Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| So he speaks, weeping, and gives his fleet free rein, and at last glides in to the Euboean shores of Cumae. They turn their prows to face the sea; then the anchors with their gripping teeth held the ships fast, and the curved sterns fringe the shore. A band of young men leaps out eagerly onto the Hesperian shore; some look for the seeds of fire hidden in veins of flint, some ravage the woods, the thick haunts of wild beasts, and point out the streams they have found. But dutiful Aeneas makes for the heights over which Apollo presides on high, and for the secret place, far off, of the dread Sibyl, a vast cave, into whom the Delian prophet breathes great mind and spirit and reveals the future. Now they come into the groves of Trivia and under the golden roof.
14| Daedalus, as the story goes, fleeing the kingdom of Minos, dared to trust himself to the sky on swift wings, floated by an unaccustomed path toward the cold North, and at last came lightly to rest above the citadel of Chalcis. Here, first restored to the earth, he dedicated to you, Phoebus, the rowing of his wings and constructed a vast temple. On the doors is the death of Androgeos; then the children of Cecrops, ordered to pay as penalty — a pitiful thing — the bodies of seven sons every year; there stands the urn, the lots drawn. Facing it, the land of Cnossos rises from the sea to match: here is the cruel love of the bull, Pasiphae mated with him by stealth, and the mixed breed, the two-formed offspring, the Minotaur, record of an unspeakable passion; here is that laborious house 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 large share in so great a work, if grief had allowed. Twice he had tried to shape your fall in gold; twice the father's hands dropped. They would have gone on to scan everything with their eyes, had not Achates, sent ahead, now arrived, accompanied by the priestess serving Phoebus and Trivia, Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus, who says to the king: "This is no time for looking at sights like these. Now it would be better to sacrifice seven bullocks from a herd untouched by the yoke, and as many sheep chosen as custom requires." Having spoken so to Aeneas — and the men do not delay the sacred commands — the priestess calls the Trojans into the high temple.
42| The huge side of the Euboean cliff is hollowed out into a cave, to which a hundred wide approaches lead, a hundred mouths, from which rush as many voices, the answers of the Sibyl. They had come to the threshold, when the maiden cried: "It is time to ask your fate: the god, look, the god!" As she spoke these words before the doors, suddenly her face, her color changed, her hair fell out of its arrangement; her breast heaves, her wild heart swells with frenzy, and she seems taller, her voice no longer mortal, since she is breathed upon by the power of the god, now closer. "Are you slow to make your vows and prayers," she says, "Trojan Aeneas? Are you slow? For not until then will the great mouths of the awestruck house open." So she spoke and fell silent. A chill tremor ran through the hard bones of the Trojans, and the king pours out prayers from the depths of his heart: "Phoebus, who have always pitied the heavy sufferings of Troy, who guided the Dardan arrow and hand of Paris against the body of Achilles, son of Aeacus: under your leadership I have entered so many seas that skirt great lands, the remote tribes of the Massylians and the fields that lie before the Syrtes; now at last we grasp the shores of Italy, that kept fleeing from us.
62| Let this be as far as Troy's fortune follows us. You too may now rightly spare the people of Pergamum, all you gods and goddesses to whom Ilium and the great glory of Dardania were an offense. And you, most holy prophetess, who know the future in advance, grant — I ask for no kingdom not owed me by my fates — that the Trojans may settle in Latium, with their wandering gods and the storm-tossed divine powers of Troy. Then I will found a temple of solid marble to Phoebus and Trivia, and festal days named after Phoebus. A great sanctuary awaits you too in our realm: for here I will place your oracles and the secret fates told to my people, and I will consecrate chosen men, gracious one. Only do not entrust your verses to leaves, or they may fly away in disorder, the playthings of the rushing winds: sing them yourself, I beg you." He ended his speech.
77| But the prophetess, not yet submitting to Phoebus, rages wildly in the cave, as though she might shake the great god from her breast; all the more he wearies her foaming mouth, taming her wild heart, and shapes her by his pressure. And now the hundred huge mouths of the house have opened of their own accord and carry the prophetess's answers through the air: "You who have at last come through the great dangers of the sea — but worse ones await on land — the Dardans will come into the kingdom of Lavinium; put that care from your heart; but they will wish they had not come. Wars, terrible wars, I see, and the Tiber foaming with much blood. You will not lack a Simois or a Xanthus or a Greek camp; another Achilles has already been born in Latium, himself also the son of a goddess. Nor will Juno, fastened upon the Trojans, ever be absent, while you, a suppliant in your need, will beg every Italian people, every city! The cause of so great an evil will again be a foreign bride for the Trojans, again a foreign marriage. Do not yield to misfortunes, but go against them all the more boldly, as far as your Fortune lets you. The first road to safety — what you would least expect — will open from a Greek city."
