Publii Vergili Maronis

AeneisChristianâ Sophiâ Gratiâ Cappellâ

ANGLICE REDDITAIn Civitate de Dono Dei in partibus Scotorum

Deo adiuvante die xii mensis februarii AD mmxivincepta

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Liber Primus

My song is of the army and the manwho first reached Italy from the fall of Troy, driven, upon the winds of fortune, here:coming to Latium's shores as the wreck of storms,broken on sea and land by the gods above,whose hands were forced by Juno’s restless hate. And many a battle he underwent, beforethe day came when he founded here The City,settled his gods in Latium; from whence derives our Latin race, our lords of Alba;from whence arise the walls of most high Rome.

Remind me, Muse. Remind me of the cause—of what divinity slighted—of what hurtthe Queen of Heaven felt, that she should putthrough all those trials a man of such pure heart,should vex him with such labours. Can it be? 10A goddess, acting so vindictively?

Once upon a time there was a city.Phoenicians built it; Carthage it was called,opposite the Italian Tiber’s mouthbut far away; and rich, and fierce in war.They say that Juno, Queen of Heaven, heldthis Tyrian Carthage dearest of all shrines,dearer indeed than she holds Samos now;there lived her chariot, the symbols of her host.Juno’s wish—if the Fates allowed her to—was to build a kingdom there to rule all men; this she dreamed, and already moved to it.But she had heard that a race of Trojan bloodwould one day overturn her citadel. 20A people who, being king over themselves,ruled many others too, with warlike pridewould ruin Carthage: that was the Fates’ design.

To ward this destiny off, and not forgettingthe love she’d shown the Greeks in Troy’s long war—nor had her older grievance’ bitter grudge yet faded from her heart; deep in her mind

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still ached the day when Paris, forced to choose,had spurned her and Athene, chosen Venus;still hated Trojans, still recalled with shameZeus’ blue-eyed Troy-boy, golden Ganymede—burning with this and more would Saturn’s daughterspread wide across the seas the wrecks of Troy:what even Achilles had not smashed, she’d break;

30she’d drive them far from Latium, and for yearsthey’d ride the seas, fate’s fools, undone, unhomed;that’s what it would cost to found our Rome.

Hardly, then, had the Trojan fleet passed Sicily—their prows like ploughs, their sails filled full with joy—when Juno, nursing still her eternal wound,said to herself: “So I must give up in defeat?Can’t keep Troy’s prince from taking over my land?Why no! The Fates forbid it—they who letAthene drown the Greeks and burn their fleet,

40for no more cause than Aias’ maddened guilt. Athene could launch Jove’s lightning from the clouds, Athene could toss their ships on the seething storm,suck Aias up in a water-spout, impale himthrough fire-exhaling lungs on a blade of rock—while I who have the goddesses’ precedence,enthroned as Jupiter’s sister, wife, and queen,cannot in all my years of war wear downone single human tribe. Who’ll worship me?What prayers at Juno’s altar can there be?”

With words like these and a burning heart did Juno50

make her way to the fatherland of storms,to the pregnant womb of the gales that come from the south:to Aeolia, where in his dark sea-caveAeolus, king of the winds, holds back the blasts,keeps imprisoned the bellowing hurricanes.And they rebel at his constraint; they growlagainst his gates like a hillside that will fall;but still Aeolus sits on his high throne, still holds sway, and smooths their tantrums down;

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without him they would carry off the land,they’d scatter sea and sky into thin air.That was why the All-Father hid them there: 60foresaw their chaos, piled a mountain on them,set King Aeolus over them to rule,who knew from Jove when he should give commandto rein them in, and when should stay his hand.

So now to Aeolus this was Juno’s plea:“Aeolus! The gods’ father, king of the world,empowered you with the winds that raise the seasand lull them down again. And now a hostile race,a race I hate, sails the Tyrrhenian Sea,bear in their holds the defeated gods of Troy. So raise your storms now, swamp their drowning decks,scatter ships and corpses far across the deep. 70Aeolus, I have twenty-four nymph-maids,all of them beauties, Deiopea the best;I’ll name her to you as your permanent wife,so she’ll spend all her years with you for this,and make you father of more lovely nymphs.”To which Aeolus: “Your part, Juno queen, is just to express your wish; my part to do it. Whatever I may rule is by your gift; you talked Jove round, you won for me a seatat the high Olympian feasts; it’s by your handthat I have skies of hurricane to command.”

