The Aeneid

by Virgil

She rages in helpless frenzy, blazing through the entire city, raving like some Maenad driven wild when the women shake the sacred emblems, when the cyclic orgy, shouts of “Bacchus!” fire her on and Cithaeron echoes round with maddened midnight cries.

Thanks to you, my sense of honor is gone, my one and only pathway to the stars, the renown I once held dear. In whose hands, my guest, do you leave me here to meet my death?

There’s no faith left on earth!

He was washed up on my shores, helpless, and I, I took him in, like a maniac let him share my kingdom, salvaged his lost fleet, plucked his crews from death.

I won’t hold you, I won’t even refute you—go!— strike out for Italy on the winds, your realm across the sea.

So Dido pleads and 550 so her desolate sister takes him the tale of tears again and again. But no tears move Aeneas now. He is deaf to all appeals. He won’t relent.

His will stands unmoved. The falling tears are futile.

Then, terrified by her fate, tragic Dido prays for death, sickened to see the vaulting sky above her.

Now from its depths she seemed to catch his voice, the words of her dead husband calling out her name

So, driven by madness, beaten down by anguish, Dido was fixed on dying, working out in her mind the means, the moment.

She’d safeguard the boughs in the sacred grove and ply the dragon with morsels dripping loops of oozing honey and poppies drowsy with slumber.

With her spells she vows to release the hearts of those she likes, to inflict raw pain on others— to stop the rivers in midstream, reverse the stars in their courses, raise the souls of the dead at night and make earth shudder and rumble underfoot

I must obliterate every trace of the man, the curse, and the priestess shows the way!”

to top it off she lays his arms and the sword he left and an effigy of Aeneas, all on the bed they’d shared, for well she knows the future. Altars ring the pyre.

Such terrible grief kept breaking from her heart as Aeneas slept in peace on his ship’s high stern, bent on departing now, all tackle set to sail.

Woman’s a thing that’s always changing, shifting like the wind.” With that he vanished into the black night.

let him grovel for help and watch his people die 770 a shameful death! And then, once he has bowed down to an unjust peace, may he never enjoy his realm and the light he yearns for, never, let him die before his day, unburied on some desolate beach!

Shore clash with shore, sea against sea and sword against sword—this is my curse—war between all our peoples, all their children, endless war!”

the queen lay down and spoke her final words: “Oh, dear relics, dear as long as Fate and the gods allowed, receive my spirit and set me free of pain. 810 I have lived a life. I’ve journeyed through the course that Fortune charted for me. And now I pass to the world below, my ghost in all its glory. I have founded a noble city, seen my ramparts rise. I have avenged my husband, punished my blood-brother, our mortal foe. Happy, all too happy I would have been if only the Trojan keels had never grazed our coast.” She presses her face in the bed and cries out: “I shall die unavenged, but die I will! So— so—I rejoice to make my way among the shades. 820 And may that heartless Dardan, far at sea, drink down deep the sight of our fires here and bear with him this omen of our death!”

All at once, in the midst of her last words, her women see her doubled over the sword, the blood foaming over the blade, her hands splattered red.

Then Juno in all her power, filled with pity for Dido’s agonizing death, her labor long and hard, sped Iris down from Olympus to release her spirit wrestling now in a deathlock with her limbs.

So Iris, glistening dew, comes skimming down from the sky on gilded wings, trailing showers of iridescence shimmering into the sun, and hovering over Dido’s head, declares: “So commanded, I take this lock as a sacred gift to the God of Death, and I release you from your body.”

Two bowls of unmixed wine he tips on the ground and two of fresh milk, two more of hallowed blood, then scatters crimson flowers with this prayer: “Hail, my blessed father, hail again! I salute your ashes, your spirit and your shade—my father I rescued once, but all for nothing. Not with you 100 would it be my fate to search for Italy’s shores and destined fields and, whatever it may be, the Italian river Tiber.”

Then the son of Anchises summons all together, true to custom. A herald’s ringing voice declares Cloanthus the victor and Aeneas crowns his brows with fresh green laurel. He presents the prizes to each ship’s crew, some wine, three bulls of their choice and a heavy silver bar and for each ship’s captain lays on gifts of honor.

“Your prizes are yours,” said captain Aeneas firmly, “they all stand fast, young comrades. No one alters our ranked list of winners now. Just let me offer a consolation prize to a luckless man, a friend without a fault.” And with that, 390 he handed Salius a giant African lion’s hide, a great weight with its shaggy mane and gilded claws.

Entellus returns: “My love of glory, my pride still holds strong, not beaten down by fear. It’s slow old age, that’s what dogs me now. My blood runs cold, my body’s chill, played out. But if I were now the man I was, full of the youth that spurs that bantam there, cocksure and strutting so— I’d need no bribe of a prize bull to bring me out. I have no use for trophies.”

Enough. Aeneas, the good captain, could not permit the fury, the blind rage of Entellus to rampage any longer. He stopped the fight, pulled the battle-weary Dares out of the bout and consoled him with these words: “Poor man, what insanity’s got you in its grip? You’re up against superhuman power, can’t you see? The will of God’s against you. Bow to God.”

Overflowing with pride, glorying over his bull the old champion shouts: “Son of the goddess, see, you Trojans too, what power I had when I was in my prime, and from what a death you rescue Dares now!”