98| With such words from the inner shrine, the Cumaean Sibyl chants her dreadful riddles and bellows from the cave, wrapping truth in obscurity: Apollo shakes the reins on her as she raves and turns the goad beneath her breast. As soon as the frenzy gave way and her wild mouth fell quiet, the hero Aeneas began: "No kind of hardship, maiden, rises up before me in a new or unexpected form; I have foreseen everything and gone through it in my mind beforehand. I ask for one thing: since this is said to be the gate of the king of the underworld, and the dark marsh formed where Acheron overflows, may it be granted to me to go into the sight and face of my dear father; teach me the way and open the sacred doors. I carried him out through flames and a thousand pursuing weapons on these shoulders and brought him out from the midst of the enemy; he went on my journey with me, and endured with me all the seas and all the threats of sea and sky, weak as he was, beyond his strength and the lot of old age. Indeed, it was he who, in prayer, gave me the instruction to seek you as a suppliant and come to your threshold. Kindly one, I beg you, pity the son and the father (for you have power over everything, and Hecate did not set you in charge of Avernus's groves for nothing), if Orpheus could call up his wife's shade, relying on his lyre of Thrace and its ringing strings, if Pollux ransomed his brother by taking turns at death and travels the road back and forth so many times. Why should I mention Theseus, why great Hercules? I too trace my family to Jupiter the highest."
124| With such words he was praying and holding the altars, when the prophetess began to speak: "Offspring of the blood of the gods, Trojan son of Anchises, the descent to Avernus is easy: night and day the door of black Dis stands open; but to retrace your steps and make your way out to the upper air, this is the task, this is the toil. A few, whom kindly Jupiter has loved or whose blazing courage has lifted to the heavens, sons of gods, have been able to do it. Woods cover all the middle ground, and Cocytus gliding around with its dark windings encircles it. But if your heart has such great love, if you have such a great desire to cross the Stygian lake twice, to see black Tartarus twice, and if it pleases you to indulge in this mad toil, hear what must be done first. In a shady tree hides a golden bough, golden in leaves and in its pliant stem, said to be sacred to Juno of the underworld; the whole grove covers it, and shadows close it in with dark valleys. But no one is allowed to go into the secret places of the earth before he has plucked from the tree this golden-haired fruit. Beautiful Proserpina has established that this be brought to her as her own gift. When the first is torn off, another does not fail, golden too, and the twig puts forth leaves of the same metal.
145| So search for it high up with your eyes, and when you have found it, pluck it with your hand in the proper way; for it will follow of its own accord and easily, if the fates are calling you; otherwise you will not be able to overcome it with any strength or tear it off with hard iron. Besides, the lifeless body of a friend of yours lies there (alas, you do not know it) and pollutes your whole fleet with death, while you seek an oracle and hang about on our threshold. Bring him back to his own place first and bury him in a tomb. Lead black sheep; let those be your first atoning sacrifices. Only then will you look on the groves of the Styx and the kingdoms that are closed to the living." She spoke, and with lips pressed together fell silent.
156| Aeneas sets out, leaving the cave, his eyes fixed, his face sad, and turns over in his mind the hidden outcomes. Faithful Achates goes with him as a companion and plants his steps with equal anxiety. They exchanged many words with one another in different talk, about which lifeless comrade, which body to be buried, the prophetess meant. And as they came, they see Misenus on the dry shore, struck down by an undeserved death, Misenus the son of Aeolus, than whom no other was better at rousing men with bronze and kindling war with song. He had been the companion of great Hector, and around Hector he went into battles, distinguished with trumpet and spear. After victorious Achilles stripped Hector of life, this bravest of heroes had joined himself as a companion to Trojan Aeneas, following a leader no lesser. But on that day, while he was foolishly making the sea resound with a hollow shell and calling the gods to a contest with his song, Triton, a jealous rival, if it is right to believe it, caught the man among the rocks and drowned him in the foaming wave. So all of them were crying out around him in great uproar, above all dutiful Aeneas. Then, without delay, weeping, they hurry to carry out the Sibyl's orders, and compete in heaping up the altar of the tomb with trees and raising it to the sky. They go into an ancient forest, the deep dens of wild beasts; pitch pines fall, the oak rings, struck by axes, and ash logs and splittable oak are split by wedges; they roll huge rowan trees down from the mountains.
183| And Aeneas, in the midst of such work, is the first to urge on his comrades and arms himself with the same tools. And he himself turns these thoughts over in his sad heart as he gazes at the immense forest, and by chance prays like this: "If only that golden bough on its tree would show itself to us now in so great a grove! For truly everything that the prophetess said about you, Misenus, alas, was only too true." He had hardly said this when by chance a pair of doves came flying from the sky right before the man's eyes, and settled on the green ground. Then the great hero recognized his mother's birds and prayed gladly: "Be my guides, oh, if there is any way, and direct your course through the air to the groves where the rich branch shades the fertile ground. And you, goddess mother, do not fail me in this uncertain situation." So he spoke, and he halted his steps, watching what signs they give, where they continue to go. As they fed, they advanced in flight only as far as the eyes of those following could keep them in sight. Then, when they came to the jaws of foul-smelling Avernus, they quickly rose, and gliding through the clear air the pair settled on the longed-for place, on the tree, from which the different-colored gleam of gold shone through the branches. As mistletoe in the woods in the cold of winter is wont to be green with new leaves, a plant its own tree does not sow, and to wrap saffron-colored fruit around smooth trunks, such was the look of the gold in the leafy holm oak, so the gold leaf rustled in the gentle breeze. Aeneas seizes it at once and eagerly breaks it off, though it clings, and carries it under the roof of the prophetess Sibyl.
