Aeneid Book 6 — The Underworld

Not far from here, outspread on every side, are shown the Mourning Fields; such is the name they bear.

Here those whom stern Love has consumed with cruel wasting are hidden in walks withdrawn, embowered in a myrtle grove; even in death the pangs leave them not.

In this region he sees Phaedra and Procris, and sad Eriphyle, pointing to the wounds her cruel son had dealt, and Evadne and Pasiphaë.

With them goes Laodamia, and Caeneus, once a youth, now a woman, and again turned back by Fate into her form of old.

Among them, with wound still fresh, Phoenician Dido was wandering in the great forest, and soon as the Trojan hero stood near and knew her, a dim form amid the shadows – even as, in the early month, one sees or fancies he has seen the moon rise amid the clouds – he shed tears, and spoke to her in tender love: “Unhappy Dido!

Was the tale true then that came to me, that you were dead and had sought your doom with the sword?

Was I, alas! the cause of your death?

By the stars I swear, by the world above, and whatever is sacred in the grave below, unwillingly, queen, I parted from your shores.

But the gods’ decrees, which now constrain me to pass through these shades, through lands squalid and forsaken, and through abysmal night, drove me with their behests; nor could I deem my going thence would bring on you distress so deep.

Stay your step and withdraw not from our view.

Whom do you flee?

This is the last word Fate suffers me to say to you.” With these words amid springing tears Aeneas strove to soothe the wrath of the fiery, fierce-eyed queen.

She, turning away, kept her looks fixed on the ground and no more changes her countenance as he essays to speak than if she were set in hard flint or Marpesian rock.

At length she flung herself away and, still his foe, fled back to the shady grove, where Sychaeus, her lord of former days, responds to her sorrows and gives her love for love.

Yet none

the

less, stricken

by her

unjust

doom, Aeneas

attends her

with

tears afar

and

pities her

as

she goes.

“Turn hither now your two-eyed gaze, and behold this nation, the Romans that are yours.

Here is Caesar and all the seed of Iulus destined to pass under heaven’s spacious sphere.

And this in truth is he whom you so often hear promised you, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who will again establish a golden age in Latium amid fields once ruled by Saturn; he will advance his empire beyond the Garamants and Indians to a land which lies beyond our stars, beyond the path of year and sun, where sky-bearing Atlas wheels on his shoulders the blazing star-studded sphere.

Against his coming both Caspian realms and the Maeotic land even now shudder at the oracles of their gods, and the mouths of sevenfold Nile quiver in alarm.

Not even Hercules traversed so much of earth’s extent, though he pierced the stag of brazen foot, quieted the woods of Erymanthus, and made Lerna tremble at his bow; nor he either, who guides his car with vine-leaf reins, triumphant Bacchus, driving his tigers down from Nysa’s lofty peaks.

And do

we still hesitate

to make

known our worth

by exploits

or shrink in

fear from settling

on Western soil?

“He yonder [Lucius Mummius], triumphant over Corinth, shall drive a victor’s chariot to the lofty Capitol, famed for Achaeans he has slain.

Yon other [Luxius Aemilius Paullus] shall uproot Argos, Agamemnon’s Mycenae, and even an heir of Aeacus, seed of mighty Achilles: he will avenge his Trojan sires and Minerva’s polluted shrine.

Who, lordly Cato, could leave you unsung, of you, Cossus; who the Gracchan race or the Scipios twain, two thunderbolts of war and the ruin of Carthage, or Favricius, in penury a prince, or you, Serranus, sowing seed in the soil?

Whither, O Fabii, do ye hurry me all breathless?

You re he, the mightest [Quinus Fabius Maximus], who could, s no one else, through inaction preserve our state.

Others, I doubt not, shall with softer mould beast out the breathing bronze, coax from the marble features to life, plead cases with greater eloquence and with a pointer trace heaven’s motions

and predict the risings of the stars: you, Roman, be sure to rule the world (be these your arts), to crown peace with justice, to spare the vanquished and to crush the proud.”