Book I: The Storm and Carthage
I, defeated, give up what I began? Am I unable to keep the king of the Trojans away from Italy?
Explanation and analysis
Aeneas's fleet leaves Sicily for Italy, and Juno sees it from above. She is queen of the gods and bears an old grudge against Troy: the judgment in which Paris preferred Venus to her, and the abduction of Ganymede. Alone, she speaks to herself, and the first thing she says is a question from someone who refuses to accept what she already knows.
The passage shows a goddess who quarrels knowing she will lose. Soon after these lines she admits that fate stands in her way, and recalls that Pallas Athena could sink a Greek fleet because of a single man. What moves her is the honor of an offended queen and the fear that no one will worship her anymore if she yields. That is why she speaks of "giving up what I began": what is at stake for her is her own position among the gods, more than the fortune of the Trojans. With this speech the poem opens the pursuit that will give the hero seven years at sea, and shows that the wrath springs from a motive that the narrator himself, in the proem, has already called into doubt.
One may read Juno's wrath here as the force that fate needs in order to fulfill itself: without her opposition, Aeneas's voyage would have no obstacle, and the promise of Rome would cost nothing. One may also read the opposite, as the portrait of a useless resistance, in which whoever has power spends it against a decision made above him. The poem leaves both readings standing.
O three and four times blessed are those who were fated to die before their fathers' eyes, beneath the lofty walls of Troy!
Explanation and analysis
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to these I set no limit of space or time: I have given them an empire without end.
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not ignoring evil, I learn to help the unfortunate.
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Book II: The Fall of Troy
or some other deceit lurks: do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Danaans, even when they bring gifts.
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Troy entrusts to you its sacred objects and its Penates. Take them as companions of the Fates: seek for them the walls that you will at last found once you have crossed the sea.
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it is not the face of the Laconian Tyndarid that you hate, nor is Paris to blame; it is the pitilessness of the gods, the gods, that brings down these riches and casts Troy from its height.
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why do you take such pleasure in giving yourself over to this mad grief, sweet husband? This does not happen without the will of the gods; it is not right for you to take Creusa as your companion, nor does the lord of high Olympus permit it. Long exiles await you, and a vast sea to plough.
Explanation and analysis
Book III: The Wandering
you must change your seat: these shores were not what the Delian god advised you, nor did Apollo order you to settle in Crete.
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but you shall not gird with walls the city given to you until dreadful hunger and the outrage of our slaughter force you to devour your tables.
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live happily, you whose fortune is already fulfilled: we are called from fate to fate.
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it is war, O hospitable land, that you bring: for war the horses arm themselves, and war these herds threaten. But these same quadrupeds are used to draw the chariot and to bear, in harmony, the bit under the yoke: there is hope of peace
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Book IV: Dido
but now the Apollo of Grynium and the oracles of Lycia have ordered me to take Italy, great Italy: there is my love, that is my homeland.
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neither is a goddess your mother, nor is Dardanus the founder of your line, treacherous man; the bristling Caucasus bred you among hard rocks, and Hyrcanian tigers gave you the breast.
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and you, Tyrians, torment his line and all the future race with hatred, and send this as an offering to my ashes: let there be no love or treaties between the peoples. Let some avenger rise from my bones, who will pursue with torch and iron the Dardanian settlers, now, later, at any time when strength is available: I pray in a curse for shores against shores, waves against waves, weapons against weapons: let the grandchildren fight too.
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I founded a glorious city; I saw my walls rise; I avenged my husband and exacted the penalty from my enemy brother; happy, alas, too happy, if the Dardanian ships had never touched our shore!
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Book V: The Games
he will reach safely the harbor of Avernus that you desire. There will be only one that, lost in the current, he will search for; a single life will be given for many.
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will no one ever again say there are walls of Troy? Shall I never again see the rivers of Hector, the Xanthus and the Simois? Come, burn with me the ill-fated ships. For in a dream it seemed to me that the image of the prophetess Cassandra gave me burning torches: here seek Troy, here is your home.
Explanation and analysis
What new madness is this? Where are you going now, where, he said, O wretched women? You are not burning an enemy or the hostile camp of the Argives: you are burning your own hopes. Here I am, your Ascanius.
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But first enter the infernal abodes of Dis and, through the depths of Avernus, come, son, to meet me. The impious Tartarus does not hold me, nor do the sad shades; I dwell in the pleasant assemblies of the pious and in Elysium. There, with the blood of many black cattle, the chaste Sibyl will take you.
Explanation and analysis
Book VI: The Descent to the Underworld
the descent to Avernus is easy; night and day the door of dark Dis stands open; but to turn back and escape to the upper air, that is the labor, this is the task
Explanation and analysis
so look for it with your eyes raised high and, once found as it should be, pluck it with your hand: it will come of its own accord and without cost if the Fates call you; otherwise, no force will overcome it, nor will you tear it away with hard iron
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alas, I was the cause of your death! I swear by the stars, by the gods above, and by whatever faith lies beneath the deep earth: against my will, queen, I left your shore
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you, Roman, remember to rule the peoples with your power; these will be your arts: to impose the custom of peace, to spare those who submit, and to crush the proud
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Book VII: The Arrival in Latium
I, however, the great wife of Jupiter, wretched that I am, who left nothing untried and threw myself into everything, am defeated by Aeneas! If my power is not enough, I will not hesitate to beg whatever there is anywhere: if I cannot bend the gods above, I will move Acheron.