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He spoke, and struck with the butt-end of his trident,breaking a hole in the hollow mountain-wall;the winds surged through the gap, a charging army,filling the world with turmoil of the air.They brood upon the sea—East wind, West Wind,the African wind that brings the sudden squall—rolling together huge combers on the shores.Men shout alarms, taut cables hum and strain.The swift-come clouds wipe out the sky and daybefore their eyes; black night begins its watch.And then from north and south the thunders roar,

90lightning-fires shake and shake the air,

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and everything they see says “death at hand”.

At once Aeneas is shaking with—the cold.Groaning and raising his joined hands to the stars,he speaks these words: “Three times, four times better to fall at bay before the walls of Troy,before the eyes of the Trojan senators.Diomedes, you bravest of the Greeks,you should have felled me in our Trojan fields: your sword-hand should have shed my blood right there,where Hector was felled by Achilles’ javelin,and Jove’s huge son Sarpedon by Patroclus;

100 there where the Simois, our river of home,spins round their shields and helms and their brave bones.”

While he’s still wailing this, the fierce North Windsmashes across the sail. Seas rise to the stars,the oars snap, and the prow falls down the wind;she lies upon her beam before a hill,a towering steep of water. Of his fleet,some hang upon the wave-crests high above,some glimpse the sea-bed in the gaping troughs;the sand of shoals is mixed into the air.The South Wind twists three ships on a hidden reef, wide back of rocks lurking just below the surface,the rocks Italians call The Chopping-Block.

110Three more the East Wind drives into the shallowswhere Sirte’s quicksands wait—O pitiful sight—and they’re dragged down to graves beneath the gravel.One ship—his Lycians on it, under Orontes—founders before his eyes, breached from asternby one huge wave; face down, the faithful masterfloats overboard, turning circles around his head.And the sea makes the ship revolve too; three timesit is driven around the edge of the whirlpool that takesit. A few tiring swimmers still show in the empty space,and weapons that float, and planks, and the treasures ofTroy.

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Ilioneus’s ship is next to sink,120

strong though it is; and then sinks brave Achates’, then Abas’s; grandfather Aletes’is taken as well by the storm; now every shipbreaks up as its timbers give way to the enemy tide:parting, they let chaos in through their broken sides.

Meanwhile was Neptune, great god of the sea,troubled in his depths. He saw his oceantumbled to one great rumour of unease,he felt the storms go loose, and the cold deepswhen they emptied their still reservoirs of calm;so, quietly, he broke the surface, and looked forth.What meets his eye is Aeneas’ broken fleetscattered across the deep, and men of Troyborne down by the waves and the ruin of heaven;and what he sees is his sister Juno’s hand.

130He summons West and East Winds, and he says: “Do you presume this far upon your birth?Lack my authority, and yet you dareconfuse the earth and heavens, stir such masses?Without me, you—but first, to calm these storms.Later on I will make you pay for thissome other way; but now, be off, and quick.Go, tell your king that he’s not king of the sea;the Fates willed the trident-sceptre rule to me.His are the coastal crags where you Winds’ menacelurks in its dwelling. Let him strut that hall,

140encage all the winds in his jail, keep watch on them all.” So Neptune speaks, and faster than his speechbrings peace to the tumid waters, scatters the clouds.In sunshine now his servant Cymothoe,tugging together with Triton, pulls the shipsto free them from the reefs, while Neptune’s trident,rising, commands release of the quicksands’ grip;weightless his chariot rides on the chastened waves.As when sedition starts in some great people,

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the nameless mob seethe rage in the heat of their hearts, and arson and rocks take flight, the munitions of fury—

150and then some statesman of real name and merit,pure in heart, perhaps arises to them,they see, fall silent, stand to hear his words;his eloquence wins them and he soothes their mood:so then the ocean’s anarchy died downthe moment that the Father of the Seas,gazing ahead on his trail across clear skies,wheeled in his course and let his horses run.  Aeneas’ exhausted people made for the coast,the nearest they could see; which was Africa.They found a harbour deep within an inletbarred by a blocking isle that takes the brunt

160of every ocean swell, that breaks the blastof towering typhoons into trivial ripples.On either side tall cliffs, twin pinnacles threaten the very heavens; under them,the wide-flowing waters keep their smiling peace;shining woods line the shores down to the sea,a black grove hangs above it, bristling.Below the brow that fronts it across the bay, below the pressing fall of those high cliffs,a cave hides carved stone seats and a clear fountain.Here live the nymphs, and in their still sea-poola tired ship may sit at rest unanchored:even unroped, unstaked, it will not drift.This is the place to which Aeneas creeps

170with—from his whole fleet—only seven ships.His scrambling Trojans, longing for dry land,at once declare their lordship of wet sandwith salt-sting-wounded limbs stretched on the strand.

