Aeneid Book 7, Lines 166 - 193

In King Latinus’s hall

by Virgil

Arrived in Italy, Aeneas sends envoys to King Latinus to assure him of the Trojans’ friendly intentions and request his permission to settle in peace. Latinus awaits the envoys in his awe-inspiring ancestral hall. In the story about Circe referred to in this extract, her advances were spurned by King Latinus’s forebear Picus, and she punished him by turning him into a woodpecker.

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Cum praevectus equo longaevi regis ad auris
nuntius ingentis ignota in veste reportat
advenisse viros. Ille intra tecta vocari
imperat et solio medius consedit avito.
tectum augustum ingens, centum sublime columnis,
urbe fuit summa, Laurentis regia Pici,
horrendum silvis et religione parentum.
hic sceptra accipere et primos attollere fasces
regibus omen erat, hoc illis curia templum,
hae sacris sedes epulis, hic ariete caeso
perpetuis soliti patres considere mensis.
quin etiam veterum effigies ex ordine avorum
antiqua e cedro, Italusque paterque Sabinus
vitisator, curvam servans sub imagine falcem,
Saturnusque senex Ianique bifrontis imago
vestibulo astabant, aliique ab origine reges
Martiaque ob patriam pugnando volnera passi.
multaque praeterea sacris in postibus arma,
captivi pendent currus curvaeque secures
et cristae capitum et portarum ingentia claustra
spiculaque clipeique ereptaque rostra carinis.
ipse Quirinali lituo parvaque sedebat
succinctus trabea laevaque ancile gerebat
Picus, equum domitor; quem capta cupidine coniunx
aurea percussum virga versumque venenis
fecit avem Circe sparsitque coloribus alas.
tali intus templo divom patriaque Latinus
sede sedens Teucros ad sese in tecta vocavit …

A messenger on horseback brought to the old
King’s ears news that huge men in strange clothing
had arrived. He ordered that they be called to the
palace and in its midst took his ancestral throne.
At the top of the city stood an immense, noble hall,
high on a hundred columns, awesome with dense
woods and the aura of the ancestors, the realm of
Laurentine Picus. Here it was auspicious for kings first
to assume the sceptre and fasces of office, this temple was
their court, the seat of holy feasts; the elders would
sacrifice a ram and assemble at these timeless tables.
Carvings in ancient cedar of the forefathers stood in order,
Italus and old Sabinus the vintner, his curved vine-hook
kept under his image, old Saturn and a statue of two-faced
Janus stood at the entrance, and the other kings since the
beginning, with warriors who had suffered wounds
for the homeland. There too were many sets
of arms on sacred posts, captured chariots
hung there and curved axes, helmet-crests,
bars from immense gates, spears,shields
and rams torn from the prows of ships.
Picus the horse-lord himself sat, first among them with
his regal staff and robe of state, a sacred shield on his left arm, whom his golden lady Circe, gripped with desire,
struck with her wand, turned into a bird with
her potions and spread his wings with colours. Such was
the temple of the Gods in which, seated on the throne
of his fathers, Latinus called the Trojans to him in his hall.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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