Aeneid Book 4, lines 65 - 89

Dido falls in love

by Virgil

Dido, founding Queen of Carthage, captivated by Aeneas’s tale of the fall of Troy and his years of wandering, has fallen madly in love.

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heu, vatum ignarae mentes! quid vota furentem,
quid delubra iuvant? est mollis flamma medullas
interea et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.
uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatur
urbe furens, qualis coniecta cerva sagitta,
quam procul incautam nemora inter Cresia fixit
pastor agens telis liquitque volatile ferrum
nescius: illa fuga silvas saltusque peragrat
Dictaeos; haeret lateri letalis harundo.
nunc media Aenean secum per moenia ducit
Sidoniasque ostentat opes urbemque paratam,
incipit effari mediaque in voce resistit;
nunc eadem labente die convivia quaerit,
Iliacosque iterum demens audire labores
exposcit pendetque iterum narrantis ab ore.
post ubi digressi, lumenque obscura vicissim
luna premit suadentque cadentia sidera somnos,
sola domo maeret vacua stratisque relictis
incubat. illum absens absentem auditque videtque,
aut gremio Ascanium genitoris imagine capta
detinet, infandum si fallere possit amorem.
non coeptae adsurgunt turres, non arma iuventus
exercet portusve aut propugnacula bello
tuta parant: pendent opera interrupta minaeque
murorum ingentes aequataque machina caelo.

Ah, the unknowing minds of seers! What help are offerings
or shrines to one raging with love? Meanwhile soft flame
gnaws her marrow and the silent wound lives deep
in her breast. Poor Dido burns and, raging, wanders
the whole city like an unwary deer that a shepherd hunting
with his weapons in Cretan woods has hit with an arrow
far off and left the flying steel in her unawares:
she runs in flight through Dictaean woods and dales
and the deadly shaft sticks in her side.
Now she leads Aeneas through the middle of the city
showing Sidon’s wealth and the town she has built;
she begins to talk, breaks off in mid-speech;
now seeks the same banquet over again as day declines,
desperate, asks to hear again of the Trojans’ troubles,
and again hangs on the storyteller’s lips.
When they are gone, and the faint moon in turn dims
her light and declining stars counsel sleep, she mourns
alone in the empty house and lies on the couch he has
left. Away from him, she hears and sees him though not
there, or holds Ascanius in her lap, rapt with the father’s
image, in hope to cheat a love that cannot be uttered.
Towers, begun, rise no more, young men do not
practice combat, build harbours or safe
defences for war; the works, the mighty threats
of the walls, the soaring cranes, all hang suspended.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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