Aeneidos IV

But the queen, wounded long since by a heavy care,

feeds the wound in her veins and is eaten by a fire unseen.

The man's great courage runs back through her mind, and back

the glory of his line; his face and his words stay

driven into her breast, and care gives her limbs no quiet rest.

The day after was sweeping the lands with Phoebus' lamp,

and Dawn had pushed the damp shadow from the sky,

when, sick in her mind, she speaks so to the sister who is one soul with her:

“Anna, my sister, what dreams frighten me, and leave me hanging!

What is he, this new guest who has come into our house,

what a bearing he carries in his face, how strong in heart and in arms!

I do believe it, and the belief is not empty, that he is of the stock of gods.

Fear proves a low-born spirit. Ah, by what fates

he has been tossed! What wars he sang of, fought out to the end!

If it were not fixed in my mind and settled there, immovable,

never to wish to join myself to any man in the marriage bond,

after my first love cheated me and failed me by his death;

if I had not come to loathe the bridal chamber and the torch,

to this one fault, perhaps, I could have given way.

Anna, for I will confess it, since the death of poor Sychaeus,

my husband, and the household gods spattered by a brother's murder,

he alone has bent my feeling, and has struck my heart

where it gives way: I recognize the traces of the old flame.

But I would pray that the deep earth gape open for me first,

or that the all-powerful Father drive me with his bolt to the shades,

the pale shades of Erebus and the bottomless night,

before I break you, Shame, or undo your laws.

He who first joined me to himself has taken my love

away with him; let him keep it by him, and hold it in the grave.”

So she spoke, and filled her breast with the tears that rose.

Anna answers: “O loved by your sister more than the light,

will you wear away alone, grieving, all your youth long,

and never know sweet children, nor the prizes of Venus?

Do you think ash cares for that, or the buried shades?

Granted: in your grief no husband bent you once,

not in Libya, not before in Tyre; Iarbas was looked past,

and the other chiefs whom the African land, rich in triumphs,

rears up: will you fight even a love that pleases you?

Does it not come into your mind whose fields you have settled in?

On this side Gaetulian cities, a race not to be beaten in war,

and unbridled Numidians hem you round, and the Syrtis that gives no welcome;

on that side a country emptied by thirst, and the Barcaeans

raging far and wide. Why should I speak of the wars rising out of Tyre,

and our brother's threats?

It was the gods' own omens, I think, and Juno's favor,

that held the Ilian keels to this course with the wind.

What a city you will see here, sister, what a kingdom

rise out of such a marriage! With Teucrian arms beside us,

to what heights will Punic glory lift itself!

Only ask the gods for pardon, and when the offerings have taken,

give yourself to your guest, and weave reasons for delay,

while winter rages itself out at sea, and rainy Orion,

and the ships are battered, and the sky will not be handled.”

With these words she set a kindled heart ablaze with love,

gave hope to a doubting mind, and loosed her shame.

First they go to the shrines and seek peace along the altars

one after another; they slaughter picked sheep by the rite

to law-giving Ceres, to Phoebus, to father Lyaeus,

and to Juno before all, who has the marriage bonds in her keeping.

Dido herself, loveliest of women, holding the bowl in her right hand,

pours it out between the horns of a white heifer,

or paces before the faces of the gods at the rich altars,

and renews the day with gifts, and gazing into the opened

chests of the beasts consults the entrails while they breathe.

Ah, the ignorant minds of seers! What good are vows, what good

are shrines to a woman on fire? The flame eats her soft marrow

all the while, and the silent wound lives under her breast.

Unhappy Dido burns, and wanders the whole city

in her madness, like a doe struck by an arrow,

whom a shepherd hunting with his weapons has pinned from far off,

off her guard among the woods of Crete, and left the flying iron

in her, not knowing it; she in flight ranges the woods and the glades

of Dicte; the deadly shaft sticks in her side.

Now she leads Aeneas with her through the middle of the walls,

and shows her Sidonian wealth and the city standing ready;

she begins to speak, and stops in the middle of the word;

now, as the day slips down, she looks for the same feast again,

and out of her mind demands to hear the sufferings of Ilium

once more, and hangs again upon his mouth as he tells them.

Afterward, when they have parted, and the dimming moon in turn

puts down her light, and the setting stars urge sleep,

she grieves alone in the empty house, and lies down

on the couch he left; absent, she hears and sees him absent;

or, caught by the father's likeness, she keeps Ascanius

in her lap, to see whether she can cheat a love past speaking.

