Aeneid Book 4, lines 685 - 705

Dido’s release

by Virgil

Death does not come quickly to Dido – she lingers in pain after stabbing herself with Aeneas’s sword. We are spared none of the details, as her sister, Anna, climbs to her on her pyre. Finally, Juno sends Iris, Goddess of the rainbow and Mercury’s female counterpart as messenger of the Gods, to release her. References to the cutting of a tress are to the practice of cutting hairs from the brows of sacrificial animals.

See the illustrated blog post here.

To follow the story of Aeneas in sequence, use this link to the full Pantheon Poets selection of extracts from the Aeneid. See the next episode here.

You can hear Schiller’s fine German version of this passage with a translation here.

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Sic fata gradus evaserat altos,
semianimemque sinu germanam amplexa fovebat
cum gemitu atque atros siccabat veste cruores.
illa gravis oculos conata attollere rursus
deficit; infixum stridit sub pectore vulnus.
ter sese attollens cubitoque adnixa levavit,
ter revoluta toro est oculisque errantibus alto
quaesivit caelo lucem ingemuitque reperta.
Tum Iuno omnipotens longum miserata dolorem
difficilisque obitus Irim demisit Olympo
quae luctantem animam nexosque resolveret artus.
nam quia nec fato merita nec morte peribat,
sed misera ante diem subitoque accensa furore,
nondum illi flavum Proserpina vertice crinem
abstulerat Stygioque caput damnaverat Orco.
ergo Iris croceis per caelum roscida pennis
mille trahens varios adverso sole colores
devolat et supra caput astitit. ‘hunc ego Diti
sacrum iussa fero teque isto corpore solvo’:
sic ait et dextra crinem secat, omnis et una
dilapsus calor atque in ventos vita recessit.

She mounted the steep slope, hugged and cradled
her dying sister, wailing, and dried
the black gore with her dress. Dido tried
to raise her heavy eyes, but fell back;
breath rattled from her deep chest wound.
Three times she raised herself on her elbow,
Three times fell back to the couch, looked with vague eyes
up for light in the heavens, groaning when she found it.
Then mighty Juno took pity on her long agony and
painful passing and sent down Iris from Olympus
to free her struggling spirit from the  limbs that clung to it.
Because her death was neither fated nor deserved,
but grim, premature and in a sudden fit of frenzy,
Proserpina had not taken the golden tress of hair from
her head and sealed her for Styx and the underworld.
Fresh with dew, Iris flew down through the sky on saffron
wings, trailing a thousand colours against the sun,
and paused above her head. “As bidden, I take this,
sacred to Pluto, and free you from this your body”
she said, and with her right hand cut the tress: at once
all warmth was vanished, her spirit gone to the winds.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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