Aeneid Book 3, lines 374 - 395

How Aeneas will know the site of his city

by Virgil

Continuing the story of his travels to Queen Dido of Carthage, Aeneas tells of his astonishment at finding that Helenus, one of the Trojan King Priam’s sons, has won the kingdom of Pyrrhus, the Greek prince whom we saw killing Priam in Book 2, and is ruling it with Andromache, the widow of the Trojans’ great hero Hector, as his Queen. In a divinely-inspired prophecy, Helenus gives Aeneas hope that, in spite of the Harpy’s curse that he and his followers will be reduced to such misery that they will gnaw their tables, all will finally be well. Ending by telling of his onward journey, including a narrow escape from Polyphemus the blind Cyclops, Aeneas brings his story up to date, and Book 3 ends.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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‘Nate dea, (nam te maioribus ire per altum
auspiciis manifesta fides, sic fata deum rex
sortitur volvitque vices, is vertitur ordo)
pauca tibi e multis, quo tutior hospita lustres
aequora et Ausonio possis considere portu,
expediam dictis: prohibent nam cetera Parcae
scire Helenum farique vetat Saturnia Iuno.
principio Italiam, quam tu iam rere propinquam
vicinosque, ignare, paras invadere portus,
longa procul longis via dividit invia terris.
ante et Trinacria lentandus remus in unda
et salis Ausonii lustrandum navibus aequor
infernique lacus Aeaeaeque insula Circae,
quam tuta possis urbem componere terra.
signa tibi dicam, tu condita mente teneto:
cum tibi sollicito secreti ad fluminis undam
litoreis ingens inventa sub ilicibus sus
triginta capitum fetus enixa iacebit,
alba, solo recubans, albi circum ubera nati,
is locus urbis erit, requies ea certa laborum.
nec tu mensarum morsus horresce futuros:
fata viam invenient aderitque vocatus Apollo.’

“Goddess-born (for it is clear that you sail
under high auspices, so the King of Gods bestows
fate and settles chance, thus events are ordered),
I will tell few things of many, by which you may sail
friendlier seas and gain an Ausonian berth more safely:
the rest, the Fates withhold from Helenus’ knowledge
and Saturn’s daughter Juno forbids their utterance.
First, Italy, that you think close, whose ports,
wrongly,you think you are near and about to enter,
lies far off over the earth, the way there is no way at all.
First you must bend your oar in the Trinacrian sea,
sail your ships across the salt Ausonian waters
past the lakes of the underworld and Aeaean Circe’s
isle before you can found your city in a safe land.
I will give you signs: hold them fast in your mind.
When in your distress by a secluded stream
you find lying under the mighty oaks a sow,
huge and white, with a new litter thirty strong
lying on the ground, the young at her dugs also white,
that will be the site of the city, certain rest from suffering.
And do not shudder at the prospect of biting tables:
the fates will find a way, and Apollo will answer your call.”

`

More Poems by Virgil

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