212| Meanwhile, no less, the Trojans on the shore were weeping for Misenus and paying their last respects to his ungrateful ashes. First they built a huge pyre, rich with pine torches and cut oak, and they weave its sides with dark foliage and set mournful cypresses before it, and adorn the top with gleaming weapons. Some prepare warm water and bronze cauldrons boiling over the fire, and bathe and anoint the body of the cold man. There is lamentation. Then, having wept over his limbs, they lay them on the bier and throw purple robes over them, his familiar garments. Some took up the great bier, a sad service, and with faces turned away, in the manner of their ancestors, held the torch beneath it. Gifts of incense, food, and bowls of poured oil are heaped up and burned. After the ashes had fallen in and the flame had died down, they washed the remains and the thirsty embers with wine, and Corynaeus gathered the bones and covered them in a bronze urn. He also carried pure water three times around his comrades, sprinkling them with light dew from a branch of fruitful olive, and purified the men and spoke the last words. But dutiful Aeneas raises a tomb of huge size for the man, with his own weapons, his oar and trumpet, under a lofty mountain, which is now named Misenus for him and keeps his name forever through the ages.
236| When this was done, he quickly carries out the Sibyl's instructions. There was a deep cave, huge, with a vast gaping mouth, rocky, protected by a black lake and the darkness of the woods, over which no flying creatures could with impunity direct their course on their wings; such a vapor, pouring out from the black jaws, rose to the vault above. [From this the Greeks called the place by the name Aornus.] Here first the priestess stationed four black-backed bullocks and poured wine on their foreheads, and, plucking the topmost bristles from between the horns, placed them on the sacred fire as first offerings, calling aloud on Hecate, powerful in heaven and in Erebus. Others put knives under the throats and catch the warm blood in bowls. Aeneas himself strikes with his sword a lamb with black fleece for the mother of the Furies and her great sister, and a barren cow for you, Proserpina; then he begins nocturnal altars for the king of the Styx and lays whole bulls' entrails on the flames, pouring rich oil over the burning innards. But look, at the threshold of the first sunlight and the sunrise, the ground began to bellow beneath their feet, and the wooded ridges to move, and dogs seemed to howl through the shadow as the goddess approached. "Away, far away, you uninitiated!" cries the prophetess, "and keep away from the whole grove; and you, enter the way and draw your sword from its sheath: now is the time for courage, Aeneas, now for a steady heart." Having said this much, in a frenzy she plunged into the open cave; he keeps pace with his guide as she goes, with steps that are not timid.
264| Gods who hold sway over souls, and silent shades, and Chaos and Phlegethon, places widely silent in night, may it be right for me to speak what I have heard, and by your will to reveal things sunk deep in earth and darkness.
268| They went on, dark, under the lonely night, through the shadow and through the empty halls of Dis and his insubstantial realm, like a journey in the woods under a doubtful moon and grudging light, when Jupiter has buried the sky in shade and black night has stolen the color from everything. Right before the entrance, in the very jaws of Orcus, Grief and vengeful Cares have placed their beds; pale Diseases live there, and grim Old Age, and Fear, and Hunger that urges to crime, and foul Want, forms dreadful to see, and Death and Toil; then Sleep, kin to Death, and the guilty Joys of the mind, and, on the threshold opposite, deadly War, and the iron chambers of the Furies, and mad Discord, her viper hair bound up in bloody ribbons. In the middle a dark elm spreads its boughs and aged arms, huge, the tree where, people say, empty Dreams make their home, clinging under every leaf. And beyond these there are many monstrous creatures of all kinds: Centaurs stable at the doors, and double-formed Scyllas, and hundred-fold Briareus, and the Lernaean beast hissing dreadfully, and the Chimaera armed with flames, Gorgons and Harpies, and the shape of the three-bodied shade. Here, in sudden terror, Aeneas seizes his sword and holds its drawn edge out against them as they come, and if his experienced companion had not warned him that these were thin lives without bodies, flitting about under a hollow semblance of form, he would have rushed in and slashed at the shades with his blade in vain.
295| From here the road leads to the waters of Tartarean Acheron. Here a whirlpool, thick with mud and a vast abyss, seethes and belches all its sand into Cocytus. A ferryman guards these waters and streams, Charon, dreadful in his squalor; a great mass of unkempt white hair lies on his chin, his eyes stand fixed with flame, and a filthy cloak hangs from his shoulders by a knot. He himself drives the boat with a pole and tends the sails, and carries the bodies across in his rust-colored skiff; he is already old, but a god's old age is raw and green. Here the whole crowd came pouring toward the banks: mothers and men, the bodies of great-hearted heroes who had finished with life, boys and unmarried girls, and young men placed on the pyre before their parents' eyes. They were as many as the leaves that fall in the woods at the first frost of autumn, or as the birds that gather in flocks to land from the deep sea, when the cold season drives them across the water and sends them to sunny lands. They stood there begging to be the first to cross, and stretched out their hands in longing for the farther shore.
315| But the grim boatman takes now these, now those, while others he thrusts far back and keeps away from the sand. Aeneas, astonished and stirred by the commotion, said: "Tell me, maiden, what does this crowding at the river mean? What do the souls want? By what distinction do these leave the banks, while those sweep the dark shallows with oars?" The aged priestess answered him briefly: "Son of Anchises, surest offspring of the gods, you are looking at the deep waters of Cocytus and the Stygian swamp, by whose power the gods fear to swear and break their word. All this crowd you see is helpless and unburied; that ferryman is Charon; those the water carries have been buried. It is not allowed to carry anyone across the dreadful banks and hoarse currents until their bones have found rest in a grave. For a hundred years they wander and flit about these shores; only then are they admitted and see again the pools they long for." The son of Anchises halted and held back his steps, thinking over many things and pitying in his heart their unjust lot. There he sees, grieving and lacking the honor of death, Leucaspis and Orontes, leader of the Lycian fleet, whom the South Wind overwhelmed as they sailed together from Troy over stormy seas, wrapping ship and men in water.
