Thus, at the summons of fate, casting himself down amid the watery grasses by the shallows of Maeander, sings the white swan.
Not because I hope you may be moved by prayer of mine do I address you—for with God’s will adverse I have begun the words you read; but because, after wretched losing of desert, of reputation, and of purity of body and soul, the losing of words is a matter slight indeed.
Are you resolved none the less to go, and to abandon wretched Dido, and shall the same winds bear away from me at once your sails and your promises? Are you resolved, Aeneas, to break at the same time from your moorings and from your pledge, and to follow after the fleeting realms of Italy, which lie you know not where? and does new-founded Carthage not touch you, nor her rising walls. nor the sceptre of supreme power placed in your hand? What is achieved, you turn your back upon; what is to be achieved, you ever pursue. One land has been sought and gained, and ever must another be sought, through the wide world. Yet, even should you find the land of your desire, who will give it over to you for your own? Who will deliver his fields to unknown hands to keep? A second love remains for you to win, and a second Dido; a second pledge to give, and a second time to prove false. When will it be your fortune, think you, to found a city like to Carthage, and from the citadel on high to look down upon peoples of your own? Should your every wish be granted, even should you meet with no delay in the answering of your prayers, whence will come the wife to love you “as I?
I am all ablaze with love, like torches of wax tipped with sulphur, like pious incense placed on smoking altar-fires. Aeneas my eyes cling to through all my waking hours; Aeneas is in my heart through the night and through the day. “hs true he is an ingrate, and unresponsive to my kindnesses, and were I not fond I should be willing to have him go; yet, however ill his thought of me, I hate him not, but only complain of his faithlessness, and when I have complained I do but love more madly still. Spare, O Venus, the bride of thy son; lay hold of thy hard-hearted brother, O brother Love, and make him to serve in thy camp! Or make him to whom I have let my love go forth—I first, and with never shame for it—yield me himself, the object of my care!
Ah, vain delusion! the fancy that flits before my mind is not the truth; far different his heart from his mother’s. Of rocks and mountains were you begotten, and of the oak sprung from the lofty cliff, of savage wild beasts, or of the sea—such a sea as even now you look upon, tossed by the winds, on which you are’ none the less making ready to sail, despite the threatening floods. Whither are you flying? The tempest rises to stay you. Let the tempest be my grace! I k you, how Eurus tosses the rolling waters ] What I had preferred to owe to you, let me owe to the stormy blasts; wind and wave are juster than your heart.
I am not worth enough—ah. why do I not wrongly rate you?—to have you perish flying from me over the long seas. ’Tis a costly and a dear-bought hate that you indulge if, to be quit of me, you account it cheap to die. Soon the winds will fall, and o’er the smooth-spread waves will Triton course with cerulean steeds. O that you too were changeable with the winds!—and, unless in hardness you exceed the oak, you will be so. What could you worse, if you did not know of the power of raging seas? How ill to trust the wave whose might you have so often felt! Even should you loose your cables at the persuasion of calm seas, there are none the less many woes to be met on the vasty deep. Nor is it well for those who have broken faith to tempt the billows. Yon is the place that exacts the penalty for faithlessness, above all when ’tis love has been wronged; for ’twas from the sea, in Cytherean waters, so runs the tale, that the mother of the Loves, undraped, arose.
Undone myself, I fear lest I be the undoing of him who is my undoing, lest I bring harm to him who brings harm to me, lest my enemy be wrecked at sea and drink the waters of the deep. O live; I pray it! Thus shall I see you worse undone than by death. You shall rather be reputed the cause of my own doom. Imagine, pray, imagine that you are caught—may there be nothing in the omen!—in the sweeping of the storm; what will be your thoughts? Straight will come rushing to your mind the perjury of your false tongue, and Dido driven to death by Phrygian faithlessness: before your eyes will appear the features of your deceived wife, heavy with sorrow, with hair streaming, and stained with blood. What now can you gain to recompense you then, when you will have to say: “’Tis my desert; forgive nie. ye gods!” when you will have to think that whatever thunderbolts fall were hurled at you?
Grant a short space for the cruelty of the sea, and for your own, to subside; your safe voyage will be great reward for waiting. Nor is it you for whom I am anxious; only let the little Iulus be spared! For you. enough to have the credit for my death. What has little Ascanius done, or what your Penates, to deserve ill fate? Have they been rescued from fire but to be overwhelmed by the wave? Yet neither are you bearing them with you; the sacred relics which are your pretext never rested on your shoulders, nor did your father. You are false in everything—and I am not the first your tongue has deceived, nor am I the first to feel the blow from you. Do you ask where the mother of pretty Iulus is?—she perished, left behind by her unfeeling lord! This was the story you told me- yes. and it was warning enough for me! Burn me; I deserve it! The punishment will be less than befits my fault.
And my mind doubts not that you, too. are under condemnation of your gods. Over sea: and over land you are now for the seventh winter being tossed. You were cast ashore by the waves and I received you to a safe abiding-place; scarce knowing your name, I gave to you my throne. Yet would I had been content with these kindnesses, and that the story of our union were buried! That dreadful day was my ruin, when sudden downpour of rain from the deep-blue heaven drove us to shelter in the lofty grot. I had heard a voice; I thought it a cry of the nymphs—’twas the Eumenides sounding the signal for my doom!
