Aeneid

But she had heard that a line was being drawn from Trojan blood that would one day overthrow the Tyrian citadel. From it would come a people ruling far and wide and proud in war, to bring destruction on Libya: so the Fates were spinning it. The daughter of Saturn feared this, and she remembered the old war she had fought at Troy, foremost of all, for her beloved Argos. Nor had the causes of her anger and her bitter resentments yet faded from her mind. Stored deep in her heart there remain the judgment of Paris and the insult to her slighted beauty, the line she hated, and the honors given to Ganymede, carried off. Inflamed by these as well, she kept far from Latium the Trojans, tossed over the whole sea, all that the Danaans and pitiless Achilles had left. For many years they wandered, driven by the fates, around all the seas. So great a labor it was to found the Roman people!note

They were scarcely out of sight of Sicily, joyfully setting sail for the open sea and churning the salt foam with their bronze prows, when Juno, nursing an everlasting wound deep in her breast, said to herself: “Am I, defeated, to give up what I began? Can I not turn the king of the Teucrians away from Italy? Of course: the fates forbid me! Could Pallas burn the Argive fleet and drown the men themselves in the sea, for the guilt and frenzy of one man, Ajax son of Oileus? She herself hurled Jupiter’s swift fire from the clouds, scattered their ships and churned up the sea with winds. And him, as he breathed out flames from his pierced breast, she caught up in a whirlwind and impaled on a jagged rock. But I, who walk as queen of the gods, both sister and wife of Jupiter, have been waging war with one people for so many years! Will anyone worship Juno’s divine power after this, or lay an offering as a suppliant on her altars?”note

Turning such thoughts over in her burning heart, the goddess came to Aeolia, the homeland of storm clouds, a place teeming with raging south winds. Here in a vast cave King Aeolus holds down the struggling winds and roaring storms under his rule, and curbs them with chains and prison. They, resentful, howl around the barriers, and the mountain rumbles loudly. Aeolus sits on his high citadel holding his scepter, soothing their passions and tempering their anger. If he did not, they would surely sweep off sea and lands and the depths of the sky in their rush and carry them away through the air. But the Almighty Father, fearing this, hid them away in dark caverns and piled a mass of high mountains on top of them. He gave them a king who, under a fixed compact, would know when to rein them in and when, at his command, to let the reins go slack. To him, then, Juno spoke these words as a suppliant:

“Aeolus, the father of gods and king of men has given you power to calm the waves and to raise them with the wind. A people hateful to me is sailing the Tyrrhenian sea, carrying Ilium and its conquered household gods into Italy. Strike fury into your winds, sink and overwhelm their ships, or drive them apart and scatter their bodies over the sea. I have twice seven nymphs of surpassing beauty. The loveliest of them, Deiopea, I will join to you in lasting marriage and make her your own, so that for such a service she may spend all her years with you and make you the father of beautiful children.” Aeolus answered her: “Your task, O queen, is to decide what you desire; it is my duty to carry out your commands.note

It is you who win me this kingdom, such as it is, you who win me my scepter and Jupiter’s favor. You grant me a place at the banquets of the gods and make me master of clouds and storms.” When he had said this, he turned his spear and struck the hollow mountain on its side. The winds, as if in battle formation, rush out where a gate has been given them and blow across the lands in a whirlwind. They swoop down on the sea, and together the East Wind and the South Wind, and the African wind thick with squalls, heave it up from its lowest depths and roll vast waves to the shores. The shouting of men follows, and the shrieking of ropes. Suddenly clouds snatch sky and daylight from the Teucrians’ eyes; black night broods on the sea. The heavens thunder, the air flashes with fire upon fire, and everything threatens the men with instant death.

At once Aeneas’ limbs go slack with cold. He groans, stretches both hands to the stars, and cries out: “O three and four times blessed, those whose lot it was to die before their fathers’ eyes beneath the high walls of Troy! O son of Tydeus, bravest of the Danaan people! Why could I not fall on the plains of Ilium and pour out this life by your right hand, where fierce Hector lies, struck down by the spear of Aeacus’ grandson, where huge Sarpedon lies, where the Simois seizes and rolls beneath its waves so many shields and helmets of men, and their brave bodies?” As he flings out such words, a gale shrieking from the north strikes the sail head-on and lifts the waves to the stars. The oars are shattered; then the prow swings round and gives its side to the waves; and after it comes a sheer mountain of water, piled high.note

Some hang on the crest of a wave; for others the yawning water lays bare the sea floor between the waves, and the surge seethes with sand. Three ships the South Wind snatches and hurls onto hidden rocks, the rocks in mid-sea that the Italians call the Altars, a huge ridge just under the surface. Three the East Wind drives from the deep onto the shallows and the Syrtes, a pitiful sight, dashes them on the shoals and walls them round with a bank of sand. One ship, which carried the Lycians and loyal Orontes, is struck on the stern, before Aeneas’ own eyes, by a huge sea from above. The helmsman is thrown out and rolled headlong; but the ship is spun three times round on the spot by the wave, and the swift whirlpool swallows it in the sea.note

“Has such confidence in your birth taken hold of you? Do you now dare, winds, without my divine assent, to throw sky and earth into confusion and raise such masses of water? You whom I—but it is better to calm the troubled waves. Later you will pay me for your crimes with a very different penalty. Hurry away, and tell your king this: the rule of the sea and the fierce trident were given by lot not to him but to me. He holds the monstrous rocks, your homes, East Wind. Let Aeolus swagger in that hall, and rule in the closed prison of the winds.” So he spoke, and quicker than his word he calmed the swollen seas, put the massed clouds to flight and brought back the sun.

Cymothoe and Triton, straining together, push the ships off the sharp rock; the god himself lifts them with his trident, opens the vast sandbanks, calms the sea, and glides over the tops of the waves on light wheels. As when, as often happens, a riot has broken out in a great crowd and the common mob is raging at heart, and already torches and stones are flying—frenzy supplies the weapons—then, if by chance they catch sight of a man of weight for his devotion and his services, they fall silent and stand still with ears pricked up, and he governs their spirits with his words and soothes their hearts: so all the crashing of the sea died down, as soon as the father, looking out over the waters and carried through the clearing sky, turned his horses and, flying on, gave free rein to his gliding chariot.note

Exhausted, Aeneas’ people strive to reach the nearest shores, and turn toward the coast of Libya. There is a place in a deep inlet: an island forms a harbor with the barrier of its sides, on which every wave from the deep breaks and divides into the far recesses of the bay. On either side vast cliffs and twin crags tower threateningly into the sky, and beneath their peaks the sheltered waters lie silent far and wide. Above, there is a backdrop of shimmering woods, and a dark grove looms overhead with bristling shade. Under the cliff face opposite is a cave of overhanging rocks; inside are fresh water and seats of living stone, a home of the nymphs. Here no cables hold tired ships, no anchor grips them with its hooked bite.

No ship is in sight; but he sees three stags wandering on the shore. Whole herds follow behind them, and the long line grazes through the valleys. He stopped there and seized in his hand the bow and swift arrows, the weapons that faithful Achates was carrying. First he lays low the leaders themselves, carrying their heads high with branching antlers, then the herd; and, driving the whole crowd with his shafts, he scatters them in confusion through the leafy woods. Nor does he stop until, victorious, he has stretched seven huge bodies on the ground, matching their number to his ships. From there he heads for the harbor and shares them among all his companions. Then he divides the wine that good Acestes had loaded into jars on the Trinacrian shore, the hero’s gift to them as they left, and soothes their grieving hearts with these words:note

“O comrades—for we are no strangers to troubles before now—O you who have suffered worse, the god will put an end to these too. You have come near Scylla’s rage and her deep-echoing rocks; you have known the rocks of the Cyclopes. Recall your courage and put away gloomy fear: perhaps one day it will please you to remember even this. Through varied misfortunes, through so many perils, we are making for Latium, where the fates show us a peaceful home; there it is ordained that the kingdom of Troy shall rise again. Endure, and save yourselves for better days.” Such were his words; and, sick with enormous cares, he feigns hope on his face and keeps his grief pressed deep in his heart. They set to work on the game and the coming feast. They strip the hides from the ribs and lay bare the flesh; some cut it into pieces and fix it, still quivering, on spits; others set bronze cauldrons on the shore and tend the fires.note

Then they restore their strength with food and, stretched out on the grass, fill themselves with old wine and rich venison. When the feast had driven away their hunger and the tables were cleared, they ask after their lost companions in long talk, wavering between hope and fear, unsure whether to believe them alive, or suffering the end and no longer able to hear when called. Above all, devoted Aeneas mourns, now the fate of fierce Orontes, now of Amycus, and to himself the cruel fate of Lycus, and brave Gyas, and brave Cloanthus. And now there was an end, when Jupiter, looking down from the height of heaven on the sea where sails fly, and the lands lying below, and the shores and the peoples far and wide, stood still at the summit of the sky and fixed his eyes on the kingdoms of Libya.

As he turned such cares over in his heart, Venus, sadder than usual, her shining eyes brimming with tears, speaks to him: “O you who rule the affairs of men and gods with eternal power and terrify them with your thunderbolt, what so great a crime could my Aeneas have committed against you, what could the Trojans have done, that after suffering so many deaths they find the whole world closed to them, because of Italy? Surely you promised that from them, as the years rolled on, the Romans would one day come, leaders from the restored blood of Teucer, who would hold the sea and all lands under their sway. What thought, father, has changed your mind? With this, indeed, I used to console myself for the fall of Troy and its sad ruin, weighing fate against opposing fate. Now the same fortune pursues these men, driven by so many disasters. What end of their hardships do you grant, great king?note

“Spare your fears, Cytherea: the fates of your people remain unmoved for you. You will see the city and the promised walls of Lavinium, and you will carry great-hearted Aeneas aloft to the stars of heaven. No thought has changed my mind. Your son—for I will speak, since this care gnaws at you, and unrolling the secrets of the fates further, I will reveal them—will wage a great war in Italy, crush fierce peoples, and establish a way of life and walls for his men, until the third summer has seen him reigning in Latium and three winters have passed since the Rutulians were subdued. But the boy Ascanius, who now has the added name Iulus—he was Ilus while the state of Ilium stood in its sovereignty—will complete with his rule thirty great circles of the rolling months. He will move the kingdom from its seat at Lavinium and fortify Alba Longa with great strength.note

Here for three hundred full years the kingdom will be ruled by Hector’s people, until Ilia, a royal priestess pregnant by Mars, gives birth to twins. Then Romulus, rejoicing in the tawny hide of the she-wolf who nursed him, will take up the line, found the walls of Mars, and call the people Romans after his own name. For them I have set no limits to their power, no end in time: I have given them empire without end. What is more, harsh Juno, who now wearies sea and earth and sky with fear, will change her counsels for the better and with me will cherish the Romans, masters of the world, the people of the toga. So it is decreed. An age will come, as the years glide by, when the house of Assaracus will crush Phthia and famous Mycenae into slavery and rule over conquered Argos. A Trojan Caesar will be born of noble origin, who will bound his empire with the Ocean, his fame with the stars—note

At once he carries out his orders, and the Carthaginians lay aside their fierce hearts as the god wills; above all, the queen takes on a peaceful spirit and a kindly mind toward the Teucrians. But devoted Aeneas, turning over many things through the night, resolved, as soon as kindly daylight came, to go out and explore the new region: to find out what shores the wind had brought him to, and who held them, men or wild beasts—for he sees that the land is untilled—and to report back to his companions what he had found. He hides the fleet in an arching recess of the woods beneath a hollowed cliff, closed in all around by trees and bristling shade. He himself sets out with Achates as his only companion, brandishing in his hand two spears with broad iron heads.

In the middle of the forest his mother came to meet him, with the face and dress of a girl, and the weapons of a girl—a Spartan girl, or like Harpalyce of Thrace, who tires out horses and outruns the swift Hebrus in her flight. For, as huntresses do, she had slung a handy bow from her shoulders and let her hair stream in the winds, her knee bare, the flowing folds of her dress gathered in a knot. She spoke first: “You there, young men, tell me if by chance you have seen one of my sisters wandering here, with a quiver at her belt and the hide of a spotted lynx, or pressing with shouts on the track of a foaming boar.” So spoke Venus; and Venus’ son answered her:note

“I have neither heard nor seen any of your sisters—but what shall I call you, maiden? For your face is not mortal, nor does your voice sound human. O goddess, surely—are you Phoebus’ sister, or one of the nymphs’ kin?—be kind to us, whoever you are, and lighten our hardship. Tell us under what sky, on what shores of the world, we are being tossed at last. Knowing nothing of the people or the places, we wander, driven here by the wind and the vast waves. Many a victim will fall for you before your altars by my right hand.” Then Venus said: “I do not think myself worthy of such an honor. It is the custom of Tyrian girls to carry a quiver and to bind their calves high with purple boots. It is the Punic kingdom you see, Tyrians and the city of Agenor; but the land around is Libyan, a people unconquerable in war.note

Dido holds power here; she came from the city of Tyre, fleeing her brother. Long is the story of the wrong, long its windings; but I will trace the chief points. Her husband was Sychaeus, the richest of the Phoenicians in land, and loved by the unhappy woman with a great love. Her father had given her to him untouched and joined them with the first omens of marriage. But the kingdom of Tyre was held by her brother Pygmalion, more monstrous in crime than anyone else. Between the two men came frenzy. Pygmalion, impious and blinded by love of gold, caught Sychaeus off guard before the altars and secretly struck him down with the sword, caring nothing for his sister’s love. He long concealed the deed, and wickedly, with many pretenses, deceived the heartsick, loving wife with empty hope. But in her dreams there came the very ghost of her unburied husband, lifting a face pale in strange ways. He laid bare the cruel altars and his breast pierced by the sword, and revealed all the hidden crime of the house.

“Goddess, if I went back to the very beginning and told it all, and you had leisure to hear the chronicle of our hardships, the Evening Star would close Olympus and lay the day to rest before I finished. We come from ancient Troy, if the name of Troy has perhaps reached your ears. We have been carried over many seas, and a storm, by its own chance, has driven us onto the shores of Libya. I am devoted Aeneas. I carry with me in my fleet the household gods snatched from the enemy, and my fame is known beyond the skies. I am seeking Italy, my fatherland; my line descends from Jupiter most high. I set out on the Phrygian sea with twenty ships, my goddess mother showing me the way, following the fates given to me. Barely seven are left, battered by the waves and the East Wind. I myself, unknown and in need, wander the deserts of Libya, driven out of Europe and Asia.” Venus would not let him lament any more, but broke in on his grief in mid-course:

“Whoever you are, I do not think the gods above hate you, as you breathe the air of life, you who have come to the Tyrian city. Only go on, and make your way from here to the queen’s threshold. For I bring you news that your comrades are restored and your fleet recovered, driven to safety when the north winds turned, unless my parents were false and taught me augury in vain. Look at those twelve swans rejoicing in their column. The bird of Jupiter, swooping from the heights of heaven, was scattering them across the open sky; now in a long line they seem either to be settling on the ground or to be looking down on the ground they have already taken. As they, safely returned, play with whirring wings, and have circled the sky in a flock and raised their song, just so your ships and your young men either hold the harbor or are entering its mouth under full sail. Only go on, and direct your steps where the path leads you.”

She spoke, and as she turned away her rosy neck shone. Her ambrosial hair breathed a divine fragrance from her head, her robe flowed down to her feet, and by her step she was revealed as a true goddess. When he recognized his mother, he followed her as she fled, with these words: “Why do you too, cruel one, so often mock your son with false appearances? Why may I not join my right hand to yours, and hear and answer in true voices?” With such words he reproaches her, and turns his steps toward the city walls. But Venus walled them in with dark air as they went, and the goddess poured a thick cloak of mist around them, so that no one could see them or touch them, or cause delay, or ask why they had come. She herself rises aloft and departs for Paphos, and joyfully revisits her home, where her temple stands and a hundred altars are warm with Sabaean incense and fragrant with fresh garlands.note

Meanwhile they hurried along the road where the path pointed the way. And now they were climbing the hill that looms large over the city and looks down on the citadel facing it. Aeneas marvels at the mass of buildings, once a cluster of huts; he marvels at the gates, the bustle, the paved streets. The Tyrians press on eagerly: some extend the walls, build up the citadel and roll stones up by hand; some choose a site for a house and mark it out with a furrow. [They choose laws and magistrates and a sacred senate.] Here some are digging out a harbor; here others are laying deep foundations for theaters, and cutting huge columns from the cliffs, lofty ornaments for stages to come. Such is the toil that keeps bees busy under the sun across the flowering countryside in early summer, when they lead out the full-grown young of their nation, or when they pack the liquid honey and swell the cells with sweet nectar, or take the loads of those coming in, or form a column and drive the drones, a lazy herd, away from the hives: the work seethes, and the fragrant honey smells of thyme.

“How fortunate you are, whose walls are already rising!” says Aeneas, and looks up at the city’s rooftops. Wrapped in the mist (wonderful to tell), he makes his way into their midst and mingles with the men, and no one sees him. In the middle of the city there was a grove, rich in shade. Here the Carthaginians, when they were first tossed ashore by waves and whirlwind, dug up from the ground the sign that royal Juno had shown them, the head of a spirited horse. By this sign their people would be outstanding in war and would live in plenty through the ages. Here Sidonian Dido was founding a huge temple to Juno, rich with offerings and with the goddess’s divine power. Its bronze threshold rose above steps, its beams were bound with bronze, and the hinges creaked on doors of bronze.note

In this grove, for the first time, something new appeared that eased his fear; here for the first time Aeneas dared to hope for safety and to trust more in his shattered fortunes. For while he surveys each thing beneath the huge temple, waiting for the queen, while he marvels at the city’s good fortune, at the handiwork of the artists, one rivaling another, and the toil of their works, he sees the battles of Ilium in order, the war already spread by rumor throughout the world: the sons of Atreus, and Priam, and Achilles, savage to both. He stopped, and weeping said, “What place now, Achates, what region on earth is not full of our hardships? Look: Priam! Here too honor has its rewards; there are tears for things, and mortal things touch the heart. Let go of your fears; this fame will bring you some kind of safety.”

So he spoke, and feeds his spirit on the empty picture, groaning often, his face wet with a flood of tears. For he saw how, as they fought around Pergamum, here the Greeks were fleeing, hard pressed by the Trojan youth, and there the Phrygians, with crested Achilles bearing down on them in his chariot. Not far from here, weeping, he recognizes the snow-white canvas of Rhesus’ tents. Betrayed in their first sleep, they were being laid waste by the son of Tydeus, bloodied with much slaughter, and he drives the fiery horses off to the camp before they could taste the pastures of Troy and drink from the Xanthus. In another part Troilus is fleeing, his weapons lost (unhappy boy, no match for Achilles in combat). He is carried along by his horses and, fallen on his back, clings to the empty chariot, still holding the reins; his neck and hair are dragged along the ground, and the dust is scored by his trailing spear.note

Meanwhile the Trojan women were going to the temple of Pallas, who was hostile to them, their hair unbound, carrying the sacred robe, mournful as suppliants, beating their breasts with their palms; the goddess, turned away, kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Three times Achilles had dragged Hector around the walls of Ilium, and he was selling the lifeless body for gold. Then indeed Aeneas gives a great groan from the bottom of his heart, as he sees the spoils, the chariot, the very body of his friend, and Priam stretching out his unarmed hands. He recognized himself too, in the thick of the Achaean chieftains, and the battle lines from the East and the arms of dark-skinned Memnon. Penthesilea in her frenzy leads the ranks of the Amazons with their crescent shields, and blazes in the midst of thousands, a golden belt fastened beneath her bared breast, a woman warrior, a girl who dares to clash with men.note

While Dardanian Aeneas gazes at these wonders, while he stands spellbound and stays fixed in a single gaze, the queen, Dido, most beautiful in form, came to the temple with a great throng of young men crowding around her. As on the banks of the Eurotas or along the ridges of Cynthus Diana leads her dancing bands, and a thousand mountain nymphs follow and gather around her on either side; she carries a quiver on her shoulder, and as she walks she towers above all the goddesses; joy thrills Latona’s silent heart: such was Dido, so she bore herself joyfully through their midst, pressing on with the work and her kingdom to come. Then at the doors of the goddess, under the middle of the temple’s vault, hedged around with armed men, she took her seat, raised high upon her throne.note

“Queen, to whom Jupiter has granted the founding of a new city and the curbing of proud peoples with justice, we unhappy Trojans, carried by the winds over every sea, beg you: keep unspeakable fires from our ships, spare a devoted people, and look more closely at our circumstances. We have not come to lay waste the household gods of Libya with the sword, or to seize plunder and drive it down to the shore. There is no such violence in our hearts, nor such arrogance in the defeated. There is a place the Greeks call Hesperia, an ancient land, mighty in arms and in the richness of its soil. The Oenotrians lived there; now rumor says that their descendants have called the nation Italy, from the name of their leader.note

If the fates preserve him, if he still feeds on the air of heaven and does not yet lie among the cruel shades, we have no fear, nor would you regret having been the first to compete in kindness. In the land of Sicily, too, there are cities and fields, and famous Acestes, of Trojan blood. Let us haul up our wind-battered fleet, shape timbers from your forests and trim new oars. Then, if we are allowed to make for Italy with our comrades and king recovered, we may joyfully seek Italy and Latium. But if our safety is lost, and the sea of Libya holds you, best father of the Teucrians, and there is no hope left in Iulus, then at least let us seek the straits of Sicily, from where we came, and the homes made ready there, and King Acestes.” Such were Ilioneus’ words; all the Dardanians together roared their assent.

Then Dido, her eyes cast down, speaks briefly: “Release your hearts from fear, Teucrians; put away your cares. Harsh circumstances and the newness of my kingdom force me to take such measures and to guard my borders far and wide with sentries. Who would not know of Aeneas’ people, who of the city of Troy, its valor and its men, or the flames of so great a war? We Carthaginians do not have hearts so dull, nor does the Sun yoke his horses so far from the Tyrian city. Whether you choose great Hesperia and the fields of Saturn, or the land of Eryx and King Acestes, I will send you off safe under escort and help you with supplies. Or would you rather settle here with me, on equal terms, in this kingdom? The city I am building is yours; haul up your ships. Trojan and Tyrian will be treated by me without distinction.note

And I wish that the king himself, Aeneas, driven by the same south wind, were here! For my part, I will send trusty men along the shores and order them to search the farthest parts of Libya, in case he has been cast ashore and is wandering in some forest or city.” Roused in spirit by these words, both brave Achates and father Aeneas had long been burning to break out of the cloud. Achates speaks to Aeneas first: “Son of the goddess, what thought now rises in your mind? You see that all is safe, the fleet and our comrades recovered. Only one is missing, whom we ourselves saw sink in the middle of the waves. Everything else agrees with your mother’s words.” He had scarcely spoken, when suddenly the cloud that surrounded them parted and cleared away into the open air.

Aeneas stood there, shining in the clear light, like a god in face and shoulders; for his mother herself had breathed on her son a beautiful head of hair, the radiant glow of youth, and a joyful grace in his eyes: such beauty as craftsmen’s hands add to ivory, or as when silver or Parian marble is set in yellow gold. Then he addresses the queen and, unforeseen by all, suddenly says: “Here I am before you, the one you are looking for, Trojan Aeneas, snatched from the Libyan waves. You alone have pitied the unspeakable hardships of Troy. We are the remnant left by the Danaans, worn out by every disaster on land and sea, in need of everything, and you make us partners in your city and your home. To repay you worthily is not in our power, Dido, nor in the power of whatever remains anywhere of the Dardanian people, scattered over the wide world.

If any divine powers have regard for the devoted, if justice counts for anything anywhere, and a mind conscious of its own right, may the gods bring you the reward you deserve. What happy age bore you? What great parents gave birth to one like you? As long as rivers run into the sea, as long as shadows travel over the curving slopes of the mountains, as long as the sky pastures the stars, your honor, your name and your praises will always remain, whatever lands may call me.” So he spoke, and reaches out his right hand to his friend Ilioneus, his left to Serestus, and then to the others, brave Gyas and brave Cloanthus. Sidonian Dido was stunned, first at the sight of him, then at all the man had suffered, and she spoke these words:

“Son of the goddess, what misfortune pursues you through such great dangers? What force drives you onto these savage shores? Are you that Aeneas whom kindly Venus bore to Dardanian Anchises by the waters of the Phrygian Simois? I remember, indeed, that Teucer came to Sidon, driven from his native land, seeking a new kingdom with the help of Belus. My father Belus was then laying waste rich Cyprus, and held it under his rule as victor. Ever since that time I have known of the fall of the Trojan city, and your name, and the Pelasgian kings. Though he was their enemy, Teucer himself used to praise the Teucrians highly, and he claimed descent from the ancient stock of the Teucrians. So come, young men, enter our house.note

Aeneas (for a father’s love would not let his mind rest) sends Achates swiftly ahead to the ships, to bring this news to Ascanius and to lead him to the city; all the loving father’s care is centered on Ascanius. He orders him besides to bring gifts saved from the ruins of Ilium: a mantle stiff with embroidered figures and gold, and a veil bordered with saffron-yellow acanthus, the finery of Argive Helen, which she had brought from Mycenae when she set out for Troy and her forbidden marriage, the wonderful gift of her mother Leda; and besides, the scepter that Ilione, eldest of Priam’s daughters, had once carried, a necklace of pearls, and a crown with a double band of jewels and gold. Hastening to carry out these orders, Achates made his way toward the ships.