Then Achates is the first whose drying flintsparks fire into leaves that he feeds with tinderuntil the kindling blossoms into flame.Still dazed by a weariness with everything,

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they find their rusted tools, their sea-rotted grain,and parch and grind with the fire and the stone.

While they do that, Aeneas climbs to the peak;looks far across the sea for any signof Antheus or his Phrygian biremes, tossed,as it might be, by some last lingering squall;or Capys; or the coat of arms of Caicusperhaps still blazoned on some proud high stern.But sees no ship at all. What is in sightis deer that pick their way from the woods to the sands;three stags at first, and then the whole herd after,long lines of grazers moving down the dell. So now he stands, takes hold his bow, his arrows,fletched and tensed by his faithful man Achates;and first he downs the prime stags, their proud headscrowded and branched with antler-coronets;

190then aims into the herd, and drives them allby his archery into groups along the glades. Nor does he rest his bow—in this war victor—till seven great forms have fallen to the ground,one feast for every ship still in his fleet.Then back he goes to the shore to divide his spoils; and, with them, he and his crew share the casked-up wine,Acestes’ gift when they sailed from Sicily’s shores.And when hunger is met, then Aeneas speaks words that restore:

“My partners in this misfortune—and misfortune’s not new—you survivors of worse, know that God will give end to this too.You’ve outfaced Scylla’s rage before now, you’ve escaped

200from rock-smashing Charybdis’ towering cliffs and capes;recall your brave forces and send your sad fears away.Even all this will make a good memory—one day.Through all changing chances, for all that misfortune may test,

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still our course holds for Latium, our fated rest.There is the site to rebuild the lost kingdom of Troy.Endure then. Live on, for the days that are coming with joy.”

So his voice says. He, ill with enormous cares,pretends hope in his face and presses his deep woe down.Dumb-lipped his people dress venison for their feast;

200they skin off the hides from the ribs, exposing the guts;slice muscle to steaks, impaling the meat on skewers;their cooking-pots, ranged on the sand, they service with fire.Then food restores their strength, as on the grassthey stretch and eat rich meat and vintage wine. Then once their hunger’s gone, and the trestles cleared,they talk at length of the friends that now are missing,torn between hope and fear. Should they think them alive?Can they still call their names, or are their sufferingsover?True-hearted Aeneas weeps first for his fierce Orontes,

220then for Amycus lost, for Lycus unsaved;weeps too for Gyas the bold, Cloanthus the brave.

His tears were scarce dry when Jove, from the highest heaven,looked down on the seas that flew with the sails of men,looked down on the men-crowded coasts and men-thronged lands—then stopped, and switched his attention full to Carthage.To him as he turned all his troubles in his great heart—her glistening eyes sadder than his, or than Aeneas’—now Venus spoke: “You rule with imperial sway,with eternal thunder, all men’s and gods’ affairs.

230What can my child Aeneas have done against you?What can his Trojans have done, after all their losses?And yet—for Italy’s sake—they are banned the world.

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You know what you promised would come from them, with the years:one day the Romans, Teucer’s returning race,a ruling race come to power over land and sea—you promised this, father. What was it changed your mind?At least I could think of the future as I mourned Troy, its tragic wreck—and balance bad fates against good.But now Troy’s survivors are hunted by Troy’s same doom.

240 Jupiter king, what end will you give them of this?You let Antenor, minister of Priam,slip away safe right through the midst of the Greeks,hide in the bays of Illyria, conceal himselffar from their eyes where the Adriatic ends,where the Po’s floods burst on the sea from the hillsthrough its nine mouths that bury the fields in silt. And there, undeterred, Antenor founded Padua,found his Trojans a home, restored their name,and planted the weapons of Troy; so now in peacehe passes his time, in quiet undisturbed. But we, heaven’s children, beckoned into its heights,

250our ships all lost—the shame! –We are betrayedby the wrath of one alone; by her one whimwe must lie far from where our Italy lies.Is this our recrowning? This our true hearts’ prize?”

With that sweet look of his that clears the skies,with the laugh that germinates both gods and men,Jove tasted his daughter’s kiss, and then replied:

“Venus of Kythira, spare your fears.Know that your children’s destiny is fixed;you’ll see The City, you will see Lavinium;within its promised walls you will exaltAeneas, great of heart, up to the stars.