337| Look, the helmsman Palinurus was coming toward him, who not long ago on the voyage from Libya, while he was watching the stars, had fallen from the stern and been thrown out into the middle of the waves. When Aeneas could just recognize him, sorrowful in the deep shadow, he spoke to him first: "Which of the gods, Palinurus, snatched you from us and drowned you in the middle of the sea? Tell me. For Apollo, never before found false, deceived my mind with this one answer: he sang that you would be safe on the sea and would reach the shores of Ausonia. Is this the faith of his promise?" But Palinurus said: "Neither did Phoebus' tripod deceive you, leader, son of Anchises, nor did a god drown me in the sea. For the helm, torn off by chance with great force, which I clung to, assigned as its guard and steering our course, I dragged down with me as I fell headlong. I swear by the rough seas that I felt no such fear for myself as I did that your ship, stripped of its gear and robbed of its helmsman, would fail amid such towering waves. For three winter nights the South Wind, violent on the water, carried me over the boundless sea; on the fourth dawn, lifted high on the crest of a wave, I could just make out Italy.
358| "Little by little I was swimming toward land; I was already safe, if a cruel people had not attacked me with their blades as I was weighed down by my soaking clothes and grasping with hooked hands at the rough crags of the mountain, and in their ignorance taken me for plunder. Now the waves hold me, and the winds roll me along the shore. So I beg you, by the pleasant light of heaven and its breezes, by your father, by your hopes for Iulus as he grows, rescue me from these troubles, unconquered one. Either cast earth over me, for you can, and seek again the harbor of Velia; or, if there is any way, if your divine mother shows you one (for I do not think you are preparing to cross such great rivers and sail the Stygian marsh without the will of the gods), give your right hand to a wretched man and take me with you across the waters, so that in death at least I may rest in a peaceful place." He had said these words when the prophetess began: "Where, Palinurus, does this terrible desire of yours come from? Will you, unburied, look upon the Stygian waters and the stern river of the Furies, or come to the bank without being bidden? Stop hoping that the decrees of the gods can be bent by prayer, but take my words and remember them as comfort in your hard lot.
378| For the neighboring peoples, driven far and wide through their cities by signs from heaven, will appease your bones, build a tomb, and send solemn offerings to the tomb, and the place will keep the name of Palinurus forever." With these words his troubles were driven out, and for a short while grief was banished from his sad heart; he is glad that a land bears his name.
384| So they complete the journey they had begun and draw near the river. As soon as the boatman saw them, from the Stygian water, going through the silent wood and turning their steps toward the bank, he spoke first, challenging them on his own initiative: "Whoever you are, who come armed to our river, say at once why you have come, and stop right there, and hold your step. This is the place of shades, of sleep and drowsy night: it is forbidden to ferry living bodies in the Stygian boat; and in truth I was not glad to receive Hercules when he came over the lake, nor Theseus and Pirithous, though they were born of gods and unconquered in strength. One of them reached for the guardian of Tartarus with his hand, to put him in chains, and dragged him trembling from the very throne of the king; the others tried to carry off the queen from Dis's bedchamber." The prophetess of Amphrysus answered briefly: "There are no such plots here (stop being alarmed), and these weapons bring no violence; the huge doorkeeper may bark forever in his cave and terrify the bloodless shades, and chaste Proserpina may keep her uncle's threshold. Trojan Aeneas, outstanding for his devotion and for his arms, is going down to his father, to the lowest shades of Erebus.
405| If the image of such great devotion moves you not at all, then at least you will recognize this branch" (she reveals the branch, which had been hidden under her robe). Then his swollen heart settles from its anger; nothing more is said than this. Marveling at the revered gift, the fated rod, seen after so long a time, he turns his dark-blue boat and draws near to the bank. Then he drives off the other souls who were sitting along the long benches, and clears the gangways; at the same time he takes huge Aeneas into the hull. The stitched skiff groaned under the weight, and, leaking, took in a great deal of marsh water. At last he sets the prophetess and the hero safely across the river, on shapeless mud and gray-green sedge.
417| This realm echoes with the barking of huge Cerberus from his three throats, as he lies monstrous in the cave opposite. Seeing his neck already bristling with snakes, the prophetess throws him a cake drugged with honey and medicinal grain. He, opening his three throats in raging hunger, snatches the thrown morsel, and his huge back relaxes as he sprawls on the ground and stretches out, enormous, across the whole cave. Aeneas, with the guard buried in sleep, takes the entrance and quickly escapes the bank of the water that none cross twice.
426| At once voices are heard, a great wailing, and the weeping souls of infants, whom a black day carried off at the very threshold, cut off from sweet life and torn from the breast, and plunged into bitter death. Next to them are those condemned to death on a false charge. And these places have not been assigned without lot and without judge: Minos the examiner shakes the urn; he summons the council of the silent and learns their lives and their crimes. The next places are held by the sorrowful, who, though innocent, brought death on themselves by their own hand and, hating the light, threw away their lives. How they would now wish to bear poverty and harsh toil in the upper air! Divine law forbids it, and the sad, unlovely marsh with its water binds them, and Styx, poured nine times around, confines them. Not far from here are shown, spreading out on every side, the Fields of Mourning; that is what they call them. Here hidden paths conceal those whom harsh love has consumed with cruel wasting, and a myrtle wood covers them all around; their cares do not leave them even in death. In these places he sees Phaedra and Procris, and sorrowful Eriphyle showing the wounds from her cruel son, and Evadne and Pasiphae; Laodamia goes as their companion, and Caeneus, once a young man, now a woman, and turned back by fate again into her former shape.