But Cytherea turns over new schemes, new plans in her heart: that Cupid, changed in face and features, should come in place of sweet Ascanius, and with the gifts set the queen ablaze with frenzy and wind fire through her bones. For she fears the treacherous house and the double-tongued Tyrians; cruel Juno burns her, and as night comes on her anxiety returns. So she addresses winged Amor with these words: “My son, my strength, you alone my great power, my son, who scorn the supreme father’s thunderbolts that struck down Typhoeus, I take refuge with you and as a suppliant beg for your divine power. You know how your brother Aeneas is tossed on the sea around every shore by the hatred of unjust Juno, and you have often grieved at my grief.note

Phoenician Dido holds him now and detains him with flattering words; and I fear where this hospitality of Juno’s may lead. She will not be idle at such a turning point of affairs. So I plan to take the queen first by trickery and surround her with flame, so that no god’s power may change her, but she may be held fast, on my side, by a great love for Aeneas. Now hear what I have in mind for how you can do this. The royal boy, my greatest care, is preparing, at his dear father’s summons, to go to the Sidonian city, bringing gifts that have survived the sea and the flames of Troy. I will lull him to sleep and hide him in my sacred shrine on high Cythera or on Idalium, so that he cannot learn of the trick or come between us and spoil it.note

And now, obeying her command, Cupid was on his way, carrying the royal gifts to the Tyrians, glad to have Achates as his guide. When he arrives, the queen has already settled herself on a golden couch amid splendid hangings, and has taken her place in the middle. Now father Aeneas, now the Trojan youth gather, and they recline on spread purple. Servants pour water over their hands, serve bread from baskets, and bring napkins of close-shorn wool. Inside are fifty serving women, whose task is to lay out the long store of provisions in order and to honor the household gods with fire; a hundred others, and as many attendants of the same age, load the tables with food and set out the cups. The Tyrians too have gathered in crowds through the joyful halls, bidden to recline on embroidered couches. They marvel at Aeneas’ gifts, they marvel at Iulus, at the god’s glowing face and pretended words, [and at the mantle and the veil embroidered with saffron-yellow acanthus.]

Here the queen called for a bowl heavy with jewels and gold and filled it with unmixed wine, the bowl that Belus and all of Belus’ line had used. Then silence fell through the halls. “Jupiter, for they say you give the laws of hospitality, may it be your will that this be a happy day for the Tyrians and for those who have come from Troy, and that our descendants remember it. May Bacchus, giver of joy, be present, and kindly Juno; and you, Tyrians, celebrate this gathering with good will.” She spoke, and poured an offering of wine on the table, and after the libation she was the first to touch the bowl, just to the edge of her lips. Then she gave it to Bitias with a challenge; he eagerly drained the foaming bowl and drenched himself in the brimming gold; after him the other nobles drank. Long-haired Iopas, whom great Atlas taught, makes the hall ring with his golden lyre.note

He sings of the wandering moon and the toils of the sun; where the human race and the beasts came from, where the rain and the lightning; of Arcturus and the rainy Hyades and the twin Bears; why the winter suns hurry so to dip themselves in Ocean, or what delay holds back the slow nights. The Tyrians redouble their applause, and the Trojans follow. Unhappy Dido, too, was drawing out the night with talk of many kinds, and drinking long draughts of love, asking many questions about Priam, many about Hector: now in what armor the son of the Dawn had come, now what the horses of Diomedes were like, now how great Achilles was. “Better still, come,” she says, “my guest, tell us from the very beginning the treachery of the Danaans, the misfortunes of your people, and your own wanderings; for this is now the seventh summer that carries you, a wanderer, over every land and sea.”

All fell silent and held their faces intent upon him. Then from his high couch father Aeneas began: You bid me, O queen, renew an unspeakable grief. You ask how the Danaans overthrew the wealth of Troy and its kingdom, so worthy of lament, the most pitiful things I saw myself, and in which I played a great part. Who, telling such things, could keep from tears, even a Myrmidon or a Dolopian, or a soldier of hard Ulysses? And already the dewy night is rushing down from the sky, and the setting stars urge sleep. But if you have so great a longing to learn of our misfortunes and to hear in brief of Troy’s final hardship, though my mind shudders to remember and has shrunk back in grief, I will begin. Broken by war and driven back by the fates,note

Here the band of Dolopians had camped, here cruel Achilles had pitched his tent; here was the place for the fleet; here they used to fight in battle line. Some stood amazed at the deadly gift to virgin Minerva and marveled at the bulk of the horse. Thymoetes was the first to urge that it be brought inside the walls and placed on the citadel, whether through treachery or because the fates of Troy were already tending that way. But Capys, and those whose minds held better counsel, urged us either to hurl the Danaans’ snare, the suspect gift, headlong into the sea and burn it with flames set beneath it, or else to bore into the hollow hiding places of its belly and probe them. The wavering crowd was split into opposing factions. Then first before all, with a great crowd following, Laocoön ran down in a blaze of passion from the top of the citadel, and from far off cried: ‘Wretched citizens, what is this great madness?

Do you believe the enemy has sailed away? Or do you think any gifts of the Danaans are free of tricks? Is this how well you know Ulysses? Either Achaeans are shut up and hidden in this wood, or this is an engine built against our walls, to spy into our homes and come down upon the city from above, or some other deception lurks in it. Do not trust the horse, Teucrians. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.’ So he spoke, and with mighty strength he hurled a huge spear into the beast’s side and into the curved frame of its belly. The spear stood quivering, and as the belly was struck the hollow caverns resounded and gave out a groan. And if the fates of the gods, if our minds had not been perverse, he would have driven us to defile the Argive hiding place with steel, and Troy, you would now be standing, and you, high citadel of Priam, would still remain.

Look: meanwhile Dardanian shepherds, with loud shouting, were dragging to the king a young man with his hands bound behind his back. A stranger, he had deliberately put himself in the path of those who came upon him, to contrive this very thing and open Troy to the Achaeans. He was confident in spirit and ready for either outcome, to work his tricks or to meet certain death. From all sides the Trojan youth, eager to see him, came rushing and crowded round, and vied with one another in mocking the captive. Hear now the treachery of the Danaans, and from a single crime learn what they all are. For as he stood there in full view, distraught and unarmed, and looked around at the Phrygian ranks:

‘Alas,’ he said, ‘what land, what seas can now receive me? Or what is left at last for me in my misery, who have no place anywhere among the Danaans, while the Dardanians themselves, enraged, demand my punishment with my blood?’ At that groan our feelings were changed and all violence was checked. We urged him to speak, to tell us from what blood he was born, what news he brought, what he trusted in, now that he was a captive. [Then at last, laying aside his fear, he spoke these words:] ‘Everything, O king, whatever comes of it, I will confess to you truly,’ he said, ‘and I will not deny that I am of the Argive people. This first of all: if Fortune has fashioned Sinon for misery, she will not, for all her malice, fashion him false and a liar as well.

If talk has by chance brought to your ears the name of Palamedes, descendant of Belus, and his glory famed in report: the Pelasgians, on a false charge of treason and by wicked testimony, sent him down to death, an innocent man, because he opposed the war, and now that he is robbed of the light they mourn him. To him my father, a poor man, sent me here to war from my earliest years, as his comrade and close kinsman. While he stood secure in his kingship and was strong in the councils of the kings, I too bore some name and honor. But after the envy of cunning Ulysses (I speak of things well known) drove him from the shores of the living, I dragged out my life, broken, in darkness and grief, and raged within myself at the fall of my innocent friend.note

‘Often the Danaans longed to leave Troy and attempt flight, and to depart, weary of the long war, and how I wish they had! Often a harsh storm at sea cut them off, and the South Wind frightened them as they set out. Above all, when this horse already stood here, framed of maple beams, storm clouds thundered across the whole sky. In suspense we sent Eurypylus to consult the oracle of Phoebus, and from the shrine he brought back these grim words: “With blood and a slaughtered virgin you appeased the winds, Danaans, when you first came to the shores of Ilium; with blood you must seek your return, and win the gods’ favor with an Argive life.” When this utterance reached the ears of the crowd, their minds were stunned, and a cold shudder ran through their very bones: for whom were the fates preparing this, whom did Apollo demand?note

At this the Ithacan, with great uproar, dragged the seer Calchas into their midst and demanded to know what this will of the gods might be. And many were already foretelling to me the schemer’s cruel crime, and silently saw what was coming. For twice five days the seer kept silent and, shutting himself away, refused to name anyone with his voice or deliver him to death. At last, barely, driven by the Ithacan’s loud clamor, he broke into speech as they had agreed and marked me out for the altar. All assented, and what each had feared for himself they accepted, once it was turned to the ruin of one wretched man. And now the unspeakable day had come. The rites were being prepared for me, the salted grain, the sacred ribbons around my temples. I tore myself from death, I confess it, and broke my bonds, and all night I lay hidden, unseen, among the sedge of a muddy marsh, until they should set sail, if by chance they did.

‘Whoever you are, from now on forget the Greeks you have lost; you will be ours. And tell me truly what I ask: why did they set up this huge bulk of a horse? Who devised it? What do they want? Is it a religious offering, or an engine of war?’ He had spoken. The other, schooled in tricks and Pelasgian art, raised his palms, freed from their chains, to the stars: ‘You, eternal fires, and your inviolable power, I call to witness,’ he said, ‘you altars and accursed swords that I fled, and you ribbons of the gods that I wore as a victim: it is right for me to break the sacred bonds that tie me to the Greeks, right to hate those men and bring everything out into the open air, whatever they hide; I am bound by no laws of my country. Only you, Troy, keep your promises, and, kept safe, keep faith with me, if I tell the truth, if I repay you richly.

All the hope of the Danaans and their confidence in the war they had begun always rested on the help of Pallas. But from the time when the impious son of Tydeus and Ulysses, contriver of crimes, set about tearing the fateful Palladium from its holy temple, killed the guards of the high citadel, seized the sacred image, and dared with bloody hands to touch the virgin goddess’s ribbons, from that time the hope of the Danaans ebbed and slipped away, their strength was broken, and the goddess’s mind turned against them. Tritonia gave signs of it in no uncertain portents. Scarcely was the image set down in the camp when flickering flames blazed from its staring eyes, salt sweat ran down its limbs, and three times (wonderful to tell) the goddess herself leaped up from the ground, bearing her shield and quivering spear.note

At once Calchas proclaimed that they must take to the sea in flight, and that Troy could not be razed by Argive weapons unless they sought fresh omens at Argos and brought back the divine power they had carried away with them over the sea in their curved ships. And now that they have sailed with the wind for their native Mycenae, they are preparing arms and gods to accompany them, and will cross the sea again and be here unexpectedly: so Calchas reads the omens. Warned by him, they set up this image in place of the Palladium, in place of the injured divine power, to atone for the grim sacrilege. But Calchas ordered them to raise this immense mass high, of timbers woven together, and build it up to the sky, so that it could not be taken in at the gates or brought within the walls, nor guard your people under the protection of the ancient worship.

I shudder as I tell it—serpents with immense coils breasted the sea and made side by side for the shore. Their chests rose upright among the waves, and their blood-red crests towered above the water; the rest of them skimmed the sea behind, winding their huge backs in coils. There was a roar as the brine foamed. And now they were on the land, their blazing eyes shot with blood and fire, licking their hissing mouths with flickering tongues. We scattered, bloodless at the sight. They made straight for Laocoön in steady course. First each serpent embraced the small bodies of his two sons, entwined them, and fed with its bites on their poor limbs. Then they seized the man himself as he came up to help, bringing weapons, and bound him in huge coils. And now, twice clasping him round the middle, twice winding their scaly backs around his neck, they towered above him with their heads and lofty necks.

We breached the walls and laid open the city’s defenses. All girded themselves for the work; they set gliding wheels beneath its feet and stretched hempen ropes around its neck. The fateful engine climbed the walls, pregnant with arms. Around it boys and unwed girls sang sacred songs and rejoiced to touch the rope with their hands. On it came, and glided, menacing, into the heart of the city. O my homeland, O Ilium, home of the gods, and walls of the Dardanians famous in war! Four times it stopped on the very threshold of the gate, and four times the arms in its belly clashed; yet we pressed on, heedless and blinded by frenzy, and set the ill-omened monster on the sacred citadel. Then too Cassandra opened her lips to tell of the fates to come, lips never, by the god’s command, believed by the Teucrians. And we, poor souls, for whom that day was to be the last, decked the shrines of the gods throughout the city with festive leaves.note

Meanwhile the sky turned, and night rushed up from the Ocean, wrapping in its great shadow earth and sky and the treachery of the Myrmidons. Sprawled throughout the city, the Teucrians fell silent; sleep embraced their weary limbs. And now the Argive host, its ships drawn up in order, was sailing from Tenedos through the friendly silence of the quiet moon, making for the familiar shore, when the royal ship raised a beacon flame; and Sinon, protected by the unjust fates of the gods, stealthily released the Danaans shut in the belly and loosened its pine bars. The horse, thrown open, gave them back to the air, and gladly out of the hollow wood came the leaders Thessandrus and Sthenelus and dread Ulysses, sliding down a lowered rope, and Acamas and Thoas, and Neoptolemus of the line of Peleus, and Machaon first, and Menelaus, and Epeos himself, the maker of the trick. They burst into a city buried in sleep and wine. The watchmen were cut down, and through the open gates they let in all their comrades and joined the columns that shared the plot.

It was the hour when first rest begins for weary mortals and, most welcome, steals over them as a gift of the gods. In my sleep, look, before my eyes Hector, in deepest sorrow, seemed to stand beside me, shedding floods of tears: dragged behind the chariot, as he once was, black with bloody dust, his swollen feet pierced through with thongs. Alas, what a sight he was! How changed from that Hector who came back clad in the spoils of Achilles, or after hurling Phrygian fire onto the ships of the Danaans! He wore a filthy beard and hair matted with blood, and those many wounds he received around the walls of his fatherland. And I seemed to weep myself and to address him first, pouring out mournful words:note

‘O light of Dardania, O most faithful hope of the Teucrians, what long delay has held you? From what shores do you come, Hector, so long awaited? Worn out as we are, how we look on you, after the many deaths of your people, after all the hardships of men and city! What shameful cause has disfigured your serene face? Or why do I see these wounds?’ He said nothing, nor did he linger over my idle questions, but, heavily drawing a groan from deep in his chest, ‘Ah, flee, son of the goddess,’ he said, ‘and snatch yourself from these flames. The enemy holds the walls; Troy is falling from her lofty height. Enough has been given to country and to Priam: if Pergamum could be defended by any right hand, it would have been defended by this one. Troy entrusts to you her sacred things and her household gods. Take them as companions of your fates; seek for them walls, the great walls you will at last establish when you have wandered over the sea.’

So he spoke, and in his hands he brought out from the innermost shrine the ribbons and mighty Vesta and the undying fire. Meanwhile the city was thrown into turmoil with grief on every side, and more and more, though the house of my father Anchises stood apart, secluded and screened by trees, the sounds grew clearer and the dread clash of arms rushed nearer. I shook myself from sleep, climbed to the top of the highest roof, and stood there with ears pricked: as when fire falls on a field of grain while the South Winds rage, or a rushing torrent swollen by a mountain stream flattens the fields, flattens the glad crops and the toil of oxen, and drags forests headlong, and the shepherd, unknowing, hears the roar from the top of a high rock and stands stunned.note

Then indeed the truth was plain, and the treachery of the Danaans lay open. Already the great house of Deiphobus had fallen in ruins as Vulcan overpowered it; already its neighbor Ucalegon was burning; the broad straits of Sigeum glowed with the fire. Up rose the shouting of men and the blare of trumpets. Out of my mind, I seized my arms, though there was little sense in arms; but my heart burned to gather a band for battle and rush with my comrades to the citadel. Frenzy and anger drove my mind headlong, and the thought came to me that it is a fine thing to die in arms. But look: Panthus, slipping out from the Achaean weapons, Panthus son of Othrys, priest of the citadel and of Phoebus, was dragging along with his own hands the sacred objects, the conquered gods, and his little grandson, and running out of his mind toward our door. ‘Panthus, where does our cause stand? What stronghold are we to hold?’ I had scarcely spoken when he answered with a groan:note

‘The last day has come, the inescapable hour for Dardania. Trojans we were; Ilium was, and the great glory of the Teucrians. Cruel Jupiter has carried everything over to Argos; the Danaans are masters in the burning city. The horse, standing high in the middle of the walls, pours out armed men, and Sinon, victorious and gloating, spreads fires everywhere. Others are at the double gates, as many thousands as ever came from great Mycenae; others have blocked the narrow streets, posted with weapons. A line of steel stands drawn, its edge flashing, ready for slaughter; the first guards of the gates barely attempt battle, and resist in blind fighting.’ By these words of Othrys’ son and by the will of the gods I was carried into the flames and the fighting, where the grim Fury calls, where the din calls, and the shouting raised to the sky.

Rhipeus and Epytus, greatest in arms, joined me as comrades, appearing in the moonlight, with Hypanis and Dymas, and they gathered at my side; and young Coroebus, son of Mygdon. He had come to Troy in those days, as it happened, burning with a mad love for Cassandra, and as a son-in-law-to-be he was bringing help to Priam and the Phrygians, unhappy man, who did not heed the warnings of his inspired bride. When I saw them massed together and eager for battle, I spoke to them further: ‘Young men, bravest of hearts, in vain: if you are set on following me as I dare the last extremity, you see what fortune has come upon our affairs. All the gods on whom this empire stood have gone away, leaving their shrines and altars; you are rushing to help a city in flames. Let us die, and charge into the midst of the fighting. The one safety for the conquered is to hope for no safety.’

So frenzy was added to the young men’s spirits. Then, like ravening wolves in a black fog, driven out blindly by the relentless fury of the belly, while their cubs, left behind, wait with dry throats, so we went through weapons, through enemies, to no uncertain death, and held our way through the middle of the city; black night flew round us with its hollow shadow. Who could unfold in words the disaster of that night, who its deaths, or match our hardships with tears? An ancient city was falling, that had ruled for many years. Everywhere, in great numbers, lifeless bodies lay strewn through the streets and houses and the sacred thresholds of the gods. Nor did the Teucrians alone pay the penalty with their blood: at times courage returned even to the hearts of the conquered, and the victorious Danaans fell. Everywhere cruel grief, everywhere terror, and death in many forms.

The first to meet us, with a great band of Danaans following, was Androgeos, who in his ignorance believed us to be allied troops, and of his own accord hailed us with friendly words: ‘Hurry, men! What sluggishness is delaying you so late? Others are plundering and carrying off burning Troy, and you are only now coming from your tall ships!’ He spoke, and at once, for the answers he got were not reassuring enough, he realized he had fallen into the midst of enemies. He was stunned, and drew back his foot and his voice. As a man who, treading hard on the ground among rough brambles, has stepped on an unseen snake, and shrinks back in sudden fear as it rears up in anger and swells its dark-blue neck, just so Androgeos, terrified at the sight, was drawing away. We rushed upon them and surrounded them with close-packed arms, and cut them down here and there, men who did not know the ground and were seized with fear. Fortune breathed favor on our first toil.

And here Coroebus, exulting in success and in his courage, said: ‘Comrades, where fortune first shows us the road to safety, and where she shows herself favorable, let us follow. Let us change shields and fit the Danaans’ insignia to ourselves. Trickery or courage: who would ask which, against an enemy? They will give us arms themselves.’ So he spoke, and then he put on Androgeos’ plumed helmet and the handsome emblem of his shield, and fitted an Argive sword to his side. Rhipeus did this, Dymas himself did this, and all the young men gladly; each armed himself with the fresh spoils. We went on, mingled with the Danaans, under a divine power not our own, and meeting them in many a fight through the blind night we joined battle, and sent many of the Danaans down to Orcus.note

Some scattered to the ships and ran for the safety of the shore; some, in shameful fear, climbed back into the huge horse and hid in its familiar belly. Alas, no one may trust in anything when the gods are against him! Look: Priam’s virgin daughter Cassandra was being dragged, her hair streaming, from the temple and shrine of Minerva, stretching her blazing eyes to heaven in vain—her eyes, for bonds held back her tender hands. Coroebus, his mind maddened, could not bear this sight, and hurled himself into the middle of the column, ready to die. We all followed and charged with close-packed arms.

Here, for the first time, we are buried under a hail of weapons thrown by our own men from the high roof of the temple, and a most pitiful slaughter begins, because of the look of our armor and the confusion caused by our Greek crests. Then the Danaans, groaning with anger at the girl snatched from them, gather from all sides and attack: Ajax, fiercest of all, and the twin sons of Atreus, and the whole army of the Dolopians. It is as when a whirlwind bursts and opposing winds clash, the West Wind, the South Wind, and the East Wind exulting in the horses of the Dawn; the forests shriek, and Nereus, all foam, rages with his trident and stirs the seas from their lowest depths. Those too appear whom we had routed by our trick through the shadows of the dark night and chased all through the city. They are the first to recognize our shields and lying weapons, and they notice that our speech does not sound like theirs.note

Here we see a battle so huge it was as if there were no fighting anywhere else, as if no one were dying anywhere in the whole city. So we see Mars untamed, the Danaans rushing at the palace, and the entrance besieged by a tortoise of locked shields driven against it. Ladders cling to the walls; right beside the doorposts the men climb the rungs, holding out their shields in their left hands to protect themselves against weapons, while their right hands grip the battlements. The Dardanians, in turn, tear down towers and whole rooftops; with these as weapons, since they see the end has come, they prepare to defend themselves now at the very point of death. They roll down gilded beams, the lofty splendors of their ancestors of old. Others, with drawn swords, have taken their stand at the doors below and guard them in a dense column. Our spirits were renewed: to bring aid to the king’s palace, to relieve the defenders with our help, and to give strength to the defeated.

There was an entrance, a hidden door, a passage linking the rooms of Priam’s palace with one another, a gateway at the back, left unnoticed. While the kingdom still stood, unhappy Andromache often used to go this way unattended to visit her husband’s parents, bringing the boy Astyanax to his grandfather. Through it I make my way up to the highest point of the roof, from where the wretched Teucrians were hurling their useless weapons. There was a tower standing at the sheer edge, rising from the rooftop to the stars, from which all Troy could be seen, and the Danaan ships, and the Achaean camp. Attacking it with iron all round, where the topmost floors offered joints that were giving way, we wrench it from its high base and push it over. Suddenly it collapses, dragging ruin down with a crash, and falls far and wide upon the Danaan columns. But others come up, and meanwhile neither stones nor any kind of weapon cease.note

Right before the entrance, at the very threshold, Pyrrhus exults, flashing with weapons and the gleam of bronze: just as when a snake comes out into the light, fed on poisonous herbs, which cold winter had kept swollen beneath the earth. Now, its old skin cast off, new and glistening with youth, it rolls its slippery coils, lifting its breast high toward the sun, and its three-forked tongue flickers from its mouth. With him come huge Periphas and Automedon, driver of Achilles’ horses and his armor-bearer; with him all the young men of Scyros close in on the palace and hurl fire at the roof. Pyrrhus himself, among the foremost, seizes a double axe, breaks through the hard doorway, and wrenches the bronze-plated doors from their hinges. Now he has cut out a panel and hollowed through the solid oak, making a huge window with a wide mouth.note

Force makes a way. They burst through the entrance; the Danaans pour in, slaughter the first men they meet, and fill the place far and wide with soldiers. Not so wild is a foaming river when it has burst its banks and broken out, overwhelming the barriers set against it with its flood: it is carried raging onto the fields in a mass and sweeps the herds and their stalls across all the plains. I myself saw Neoptolemus mad with slaughter, and the two sons of Atreus on the threshold; I saw Hecuba and her hundred daughters-in-law, and Priam among the altars, polluting with his blood the fires he himself had consecrated. Those fifty bedchambers, so great a hope of grandchildren, their doors proud with foreign gold and spoils, came crashing down; where the fire fails, the Danaans hold the ground.

Perhaps you may also ask what Priam’s fate was. When he saw the fall of the captured city, the doors of his palace torn down, and the enemy in the heart of his home, the old man, to no purpose, put armor long unused on shoulders trembling with age, girded on his useless sword, and rushed, ready to die, into the thick of the enemy. In the middle of the palace, under the open vault of heaven, there was a great altar, and beside it a very ancient laurel, leaning over the altar and embracing the household gods in its shade. Here Hecuba and her daughters sat huddled around the altars in vain, like doves driven headlong by a black storm, clinging to the images of the gods. But when she saw Priam himself in the armor of his youth, she said, ‘What mind so dreadful, my poor husband, has driven you to put on these weapons? Where are you rushing?’