The towers begun do not go up; the young men do not drill

at arms, nor make the harbors or the ramparts safe

for war; the works hang broken off, and the huge

menace of the walls, and the crane raised level with the sky.

As soon as Jove's dear wife saw clearly that she was held

by such a plague, and that no good name stood against the madness,

Saturn's daughter came at Venus with words like these:

“Splendid praise indeed you carry off, and generous spoils,

you and that boy of yours, a great power, and one to remember,

if one woman is beaten by the trickery of two gods!

Nor does it escape me at all that you have feared our walls

and held the houses of high Carthage under suspicion.

But where will it end, or where does so great a contest go now?

Why not rather work an everlasting peace and a wedding

sealed by treaty? You have what you sought with your whole mind:

Dido burns in love, and has drawn the madness through her bones.

So let us rule this people in common, and under omens

held equally; let her be allowed to serve a Phrygian husband,

and to hand her Tyrians to your right hand for a dowry.”

To her (for Venus felt she had spoken with a feigned mind,

to turn the kingdom of Italy aside to Libyan shores)

Venus began in answer: “Who would be mad enough to refuse

such terms, or would rather fight it out with you in war,

if only fortune follows the thing you speak of, once it is done?

But the fates leave me unsure: whether Jupiter wants one

city for the Tyrians and for those who set out from Troy,

or approves the mixing of the peoples, or a treaty joined.

You are his wife; it is right for you to try his mind by asking.”

“Go on; I will follow.” Then royal Juno took it up:

“That task will be mine. Now by what plan the thing at hand

can be brought about, attend, and I will teach it in few words.

Aeneas, and with him poor Dido, are making ready to go

hunting into the wood, when tomorrow's Titan has brought up

his first rising and unwoven the world with his rays.

On them a black cloud, mixed with hail,

while the beaters scramble and ring the glades with nets,

I will pour down from above, and set the whole sky moving with thunder.

Their companions will scatter and be covered in a dark night:

Dido and the Trojan leader will come down into the same

cave; I will be there, and, if your will toward me is sure,

I will join them in a lasting marriage and name her his own.

This will be their wedding.” Not opposing what she asked,

Cytherea nodded, and laughed once she had found the trickery out.

Meanwhile Dawn rose up and left the Ocean.

With the first ray up, picked young men go out from the gates;

wide-meshed nets, snares, hunting spears with broad iron,

and Massylian riders pour out, and the keen-nosed strength of the hounds.

At the threshold the first men of Carthage wait for the queen,

who is slow to leave her chamber; her horse stands marked out

with purple and gold, and champs fierce at the foaming bit.

At last she comes out, a great crowd pressing round her,

wrapped in a Sidonian cloak with an embroidered hem.

Her quiver is of gold, her hair is knotted up into gold,

a golden brooch gathers her purple dress beneath.

The Phrygian companions too, and Iulus in his gladness,

come on. Aeneas himself, the handsomest of them all,

brings himself in as their fellow and joins the two columns.

As when Apollo leaves wintering Lycia and the streams

of Xanthus, and goes to see his mother's Delos,

and sets the dances up again, and around the altars, mingled,

Cretans and Dryopians and painted Agathyrsi are roaring;

he himself walks the ridges of Cynthus, and binding his flowing

hair with soft leaves, shapes it and wraps it in gold;

the arrows ring on his shoulders: no slower than he went

Aeneas; such grace shines out from that splendid face.

When they had come into the high mountains and the trackless lairs,

look, wild goats, driven off the peak of a rock,

ran down from the ridges; from another side stags cross

the open plains at a run, and mass their columns

in a dusty flight, and leave the mountains behind.

But the boy Ascanius, down in the middle of the valleys, delights

in his hot horse, and outruns now these, now those,

and prays that among the spiritless herds a foaming boar

may be granted him, or a tawny lion come down from the hill.

Meanwhile the sky begins to be stirred up with a great

rumbling; a rain cloud follows, shot through with hail;

and the Tyrian companions scattered, and the Trojan young men,

and Venus' Dardanian grandson, in fear made for shelter

in different places over the fields; rivers rush down the hills.

Dido and the Trojan leader come down into

the same cave: Earth first, and Juno who leads the bride,

give the sign; fires flashed, and the upper air was witness

to the marriage, and on the high peak the nymphs howled.

That day was the first cause of death, and the first