Vergil, Aeneid IV 1-30

Manuscripts: M 1-29, 30 | P 1-23, 24-30 | R 1-18, 19-30 | G 1-18, 19-30

Throughout the night Dido cannot rest, for the story and the image of Aeneas recur to her mind. At dawn she opens her heart to her sister, and, after dwelling on the charms of her guest, declares that, if she had not resolved since the death of Sychaeus to put away all thoughts of love, she could have yielded to this passion, but that now she prays heaven to destroy her rather than allow her to be unfaithful to the dead Sychaeus (Page).

1: at: “but now,” denotes the return from the narrative of Aeneas to that of the poet, which was interrupted at the end of the first book (Frieze). The particle strongly contrasts the restlessness of Dido with the calm (quiēvit) indicated by the last line of Book III (Pharr). rēgīna: at the beginning of the tragedy of Book Four the loftiness of its characters is emphasized, in Dido’s case by this word, in that of Aeneas by lines 11–12 (Pease). gravī saucia cūrā: Dido has been “wounded” (saucia), as it were, by the arrow of Cupid (Carter). Cūra is regularly used of the “pain,” “pangs,” or “trouble” caused by love (Page). iamdūdum: graphic and natural; Dido’s love has been coming upon her “all this long while,” and by now the time when she did not love Aeneas seems far away (Austin).

2: vulnus...ignī: “She feeds the wound with her life-blood, and is wasted by a flame deep down within her” (Austin). The wound drains her life-blood, and so she is said to “feed it with her veins.” The double metaphor of “a wound” and “fire” is suggested by the fiery arrows of Love (Page). Vēnīs and ignī are probably an ablative of instrument / means (AG 409), but Vergil constantly uses phrases which must not be put straight into English and left as nonsense. Here, his meaning is that Dido lets love poison her blood or exhaust her strength (Warman). caecō: “unseen” (F-B); “hidden” (Chase). Fulfilling the instructions of Venus to Amor (1.688): occultum inspires ignem fallasque venenum (Pease). carpitur: “is consumed”: the image being of a flame, which catches successively upon the objects within its reach. Carpere well expresses the gradualness and the inexorability of her passion; it implies the action of taking a part from a whole, and so the completion of something by successive stages; little by little the fire will wear her down to nothingness (Austin).

3: multa, multus: = magna, “great,” in the sense of “abundant”; proved by his many great deeds (Frieze). The repetition intentionally strengthens and makes more vivid the idea of frequency and repetition (Pharr). “Many a thought of the hero’s high valor comes racing back to her heart, many a picture of the glories of his line”; multus implies both the frequency of Dido’s thoughts (hence the frequentative recursat) and the abundance of virtūs and honōs in Aeneas (Austin). virtūs: “valor” (F-B); “bravery” (Carter). virī virtūs: figura etymologica (Pease). animō = ad animum, dative of direction (AG 428 h) (Pharr). recursat: not a common word; it occurs in 1.662 and 12.802, both times with reference to cūra (Austin).

4: gentis honōs: “his fine ancestry” (Carter); “his glorious stock” (F-B); “his noble birth,” being a member of the royal family and descended from Jupiter and Venus (Pharr) and the old Trojans (Carter). Vergil always uses this form of the nominative, and both in Cicero and in Livy honor is very rare; but Horace, Ovid, and Silver Age prose writers avoid honōs as an archaism. Like arbōs (for arbor) and labōs (for labor), these forms in “-ōs” were the original ones (Austin). pectore: understand “in,” ablative of place where (AG 429) (Pharr). vultūs: “his looks” (Chase); “his features,” a frequent plural; the way Aeneas looked, the way he spoke, is stamped upon her mind (Austin).

5: verba: the four causes mentioned as arousing the love of the queen for Aeneas are his courage (virtūs), his noble birth (gentis honōs), his handsome appearance (vultūs), and his fine words (verba) (Pharr). nec placidam…quiētem: It is characteristic of Virgil that he does not elaborate the picture of Dido’s sleeplessness. Possibly cūra here has a wider sense than in line 1, implying her general “worry” at her situation (Austin).

