Aeneid lines 1.446-93 (class translation)

[1.437 “Oh fortunate ones whose walls already rise!”]


Here Sidonian Dido was building a huge temple to Juno, rich with gifts and the majesty of the goddess, on the steps of which were rising the bronze thresholds and the beams fastened with bronze; the socket creaked with the bronze doors. First in this grove did a strange sight which presented itself soften his fear, here Aeneas first dared to hope for safety and to trust for better in shattered circumstances. And truly while he looks at each thing under the huge temple, waiting for the queen, while he wonders at what luck the city has and the artifice of the hands among them and the effort of the deeds, he sees Trojan battles in order and the wars known already by their reputation through the whole world, the sons of Atreus and Priam, and Achilles hostile to both. He stopped and crying he said “Achates, what place now, what region among the lands is not full of our sorrow? Look Priam! Here also praise has its own rewards, there are tears for (human) affairs, and human (woes) touch the mind. Release your fears; this fame will carry some safety to you.”

Thus he speaks and groaning much he feeds his mind on the lifeless picture, and he wets his face with a large river (of tears). For he was seeing how here the Greeks warring around Pergama were fleeing, the Trojan youth pressing on, but there the Trojans (were fleeing), crested Achilles pressing on with his chariot. Not far from here, crying he recognized the tents of the Rhesus with their white canvases, to which, betrayed in first sleep, cruel Diomedes laid waste with much slaughter, and he averted the fiery horses into his camp before they had tasted the fodder of Troy and had drunk the Xanthus. In another part, Troilus fleeing with his arms lost, unlucky boy, and not equal to Achilles in battle is born by his horses and on his back clings to the empty chariot yet holding the reins; both his neck and his hair are drug through the earth and the dust is marked with his trailing spear. Meanwhile the Trojan women were going with their hair disheveled and were humbly carrying a robe to the temple of not impartial Pallas, sad and beating their breasts with their palms; the goddess, turned away, held her eyes fixed to the ground. Three times Achilles had dragged Hector around the Trojan walls and was selling the lifeless body for gold. Then indeed he gives a huge groan from the depth of his chest as he looked at the spoils, at the chariots, and at the body itself of his friend, and Priam, holding out unarmed hands. He recognized himself also mixed with the Greek chiefs and the eastern armies and the arms of black Memnon. Raging Penthesilea leads the bands of Amazons with their crescent shields and burns amidst the thousands, a woman warrior, binding her bare breast with golden girdle; a maiden, she dares to contend with the men.