Aeneid Book 5, lines 719 - 740

Anchises’s ghost invites Aeneas to visit the underworld

by Virgil

In a dramatic intervention the image of Aeneas’s father Anchises appears to confirm the advice of the venerable Nautes that he should purge his company of the old, the tired and the discouraged and take only the young, strong and eager with him on his onward journey to his destiny in Italy. He adds an invitation for Aeneas to journey through the underworld to visit him in the Elysian Fields to learn more about the descendance that will follow him and the city that it is his fate to found in Latium. The journey to the underworld in Book 6 of the Aeneid will be one of the highest points of the whole epic.

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Talibus incensus dictis senioris amici
tum vero in curas animo diducitur omnis;
et Nox atra polum bigis subvecta tenebat.
visa dehinc caelo facies delapsa parentis
Anchisae subito talis effundere voces:
‘nate, mihi vita quondam, dum vita manebat,
care magis, nate Iliacis exercite fatis,
imperio Iovis huc venio, qui classibus ignem
depulit, et caelo tandem miseratus ab alto est.
consiliis pare quae nunc pulcherrima Nautes
dat senior; lectos iuvenes, fortissima corda,
defer in Italiam. gens dura atque aspera cultu
debellanda tibi Latio est. Ditis tamen ante
infernas accede domos et Averna per alta
congressus pete, nate, meos. non me impia namque
Tartara habent, tristes umbrae, sed amoena piorum
concilia Elysiumque colo. huc casta Sibylla
nigrarum multo pecudum te sanguine ducet.
tum genus omne tuum et quae dentur moenia disces.
iamque vale; torquet medios Nox umida cursus
et me saevus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis.’
dixerat et tenuis fugit ceu fumus in auras.

Then well and truly he was rent apart in mind for
his cares, moved by what his venerable friend had said:
black Night, borne up in her chariot, ruled the pole.
Then suddenly the shape of his father, Anchises, was seen
descending the sky, saying: “Son, strong from the fates
of Troy, once dearer than life, when life remained me,
I come at the bidding of Jove, who kept the fire
from the fleet and has finally taken pity from on high.
Follow the excellent advice that venerable Nautes gives:
take to Italy picked, youthful men and the stoutest
of hearts. The race is a hard one, raised in a tough school,
that you must battle in Latium. But go first to the depths
of the underworld, Son, and seek my home, through
the chasms of Avernus. For shameful Tartarus and its dire
shadows do not hold me, but the assemblies of the blest
and Elysium are where I dwell. There will the chaste
Sibyl lead you, helped by the blood of many black sheep.
Then will you learn of your whole posterity and the city
you will be given. Now farewell: Night with her dews
bends her middle way and the cruel East
has touched me with the breath of his panting horses.”
He finished, and vanished like thin smoke into the air.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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