‘This hour does not need such help or such defenders as you, no, not even if my own Hector were here now. Come here, at last; this altar will protect us all, or you will die with us.’ So she spoke, drew the old man to her, and set him down in the sacred place. But look: Polites, one of Priam’s sons, who had escaped slaughter at Pyrrhus’ hands, flees through weapons, through enemies, down the long colonnades, and ranges, wounded, through the empty halls. Pyrrhus pursues him hotly, eager to deal the deadly blow; now, at any moment, he has him in his grasp and presses on him with his spear. When at last the boy came out before the eyes and faces of his parents, he collapsed and poured out his life with a flood of blood. At this Priam, though already held in the grip of death, did not hold back or spare his voice and his anger:

‘For this crime,’ he cries, ‘for such outrages, may the gods, if there is any devotion in heaven to care about such things, pay you the thanks you deserve and give you the rewards you are owed, you who have made me see my own son’s death before my eyes and defiled a father’s face with his murder. But that Achilles, whose son you falsely claim to be, was not like this to Priam, his enemy: he felt shame before the rights and the trust of a suppliant, gave back Hector’s bloodless body for burial, and sent me home to my kingdom.’ So the old man spoke, and hurled a feeble spear without force; the clanging bronze repelled it at once, and it hung uselessly from the boss at the center of the shield. Pyrrhus answered him: ‘Then you will carry this news and go as a messenger to my father, the son of Peleus. Remember to tell him about my grim deeds and his degenerate Neoptolemus.note

Now die.’ As he said this, he dragged him, trembling and slipping in the pool of his son’s blood, to the very altar, twisted his hair in his left hand, raised his flashing sword with his right, and buried it in his side up to the hilt. Such was the end of Priam’s fate; this was the death that fell to his lot, seeing Troy in flames and Pergamum in ruins, he who was once the proud ruler of Asia, over so many peoples and lands. He lies on the shore, a huge trunk, the head torn from the shoulders, a body without a name. Then for the first time a savage horror surrounded me. I stood stunned. The image of my dear father came to me as I saw the king, a man of his own age, breathing out his life from a cruel wound; Creusa came to my mind, left alone, and my plundered house, and what might befall little Iulus.note

I look back and survey what forces remain around me. All had deserted me, exhausted: they had thrown themselves to the ground with a leap or, sick at heart, given their bodies to the flames. [And now I was the only one left, when I catch sight of the daughter of Tyndareus, keeping to the threshold of Vesta and hiding silently in the secret shrine; the bright fires give me light as I wander, casting my eyes everywhere over everything. Dreading in advance the Teucrians’ hatred for the overthrow of Pergamum, the punishment of the Danaans, and the anger of the husband she had deserted, she, the common Fury of Troy and of her own homeland, had hidden herself and sat, a hated figure, at the altars. Fire blazed up in my heart; anger rises in me to avenge my falling country and to exact the punishment her crimes deserve.]note

[‘So is she to see Sparta and her native Mycenae unharmed, and go as a queen in the triumph she has won? Is she to see her husband and her home, her parents and her children, attended by a crowd of Trojan women and Phrygian servants? Is Priam to have fallen by the sword, Troy to have burned with fire, the Dardanian shore to have sweated with blood so many times? Not so. For though there is no name worth remembering to be won by punishing a woman, and such a victory brings no glory, still I will be praised for having blotted out an abomination and exacted a deserved punishment, and it will be a joy to have filled my heart with avenging fire and to have satisfied the ashes of my people.’ Such were the words I was hurling out, swept along by my frenzied mind,] when my gracious mother offered herself to my sight, never before so clear to my eyes, and shone out in pure light through the night, revealing herself as a goddess, with the beauty and stature in which she is used to appearing to the gods of heaven. She caught me by the right hand and held me back, and from her rosy lips added these words:

‘My son, what great resentment stirs up this ungovernable anger? Why are you raging? Where has your care for us gone? Will you not first see where you have left your father, Anchises, worn out with age, and whether your wife Creusa and the boy Ascanius are still alive? All around them on every side the Greek battle lines are roaming, and if my care did not resist, the flames would already have carried them off and the enemy sword would have drained their blood. It is not the hated face of the Spartan woman, the daughter of Tyndareus, nor Paris, whom you blame: it is the gods’ unmercifulness, the gods’, that is overthrowing this wealth and bringing Troy down from its height. Look—for I will tear away the whole cloud that now veils your sight, dulling your mortal vision and wrapping you in damp mist; and you, do not fear any command of your mother’s, and do not refuse to obey her instructions—

She had spoken, and hid herself in the thick shadows of night. Dreadful shapes appear, the mighty powers of the gods, hostile to Troy. Then indeed all Ilium seemed to me to sink into the fires, and Neptune’s Troy to be overturned from its foundations: just as when, high on the mountains, farmers vie with one another to bring down an ancient ash tree, hacked at with iron and blow after blow of their axes—it keeps threatening to fall, and, shaken, its foliage trembling, nods its stricken crown, until little by little, overcome by its wounds, it groans its last and, torn from the ridge, crashes down in ruin. I come down and, with a god as my guide, make my way between flames and enemies; the weapons give way, and the flames draw back.

And when I had reached the threshold of my father’s house, our ancient home, my father, whom I longed to carry first up into the high mountains and whom I sought out first, refuses to prolong his life now that Troy has been destroyed, and to endure exile. ‘You,’ he says, ‘whose blood is untouched by age, whose strength stands firm in its own vigor, you must make your escape. If the gods of heaven had wished me to live on, they would have preserved this home for me. It is enough and more that I have seen one destruction and survived one capture of the city. Here, here, as I lie laid out, say your farewells to my body and go. I myself will find death by a violent hand; the enemy will pity me and seek my spoils. The loss of a tomb is easy to bear. For a long time now, hated by the gods and useless, I have been lingering out my years, ever since the father of gods and king of men blasted me with the winds of his thunderbolt and touched me with its fire.’note

So he persisted in saying, and remained unmoved. We, on the other side, dissolved in tears—my wife Creusa, Ascanius, and the whole household—begged my father not to bring everything down with him and add his weight to the fate pressing upon us. He refuses, and clings to his purpose and to the same place. Once more I am swept toward arms, and in utter misery I long for death: for what plan, what chance, was left to us now? ‘Did you hope, father, that I could set foot out of here and leave you behind? Did such a monstrous thing fall from a father’s lips? If it pleases the gods above that nothing be left of so great a city, and this is fixed in your mind, and it pleases you to add yourself and your family to the ruin of Troy, the door to that death lies open: soon Pyrrhus will be here, fresh from Priam’s streaming blood, he who butchers the son before his father’s face, and the father at the altars.

Was it for this, gracious mother, that you rescue me through weapons and through fire, so that I may see the enemy in the heart of my home, and Ascanius and my father and Creusa beside them, slaughtered in one another’s blood? Arms, men, bring arms! The last day calls the conquered. Give me back to the Danaans; let me return to the battle and take it up again. We shall not all die unavenged today.’ At this I gird on my sword again, and was fitting my left arm into my shield and rushing out of the house. But look: at the threshold my wife clung to my feet, holding up little Iulus to his father. ‘If you are going out to die, take us with you into anything; but if from experience you place some hope in the arms you have taken up, guard this house first. To whom is little Iulus left, to whom your father, and I, once called your wife?’

As she cried out these words, filling the whole house with her groaning, a sudden portent arises, wonderful to tell. For between the hands and faces of his grieving parents, look, a light tongue of flame seemed to pour out radiance from the top of Iulus’ head, and a flame, harmless to the touch, licked his soft hair and fed around his temples. We, terrified, trembled with fear, shook out his blazing hair, and tried to put out the holy fire with water from the springs. But father Anchises joyfully raised his eyes to the stars and stretched his hands to heaven, praying aloud: ‘Almighty Jupiter, if any prayers can move you, look on us, only this; and if our devotion deserves it, then give us your aid, father, and confirm these omens.’

The old man had scarcely spoken when with a sudden crash there came thunder on the left, and a star fell from the sky through the darkness, trailing a torch of fire, and ran its course in a blaze of light. We watch it glide above the rooftop of the house and bury itself, still bright, in the forest of Ida, marking out the way; then a long furrow of light glows along its track, and all around, the place smokes with sulfur. At this my father, won over at last, rises to his feet, addresses the gods, and worships the holy star. ‘Now, now there is no delay; I follow, and where you lead, there I am. Gods of my fathers, save my house, save my grandson. This omen is yours, and Troy is in your power. I yield, my son, and I do not refuse to go as your companion.’note

He had spoken; and now the roar of the fire is heard more clearly through the walls, and the heat rolls the blaze closer. ‘Come then, dear father, climb onto my neck; I will carry you on my shoulders, and that burden will not weigh me down. However things fall out, we two shall share one and the same danger, one rescue. Let little Iulus come with me as my companion, and let my wife follow our footsteps at a distance. You, servants, pay close attention to what I say. As you leave the city there is a mound and an ancient temple of Ceres, now deserted, and beside it an old cypress, preserved for many years by the reverence of our fathers. To this one place we will come by different ways. You, father, take in your hands the sacred objects and our ancestral household gods; for me, fresh from such great fighting and recent slaughter, it would be a sin to touch them until I have washed myself in a running stream.’

Having said this, I spread a covering, the tawny skin of a lion, over my broad shoulders and bowed neck, and take up the burden. Little Iulus twines his hand in my right hand and follows his father with steps that cannot match mine; my wife comes behind. We go through dark places; and I, whom just before no weapons hurled at me could move, nor the Greeks massed in a hostile column, am now terrified by every breath of air, startled by every sound, anxious and fearing equally for my companion and my burden. And now I was nearing the gates and seemed to have come safely through the whole way, when suddenly the sound of many footsteps seemed to reach my ears, and my father, peering out through the darkness, cries: ‘My son, flee, my son, they are coming near.

I see their blazing shields and flashing bronze!—’ At this point some power, I do not know what, no friend to me, robbed me in my panic of my confused wits. For while I was running along pathless ways, leaving the familiar network of streets, alas, whether my wife Creusa was snatched from me by fate, wretched as I am, or stopped, or lost her way, or sat down exhausted, no one knows; and she was never given back to our eyes afterward. I did not look back for her, lost as she was, or turn my thoughts to her, until we came to the mound and the sacred site of ancient Ceres. Here at last, when all were gathered together, she alone was missing, and her companions, her son, and her husband were cheated of her. Whom of men and gods did I not accuse in my madness? What crueler sight did I see in all the overthrown city?

And now, in the empty colonnades of Juno’s sanctuary, Phoenix and cruel Ulysses, the chosen guards, were watching over the plunder. Here, from every side, Trojan treasure snatched from burning shrines, tables of the gods, mixing bowls of solid gold, and captured garments are heaped together; boys and frightened mothers stand around in a long line. I even dared to fling my cries into the darkness; I filled the streets with shouting and, in my grief, repeating ‘Creusa’ in vain, I called her again and again. As I searched, rushing endlessly through the houses of the city, the unhappy phantom and shade of Creusa herself appeared before my eyes, an image larger than the one I knew. I stood stunned; my hair stood on end, and my voice stuck in my throat. [Then she spoke to me like this, and with these words took away my cares:]note

‘What good does it do to give way so much to frantic grief, my sweet husband? These things do not happen without the will of the gods; it is not permitted for you to take Creusa with you from here as your companion, nor does the ruler of high Olympus allow it. Long exile is yours, and a vast expanse of sea to plow, and you will come to the land of Hesperia, where the Lydian Tiber flows with gentle course through rich fields tilled by men. There happy fortune, a kingdom, and a royal wife have been won for you. Banish your tears for your beloved Creusa. I shall not see the proud homes of the Myrmidons or the Dolopians, nor go to be a slave to Greek matrons, I, a Dardanian woman and daughter-in-law of the goddess Venus. But the great mother of the gods keeps me on these shores. And now farewell, and keep your love for the son we share.’note

When she had said these words, she left me weeping and wanting to say many things, and withdrew into thin air. Three times I tried to put my arms around her neck; three times the image, grasped in vain, slipped through my hands, like the light winds, most like a fleeting dream. So at last, the night spent, I return to my comrades. And here, to my amazement, I find that a huge number of new companions have flocked together, mothers and men, a people gathered for exile, a pitiful crowd. They had come from every side, ready in heart and with their goods for me to lead them across the sea to whatever lands I wished. And now the Morning Star was rising above the ridges of highest Ida, leading in the day; the Danaans held the gates under guard, and no hope of help was offered. I gave way, and lifting my father, I made for the mountains.

After the gods above had seen fit to overthrow the power of Asia and Priam’s undeserving people, after proud Ilium had fallen and all of Neptune’s Troy lay smoking on the ground, we were driven by omens from the gods to seek far-flung places of exile and empty lands. Beneath Antandros itself and the mountains of Phrygian Ida we built a fleet, not knowing where the fates would carry us or where we would be allowed to settle, and we gathered our men. Summer had scarcely begun, and father Anchises was urging us to spread our sails to the fates, when in tears I left the shores and harbors of my homeland and the plains where Troy had been. I was carried out onto the deep, an exile, with my comrades and my son, with the household gods and the great gods.note

Some way off lies a land of Mars with vast plains, farmed by Thracians and once ruled by fierce Lycurgus. It was an old friend in hospitality to Troy, and its household gods were allied with ours, while our fortune lasted. Here I was carried, and on the curving shore I laid out my first walls, setting out under hostile fates, and from my own name I fashioned a name for its people: Aeneadae. I was offering sacrifice to my mother, Dione’s daughter, and to the gods who watch over new undertakings, and on the shore I was slaughtering a gleaming bull to the high king of the heaven-dwellers. As it happened, there was a mound nearby, and on its top grew cornel thickets and a myrtle bristling with dense, spear-like shoots. I went up to it, and as I tried to tear the green growth from the ground, to cover the altars with leafy boughs, I saw a dreadful portent, strange to tell.note

For from the first tree I pulled out of the soil, its roots torn, drops of dark blood trickled down and stained the earth with gore. A cold shudder shook my limbs, and my blood froze with fear. Again I went on to tear up the pliant stem of a second, to probe the hidden cause to its depths, and dark blood flowed from the bark of the second too. Turning much over in my mind, I prayed to the nymphs of the countryside and to father Gradivus, who rules over the Getic fields, to make the vision favorable, as was right, and to lighten the omen. But when I attacked a third set of shafts with greater effort, and struggled with my knees against the sand—should I speak, or keep silent?—a tearful groan was heard from deep within the mound, and a voice came back to my ears:note

‘Why do you tear at a wretched man, Aeneas? Spare me now that I am buried; do not stain your devoted hands with crime. Troy did not bear me a stranger to you, and it is not from a mere stump that this blood flows. Ah, flee these cruel lands, flee this greedy shore: for I am Polydorus. Here an iron crop of spears covered me as I lay pierced, and grew up into sharp javelins.’ Then indeed, my mind gripped by a double fear, I was stunned; my hair stood on end and my voice stuck in my throat. This Polydorus unhappy Priam had once secretly entrusted, with a great weight of gold, to the Thracian king to be raised, when he had begun to lose faith in the arms of Dardania and saw the city ringed by siege.note

That king, as soon as the strength of the Teucrians was broken and Fortune withdrew, followed Agamemnon’s cause and victorious arms; he broke every sacred law, cut Polydorus down, and seized the gold by violence. To what do you not drive mortal hearts, accursed hunger for gold? When the terror had left my bones, I reported the gods’ portent to the chosen leaders of the people, and first of all to my father, and asked what they thought. All were of one mind: to leave that criminal land, to abandon a bond of hospitality that had been defiled, and to give our fleet to the south winds. So we gave Polydorus a fresh funeral. A great mound of earth was heaped up for the tomb; altars stood to his shade, mournful with dark-blue ribbons and black cypress, and around them the Trojan women, their hair unbound as custom requires. We offered bowls foaming with warm milk and dishes of sacred blood, laid his spirit to rest in the tomb, and with loud voices called on him for the last time.

Then, as soon as we could trust the sea, when the winds left the waters calm and the South Wind, softly rustling, called us to the deep, my comrades launched the ships and crowded the shore. We put out from the harbor, and lands and cities fell away behind us. In the middle of the sea lies a sacred land, most dear to the mother of the Nereids and to Aegean Neptune. It used to drift about coasts and shores until the devoted archer-god bound it fast to lofty Myconos and Gyaros, and let it be inhabited, unmoving, and scorn the winds. Here I was carried; this most peaceful island welcomed us, weary, into a safe harbor. We disembarked and paid reverence to Apollo’s city. King Anius, king of men and priest of Phoebus alike, his temples wreathed with ribbons and sacred laurel, came to meet us; he recognized Anchises, his old friend. We joined right hands in friendship and went in under his roof. I was paying reverence to the god’s temple, built of ancient stone:note

‘God of Thymbra, give us a home of our own; give the weary walls, and descendants, and a city that will last. Preserve a second Pergamum for Troy, all that the Danaans and pitiless Achilles have left. Whom are we to follow? Where do you bid us go? Where are we to settle? Give us an omen, father, and steal into our hearts.’ I had scarcely spoken when suddenly everything seemed to tremble—the god’s threshold and his laurel—and the whole mountain around seemed to move, and the tripod’s cauldron to bellow as the shrine was thrown open. We fell low to the ground, and a voice came to our ears: ‘Hardy Dardanians, the land that first bore you from the stock of your ancestors will welcome you back to its fruitful breast. Seek out your ancient mother. There the house of Aeneas will rule over every shore, and his children’s children, and those who will be born of them.’note

So spoke Phoebus. A great joy arose, mixed with uproar, and all asked what walls those were, where Phoebus was calling us in our wandering and bidding us return. Then my father, turning over the records of men of old, said: ‘Listen, leaders, and learn where your hopes lie. In the middle of the sea lies Crete, the island of great Jupiter, where Mount Ida is, the cradle of our people. Its inhabitants live in a hundred great cities, a most fertile realm. From there, if I rightly recall what I have heard, our greatest ancestor, Teucer, first sailed to the Rhoetean shores and chose a site for his kingdom. Ilium and the towers of Pergamum did not yet stand; men lived in the depths of the valleys. From Crete came the Mother who dwells on Cybelus, and the Corybants’ bronze cymbals, and the grove of Ida; from there came the faithful silence of her rites, and the yoked lions that draw their lady’s chariot.note

So come, let us follow where the gods’ commands lead; let us appease the winds and make for the realm of Cnossos. It is no long voyage: if only Jupiter is with us, the third dawn will bring the fleet to rest on the shores of Crete.’ So he spoke, and slaughtered the due offerings at the altars: a bull to Neptune, a bull to you, beautiful Apollo, a black sheep to the Storm, a white one to the favoring west winds. A rumor flew that the leader Idomeneus had been driven from his father’s kingdom and had left it, that the shores of Crete were deserted, its houses empty of enemies, and dwellings stood abandoned and waiting for us. We left the harbor of Ortygia and flew over the sea, past Naxos with its Bacchic revels on the ridges, and green Donysa, Olearos and snowy Paros, and the Cyclades scattered across the water, threading the straits thick-sown with islands. The sailors’ shout went up as they vied with one another; my comrades urged each other on: ‘Let us make for Crete and our ancestors!’note

A wind rising astern followed us on our way, and at last we glided in to the ancient shores of the Curetes. So I eagerly set about the walls of the city I had longed for, and called it Pergamea, and urged my people, glad of the name, to love their hearths and raise a citadel above their houses. And now the ships were almost all drawn up on the dry beach; the young men were busy with marriages and new fields; I was giving laws and homes; when suddenly, from a corrupted tract of sky, a wasting and pitiful plague came upon our bodies, and upon trees and crops, a season of death. Men gave up their sweet lives or dragged about their sickened bodies; then Sirius began to scorch the fields barren; the grass withered, and the diseased crops refused us food. My father urged us to cross the sea again, back to Ortygia’s oracle and Phoebus, and pray for his favor: what end would he grant to our weary state, where did he bid us seek help for our hardships, which way should we turn our course?note

It was night, and sleep held the living creatures of the earth. The sacred images of the gods, the Phrygian household gods whom I had carried with me from Troy, out of the heart of the burning city, seemed to stand before my eyes as I lay asleep, clearly seen in a flood of light where the full moon was pouring in through the windows. Then they seemed to address me thus, and to take away my cares with these words: ‘What Apollo would tell you if you sailed to Ortygia, he sings to you here, and look, he sends us to your threshold unasked. We followed you and your arms when Dardania was burned; under your command we crossed the swelling sea in your ships; we too will raise your descendants to the stars and give their city empire. You must prepare great walls for the great, and not abandon the long toil of flight.

Your home must be changed. These are not the shores the Delian god urged on you; Apollo did not bid you settle in Crete. There is a place the Greeks call by the name of Hesperia, an ancient land, strong in arms and in the richness of its soil. The Oenotrians lived there; now the story is that their descendants have called their nation Italy, after the name of their leader. That is our true home; from there came Dardanus, and father Iasius, the founder from whom our line descends. Rise, then, and gladly take these words, which are not to be doubted, to your aged father: let him seek Corythus and the lands of Ausonia. Jupiter denies you the fields of Dicte.’note

Stunned by such a vision and by the voice of the gods—it was no dream, but I seemed to recognize their faces before me, their veiled hair, their living presence; then a cold sweat streamed over my whole body—I sprang from my bed, stretched my upturned palms to heaven with a prayer, and poured pure offerings on the hearth. The rite completed, I gladly told Anchises and laid out the matter in order. He recognized the double ancestry, the two founding fathers, and saw that he had been misled by a new error about ancient places. Then he said: ‘My son, so hard pressed by the fates of Ilium, Cassandra alone used to prophesy such fortunes to me. Now I remember that she foretold this as destined for our line, and often spoke of Hesperia, often of Italian kingdoms. But who would have believed that Teucrians would come to the shores of Hesperia? And whom did the prophet Cassandra move in those days? Let us yield to Phoebus and, now that we are warned, follow the better course.’

So he spoke, and we all obeyed his words with joy. This home too we abandoned, and leaving a few behind we set sail and raced over the vast sea in our hollow ships. When the ships held the open sea and no land could be seen any longer, sky on every side and on every side sea, then a dark rain cloud came to stand above my head, bringing night and storm, and the waves shuddered in the darkness. At once the winds rolled up the sea, and great waves rose; scattered, we were tossed on the vast abyss; storm clouds wrapped up the day, and wet night took away the sky; lightning flashed again and again from the torn clouds. We were thrown off course and wandered on the blind waves. Palinurus himself said he could not tell day from night in the sky, nor remember the way in the midst of the sea.

For three days, uncertain in blind darkness, we wandered on the sea, and as many nights without a star. On the fourth day land at last seemed to rise, to open up mountains in the distance and send up rolling smoke. The sails dropped, we rose to our oars; without delay the sailors strained, churning the foam and sweeping the dark-blue waters. Saved from the waves, I was welcomed first by the shores of the Strophades. The Strophades, as they are called by a Greek name, are islands set in the great Ionian sea, where dread Celaeno and the other Harpies live, ever since Phineus’ house was closed to them and in fear they abandoned their former tables. No monster grimmer than these, no plague or wrath of the gods more savage, ever rose from the waters of the Styx. They are birds with the faces of girls, a most foul discharge flows from their bellies, their hands are hooked, and their faces always pale with hunger.note

When we had been carried here and entered the harbor, look—we saw sleek herds of cattle all over the plains, and flocks of goats on the grass with no one guarding them. We rushed at them with our swords, calling on the gods and Jupiter himself to share the spoils. Then on the curving shore we set up couches and feasted on the rich meat. But suddenly, swooping down from the mountains with a horrifying rush, the Harpies were upon us, beating their wings with loud clangor; they tore at the food and fouled everything with their filthy touch; then came their dreadful cry amid the foul stench. Again, in a deep recess under a hollowed rock, closed in by trees and bristling shadows all around, we set out the tables and placed fire on the altars once more; again, from a different quarter of the sky and from hidden lairs, the shrieking flock flew round the food with hooked feet and defiled the feast with their mouths. Then I ordered my comrades to take up arms, and declared that war must be waged with that dread brood.