260On none of this has Jupiter’s judgement swerved.I’ll tell you—now this worry bites your heart,I’ll unwind the mysteries hidden by our fates:On Italy Aeneas will bring huge wars, beat down fierce tribes, and be himself the founder

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of the laws and of the walls that save his people. Three summers will see him King in Latium;he’ll last three winters after the Rutilians’ defeat.But his boy Ascanius, who now bears the nameof Iulus—changed from Ilus after Troy—will reign for thirty circuits of the monthsin his imperial might, and will remove

270from a Lavinian throne to Alba Longa.At Alba Longa for three hundred yearsthe race of Hector will sustain the crown;and then the priestess-queen of war-god Mars,heavy with Mars’s child, shall bear him twins.And then will Romulus, in wolf-skin clad,the skin of his wolf-mother, move his race:the walls of Mars he’ll found, and call his peopleRomans: after “Romulus”, his own name.And on these Romans I impose no limit—none to their power, none to its length of days;what I give them is empire without end. Believe me, fierce Juno, though she now spreads reign of terror over land and sea,

280will change her views for better, and with mewill nurture Romans as the lords of all,the togaed people. Such is my decree.And there will come a time in the turning yearswhen the lords of Troy’s descendants will press downthe Greek lands and the lands of famed Mycenae, make slaves of them, and rule over beaten Argos.From that fair Trojan source there will be borna Caesar whose domain will match the dry land,whose fame reach to the stars: Augustus, hewhose name is also Julius, after Iulus.This Augustus you, when all your cares are past,will greet in heaven, bowed with orient spoils;and he will be a god to pray to too.

290In his time, bitter war will be put aside;the era will grow gentle. White-haired Faith,hearth-goddess Vesta, Remus and his brother—they’ll be the law-givers. War’s dire gates,

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dreadful with iron and with shuttered bars,will shut at last, the while barbarian ragepassing into the City, sat on his own piled swords,from chains of unbreakable bronze roars his bloody wrath,his hands bound behind his back in a hundred knots.”

Jove spoke this, and sent Mercury down from heaven,his messenger, to open to Aeneasthe welcome of the new-raised walls of Carthage,the welcome of the Carthaginians’ queen,lest she, not knowing fate, should bid them leave.

300Swift Mercury fled down the beating air,great wings his oars, and came to the Libyan coast;soon at the god’s command the fierce hearts of Dido’s people settled to softer work.And she, above the rest, in mildness giveskindness and mercy to these fugitives.

But Aeneas of the pure heart, who broods all nighton all the cares of kingship, with first lightof the kindly dawn, remembers he is boundto go and look out all these strange new places,to find what shores he’s been borne to by the wind,what humans or what beasts inhabit herewhere all seems wild, and tell his friends his findings.So he hides the boats in a hollow of the woods

310under a rock overhang, where they’re enclosedby the bristling shadows of the dark-filled woods; he goes his way with no company but Achatesand a pair of wide-tongued spears in his hands.

And in the middle wood his mother meets him,faced and dressed as a maiden warrior,a soldier-girl of Sparta with her round shield,or like the Thracian girl Harpalycewho outruns horses and the stream-god Hebrus.For her bow was on her shoulder, hanging ready;the huntress’ hair was flowing with the winds;

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her knees were bare, her flowing skirts girt up.320

And she spoke first: “You young men!” she cried out, “Tell me, perhaps my sister’s passed your way?Perhaps with her quiver on over a lynx-spot hide,or crying on the hunt of a foam-flecked boar?” Thus Venus spoke, and thus her son replied: “I’ve heard no sister of yours, nor have I seen…but how to call you, Madam? Since your face is not a mortal face, nor is your voice;you are a goddess, surely? Phoebus’ sister,is that you? Or one of the race of the nymphs?But be our good fortune, lady; spare us toil,

330whoever you may be, and tell us this:what heaven are we under—now—at last?what shore of all the world are we cast onto?We wander blindly, unaware of where,of whose land we’re borne on by winds and tides. Tell us, then watch us blood your altar’s sides.”

But Venus replied, “Sir, truly, I have no such airs;to wear the quiver is just the way that we dress here, we Tyrian girls, with our high-laced hunting boots. Here is the realm of Carthage, Agenor’s town;we border the Libyans, a people uncowed by war.Dido’s our queen; she came here from Phoenicia

340to escape her brother. The pain is now long-aged,the tale long-done; but this is it in brief.

“Dido’s husband was Sychaeus, rich in lands,and Dido loved him with heart overflowing; her father gave her, innocent bride, to himin costly ceremony. But her brother,Pygmalion king of Tyre, being huge with crimesbeyond all others—madness intervened.Pygmalion could see nothing but his money,for the sake of his money secretly murdered Sychaeus,

350a blasphemy against the gods and his sister’s love.

