Dido loves Aeneas, the Trojan stranger. Virgil tells the story here.
After stabbing herself, Dido lingers on in pain until Juno, Queen of the Gods, takes pity and sends Iris, the Goddess of the rainbow to set her finally free. See and hear the passage here.
On a mission to find Aeneas, the lovers Euryalus and Nisus pause to take the enemy unawares in their camp. Success will be short-lived: hear their tragic end in Latin and follow in English here. the 16th century enamelled illustration is by the Master of the Aeneid Legend.
Aeneas’s enemy Juno has duped his tired and travel-worn Trojan women into setting fire to his ships while he holds rich funeral games in Sicily for the anniversary of the death of his father Anchises. Juno and the women hope that he will give up his destiny in Italy and settle where he is. In today’s extract here, Aeneas calls on Jupiter to save the ships in the nick of time. Help is granted: only the old, tired and timid will stay and Aeneas will go on to Italy with a smaller but more select band composed solely of the young, brave and battle-ready. In the illustration, Claude Lorrain (1600 – 1682) uses the incident as an excuse for a charmingly mysterious seascape.
Here is a selection of poetry about the Gods – in a variety of moods. First, Jupiter, King of the Gods, in the mood for love as Europa’s bull. After Continue Reading
As the body of Prince Pallas is returned to his father, Aeneas performs the due rites for his soldiers who have fallen in the battle against Turnus and the Latins. Hear the story in Virgil’s original Latin and follow in John Dryden’s classic English translation here.