Aeneid Book 7, Lines 249 - 273

King Latinus grants the Trojans’ request

by Virgil

Newly arrived in Italy, Aeneas has sent an embassy to the King asking to be allowed to settle peacefully. King Latinus thinks hard about what Aeneas’s ambassador Ilioneus has had to say. He hesitates at first, but then whole-heartedly grants Aeneas’s request, and adds that he will offer him his daughter in marriage. Turnus, the leader of the neighbouring Rutuli and the candidate favoured by Latinus’s Queen for Lavinia’s hand, will not be pleased.

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Talibus Ilionei dictis defixa Latinus
obtutu tenet ora soloque immobilis haeret
intentos volvens oculos. Nec purpura regem
picta movet nec sceptra movent Priameia tantum,
quantum in conubio natae thalamoque moratur,
et veteris Fauni volvit sub pectore sortem,
hunc illum fatis externa ab sede profectum
portendi generum paribusque in regna vocari
auspiciis, huic progeniem virtute futuram
egregiam et totum quae viribus occupet orbem.
tandem laetus ait: ‘Di nostra incepta secundent
auguriumque suum; dabitur, Troiane, quod optas,
munera nec sperno. non vobis rege Latino
divitis uber agri Troiaeve opulentia deerit.
ipse modo Aeneas, nostri si tanta cupido est,
si iungi hospitio properat sociusque vocari,
adveniat voltus neve exhorrescat amicos:
illi pacis erit dextram tetigisse tyranni.
vos contra regi mea nunc mandata referte.
est mihi nata, viro gentis quam iungere nostrae
non patrio ex adyto sortes, non plurima caelo
monstra sinunt: generos externis adfore ab oris,
hoc Latio restare canunt, qui sanguine nostrum
nomen in astra ferant. Hunc illum poscere fata
et reor et, siquid veri mens augurat, opto.’

When Ilioneus finished, Latinus, face downturned,
sat motionless, except for his eyes intently scanning
the ground. The embroidered purple robe and Priam’s
sceptre do not move him beyond the hesitation he feels
about his daughter’s marriage and bridal bed, deeply
pondering old Faunus’s oracle, and whether this might be
the son-in-law predicted by the fates, come from abroad
and called to the realm with equal authority, if the
posterity to come was his that would excel through virtue,
occupy the whole world through its might. Content at last,
he said: “May the Gods second our purposes,and their own
augury; what you wish for, Trojan, will be granted;
gladly, I accept your gifts. While Latinus reigns, you will
not lack the wealth of fertile lands, rich as those of Troy.
Only let Aeneas himself, if his desire for us is so great, if
he is eager to be joined in friendship, to be called our ally,
let him come, and not shun our friendly faces: for him
it will mean peace to have clasped the hand of the king.
But now take my answer to your ruler. I have a daughter,
whom oracles from my fathers’ tomb and many signs
of heaven do not permit to be joined to a man of our own
blood. They sing of a match from foreign shores, who will
remain here in Latium, through his line will lift our name
to the stars. That this is he that the fates demand, I
believe, and, if my thought is true, I wish as well.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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