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.

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