Aeneid Book 4, lines 642 – 668

The death of Dido.

by Virgil

Dido has had a great bonfire prepared, ostensibly to burn everything that Aeneas has left behind when his fleet sailed: in fact, she knows that it is her own funeral pyre.

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at trepida et coeptis immanibus effera Dido
sanguineam volvens aciem, maculisque trementis
interfusa genas et pallida morte futura,
interiora domus inrumpit limina et altos
conscendit furibunda rogos ensemque recludit
Dardanium, non hos quaesitum munus in usus.
hic, postquam Iliacas vestis notumque cubile
conspexit, paulum lacrimis et mente morata
incubuitque toro dixitque novissima verba:
‘dulces exuviae, dum fata deusque sinebat,
accipite hanc animam meque his exsolvite curis.
vixi et quem dederat cursum Fortuna peregi,
et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago.
urbem praeclaram statui, mea moenia vidi,
ulta virum poenas inimico a fratre recepi,
felix, heu nimium felix, si litora tantum
numquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae.’
dixit, et os impressa toro ‘moriemur inultae,
sed moriamur’ ait. ‘sic, sic iuvat ire sub umbras.
hauriat hunc oculis ignem crudelis ab alto
Dardanus, et nostrae secum ferat omina mortis.’
dixerat, atque illam media inter talia ferro
conlapsam aspiciunt comites, ensemque cruore
spumantem sparsasque manus. it clamor ad alta
atria: concussam bacchatur Fama per urbem.
lamentis gemituque et femineo ululatu
tecta fremunt, resonat magnis plangoribus aether.

Dido, borne up by her agitation, her deadly purpose
begun, rolling bloodshot eyes, her trembling cheeks
mottled, blenching at her approaching death, bursts
through the inner threshold of her house, raging,
mounts the heaped-up pyre and draws the Trojan
sword, a gift not sought with this use in mind.
Here, after she had looked on the Trojan robes and
familiar bed, pausing a moment in thoughts and tears,
she lies on the couch and utters her dying words:
“Relics that were sweet when fate and God allowed,
receive this soul and free me from these cares.
I have lived, and run the course that Fortune gave me,
and now my mighty ghost will pass under the earth.
I have founded a great city, seen my own walls rise,
avenged my husband on my enemy brother,
happy, too happy alas, if only Trojan ships
had never touched my shores.” She paused,
then, lips pressed to the couch, “I die unavenged”,
she said, “but let me die! I joy, joy to enter the shades!
Let the cruel Trojan see this fire from the sea, and take
omens from my death with him! As she concluded,
her train saw her fall on the blade, the blood welling
round the sword, spattering her hands. In the lofty halls
the cry goes up: Rumour runs amok
through the dumbstruck city.
The roof quakes with lamenting, groans and the shriek
of women and the sky shakes with the mighty din.

`

More Poems by Virgil

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