Aeneid Book 1, lines 695 - 722

Dido and Cupid

Aeneas and his Trojans have been given a warm welcome by Dido, Queen of Carthage, but his mother Venus is concerned that it may cool under the influence of his enemy Juno, who is a patron goddess of the city. To guard against this, she has told her other son, Cupid, to disguise himself as Aeneas’s boy Iulus and make Dido fall in love with the Trojan hero. It is a decision that will have unforeseen consequences over future centuries both for Carthage and Rome. The mantle and veil that the Tyrians admire in this sometimes difficult passage have been saved from the sack of Troy, rich gifts that Aeneas is making to Dido. The real Iulus, or Ascanius, has been sent to sleep by Venus and transported to one of her homes.

Sychaeus was Dido’s former husband, murdered by her brother, Pygmalion.

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Iamque ibat dicto parens et dona Cupido
regia portabat Tyriis, duce laetus Achate.
cum venit, aulaeis iam se regina superbis
aurea composuit sponda mediamque locavit.
Iam pater Aeneas et iam Troiana iuventus
conveniunt, stratoque super discumbitur ostro.
dant famuli manibus lymphas, Cereremque canistris
expediunt, tonsisque ferunt mantelia villis.
quinquaginta intus famulae, quibus ordine longam
cura penum struere, et flammis adolere Penatis;
centum aliae totidemque pares aetate ministri,
qui dapibus mensas onerent et pocula ponant.
nec non et Tyrii per limina laeta frequentes
convenere, toris iussi discumbere pictis.
mirantur dona Aeneae, mirantur Iulum
flagrantisque dei voltus simulataque verba,
pallamque et pictum croceo velamen acantho.
praecipue infelix, pesti devota futurae,
expleri mentem nequit ardescitque tuendo
Phoenissa, et pariter puero donisque movetur.
ille ubi complexu Aeneae colloque pependit
et magnum falsi implevit genitoris amorem,
reginam petit. haec oculis, haec pectore toto
haeret et interdum gremio fovet, inscia Dido,
insidat quantus miserae deus; at memor ille
matris Acidaliae paulatim abolere Sychaeum
incipit, et vivo temptat praevertere amore
iam pridem resides animos desuetaque corda.

Obeying, Cupid went and blithely brought the kingly gifts to the Tyrians, guided by Achates. As he arrived, the queen had just taken her place in the centre of her golden couch, hung about with splendid tapestries. Now came Father Aeneas and the Trojan troops and took their places on the purple cloths spread for them. Boys poured water for their hands, served bread from baskets and brought napkins with close-shorn nap. Within were fifty servant-girls, whose task was to set the long feast in order and keep the hearth-fires burning. There were another hundred, and as many boys of similar age, to load the tables with food and lay them with cups. The Tyrians, too, came thronging into the festal chamber, invited to recline on the embroidered couches. They were amazed at Aeneas’s gifts, and at “Iulus”, the God’s glowing cheeks and disguised voice, and at the mantle and the veil embroidered with yellow acanthus. Most of all, the unhappy Dido, doomed to her future ruin, gazed at him ardently, could not get enough, and was equally moved by the boy and the gifts. Cupid, when he had hung in an embrace on Aeneas’s neck and satisfied his supposed father’s intense affection, went to the queen. Dido clung to him with eyes, heart and all, holding him now and then in her lap, unaware how great a god, to her misfortune, was nestling there. He, remembering his mother, began little by little to efface Sychaeus, and tried to occupy with a fresh affection a mind and heart long inured and unused to love.

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