450| Among them Phoenician Dido, her wound still fresh, was wandering in a great wood. As soon as the Trojan hero stood near her and recognized her dim figure through the shadows, as one who sees, or thinks he has seen, the moon rise through the clouds in the first days of the month, he shed tears and spoke to her with tender love: "Unhappy Dido, so the news that came to me was true, that you were dead and had followed your end with the sword? Alas, was I the cause of your death? I swear by the stars, by the powers above, and by whatever faith there is deep under the earth: unwillingly, queen, I left your shore. But the commands of the gods, which now force me to go through these shadows, through places overgrown with decay, and through deep night, drove me by their authority; nor could I believe that by leaving I would bring you so great a grief. Stay your step, and do not withdraw from my sight. Whom are you fleeing? This is the last time that fate lets me speak to you." With such words Aeneas tried to soothe her burning, fierce-eyed spirit and brought tears to his own eyes. She kept her eyes fixed on the ground, turned away, and her face was no more moved by the speech he had begun than if she were standing there as hard flint or a crag of Marpesian marble. At last she tore herself away and fled, hostile, into the shady grove, where her former husband Sychaeus answers her cares and matches her love. Aeneas, no less shaken by her unjust fate, follows her far with his tears and pities her as she goes.
477| From there he works his way along the road he has been given. And now they were reaching the farthest fields, which those famous in war frequent, set apart. Here Tydeus meets him, here Parthenopaeus, renowned in arms, and the phantom of pale Adrastus, here the Dardans who fell in war and were much mourned in the world above; seeing them all in a long line, he groaned, Glaucus, Medon and Thersilochus, Antenor's three sons, and Polyboetes, priest of Ceres, and Idaeus, still holding his chariot, still holding his arms. The souls crowd around him on right and left, and it is not enough to have seen him once; they like to linger, to walk beside him, and to learn the reasons for his coming. But the Greek leaders and Agamemnon's battle lines, when they saw the man and his gleaming arms through the shadows, trembled with great fear; some turned their backs, as they once ran for the ships, some raised a thin cry: the shout they began deceives their gaping mouths.
494| And here he sees Deiphobus, son of Priam, mangled over his whole body, his face cruelly torn, his face and both hands, his temples stripped of ears that had been cut off, and his nostrils lopped by a shameful wound. He barely recognized him, trembling and hiding his terrible punishments, and spoke to him first in familiar tones: "Deiphobus, mighty in arms, born of the high blood of Teucer, who wanted to exact such cruel penalties? Who was allowed to do so much to you? A report reached me that on the last night you had fallen, worn out by the great slaughter of the Pelasgians, on top of a heap of tangled dead. Then I myself set up an empty tomb on the Rhoetean shore and called your spirit three times in a loud voice. Your name and arms keep the place; but you, my friend, I was not able to see, nor to lay you in your native earth as I departed." To this the son of Priam replied: "My friend, nothing has been left undone by you; you have paid Deiphobus and his shade every funeral due. But my own fate and the deadly crime of the Spartan woman plunged me into these evils; she left me these memorials. For you know how we spent that last night among false joys; and it is only too necessary to remember it.
515| When the fateful horse came with a leap over the steep heights of Pergamum and brought in its heavy belly armed infantry, she, pretending to lead the Phrygian women in a chorus, crying out in ecstasy around the rites, held a great flame in their midst and called the Greeks from the top of the citadel. Then I, worn out with cares and weighed down with sleep, was held by my unlucky bedroom, and a sweet, deep rest pressed on me as I lay there, most like peaceful death. Meanwhile my excellent wife removes all the weapons from the house, and had taken my trusty sword from under my pillow. She summons Menelaus into the house and throws open the doors, no doubt hoping this would be a great gift to her lover, and that the reputation of her old wrongs could be wiped out in this way. Why do I delay? They burst into the bedroom, and with them, joined as a companion and urger of crimes, the grandson of Aeolus. Gods, repay the Greeks in kind, if I ask for punishment with a righteous mouth. But come, tell me in turn what chances have brought you here alive. Do you come driven by wanderings on the sea, or by the warning of the gods? Or what fortune wearies you, that you should come to these sad houses without sun, these troubled places?"
535| In this exchange of words Dawn, in her rosy four-horse chariot, had already crossed the middle of the sky's axis on her course through the heavens; and perhaps they would have spent all the time granted them on such talk, but his companion warned him, and the Sibyl spoke briefly: "Night is rushing on, Aeneas; we are spending the hours weeping. This is the place where the road splits in two directions: the right, which leads under the walls of great Dis, is our way to Elysium; but the left exacts punishment from the wicked and sends them to wicked Tartarus." Deiphobus answered: "Do not be angry, great priestess; I will go, I will fill out the number and be given back to the darkness. Go, go, our glory; enjoy a better fate." He said only this, and in the middle of the word turned his steps away.