Take these words of mine into your minds, then, and fix them there. What the almighty Father foretold to Phoebus, and Phoebus Apollo to me, I, greatest of the Furies, now reveal to you. You are bound for Italy; calling on the winds you will reach Italy, and you will be allowed to enter its harbors. But you will not ring with walls the city granted you until dread hunger, and the wrong you did us in that slaughter, force you to gnaw round and devour your very tables with your jaws.’ She spoke, and borne away on her wings fled back into the forest. But my comrades’ blood ran cold and froze with sudden fear; their spirits fell, and they no longer wanted to seek peace with weapons, but to beg for it with vows and prayers, whether these were goddesses or dread and ill-omened birds. And father Anchises, his palms outspread on the shore, called upon the great powers and proclaimed the due offerings:

‘Gods, ward off these threats; gods, turn aside such a fate, and graciously preserve the devoted!’ Then he ordered the cable torn from the shore and the sheets shaken loose and slackened. The south winds stretched the sails; we fled over the foaming waves where wind and helmsman called our course. Now in mid-sea appeared wooded Zacynthos, and Dulichium and Same, and Neritos, steep with rock. We escaped the reefs of Ithaca, the realm of Laertes, and cursed the land that nursed cruel Ulysses. Soon the cloud-capped peaks of Mount Leucata came into view, and Apollo, dreaded by sailors. Weary, we made for it and came up to the little town; the anchor was cast from the prow, the sterns stood along the shore.note

So, having reached at last a land we had not hoped for, we purified ourselves for Jupiter, set the altars ablaze with our vowed offerings, and thronged the shores of Actium with Trojan games. My comrades, stripped and slippery with oil, practiced the wrestling of our fathers; they were glad to have slipped past so many Argive cities and held to their flight through the midst of enemies. Meanwhile the sun rolled round the great circle of the year, and icy winter roughened the waves with north winds. I fixed to the doorposts facing us a shield of hollow bronze, once carried by great Abas, and marked the deed with a verse: AENEAS FROM THE VICTORIOUS DANAANS, THESE ARMS. Then I ordered them to leave the harbor and take their places on the benches; in rivalry my comrades struck the sea and swept the waters. Soon we lost sight of the airy heights of the Phaeacians, coasted along the shores of Epirus, entered the Chaonian harbor, and came up to the lofty city of Buthrotum.note

Here an incredible report reached our ears: that Helenus, son of Priam, was ruling over Greek cities, having won the wife and the scepter of Pyrrhus, descendant of Aeacus, and that Andromache had passed once more to a husband of her own people. I was astonished, and my heart burned with a wondrous longing to speak to the man and learn of such great events. I went forward from the harbor, leaving the fleet and the shore, just when, as it happened, in a grove before the city, by the waters of a false Simois, Andromache was offering the yearly feast and mournful gifts to the ashes, and calling on the shade of Hector at his tomb—an empty one, which she had consecrated with green turf, along with twin altars, a cause for tears. As soon as she saw me coming and, beside herself, saw Trojan arms around me, terrified by the great portent she froze in mid-gaze, and the warmth left her bones; she fainted, and only after a long time did she speak at last:note

‘Is that a true face, a true messenger who comes to me, goddess-born? Are you alive? Or, if the kindly light has left you, where is Hector?’ She spoke, and poured out tears, and filled the whole place with her cries. Hardly able to say a few words in answer to her distraction, I stammered, shaken, with broken phrases: ‘I am alive, indeed, and drag out my life through every extremity; do not doubt it, for what you see is real. Ah, what fate has received you, cast down from so great a husband? Or what fortune worthy enough has come again to Hector’s Andromache? Are you still Pyrrhus’ wife?’ She lowered her gaze and spoke in a low voice: ‘Oh, happy above all others was that one maiden, Priam’s daughter, ordered to die at an enemy’s tomb beneath the high walls of Troy, who endured no casting of lots, and never as a captive touched the bed of a conquering master!note

We, our homeland burned, carried over distant seas, endured the arrogance of Achilles’ son and his insolent youth, bearing children in slavery. Then he went after Hermione, Leda’s granddaughter, and a Spartan marriage, and handed me over, a slave, to Helenus, a slave, to keep. But Orestes, inflamed by great love for the bride stolen from him and driven by the Furies of his crimes, caught him off guard and cut him down at his father’s altar. On the death of Neoptolemus, part of his kingdom passed to Helenus, who named the plains Chaonian and the whole land Chaonia, after Trojan Chaon, and set on the heights this Pergamum, this citadel of Ilium. But you—what winds, what fates gave you your course? Or what god drove you, unknowing, to our shores? What of the boy Ascanius? Is he alive and does he breathe the air, the boy whom Troy, already—note

And now one day, then a second, had passed, and the breezes were calling to the sails, and the canvas swelled with a filling south wind. I approached the prophet with these words and asked him this: ‘Son of Troy, interpreter of the gods, you who feel the will of Phoebus, his tripods, the laurels of the Clarian, the stars, the tongues of birds and the omens of the swift wing, come, speak. Every sacred sign has foretold my whole course as favorable, and all the gods by their divine will have urged me to seek Italy and to try for lands far away. Only the Harpy Celaeno sings of a strange portent, a horror to speak of, and proclaims grim anger and foul hunger. What dangers should I avoid first? Or by following what course could I overcome such great hardships?’

Then Helenus first sacrifices bullocks in the customary way and begs the gods for peace. He unbinds the ribbons from his consecrated head, and with his own hand leads me to your threshold, Phoebus, as I stand in suspense before the god’s great power. Then the priest chants these words from his divine lips: ‘Son of the goddess—for there is clear proof that you travel over the deep under greater auspices: so the king of the gods allots the fates and turns the cycle of events; this is the order that revolves—I will set out in words a few things out of many, so that you may cross the seas that receive you more safely and settle in an Ausonian harbor. The rest the Fates forbid Helenus to know, and Juno, daughter of Saturn, forbids him to speak.

First, Italy, which you, unknowing, already think near, and whose neighboring harbors you are preparing to enter, lies far off, cut off from you by a long and pathless way through long stretches of land. Before that, your oar must bend in the Trinacrian waves, and your ships must cross the expanse of the Ausonian sea, and the lakes of the underworld, and the island of Aeaean Circe, before you can build your city in a safe land. I will tell you signs; keep them stored in your mind. When, troubled, you find by the waters of a secluded river a huge sow lying under the oaks on the shore, having given birth to a litter of thirty young—white, lying on the ground, her white young around her teats—that will be the place of your city, that the sure rest from your toils. And do not dread the gnawing of tables that is to come: the fates will find a way, and Apollo will be there when you call.

But these lands, and this stretch of the Italian coast nearest us, washed by the tide of our own sea—flee them; all the towns are inhabited by hostile Greeks. Here the Narycian Locrians have set their walls, and Lyctian Idomeneus has filled the Sallentine plains with soldiers; here is that little Petelia of the Meliboean leader Philoctetes, relying on its wall. Moreover, when your fleets have crossed the sea and stand at anchor, and you set up altars and pay your vows on the shore, veil your hair, covering it with a purple robe, so that no hostile face may appear amid the sacred fires in honor of the gods and disturb the omens. Let your companions keep this custom of worship, and keep it yourself; let your descendants remain pure in this observance.

But when, after you set out, the wind has brought you near the Sicilian shore, and the barriers of narrow Pelorus open out, make for the land on the left and the sea on the left by a long circuit; flee the shore and the waters on the right. These places, they say, were once torn apart by force and vast upheaval—so great is the change the long passage of time can work—and sprang asunder, when the two lands had been one unbroken whole. The sea came violently between, cut off the Hesperian side from the Sicilian with its waves, and flows with a narrow tide between fields and cities parted on separate shores. Scylla holds the right side, implacable Charybdis the left. Three times, in the deepest whirlpool of her abyss, she sucks vast waves down into the depths, and in turn hurls them up again into the air and lashes the stars with water. But Scylla is confined in a cave with dark hiding places, thrusting out her mouths and dragging ships onto the rocks.note

When you have been carried there and have reached the city of Cumae, and the sacred lakes, and Avernus with its rustling woods, you will see a frenzied prophetess, who deep beneath her rock sings the fates and entrusts signs and names to leaves. Whatever verses the maiden has written on the leaves, she arranges in order and leaves shut away in her cave. They stay unmoved in their places and keep their order. But when the hinge turns and a light breeze has stirred them, and the opening door has scattered the tender leaves, she never afterward cares to catch them as they flutter about the hollow rock, nor to restore their places or join the verses. Those who came leave without counsel, and hate the Sibyl’s dwelling.note

When the prophet had spoken these words with friendly lips, he then orders gifts heavy with gold and carved ivory to be carried to the ships, and packs into the hulls masses of silver and cauldrons from Dodona, a breastplate of linked mail triple-woven with gold, and the peak of a splendid helmet with flowing crests, the armor of Neoptolemus. There are gifts of his own for my father as well. He adds horses, he adds guides; he makes up our number of rowers; at the same time he equips my comrades with arms. Meanwhile Anchises was ordering the fleet to be rigged with sails, so that there would be no delay when the wind was favorable. The interpreter of Phoebus addresses him with great respect: ‘Anchises, found worthy of proud marriage with Venus, cherished by the gods, twice rescued from the ruins of Pergamum, look, there before you is the land of Ausonia: seize it with your sails.

And yet you must glide past it on the sea: that part of Ausonia which Apollo reveals lies far off. Go,’ he said, ‘happy in your son’s devotion. Why do I go on further, and hold back the rising south winds with my talk?’ No less, Andromache, grieving at this final parting, brings robes embroidered with threads of gold and a Phrygian cloak for Ascanius (nor is she outdone in honoring him), loads him with woven gifts, and speaks these words: ‘Take these as well, my child, to be memorials of my hands and to bear witness to the long love of Andromache, wife of Hector. Take the last gifts of your own people, you who are the only image left to me of my Astyanax: such were his eyes, such his hands, such his face; and now he would be growing into manhood, of an age with you.’note

As I left them, I spoke to them with tears welling up: ‘Live happily, you whose fortune is already complete; we are called from one fate to another. You have won your rest. You have no expanse of sea to plow, no fields of Ausonia, forever receding, to seek. You see an image of the Xanthus and a Troy that your own hands have made—under better auspices, I pray, and less exposed to the Greeks. If ever I enter the Tiber and the fields that border the Tiber, and see the walls granted to my people, then one day of our kindred cities and allied peoples, in Epirus and in Hesperia, who have the same Dardanus as founder and the same misfortunes, we shall make both one Troy in spirit. May that task await our descendants.’

We sail on over the sea close by the Ceraunian mountains, from where lies the way to Italy and the shortest crossing over the waves. Meanwhile the sun sets and the mountains grow dark with shadow. Having drawn lots for the oars, we stretch out on the lap of the longed-for land by the water, and here and there on the dry shore we refresh our bodies; sleep flows over our weary limbs. Night, driven by the Hours, had not yet reached the middle of her circuit when Palinurus rises briskly from his bed and studies all the winds, catching the breezes with his ears. He notes all the stars gliding in the silent sky, Arcturus and the rainy Hyades and the twin Bears, and looks about him at Orion armed with gold. When he sees that all is settled in a cloudless sky, he gives a clear signal from the stern; we break camp, try our way, and spread the wings of our sails.

And now Dawn was reddening and the stars had been put to flight, when far off we see dim hills and Italy lying low. ‘Italy!’ Achates is the first to shout; ‘Italy!’ my comrades greet it with joyful cries. Then father Anchises wreathed a great mixing bowl with a garland, filled it with unmixed wine, and called on the gods, standing on the high stern: ‘Gods who rule sea and land and storms, bring us an easy passage with the wind and breathe favorably on us.’ The longed-for breezes freshen, the harbor opens up, nearer now, and a temple of Minerva appears on the height. My comrades furl the sails and turn their prows toward the shore. The harbor is curved into a bow by the eastern waves; the rocks that face the sea foam with salt spray; the harbor itself lies hidden; towering crags let down their arms in a double wall, and the temple stands back from the shore.

Here, as the first omen, I saw four horses on the grass, white as snow, grazing far and wide over the plain. And father Anchises said: ‘It is war you bring, land that receives us: horses are armed for war, war is what these herds threaten. But still, these same four-footed beasts are sometimes used to go under the chariot and to bear bridles in harmony under the yoke: there is hope of peace as well,’ he said. Then we pray to the holy power of Pallas of the clashing arms, who was the first to receive us in our joy, and before the altars we veil our heads with Phrygian robes; and following the instructions of Helenus, which he had given as the most important, we duly burn the offerings commanded to Argive Juno.

Without delay, as soon as the vows have been fully paid in due order, we turn the horns of our sail-clad yards seaward and leave behind the homes of the Greek-born and the fields we distrust. Next the bay of Tarentum, city of Hercules (if the story is true), comes into sight; opposite it rises the goddess of Lacinium, and the citadel of Caulon, and Scylaceum, wrecker of ships. Then far off, rising from the waves, Trinacrian Etna is seen, and from afar we hear the huge groaning of the sea, the pounding of rocks and the broken roar of the surf on the shore; the shallows leap up, and the sands are churned by the surge. And father Anchises said: ‘Surely this is that Charybdis: these are the crags, these the dreadful rocks Helenus foretold. Pull us clear, my comrades, and rise together to the oars!’

They do just as they were ordered, and first Palinurus wrenched the groaning prow round to the waves on the left; to the left the whole company made, with oars and winds. We are lifted to the sky on the arching swell, and then, as the wave drops away, we sink down to the shades in the depths. Three times the cliffs gave a roar among their hollow rocks; three times we saw the foam dashed up and the stars dripping. Meanwhile the wind left us weary along with the sun, and, not knowing the way, we drift onto the shores of the Cyclopes. There is a harbor, sheltered from the winds and untroubled, and spacious in itself; but nearby Etna thunders with terrifying crashes. At times it hurls a black cloud into the sky, smoking with a pitch-black whirlwind and glowing ash, and raises balls of flame and licks the stars; at times it belches out rocks, the torn-out innards of the mountain, and with a groan masses molten stone up into the air, and boils up from its lowest depths.

The story is that the body of Enceladus, half-burned by the thunderbolt, is pinned down by this mass, and that huge Etna, set on top of him, breathes out flame from its burst furnaces; and that whenever he shifts his weary side, all Trinacria trembles and rumbles, and veils the sky in smoke. That night, sheltered in the woods, we endure monstrous portents, and cannot see what causes the sound. For there were no fires of the stars, nor was the sky bright with starry light, but clouds filled a dark heaven, and the dead of night held the moon hidden in a storm cloud. And now the next day was rising with the first morning star, and Dawn had driven the damp shadows from the sky, when suddenly from the woods there comes forward the strange form of an unknown man, worn out by utter starvation and pitiful in his dress, and he stretches out his hands in supplication toward the shore.note

We look back at him: dreadful filth, a beard grown long, clothing pinned together with thorns; but in all else a Greek, [and once sent to Troy in his country’s arms.] When he saw from afar Dardanian dress and Trojan arms, he was terrified at the sight and hesitated a little, checking his step; then he rushed headlong to the shore with tears and prayers: ‘By the stars I implore you, by the gods above and this light of heaven that we breathe, take me away, Teucrians; carry me off to any land at all; that will be enough. I know I am one of the Danaan fleet, and I confess that I made war on the household gods of Ilium. For this, if the wrong of my crime is so great, tear me apart and scatter me on the waves, and plunge me into the vast sea. If I die, it will be a comfort to have died at the hands of men.’

He had spoken, and, clasping our knees and groveling at our knees, he clung to us. We urge him to tell us who he is, of what blood he was born, and then to confess what fortune drives him on. Father Anchises himself, without long delay, gives the young man his right hand and strengthens his spirit with this ready pledge. At last he lays aside his fear and speaks: ‘My homeland is Ithaca; I am a companion of unlucky Ulysses, Achaemenides by name. I set out for Troy because my father Adamastus was poor—if only I had stayed in that fortune! Here my comrades, in their panic to leave the cruel threshold, forgot me and abandoned me in the Cyclops’ vast cave. It is a house of gore and bloody feasts, dark inside and huge. He himself is towering, and strikes the high stars—gods, rid the earth of such a plague!—not easy to look at, nor to be spoken to by anyone.

He feeds on the flesh and dark blood of his wretched victims. I saw it myself, when he seized two of our number in his great hand and, lying back in the middle of the cave, smashed them against the rock, and the threshold was spattered and swam with gore; I saw him chewing limbs dripping with black blood, and the warm joints quivered under his teeth. Not without punishment, though: Ulysses did not endure such things, nor did the man of Ithaca forget himself in so great a danger. For as soon as, gorged with his feasting and buried in wine, he laid down his drooping neck and lay sprawled across the cave, immense, belching out gore and morsels mixed with bloody wine in his sleep, we prayed to the great gods, drew lots for our tasks, and all together poured around him on every side, and with a sharp point we bored out his eye—

When he had reached the deep waves and come to the sea, he washed in it the blood flowing from his gouged-out eye, gnashing his teeth with a groan, and now he walks through the open sea, and still the waves have not wet his towering sides. In terror we hasten our flight far from there, taking on board the suppliant who had so well deserved it, and silently cut the cable; and leaning forward we sweep the sea with competing oars. He sensed it, and turned his steps toward the sound of our voices. But when he finds no chance to lay hands on us, and cannot keep pace with the Ionian waves in pursuit, he raises an immense roar, at which the sea and all its waves shook, the land of Italy was terrified to its depths, and Etna bellowed in its winding caverns.

But the people of the Cyclopes, roused from the woods and high mountains, rush to the harbor and crowd the shore. We see them standing there, powerless, with grim eye, the brothers of Etna, carrying their heads high to the sky, a dreadful assembly: as when on a lofty summit towering oaks or cone-bearing cypresses stand together, a high forest of Jupiter or a grove of Diana. Sharp fear drives us headlong to shake out the ropes wherever they lead and spread our sails to the favoring winds. Yet the commands of Helenus warn us against holding a course between Scylla and Charybdis, where on either side the way lies a hair’s breadth from death; we resolve to turn our sails back. But look, Boreas, the north wind, arrives, sent from the narrow seat of Pelorus. I sail past the mouth of the Pantagias with its living rock, the bay of Megara and low-lying Thapsus. These were the shores that Achaemenides, companion of unlucky Ulysses, pointed out, retracing in reverse the course of his former wanderings.

Stretched across the mouth of a Sicanian bay lies an island, facing wave-beaten Plemyrium; men of old called it Ortygia. The story goes that Alpheus, the river of Elis, forced a hidden path here beneath the sea, and now, Arethusa, mingles at your mouth with the Sicilian waters. As we were ordered, we worship the great gods of the place; and from there I pass the rich soil of the marshy Helorus. Next we graze the high crags and jutting rocks of Pachynus, and far off appears Camerina, which the fates allowed never to be moved, and the Geloan plains, and huge Gela, named after its river. Then steep Acragas displays its mighty walls in the distance, once the breeder of high-spirited horses; and you, palm-rich Selinus, I leave behind with the winds granted me, and I thread the shallows of Lilybaeum, treacherous with hidden rocks.note

From there the harbor of Drepanum and its joyless shore receive me. Here, after being driven by so many storms at sea, alas, I lose my father, Anchises, the comfort of every care and misfortune. Here, best of fathers, you abandon me in my weariness, alas, rescued in vain from such great dangers! Neither the prophet Helenus, though he warned of many horrors, foretold this grief to me, nor dread Celaeno. This was my last hardship, this the end of my long journeys. When I left there, a god drove me to your shores. So father Aeneas, alone, with all intent upon him, retold the fates sent by the gods and described his wanderings. At last he fell silent, and here, making an end, he rested.

But the queen, long since wounded by a heavy care, feeds the wound with her lifeblood and is consumed by a hidden fire. Again and again the man’s valor comes back to her mind, again and again the high honor of his people. His face and his words cling fixed in her heart, and her care gives her limbs no peaceful rest. The next dawn was sweeping the earth with Phoebus’ lamp, and Dawn had cleared the dewy shadow from the sky, when, scarcely in her right mind, she spoke to the sister who shared her heart: “Anna, my sister, what dreams terrify me and hold me in suspense! Who is this stranger, new to our house, who has come among us? How he bears himself! How brave his heart and his arms! I truly believe, and it is no idle belief, that he is descended from the gods. Fear exposes a low-born soul. Ah, by what fates he has been tossed! What wars, endured to the end, he was telling of!

If it were not fixed and settled immovably in my mind never to join myself to anyone in the bond of marriage, since my first love cheated me and left me betrayed by death; if I had not grown weary of the bridal chamber and the marriage torch, perhaps to this one fault I might have yielded. Anna, I will confess it: since the death of my poor husband Sychaeus, since our household gods were spattered with the blood my brother shed, he alone has bent my feelings and shaken my wavering heart. I recognize the traces of the old flame. But I would pray that the earth gape open to its depths for me, or that the Almighty Father hurl me with his thunderbolt down to the shades, the pale shades of Erebus and its deep night, before I violate you, Shame, or break your laws. He who first joined me to himself took away my love; let him keep it with him and guard it in the grave.”

So she spoke, and the welling tears filled the fold of her dress. Anna answers: “O dearer to your sister than the light, will you waste away alone, grieving all through your youth, never knowing sweet children or the rewards of Venus? Do you believe that ashes or buried spirits care about that? So be it: no suitors moved you in your grief before, not in Libya, nor earlier in Tyre; Iarbas was scorned, and the other chieftains whom Africa, a land rich in triumphs, breeds. Will you fight even against a love that pleases you? And does it not come to your mind in whose lands you have settled? On this side the Gaetulian cities, a people unconquerable in war, and the unbridled Numidians hem you in, and the inhospitable Syrtis; on that side a region made desert by thirst, and the Barcaeans raging far and wide. Why should I speak of the wars rising from Tyre, and our brother’s threats?note

For my part I believe it was with the gods’ favor and Juno’s support that the Trojan ships held their course here on the wind. What a city you will see rise here, sister, what a kingdom, from such a marriage! With Teucrian arms at its side, to what great deeds will Punic glory raise itself! Only ask the gods’ favor, and once the sacrifices are accepted, indulge your guest and weave reasons for delay, while winter and rainy Orion rage themselves out on the sea, while his ships are battered and the sky is beyond handling.” With these words she set her already burning heart ablaze with love, gave hope to her wavering mind, and loosened her sense of shame. First they go to the shrines and seek peace at altar after altar; they sacrifice chosen two-year-old sheep, as custom requires, to Ceres the lawgiver, to Phoebus and to father Lyaeus, and above all to Juno, who has the bonds of marriage in her care.

Dido herself, most beautiful, holding the bowl in her right hand, pours it out between the horns of a gleaming white heifer, or paces before the faces of the gods toward the altars rich with offerings, and renews the day with gifts, and gazing eagerly into the opened breasts of the victims consults the still-breathing entrails. Ah, the ignorant minds of prophets! What use are vows, what use are shrines to a woman in frenzy? All the while a flame devours her soft marrow, and a silent wound lives beneath her breast. Unhappy Dido burns and wanders through the whole city in frenzy, like a deer struck by an arrow, which a shepherd hunting with his weapons has pierced from far off, off her guard among the Cretan woods, and has left the flying steel in her without knowing it; she ranges in flight through the forests and glades of Dicte, and the deadly shaft clings to her side.

Now she leads Aeneas with her through the midst of the walls and shows him the wealth of Sidon and the city ready built; she begins to speak, and stops in mid-word. Now, as the day wanes, she seeks the same banquet again, and in her madness begs to hear once more the hardships of Ilium, and hangs once more on the lips of the teller. Afterwards, when they have parted, and the dim moon in her turn hides her light, and the setting stars urge sleep, she grieves alone in the empty house and lies down on the couch he has left; absent, she hears him and sees him, absent; or, captivated by his likeness to his father, she holds Ascanius in her lap, to see if she can deceive a love she dare not speak. The towers she began rise no further, the young men do not practice arms or make ready harbors or battlements to keep them safe in war; the works hang broken off, the huge menacing walls and the cranes that reach the sky.

As soon as Jupiter’s dear wife saw that Dido was held fast by such a plague, and that her good name was no obstacle to her frenzy, the daughter of Saturn approached Venus with these words: “A fine glory indeed and rich spoils you carry off, you and your boy, a great and memorable divine power, if one woman has been conquered by the trickery of two gods! Nor does it escape me that you have feared our walls and held the homes of lofty Carthage in suspicion. But what will be the limit? Where are we going now with so great a contest? Why do we not rather make an everlasting peace and a pledged marriage? You have what you sought with all your heart: Dido burns with love and has drawn the frenzy into her bones.

So let us rule this people in common and under equal auspices; let her be allowed to serve a Phrygian husband and to hand over her Tyrians into your hand as her dowry.” To her Venus began in reply, for she sensed that Juno had spoken with deceit in her heart, to divert the kingdom of Italy to Libyan shores: “Who would be so mad as to refuse such terms, or prefer to contend with you in war, if only fortune follows the deed you propose? But I am carried along uncertain of the fates, whether Jupiter wishes there to be one city for the Tyrians and for those who set out from Troy, or approves the mingling of peoples and the joining of treaties. You are his wife: it is right for you to test his mind by entreaty. Go on; I will follow.” Then royal Juno took her up thus:

“That task will be mine. Now listen, and I will tell you in a few words how what presses on us can be accomplished. Aeneas and most unhappy Dido are preparing to go hunting together in the forest as soon as tomorrow’s Titan brings up his first rising and unveils the world with his rays. On them, while the horsemen bustle and ring the glades with nets, I will pour down from above a black storm cloud mixed with hail and rouse the whole sky with thunder. Their companions will scatter and be covered in thick darkness. Dido and the Trojan leader will come to the same cave. I will be there, and, if I can be sure of your will, [I will join them in lasting marriage and make her his own;] this will be their wedding.” Not opposing her request, Cytherea nodded assent and smiled at the trick she had seen through.

