Aeneid Book 5, lines 833 - 861 and 867-871

Palinurus the helmsman is lost

by Virgil

By agreement among the Gods, the price of a safe onward journey from Sicily for Aeneas and his newly-streamlined, élite band of brothers is the life of his legendarily skilled navigator and helmsman, Palinurus. Only a God, Sleep, is strong enough to force him from his duty and throw him overboard to his death. He will become the archetype of the mariner lost at sea and left without a tomb, an idea which maintains a powerful hold on the imagination of European writers to the present day.

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princeps ante omnis densum Palinurus agebat
agmen; ad hunc alii cursum contendere iussi.
iamque fere mediam caeli Nox umida metam
contigerat, placida laxabant membra quiete
sub remis fusi per dura sedilia nautae,
cum levis aetheriis delapsus Somnus ab astris
aera dimovit tenebrosum et dispulit umbras,
te, Palinure, petens, tibi somnia tristia portans
insonti; puppique deus consedit in alta
Phorbanti similis funditque has ore loquelas:
‘Iaside Palinure, ferunt ipsa aequora classem,
aequatae spirant aurae, datur hora quieti.
pone caput fessosque oculos furare labori.
ipse ego paulisper pro te tua munera inibo.’
cui vix attollens Palinurus lumina fatur:
‘mene salis placidi vultum fluctusque quietos
ignorare iubes? mene huic confidere monstro?
Aenean credam (quid enim?) fallacibus auris
et caeli totiens deceptus fraude sereni?’
talia dicta dabat, clavumque adfixus et haerens
nusquam amittebat oculosque sub astra tenebat.
ecce deus ramum Lethaeo rore madentem
vique soporatum Stygia super utraque quassat
tempora, cunctantique natantia lumina solvit.
vix primos inopina quies laxaverat artus,
et super incumbens cum puppis parte revulsa
cumque gubernaclo liquidas proiecit in undas
praecipitem ac socios nequiquam saepe vocantem;
ipse volans tenuis se sustulit ales ad auras.

cum pater amisso fluitantem errare magistro
sensit, et ipse ratem nocturnis rexit in undis
multa gemens casuque animum concussus amici:
‘o nimium caelo et pelago confise sereno,
nudus in ignota, Palinure, iacebis harena.’

First, ahead of others, Palinurus led the close column;
the others were told to set their course by him.
Now dewy Night had almost touched her mid-point,
the sailors stretched limbs in restful quiet,
lain under their oars across the hard benches,
when light Sleep, dropping from the stars of the sky,
parted the dark air and dispelled the shadows,
seeking you, Palinurus, bringing you sad slumber in
your innocence; the God sat on the high stern in the
form of Phorbas, and poured these words in your ear:
“Palinurus, son of Iasus, the waters bear the fleet by
themselves, winds breathe calm, a time is given for rest.
Lay down your head, steal your tired eyes from labour.
I myself will do your work instead a little while.”
Hardly raising his eyes, Palinurus replies:
“You tell me to disregard the face of a placid sea
and quiet waves? Me to trust this monster?
What, shall I trust Aeneas to treacherous winds,
who have so often been defrauded by a quiet sky?
This he said, and, clamped and clinging to the tiller,
never let go a moment, his eyes kept raised to the stars.
But see, the God shakes a branch wet with Lethe’s dew
and sleepy with the power of Styx over both his temples,
and closes the drowsing steersman’s swimming eyes.
Barely had unwelcome quiet first relaxed his limbs,
when Sleep, standing over him, threw him into the sea
with the tiller and a piece torn from the ship, head first
and repeatedly calling his shipmates in vain;
the winged God lightly bore himself aloft to the winds.

When Aeneas realised his ship was adrift, the helmsman
lost, he steered it himself on the night waters,
lamenting greatly and shaken in mind by his friend’s fate:
“Trusting too far in a peaceful sky and sea, Palinurus,
you will lie naked on unknown sands.”

`

More Poems by Virgil

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