Aeneid IV.1-89
Cupid's arrows take effect. Dido seeks counsel from her sister.
But the queen, wounded long since by intense love,
feeds the hurt with her life-blood, weakened by hidden fire.
The hero’s courage often returns to mind, and the nobility
of his race: his features and his words cling fixedly to her heart,
and love will not grant restful calm to her body.
The new day’s Dawn was lighting the earth with Phoebus’s
brightness and dispelling the dew-wet shadows from the sky,
when she spoke ecstatically to her sister, her kindred spirit:
“Anna, sister, how my dreams terrify me with anxieties!
Who is this strange guest who has entered our house,
with what boldness he speaks, how resolute in mind and warfare!
Truly I think—and it’s no idle saying—that he’s born of a goddess.
Fear reveals the ignoble spirit. Alas! What misfortunes test him!
What battles he spoke of, that he has undergone!
If my mind was not set, fixedly and immovably,
never to join myself with any man in the bonds of marriage,
because first love betrayed me, cheated me through dying:
if I were not wearied by marriage and bridal-beds,
perhaps I might succumb to this one temptation.
Anna (yes I confess) since my poor husband Sychaeus’s death
when the altars were blood-stained by my murderous brother,
he’s the only man who’s stirred my senses, troubled my
wavering mind. I know the traces of the ancient flame.
But I pray rather that earth might gape wide for me, to its depths,
or the all-powerful father hurl me with his lightning-bolt
down to the shadows, to the pale ghosts and deepest night
of Erebus1, before I violate you, Honour, or break your laws.
He who first took me to himself has stolen my love:
let him keep it with him and guard it in his grave.”
So saying her breast swelled with her rising tears.
Anna replied: “O you, who are more beloved to your sister
than the light, will you wear your whole youth away
in loneliness and grief, and not know Venus’s sweet gifts
or her children? Do you think that ashes or sepulchral spirits care?
Granted that in Libya or Tyre before it, no suitor ever
dissuaded you from sorrowing: and Iarbas and the other lords
whom the African soil, rich in fame, bears, were scorned:
will you still struggle against a love that pleases?
Do you not recall to mind in whose fields you settled?
Here Gaetulian cities, a people unsurpassed in battle,
unbridled Numidians, and inhospitable Syrtis2, surround you:
there, a region of dry desert, with Barcaeans raging around.
And what of your brother’s threats, and war with Tyre imminent?
The Trojan ships made their way here with the wind,
with gods indeed helping them I think, and with Juno’s favour.
What a city you’ll see here, sister, what a kingdom rise,
with such a husband! With a Trojan army marching with us,
with what great actions Punic glory will soar!
Only ask the gods for their help, and, propitiating them
with sacrifice, indulge your guest, spin reasons for delay,
while winter and stormy Orion3 rage at sea,
while the ships are damaged and the skies are hostile.”
By saying this she inflames the queen’s burning heart with love
and raises hopes in her anxious mind, and weakens her sense
of shame. First they visit the shrines and ask for grace at the altars:
they sacrifice chosen animals according to the rites,
to Ceres, the law-maker, and Phoebus, and father Lycaeus4,
and to Juno above all, in whose care are the marriage ties.
Dido herself, supremely lovely, holding the cup in her hand,
pours the libation between the horns of a white heifer
or walks to the rich altars, before the face of the gods,
celebrates the day with gifts, and gazes into the opened
chests of victims and reads the living entrails.
Ah, the unknowing minds of seers! What use are prayers
or shrines to the impassioned? Meanwhile her tender marrow
is aflame, and a silent wound is alive in her breast.
Wretched Dido burns and wanders frenzied through the city,
like an unwary deer struck by an arrow, that a shepherd hunting
with his bow has fired at from a distance in the Cretan woods,
leaving the winged steel in her without knowing:
she runs through the woods and glades of Dicte5;
the lethal shaft hangs in her side.
Now she leads Aeneas with her round the walls,
showing her Sidonian wealth and the city she’s built:
she begins to speak, and stops in mid-flow:
now she longs for the banquet again as day wanes,
yearning madly to hear about the Trojan adventures once more
and hangs once more on the speaker’s lips.
Then when they have departed, and the moon in turn
has quenched her light and the setting constellations urge sleep,
she grieves alone in the empty hall and lies on the couch
he left. Absent she hears him absent, sees him,
or hugs Ascanius on her lap, taken with this image
of his father, so as to deceive her silent passion.
The towers she started no longer rise, the young men no longer
carry out their drill, or work on the harbour and the battlements
for defence in war: the interrupted work is left hanging,
the huge threatening walls, the sky-reaching cranes.