548| Aeneas suddenly looks back and sees, under a cliff on the left, broad walls surrounded by a triple wall, which a swift river encircles with torrents of flame, Tartarean Phlegethon, rolling along booming rocks. In front is a huge gate with columns of solid adamant, so that no strength of men, not even the heavenly gods themselves, could cut it down in war; an iron tower stands high in the air, and Tisiphone, sitting there with her robe girded up and stained with blood, guards the entrance, sleepless, night and day. From here groans can be heard, and the sound of savage lashes, then the grating of iron and the dragging of chains. Aeneas halted and took in the din with terror. "What kinds of crime are these? Maiden, tell me; with what punishments are they pressed? What is this great wailing that rises to the air?" Then the prophetess began to speak: "Famous leader of the Trojans, no pure person is allowed to 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 gods' punishments and led me through them all. Cretan Rhadamanthus holds this harshest of realms; he punishes and hears out deceits, and forces each to confess whatever crime he committed in the world above, taking joy in a pointless theft, and put off atoning for until late death.
570| At once avenging Tisiphone, girt with a whip, leaps at the guilty and lashes them, and, holding out fierce snakes in her left hand, calls the savage troop of her sisters. Only then do the accursed gates open, grating on their horrifying hinge. Do you see what kind of guard sits at the entrance, what shape watches over the threshold? Inside, a Hydra even fiercer, with fifty black gaping mouths, has her seat. Then Tartarus itself opens twice as far down, and stretches into the shadows as far as the view up to heavenly Olympus in the sky. Here the ancient race of Earth, the Titan youth, hurled down by lightning, writhe at the very bottom. Here too I saw the twin sons of Aloeus, enormous bodies, who tried with their hands to tear down the great sky and thrust Jupiter from the realms above. I saw also Salmoneus paying a cruel penalty, for imitating Jupiter's flames and the thunder of Olympus. Borne by four horses and shaking a torch, he went in triumph among the peoples of Greece and through the city in the middle of Elis, and demanded for himself the honor due to the gods, a madman, who imitated storm clouds and inimitable lightning with bronze and the beat of horses' hooves.
592| But the almighty father hurled his weapon from among the thick clouds, not torches nor smoky light from pine brands, and drove him headlong in a huge whirlwind. Tityos too could be seen, foster child of Earth who bears all things; his body stretches over nine whole acres, and a monstrous vulture with hooked beak, gnawing at his immortal liver and entrails fertile for punishment, probes them for its feast and lives beneath his deep chest, and no rest is given to the fibers as they grow back. Why should I tell of the Lapiths, Ixion and Pirithous? Over them hangs a black rock, always about to slip and looking as if it is falling; golden couches gleam on high festal beds, and feasts are laid before their eyes with royal luxury; beside them the eldest of the Furies reclines and keeps them from touching the tables with their hands, and rises, lifting a torch, and thunders in their faces. Here, shut in, those await punishment who hated their brothers while life lasted, or struck a parent, or wove deceit against a client, or who brooded alone over riches they had found and set aside no share for their own (the largest crowd), and those killed for adultery, and those who followed impious arms and did not fear to betray their masters' pledged right hands. Do not ask to be told what punishment, or what shape or fortune has sunk these men.
616| Some roll a huge stone, or hang stretched on the spokes of wheels; unlucky Theseus sits, and will sit forever, and most wretched Phlegyas warns everyone and bears witness in a great voice through the shadows: 'Learn justice, be warned, and do not scorn the gods.' This one sold his country for gold and set a tyrant over it; he made laws and unmade them for a price; this one invaded his daughter's bed and an illicit marriage. All of them dared some monstrous crime, and achieved what they dared. Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths, a voice of iron, could I include all the forms of crime, or run through all the names of punishments."
628| When the aged priestess of Phoebus had said this, she added: "But come now, take the road and finish the task you have undertaken; let us hurry. I see walls built in the forges of the Cyclopes, and the gates under the arch facing us, where our instructions command us to lay down these gifts." She had spoken, and walking side by side through the dark ways they quickly cross the space between and approach the doors. Aeneas takes the entrance, sprinkles his body with fresh water, and fixes the branch on the threshold in front of him.
637| When all this was finished and the goddess's gift duly delivered, they came to the joyful places, the pleasant green lawns of the groves of the fortunate, and the blessed homes. Here a broader sky clothes the fields in radiant light, and they know their own sun and their own stars. Some exercise their limbs on grassy wrestling grounds, compete in games and wrestle on golden sand; some beat out dances with their feet and speak verses. The Thracian priest, too, in his long robe, accompanies their measures with the seven distinct notes, plucking the same melody now with his fingers, now with an ivory plectrum. Here is the ancient family of Teucer, a most beautiful line, great-hearted heroes born in better years: Ilus, Assaracus, and Dardanus, founder of Troy. From a distance he marvels at the men's arms and empty chariots; spears stand fixed in the ground, and horses, unyoked, graze freely over the plain. The delight they took in chariots and arms while alive, the care they took in feeding sleek horses, follows them when they are laid to rest in the earth. Look, he sees others to right and left feasting on the grass and joyfully singing a paean in chorus among a fragrant grove of laurels, from which the river Eridanus flows in abundance up above through the wood.
660| Here is the company of those who suffered wounds fighting for their country, and priests who stayed pure while life lasted, and faithful poets who spoke words worthy of Phoebus, and those who enriched life through discovered arts, and those who made others remember them by their services: the brows of all these are bound with a snow-white headband. As they crowded around, the Sibyl addressed them, Musaeus above all (for the great crowd holds him in its midst and looks up at him, standing out with his shoulders high): "Tell me, blessed souls, and you, best of poets, what region, what place holds Anchises? It is for him that we have come and crossed the great rivers of Erebus." And the hero gave her this brief answer: "No one has a fixed home; we live in shady groves, and inhabit couches by the riverbanks and meadows fresh with streams. But you, if your heart is set on it, cross this ridge, and I will soon set you on an easy path." He spoke, and went before them, and shows them the shining plains from above; then they leave the mountaintop.