Meanwhile Dawn rose and left the Ocean. When the first light of the sun has risen, the chosen youth go out from the gates; wide-meshed nets, snares, hunting spears with broad iron heads, Massylian horsemen and the keen-scented pack of hounds pour out. The leading Carthaginians wait at the doors for the queen, who lingers in her chamber; her horse stands brilliant in purple and gold and fiercely champs the foaming bit. At last she comes forward, a great crowd thronging round her, wrapped in a Sidonian cloak with an embroidered border. Her quiver is of gold, her hair is knotted up in gold, a golden brooch fastens her purple robe. The Phrygian companions too come on, and joyful Iulus. Aeneas himself, most beautiful of all, comes forward to join her and unites his band with hers.

Meanwhile the sky begins to be stirred with a great rumbling; there follows a storm cloud mixed with hail; and the Tyrian companions everywhere, and the Trojan youth, and the Dardanian grandson of Venus, in fear sought shelter here and there across the fields; rivers rush down from the mountains. Dido and the Trojan leader come to the same cave. First Earth and Juno, attendant of brides, give the signal; fires flashed, and the sky was witness to the union, and on the highest peak the nymphs wailed. That day was the first cause of death, the first cause of disasters; for Dido is no longer moved by appearances or her good name, nor does she now think of a secret love: she calls it marriage; with this name she covers her fault.

At once Rumor goes through the great cities of Libya—Rumor, an evil swifter than any other; she thrives on movement and gains strength as she goes; small at first through fear, soon she lifts herself into the air, walks upon the ground, and hides her head among the clouds. Mother Earth, provoked to anger against the gods, bore her, so they say, as her last child, a sister to Coeus and Enceladus, swift of foot and quick of wing, a monster horrible and huge, who has as many watchful eyes beneath—wonderful to tell—as she has feathers on her body, as many tongues, as many mouths that speak, as many ears she pricks up. By night she flies between sky and earth through the shadow, shrieking, and never closes her eyes in sweet sleep; by day she sits on watch on the top of a high roof or on lofty towers, and terrifies great cities, as tenacious of the false and wicked as she is a messenger of the truth.note

She then was filling the peoples with manifold talk, rejoicing, and singing alike of what was done and what was not: that Aeneas had come, born of Trojan blood, a man to whom lovely Dido thinks it fitting to join herself; that now they were spending the winter, all its length, in luxury together, forgetful of their kingdoms and held captive by shameful desire. These things the foul goddess spreads everywhere on the lips of men. Straightaway she turns her course to King Iarbas, sets his mind on fire with her words and heaps up his anger. He, the son of Ammon by a Garamantian nymph he had carried off, had set up to Jupiter in his broad kingdoms a hundred huge temples, a hundred altars, and had consecrated an ever-wakeful fire, the eternal sentry of the gods; the ground was rich with the blood of beasts, and the doorways bloomed with garlands of many colors. And he, out of his mind and inflamed by the bitter rumor, is said to have prayed long to Jupiter before the altars, among the divine presences of the gods, a suppliant with upturned hands:note

“Almighty Jupiter, to whom the Moorish people, feasting on embroidered couches, now pour the offering of Lenaean wine, do you see these things? Or, father, when you hurl your thunderbolts, do we fear you for nothing, and are they blind fires among the clouds that terrify our minds and stir up empty rumblings? A woman who wandered into our territory and founded a tiny city for a price, to whom we gave a shore to plow and the laws of the place, has rejected marriage with us and received Aeneas into her kingdom as its lord. And now that Paris, with his retinue of half-men, his chin and his perfumed hair tied up in a Maeonian cap, takes possession of what he has seized, while we, of course, bring gifts to your temples and cherish a hollow tale.” As he prayed in such words and clung to the altars, the Almighty heard him and turned his eyes toward the royal walls and the lovers who had forgotten their better name. Then he addresses Mercury thus and gives these commands:

“Go now, my son, call the Zephyrs and glide on your wings, and speak to the Dardanian leader, who now lingers in Tyrian Carthage and does not look to the cities granted him by the fates; carry my words through the swift breezes. His most beautiful mother did not promise him to us as such a man, nor is that why she twice rescued him from the arms of the Greeks; she promised he would be the one to rule Italy, teeming with empires and roaring with war, to hand on a line from the high blood of Teucer, and to bring the whole world under laws. If the glory of such great things does not fire him, and he will not shoulder the toil for his own fame, does the father begrudge Ascanius the citadels of Rome? What is he building? With what hope does he linger among a hostile people, and not look to his Ausonian descendants and the Lavinian fields? Let him sail: this is the sum of it; let this be our message.”

He had spoken. Mercury made ready to obey the command of his great father. First he binds on his feet the golden sandals that carry him on high on their wings, over the seas or over the land, as swiftly as the rushing wind; then he takes up his wand: with it he calls pale souls out of Orcus and sends others down to gloomy Tartarus, gives sleep and takes it away, and unseals eyes in death. Relying on it he drives the winds before him and swims through the turbulent clouds; and now in his flight he sees the summit and the steep sides of hardy Atlas, who props up the sky on his head—Atlas, whose pine-crowned head, constantly ringed with black clouds, is beaten by wind and rain; snow spreads over his shoulders and covers them; rivers plunge down from the old man’s chin, and his rough beard is stiff with ice.

At once he confronts him: “Are you now laying the foundations of lofty Carthage, and, a doting husband, building a beautiful city—forgetful, alas, of your own kingdom and your own destiny? The ruler of the gods himself sends me down to you from bright Olympus, he who turns sky and earth by his power; he himself orders me to carry these commands through the swift breezes: what are you building? With what hope do you waste your time in idleness in Libyan lands? If the glory of such great things does not move you, [and you will not shoulder the toil for your own fame,] look to Ascanius as he grows, to the hopes of Iulus your heir, to whom the kingdom of Italy and the Roman land are owed.” Having spoken thus, the Cyllenian left mortal sight in mid-speech and vanished far from view into thin air.

But Aeneas, at the sight, was struck dumb and out of his mind; his hair stood on end with terror and his voice stuck in his throat. He burns to be gone in flight and leave the sweet lands, thunderstruck by so great a warning and command of the gods. Ah, what should he do? With what words can he now dare to approach the queen in her frenzy? What opening should he make first? He divides his swift mind now this way, now that, sends it rushing in different directions and turns everything over. As he wavered, this seemed the better plan: he calls Mnestheus and Sergestus and brave Serestus: they are to fit out the fleet in silence, gather the companions on the shore, make ready their arms, and conceal the reason for the change; he himself meanwhile, since good Dido knows nothing and does not expect so great a love to be broken off, will try to find a way to approach her, the gentlest time for speaking, the right way to handle the matter. Swiftly they all gladly obey his command and carry out his orders.

But the queen—who could deceive a lover?—sensed the deceit beforehand and was the first to catch the coming stir, fearing everything, even what was safe. The same wicked Rumor brought word to her in her frenzy that the fleet was being armed and the voyage prepared. She rages, helpless in mind, and blazing, runs wild through the whole city, like a Thyiad roused when the sacred emblems are shaken, when the rites held every other year spur her on as she hears the cry of Bacchus, and Cithaeron calls her with its shouting by night. At last she speaks to Aeneas first, with these words: “Did you even hope, faithless one, that you could hide so great a wrong, and leave my land in silence? Does neither our love hold you, nor the right hand you once gave, nor Dido, who will die a cruel death?note

Are you even working on your fleet under the winter star, and hurrying to cross the deep in the midst of the north winds, cruel one? What then? If you were not seeking foreign fields and unknown homes, if ancient Troy still stood, would you seek out Troy with your fleet across the stormy sea? Is it me you flee? By these tears and by your right hand (since I have left myself, in my misery, nothing else), by our marriage, by the wedding we began, if I have deserved any good of you, or if anything of mine was ever sweet to you, pity a falling house, and put away—I beg you, if there is still any place for prayers—that intention of yours. Because of you the Libyan peoples and the Nomad chieftains hate me, the Tyrians are hostile; because of you, too, my sense of shame is extinguished, and my former good name, by which alone I was rising to the stars. To whom are you leaving me, at the point of death, my guest?

I will say a few words to the point. I did not hope to hide this flight by stealth—do not imagine it—nor did I ever hold out a husband’s marriage torch, or enter into such a pact. If the fates allowed me to lead my life under my own auspices and settle my cares as I wished, I would be tending first the city of Troy and the sweet remnants of my people; Priam’s high halls would still stand, and with my own hand I would have founded a Pergamum reborn for the conquered. But now Grynean Apollo has ordered me to make for great Italy; the Lycian oracles have ordered me to Italy: this is my love, this my homeland. If the citadels of Carthage and the sight of a Libyan city hold you, a Phoenician, why, then, begrudge the Teucrians their settling in Ausonian land? We too have the right to seek foreign kingdoms.note

“No goddess was your mother, nor was Dardanus the founder of your line, traitor. No, Caucasus, bristling with hard crags, gave birth to you, and Hyrcanian tigers gave you their udders. For why should I pretend, or what greater wrongs am I holding myself back for? Did he groan when I wept? Did he turn his eyes? Was he overcome, did he shed tears, or pity the woman who loves him? Which of these things should I put first, and which after? Now, now neither great Juno nor the father, son of Saturn, looks on these things with fair eyes. Nowhere is trust safe. He was cast up on the shore, in need, and I took him in, and like a madwoman gave him a share in my kingdom. I brought back his lost fleet and rescued his comrades from death. Ah, I am swept along, on fire with frenzy! Now it is the prophet Apollo, now the Lycian oracles, now even the messenger of the gods, sent by Jupiter himself, who brings dreadful commands through the air.

But devoted Aeneas, though he longs to soothe her grief with comfort and turn aside her cares with words, groans deeply, and his heart is shaken by his great love. Still he carries out the commands of the gods and goes back to his fleet. Then indeed the Teucrians set to work and launch their tall ships all along the shore. The tarred keels float. In their eagerness for flight they bring oars still in leaf, and timber from the woods not yet shaped. You could see them on the move, rushing out from all over the city. And as when ants, mindful of winter, plunder a huge heap of grain and store it in their home: the black column moves across the fields, and they carry their plunder through the grass along a narrow track. Some strain with their shoulders and push the great grains; some keep the column together and punish delay; the whole path seethes with work.

What did you feel then, Dido, as you saw such things? What groans did you utter, when from the top of the citadel you looked out on the shore seething far and wide, and saw the whole sea before your eyes in turmoil with such shouting? Cruel Love, to what do you not drive mortal hearts! She is driven to go again to tears, again to try entreaty, and as a suppliant to bow her pride to love, so that she may not leave anything untried and die for nothing. “Anna, you see the bustle all along the shore. They have gathered from every side. Already the canvas calls to the breezes, and the joyful sailors have set garlands on the sterns. If I could foresee so great a grief, I will be able to bear it too, sister. Yet, Anna, do this one thing for me in my misery. That traitor honored you alone and even entrusted his secret thoughts to you. You alone knew the times and the ways to approach the man easily.

Go, sister, and humbly address our proud enemy. I did not swear with the Danaans at Aulis to wipe out the Trojan people, or send a fleet against Pergamum. I did not tear up the ashes or the shade of his father Anchises. Why does he refuse to let my words into his hard ears? Where is he rushing? Let him give this last gift to the poor woman who loves him: let him wait for an easy flight and favoring winds. I no longer ask for the old marriage he has betrayed, nor that he go without lovely Latium and give up his kingdom. I ask for empty time, a rest and a respite for my frenzy, until my fortune teaches me, defeated, how to grieve. This is the last favor I ask—pity your sister—and when he has granted it, I will repay it with interest at my death.”note

So she pleaded, and her most unhappy sister carries such tearful appeals to him again and again. But he is moved by no tears, and listens to no words with a yielding mind. The fates stand in the way, and a god blocks the man’s kindly ears. And as when the Alpine north winds, blowing now from this side, now from that, vie with one another to uproot an oak whose timber is strong with many years: a roaring goes up, and as the trunk is shaken the high leaves strew the ground, but the tree itself clings to the rocks, and as far as its crown reaches up toward the breezes of heaven, so far do its roots stretch down toward Tartarus. Just so the hero is battered on this side and that by constant pleas, and feels the cares deep in his great heart. His mind stays unmoved; the tears roll down in vain.

Then indeed unhappy Dido, terrified by her fate, prays for death; she is weary of looking at the vault of heaven. To make her all the more resolved to carry out her plan and leave the light, she saw, as she laid her offerings on the altars where incense burns, the holy liquids turn black and the wine she poured change into foul blood. It is horrible to tell. She told this sight to no one, not even to her sister. Besides, there was in the palace a marble shrine to her former husband, which she tended with wonderful reverence, wreathed with snow-white wool and festive leaves. From here she seemed to hear voices, the words of her husband calling her, when dark night held the earth. And on the rooftops a lone owl often seemed to lament with its funeral song and to draw out its long notes into a wail;

“Sister, I have found a way—congratulate your sister—that will give him back to me or free me from loving him. Near the edge of Ocean and the setting sun lies the farthest land of the Ethiopians, where mightiest Atlas turns on his shoulder the axis of heaven, studded with blazing stars. From there a priestess of the Massylian people has been shown to me. She was guardian of the temple of the Hesperides, and she used to give the dragon its food and guard the sacred branches on the tree, sprinkling moist honey and sleep-bringing poppy. She claims that with her spells she can free the minds of whomever she wishes, and send hard cares into others; that she can stop the water in rivers and turn the stars backward. She raises the spirits of the dead by night: you will see the earth bellow beneath your feet and the ash trees come down from the mountains. I swear by the gods, dear one, by you, sister, and by your dear head, that I arm myself with the arts of magic against my will.note

Altars stand around, and the priestess, her hair streaming loose, thunders out the names of three hundred gods, Erebus and Chaos, and triple Hecate, the three faces of the virgin Diana. She had sprinkled, too, water feigned to come from the spring of Avernus. Herbs are sought, cut by moonlight with bronze sickles, downy and full of the milky juice of black poison. Sought too is the love-charm torn from the forehead of a newborn foal and snatched before its mother could take it. Dido herself, with the holy meal in her devout hands, beside the altars, one foot freed from its sandal, her robe ungirt, about to die, calls to witness the gods and the stars that know her fate. Then she prays to whatever power, just and mindful, cares for lovers bound in an unequal pact.note

It was night, and all over the earth weary bodies were enjoying peaceful sleep, and the woods and the savage seas had grown quiet. It was the hour when the stars roll on in the middle of their course, when every field is silent, and the beasts and the bright-colored birds, those that dwell far and wide on the clear lakes and those that live in the countryside rough with thickets, lay sleeping under the silent night [soothing their cares, their hearts forgetful of their toils]. But not the Phoenician queen, unhappy in her heart. Never does she sink into sleep or take the night into her eyes or her heart. Her cares redouble; her love rises again and rages, and she surges on a great tide of anger. So she begins, and thus she turns it over in her heart:

“See, what am I to do? Shall I, a laughingstock, try my former suitors once again, and humbly seek marriage among the Nomads, whom I have so often scorned as husbands? Shall I then follow the Trojan fleets and the Teucrians’ lowest commands? Because they are glad to have been helped by me before, and gratitude for my old kindness stands firm in their memories? But suppose I wanted it: who would allow me, or take me, a woman they hate, on their proud ships? Ah, lost woman, do you not know, do you not yet see the perjuries of Laomedon’s people? What then? Shall I go alone in flight with the exultant sailors? Or shall I take ship surrounded by my Tyrians and my whole band of followers, and drive out to sea again those whom I barely tore away from the city of Sidon, and order them to spread their sails to the winds?

“Son of the goddess, can you sleep at such a moment? Madman, do you not see the dangers that will surround you then, or hear the favoring west winds blowing? She is turning over treachery and dreadful crime in her heart, resolved to die, and surges on a shifting tide of anger. Will you not flee from here headlong, while you have the power to hurry? Soon you will see the sea churned with timbers and cruel torches blazing, soon the shore seething with flames, if Dawn finds you lingering in these lands. Come now, break off delay. Woman is always a fickle and changeable thing.” So he spoke, and merged into the black night.

Then indeed Aeneas, terrified by the sudden apparition, snatches his body from sleep and rouses his comrades: “Wake up at once, men, and take your seats on the benches; quickly, loose the sails. Look, a god sent from high heaven is urging us again to hasten our flight and cut the twisted cables. We follow you, holy one among the gods, whoever you are, and once again we gladly obey your command. Be with us, help us kindly, and bring favorable stars in the sky.” He spoke, snatches his flashing sword from its sheath, and strikes the mooring ropes with the drawn blade. The same ardor takes hold of them all at once; they seize their gear and rush. They have left the shore; the sea is hidden beneath their ships. Straining, they churn the foam and sweep the blue water.

And now Dawn, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, was first sprinkling the earth with new light. As soon as the queen, from her watchtower, saw the light grow white and the fleet moving off with level sails, and realized that the shore and harbor were empty, with no oarsmen, she struck her lovely breast three and four times with her hand, tore her golden hair, and said: “O Jupiter, shall he go? Shall this stranger have made a mockery of my kingdom? Will they not get out their weapons and follow from all over the city, and will others not drag ships from the docks? Go, quickly, bring fire, spread the sails, drive the oars!—

“Dear nurse, bring my sister Anna here to me. Tell her to hurry and sprinkle her body with river water, and to bring with her the animals and the offerings of atonement, as directed. So let her come; and you yourself cover your temples with a holy headband. I mean to complete the rites to Stygian Jupiter that I have duly begun and prepared, to put an end to my sorrows, and to give over to the flames the pyre of that Dardanian.” So she spoke; the nurse quickened her steps with an old woman’s eagerness. But Dido, trembling and wild with her monstrous undertaking, rolling her bloodshot eyes, her quivering cheeks flecked with spots, and pale with her coming death, bursts into the inner courts of the palace. In frenzy she climbs the high pyre and unsheathes the Dardanian sword, a gift not sought for this use. Here, when she had seen the Trojan clothes and the familiar bed, she paused a little in tears and thought, then lay down on the bed and spoke her last words:note

“Sweet relics, sweet while fate and the god allowed, receive this soul and free me from these sorrows. I have lived, and I have finished the course that fortune gave me, and now my great shade will go beneath the earth. I have founded a glorious city; I have seen my own walls; I have avenged my husband and made my hostile brother pay. Happy, ah, too happy, if only the Dardanian ships had never touched our shores!” She spoke, and pressing her face into the bed, she said: “I shall die unavenged, but let me die. So, so I am glad to go down to the shades. Let the cruel Dardanian drink in this fire with his eyes from out at sea, and carry with him the omen of my death.”

She had spoken, and in the midst of such words her companions see her fallen on the sword, the blade foaming with blood and her hands spattered. A cry goes up to the high halls; Rumor runs wild through the stricken city. The houses resound with lamentation and groaning and the wailing of women; the sky echoes with loud mourning, just as if all Carthage or ancient Tyre were falling as enemies poured in, and raging flames were rolling over the roofs of men and of gods. Her sister heard, and breathless and terrified, running in trembling haste, tearing her face with her nails and beating her breast with her fists, she rushes through the crowd and calls the dying woman by name: “So this was what it meant, sister? Was your deceit aimed at me? Was this what that pyre, this what the fires and altars were preparing for me?

Deserted, what shall I lament first? Did you scorn your sister’s company as you died? You should have called me to the same fate: the same pain, the same hour would have carried us both off by the sword. Did I build this with these hands, and call aloud on our fathers’ gods, only so that I should cruelly be absent while you lay here? You have destroyed yourself and me, sister, the people and the elders of Sidon, and your city. Give me water to wash her wounds, and if any last breath still lingers, let me catch it with my lips.” So she spoke. She had climbed the high steps, and, embracing her half-dead sister, she held her to her breast, groaning, and dried the dark blood with her dress. She tried to lift her heavy eyes, and fails again; the wound fixed deep beneath her breast hisses. Three times she raised herself, leaning on her elbow; three times she fell back on the bed, and with wandering eyes she sought the light in high heaven, and groaned when she found it.

Then all-powerful Juno, pitying her long suffering and her hard death, sent Iris down from Olympus to release the struggling soul from the limbs that held it bound. For since she was dying neither by fate nor by a death she had earned, but wretchedly, before her day, set on fire by sudden madness, Proserpina had not yet taken a golden lock from her head and condemned her to Stygian Orcus. So Iris, dewy on saffron wings, trailing a thousand changing colors against the sun, flies down across the sky and stands above her head: “As I was bidden, I carry off this lock, sacred to Dis, and I release you from that body.” So she spoke, and with her right hand she cuts the lock. At once all warmth slipped away, and life withdrew into the winds.

Meanwhile Aeneas, resolute, was already holding his course with the fleet in mid-sea, cutting through waves darkened by the north wind, and looking back at the walls that now glow with the flames of unhappy Elissa. What kindled so great a fire is hidden. But the Teucrians know the bitter pain that follows when a great love is defiled, and what a woman in frenzy can do, and that knowledge leads their hearts through grim foreboding. When the ships held the open sea and no land any longer met them, sea on every side and on every side sky, a dark rain cloud stood above his head, bringing night and storm, and the water shuddered in the darkness. The helmsman Palinurus himself cried from the high stern: “Ah! Why have such clouds encircled the sky? What are you preparing, father Neptune?” Having spoken so, he orders them to gather in the tackle and lean on their sturdy oars. He sets the sails slanting to the wind and speaks thus:

“Great-hearted Aeneas, not even if Jupiter pledged it to me would I hope to reach Italy under such a sky. The winds have shifted and roar across our path, rising out of the dark west, and the air is massing into cloud. We are not strong enough to struggle against it, or even to hold our course. Since Fortune is the stronger, let us follow her and turn our course where she calls. Not far off, I think, are the faithful shores of your brother Eryx and the Sicanian harbors, if only I remember rightly and am retracing the stars I watched before.” Then devoted Aeneas answered: “For my part, I have seen for some time that the winds demand this, and that you strain against them in vain. Change course under sail. Could any land be more welcome to me, or any where I would rather bring my weary ships to rest, than the land that keeps Dardanian Acestes for me and holds in its embrace the bones of my father Anchises?”note

When this was said, they make for the harbor, and the west winds fill the sails behind them. The fleet is borne swiftly over the flood, and at last they turn, glad, toward the familiar sands. But Acestes, far off on a lofty mountaintop, marvels at the arrival of friendly ships and hurries to meet them, bristling with javelins and the hide of a Libyan she-bear. A Trojan mother bore him, conceived by the river Crinisus. He has not forgotten his ancient parentage: he rejoices at their return, gladly receives them with his rustic wealth, and comforts the weary with a friend’s abundance. On the next day, when the bright dawn had put the stars to flight in the east, Aeneas calls his comrades from all along the shore into an assembly and speaks from the top of a mound:

“Great Dardanians, people sprung from the high blood of the gods, the circling year has completed its months since we laid in the earth the remains, the bones of my divine father, and consecrated altars of mourning. And now the day is here, unless I am mistaken, which I shall always hold bitter, always honored—so you gods have willed it. If I were spending it as an exile among the Gaetulian Syrtes, or were caught on the Argive sea or in the city of Mycenae, I would still perform the yearly vows and the solemn processions in due order, and heap the altars with their proper gifts. Now, beyond all expectation, we stand by the ashes and bones of my father himself—not, I think, without the purpose and the will of the gods—and have been carried into a friendly harbor.

So he spoke, and veils his brows with his mother’s myrtle. Elymus does the same, and Acestes, ripe in years, and the boy Ascanius, and the rest of the young men follow them. From the assembly Aeneas went with many thousands to the tomb, in the midst of a great attending throng. Here, pouring a due libation, he spills on the ground two goblets of unmixed wine, two of fresh milk, two of sacred blood, and scatters crimson flowers, and speaks thus: “Hail, holy father; hail once more, ashes recovered in vain, and soul and shade of my father. It was not granted me to seek with you the borders of Italy and the fields of fate, nor Ausonian Tiber, whatever that may be.”

He had said this, when from the depths of the shrine a gliding snake drew out seven huge coils, seven folds, gently embracing the tomb and sliding among the altars. Its back was flecked with blue markings, and a gleam dappled with gold set its scales on fire, as a rainbow in the clouds casts a thousand shifting colors against the sun. Aeneas was struck dumb at the sight. At last, winding its long train among the bowls and polished cups, the serpent tasted the offerings, and, harmless, crept back into the depths of the tomb, leaving the altars where it had fed. All the more eagerly Aeneas renews the rites he had begun for his father, uncertain whether to think it the guardian spirit of the place or his father’s attendant. He slays two sheep, as custom requires, as many pigs, and as many black-backed bullocks; and he poured wine from the bowls, calling on the soul of great Anchises and his shade released from Acheron.