6–7: postera Aurōra lustrābat…dīmōverat: “the morrow’s dawn was lighting the earth...and had dispersed” (F-B). Prose would invert the order of the two clauses or make the second subordinate (“when she had dispersed…”) to the first (Page). Vergil describes the ordered procession of the dawn. He does not use fixed formulae like Homer, but prefers to vary his method (Austin).

6: Phoebeā lampade: i.e., the Sun; “with the sun’s rays” (Pharr). Phoebeā = “of Phoebus Apollo” (the regular use of the possessive adjective). Apollo is naturally identified with the sun (G-K).

7: polō: a poetic word used as a convenient synonym for caelum. dīmōverat: suggests the flinging back and parting of a great curtain (Austin).

8: ūnanimam: “sympathizing,” i.e., of one heart and mind with her (Carter). male sāna: = nōn sāna = īnsāna, litotes (Pharr); “beside herself (with love)” (Austin); “distraught” (Page). Male with adjectives has the force of a negative (Warman). Here the combination emphasizes Dido’s deteriorating mental state; compare 2.23: statiō male fida carīnīs, “a mooring place badly trustworthy (i.e., dangerous) for ships.”

9: Anna soror: sister Anna as the confidante of the love-lorn Dido plays here the role usually performed by the old nurse (nūtrix) in tragedies (Carter). quae mē suspensam īnsomnia terrent!: “What visions frighten my anxious soul!” an exclamation rather than a question. She had enjoyed no “calm repose” (placidam quiētem, 5), but had been disturbed by dreams, which left her anxious and uncertain (suspensam), her passion urging her forward and their terror warning her back (Page). Here again a literal translation will produce awkward English, for we do not usually use adjectives and participles with pronouns in this way (Warman). īnsomnia: = somnia graviōra et terribilia, “startling dreams” (Frieze); “nightmares” (Carter).

10: Quis novus...hospes: supply est (Pharr). “What a fine man this stranger is who has taken shelter in my home!” (Austin). “What a marvelous stranger this is, who has come to our house!” (Pharr). As often happens in Latin, there are here two clauses compressed into one (G-K). Novus implies different from the everyday type, distinguished (Carter). Sēdibus is dative with the intransitive compound verb successit (AG 370).

11: Quem sēsē ōre ferēns: = Quālis est et quālī ōre sē fert! (Pharr). Sē ferre, like our words “bearing,” “carriage,” and “presence,” implies dignity of bearing; “Bearing himself what a man as to his countenance!” therefore means “What a majesty there is in his face!” (Stephenson). “With what a noble countenance he presents himself” (Warman). “How noble in appearance (he is)!” (Pharr). “Bearing himself with what an aspect!” (Page). quam fortī pectore et armīs: “How brave his heart and feats of arms!” (F-B). Ablatives of quality / characteristic (AG 415) in respect to the hospes (Pharr). It is best to take the words as referring to moral qualities, since timor (line 13) is obviously opposed to them (G-K). armīs: supply fortibus, i.e., his bold feats of arms (Carter). A well-known ambiguity: is it from arma, -ōrum “weapons,” or from armus, -ī, “shoulders?” Frieze feels that Vergil was not likely to use armus, regularly in reference to animals, in an ambiguous case of a man’s shoulders without some explanatory word to show his meaning. Austin prefers to take it from armus: “How strong his breast and shoulders!” Aeneas was previously described as ōs umerōsque deō similis, “similar to a god in [respect to] his countenance and shoulders” (1.589), and quam fortī pectore et armīs is a variation of quem sēsē ōre ferēns, both referring to physical characteristics (Austin). Even supposing that forte pectus could means “a fine chest,” fortēs armī is hopeless. Dido cannot speak of Aeneas as though she were appraising a horse with “strong hindquarters” (Page).