Seven summers gone since Troy went down and still we’re swept along, measuring out each land, each sea— how many hostile rocks and stars?—scanning an endless ocean, chasing an Italy fading still as the waves roll us on. Here is our brother Eryx’ land.

The ghost of Cassandra came to me in dreams, the prophetess gave me flaming brands and said: ’Look for Troy right here, your own home here!’ Act now. No delay in the face of signs like these. You see? Four altars to Neptune. The god himself is giving us torches, building our courage, too.”

Now they are dumbstruck, driven mad by the sign they scream, some seize fire from the inner hearths, 730 some plunder the altars—branches, brushwood, torches, they hurl them all at once and the God of Fire unleashed goes raging over the benches, oarlocks, piney blazoned sterns. The ships are ablaze. The herald Eumelus runs the news to crowds wedged in the theater round Anchises’ tomb— even they can see the black cloud churn with sparks.

Despite all that, the flames, the implacable fire never quits its fury. Under the sodden beams the tow still smolders, reeking a slow, heavy smoke that creeps along the keels, the ruin eating into the hulls, and all their heroic efforts, showering water, get them nowhere. At once devoted Aeneas ripped the robe on his shoulders, called the gods for help and flung his hands in prayer: “Almighty Jove, if you still don’t hate all Trojans, 760 if you still look down with your old sense of devotion, still respect men’s labors, save our fleet from fire! Now, Father, snatch the slim hopes of the Trojans out of the jaws of death! Or if I deserve it, come, hurl what’s left of us down to death with all your angry bolts— overwhelm us here with your iron fist!”

Then old Nautes, the one man Tritonian Pallas taught, making him famous for his knowledge of her arts, 780 giving him answers for what the gods’ great rage might mean or what the march of Fate cried out for— Nautes speaks, consoling Aeneas with his counsel: “Son of Venus, whether the Fates will draw us on or draw us back, let’s follow where they lead.

Whatever Fortune sends, we master it all by bearing it all, we must!

So come, follow old Nautes’ good sound advice: choose your elite troops, your bravest hearts, and sail them on to Italy. There in Latium you 810 must battle down a people of wild, rugged ways. But first go down to the House of Death, the Underworld, go through Avernus’ depths, my son, to seek me, meet me there. I am not condemned to wicked Tartarus, those bleak shades, I live in Elysium, the luminous fields where the true and faithful gather. A chaste Sibyl will guide you there, once you have offered the blood of many pure black sheep. And then you will learn your entire race to come and the city walls that will be made your own. Now farewell. Dank Night wheels around 820 in mid-career, cruel Dawn breaks in the East, and I feel her panting stallions breathing near.”

Apart at the prow, Aeneas 860 takes his stand, crowned with a trim olive wreath, and raises a wine bowl high and scatters innards over the salt swell and tips out streams of wine.

But now Venus, her anguish mounting, goes to Neptune, pouring out her heart in a flood of lamentation: “Juno—her lethal rage, her insatiable spirit, Neptune, makes me stoop to every kind of prayer.

Now she stalks the bones, the ashes of murdered Troy!

But watch, the god with a bough drenched in Lethe’s dew and drowsy with all the river Styx’s numbing power shakes it over the pilot’s temples left and right and fight as he does, his swimming eyes fall shut.

Your naked corpse will lie on an unknown shore.”

bear the Sibyl’s answers through the air: 100 “You who have braved the terrors of the sea, though worse remain on land—you Trojans will reach Lavinium’s realm—lift that care from your hearts— but you will rue your arrival. Wars, horrendous wars, and the Tiber foaming with tides of blood, I see it all!

But never bow to suffering, go and face it, all the bolder, wherever Fortune clears the way.

If Orpheus could summon up the ghost of his wife, trusting so to his Thracian lyre and echoing strings; if Pollux could ransom his brother and share his death by turns, time and again traversing the same road up and down; if Theseus, mighty Hercules—must I mention them? I too can trace my birth from Jove on high.”

the Sibyl gave her answer: “Born of the blood of gods, Anchises’ son, man of Troy, the descent to the Underworld is easy. 150 Night and day the gates of shadowy Death stand open wide, but to retrace your steps, to climb back to the upper air— there the struggle, there the labor lies.

“Hidden deep in a shady tree there grows a golden bough, its leaves and its hardy, sinewy stem all gold, held sacred to Juno of the Dead, Proserpina.

No one may pass below the secret places of earth before he plucks the fruit, the golden foliage of that tree. As her beauty’s due, Proserpina decreed this bough 170 shall be offered up to her as her own hallowed gift.

Lift up your eyes and search, and once you find it, duly pluck it off with your hand. Freely, easily, all by itself it comes away, if Fate calls you on.

“One thing more I must tell you. A friend lies dead—oh, you could not know— 180 his body pollutes your entire fleet with death while you search on for oracles, linger at our doors. Bear him first to his place of rest, bury him in his tomb.

“If only that golden bough would gleam before us now on a tree in this dark grove! Since all the Sibyl foretold of you was true, Misenus, all too true.”

No sooner said than before his eyes, twin doves chanced to come flying down the sky and lit on the green grass at his feet. His mother’s birds— the great captain knew them and raised a prayer of joy: “Be my guides! If there’s a path, fly through the air, 230 set me a course to the grove where that rich branch shades the good green earth. And you, goddess, mother, don’t fail me in this, my hour of doubt!”