Exact the penalty of me, O purity undone!—the penalty due Sychaeus. To absolve it now I go—ah me, wretched that I am, and overcome with shame! Standing in shrine of marble is an image of Sychaeus I hold sacred—in the midst of green fronds hung about, and fillets of white wool. From within it four times have I heard myself called by a voice well known; ’twas he himself crying in faintly sounding tone: “Elissa, come!”
I delay no longer, I come; I come thy bride, thine own by right; I am late, but ’tis for shame of my fault confessed. Forgive me my offence! He was worthy who caused my fall; he draws from my sin its hatefulness. That his mother was divine and his aged father the burden of a loyal son gave hope he would remain my faithful husband. If ’twas my fate to err, my error had honourable cause; so only he keep faith, I shall have no reason for regret.
The lot that was mine in days past still follows me in these last moments of life, and will pursue to the end. My husband fell in his blood before the altars in his very house, and my brother possesses the fruits of the monstrous crime: myself am driven into exile, compelled to leave behind the ashes of my lord and the land of my birth. Over hard paths I fly, and my enemy pursues. I land on shores unknown; escaped from my brother and the sea. I purchase the strand that I gave, perfidious man, to you. I establish a city, and lay about it the foundations of wide-reaching walls that stir the jealousy of neighbouring realms. Wars threaten; by wars, a stranger and a woman, I am assailed; hardly can I rear rude gates to the city and make ready my defence. A thousand suitors cast fond eyes on me, and have joined in the complaint that I preferred the hand of some stranger love. Why do you not bind me forthwith, and give me over to Gaetulian Iarbas? I should submit my arms to your shameful act. There is my brother, too. whose impious hand could be sprinkled with my blood, as it is already sprinkled with my lord’s. Lay down those gods and sacred things; your touch profanes them! It is not well for an impious right hand to worship the dwellers in the sky. If ’twas fated for you to worship the gods that escaped the fires, the gods regret that they escaped the fires.
Perhaps, too, it is Dido soon to be mother, O evil-doer, whom you abandon now. and a part of your being lies hidden in myself. To the tale of the mother will be added that of the wretched babe, and you will be the cause of doom to your yet unborn child; with his own mother will Iulus’ brother die, and one fate will bear us both aw i together.
“But you are bid to go—by your god I ‘ Ah, would he had forbidden you to come: would Punic soil had never been pressed by Teucrian feet! Is this, forsooth, the god under whose guidance you are tossed about by unfriendly winds, and pass long years on the surging seas? ’Twould scarce require such toil to return again to Pergamum, were Pergamum still what it was while Hector lived. ’Tis not the Simois of your fathers you seek, but the waves of Tiber—and yet, forsooth, should you arrive at the place you wish, you will be but a stranger; and the land of your quest so hides from your sight, so draws away from contact with your keels, that ’twill scarce be your lot to reach it in old age.
Cease, then, your wanderings! Choose rather me, and with me my dowry—-these peoples of mine, and the wealth of Pygmalion I brought with me. Transfer your Ilion to the Tyrian town, and give it thus a happier lot; enjoy the kingly state, and the sceptre’s right divine. If your soul is eager for war, if Iulus must have field for martial prowess and the triumph, we shall find him foes to conquer, and naught shall lack; here there is place for the laws of peace, here place, too, for arms. Do you only, by your mother I pray, and by the weapons of your brother, his arrows, and by the divine companions of your flight, the gods “I Dardanus—so may those rise above fate whom you are saving from out your race, so may that cruel war be the last of misfortunes to you, and so m i Ascanius fill happily out his years, and the bones of old Anchises rest in peace! -do you only spare thihouse which gives itself without condition into your hand. What can you charge me with but love? I am not of Phthia, nor sprung of great Mycenae, nor have I had a husband and a father who have stood against you. If you shame to have me your wife, let me not be called bride, but hostess; so she be yours, Dido will endure to be what you will.
Well do I know the seas that break upon African shores; they” have their times of granting and denying the way. When the breeze permits, you shall give your canvas to the gale; now the light seaweed detains your ship by the strand. Entrust me with the watching of the skies; you” shall go later, and I myself, though you desire it, will not let you to stay. Your comrades, too, demand repose, and your shattered fleet, but half refitted, calls for a short delay; by your past kindnesses, and by that other debt I still, perhaps, shall owe you, by my hope of Wedlock, I ask for a little time—while the sea and my love grow calm, while through time and wont I learn the strength to endure my sorrows bravely.
If you yield not, my purpose is fixed to pour forth my life; you can not be cruel to me for long. Could you but see now the face of her who writes these words! I write, and the Trojan’s blade is ready in my lap. Over my cheeks the tears roll, and fall upon the drawn steel—which soon shall be stained with blood instead of tears. How fitting is your gift in my hour of fate! You furnish forth my death at a cost but slight. Nor does my heart now for the first time feel a weapon’s thrust; it already bears the wound of cruel love.
Anna my sister, my sister Anna, wretched sharer in the knowledge of my fault, soon shall you give to my ashes the last boon. Nor when I have been consumed upon the pyre, shall my inscription read: ELISSA, WIFE OF SYCHAEUS; yet there shall be on the marble of my tomb these lines:
FROM AENEAS CAME THE CAUSE OF HER DEATH, AND FROM HIM THE BLADE; FROM THE HAND OF DIDO HERSELF CAME THE STROKE BY WHICH SHE FELL.
Cite This Text