Aeneid Book 4, lines 238 - 258

Mercury’s journey to Carthage

by Virgil

Here is Mercury on his way to Carthage with a stern message for Aeneas from the Gods. Virgil combines a description of Mercury which is quite closely based on Homer with ideas of his own personifying Mount Atlas as a huge, craggy old man.

Mercury’s function as a psychopomp – a guide of the the souls of the dead – features in Homer’s Odyssey, where he brings the souls of Penelope’s suitors to the underworld when Odysseus has killed them. “Opening eyes in death” is a reference to the Roman custom of opening the eyes of the dead on the funeral pyre.

Mercury’s mother, Maia, was the daughter of Atlas. Mercury is called “the Cyllenian” after Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, where, according to tradition, he was born.

See the illustrated blog post here.

To follow the story of Aeneas in sequence, use this link to the full Pantheon Poets selection of extracts from the Aeneid. See the next episode here.

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Dixerat. ille patris magni parere parabat
imperio; et primum pedibus talaria nectit
aurea, quae sublimem alis sive aequora supra
seu terram rapido pariter cum flamine portant.
tum virgam capit: hac animas ille evocat Orco
pallentis, alias sub Tartara tristia mittit,
dat somnos adimitque, et lumina morte resignat.
illa fretus agit ventos et turbida tranat
nubila. iamque volans apicem et latera ardua cernit
Atlantis duri caelum qui vertice fulcit,
Atlantis, cinctum adsidue cui nubibus atris
piniferum caput et vento pulsatur et imbri,
nix umeros infusa tegit, tum flumina mento
praecipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba.
hic primum paribus nitens Cyllenius alis
constitit; hinc toto praeceps se corpore ad undas
misit avi similis, quae circum litora, circum
piscosos scopulos humilis volat aequora iuxta.
haud aliter terras inter caelumque volabat
litus harenosum ad Libyae, ventosque secabat
materno veniens ab avo Cyllenia proles.

The Great Father had spoken. Mercury prepared
to obey his order, and first laced the golden
sandals on his feet which bear him aloft on
their wings as fast as the wind over sea and land.
Next he took his wand, with which he summons
pale ghosts from Orcus, sends others under sad
Tartarus, gives and takes sleep and opens eyes
in death. With it he drives the winds and swims
over the wild clouds. In flight he sees the peak
and steep sides of rough Atlas, whose crown supports
the heavens, Atlas whose pine-clad head is forever
girt with black clouds and lashed by gale and storm,
snowfall clothes his shoulders, torrents crash down
from the ancient’s chin, his bristling beard is stiff
with ice. Here the Cyllenian, hovering on both wings,
first paused, then stooped headlong close to the waves in
the shape of a bird which flies low, skimming the surface,
around the shore and the fishes’ rocky home.
Just so Cyllene’s child cut the winds as he came,
flying between earth and sky to Libya’s sandy shore
from his maternal grandsire.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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