First, four well-matched ships chosen from the whole fleet enter the contest with their heavy oars. Mnestheus drives the swift Pristis with its keen rowers—Mnestheus, soon to be Italian, from whose name comes the line of Memmius. Gyas drives the huge Chimaera of huge bulk, a city of a ship, which Dardanian youths drive in three tiers, the oars rising in three rows. Sergestus, from whom the Sergian house takes its name, rides in the great Centaur; and Cloanthus in the sea-blue Scylla—from him comes your line, Roman Cluentius.note

Far out at sea, facing the foaming shore, there is a rock which is sometimes submerged and pounded by swollen waves, when the stormy northwest winds of winter hide the stars. In calm weather it is silent and rises from the motionless water, a level surface and a welcome resting place for sun-loving seabirds. Here father Aeneas set up a green turning post of leafy holm oak as a mark for the sailors, so that they would know where to turn back and where to wheel round on their long course. Then they draw lots for places, and the captains themselves stand on the sterns, gleaming from afar, splendid in gold and purple. The rest of the crews are crowned with poplar leaves, their bare shoulders glistening, drenched with oil. They take their seats on the benches, their arms tense on the oars. Tense, they wait for the signal, and throbbing fear and the eager desire for praise drain their leaping hearts.

Then, when the trumpet gave its clear blast, all of them, without delay, sprang forward from their places. The sailors’ shouts strike the sky, and the water is churned to foam as their arms pull back. They cut their furrows side by side, and the whole sea gapes open, torn up by the oars and the three-pronged beaks. Not so headlong do chariots in a two-horse race seize the plain and pour out from the starting gate; nor do charioteers so shake the rippling reins over their loosed teams and hang forward over the lash. Then the whole wood rings with applause, with the roar of men and the cheers of their supporters; the enclosed shore rolls the sound along, and the hills, struck by the shouting, echo it back.

Ahead of the others Gyas escapes and glides out first over the waves amid the crowd and the roar. Cloanthus follows next, with better oarsmen, but his ship is slowed by its weight of pine. After them, at an equal distance, the Pristis and the Centaur strive to win the lead. Now the Pristis has it, now the huge Centaur overtakes and passes her, now both move together with prows level, plowing the salt waters with their long keels. And now they were nearing the rock and reaching the turning post, when Gyas, in the lead and winning at the halfway point, calls out to Menoetes, the ship’s helmsman: “Why are you going so far to the right? Steer this way. Hug the shore and let the oar blades graze the rocks on the left; let the others keep to deep water.” He spoke; but Menoetes, fearing hidden rocks, turns the prow away toward the open sea.

“Where are you heading off course? Make for the rocks, Menoetes!” Gyas was calling him back again with a shout; and look—he sees Cloanthus behind him, pressing on his stern and holding a closer line. Cloanthus scrapes his way along the inside course on the left, between Gyas’ ship and the roaring rocks, suddenly passes the leader, leaves the turning post behind and holds safe water. Then indeed a mighty resentment blazed up in the young man’s bones, and his cheeks were not without tears. Forgetting both his own dignity and his comrades’ safety, he hurls the sluggish Menoetes headlong from the high stern into the sea. He himself takes the helm, himself steersman and master; he urges on the men and turns the tiller toward the shore. But Menoetes, heavy, and no longer young, when at last he had barely risen from the bottom of the sea, streaming in his dripping clothes, makes for the top of the rock and sat down on the dry stone.

The Teucrians laughed at him as he fell and as he swam, and they laugh as he spews salt water from his chest. Here a joyful hope was kindled in the last two, Sergestus and Mnestheus, of overtaking Gyas as he lagged. Sergestus takes the lead and draws near the rock, yet he is not ahead by the whole length of his keel: ahead by part of it, while the rival Pristis presses on the other part with her beak. But Mnestheus, striding amidships among his comrades, urges them on: “Now, now rise to your oars, comrades of Hector, whom I chose as my companions in Troy’s last hour. Now bring out that strength, now that spirit which you showed in the Gaetulian Syrtes, in the Ionian Sea and in the pursuing waves of Malea.

I, Mnestheus, no longer seek first place, nor do I strive to win—and yet, oh!—but let them prevail to whom you have granted this, Neptune. Let it be shameful to come back last: win this at least, my countrymen, and prevent that disgrace.” They bend forward with the utmost effort. The bronze stern shudders under their mighty strokes, and the water slips away beneath them. Then rapid panting shakes their limbs and parched mouths, and sweat flows everywhere in streams. Chance itself brought the men the honor they longed for. For while Sergestus, wild in spirit, drives his prow toward the rocks on the inside and enters a dangerously narrow space, the unlucky man ran aground on the jutting rocks. The crags shook, the oars cracked as they struck the sharp points, and the prow, dashed against them, hung there. The sailors leap up and are held fast amid loud shouting; they bring out iron-tipped poles and sharp-pointed boat hooks, and gather up the broken oars from the water.

But Mnestheus, overjoyed and made keener by his very success, with a swift sweep of oars and the winds called to his aid, makes for the downhill water and runs down the open sea. As a dove suddenly startled from a cave, whose home and sweet nest are in the hollow rock, flies out toward the fields, and in her fright makes a loud clatter of wings within her shelter, then, gliding through the quiet air, skims her clear path and does not move her swift wings: so Mnestheus, so the Pristis herself in her flight cuts through the last stretch of water, so her own momentum carries her flying on. And first she leaves behind Sergestus, struggling on the high rock and in the shallows, calling in vain for help and learning to race with broken oars. Then she catches Gyas and the Chimaera herself with her huge bulk; the Chimaera gives way, since she has been robbed of her helmsman.

And now, at the very finish, only Cloanthus remains. Mnestheus makes for him and presses him hard, straining with all his strength. Then indeed the shouting redoubles, everyone urges on the pursuer with cheers, and the sky echoes with the din. One crew thinks it shameful not to keep the glory that is theirs and the honor they have won, and would trade their lives for fame; the other is fed by success: they can, because they think they can. And perhaps they would have taken the prize with prows level, had not Cloanthus stretched both his hands toward the sea, poured out prayers and called on the gods to hear his vows: “Gods who rule the sea, whose waters I race across, gladly on this shore I will set a white bull before your altars, bound by my vow, and I will cast its entrails into the salt waves and pour out flowing wine.”

He spoke, and deep beneath the waves the whole chorus of the Nereids and of Phorcus heard him, and the maiden Panopea; and father Portunus himself, with his great hand, pushed the ship on her way. Swifter than the south wind or a winged arrow she flies to land and takes shelter in the deep harbor. Then the son of Anchises, summoning everyone as custom requires, has a herald’s loud voice declare Cloanthus the victor, and wreathes his brows with green laurel. As gifts for each ship he gives three bullocks of their choice, and wine, and a great talent of silver to carry off. To the captains themselves he adds special honors. To the victor he gives a cloak worked with gold, around which ran a broad border of Meliboean purple in a double meander. Woven into it, the royal boy on leafy Ida tires out swift stags with javelin and running, eager, seeming out of breath; and Jupiter’s armor-bearer, swooping down from Ida, has snatched him up on high in his hooked talons. His aged guardians stretch their hands in vain toward the stars, and the barking of dogs rages up into the air.note

To the man who held second place by his valor he gives a corselet of smooth linked rings, triple-woven with gold, which Aeneas himself, as victor, had stripped from Demoleos beside the swift Simois under high Ilium. He gives it to the man to keep, an honor and a protection in battle. The servants Phegeus and Sagaris could barely carry its many layers, straining with their shoulders; yet Demoleos, wearing it, used to chase the scattering Trojans at a run. As the third gift he gives twin cauldrons of bronze and bowls wrought in silver and rough with embossed figures. And now all had received their gifts and were walking proudly with their wealth, their brows bound with crimson ribbons, when Sergestus, barely wrenched free from the cruel rock with much skill, his oars lost and crippled in one tier, was bringing in his mocked ship without honor.

As often happens when a snake is caught on the raised roadway, and a bronze wheel has run across it, or a traveler, striking hard with a stone, has left it half-dead and mangled: trying in vain to escape, it twists its body in long coils, fierce in one part, its eyes blazing, rearing its hissing neck high, while the part crippled by the wound holds it back as it knots itself in coils and folds itself upon its own body: so, with such rowing, the slow ship moved along. Still she makes sail, and with sails full enters the harbor mouth. Aeneas presents Sergestus with the promised prize, glad that the ship was saved and the comrades brought back. He is given a slave woman not unskilled in the works of Minerva, Cretan by birth, Pholoë, with twin sons at her breast.

When this contest was over, devoted Aeneas goes to a grassy plain, encircled on all sides by woods on curving hills. In the middle of the valley lay the ring of a natural theater. Here the hero, with many thousands, took his place in the midst of the gathering and sat on a raised seat. Here he entices with prizes the spirits of any who may wish to compete in the swift footrace, and sets out the rewards. From all sides they gather, Teucrians and Sicanians mingled, Nisus and Euryalus first—Euryalus outstanding for his beauty and fresh youth, Nisus for his devoted love of the boy. After them came royal Diores, of Priam’s noble line; with him Salius and Patron, one an Acarnanian, the other of Arcadian blood, from the people of Tegea; then two young Trinacrians, Helymus and Panopes, at home in the woods, companions of old Acestes; and many more besides, whom obscure fame keeps hidden.note

When this was said, they take their places, and suddenly, at the signal, they dash down the course and leave the starting line, pouring forth like a storm cloud, their eyes fixed on the finish. Nisus is off first and flashes out far ahead of all the others, swifter than the winds and the wings of the thunderbolt. Next to him, but next by a long gap, follows Salius; then, after a space, Euryalus third; and Helymus follows Euryalus; and right behind him, look, Diores flies, now grazing heel with heel, pressing on his shoulder; and if more of the course were left, he would slip past ahead and leave the outcome in doubt.

And now they were almost at the last stretch and, tired, were nearing the finish itself, when unlucky Nisus slips in some slick blood, spilled where, as it happened, bullocks had been slaughtered, and it had poured over the ground and soaked the green grass. Here the young man, already exulting in victory, could not keep his stumbling feet on the ground he trod, but fell headlong right in the filthy dung and the sacred blood. Yet he did not forget Euryalus, did not forget his love: rising from the slippery ground, he threw himself in Salius’ way, and Salius rolled over and lay on the packed sand. Euryalus flashes ahead and, winner by his friend’s gift, holds first place and flies on amid applause and cheering. Behind him comes Helymus, and now Diores takes the third palm.

At this Salius fills the whole gathering in the huge stands, and the elders in the front rows, with loud protests, and demands that the honor snatched from him by a trick be given back to him. Favor protects Euryalus, and his becoming tears, and courage that is the more welcome for coming in a handsome body. Diores supports him and shouts aloud: he had come up to the palm and has reached the last prize in vain if the first honors are given back to Salius. Then father Aeneas said: “Your prizes remain assured to you, boys, and no one changes the order of the palms. Let me be allowed to pity the misfortune of a friend who did no wrong.”

So he spoke, and gives Salius the huge hide of a Gaetulian lion, heavy with shaggy hair and golden claws. At this Nisus said: “If the vanquished get prizes this great, and you pity those who fall, what gifts worthy of Nisus will you give? I earned the first crown by merit, had not the hostile fortune that struck Salius carried me off as well.” And with these words he displayed his face and his limbs fouled with wet dung. The best of fathers laughed at him and ordered a shield to be brought out, the work of Didymaon, which the Danaans had taken down from Neptune’s sacred doorpost. With this outstanding prize he presents the splendid young man. Then, when the races were done and he had finished giving gifts, he said: “Now, if anyone has courage and a ready spirit in his breast, let him come forward and raise his arms, with his hands bound in gauntlets.”

So he spoke, and sets out a double prize for the fight: for the victor a bullock adorned with gold and ribbons, and a sword and a splendid helmet as consolation for the vanquished. There is no delay: at once Dares shows his face in all his vast strength and rises up amid a great murmur from the men. He alone used to contend against Paris; and he too, by the tomb where mightiest Hector lies, struck down the champion Butes, a man of huge body, who came boasting that he was of the Bebrycian line of Amycus, and stretched him dying on the yellow sand. Such was Dares, who raises his head high for the first bout, shows his broad shoulders, thrusts out his arms one after the other, and beats the air with blows. A match is sought for him; but no one from all that crowd dares to approach the man and pull the gauntlets onto his hands.

He replied to this: “It is not that my love of praise or my pride has given way, driven out by fear. But my blood is chilled and dulled by slow old age, and the strength in my body is worn out and cold. If I had now the youth I once had, the youth in which that shameless fellow exults so confidently, I would not have needed a prize or a handsome bullock to bring me forward; I care nothing for gifts.” Having spoken thus, he flung into the middle a pair of gauntlets of enormous weight, in which fierce Eryx used to bring his hand into battle, binding his arms in the tough hide. Their minds were stunned: so huge were the seven hides of such great oxen, stiff with lead and iron sewn into them. Above all Dares himself is astounded and refuses outright; and the great-hearted son of Anchises turns over the weight and the immense coils of the thongs this way and that. Then the old man uttered from his breast such words as these:

“What if one of you had seen the gauntlets and arms of Hercules himself, and the grim fight on this very shore? These are the arms your brother Eryx once bore—you see them still stained with blood and spattered brains—in these he stood against great Alcides; to these I was accustomed, while better blood gave me strength, and envious old age had not yet scattered white across both my temples. But if Trojan Dares refuses these arms of ours, and devoted Aeneas is so resolved, and Acestes, who urged me on, approves, let us make the fight equal. I give up the hides of Eryx for you—put away your fears—and you, take off your Trojan gauntlets.” So he spoke, threw the double cloak from his shoulders, bared the great joints of his limbs, his great bones and arms, and stands, a giant, in the middle of the sand.note

Then the son of Anchises, father Aeneas, brought out matched gauntlets and bound the hands of both with equal arms. At once each rose up on his toes and, undaunted, lifted his arms to the air above. They drew their heads, held high, far back out of reach of the blows, mingle hands with hands and provoke the fight. One is better in the movement of his feet and relies on his youth; the other is strong in limbs and bulk, but his slow knees totter and give way, and labored panting shakes his huge frame. Many blows the men throw at each other in vain, many they redouble on the hollow flank, drawing great sounds from the chest; their hands stray thick and fast around ears and temples, and jaws crack under the hard blows.

Entellus stands heavy and unmoved, holding the same stance, and avoids the blows only with his body and his watchful eyes. The other, like a man who assaults a lofty city with siege works, or sits in arms around a mountain fortress, tries now this approach, now that, ranges skillfully over every spot, and presses him with varied attacks, in vain. Entellus rose up, showed his right hand and raised it high; but the other, quick, foresaw the blow coming down from above and slipped aside with a nimble body. Entellus spent his strength on the wind, and of his own accord, heavy as he was, he went down heavily with his vast weight to the ground, as a hollow pine sometimes falls, torn up by its roots, on Erymanthus or on great Ida.

“Poor man, what madness so great has seized your mind? Do you not feel that this strength is of another kind, that the divine will has turned against you? Give way to the god.” He spoke, and with his voice parted the fighters. But Dares’ loyal comrades lead him to the ships, dragging his weakened knees, his head lolling from side to side, spitting thick gore from his mouth and teeth mixed with the blood; when called, they take the helmet and the sword, and leave the palm and the bull to Entellus. At this the victor, exultant in spirit and proud of his bull, said: “Son of the goddess, and you, Teucrians, learn from this what strength I had once in my young body, and from what a death you are rescuing Dares and calling him back.”

He spoke, and stood facing the bullock that stood by as the prize of the fight; then, drawing back his right hand, he rose to his full height, swung the hard gauntlets right between its horns, and drove them into the bone, smashing in the skull. The ox is felled and falls lifeless and trembling to the ground. Standing over it, he pours out these words from his heart: “This better life I pay to you, Eryx, in place of Dares’ death; here, victorious, I lay down the gauntlets and my art.” At once Aeneas invites any who might wish to compete with the swift arrow, and sets out prizes; with his mighty hand he raises the mast from Serestus’ ship, and on a cord passed through it he hangs a winged dove from the top of the mast as a target for their arrows.

The men gathered, and a bronze helmet received the lots as they were thrown in; and first of all, to a favorable shout, comes out the lot of Hippocoön, son of Hyrtacus; next comes Mnestheus, just now the victor in the ship race, Mnestheus wreathed in green olive. Third is Eurytion, your brother, most famous Pandarus, you who once, ordered to break the truce, were the first to hurl a spear into the midst of the Achaeans. Last, at the very bottom of the helmet, lay Acestes, who also dared to try his hand at the young men’s toil. Then each man for himself bends his curving bow with all his strength, and they draw arrows from their quivers. And first through the sky, as the string twangs, the arrow of the young son of Hyrtacus whips through the fleeting air; it reaches the mast and lodges in the wood before it.note

The mast quivered, the bird took fright, its wings fluttering in terror, and the whole place rang with loud applause. Next keen Mnestheus took his stand with bow drawn, aiming high, and leveled eye and arrow together. But, unlucky man, he could not reach the bird itself with his arrowhead: he broke the knots and the linen cords that tied her by the foot as she hung from the top of the mast; she flew off into the winds and the high clouds. Then swift Eurytion, who had long been holding his arrow ready on the drawn bow, called on his brother with a vow, and, watching the dove as she rejoiced in the open sky, he strikes her as she beats her wings beneath a dark cloud. She fell lifeless, left her life among the stars of heaven, and, falling, brings back the arrow fixed in her.

With the prize lost, Acestes alone remained; yet he shot his arrow up into the airy breezes, showing off, old father that he was, his skill and his ringing bow. At this a sudden portent meets their eyes, destined to be of great augury; the mighty outcome taught its meaning later, and fearsome seers proclaimed the omens when it was too late. For as it flew among the clear clouds the reed caught fire, marked its path with flames, and vanished, consumed, into the thin winds, as often shooting stars, loosed from the sky, run across it and trail their hair behind them as they fly. The men of Trinacria and the Teucrians stood fixed, stunned in spirit, and prayed to the gods above; nor did great Aeneas reject the omen, but embracing the joyful Acestes he heaps great gifts upon him, and speaks these words:

“Take these, father; for the great king of Olympus, by such signs, has willed that you should receive honors outside the lot. You shall have this gift that belonged to aged Anchises himself, a mixing bowl embossed with figures, which Thracian Cisseus once gave to my father Anchises as a great gift to take with him, a memorial of himself and a pledge of his love.” So he spoke, and wreathed his brows with green laurel, and proclaimed Acestes victor first of all. Nor did good Eurytion begrudge the honor set before his own, though he alone brought the bird down from the high sky. Next for prizes comes the one who broke the cords; last, the one who pierced the mast with his winged arrow. But father Aeneas, before the contest was dismissed, calls to him Epytides, guardian and companion of young Iulus, and speaks these words into his faithful ear:

“Go now,” he said, “and if Ascanius has his company of boys ready with him and has arranged the movements of the horses, tell him to lead out his squadrons in honor of his grandfather and show himself in arms.” He himself orders all the people who had flooded onto the long course to withdraw, and the field to be left open. The boys ride in, and in even ranks before their parents’ eyes they shine on their bridled horses; as they pass, all the young men of Trinacria and Troy murmur in admiration. All have their hair bound, as the custom is, with a garland of trimmed leaves; they carry two cornel-wood spears tipped with iron; some have light quivers on their shoulders; high on the chest a pliant circlet of twisted gold runs around the neck. There are three troops of horsemen, and three leaders ride to and fro; each is followed by twelve boys, and they gleam in their divided columns, each with a matching trainer.

One line of boys, exulting, is led by little Priam, who bears his grandfather’s name—your famous offspring, Polites, who will increase the Italians. He rides a Thracian horse dappled with white, showing white fetlocks on its forefeet and, prancing high, a white forehead. The second is Atys, from whom the Latin Atii trace their line—little Atys, a boy loved by the boy Iulus. Last, and more beautiful than all, Iulus rides a Sidonian horse that fair Dido had given him as a memorial of herself and a pledge of her love. The rest of the youth ride the Trinacrian horses of old Acestes. The Dardanians welcome the nervous boys with applause and rejoice as they watch, recognizing the faces of their forebears. When they had joyfully ridden round the whole assembly, before the eyes of their own people, Epytides gave the signal from afar with a shout to the waiting boys and cracked his whip.note

They galloped apart in equal numbers, and the three troops broke their columns into separate bands; then, called back, they wheeled about and bore their weapons leveled for attack. Then they enter on other courses and other countercourses, facing one another across the field, weave circle within alternating circle, and in arms stir up a mock battle; now they bare their backs in flight, now turn their spears in attack, now ride side by side as if peace were made. As once, they say, the Labyrinth in lofty Crete held a path woven between blind walls and a treacherous maze of a thousand ways, where the wandering, impossible to detect or retrace, would baffle any signs to follow; so, in just such a course, the sons of the Teucrians weave their tracks and interlace flight and battle in play, like dolphins that, swimming through the watery seas, cut through the Carpathian and Libyan waters [and play among the waves].

Speeding her way along the rainbow of a thousand colors, the maiden runs swiftly down her path, seen by no one. She sees the vast gathering, surveys the shores, and sees the harbor deserted and the fleet abandoned. But far off, apart on the lonely shore, the Trojan women were weeping for lost Anchises, and all of them, weeping, gazed out at the deep sea. “Alas, that so many shallows, so much sea remains for us in our weariness!” One cry from all. They pray for a city; they are sick of enduring the hardship of the sea. So into their midst, well skilled in doing harm, she throws herself, and lays aside the face and dress of a goddess; she becomes Beroë, the aged wife of Doryclus of Tmarus, who had once had birth, a name and sons; and so she goes among the mothers of the Dardanians:

“O wretched women,” she said, “whom no Achaean hand dragged to death in war beneath the walls of our homeland! O unhappy people, for what destruction is Fortune keeping you? The seventh summer since the fall of Troy is already turning, while we are carried on, having crossed all seas, all lands, so many inhospitable rocks and stars, as through the great sea we chase an Italy that flees from us, and are tossed by the waves. Here are the lands of our brother Eryx, and Acestes is our host: who forbids us to lay walls and give our citizens a city? O homeland, O household gods snatched in vain from the enemy, will no walls ever again be called Troy’s? Shall I nowhere see Hector’s rivers, the Xanthus and the Simois? Come, then, and burn these ill-starred ships with me.

I myself left Beroë just now, sick and indignant that she alone was missing such a rite and could not pay Anchises the honors he deserves.” So she spoke. But the mothers at first, hesitating, looked at the ships with hostile eyes, torn between wretched love for the land at hand and the kingdoms that summon them by fate, when the goddess rose on poised wings through the sky and in her flight cut a huge arc beneath the clouds. Then indeed, stunned by the portents and driven by frenzy, they cry out together and snatch fire from the inner hearths; some strip the altars and hurl leaves, brushwood and torches. Vulcan rages with reins let loose across the thwarts and oars and the painted sterns of pine.

Eumelus brings the news of the burning ships to Anchises’ tomb and the tiers of the theater, and they themselves look back and see the black ash flying in a cloud. And Ascanius was the first: just as he was, joyfully leading the horsemen’s maneuvers, he galloped eagerly to the troubled camp, and his breathless trainers could not hold him back. “What strange madness is this? Where now, where are you heading,” he said, “alas, my poor countrywomen? It is not the enemy, not a hostile Argive camp: you are burning your own hopes. Look, I am your Ascanius!” He threw at his feet the empty helmet he had worn in play while staging the mock battle; at the same moment Aeneas hurries up, and with him the Teucrian columns. But the women, in fear, scatter here and there along the shores and furtively seek the woods and any hollow rocks; they are ashamed of what they began, and of the light; changed, they recognize their own people, and Juno is shaken from their hearts.

But not for that did the flames and the blaze lay aside their untamed strength; beneath the wet oak the tow lives on, spewing slow smoke, the smoldering heat devours the hulls, and the plague creeps down through their whole body, and neither the heroes’ strength nor the floods poured on are any help. Then devoted Aeneas tore the garment from his shoulders, called on the gods for help, and stretched out his hands: “Almighty Jupiter, if you do not yet hate the Trojans to the last man, if your devotion of old has any regard for human hardships, grant that the fleet escape the flames now, Father, and snatch the slender fortunes of the Teucrians from destruction. Or else, as the one thing left, if I deserve it, send me down to death with your hostile thunderbolt, and overwhelm me here with your own right hand.”