679| But father Anchises, deep in a green valley, was reviewing with careful attention the souls shut away there who were destined to go up to the light above, and happened to be counting the whole number of his descendants, his dear grandsons, and their fates and fortunes, their characters and deeds. When he saw Aeneas coming toward him across the grass, he eagerly stretched out both hands, tears poured down his cheeks, and a word fell from his mouth: "You have come at last, and your devotion, which your father waited for, has overcome the hard journey? Am I allowed to look at your face, my son, and to hear and answer familiar voices? So indeed I reckoned in my mind and believed it would be, counting up the days, and my concern did not deceive me. Over what lands, over what great seas have you traveled before I receive you! Tossed by what dangers, my son! How I feared that the realm of Libya might harm you!" But Aeneas said: "Your sad image, father, your image, coming to me again and again, drove me to make my way to this threshold; my ships stand in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Let me clasp your right hand, let me, father, and do not draw yourself away from my embrace." As he said this, he was also drenching his face with a flood of tears. Three times he tried there to throw his arms around his neck; three times the image, grasped in vain, slipped through his hands, like the light winds and most like a winged dream.
703| Meanwhile Aeneas sees in a secluded valley a sheltered grove and the rustling thickets of a wood, and the river Lethe, which flows past the peaceful homes. Around it countless nations and peoples were flying about: just as in the meadows, when in the clear days of summer bees settle on the various flowers and stream around the white lilies, the whole field hums with their murmur. Aeneas shudders at the sudden sight and, not understanding, asks the reasons: what are those rivers there beyond, and who are the men who have filled the banks in such a great throng? Then his father Anchises said: "They are souls to whom fate owes second bodies, and at the water of the river Lethe they drink untroubled draughts and long forgetfulness. I have long wanted to tell you of these and show them to you face to face, to count off this line of my descendants, so that you may rejoice with me all the more that Italy has been found." "Father, must we think that some souls go from here up to the sky and again return to sluggish bodies? What is this terrible desire for light in these poor souls?" "I will tell you, my son, and not keep you in suspense," Anchises replies, and lays out each point in order.
724| "First of all, a spirit within nourishes the sky and the earth and the watery plains, the shining globe of the moon and the Titan stars, and a mind, spread through the limbs, moves the whole mass and mingles with the great body. From it come the races of men and cattle, the lives of winged creatures, and the monsters the sea carries beneath its marble surface. These seeds have a fiery force and a heavenly origin, so far as harmful bodies do not slow them and earthly limbs and dying flesh do not dull them. Because of this they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice, and, shut up in darkness and a blind prison, they do not see the sky. Even when life has left them on their last day, still not every evil, and not every bodily plague, leaves these wretched souls entirely, and it is inevitable that many things that have long grown together in them become deeply ingrained in strange ways. So they are disciplined with punishments and pay the penalty for old wrongs: some are stretched out, hung empty to the winds; for others the guilt that stains them is washed out beneath a vast whirlpool or burned away by fire. Each of us endures his own shade's lot. After that we are sent through broad Elysium, and a few of us hold the happy fields, until the long day, when time's cycle has been completed, takes away the ingrained stain and leaves pure the heavenly sense and the fire of simple air. All of these, when they have rolled the wheel for a thousand years, the god calls out to the river Lethe in a great company, so that, forgetful, they may revisit the vault above and begin to want to return into bodies."
752| Anchises had spoken, and draws his son and with him the Sibyl into the middle of the assembly and the murmuring crowd, and takes a mound from which he could scan them all in a long line as they faced him, and learn the faces of those coming.
756| "Now come, I will set out in words what glory will follow the Dardan line, what descendants await you from the Italian people, illustrious souls who will come to bear our name, and I will teach you your own fate. That young man you see leaning on a headless spear holds the place nearest to the light by lot; he will be the first to rise to the air above, with Italian blood mixed in his: Silvius, an Alban name, your last-born son, whom your wife Lavinia will bring up for you in the woods when you are old and late in life, as a king and father of kings, from whom our family will rule in Alba Longa. Next to him is Procas, glory of the Trojan people, and Capys and Numitor and Silvius Aeneas, who will bring back your name, outstanding alike in devotion and in arms, if he ever receives Alba to rule. What young men! See what strength they display, and how they wear their brows shaded with the civic oak! They will found for you Nomentum, Gabii, and the city of Fidenae; they will set the Collatine fortresses on the hills, Pometia, the Fort of Inuus, Bola, and Cora.
776| These will be names then; now they are nameless lands. And Mars's son Romulus will also join his grandfather as companion, whom his mother Ilia will bring up from the blood of Assaracus. Do you see how the twin crests stand on his head, and how the father of the gods himself already marks him with his own honor? Look, my son: under his auspices that famous Rome will make her empire equal to the earth, and her spirit to Olympus, and will surround seven hills with a single wall, fortunate in her offspring of men, like the Berecyntian mother, crowned with towers, riding in her chariot through the Phrygian cities, happy in her birth of gods, embracing a hundred grandchildren, all dwellers in heaven, all holding the heights above. Turn your eyes now this way; look at this people, your own Romans. Here is Caesar and all the descendants of Iulus who will come beneath the great vault of the sky. This is the man, this is he, whom you so often hear promised to you, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who will found again a golden age in Latium, over the fields once ruled by Saturn, and will extend his rule beyond the Garamantes and the Indians; the land lies beyond the stars, beyond the paths of the year and the sun, where sky-bearing Atlas turns on his shoulder the axis set with blazing stars.
