Aeneid 4.642-705

But Dido trembling and wild with her huge undertakings, rolling bloodshot eyes and flecked in respect to her trembling cheeks with blotches and pale with coming death, she breaks over the interior thresholds of the home and, raging, climbs the high pyres and uncovers the Dardanian sword, a gift not sought for these use (lit pl.). Here, after she saw the Trojan clothes and known bed, having delayed a little in tears and thought, she both lay back on the couch and said (these) last words, "Sweet spoils, while the fates and god allowed, receive this spirit and free me from these cares. I have lived and I have completed what course Fortune had given, and now the great image of myself will go under the lands. I have set up a splendid city; I have seen my walls; having avenged my husband, I have received punishments from my hostile brother--lucky, alas too lucky if only Dardanian keels had never touched our shores." She spoke, and having pressed her mouth to the bed, she said, "We die unavenged, but let us die. Thus, thus it is pleasing to go under the shades. Let the cruel Dardanian drink in this fire from the deep with his eyes and let him take with him the omens of our death."

(663) She had spoken, and her companions see that one having fallen on the iron in the middle of such (words) and the sword foaming with gore and her spattered hands. The clamor goes to the high atria: Fame revels through the shaken city. Houses roar with laments and groaning and feminine wailing, the aether resounds with great shrieks, not other than if all Carthage or ancient Tyre rushes with admitted enemies, and raging flames roll both through the rooftops of men and through (the rooftops) of gods. She heard, lifeless and terrified with a fearful run, befouling her face with her nails and her chest with blows, her sister rushes through the midst of them and shouts to the dying one by name, "This was it, sister? You sought me with fraud? That pyre, the fires and altars prepared this, this for me? What first, deserted, will I lament? Dying, did you scorn a sister as companion? You should have called me to the same fates; the same grief and the same hour should have born us both by the iron. I laid (it) out with these hands and called paternal gods with my voice, so that I would be absent with you laid upon (it), cruel one? You have killed yourself and me, sister, and your people and Sidonian fathers and your city. Grant that I bathe your wounds with the waters and that I catch with my mouth if any last breath wanders above." Thus having spoken, she had climbed the high steps and, having embraced her half-dead sister, she kept (her) warm in her lap with a groan and tried to dry the dark gore with her clothing. That one, having tried to lift her heavy eyes, again grew faint; the driven wound hissed under her chest. Three times lifting herself and having leaned upon the bed she rose, three times she fell back upon the bed and with wandering eyes she sought light in the high sky and groaned, (the light) having been found.

(693) Then all-powerful Juno, having pitied the long grief and difficult death (lit. pl.), sent Iris down from Olympus, who was to free the struggling spirit and tied limbs. For since she was dying neither by fate nor by merited death, but wretched before her day and burned by sudden fury, Proserpina had not yet taken the yellow hair from her head and damned her head to Stygian Orcus. Therefore dewy Iris flies downs through the sky on saffron wings, dragging a thousand varied colors against the sun and alights above her head. "I bear this sacrifice to Dis, as ordered, and I release you from this body." Thus she spoke and cut her hair with her right hand, and all at once the heat slipped away and her life receded into the winds.