Aeneid VI.384-476
Aeneas runs into another familiar face in the Underworld. It goes badly.
So they pursued their former journey and drew near the river.
Now when the boatman saw them from the Stygian wave,
walking through the silent wood and directing their footsteps
towards its bank, he attacked them verbally, first, and unprompted,
rebuking them: “Whoever you are, who come armed to my river,
tell me from over there why you’re here, and halt your steps.
This is a place of shadows, of Sleep and drowsy Night:
I’m not allowed to carry living bodies in the Stygian boat.
Truly it was no pleasure for me to take Hercules on his journey
over the lake, nor Theseus and Pirithous, though they may
have been children of gods, unrivalled in strength.
The first came for Cerberus the watchdog of Tartarus,
and dragged him away quivering from under the king’s throne:
the others were after snatching our Queen from Dis’s chamber.”1
To this the prophetess of Amphrysian2 Apollo briefly answered:
‘There’s no such trickery here (don’t be disturbed),
our weapons offer no affront: your huge guard-dog
can terrify the bloodless shades with his eternal howling:
chaste Proserpine can keep to her uncle’s threshold.3
Aeneas the Trojan, renowned in piety and warfare,
goes down to the deepest shadows of Erebus, to his father.
If the idea of such affection does not move you, still you
must recognise this bough.” (She showed the branch, hidden
in her robes.) Then the anger in his swollen breast subsided;
no more was said. Marvelling at the revered offering
of fateful twigs, seen again after so long, he turned the stern
of the dark skiff towards them and neared the bank.
Then he turned off the other souls who sat on the long benches,
cleared the gangways, and received mighty Aeneas
on board. The seamed skiff groaned with the weight
and let in quantities of marsh-water through the chinks.
At last, the river crossed, he landed the prophetess and the hero
safe on the unstable mud, among the blue-grey sedge.
Huge Cerberus sets these regions echoing with his triple-throated
howling, crouching monstrously in a cave opposite.
Seeing the snakes rearing round his neck,4 the prophetess
threw him a pellet, a soporific of honey and drugged wheat.
Opening his three throats, in rabid hunger, he seized
what she threw and, flexing his massive spine, sank to earth,
spreading his giant bulk over the whole cave-floor.
With the guard unconscious Aeneas won to the entrance,
and quickly escaped the bank of the river of no return.
Immediately a loud crying of voices was heard, the spirits
of weeping infants, whom a dark day stole at the first
threshold of this sweet life, those chosen to be torn
from the breast and drowned in bitter death.
Nearby are those condemned to die on false charges.
Yet their place is not ordained without the allotted jury:
Minos, the judge, shakes the urn; he convenes the voiceless court
and hears their lives and sins. Then the next place
is held by those gloomy spirits who, innocent of crime,
died by their own hand, and, hating the light, threw away
their lives. How willingly now they’d endure
poverty and harsh suffering in the air above!
Divine Law prevents it, and the sad marsh and its hateful
waters binds them, and nine-fold Styx confines them.
Not far from there the Fields of Mourning are revealed,
spread out on all sides; so they name them.
There, those whom harsh love devours with cruel pining
are concealed in secret walkways, encircled by a myrtle grove;
even in death their troubles do not leave them.
Here Aeneas saw Phaedra5, and Procris6, and sad Eriphyle,
displaying the wounds made by her cruel son,7
Evadne8, and Pasiphae: with them walked Laodamia9,
and Caeneus, now a woman, once a young man,
returned by her fate to her own form again.10
Among them Phoenician Dido wandered in the great wood,
her wound still fresh. As soon as the Trojan hero stood near her
and knew her, shadowy among the shadows, like a man who sees,
or thinks he sees, the new moon rising through a cloud as its month
begins, he wept tears and spoke to her with tender affection:
“Dido, unhappy spirit, was the news that came to me
of your death true, then, taking your life with a blade?
Alas, was I the cause of your dying? I swear by the stars,
by the gods above, by whatever truth may be in the depths
of the earth, I left your shores unwillingly, my queen.11
I was commanded by gods who drove me by their decrees,
that now force me to go among the shades through places
thorny with neglect and deepest night: nor did I think
my leaving there would ever bring such grief to you.
Halt your footsteps and do not take yourself from my sight.
What do you flee?12 This is the last speech with you that fate allows.”
With such words Aeneas would have calmed
her fiery spirit and wild looks, and provoked her tears.
She turned away, her eyes fixed on the ground,
no more altered in expression by the speech he had begun
than if hard flint stood there, or a cliff of Parian marble.
At the last she tore herself away and, hostile to him,
fled to the shadowy grove where Sychaeus, her husband
in former times, responded to her suffering and gave her
love for love. Aeneas, no less shaken by the injustice of fate,
followed her, far off, with his tears, and pitied her as she went.13
Ergo iter inceptum peragunt fluvioque propinquant.
navita quos iam inde ut Stygia prospexit ab unda 385
per tacitum nemus ire pedemque advertere ripae,
sic prior adgreditur dictis atque increpat ultro:
'quisquis es, armatus qui nostra ad flumina tendis,
fare age, quid venias, iam istinc et comprime gressum.
umbrarum hic locus est, somni noctisque soporae: 390
corpora viva nefas Stygia vectare carina.
nec vero Alciden me sum laetatus euntem
accepisse lacu, nec Thesea Pirithoumque,
dis quamquam geniti atque invicti viribus essent.
Tartareum ille manu custodem in vincla petivit 395
ipsius a solio regis traxitque trementem;
hi dominam Ditis thalamo deducere adorti.'
quae contra breviter fata est Amphrysia vates:
'nullae hic insidiae tales (absiste moveri),
nec vim tela ferunt; licet ingens ianitor antro 400
aeternum latrans exsanguis terreat umbras,
casta licet patrui servet Proserpina limen.
