Home Introduction Persons Geogr. Sources Events Mijn blog(Nederlands)
Religion Subjects Images Queries Links Contact Do not fly Iberia
This is a non-commercial site. Any revenues from Google ads are used to improve the site.

Custom Search
Quote of the day: That he would bring the war to conclusio
Notes
Display Latin text
The Aeneid by Virgil
translated by Theodore C. Williams
Book IV Chapter 21: Preparations of Dido's death
Next chapter
Return to index
Previous chapter
Soon as the funeral pyre was builded high
in a sequestered garden, looming huge
with boughs of pine and faggots of cleft oak,
the queen herself enwreathed it with sad flowers
and boughs of mournful shade; and crowning all
she laid on nuptial bed the robes and sword
by him abandoned; and stretched out thereon
a mock Aeneas; -- but her doom she knew.
Altars were there; and with loose locks unbound
the priestess with a voice of thunder called
three hundred gods, Hell [Note 1], Chaos, the three shapes
of triple Hecate, the faces three
of virgin Diana. She aspersed a stream
from dark Avernus drawn, she said; soft herbs
were cut by moonlight with a blade of bronze,
oozing black poison-sap; and she had plucked
that philter from the forehead of new foal
before its dam devours. Dido herself,
sprinkling the salt meal, at the altar stands;
one foot unsandalled, and with cincture free,
on all the gods and fate-instructed stars,
foreseeing death, she calls. But if there be
some just and not oblivious power on high,
who heeds when lovers plight unequal vow,
to that god first her supplications rise.

Note 1: Hell = Erebus

Event: Love and Death of Dido

504-521
At regina, pyra penetrali in sede sub auras
erecta ingenti taedis atque ilice secta,
intenditque locum sertis et fronde coronat
funerea; super exuuias ensemque relictum
effigiemque toro locat haud ignara futuri.
stant arae circum et crinis effusa sacerdos
ter centum tonat ore deos, Erebumque Chaosque
tergeminamque Hecaten, tria uirginis ora Dianae.
sparserat et latices simulatos fontis Auerni,
falcibus et messae ad lunam quaeruntur aenis
pubentes herbae nigri cum lacte ueneni;
quaeritur et nascentis equi de fronte reuulsus
et matri praereptus amor.
ipsa mola manibusque piis altaria iuxta
unum exuta pedem uinclis, in ueste recincta,
testatur moritura deos et conscia fati
sidera; tum, si quod non aequo foedere amantis
curae numen habet iustumque memorque, precatur.