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hail, land owed to me by the Fates; and you, he said, O faithful Penates of Troy, hail! Here is home, this is the homeland.
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we are broken, alas, by the Fates, he said, and carried off by the storm. You yourselves will pay these penalties with sacrilegious blood, O unhappy ones! For you, Turnus, crime, and for you a dreadful punishment awaits; and with belated vows you will worship the gods. For me, rest is assured, the whole harbor at my door; I am deprived of a happy death.
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Book VIII: The Shield
here you have a sure home and sure Penates, do not give up; do not be frightened by the threats of war: all the swelling of the gods' anger has subsided.
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this threshold the victor, grandson of Alcaeus, crossed; this palace received him. Dare, guest, to scorn riches, make yourself worthy of the god too, and come without roughness into the humble house.
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I would not now be torn from your sweet embrace, son; and Mezentius, insulting this so-near head, would not have made so many deaths by the sword nor left the city widowed of so many citizens.
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such things, on the shield of Vulcan, a gift of his mother, he admires and, not knowing their meaning, rejoices in the image, raising onto his shoulder the fame and destinies of his descendants.
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Book IX: The Siege
Do the gods put this ardor into our minds, Euryalus, or does each man make a god of his violent desire? For some time my mind has urged me toward a battle or some great deed, and it is not content with peaceful quiet. [...] Everyone asks that Aeneas be called, the people and the elders, and that men be sent with sure news; if they promise you what I ask (for the fame of the deed is enough for me), it seems to me that, by that hill, I can find a way to the walls and the city of Pallas.
Explanation and analysis
I ask only one thing: I have a mother, of the old lineage of Priam, whom neither the land of Ilium nor the walls of King Acestes kept back, poor as she was, when she left with me. I leave her now without knowing any danger that might come, and without farewell; the night and your right hand are witnesses that I could not bear my mother's tears. But you, I beg, console the forsaken woman and help the abandoned one; let me take with me that hope in you, and I will go more boldly into every danger.
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Me, me, here I am, I did it; turn your steel against me, O Rutulians; the whole plot is mine; this one dared nothing, nor could he have; I call to witness this sky and the stars that know; he only loved his unhappy friend too much.
Explanation and analysis
Book X: The Battle
you could snatch Aeneas from the hands of the Greeks and set before him, in the man's place, a cloud and empty winds; you could turn the fleet into so many nymphs; and we, for having helped the Rutulians in any way, it is a crime!
Explanation and analysis
each has his day, brief and without return is the span of life for all; but to extend fame through deeds, that is the work of virtue. Beneath the high walls of Troy so many sons of gods have fallen! With them died Sarpedon, my son; and his fates call Turnus too, and he has reached the end of the time given to him.
Explanation and analysis
what will the pious Aeneas now give, poor boy, in exchange for such praise, worthy of so noble a nature? Keep the arms you were proud of; and I give you back to the shades and ashes of your fathers, if that matters to them. But you will have, unfortunate one, this consolation in your sad death: you fall by the hand of great Aeneas.
Explanation and analysis
O human spirit, ignorant of fate and of the luck to come, and incapable of keeping measure when prosperity exalts it! The time will come when Turnus will wish he had paid dearly to see Pallas unharmed, and will hate these spoils and that day.
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Book XI: Camilla
is this our return, are these the triumphs we hoped for? This is my great faith!
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if I still linger in a hateful life, now that Pallas is dead, the cause is your hand: you see that it owes Turnus to the son and to the father; only this place remains for your merits and your fortune.
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Turnus, if a strong one has any right to trust in himself, I dare and promise to face alone the cavalry of the Aeneadae and to go against the Tyrrhenian horsemen. Let me try the dangers of war first: you, on foot, stay by the walls and guard the city.
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This far I could go, sister Acca; now the bitter wound finishes me and everything around me grows dark. Flee and carry this last order to Turnus: that he take up the fight and drive the Trojans away from the city.
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Book XII: Turnus
Overcome by the love I bear you, overcome by kinship and by the tears of my distressed wife, I broke every bond, took away the daughter promised to my son-in-law, and took up impious arms.
Explanation and analysis
I deserved it, and I do not ask you to spare me; use your fortune. If any concern for an unhappy father can touch you (you too had a father like that, Anchises), have pity on Daunus's old age; and if you prefer to keep my body, robbed of light, give it back to my people. You have won, and the Ausonians have seen the vanquished stretch out his palms: Lavinia is your wife; do not carry the hatred any further.
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You, clad in the spoils of my people, would escape me here? Pallas, Pallas sacrifices you with this blow and exacts the penalty for your guilty blood.
Explanation and analysis
let the ancient name remain for the native Latins, do not command them to become Trojans and be called Teucrians, nor let the men change their speech or change their dress. Let there be Latium, let there be Alban kings for centuries, let the Roman line be powerful through Italian valor: Troy has fallen, and allow it to have fallen with its name.