Troius Aeneas, pietate insignis et armis,
ad genitorem imas Erebi descendit ad umbras.
si te nulla movet tantae pietatis imago, 405
at ramum hunc' (aperit ramum qui veste latebat)
'agnoscas.' tumida ex ira tum corda residunt;
nec plura his. ille admirans venerabile donum
fatalis virgae longo post tempore visum
caeruleam advertit puppim ripaeque propinquat. 410
inde alias animas, quae per iuga longa sedebant,
deturbat laxatque foros; simul accipit alveo
ingentem Aenean. gemuit sub pondere cumba
sutilis et multam accepit rimosa paludem.
tandem trans fluvium incolumis vatemque virumque 415
informi limo glaucaque exponit in ulua.
Cerberus haec ingens latratu regna trifauci
personat adverso recubans immanis in antro.
cui vates horrere videns iam colla colubris
melle soporatam et medicatis frugibus offam 420
obicit. ille fame rabida tria guttura pandens
corripit obiectam, atque immania terga resolvit
fusus humi totoque ingens extenditur antro.
occupat Aeneas aditum custode sepulto
evaditque celer ripam inremeabilis undae. 425
Continuo auditae voces vagitus et ingens
infantumque animae flentes, in limine primo
quos dulcis vitae exsortis et ab ubere raptos
abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo;
hos iuxta falso damnati crimine mortis. 430
nec vero hae sine sorte datae, sine iudice, sedes:
quaesitor Minos urnam movet; ille silentum
consiliumque vocat vitasque et crimina discit.
proxima deinde tenent maesti loca, qui sibi letum
insontes peperere manu lucemque perosi 435
proiecere animas. quam vellent aethere in alto
nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores!
fas obstat, tristisque palus inamabilis undae
alligat et novies Styx interfusa coercet.
nec procul hinc partem fusi monstrantur in omnem 440
Lugentes campi; sic illos nomine dicunt.
hic quos durus amor crudeli tabe peredit
secreti celant calles et myrtea circum
silva tegit; curae non ipsa in morte relinquunt.
his Phaedram Procrinque locis maestamque Eriphylen 445
crudelis nati monstrantem vulnera cernit,
Evadnenque et Pasiphaen; his Laodamia
it comes et iuvenis quondam, nunc femina, Caeneus
rursus et in veterem fato revoluta figuram.
inter quas Phoenissa recens a vulnere Dido 450
errabat silva in magna; quam Troius heros
ut primum iuxta stetit agnovitque per umbras
obscuram, qualem primo qui surgere mense
aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila lunam,
demisit lacrimas dulcique adfatus amore est: 455
'infelix Dido, verus mihi nuntius ergo
venerat exstinctam ferroque extrema secutam?
funeris heu tibi causa fui? per sidera iuro,
per superos et si qua fides tellure sub ima est,
inuitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi. 460
sed me iussa deum, quae nunc has ire per umbras,
per loca senta situ cogunt noctemque profundam,
imperiis egere suis; nec credere quivi
hunc tantum tibi me discessu ferre dolorem.
siste gradum teque aspectu ne subtrahe nostro. 465
quem fugis? extremum fato quod te adloquor hoc est.'
talibus Aeneas ardentem et torva tuentem
lenibat dictis animum lacrimasque ciebat.
illa solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat
nec magis incepto vultum sermone movetur 470
quam si dura silex aut stet Marpesia cautes.
tandem corripuit sese atque inimica refugit
in nemus umbriferum, coniunx ubi pristinus illi
respondet curis aequatque Sychaeus amorem.
nec minus Aeneas casu percussus iniquo 475
prosequitur lacrimis longe et miseratur euntem.
Find the glossary for Aeneid Daily here; subscribe to receive daily posts.
An epithet referring to a river in Thessaly where Apollo, under exile and in disguise as a mortal, tended sheep (cf. Euripides’ Alcestis)
Pluto was both Prosperina’s husband and her uncle, as the brother of her parents Jupiter and Ceres. The gods were that way.
Cerberus was the three-headed dog guarding the Underworld; he was said to have snakes growing from his back and a snake’s tail.
The daughter of Minos and wife of Theseus, Phaedra fell in love with her stepson Hippolytus (sometimes due to a divine curse). When he rejected her, she accused him of raping her, inadvertently leading to his death and her suicide.
Convinced her husband Cephalus was cheating on her, Procris followed him into the woods on a hunt, where he accidentally shot and killed her.
Bribed by a necklace, Eriphyle persuaded her husband to join the war against Thebes though she knew he would die; in exchange, she was killed by her son.
Evadne’s husband Capaneus died of hubris crimes in the war against Thebes; Evadne threw herself onto his funeral pyre to die with him.
Wife of Protosilaeus, the first Greek to die in the Trojan war; Laodamia killed herself to join him.
Originally Caenis, a woman; turned to an invulnerable man by Neptune, either in exchange for sex or in the aftermath of rape.
A line with an incongruously unserious origin in Catullus 66, where similar words are spoken by a lock of hair detached from its owner’s head. Comparison of the lines along with one potential interpretation can be found here.
c.f. Dido’s “mene fugis” (“Do you flee me?”)
This scene mirrors Odyssey 11, in which the shade of Ajax refuses to forgive or speak to the visiting Odysseus. The comparison invites the casting of Dido in the traditionally-masculine role of a hero, who would prefer to die on her own sword rather than let her enemies defeat her. Her silence here, according to my professor, also “prefigures Lavinia,” who we’ll meet before long.