He had scarcely uttered these words when a black storm with pouring rain rages beyond all measure, and the heights and plains of the earth tremble with thunder; from the whole sky a rainstorm rushes down, turbulent with water and pitch-black with dense south winds; the ships fill to overflowing; the half-burnt timbers are soaked; until all the heat was quenched and all the hulls but four, which were lost, were saved from destruction. But father Aeneas, shaken by the bitter blow, turned his great cares over in his heart, now this way, now that: should he settle in the Sicilian fields, forgetting the fates, or make for the shores of Italy? Then old Nautes, whom Tritonian Pallas had taught above all others and made famous for great skill, gave answers declaring what the great anger of the gods foretold or what the order of the fates demanded; and he, consoling Aeneas, begins with these words:

“Son of the goddess, wherever the fates draw us and draw us back, let us follow; whatever comes, every fortune must be overcome by enduring it. You have Dardanian Acestes, of divine descent: take him as a partner in your plans and join with him, for he is willing; hand over to him those who are left over from the lost ships, and those who have grown weary of the great undertaking and of your fortunes; the long-lived old men and the mothers weary of the sea, and whatever you have with you that is weak and fearful of danger—choose them, and let the weary have walls in this land: they will call the city Acesta, if the name is allowed.” Fired by such words from his old friend, he is then truly torn in mind among all his cares. And black Night, borne up in her two-horse chariot, held the sky; then the face of his father Anchises seemed to glide down from heaven and suddenly pour out such words:

“My son, dearer to me than life once, while life remained, my son, harried by the fates of Ilium, I come here at the command of Jupiter, who drove the fire from your fleet and at last took pity on you from high heaven. Obey the counsel that old Nautes now gives, the finest counsel: take chosen young men, the bravest hearts, to Italy; in Latium you must subdue in war a people hard and rough in their way of life. Yet first approach the infernal halls of Dis, and through deep Avernus seek a meeting with me, my son. For I am not held by impious Tartarus and its gloomy shades; I dwell in Elysium among the pleasant gatherings of the devout. Here the chaste Sibyl will lead you, with much blood of black cattle; then you will learn of all your line and what walls are given you. And now farewell: dewy Night is turning her middle course, and the cruel East has breathed on me with its panting horses.”

He had spoken, and fled like thin smoke into the air. “Where are you rushing now?” said Aeneas. “Where are you hurrying? Whom do you flee, or who keeps you from my embrace?” Saying this, he stirs the embers and the slumbering fires, and as a suppliant reverently honors the hearth god of Pergamum and the shrine of hoary Vesta with holy meal and a full incense box. At once he summons his comrades, Acestes first, and tells them of Jupiter’s command and his dear father’s instructions, and what decision now stands firm in his mind. There is no delay in their plans, and Acestes does not refuse the orders. They enroll the mothers for the city, and set ashore the people who wish to stay, spirits with no need of great glory. They themselves renew the thwarts, replace the fire-gnawed timbers in the ships, and fit the oars and rigging—few in number, but with courage alive for war.

Meanwhile Aeneas marks out the city with a plow and allots the houses; this he commands to be Ilium, these places Troy. Trojan Acestes rejoices in his kingdom, proclaims a court, summons the elders and gives them laws. Then, near the stars, on the summit of Eryx, a home is founded for Idalian Venus, and a priest and a grove sacred far and wide are added to Anchises’ tomb. And now the whole people had feasted for nine days and offerings had been made on the altars; calm winds have smoothed the seas, and the south wind, blowing steadily again, calls them to the deep. Along the curving shores a great weeping arises; embracing one another, they linger a night and a day. Now the mothers themselves, even those to whom the face of the sea once seemed harsh and its name unbearable, want to go and endure all the hardship of the flight.

Good Aeneas consoles them with friendly words, and weeping, commends them to Acestes, his kinsman. Then he orders three calves to be sacrificed to Eryx and a lamb to the Storms, and the cables to be loosed in due order. He himself, his head bound with leaves of trimmed olive, standing apart on the prow, holds a bowl, throws the entrails into the salt waves, and pours out the flowing wine. A wind rising astern follows them as they go. Vying with one another, his comrades strike the sea and sweep the waters. But Venus meanwhile, troubled with cares, addresses Neptune and pours out such complaints from her heart: “Juno’s heavy anger and insatiable heart force me, Neptune, to stoop to every kind of prayer; neither length of days nor any devotion softens her, nor does she rest, broken by Jupiter’s command and the fates.

It is not enough for her, in her unspeakable hatred, to have devoured a city from the heart of the Phrygian people, nor to have dragged what was left of it through every punishment: she hounds the remains of Troy, the ashes and bones of the murdered city. Let her know the causes of such great madness. You yourself were my witness lately what a turmoil she suddenly stirred up in the Libyan waters: she mingled all the seas with the sky, trusting in vain in the storms of Aeolus, daring this in your own realm. And look—driving even the Trojan mothers to crime, she has foully burned the ships and, with the fleet lost, forced them to leave their comrades in an unknown land. As for what remains, I beg you, let them sail safely across the waves under your care; let them reach the Laurentine Tiber—if what I ask is allowed, if the Fates grant those walls.”

Then the son of Saturn, tamer of the deep sea, uttered these words: “It is entirely right, Cytherea, that you should trust my realm, from which you take your birth. I have earned it, too: often I have checked the frenzy and the great rage of sky and sea. Nor on land—I call Xanthus and Simois to witness—has my care for your Aeneas been less. When Achilles, pursuing the panic-stricken Trojan columns, was driving them against their walls and giving many thousands to death, and the choked rivers groaned, and Xanthus could not find his way or roll himself out to the sea, then, when Aeneas had met the brave son of Peleus with neither the gods nor his strength equal, I snatched him away in a hollow cloud, though I longed to overturn from their foundations the walls of perjured Troy that my own hands had built.note

Now too my mind remains the same: banish your fears. Safe, as you wish, he will reach the harbor of Avernus. There will be only one, lost in the deep, whom you will seek; one life will be given for many.” When with these words he had soothed the goddess’s heart to gladness, the father yokes his horses with gold, fits foaming bits to the wild creatures, and lets all the reins run free from his hands. In his sea-blue chariot he flies lightly over the surface of the waters; the waves sink down, and beneath the thundering axle the swollen sea is leveled; the storm clouds flee from the vast sky. Then come the varied forms of his companions, huge sea monsters, the aged band of Glaucus, Palaemon son of Ino, the swift Tritons and the whole army of Phorcus; on the left are Thetis and Melite and the maiden Panopea, Nisaee and Spio, Thalia and Cymodoce.

Then in turn soothing joys steal into father Aeneas’ anxious mind: he orders all the masts to be raised quickly and the yards spread with sails. All together they made fast the sheets, and together slackened the sails’ folds, now to the left, now to the right; together they turn the lofty yardarms this way and back; their own winds carry the fleet. Palinurus led the close-packed column ahead of all; the others were ordered to steer their course by him. And now dewy Night had almost reached the midpoint of the sky; the sailors, stretched out on the hard benches beneath the oars, were relaxing their limbs in calm rest, when Sleep, gliding lightly down from the stars of heaven, parted the shadowy air and drove away the darkness, seeking you, Palinurus, bringing you grim dreams, innocent as you were; and the god sat down on the high stern in the likeness of Phorbas, and poured these words from his lips:

“Palinurus, son of Iasus, the seas themselves carry the fleet; the breezes blow steady; an hour is given for rest. Lay down your head and steal your weary eyes from their toil: I myself will take over your duties for you for a while.” Barely lifting his eyes, Palinurus says to him: “Do you tell me to ignore the face of the calm sea and the quiet waves? Do you tell me to trust this monster? Why should I entrust Aeneas to treacherous breezes and sky, I who have been deceived so often by the treachery of a clear sky?” Such were his words, and clinging fast to the tiller he never let it go, and kept his eyes fixed on the stars. But see, the god shakes over both his temples a branch dripping with the dew of Lethe and made drowsy with the power of Styx, and, for all his resistance, closes his swimming eyes.

Scarcely had the unexpected rest begun to loosen his limbs when the god, leaning over him, flung him headlong into the clear waves, with part of the stern torn away and the rudder too, as he called again and again to his comrades in vain; the god himself, rising on wings, flew up into the thin air. The fleet runs its course safely over the sea all the same, and is carried on unafraid, trusting in father Neptune’s promises. And now, borne onward, it was nearing the cliffs of the Sirens, once dangerous and white with the bones of many—at that time the rocks were booming hoarsely far off with the ceaseless surf—when father Aeneas sensed that his ship was drifting aimlessly, its pilot lost, and himself steered it through the night waves, groaning deeply, his spirit shaken by his friend’s fate: “O you who trusted too much in a calm sky and sea, Palinurus, you will lie naked on an unknown shore!”

So he spoke, weeping, and gave the fleet free rein, and at last glided in to the shores of Euboean Cumae. They turned their prows to face the sea; then the anchor with its gripping tooth made the ships fast, and the curved sterns fringed the beach. A band of young men leapt eagerly out onto the Hesperian shore. Some searched for the seeds of fire hidden in the veins of flint; some raided the woods, the dense lairs of wild beasts, and pointed out the streams they had found. But devoted Aeneas made for the heights over which Apollo presides on high, and, some way off, the secret retreat of the dread Sibyl, a vast cave; into her the Delian prophet breathes a mighty mind and spirit, and to her he reveals what is to come. Now they were entering the groves of Trivia and the golden temple.note

Daedalus, so the story goes, fleeing the kingdom of Minos, dared to trust himself to the sky on swift wings. By an unaccustomed path he swam out toward the frozen Bears of the north, and at last alighted lightly on the Chalcidian citadel. Restored to earth here first, he dedicated to you, Phoebus, the oarage of his wings, and built a vast temple. On its doors was the death of Androgeos; then the descendants of Cecrops, ordered—a pitiful thing!—to pay as penalty seven bodies of their sons each year; there stands the urn, the lots drawn. Facing it, rising from the sea, the land of Cnossus answers: here is the cruel passion for the bull, and Pasiphaë mated with it by stealth, and the mixed breed, the two-formed offspring, the Minotaur, record of an unspeakable love; here is that house of toil and its inextricable maze. But Daedalus himself, pitying the great love of the princess, unraveled the tricks and windings of the building, guiding blind footsteps with a thread. You too, Icarus, would have had a great part in so great a work, had grief allowed.note

They had come to the threshold, when the maiden cried: “It is time to ask the fates! The god—look, the god!” As she spoke these words before the doors, suddenly her face, her color did not stay the same, nor did her hair stay neatly bound; her breast heaved, and her wild heart swelled with frenzy. She seemed taller, her voice no longer mortal, for she was breathed upon by the power of the god now drawing nearer. “Are you slow to your vows and prayers,” she said, “Trojan Aeneas? Are you slow? For until you pray, the great mouths of this awestruck house will not open.” And having said this, she fell silent. A chill trembling ran through the hard bones of the Teucrians, and the king poured out prayers from the depths of his heart:

“Phoebus, you who have always pitied the heavy toils of Troy, who guided the Dardanian arrow and hand of Paris against the body of Aeacus’ grandson: with you as my guide I have entered so many seas that skirt great lands, and the far-removed tribes of the Massylians, and the fields that stretch before the Syrtes. Now at last we grasp the shores of fleeing Italy. Let Troy’s fortune have followed us this far and no farther. You too may now rightly spare the people of Pergamum, all you gods and goddesses who resented Ilium and the great glory of Dardania. And you, most holy prophetess, who foreknow the future, grant—I ask for no kingdom not owed to my fates—that the Teucrians may settle in Latium, with the wandering gods and storm-tossed divinities of Troy.note

“You who have at last come through the great perils of the sea—heavier ones await you on land. The Dardanians will come into the kingdom of Lavinium—put this care from your heart—but they will also wish they had not come. Wars, terrible wars I see, and the Tiber foaming with much blood. You will not lack a Simois, nor a Xanthus, nor a Doric camp; another Achilles is already born in Latium, he too the son of a goddess; nor will Juno, fastened upon the Teucrians, ever leave them; while you, a suppliant in your need—what peoples, what cities of Italy will you not have begged! The cause of so great an evil is once again a foreign bride for the Teucrians, once again a marriage with a stranger. Do not yield to evils, but go to meet them the more boldly, wherever your fortune allows. The first road to safety—what you would least expect—will open from a Greek city.”note

With such words from her shrine the Cumaean Sibyl chanted fearsome riddles and boomed from the cave, wrapping truth in darkness: such were the reins Apollo shook over her in her frenzy, such the goads he twisted beneath her breast. As soon as the frenzy passed and her raging mouth fell quiet, the hero Aeneas began: “No face of hardship, maiden, rises before me new or unexpected; I have foreseen it all and gone through it beforehand in my mind. One thing I ask: since here, they say, is the gate of the king below, and the dark marsh fed by the overflowing Acheron, may it be granted me to come into the sight and presence of my dear father. Teach me the way and open the sacred doors.

Aeneas, his eyes fixed on the ground, his face sad, walked on, leaving the cave, and turned over within himself the dark outcomes. Faithful Achates went with him as his companion and planted his steps under cares like his. Much they discussed between them in shifting talk: which lifeless comrade the prophetess meant, which body was to be buried. And as they came, they saw Misenus on the dry shore, cut off by an undeserved death—Misenus, son of Aeolus, unsurpassed at rousing men with the bronze and kindling Mars with his call. He had been the companion of great Hector; at Hector’s side he went into battle, distinguished for both trumpet and spear. After victorious Achilles stripped Hector of life, this bravest of heroes had joined Dardanian Aeneas as his comrade, following no lesser man.

“If only that golden bough would show itself to us now on its tree in this great forest! For all that the prophetess said of you, Misenus, was true—alas, too true.” He had scarcely spoken, when by chance twin doves came flying from the sky right before his face and settled on the green ground. Then the great hero recognized his mother’s birds and prayed joyfully: “Be my guides, if there is any way, and direct your course through the air into the groves where the rich bough shades the fertile ground. And you, goddess mother, do not fail me in this uncertain hour.” So he spoke, and stood still, watching what signs they would give, where they would go.note

Feeding as they went, they flew forward only so far as the eyes of those following could keep them in sight. Then, when they came to the jaws of foul-smelling Avernus, they rose swiftly, and gliding through the clear air the pair settled in the place they longed for, on the tree, from which the contrasting gleam of gold shone out through the branches. As in the woods, in winter’s cold, the mistletoe, which its tree does not bear, flourishes with fresh leaves and wreathes the smooth trunks with saffron fruit, such was the look of the gold leafing on the dark holm oak, so the gold foil rustled in the gentle breeze. At once Aeneas seized it and eagerly broke it off, though it resisted, and carried it to the house of the prophetess Sibyl.

Meanwhile, no less, the Teucrians on the shore were weeping for Misenus and paying the last honors to the unheeding ashes. First they built a huge pyre, rich with resinous pine and cut oak; they wove its sides with dark leaves, set funereal cypresses in front, and adorned it on top with gleaming arms. Some prepared hot water and bronze cauldrons seething over the flames, and washed and anointed the cold body. A groan rose. Then they laid the lamented limbs on the couch and threw over them purple robes, his familiar garments. Some shouldered the great bier—a sad service—and, in the manner of their fathers, with faces turned away held the torch beneath. The heaped offerings burned: gifts of incense, food, bowls of poured olive oil. When the ashes had fallen in and the flame died down, they washed the remains and the thirsty embers with wine, and Corynaeus gathered the bones and enclosed them in a bronze urn.

Here first the priestess set four black-backed bullocks and tipped wine onto their foreheads; plucking the topmost bristles between the horns, she placed them on the sacred fires as first offerings, calling aloud on Hecate, mighty in heaven and in Erebus. Others put knives to their throats and caught the warm blood in bowls. Aeneas himself struck with his sword a black-fleeced lamb for the mother of the Eumenides and her great sister, and for you, Proserpina, a barren heifer. Then he set up night altars for the Stygian king, laid whole carcasses of bulls on the flames, and poured rich oil over the burning entrails. But look—just at the first light of the rising sun, the ground began to bellow under their feet, the wooded ridges to stir, and dogs seemed to howl through the gloom as the goddess approached. “Away, away, you who are uninitiated,”note

cried the prophetess, “keep clear of the whole grove! And you, set out on the road and snatch your sword from its sheath: now you need courage, Aeneas, now a steadfast heart.” Saying only this, she plunged in frenzy into the open cave; he kept pace with his guide as she went, with fearless steps. You gods who rule over souls, and you silent shades, and Chaos and Phlegethon, places silent far and wide in night: may it be lawful for me to tell what I have heard; may I with your consent reveal things buried deep in earth and darkness! On they went, dim figures in the lonely night, through the gloom, through the empty halls of Dis and his phantom realms: as when one travels through the woods by the fitful moon’s grudging light, when Jupiter has buried the sky in shadow and black night has taken the color from the world.note

Before the very entrance, in the first jaws of Orcus, Grief and avenging Cares have made their beds; there dwell pale Diseases, and sad Old Age, and Fear, and Hunger that counsels evil, and shameful Want, shapes terrible to see; and Death, and Toil; then Sleep, Death’s kinsman, and the evil Joys of the mind; and on the threshold opposite, death-dealing War, and the iron chambers of the Eumenides, and mad Discord, her snaky hair bound with bloody ribbons. In the middle a huge, shadowy elm spreads its branches and aged arms; there, they say, empty Dreams make their home, clinging beneath every leaf. Besides these, many monstrous forms of various beasts: Centaurs are stabled at the doors, and two-formed Scyllas, and hundredfold Briareus, and the beast of Lerna, hissing horribly, and the Chimaera armed with flames, Gorgons and Harpies, and the shape of the three-bodied shade.note

Here, suddenly trembling with fear, Aeneas seized his sword and turned its drawn edge on them as they came; and had not his wise companion warned him that these were thin, bodiless lives flitting under a hollow semblance of form, he would have rushed in and slashed through shades with steel in vain. From here a road leads to the waters of Tartarean Acheron. Here a whirlpool, murky with mire, seethes in a vast abyss and spews all its sand into Cocytus. A dread ferryman guards these waters and rivers, Charon, terrible in his squalor; a mass of unkempt white hair lies on his chin, his eyes are fixed flames, a filthy cloak hangs knotted from his shoulders. He himself pushes the boat with a pole, tends the sails, and ferries the bodies in his rust-dark skiff—old now, but a god’s old age is hardy and green.

Here the whole crowd came pouring and rushing to the banks: mothers and men, and the bodies, done with life, of great-hearted heroes, boys and unmarried girls, and young men laid on the pyre before their parents’ eyes: as many as the leaves that fall, loosened, in the woods at autumn’s first frost, or as many as the birds that flock to land from the deep sea, when the cold season drives them across the ocean and sends them to sunny lands. They stood begging to be the first to make the crossing, and they stretched out their hands in longing for the farther shore. But the grim boatman took now these, now those, while others he thrust back and kept far from the sand. Aeneas, amazed and moved by the tumult,

said: “Tell me, maiden, what does this crowding to the river mean? What do the souls seek? By what distinction do some leave the banks, while others sweep the livid waters with oars?” The aged priestess answered him briefly: “Son of Anchises, true-born offspring of the gods, you see the deep pools of Cocytus and the Stygian marsh, by whose power the gods fear to swear and then break faith. All this crowd you see are the helpless and unburied; that ferryman is Charon; those the water carries are the buried. He may not carry them across the dreadful banks and hoarse streams before their bones have found rest in a grave. They wander a hundred years and flit about these shores; only then are they admitted and come back to the pools they long for.”

The son of Anchises stopped and stood still, thinking much, pitying in his heart their unjust lot. There he saw, sorrowful and lacking the honors of the dead, Leucaspis and Orontes, leader of the Lycian fleet, whom, as they sailed together from Troy across windy waters, the South Wind overwhelmed, engulfing ship and men in the sea. And look, there came the helmsman Palinurus, who lately, on the voyage from Libya, while he watched the stars, had fallen from the stern and been flung into the midst of the waves. When at last he recognized him, sad in the deep gloom, Aeneas spoke to him first: “Which of the gods, Palinurus, snatched you from us and drowned you in the middle of the sea? Come, tell me. For Apollo, never found false before, deceived my mind with this one answer: he prophesied that you would be safe on the sea and would reach the shores of Ausonia. Is this how his promise keeps faith?”

But he replied: “Neither did the tripod of Phoebus deceive you, my leader, son of Anchises, nor did a god drown me in the sea. For the rudder, which by chance was wrenched away with great force—I was clinging to it as its appointed guardian and steering our course—I dragged with me as I fell headlong. By the rough seas I swear that I felt no fear for myself so great as my fear that your ship, stripped of its gear, its helmsman thrown overboard, might founder amid such rising waves. For three wintry nights the violent South Wind drove me over the boundless waters; barely at the fourth dawn, lifted high on the crest of a wave, I caught sight of Italy. Little by little I swam toward land; I was already reaching safety, had not a cruel people attacked me with swords as, weighed down by my soaking clothes, I clutched with hooked fingers at the rough crags of a headland, and in their ignorance thought me a prize.

“Where does this dreadful longing come from, Palinurus? Will you, unburied, look upon the Stygian waters and the stern river of the Eumenides, and come to the bank unbidden? Stop hoping that the fates of the gods can be bent by prayer. But take my words and remember them, as comfort for your harsh lot. For the neighboring peoples, far and wide through their cities, driven by portents from heaven, will make atonement to your bones; they will raise a tomb, and offer solemn rites at the tomb, and the place will keep the name of Palinurus forever.” At these words his cares were lifted, and for a while grief was driven from his sorrowful heart: he rejoiced in the land that would bear his name. So they continued the journey they had begun and drew near the river. When the boatman, from the Stygian water, saw them from afar coming through the silent wood and turning their steps toward the bank, he spoke first, accosting them, and rebuked them unprovoked:note

“Whoever you are who come armed to our river, tell me—come, from where you stand—why you are here, and halt your step. This is the place of shades, of sleep and drowsy night; it is unlawful to carry living bodies in the Stygian boat. Nor indeed was I glad to take Alcides on the lake when he came, nor Theseus and Pirithous, though they were born of gods and unconquered in strength. The one sought by force to put the guardian of Tartarus in chains, and dragged him trembling from the very throne of the king; the others tried to carry off the queen from the bridal chamber of Dis.” In reply the Amphrysian prophetess spoke briefly:note

“There is no such plotting here; cease to be troubled; these weapons bring no violence. The huge doorkeeper may bark forever in his cave and terrify the bloodless shades; chaste Proserpina may keep to her uncle’s threshold. Trojan Aeneas, renowned for devotion and for arms, comes down to his father in the deepest shades of Erebus. If the sight of such great devotion does not move you, yet this bough”—she revealed the bough hidden in her robe—“you will recognize.” Then the swelling anger in his heart subsided. No more was said. Marveling at the awesome gift of the fateful wand, seen after so long a time, he turned his dark-blue boat about and approached the bank.

Then he drove off the other souls who sat along the long benches and cleared the gangways; at the same time he took the huge Aeneas into the hull. The stitched boat groaned under the weight and, full of leaks, took in much of the marsh. At last he set prophetess and hero down safe across the river on shapeless mud and gray-green sedge. Huge Cerberus made these realms ring with his three-throated barking, lying monstrous in the cave opposite. The prophetess, seeing his necks already bristling with snakes, threw him a cake made drowsy with honey and drugged grain. He, opening his three throats in ravenous hunger, snatched it as it was thrown, and relaxed his monstrous back, sprawling on the ground, stretched hugely through the whole cave. Aeneas seized the entrance while the guardian was buried in sleep, and quickly escaped the bank of the water from which there is no return.

At once voices were heard, a great wailing, the souls of infants weeping at the very threshold, whom, given no share of sweet life and torn from the breast, the black day carried off and plunged into untimely death. Next to them were those condemned to death on false charges. But these places are not assigned without allotment, without a judge: Minos, the presiding judge, shakes the urn; he calls a court of the silent and learns their lives and offenses. Next, the places nearby are held by the sorrowful ones who, guiltless, brought death on themselves by their own hand and, hating the light, threw away their lives. How gladly now, in the air above, they would endure both poverty and hard toil! Divine law forbids; the grim marsh with its unlovely water binds them, and the Styx, winding nine times between, hems them in.note

Not far from here, spreading out on every side, the Fields of Mourning are shown: so they call them by name. Here those whom harsh love has eaten away with cruel wasting are hidden by secluded paths, and a myrtle wood surrounds and shelters them; their sorrows do not leave them even in death. In these places he saw Phaedra and Procris, and sorrowful Eriphyle, showing the wounds her cruel son had dealt, and Evadne and Pasiphaë; with them goes Laodamia, and Caeneus, once a young man, now a woman, turned back again by fate into her former shape. Among them Phoenician Dido, her wound still fresh, was wandering in the great wood. As soon as the Trojan hero stood near and recognized her, dim through the shadows, as one sees, or thinks he has seen, the moon rising through the clouds at the beginning of the month, he let his tears fall and spoke to her with tender love:note

“Unhappy Dido, so the message that reached me was true, that you were dead, that you had sought your end with the sword? Was I, alas, the cause of your death? I swear by the stars, by the gods above, and by whatever faith there is deep beneath the earth: unwillingly, my queen, I left your shore. But the commands of the gods, which now force me to go through these shades, through places rough with neglect and through the depths of night, drove me by their authority; and I could not believe that by leaving I would bring you such great grief. Stop; do not withdraw yourself from my sight. Whom are you fleeing? This is the last word fate allows me to speak to you.”

