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