Book 1: O, Diomede, bravest of the Greeks,
why could I not have fallen to your right hand
Book 1: I have given them an empire
that will know no end
Book 1: There will be born a Trojan Caesar…He will be called Julius,
a name passed down to him from the great Iulus
Book 1: I am Aeneas,
known for my devotion
Book 1: They were like bees at the beginning of summer,
bush in the sunshine all through the flowery meadows
Book 1: The hive seethes
with activity
Book 1: She fixed her eyes and her whole heart on him and sometimes she dandled him on her knee…
without knowing what a great god was sitting there marking her out to suffer
Book 1: Venus…was…devising new plans…to inflame the heart of the queen
driving her to madness by the gifts and winding the fire of passion round her bones
Book 1: Dido was like Diana, and like Diana she bore herself joyfully
among her people, urging on their work for the kingdom that was to be
Book 1: Have no fear men of Troy.
Put every anxious thought out of your hearts
Book 1: Through my own suffering,
I am learning to help those who suffer
Book 2: The sorrow you bid me bring to life again
is past all words
Book 2: Capys…did not
trust this offering
Book 2: He struggled to prise open their coils,
his priestly ribbons befouled by gore and black venom
Book 2: He was raising horrible cries to heaven like the bellowing of a wounded bull
shaking the ineffectual axe out of its neck as it flees from the altar
Book 2: [Laocoon] had violated the sacred timbers
by hurling his sinful spear into the horse’s back
Book 2: Toppling over from its foundations like an ancient ash tree…which farmers have hacked
with blow upon blow of their double axes
Book 2: This was the last day of a doomed people
and we spent it adorning the shrines of the gods all through the city with festal garlands
Book 2: He was dragging Priam to the very altar
his body trembling as it slithered through pools of his son’s blood
Book 2: His mighty trunk lay upon the shore…
the head hacked from the shoulders, a corpse without a name
Book 2: There prosperity is waiting for you,
and a kingdom and a royal bride
Book 2: Three times I tried to put my arms around her neck.
Three times her phantom melted in my arms
Book 2: Come then dear father, up on my back…
I shall take you on my shoulders
Book 2: The flame seemed to lick his soft hair…
and feed round his forehead without harming him
Book 3: To Italy you will go…but you will not be given a city,
and you will not be allowed to build walls around it before a deadly famine has come upon you
Book 3: This is our true home…
This is where Dardanus sprang from
Book 4: The queen had long since been suffering from
love’s deadly wound
Book 4: Being consumed by its
hidden fire
Book 4: Dido was on fire with love and wandered
…like a wounded doe
Book 4: The towers she was building ceased to rise…
all stood idle
Book 4: I shall join them
in lasting marriage
Book 4: Her quiver was of gold. Gold was the clasp that gathered up her hair
and her purple tunic was fastened with a golden brooch
Book 4: Fire flashed and
the heavens were witness to the marriage
Book 4: This day
was the beginning of her death
Book 4: Dido gave no thought to appearance or her good name and no longer kept her love as a secret…
but called it marriage, using the word to cover her guilt
Book 4: Of all the ills there are, Rumour is
the swiftest…a huge and horrible monster
Book 4: Forgetting about their kingdoms
and becoming the slaves of lust
Book 4: This second Paris,
with eunuchs in attendance
Book 4: ‘You owe him the land of Rome
and the kingdom of Italy’
Book 4: It is not by my own will
that I search for Italy
Book 4: I shall follow you not in the flesh but in the black fires of death…
my shade shall be with you wherever you may be
Book 4: She laid on a bed an effigy of Aeneas…
she also sought out potent herbs
Book 5: No one understood what had lit such a blaze,
but…the minds of the Trojans were filled with dark foreboding
Book 6: At long last you have done it the perils of the ocean,
but worse things remain for you to bear on land
Book 6: I see wars, deadly wars,
I see the Thybris foaming with torrents of blood
Book 6: A second Achilles is already born in Latium,
and he too is the son of a goddess
Book 6: It was against my will,
O queen, that I left your shore
Book 6: She rushed away, hating him, into the shadows of the wood where Sychaeus,
who had been her husband, answered her grief with grief and her love with love
Book 6: Here he is, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, the man
who will bring back the golden years to the fields of Latium
Book 6: Your task, Roman, and do not forget it,
will be to govern the peoples of the world in your empire
Book 7: For me this is the birth of a higher order of things…
This is a greater work I now set in motion
Book 7: The Queen Amata longed above all things
to see [Turnus] married to her daughter
Book 7: Your dowry, Lavinia,
will be the blood of Rutulians and Trojans
Book 7: Taking one of the snakes from her dark hair, the goddess Allecto threw it on Amata’s breast
to enter deep into her heart, a horror driving her to frenzy and bringing down her whole house in ruin
Book 7: The unhappy Amata, driven out of her mind…raged in a wild frenzy
through the length and breadth of the city like a spinning top
Book 7: She threw a burning torch at the warrior and it lodged deep in his heart…
the lust for battle raged within him, the criminal madness of war and, above all, anger
Book 7: This was the first cause of all the suffering.