12: equidem: “I’m sure” (G-K). nec vāna fidēs: supply est (Stephenson) and mea (Pharr), “nor is my confidence unfounded” (Chase); “nor is my trust idle”; literally “empty”, i.e., founded on nothing (Page). Her assumption is not without evidence or support; the proof of his superhuman origin lies in his character (Carter). esse genus deōrum: supply illum as the implied accusative subject of an indirect discourse governed by crēdō (AG 581). Genus is accusative with esse (Frieze). Either “he is the child of gods” or “his lineage is divine” (Austin). Genus = “offspring,” the word being used here of one person (F-B).

13: dēgenerēs animōs: “ignoble souls” (Chase); “low-born souls” (Carter); “souls of base descent.” The heroism of Aeneas confirms his claim to a divine origin (Frieze). Dēgenerēs generally means “degenerate,” but here it clearly means “unheroic.” (Stephenson). timor arguit: arguit, “discloses,” “betrays” (Carter). Valor is a test of noble birth (Harper-Miller).

13–14: quibus fātīs: “by what (outrageous) fate”; this exclamation is prompted by compassion, as the first exclamation (quem sēsē ōre ferēns, quam fortī pectore et armīs, line 11) was prompted by admiration (G-K).

14: iactātus: supply est (Warman). Compare 1.3: multum ille et terrīs iactātus et altō, “much battered on land as well as on the sea” (Page). A characteristic Virgilian word, especially in a context such as this. Dido loves him for the dangers he has endured and survived (Austin). Quae bella exhausta canēbat!: “of what wars long-endured did he tell!” Exhaurīre is often used metaphorically of “going through” anything painful or grievous, and so exhaurīre bella is “to go through” or “to drink to the dregs the miseries of war.” Canere is often used of stately utterance (Page), to tell in dignified style, to recount in Epic fashion (Carter).

15: animō: supply in, ablative of place where (AG 429) (Pharr). sī…sedēret: present contrary to fact condition (AG 514). sedet = “it is settled” (Page). fixum immōtumque: neuter singular in agreement with the following substantive clause, which is the logical subject of sedēret: “(the fact) that I do not wish to join myself to any man… remains fixed and unmoved.” (Frieze). “if in my mind it were not planted, fixed and immovable, the purpose to ally myself with no one in the bond of wedlock” (F-B). The whole line shows how firm her resolve has been, and so her imminent desertion of it is all the more tragic in its result (Austin).

16: nē vellem: “not to be willing” or “that I am not willing”; vellem is subjunctive in a substantive clause (AG 561) (Pharr). Expresses the purpose implied in animō sedēret (Stephenson). cui: “any one” (Pharr). An indefinite pronoun (= alicui), used in this shortened form chiefly after nē, sī, nisi, and num (Warman). vinclō iugālī: “in bonds of wedlock” (Pharr); “with the yoke of matrimony” (Carter). Vinclō is a syncopated version of vinculō. Ablative of manner (AG 412) (G-K).

17: postquam: “since” (F-B). prīmus amor: “he whom I first loved”, i.e., Sychaeus (Austin). dēceptam morte fefellit: supply mē. A participle (dēceptam) and a verb (fefellit) can often be translated by two verbs coupled by “and” = mē dēcēpit et fefellit, “he deceived and cheated me…” (Warman). “Since my first passion disappointed me, cheated (of my hopes) by death” (Chase). “Since my first love betrayed me, mocked by death.” The death of her husband had rendered all her hopes of happiness illusory. For Sychaeus and his death see 1.343 ff. (Page).

18: sī pertaesum fuisset: “If I had not been utterly weary of…”; impersonal verb; supply mē (accusative of the person affected); with genitive of the cause of the feeling (thalamī taedaeque) (AG 354b). Fuisset is pluperfect subjunctive in the protasis of a past contrary to fact condition (AG 517). thalamī taedaeque: “the bridal chamber and the marriage torch,” by metonymy for “marriage.” Torches were borne before the bridal pair in the marriage procession, and Hymenaeus, the god of marriage, is represented with a torch (G-K). What does Dido mean by this statement? She had been happy with Sychaeus, yet here she says that she is “quite sick” of marriage. Pease suggests that she was tired of the approaches of suitors; perhaps she feels that any marriage may bring disappointment like that of her first; perhaps the words are simply part of her own self-deception, an attempted defense against desire (Austin).