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Long he concealed his own guilt, and gulled Didowith empty hopes that Sychaeus was—elsewhere.But she dreamed the truth: her unburied husband’s imageraising to her his pale and revenant face,exposing the altar’s violation by the knife,unveiling the secret sin of Pygmalion’s house. The ghost said Speed your flight and leave your land.As a help to escape he told her where treasure was buried,a burden of silver and gold to all unknown.Dido, aghast, made ready her flight and her friends,

360united by hate of a tyrant or sharp fear;some ships that were ready by chance, they commandeered;they cargoed those ships with grasping Pygmalion’s gold;it was floated off on the sea by their captain-queen.And they found this place, where now you see arisetall walls and the springing citadel of Carthage;they bought ‘as much as one bull’s hide could enclose’—sharp-cut in one long thin strip—and called it Byrsa.

“But now, who are you? And what land are you from,And where is it you’re going?”

At this he sighed,370

and dragging the words from his deepest heart replied:

“Divine girl, if I told you our whole story, if we made time for all our annals of loss,the night would close down the day before we were done.From ancient Troy—if by chance old Troy’s namehas come to you in rumour—we by chance of stormwere cast in confusion of waters on Libya’s shores.And I am pure-hearted Aeneas, whose household gods,snatched from the sack of Troy, ride in my fleet;my name is not unknown at Olympian heights.My destined fatherland I seek in Italy;there I will found a Jovian master-race.

380I went onto the Phrygian sea with twenty ships,my goddess mother showing me my way, following where the fates ordained for me;

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hardly have seven survived the waves and the wind.And I myself, with neither name nor wealth,wander the wastes of Africa, since bothAsia and Europe alike have now rejected me…”

But Venus would hear no more of her son’s woes.Breaking in on his moans, she spoke like this:

“Whoever you may be, you live and breathe; you’ve reached the town of Tyre; I don’t believeyou’d get this far if hated by the gods.So just keep going. Boldly present yourself in Carthage, at the queen’s doors, Dido’s gate.For I can tell you of your friends’ return,

390your ships restored and driven into portby changed-tune friendly winds; this I can tell,unless my parents’ prophet-lessons fail. Look up and see the swans come, twelve of them,rejoicing in one fleet-line, now untroubled by the Jovian eagle harrying them in clear skies;now their line of descending grace alights,seems some are landing, some watch others land;now they return, now they rejoice with wing-flaps,one flock that rings the north and makes its song.Not otherwise your ships and your folk in themare either near or in safe port received.

400So just keep going where your path may lead.”

So Venus spoke, and as she turned away the rosy bloom of her sweet neck glowed with light,the fragrance of the immortals in her hair, the sway of her raiment rippling to her feet,the feet whose gait said goddess beyond mistaking. Aeneas knew his mother then at last,and as she fled he followed her with his voice:

“So many times you too so cruelly toywith your son—your son—these tricksterish deceits!Why won’t you let me put my hand in yours?Why can’t I talk with you in open talk?”

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Such was his grievance as he turned to the city. 410

But Venus sealed in mist him and Achates:the goddess poured a thick covering cloud around,lest any see or lay a finger on them,delay their steps, or ask them why they’d come;while she herself on high returns to Paphos,revisits with delight her own abode,the place of her temple, where a hundred shrinesare hot with Sabaean incense, bright with new blooms.

Meanwhile the Trojans take the path they’re shown.This leads them to the hill hulked over the townthat looks down and across to its new towers.

420From there Aeneas wonders at it all:broad halls where hovels were, a harbour’s bustle;he wonders at the even-levelled roads.Here Dido’s Tyrians work. They are building wallsfrom boulders they roll themselves to the citadel’s height, or picking where they themselves will live and plough;they are choosing their laws and consuls and their gravesenate; or they are digging their harbour, or laying deepthe foundations for their city’s theatre, cutting its mighty proscenium out of the cliff.They were like a beehive in the early summer

430who labour, intent, where the sun-blossomed meadow’s in bloom,who drive forth their offspring to learn the work of thebee,who cram thick the comb and the stretching cell with honey,who pass on the honey to others, or fall into ranks to banish the idle drones from the working swarm;the urge of their work loads their honey with fragrance of thyme.“How lucky are those whose walls are already built high,”

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says Aeneas to himself, looking down on the rooftops of Carthage. And he finds his way in, cloaked in (miraculous) cloud;hidden, unseen, he melts into the Tyrian crowd.