798| Already now, at his coming, the Caspian kingdoms shudder at the oracles of the gods, and the land of Maeotis, and the mouths of the sevenfold Nile are in turmoil with fear. Nor in truth did Hercules cover so much of the earth, though he pierced the bronze-footed deer, or brought peace to the woods of Erymanthus and made Lerna tremble with his bow; nor did Liber, who in triumph guides his chariot with reins of vine, driving tigers down from the high peak of Nysa. And do we still hesitate to extend our valor by deeds, or does fear prevent us from settling in the land of Ausonia? But who is that, far off, distinguished by olive branches, carrying sacred objects? I recognize the hair and white beard of the Roman king who will found the new city on laws, sent from little Cures and a poor land into great power. After him will come Tullus, who will break his country's peace and rouse idle men to arms, and armies now unused to triumphs. Next to him follows Ancus, more boastful, even now delighting too much in the favor of the people. Do you want to see also the Tarquin kings, and the proud spirit of Brutus the avenger, and the rods of office recovered?
819| He will be the first to receive a consul's authority and the cruel axes, and when his sons stir up new wars, the father will summon them to punishment for the sake of noble liberty — unhappy man, however later ages tell of that deed: love of country will prevail, and a boundless hunger for praise. Look, too, at the Decii and the Drusi in the distance, and Torquatus, savage with his axe, and Camillus bringing back the standards. But those two souls whom you see gleaming in matching armor, in harmony now, while the night holds them down — alas, what a war they will wage between them, if they reach the light of life, what battle lines and slaughter they will stir up: the father-in-law coming down from the Alpine ramparts and the citadel of Monoecus, the son-in-law drawn up with the armies of the East to oppose him! No, my sons, do not make your hearts used to such great wars, do not turn your strong might against the vitals of your country; and you first, you who trace your race from Olympus, show mercy, throw the weapons from your hand, my own blood! — That one will drive his chariot in victory to the lofty Capitol, triumphant over Corinth, renowned for the Achaeans he has slain. That one will overthrow Argos and Agamemnon's Mycenae, and the very son of Aeacus, descendant of Achilles mighty in arms, avenging his Trojan forefathers and Minerva's defiled temple.
841| Who would leave you unmentioned, great Cato, or you, Cossus? Who would pass over the family of the Gracchi, or the two Scipios, two thunderbolts of war, the ruin of Libya, or Fabricius, powerful in his poverty, or you, Serranus, sowing seed in your furrow? Where are you hurrying me, weary as I am, you Fabii? You are that Maximus, the one man who restores our state by delaying. Others, I do not doubt, will hammer out bronze that breathes with a softer touch and draw living faces out of marble; they will plead cases better, trace the paths of the sky with the rod, and name the rising stars. You, Roman, remember to govern the peoples with your power — these will be your arts — to set the habit of peace upon them, to spare the conquered and to war down the proud."
854| So spoke father Anchises, and, as they marveled, he added: "See how Marcellus marches on, distinguished by the spoils of honor, and towers in victory over all men. When a great upheaval throws it into turmoil, he will steady the Roman state; a horseman, he will lay low the Carthaginians and the rebel Gaul, and hang up the third set of captured arms to father Quirinus." And here Aeneas — for he saw walking with him a young man outstanding in beauty and in gleaming armor, but his brow was far from glad and his eyes were downcast — asked: "Who, father, is that, walking beside the man as he goes? His son, or one of the great line of his descendants? What a stir among his companions around him! How much presence he has in himself! But black night flies around his head with its gloomy shadow." Then father Anchises began, with 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 stay longer. The Roman race would have seemed to you too powerful, gods above, if these gifts had been its own to keep. What groans of men that Field will send up to the great city of Mars! What funeral rites you will see, Tiber, as you glide past his new tomb!
875| No boy from the Trojan race 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-fashioned good faith, and his right hand unconquered in war! No one would have met him in arms unharmed, whether he went against the enemy on foot or dug his spurs into the flanks of a foaming horse. Ah, boy to be pitied, if only you could somehow break your harsh fate — you will be Marcellus. Give me lilies by the handful; let me scatter purple flowers, and at least heap these gifts on my descendant's spirit and perform an empty service." So they roam here and there across the whole region, in the wide fields of air, and survey everything. And when Anchises had led his son through each thing and fired his heart with love of the fame to come, he then tells the hero of the wars he must later wage, teaches him about the Laurentine nations and the city of Latinus, and how he is to avoid or endure each hardship.
893| There are two gates of Sleep: one, they say, is of horn, by which true shades find an easy way out; the other shines, wrought of gleaming white ivory, but by that one the spirits below send false dreams up toward the sky. There, with these words, Anchises escorts his son and the Sibyl together and sends them out through the ivory gate. Aeneas makes his way to the ships and rejoins his companions.
900| Then he sails straight along the coast to the harbor of Caieta. The anchor is thrown from the prow; the sterns stand along the shore.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/vergil/006-aeneid-book-vi#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.