19: huic ūnī: with culpae, dative with the intransitive compound verb succumbere (AG 370) (Pharr). potuī succumbere: “I might have yielded…” (Frieze). The perfect indicative potuī in the apodosis (instead of the more usual pluperfect subjunctive) expresses the conclusion in a more positive way, as though it were practically realized (Pharr). The indicative seems to imply that the thing was very near happening or was a distinct possibility. But picturesqueness and metrical convenience also have something to say probably to the use in poetry (Stephenson). culpae: “weakness”; the word is a favorite euphemism in connection with love (Page). I.e., loving and marrying another man after the death of her husband Sychaeus was, to her mind, a “fault,” for she had resolved to remain true to him forever (Frieze). The tragic “flaw” in Dido’s character was her passion for Aeneas, which she knows is wrong (Austin).

20: Anna: vocative; the repetition of the name is subtle; Dido’s tone becomes more urgent as she reaches her confession that she does in fact love Aeneas (Austin). fatēbor enim: “yes, I will admit it”; enim is used as Plautus and Terence use it in lively conversational language, to affirm and emphasize a fact (Austin). post fāta: “since the death” (F-B); poetic use of plural for singular (Warman).

21: coniugis: the emphatic position—at the beginning of its line but also joined with miserī Sychaeī in the preceding line—and indeed the insertion of the word at all (for it is not necessary), again shows how Dido is struggling against herself: Sychaeus is her lawful husband still (Austin). penātēs: used figuratively for “hearth” or “home.” The actual place of the murder is described (1.349) as ante aras (making the act, therefore, sacrilegious as well as cruel), and Dido’s own pyre was later erected near area (4.509). In each case the horror of the event is associated with the privacy of the interior of the house (Pease). frāternā caede: frāternā is equivalent to a subjective genitive: “the murder of Sychaeus by my brother” (Pharr). Dido may mean “that committed by my brother,” but the effect is much more striking of Sychaeus is regarded as the frater of Pygmalion (Pease). Frāternus is used loosely of the relationship between the two men; marriage into a Roman family made the man or woman part of that family, and so Sychaeus (Pygmalion’s brother-in-law) could be described as Pygmalion’s frater (Austin).

22: hic: refers to Aeneas; the vowel quantity here is short (Frieze). īnflexit sēnsūs: “has swayed my senses” (Rhoades).

22–23: animum labantem impulit: = meum animum sīc impulit ut labāret (Pharr); “has shocked my heart to a fall” (Austin); “has overthrown my tottering heart” (Page); “has moved my heart to waver (G-K). Labantem is an instance of prolepsis, as it anticipates the ultimate collapse of her resolve and expresses the result of impulit: “so that it wavered” (Warman). Impulit with labantem certainly describes giving a decisive push to something already shaken (Page).

23: veteris...flammae: “the imprint of that hot passion of old days” (Austin). She recognizes the return of the same feeling she had had of old toward Sychaeus (Carter).

24–26: optem prius…dēhiscat…ante…quam violō: “I would pray that sooner should the earth yawn for me to the abyss…before I violate.” Optem is the subjunctive used to express a wish modestly (like nōlim, velim); dēhiscat the subjunctive of oblique petition is dependent on it. The indicative violō is remarkable, as after antequam; where it is used not to record a simple fact (e.g. dīxit antequam mortuus est), but to suggest a wish or intention, the subjunctive is regular (AG 550, 551) (Page). tellūs īma: “the bowels of the earth” (Carter); “the lowest (depths of) the earth” (Pharr). Though īma modifies tellūs, it goes logically with the predicate and qualifies dēhiscat like an adverb: “deeply, to its deepest depths” (Warman). prius: with quam (27), but repeated as ante in 27 because of the intervening clauses (Pharr).