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A shade-blessed grove there was within the city;when they first arrived, the tempest-tossed Phoeniciansdiscovered there the sign of Juno to them,the noble warhorse-head that prophesiedthey’d be no common warriors, see no famine.And in that place was Sidon’s princess, Dido,inaugurating Juno’s towering shrine,full of offerings and the goddess’ presence,where gates of bronze rose above mounting stairs,where bronze-sheathed beams held up the mighty roofs,where the very hinges swung with the sound of bronze.And in this grove, for the first time, something new

450that lenienced his fears, that made him riskthe hope all might be well, his fortunes mend.Attending on the queen, he lifts his eyesto this and that detail of the mighty shrine, lost in wonder at their wealth and work and skill—then spies, set in a frieze, the wars of Troy,the fights that fame has published to the world,and Priam and Menelaus and Agamemnon,and Achilles in his wrath against both sides.

This stops him dead. His half-wept question is“Achates, can a place be left on earth,is anywhere untouched by our Troy’s fall?

460Oh, Priam! Even here your fame is prized!Life means tears, mortality touches our minds.Yet shed your fear, Achates. Be bold now;they know who we are. That will work our good somehow.” With words like these he gluts his soul on it,the lifeless work of art; his tears flowin flood-streams down his face; he groans and groans.For he stands looking how, round the city’s walls,

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here it was Greeks who fled from Trojan slaughter,there his own people fleeing the charioteer,crested Achilles poised high above the rout.And close to these, he weeps to see againthe argent equipage of Rhesus’ camp,

470brave cavalry marching in to lift Troy’s siege—how their silver tent-silks suddenly spread with scarlet,burst in their sleep by Diomedes’ raping sword.He spared only Rhesus’ horses. He led them awaynever to be watered by Xanthus or stabled in Troy.

And Troilus, armour-stripped, boy come to grief,helpless child with no chance against Achilles: now his horses drag him behind his chariot, hands trapped in his reins, eyes to the empty sky,the rough ground beating at his back and neck,his hair marred in the dirt, his useless spearscratching its harmless furrow into the earth.

And all this time the women of Troy were going—their hair let down, the totem in their hands,

480their flat palms beating at their sobbing chests—to plead at the shrine of Athene, called “the Just”,while She turned her cold averted gaze to the dust;while Achilles dragged dead Hector thrice round Troyand mock-sold that mocked corpse of our golden boy.

And here Aeneas’ pains wring his heart’s depth most—when he sees war-glories wrung from the death of his friend,when the pleadings of Priam mean everything else is lost.

He is pictured there himself in the battle mêlée—where the Africans fight, led by Memnon in dark mail.There Penthesilea, amok, leads her bare-chest women,

490her warriors with curved shields, and outshines all,her golden war-belt tight below her breasts—

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a goddess of war, a woman who duels with men.

And while Aeneas of Troy looks on these wonders,rapt and amazed, unable to look away,  Dido of Carthage, fairest of womanly form,enters the temple with all her attendants in train.Like Diana the huntress adance by some wild river-course,or leading the mountain-spirits that flock to her over the ridges of Delos’ holy mount,

500bow on her shoulder, tallest of goddesses,delight to the heart of the mother bore her and Apollo—just so did Dido look as she joyfully steppedthrough the midst of her work, through her kingdom rising around her,and took her high-throned seat amid her guards,under the vaulted dome at the temple’s gate.There she sat to give judgement and law to Carthage;there she sat to assign due shares of the work;when Aeneas saw, amid the thick crowd approaching,Antheus and Sergestus and Cloanthus—

510his own men!—and other Trojans with them,his navy the storm had scattered across the coasts. Aeneas and Achates gaped alike,prostrate with fear and hope, and longing nowto join their hands again; but were too surprised.Still hidden within their bubble-cloud they watchto see how their men do. Where is their fleet?And what has brought them here? For every shiphas sent someone to this temple to ask for help.

Their entrance made, and leave to speak once given,520

Ilioneus, their eldest, calmly spoke: “Lady, queen, whom Jupiter grants the rightto found a city anew, and deal out justice,curbing the proud ambition of your folk—we wretched ones of Troy all winds have driven here to your doors—to beg you to forbidthe curse of fire from falling on our ships!

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Spare our true-hearted tribe; be close to us.We do not come as pirates here, to pillage,or carry plunder off to waiting ships; we haven’t the force. The beaten aren’t so proud.