With such words Aeneas tried to soothe her burning, fiercely glaring spirit, and his tears were flowing. She, turned away, kept her eyes fixed on the ground, and her face was no more moved by the speech he had begun than if she stood there as hard flint or a crag of Marpessian rock. At last she tore herself away and fled, still his enemy, into the shadowy grove, where Sychaeus, her husband of former days, answers her sorrows and matches her love. Aeneas no less, shaken by her unjust fate, follows her far with tears and pities her as she goes. Then he presses on along the way granted to them. And now they were reaching the farthest fields, set apart, where those renowned in war gather.note

Here Tydeus meets him, here Parthenopaeus, famous in arms, and the ghost of pale Adrastus; here the Dardanians, much wept for in the world above and fallen in war. Seeing them all in a long line, he groaned: Glaucus, Medon and Thersilochus, the three sons of Antenor, and Polyphoetes, priest of Ceres, and Idaeus, still holding his chariot, still holding his arms. The souls crowd round him, right and left; it is not enough to have seen him once; they delight to linger on, to walk step by step beside him, and to learn the reasons for his coming. But the Danaan chiefs and Agamemnon’s battle lines, when they saw the man and his arms gleaming through the shadows, trembled with great fear; some turned their backs, as once they had run for their ships; some raised a thin cry: the shout they begin mocks their gaping mouths.note

And here he sees Deiphobus, son of Priam, his whole body mangled, his face cruelly torn—his face and both his hands—his temples ravaged, the ears cut away, and his nostrils lopped by a shameful wound. He barely recognized him, cowering and trying to hide his dreadful punishment, and Aeneas spoke first, in familiar tones: “Deiphobus, mighty in arms, descendant of Teucer’s noble blood, who chose to inflict such cruel punishment? Who was allowed such power over you? Report told me that on that last night, exhausted from vast slaughter of the Pelasgians, you had fallen on a heap of tangled dead. Then I myself set up an empty tomb on the Rhoetean shore and three times called aloud on your shade. Your name and your arms keep the place; you, my friend, I could not find, nor lay you in your native earth as I left.”note

To this the son of Priam replied: “Nothing, my friend, have you left undone; you have paid everything owed to Deiphobus and to the shade of the dead. But my own fate and the deadly crime of the Spartan woman sank me in these miseries; she left these memorials. For you know how we spent that last night among false joys; and we must remember it all too well. When the fateful horse came leaping up over the high walls of Pergamum and brought armed infantry in its heavy belly, she, pretending a sacred dance, led the Phrygian women around, crying out in Bacchic rites; she herself, in their midst, held a huge torch and called the Danaans from the top of the citadel. Then my ill-starred bedroom held me, worn out with cares and heavy with sleep, and as I lay there a rest pressed upon me, sweet and deep and very like a peaceful death.note

During this exchange of words Dawn, with her rosy four-horse chariot, had already crossed the midpoint of the sky on her heavenly course; and perhaps they would have spent all the time granted them in such talk; but his companion warned him, and the Sibyl spoke briefly: “Night is rushing on, Aeneas; we spend the hours in weeping. This is the place where the road splits in two: the right-hand way, which runs beneath the walls of great Dis, is our path to Elysium; but the left carries out the punishment of the wicked and sends them to impious Tartarus.” Deiphobus answered: “Do not be angry, great priestess; I will go, I will make up the number and return to the darkness. Go, our glory, go; enjoy a better fate!” Only this he said, and with that word he turned away.

Aeneas suddenly looks back and sees, under a cliff on the left, a broad fortress enclosed by a triple wall, which a rushing river surrounds with torrents of flame—Tartarean Phlegethon—rolling along its roaring rocks. Facing him is a huge gate, with pillars of solid adamant, so that no force of men, not even the dwellers in heaven themselves, could cut them down in war; an iron tower stands rising into the air, and Tisiphone, seated there with her bloodstained robe girded up, guards the entrance sleeplessly night and day. From within groans can be heard, and the crack of savage lashes, then the grating of iron and the dragging of chains. Aeneas stopped, terrified, and took in the uproar. “What forms of crime are these? Tell me, maiden. With what punishments are they pressed? What is this great wailing rising into the air?”note

Then the prophetess began to speak: “Famous leader of the Teucrians, no one pure may set foot on the threshold of the wicked; but when Hecate put me in charge of the groves of Avernus, she herself taught me the punishments of the gods and led me through them all. Rhadamanthus of Cnossus rules this realm, the harshest of realms; he punishes and hears their deceits, and forces each to confess the crimes committed among the living that he, pleased with his useless concealment, put off atoning for until death came too late. At once Tisiphone the avenger, armed with her whip, leaps upon the guilty and lashes them, and holding out her grim snakes in her left hand she calls the savage troops of her sisters. Then at last, grating on hinges that scream horribly, the accursed gates open wide. Do you see what kind of guard sits in the entrance, what shape keeps the threshold?note

But the almighty father hurled a weapon through the thick clouds—no torches for him, no smoky glare of pine brands—and drove him headlong in a monstrous whirlwind. Tityos too could be seen, nursling of Earth the mother of all, whose body stretches over nine whole acres; a monstrous vulture with hooked beak, cropping his immortal liver and his entrails fruitful for punishment, digs for its feast and dwells deep within his breast, and no rest is given to the flesh as it grows again. [Why should I tell of the Lapiths, of Ixion and Pirithous?] Over them hangs a black rock, just about to slip, as if already falling; golden frames gleam on high festal couches, and a banquet is set before their eyes with royal luxury; the eldest of the Furies reclines close by and keeps their hands from touching the tables, and springs up, raising her torch, and thunders with her voice.note

Here are those who hated their brothers while life remained, or struck a parent, or wove fraud against a client; or who brooded alone over riches they had found and set aside no share for their own (and these are the greatest crowd); and those killed for adultery, and those who followed unholy war and did not fear to break faith with their masters’ pledged hands—shut in, they await their punishment. Do not seek to learn what punishment, or what form of doom or fortune has overwhelmed them. Some roll a huge rock, others hang stretched on the spokes of wheels; unhappy Theseus sits and will sit forever; and Phlegyas, most wretched of all, warns everyone and bears witness with a loud voice through the shades: ‘Be warned: learn justice, and not to scorn the gods.’note

This done at last, the goddess’s task performed, they came to the happy places, the pleasant green lawns of the Fortunate Groves and the homes of the blessed. Here a more generous air clothes the plains in a radiant light, and they know their own sun, their own stars. Some exercise their limbs on grassy wrestling grounds, compete in sport and wrestle on the yellow sand; some beat out dances with their feet and sing songs. The Thracian priest too, in his long robe, accompanies their rhythms with the seven distinct notes, striking them now with his fingers, now with an ivory plectrum. Here is Teucer’s ancient line, most beautiful offspring, great-hearted heroes born in better years: Ilus and Assaracus, and Dardanus, the founder of Troy. From a distance he gazes in wonder at the arms and the phantom chariots of the men.note

As they poured around her, the Sibyl addressed them, and Musaeus above all, for the great crowd holds him at its center and looks up at him as he stands out, tall-shouldered: “Tell us, happy souls, and you, best of poets, what region, what place holds Anchises? It is for his sake we have come and crossed the great rivers of Erebus.” And the hero answered her in few words: “No one has a fixed home. We live in shady groves and dwell on cushioned riverbanks and in meadows fresh with streams. But you, if your heart so wishes, climb this ridge, and I will set you on an easy path.” He spoke, and walked on ahead, and from above showed them the shining plains; then they leave the summits behind.note

But father Anchises, deep in a green valley, was surveying with eager thought the souls enclosed there, who were to go up to the light above, and as it happened he was reviewing the whole number of his people and his dear descendants, the fates and fortunes of the men, their characters and their deeds. And when he saw Aeneas coming toward him across the grass, he eagerly stretched out both hands, tears poured down his cheeks, and a cry fell from his lips: “Have you come at last, and has your devotion, so awaited by your father, overcome the hard road? Am I granted to see your face, my son, and to hear and answer the voice I know? So indeed I reckoned in my mind and thought it would be, counting the days, and my anxious hope has not deceived me. Over what lands, across what great seas, have you traveled for me to welcome you! By what great dangers you have been tossed, my son! How I feared that the kingdom of Libya might do you some harm!”

But he replied: “Your image, father, your sad image, appearing to me again and again, drove me to seek these thresholds. My fleet rides on the Tyrrhenian sea. Let me clasp your right hand, let me, father, and do not withdraw yourself from my embrace.” So saying, he wet his face with flowing tears. Three times he tried there to put his arms around his neck; three times the image, grasped in vain, escaped his hands, [like the light winds, and most like a winged dream]. Meanwhile Aeneas sees in a secluded valley a grove set apart, with rustling thickets in the woods, and the river Lethe, which flows past those peaceful homes. Around it countless peoples and nations were flitting; and—as in meadows on a clear summer day, when bees settle on many-colored flowers and swarm around the white lilies—the whole plain hums with murmuring.note

Aeneas shudders at the sudden sight and, not understanding, asks the causes: what that river is beyond, and who the men are that fill its banks in such a throng. Then father Anchises: “Souls to whom fate owes second bodies drink at the stream of Lethe the waters that free from care, and long forgetfulness. [These indeed I want to tell you of and show you face to face;] for a long time I have wished to number this line of my descendants for you, so that you may rejoice with me the more at finding Italy.” “Father, must we think that some souls go up from here to the sky above and return again to sluggish bodies? What is this dreadful longing of the wretched for the light?” “I will tell you, my son, and not keep you in suspense,” Anchises replies, and reveals each thing in order.

“First, the sky and the earth and the watery plains, the shining globe of the moon and the Titan’s stars, are nourished by a spirit within, and a mind, poured through all the limbs, stirs the whole mass and mingles with the great body. From this come humankind and the beasts, the life of flying things, and the monsters the sea bears beneath its marble surface. Those seeds have the vigor of fire and a heavenly origin, so far as harmful bodies do not slow them and earthly limbs and dying members do not dull them. From this they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice, and, shut up in darkness and a blind prison, they do not see the clear air. Indeed, even when life has left them with the last light, still not all evil, not all the plagues of the body depart wholly from the wretched, and it must be that much that has long grown in becomes deeply ingrained in wondrous ways.

“Come now, I will set out in words what glory will hereafter follow the Dardanian line, what descendants await you from the Italian people, illustrious souls who will inherit our name, and I will teach you your fates. That young man, you see, who leans on a headless spear, holds by lot the places nearest the light; he will be the first to rise into the air above with Italian blood mixed in him: Silvius, an Alban name, your last-born child, whom your wife Lavinia will raise for you in the woods late in your old age, a king and father of kings, through whom our line will rule in Alba Longa. Next to him is Procas, glory of the Trojan people, and Capys and Numitor, and the one who will bring back your name, Silvius Aeneas, outstanding equally in devotion and in arms, if he ever receives Alba to rule.

What young men! See what strength they show, and how they wear their brows shaded with the civic oak! These will build for you Nomentum and Gabii and the city of Fidenae, these will set the citadels of Collatia on the hills, Pometii and the Fort of Inuus, Bola and Cora. These will be names then; now they are lands without a name. Romulus, too, son of Mars, will join his grandfather as companion, whom his mother Ilia will bear, of the blood of Assaracus. Do you see how the twin plumes stand on his crest, and how the father of the gods himself already marks him with his own honor? Look, my son: under his auspices that glorious Rome will make her empire equal to the earth and her spirit to Olympus, and will surround her seven heights with a single wall, blessed in her offspring of heroes: just as the Berecyntian mother, crowned with towers, rides in her chariot through the Phrygian cities, glad in her offspring of gods, embracing a hundred descendants, all dwellers in heaven, all holding the heights above.note

Now turn both your eyes this way, look at this people, your own Romans. Here is Caesar and all the descendants of Iulus who are destined to come beneath the great vault of the sky. This, this is the man you so often hear promised to you, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who will again found the golden age in Latium, through the fields where Saturn once reigned, and will extend his empire beyond the Garamantes and the Indians: there lies a land beyond the stars, beyond the paths of the year and the sun, where Atlas, bearer of the sky, turns on his shoulder the heavens studded with blazing stars. Even now, at the thought of his coming, the Caspian kingdoms and the land of Maeotis shudder at the oracles of the gods, and the seven mouths of the Nile are troubled and in turmoil.note

Not even Alcides traversed so much of the earth, though he pierced the bronze-footed deer, brought peace to the woods of Erymanthus, and made Lerna tremble with his bow; nor Liber, who in triumph steers his team with vine-leaf reins, driving his tigers down from the high peak of Nysa. And do we still hesitate to extend our power by valor, or does fear keep us from settling in the Ausonian land? But who is that, far off, marked out by olive branches, carrying the sacred objects? I know the hair and the white beard of the Roman king who will first ground the city on laws, sent from little Cures and a poor land to great power. After him will come Tullus, who will break his country’s peace and rouse to arms men grown idle and ranks now unused to triumphs. Close behind him follows Ancus, too boastful, even now delighting too much in the breeze of popular favor.note

Do you wish to see, too, the Tarquin kings, and the proud soul of Brutus the avenger, and the fasces won back? He will be the first to receive a consul’s power and the cruel axes, and, a father, when his sons stir up new war, he will summon them to punishment for the sake of noble freedom. Unhappy man, however later generations judge that deed: love of country will prevail, and a boundless desire for praise. Look, too, at the Decii and the Drusi in the distance, and Torquatus, savage with the axe, and Camillus bringing back the standards. But those souls you see shining in matching arms, in harmony now while they are held down by night—alas, what a war between them, if they reach the light of life, what battle lines and slaughter they will raise! The father-in-law coming down from the Alpine ramparts and the citadel of Monoecus, the son-in-law ranged against him with the forces of the East.note

Do not, my sons, do not make such wars familiar to your hearts, nor turn your country’s mighty strength against her own vitals; and you first, you spare her, you who draw your line from Olympus—throw the weapons from your hand, my own blood!— That one, triumphant over Corinth, will drive his chariot as victor to the lofty Capitol, renowned for the Achaeans he has slain. That one will overthrow Argos and Agamemnon’s Mycenae, and the descendant of Aeacus himself, of the line of Achilles mighty in arms, avenging his Trojan ancestors and Minerva’s defiled temple. Who would leave you unmentioned, great Cato, or you, Cossus? Who the family of Gracchus, or the twin Scipios, two thunderbolts of war, the ruin of Libya, and Fabricius, powerful in poverty, or you, Serranus, sowing your furrow? Where are you hurrying me, weary as I am, Fabii? You are that Maximus, the one man who by delaying restores our state to us.note

“Who, father, is that who walks beside the man as he goes? His son, or one of the great line of his descendants? What a murmuring of companions around him! What presence there is in him! But black night hovers around his head with its sad shadow.” Then father Anchises began, his tears welling up: “My son, do not ask about the vast grief of your people. The fates will only show him to the earth, and will not let him live longer. You gods above, you thought the Roman line would be too powerful if these gifts had been its own to keep. What groans of men that field will send up to the great city of Mars! Or what funerals, Tiber, will you see, as you glide past the new-made tomb!note

No boy of the Ilian people will raise his Latin forefathers so high in hope, nor will the land of Romulus ever take such pride in any son it has reared. Alas for his devotion, alas for his old-time faith, and his right hand unconquered in war! No one would have met him in arms unharmed, whether he went on foot against the enemy or dug his spurs into the flanks of his foaming horse. Alas, pitiable boy, if only you could somehow break your harsh fate—you will be Marcellus. Give me lilies in armfuls, let me scatter purple flowers, let me at least heap these gifts on my descendant’s soul, and perform an empty service—” So they wander everywhere through the whole region, in the wide fields of air, and survey everything.

You too, Caieta, nurse of Aeneas, gave our shores everlasting fame by your death; and even now your honor keeps its seat there, and your name marks your bones in great Hesperia, if that is any glory. But devoted Aeneas, when the funeral rites had been duly paid and the mound of the tomb heaped up, and once the deep seas had grown calm, set his course under sail and left the harbor. The breezes blew on into the night, and the bright Moon did not deny them their voyage; the sea gleamed under her trembling light. They skirted the nearby shores of Circe’s land, where the rich daughter of the Sun makes her untrodden groves ring with unceasing song, and in her proud halls burns fragrant cedar to light the night, running the whirring comb across her fine weaving.note

And here Aeneas, looking out from the sea, saw a vast grove. Through it the Tiber, with its pleasant stream, swirling in rapid eddies and yellow with abundant sand, bursts out into the sea. All around and overhead, birds of many kinds, at home on the banks and in the river’s bed, soothed the air with their song and flew about the grove. He ordered his comrades to change course and turn their prows to land, and joyfully he entered the shady river. Come now, Erato: who the kings were, what the times, what the state of ancient Latium when the foreign army first brought its fleet to Ausonian shores, I will set out, and I will recall the beginnings of the first battle.note

You, goddess, you instruct your poet. I will tell of dreadful wars, I will tell of battle lines, and kings driven by their passions to their deaths, and the Tyrrhenian band, and all Hesperia forced into arms. A greater order of things is born for me; a greater work I set in motion. King Latinus, now growing old, ruled fields and towns in the calm of a long peace. He was the son, we are told, of Faunus and the Laurentine nymph Marica; Faunus’ father was Picus, and Picus names you, Saturn, as his father: you are the first founder of the line. By the fate of the gods he had no son, no male offspring: one had been born, but was snatched away in the first bloom of youth. A single daughter kept the house and that great estate, now ripe for a husband, now of full age to marry.note

Many sought her hand from great Latium and all Ausonia. Foremost among them came Turnus, handsomest of them all, mighty in his long line of ancestors, whom the king’s wife was eager, with a wondrous love, to have joined to the family as son-in-law; but portents from the gods, with various terrors, stood in the way. There was a laurel in the middle of the palace, in the deep inner court, its foliage sacred and preserved in awe through many years. Father Latinus himself was said to have found it when he was building his first citadel and to have consecrated it to Phoebus, and from it to have given his settlers their name, Laurentines. To the very top of this tree a dense swarm of bees (a marvel to tell), carried with a loud humming across the clear air, came and settled on the highest point, and with their feet linked together the sudden swarm hung from the leafy branch. At once the seer said: “We see a man from abroad

arriving, and a host coming from the same quarter to the same place, and holding sway from the summit of the citadel.” Moreover, while the maiden Lavinia stood beside her father as he kindled the altars with pure torches, she seemed (a thing of horror) to catch fire in her long hair, [and all her finery to burn in the crackling flame,] her royal tresses set ablaze, ablaze her crown, brilliant with jewels; then, wrapped in smoke and yellow light, to scatter Vulcan’s fire through the whole palace. That was reported as a dreadful and marvelous sight: for they prophesied that she herself would be glorious in fame and fate, but that she foreshadowed a great war for her people.

But the king, troubled by the portents, went to the oracle of Faunus, his prophetic father, and consulted the groves beneath lofty Albunea, greatest of forests, which echoes with its sacred spring and in its darkness breathes out a deadly vapor. From here the Italian peoples and all the land of Oenotria seek answers in times of doubt. When the priest has brought his offerings here and, in the silent night, has lain down on the outspread fleeces of slaughtered sheep and sought sleep, he sees many phantoms flitting in wondrous ways, hears all kinds of voices, talks with the gods, and speaks with Acheron in the depths of Avernus. Here, then, father Latinus himself, seeking an answer, duly sacrificed a hundred woolly sheep and lay propped on their hides and outspread fleeces. Suddenly a voice came from the depths of the grove:note

“Do not seek to join your daughter in a Latin marriage, my offspring, and do not trust the bridal chamber that is prepared. Sons-in-law will come from abroad, whose blood will raise our name to the stars, and the descendants of their line will see the whole world, wherever the Sun in his circuit looks on Ocean at either end, turned and ruled beneath their feet.” These answers of his father Faunus, the warnings given in the silent night, Latinus did not keep locked behind his own lips: Rumor, flitting far and wide, had already carried them through the Ausonian cities, when the young men of Laomedon’s line moored their fleet to the grassy bank of the river.

Aeneas and his chief captains and handsome Iulus stretched out their bodies under the boughs of a tall tree and set out a feast. They placed wheaten cakes on the grass beneath the food (so Jupiter himself inspired them) and heaped that base of Ceres’ grain with wild fruits. Here, as it chanced, when the rest had been eaten and scarcity of food drove them to turn their teeth on the meager bread, to break with hands and bold jaws the circle of the fateful crust and not to spare its broad quarters, “Look! We are eating our tables too!” said Iulus, joking, and nothing more. That saying, once heard, first brought an end to their hardships; his father caught it first from the speaker’s lips and, struck with awe at the divine will, held it fast.

At once he said: “Hail, land owed to me by the fates! And hail to you, faithful household gods of Troy! Here is our home, this is our country. For my father Anchises (now I remember) left me these secrets of the fates: ‘When, my son, you have been carried to unknown shores, and hunger, your food used up, forces you to eat your tables, then, weary as you are, remember to hope for a home, and there with your own hand to set up your first dwellings and fortify them with a rampart.’ This was that hunger; this was the last trial waiting for us, which would set an end to our exile. So come, and gladly, with the first light of the sun, let us explore what this place is, what people live here, where the walls of their nation are, and let us set out from the harbor in different directions. Now pour libations to Jupiter from your bowls, call on my father Anchises in prayer, and set the wine back on the tables.”

So he spoke, and then he wreathed his brows with a leafy branch and prayed to the spirit of the place, and to Earth, first of the gods, and to the nymphs and the rivers still unknown; then he invoked Night and the rising stars of Night, and Jupiter of Ida, and the Phrygian Mother, each in turn, and his two parents, one in heaven and one in Erebus. At this the almighty father thundered clearly three times from high heaven and, shaking it with his own hand, displayed from the upper air a cloud blazing with rays of light and gold. Then suddenly the rumor spread through the Trojan ranks that the day had come for them to found their promised walls. Eagerly they renewed the feast, and, gladdened by the great omen, set up the mixing bowls and crowned the wine.note

When the next day had risen and was lighting the earth with its first torch, they scattered to explore the city, the borders and the shores of the people: this, they learned, was the pool of the spring of Numicus, this the river Tiber, here lived the brave Latins. Then Anchises’ son ordered a hundred envoys, chosen from every rank, to go to the king’s majestic walls, all of them wreathed with Pallas’ olive branches, to bring gifts to the man and ask for peace for the Teucrians. Without delay they hurried as ordered and went off at a rapid pace. He himself marked out the walls with a shallow trench, labored on the site, and surrounded his first settlement on the shore with battlements and a rampart, like a camp. And now the young men had covered the distance; they could see the towers and lofty roofs of the Latins, and were coming up to the wall.note

And indeed I remember (though the story is dimmed by the years) that the old men of the Aurunci used to tell how Dardanus, born in these fields, made his way to the cities of Phrygian Ida and to Thracian Samos, which is now called Samothrace. From here he set out, from Corythus, his Tyrrhenian home; now the golden palace of the starry sky receives him on a throne, and he adds to the number of the gods with his altars.” He had finished, and Ilioneus followed his words thus: “King, illustrious offspring of Faunus, no black storm has forced us, driven by the waves, to come to your lands, nor has star or shore misled us in the direction of our course. By design and with willing hearts we are all brought to this city, driven from a kingdom once the greatest that the Sun looked upon as he came from the farthest edge of heaven.note

From Jupiter is the beginning of our line; in Jupiter as ancestor the Dardanian youth rejoice; our king himself, of Jupiter’s highest line, Trojan Aeneas, has sent us to your doors. How great a storm, poured out of savage Mycenae, swept over the plains of Ida, by what fates the two worlds of Europe and Asia were driven to clash, has been heard even by anyone whom the farthest land holds apart where Ocean flows back on itself, and by anyone whom the zone of the cruel sun, stretched out in the middle of the other four, cuts off. Out of that deluge, carried over so many vast seas, we ask a small home for our fathers’ gods, a harmless strip of shore, and the water and air that are open to all. We will not be a disgrace to your kingdom, nor will your renown be lightly spoken of, nor will gratitude for so great a deed fade, nor will the Ausonians regret having taken Troy into their embrace.

At these words of Ilioneus, Latinus held his face fixed in a steady gaze, rooted motionless to the ground, rolling his intent eyes. The embroidered purple did not move the king, nor did Priam’s scepter move him, so much as he dwelt on his daughter’s marriage and bridal chamber, and turned over in his heart the oracle of old Faunus: this was the man, setting out from a foreign home, foretold by the fates as his son-in-law, called to the kingdom with equal authority; from him would come descendants glorious in valor, who would seize the whole world by their strength. At last he said with joy: “May the gods favor our undertaking and their own augury! What you wish, Trojan, will be granted, and I do not spurn your gifts. While Latinus is king, you will not lack the richness of fertile land, nor the wealth of Troy.