24–25: dēhiscat, redigat: supply ut; optative subjunctive in parataxis with optem (AG 446, 447) (F-B): “that the earth would open up…..and that the all-powerful father would cast me…” The omission of ut often occurs after volō, and more regularly after velim and vellem: Velim hoc faciās, “I should like you to do this” (Stephenson).

25: pater omnipotēns: = Iuppiter (Pharr). ad umbrās: = ad mortem, defined by the next verse (Pharr).

26: pallentēs umbrās: This repetition of umbrās (anaphora) gives rhetorical emphasis and also provides a convenient method of connecting clauses (Page). Umbrās gains added awe from the epithet; pallēns and pallidus are commonly used of phantoms, but the phrase is really a kind of oxymoron—the ghosts are not dark shadows, but glimmer pale in the darkness (Austin). Erebō: Erebus, originally the darkness of the underworld, is often applied to the nether world itself, and then personified, by Hesiod (Theogony 123) and others, as a child of Chaos (Pease).

27: pudor: a difficult word, full of shades of meaning; here it is something like “sensitiveness to what is right,” an instinct that tells her that there is something wrong in loving Aeneas, virtually “conscience” (as a restraining force, like religiō). Note the use of apostrophe (the addressing of an absent person or a personified thing), a rhetorical figure which Virgil often employs (Austin). The respect due her former husband (Chase). Roman sentiment of the severer type disapproved of second marriages, and the epithet ūnivira is common in monumental inscriptions. At a Roman wedding, the prōnubae (“matrons-of-honor”) who attended the bride were women who had had one husband only; and sepulchral inscriptions constantly refer to women as ūnivirae. (Austin). Livy (10.23.9) claims that in early times only a matron quae ūnī virō nupta fuisset could sacrifice at the altar of Patrician Chastity (Pudicitia Patricia) in the Forum Boarium in Rome (Page).

violō: present indicative, where we might have expected the subjunctive, with final force, since there is a sense of prevention present. Vergil has made the pledge more vivid by substituting the mood of fact for that of possibility (Austin). tua iūra resolvō: “undo” or “transgress your laws” (Carter); “unloose thy laws.” Resolvō, because the laws bind or restrain her conduct (Page).

28: meōs amōrēs: “affections” (F-B). All right and legitimate expressions of my love (Carter).

29: abstulit: “has borne away with him” (G-K), i.e., it died with him (Carter). A well-chosen verb: Sychaeus had not only “carried off” Dido’s affections, but he had taken them with him to the tomb. ille habeat..servetque: supply meōs amōrēs; jussive subjunctives (AG 439) (Pharr). “Let him keep them…” (Frieze). amōrēs: the plural is common, both of the affection felt and of the person for whom it is felt (Austin). sēcum servetque sepulcrō: note the alliteration of s, both here and in the preceding and following line. These words of Dido have a special pathos when we remember the scene in 6.472ff., where she meets Aeneas in the Underworld, turns from him in scorn, and is comforted by Sychaeus: coniunx ubi pristīnus illī / respondet cūrīs aequatque Sychaeus amōrem, “where her former husband Sychaeus responds to her with concern and equally returns her love” (Austin). sepulcrō: supply in, ablative of place where (AG 429), very common in Vergil, though in prose there would have to be a preposition with it (Warman).

30: sīc...obortīs: “thus she spoke her heart; and the tears flooded up and filled her bosom”; obortīs suggests that her tears choked her speech. This vivid, unexpected line throws a clear light on Dido’s character; Vergil might have left us simply with Dido’s fine firm words, her weakness seemingly overcome; but her tears show that she is unstable and irresolute, for all her bravery -- a foreshadowing of what is to follow (Austin). Dido throws herself into Anna’s arms and fills her bosom with tears. Notwithstanding her strong resolve to be true to her former husband, her tears show that her present passion is stronger than her will (Harper-Miller). sic effata: languages lacking marks of punctuation to indicate the beginnings and ends of quotations have to lay stress upon vocatives and other introductory and concluding phrases (Pease).