There is a land Greek-speakers call Hesperia,530

an ancient land, one rich in vines and arms,once tilled by the Oenotrians; word now goesnew tribes rename it for their leader Italus. That way lay our course until Orion,rising in storm at the onset of flood-tide,drove us blind on a hidden bar of sand,scattered us wide among the wayless rocks through southern squalls, through the overfall of brine;we are the few who have made it to your shores.But what kind of men are here? What fatherland’sso savage as to allow it customary 540that we should meet with repulse on the shore,that even our landfall’s seen as an act of war?Perhaps you put no trust in mortals’ swords, yet you too hope that the gods track right and wrong.We had a king; Aeneas, no man juster,none purer-hearted, nor more lord of war.If the fates still preserve him, if he still drawsthe airs of heaven into his rescued lungs,if he does not yet rest with the uncaring dead,then we are not afraid, nor would you sufferhurt if you vied with him to favour us.And there are Trojan settlements in Sicily:there is Acestes, born of our famous blood.

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 Quassatam ventis liceat subducere classem,et silvis aptare trabes et stringere remos:si datur Italiam, sociis et rege recepto,tendere, ut Italiam laeti Latiumque petamus;555sin absumpta salus, et te, pater optume Teucrum,pontus habet Lybiae, nec spes iam restat Iuli,at freta Sicaniae saltem sedesque paratas,

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unde huc advecti, regemque petamus Acesten.”Talibus Ilioneus; cuncti simul ore fremebant560Dardanidae.

Tum breviter Dido, voltum demissa, profatur:“Solvite corde metum, Teucri, secludite curas.Res dura et regni novitas me talia coguntmoliri, et late finis custode tueri.565Quis genus Aeneadum, quis Troiae nesciat urbem,virtutesque virosque, aut tanti incendia belli?Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni,nec tam aversus equos Tyria Sol iungit ab urbe.Seu vos Hesperiam magnam Saturniaque arva,570sive Erycis finis regemque optatis Acesten,auxilio tutos dimittam, opibusque iuvabo.Voltis et his mecum pariter considere regnis;urbem quam statuo vestra est, subducite navis;Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.575Atque utinam rex ipse Noto compulsus eodemadforet Aeneas! Equidem per litora certosdimittam et Libyae lustrare extrema iubebo,si quibus eiectus silvis aut urbibus errat.” 

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His animum arrecti dictis et fortis Achates580et pater Aeneas iamdudum erumpere nubemardebant. Prior Aenean compellat Achates:“Nate dea, quae nunc animo sententia surgit?omnia tuta vides, classem sociosque receptos.Unus abest, medio in fluctu quem vidimus ipsi585submersum; dictis respondent cetera matris.”Vix ea fatus erat, cum circumfusa repentescindit se nubes et in aethera purgat apertum.Restitit Aeneas claraque in luce refulsit,os umerosque deo similis; namque ipsa decoram590caesariem nato genetrix lumenque iuventaepurpureum et laetos oculis adflarat honores:quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavoargentum Pariusve lapis circumdatur auro.Tum sic reginam adloquitur, cunctisque repente595improvisus ait: “Coram, quem quaeritis, adsum,Troius Aeneas, Lybicis ereptus ab undis.O sola infandos Troiae miserata labores,quae nos, reliquias Danaum, terraeque marisqueomnibus exhaustos iam casibus, omnium egenos,600urbe, domo, socias, grates persolvere dignasnon opis est nostrae, Dido, nec quicquid ubique estgentis Dardaniae, magnum quae sparsa per orbem.Di tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quidusquam iustitia est et mens sibi conscia recti,605praemia digna ferant. Quae te tam laeta tuleruntsaecula? Qui tanti talem genuere parentes?In freta dum fluvii current, dum montibus umbraelustrabunt convexa, polus dum sidera pascet,semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt,610quae me cumque vocant terrae.” Sic fatus, amicumIlionea petit dextra, laevaque Serestum,post alios, fortemque Gyan fortemque Cloanthum. 

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Obstipuit primo aspectu Sidonia Dido,casu deinde viri tanto, et sic ore locuta est:615“Quis te, nate dea, per tanta pericula casusinsequitur? Quae vis immanibus applicat oris?Tune ille Aeneas, quem Dardanio Anchisaealma Venus Phrygii genuit Simoentis ad undam?Atque equidem Teucrum memini Sidona venire620finibus expulsum patriis, nova regna petentemauxilio Beli; genitor tum Belus opimamvastabat Cyprum, et victor dicione tenebat.Tempore iam ex illo casus mihi cognitus urbisTroianae nomenque tuum regesque Pelasgi.625Ipse hostis Teucros insigni laude ferebat,seque ortum antiqua Teucrorum ab stirpe volebat.Quare agite, O tectis, iuvenes, succedite nostris.Me quoque per multos similis fortuna laboresiactatam hac demum voluit consistere terra.630Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.”Sic memorat; simul Aenean in regia ducittecta, simul divom templis indicit honorem.Nec minus interea sociis ad litora mittitviginti tauros, magnorum horrentia centum635terga suum, pinguis centum cum matribus agnos,munera laetitiamque dii.At domus interior regali splendida luxuinstruitur, mediisque parant convivia tectis:arte laboratae vestes ostroque superbo,640ingens argentum mensis, caelataque in aurofortia facta patrum, series longissima rerumper tot ducta viros antiqua ab origine gentis.

