Aeneid Book 9, lines 98 - 122

Aeneas’s ships are transformed

by Virgil

As Turnus cannot dstroy the Trojans in battle, he decides that he will at least burn their ships, which they cannot take inside the walls. He does not know, however, about a promise that Jupiter has made to the Goddess Cybele long before. The ships were built from pine from a sacred grove to the Goddess on Mount Ida: she had asked for them to be made immortal and indestructible. Jupiter had replied that he could not extend the privileges of immortality so far, but, speaking as this extract opens, is about to agree to confer a great distinction nevertheless on those of Aeneas’s ships that remain when he has reached Italy.

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“immo, ubi defunctae finem portusque tenebunt
Ausonios olim, quaecumque evaserit undis
Dardaniumque ducem Laurentia vexerit arva,
mortalem eripiam formam magnique iubebo
aequoris esse deas, qualis Nereia Doto
et Galatea secant spumantem pectore pontum.”
dixerat idque ratum Stygii per flumina fratris,
per pice torrentis atraque voragine ripas
adnuit, et totum nutu tremefecit Olympum.
Ergo aderat promissa dies et tempora Parcae
debita complerant, cum Turni iniuria Matrem
admonuit ratibus sacris depellere taedas.
hic primum nova lux oculis offulsit et ingens
visus ab Aurora caelum transcurrere nimbus
Idaeique chori; tum vox horrenda per auras
excidit et Troum Rutulorumque agmina complet:
‘ne trepidate meas, Teucri, defendere navis
neve armate manus; maria ante exurere Turno
quam sacras dabitur pinus. vos ite solutae,
ite deae pelagi; genetrix iubet.’ et sua quaeque
continuo puppes abrumpunt vincula ripis
delphinumque modo demersis aequora rostris
ima petunt. hinc virgineae (mirabile monstrum)
reddunt se totidem facies pontoque feruntur.

“No, but from those that one day have completed the task,
come to the fields of Italy, survived the seas and brought
Aeneas from Troy to the shore of Laurentium, I shall take
their mortal form and ordain that they will be Goddesses
of mighty ocean, and, like the Nereids Doto and Galatea,
sunder with their breast the foaming sea”. He spoke,
and with a nod swore the oath by his Stygian brother’s
stream, its banks burning with pitch about the black gulf,
and at his nod the whole of Olympus quaked. And so
the promised day was come, and the Fates had fulfilled
the time for Turnus’s attack to prompt
the great Mother to ward off fire from the sacred ships.
Now first an unfamiliar light dazzled all eyes, while
from the East an enormous cloud was seen approaching,
accompanied by Idaean choirs, and a tremendous voice
overwhelmed Trojans and Rutuli alike. “Do not trouble,
Teucrians, to defend my ships, and do not take up arms:
Turnus will be allowed to burn up the seas, sooner than
their sacred timbers. You, go in freedom, go as Goddesses
of the sea: your Mother bids you!” And each ship instantly,
breaking its moorings, dipped its beaked prow and dove
dolphin-fashion for the deep, and up, miraculously,
surged as many maiden forms as the prows that earlier
fringed the shore, and were borne away to seaward.

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More Poems by Virgil

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