui strepitus circa comitum! quantum instar in ipso!
sed nox atra caput tristi circumvolat umbra.’
tum pater Anchises lacrimis ingressus obortis:
‘o gnate, ingentem luctum ne quaere tuorum;
ostendent terris hunc tantum fata nec ultra
esse sinent. nimium vobis Romana propago
visa potens, superi, propria haec si dona fuissent.
quantos ille virum magnam Mauortis ad urbem
campus aget gemitus! vel quae, Tiberine, videbis
funera, cum tumulum praeterlabere recentem!
nec puer Iliaca quisquam de gente Latinos
in tantum spe tollet avos, nec Romula quondam
ullo se tantum tellus iactabit alumno.
heu pietas, heu prisca fides invictaque bello
dextera! non illi se quisquam impune tulisset
obvius armato, seu cum pedes iret in hostem
seu spumantis equi foderet calcaribus armos.
heu, miserande puer, si qua fata aspera rumpas!
Tu Marcellus eris. manibus date lilia plenis
purpureos spargam flores animamque nepotis
his saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani
munere.’

Here Aeneas, seeing an outstandingly beautiful
young man in dazzling armour walking with him,
but with too sad a brow, eyes and face cast down, said
“Father, who is that walking with him as he goes?
His son, or one of the great line of his descendants? What
a stir their companions make! What a paragon he is! But
the blackness of night flits round him with its sad shade.”
Father Anchises, tears welling, said: “my son, do not
ask about the great sorrow of your people; fate will give
the world only a glimpse of him, and let him live no longer.
Gods, the Roman race seemed too strong to you, had these
gifts been lasting. How great the groans of men, that the
Campus Martius will bear to Mars’s city! Tiber, what
mourning you will see, flowing by the freshly-made tomb!
Nor will any son of the Trojan race lift the Latin elders
so much in hope, or the land of Rome
boast so of any other of its sons. Alas for his
uprightness, alas for his pristine loyalty,
his right arm invincible in war! No-one
could have stood against him in arms,
taking on the enemy afoot or when spurring
the flanks of his foaming horse. If only, pitiable child,
you could somehow break from bitter destiny!
You will be Marcellus. Let me scatter purple lily flowers
in handfuls, at least load the spirit of my descendant with
those gifts, and make my tribute although in vain.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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