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Aeneas (neque enim patrius consistere mentempassus amor) rapidum ad navis praemittit Achaten,645Ascanio ferat haec, ipsumque ad moenia ducat;omnis in Ascanio cari stat cura parentis.Munera praeterea, Iliacis erepta ruinis,ferre iubet, pallam signis auroque rigentem,et circumtextum croceo velamen acantho,650ornatus Argivae Helenae, quos illa Mycenis,Pergama cum peteret inconcessosque hymenaeos,extulerat, matris Ledae mirabile donum:praeterea sceptrum, Ilione quod gesserat olim,maxima natarum Priami, colloque monile655bacatum, et duplicem gemmis auroque coronam.Haec celerans ita ad naves tendebat Achates. 

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At Cytherea novas artes, nova pectore versatConsilia, ut faciem mutatus et ora Cupidopro dulci Ascanio veniat, donisque furentem660incendat reginam, atque ossibus implicet ignem;quippe domum timet ambiguam Tyriosque bilinguis;urit atrox Iuno, et sub noctem cura recursat.Ergo his aligerum dictis adfatur Amorem:“Nate, meae vires, mea magna potentia solus,665nate, patris summi qui tela Typhoia temnis,ad te confugio et supplex tua numina posco.Frater ut Aeneas pelago tuus omnia circumlitora iactetur odiis Iunonis iniquae,nota tibi, et nostro doluisti saepe dolore.670Hunc Phoenissa tenet Dido blandisque moraturvocibus; et vereor, quo se Iunonia vertanthospitia; haud tanto cessabit cardine rerum.Quocirca capere ante dolis et cingere flammareginam meditor, ne quo se numine mutet,675sed magno Aeneae mecum teneatur amore.Qua facere id possis, nostram nunc accipe mentem.Regius accitu cari genitoris ad urbemSidoniam puer ire parat, mea maxima cura,dona ferens, pelago et flammis restantia Troiae:680hunc ego sopitum somno super alta Cytheraaut super Idalium sacrata sede recondam,ne qua scire dolos mediusve occurrere possit.Tu faciem illius noctem non amplius unamfalle dolo, et notos pueri puer indue voltus,685ut, cum te gremio accipiet laetissima Didoregalis inter mensas laticemque Lyaeum,cum dabit amplexus atque oscula dulcia figet,occultum inspires ignem fallasque veneno.”Paret Amor dictis carae genetricis, et alas690exuit, et gressu gaudens incedit Iuli.At Venus Ascanio placidam per membra quieteminrigat, et fotum gremio dea tollit in altosIdaliae lucos, ubi mollis amaracus illumfloribus et dulci adspirans complectitur umbra. 

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Iamque ibat dicto parens et dona Cupidoregia portabat Tyriis, duce laetus Achate.Cum venit, aulaeis iam se regina superbisaurea composuit sponda mediamque locavit.Iam pater Aeneas et iam Troiana iuventus700conveniunt, stratoque super discumbitur ostro.Dant famuli manibus lymphas, Cereremque canistrisexpediunt, tonsisque ferunt mantelia villis.Quinquaginta intus famulae, quibus ordine longamcura penum struere, et flammis adolere Penatis;705centum aliae totidemque pares aetate ministri,qui dapibus mensas onerent et pocula ponant.Nec non et Tyrii per limina laeta frequentesconvenere, toris iussi discumbere pictis.Mirantur dona Aeneae, mirantur Iulum710flagrantisque dei voltus simulataque verba,pallamque et pictum croceo velamen acantho.Praecipue infelix, pesti devota futurae,expleri mentem nequit ardescitque tuendoPhoenissa, et pariter puero donisque movetur.715Ille ubi complexu Aeneae colloque pependitet magnum falsi implevit genitoris amorem,reginam petit haec oculis, haec pectore totohaeret et interdum gremio fovet, inscia Dido,insidat quantus miserae deus; at memor ille720matris Acidaliae paulatim abolere Sychaeumincipit, et vivo temptat praevertere amoreiam pridem resides animos desuetaque corda.

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