At regina gravi iamdudum saucia cura
vulnus alit venis et caeco carpitur igni.
multa viri virtus animo multusque recursat
gentis honos; haerent infixi pectore vultus
verbaque nec placidam membris dat cura quietem. 5
postera Phoebea lustrabat lampade terras
umentemque Aurora polo dimoverat umbram,
cum sic unanimam adloquitur male sana sororem:
'Anna soror, quae me suspensam insomnia terrent!
quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus hospes, 10
quem sese ore ferens, quam forti pectore et armis!
credo equidem, nec vana fides, genus esse deorum.
degeneres animos timor arguit. heu, quibus ille
iactatus fatis! quae bella exhausta canebat!
si mihi non animo fixum immotumque sederet 15
ne cui me vinclo vellem sociare iugali,
postquam primus amor deceptam morte fefellit;
si non pertaesum thalami taedaeque fuisset,
huic uni forsan potui succumbere culpae.
Anna (fatebor enim) miseri post fata Sychaei 20
coniugis et sparsos fraterna caede penatis
solus hic inflexit sensus animumque labantem
impulit. agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.
sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat
vel pater omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras, 25
pallentis umbras Erebo noctemque profundam,
ante, pudor, quam te violo aut tua iura resolvo.
ille meos, primus qui me sibi iunxit, amores
abstulit; ille habeat secum servetque sepulcro.'
sic effata sinum lacrimis implevit obortis. 30
Anna refert: 'o luce magis dilecta sorori,
solane perpetua maerens carpere iuventa
nec dulcis natos Veneris nec praemia noris?
id cinerem aut manis credis curare sepultos?
esto: aegram nulli quondam flexere mariti, 35
non Libyae, non ante Tyro; despectus Iarbas
ductoresque alii, quos Africa terra triumphis
dives alit: placitone etiam pugnabis amori?
nec venit in mentem quorum consederis arvis?
hinc Gaetulae urbes, genus insuperabile bello, 40
et Numidae infreni cingunt et inhospita Syrtis;
hinc deserta siti regio lateque furentes
Barcaei. quid bella Tyro surgentia dicam
germanique minas?
dis equidem auspicibus reor et Iunone secunda 45
hunc cursum Iliacas vento tenuisse carinas.
quam tu urbem, soror, hanc cernes, quae surgere regna
coniugio tali! Teucrum comitantibus armis
Punica se quantis attollet gloria rebus!
tu modo posce deos veniam, sacrisque litatis 50
indulge hospitio causasque innecte morandi,
dum pelago desaevit hiems et aquosus Orion,
quassataeque rates, dum non tractabile caelum.'
His dictis impenso animum flammavit amore
spemque dedit dubiae menti solvitque pudorem. 55
principio delubra adeunt pacemque per aras
exquirunt; mactant lectas de more bidentis
legiferae Cereri Phoeboque patrique Lyaeo,
Iunoni ante omnis, cui vincla iugalia curae.
ipsa tenens dextra pateram pulcherrima Dido 60
candentis vaccae media inter cornua fundit,
aut ante ora deum pinguis spatiatur ad aras,
instauratque diem donis, pecudumque reclusis
pectoribus inhians spirantia consulit exta.
heu, vatum ignarae mentes! quid vota furentem, 65
quid delubra iuvant? est mollis flamma medullas
interea et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.
uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatur
urbe furens, qualis coniecta cerva sagitta,
quam procul incautam nemora inter Cresia fixit 70
pastor agens telis liquitque volatile ferrum
nescius: illa fuga silvas saltusque peragrat
Dictaeos; haeret lateri letalis harundo.
nunc media Aenean secum per moenia ducit
Sidoniasque ostentat opes urbemque paratam, 75
incipit effari mediaque in voce resistit;
nunc eadem labente die convivia quaerit,
Iliacosque iterum demens audire labores
exposcit pendetque iterum narrantis ab ore.
post ubi digressi, lumenque obscura vicissim 80
luna premit suadentque cadentia sidera somnos,
sola domo maeret vacua stratisque relictis
incubat. illum absens absentem auditque videtque,
aut gremio Ascanium genitoris imagine capta
detinet, infandum si fallere possit amorem. 85
non coeptae adsurgunt turres, non arma iuventus
exercet portusve aut propugnacula bello
tuta parant: pendent opera interrupta minaeque
murorum ingentes aequataque machina caelo.
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Here, the underworld.
The Gaetulians, Numidians, and Barcaeans are other African civilizations near Carthage; Syrtis is a region of quicksand.
c.f. this footnote; noting it again because I forgot what this meant.
A mountain in Crete.
This girl is on fire