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Notes Display Latin text | translated by Theodore C. Williams Book IV Chapter 19: Dido chooses for suicide | Next chapter Return to index Previous chapter |
Then wretched Dido, by her doom appalled, asks only death. It wearies her to see the sun in heaven. Yet that she might hold fast her dread resolve to quit the light of day, behold, when on an incense-breathing shrine her offering was laid -- O fearful tale! -- the pure libation blackened, and the wine flowed like polluting gore. She told the sight to none, not even to her sister's [Note 1] ear. A second sign was given: for in her house a marble altar to her husband's [Note 2] shade, with garlands bright and snowy fleeces dressed, had fervent worship; here strange cries were heard as if her dead spouse called while midnight reigned, and round her towers its inhuman song the lone owl sang, complaining o'er and o'er with lamentation and long shriek of woe. Forgotten oracles by wizards told whisper old omens dire. In dreams she feels cruel Aeneas goad her madness on, and ever seems she, friendless and alone, some lengthening path to travel, or to seek her Tyrians through wide wastes of barren lands. Thus frantic Pentheus flees the stern array of the Eumenides, and thinks to see two noonday lights blaze oer his doubled Thebes; or murdered Agamemnon's haunted son, Orestes, flees his mother's [Note 3] phantom scourge of flames and serpents foul, while at his door avenging horrors wait. Note 1: sister = Anna Events: Love and Death of Dido, Dionysus and Pentheus, The youth of Orestes |
450-473 Tum uero infelix fatis exterrita Dido mortem orat; taedet caeli conuexa tueri. quo magis inceptum peragat lucemque relinquat, uidit, turicremis cum dona imponeret aris, (horrendum dictu) latices nigrescere sacros fusaque in obscenum se uertere uina cruorem; hoc uisum nulli, non ipsi effata sorori. praeterea fuit in tectis de marmore templum coniugis antiqui, miro quod honore colebat, uelleribus niueis et festa fronde reuinctum: hinc exaudiri uoces et uerba uocantis uisa uiri, nox cum terras obscura teneret, solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo saepe queri et longas in fletum ducere uoces; multaque praeterea uatum praedicta priorum terribili monitu horrificant. agit ipse furentem in somnis ferus Aeneas, semperque relinqui sola sibi, semper longam incomitata uidetur ire uiam et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra, Eumenidum ueluti demens uidet agmina Pentheus et solem geminum et duplices se ostendere Thebas, aut Agamemnonius scaenis agitatus Orestes, armatam facibus matrem et serpentibus atris cum fugit ultricesque sedent in limine Dirae. |