Aeneid 4:584-606

By the light of dawn Dido sees the fleet sailing away. She is stirred once again to fury.

Et iam prima novo spargebat lumine terras Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile.

And already Aurora Dawn was first scattering the lands with new light leaving the saffron bed of her husband Tythonis.

Regina e speculis ut primum albescere lucem vidit,

The queen, as soon as she saw from her high tower the first light glowing bright

et aequatis classem procedere velis,

and the fleet making its way on square sails,

litoraque et vacuos sensit sine remige portus,

and she realised that the shore and the harbour were empty, without even an oar,

terque quaterque manu pectus percussa decorum, flaventesque abscissa comas,

with her hand and three times and four, striking her lovely breast and tearing at her fair hair,

“Pro Iuppiter, ibit hic” ait “et nostris inluserit advena regnis?

She said “By Jupiter! Will this man go and will the stranger have mocked out kingdom?

Non arma expedient, totaque ex urbe sequentur, deripientque rates alii navalibus?

Will [my people] not prepare weapons and pursue them out of the whole city, wnd will other ships from the dockyards tear them apart?

Ite, ferte citi flammas, date vela, impellite remos!

Go, quickly bring fire, get weapons, get oars in motion!

quid loquor? aut ubi sum?

What am I saying? Or where am I?

Quae mentem insania mutat?

What madness is altering my mind?

infelix Dido, nunc te facta impia tangunt.

Unfortunate Dido, what impious actions touch you now?

Tum decuit, cum sceptra dabas.

Then it was suitable when you were offering the scepter.

En dextra fidesque,

quem secum patrios aiunt portare Penates,

quem subiisse umeris confectum aetate parentem!

Look, his right hand and pledge, [the man] whom they say carry with him his family’s household gods, who took upon his shoulders a parent exhausted by age!

Non potui abreptum divellere corpus, et undis spargere?

Could I not have seized his body and rent it asunder and scattered it on the waves?

Non socios, non ipsum absumere ferro

Ascanium, patriisque epulandum ponere mensis?

[Could I not have] killed his allies, or even Ascanius himself, with the sword and placed him on his father’s dishes to be feasted upon?

Verum anceps pugnae fuerat fortuna:—fuisset.

But the outcome of the combat was doubtful:—it should have been so.

Quem metui moritura?

Whom did I fear [since I was] ready to die?

Faces in castra tulissem,

implessemque foros flammis, natumque patremque

cum genere extinxem, memet super ipsa dedissem.

Had I brought torches to their camp, and filled their decks with fire, and extinguished both father and son with their people, I myself would have given myself atop of it.