It was this that kindled the zeal for war in the hearts of the country people
Book 7: Ascanius, burning with a passionate love of glory, bent his bow and aimed the arrow…
passed straight through the flank into the belly
Book 7: The shaft had stuck deep in [Almo’s] throat, blocking the moist passage of the voice
and closing off the narrow channel of his life in blood
Book 7: The old king, father of his people, would not let his hand upon them,
but recoiled from this wickedness and refused to perform the task, shutting himself up in the darkness away from the sight of men
Book 7: Turnus…the fairest of them all,
and taller by a head than all the others
Book 7: She was a maid inured to battle,
of a fleetness of foot to race the winds
Book 8: Oh my dear son, my only source of joy, given to me so late in life
I want no grim news to come and wound my ears
Book 8: Messapus and Ufens and the scorner of the gods Mezentius were levying men everywhere,
stripping the fields of those who tilled them
Book 8: Mezentius eventually took it under his despotic rule as king
and held it by the ruthless use of armed force
Book 8: He even devised a form of torture whereby living men were roped to dead bodies…
to die a lingering death oozing with putrefying flesh in this cruel embrace
Book 8: Rejoicing at the things pictured on it without knowing what they were
Aeneas lifted on to his shoulder the fame and fate of his descendants
Book 9: Turnus in a fury prowled round the walls…like a wolf in the dead of night,
lying in wait in all the wind and rain by a pen full of sheep
Book 9: In an instant every ship burst the ropes that moored it to the bank,
and they plunged like dolphins…to the bottom
Book 9: I too have a destiny, of a different sort – to cut down with the sword
this vicious people that has robbed me of my bride
Book 9: Nisus was like a lion driven mad with hunger…
[Euryalus – He] too was in a blazing frenzy
Book 9: He noticed that Euryalus was being
carried away by blood lust and greed
Book 9: He hurled his spear…Parting the shadows of night it flew towards Sulmo…
he rolled over, vomiting a stream of warm blood from his chest
Book 9: He was still speaking as the sword was driven through the ribs of Euryalus,
full force, shattering his white breast
Book 9: He rolled on the ground in death, the blood flowed over his beautiful body…
the head drooped on his shoulders, like a scarlet flower languishing and dying when its stem has been cut by the plough
Book 9: They even stuck the heads
of Euryalus and Nisus on spears
Book 9: Meanwhile rumour flew with the news on her swift wings…and came gliding into the ears of the mother of Euryalus.
In that instant the warmth left her very bones…crazed with grief
Book 9: We are men of a hardy stock…But you like your clothes dyed
with yellow saffron and the bright juice of the purple fish
Book 9: Ascanius could endure it no longer…the arrow had been drawn back,
and it flew with a fearful hiss straight through the head of Remulus
Book 9: If at that moment the victor had thought of breaking the bolts and letting his comrades in through the gate, that would have been the end of the war and the end of the Trojan race,
but instead his mad lust for blood drove him upon his enemies in an ecstasy of passion
Book 9: They rallied and held fast in close formation…crowding him like a pack of huntsmen with levelled spears pressing hard on a savage lion;
the lion is afraid and gives ground, but he is still dangerous
Book 10: Pallas is mine, and mine alone.
I wish his father were here to see it
Book 10: I shall win rich renown today, either for stripping
the corpse of the leader of my country’s enemies, or else for a glorious death
Book 10: In desperation Pallas tore the warm blade out of the wound,
and blood and life came out together after it, both by the same channel
Book 10: The time will come when Turnus would gladly pay,
and pay richly, to see Pallas alive and unharmed
Book 10: Everything that stood before him he harvested with the broad sword,
cutting a broad swathe through the enemy ranks, and burning with rage
Book 10: I beg you to spare this life of mine for the sake of my son and my father…I have talents of engraved silver
and great weights of gold…A Trojan victory does not depend on me…[Aeneas] drove the sword home to the hilt
Book 10: Four warrior sons of Sulmo he now captured alive and four reared by Ufens,
to sacrifice them as offerings to the shade of Pallas and pour their captive blood on the flames of his pyre
Book 10: He [Mezentius] stood like a rock jutting out into the ocean wastes,
exposed to the threats and fury of wind and wave and bearing all the violence of sea and sky, unmoved
Book 10: Let the right hand which is my god not fail me now,
nor the spear which I brandish to throw
Book 10: The fates gathered up the last threads for Lausus. Aeneas drove his mighty sword through the middle of the young man’s body…it pierced…
the tunic his mother had woven for him…then did his life leave his body and go in sorrow through the air to join the shades
Book 10: Again and again he asked about Lausus, and kept sending men to recall him
and take him orders from his anxious father. But Lausus was dead
Book 11: There he lay like a flower cut by the
thumbnail of a young girl, a soft violet or drooping lily
Book 11: No power on earth could restrain Evander…
he threw himself on the body of Pallas and cling to it weeping and moaning
Book 11: The waters rang with the sound as helpless
Camilla flew over the wild river on the whistling javelin
Book 11: The shaft struck home beneath her naked breast…
and lodged there drinking deep of her virgin blood
Book 11: As when a wolf has killed a shepherd or a great ox, and goes at once to hide…
before the avenging spears can come to look for him
Book 11: Growing cold, she little by little freed herself from her body…
her life left her with a groan and fled in anger down to the shades
Book 12: But it had long seemed to the Rutulians…
that this was not an even contest
Book 12: He burned with implacable rage and his courage rode within him. Just as a lion in the fields round Carthage,
who does not move into battle till he has received a great wound in his chest from the hunters, and then revels in it