Aeneid Book 1 Quotes/People

Am I to admit defeat and give up my attempt to keep the king of the Trojans away from Italy?

Juno

I have waged war all these years against a whole race of men!

Juno

Will there be no one in the future to pray to me and lay an offering on my altars?

Juno

I have fourteen nymphs of the rarest beauty, and the loveliest of them al is Deiopea.

Juno

Through you I have a couch to lien on at the feasts of the gods, and my power over cloud and storm comes from you.

Aeolus

Those whose fate it was to die beneath the high walls of Troy with their fathers looking down on them were many, many times more fortunate than I.

Aeneas

O Diomede, bravest of the Greeks, why could I not have fallen to your right hand and breathed out my life on the plains of Troy, where fierce Hector fell by the sword of Achilles, where great Sarpedon lies and where the river Simois caught upso many shields and helmets and bodies of brave men and rolled them down its current?

Aeneas

Is it your noble birth that has made you so sure of yourselves?

Neptune

I could take you now and…but first I must still the waves you have stirred up.

Neptune

What crime have the Trojans committed that they should suffer all this loss of life and the whole world be closed to them for the sake of Italy?

Venus

Did you not promise that with the rolling years there would come a time when from this stock the Romans would arise?

Venus

From this blood of Teucer, recalled to Italian soil, there would come leaders of men who would hold power over every land and sea.

Venus

We are betrayed and kept far away from the shores of Italy because there is one who hates us.

Venus

There will come a day, as the years glide by, when the house of Assaracus will reduce Achilles’ Pthia and glorious Mycenae to slavery and will conquer and rule the city of Argos.

Jupiter

The dread GAtes of WAr with their tight fastenings of stell will then be closed, and godless Strife will sit inside them on his murderous armour roaring hideously from bloody mouth, hands shackled behind his back with a hundred bands of bronze.

Jupiter

What shore of the world is this on which we now wander, tossed here by the fury of wind and wave?

Aeneas

I carry with me on my ships the gods of my home, the Penates, wrested from my enemies, and my fame has reached beyond the skies.

Aeneas

I embarked upon the Phrygian sea with twenty ships, following the destiny which had been given to me, and now a bare seven of them remain, and these torn to pieces by wind and wave.

Aeneas

I am a helpless stranger, driven out of Europe and out of Asia, tramping the desert wastes of Libya.

Aeneas

Look at these twelve swans flying joyfully in formation.

Venus

Just as they come to their home and their flock has circled the sky in play, singing as they fly with whirring wings, so your ships and your warriors are either already in port or crossing the bar in full sail.

Venus

Why do you so often mock your own son by taking on these disguises?

Aeneas

How fortunate they are!

Aeneas

Here too there is just reward for merit, there are tears for suffering and men’s hearts are touched by what man has to bear.

Aeneas

Save our ships from the impious thread of fire.

Ilioneus

Put every anxious thought out of your hearts.

Dido

May the gods bring you the reward you deserve, if there are any gods who have regard for goodness, if there is any justice in the world, if their minds have any sense of right.

Aeneas

While rivers run into the sea, while shadows of mountains move in processions round the curves of valleys, while the sky feeds the stars, your honour, you name, and your praise will remain forever in every land to which I am called.

Aeneas

What sort of chance is this that hounds the son of a goddess through all these dangers?

Dido

I, too, have known ill fortune like yours and been tossed from one wretchedness to another until at last I have been allowed to settle in this land.

Dido

Through my own suffering, I am learning to help those who suffer.

Dido

He is a boy like yourself, and you know him, so put on his features, and when the royal table is flowing with wine and brings release, and Dido takes you happily on to her lap and gives you sweet kisses, you can then breathe fire and poison into her and she will not know.

Venus

Jupiter, to you we pray, since men say that you ordain the laws of hospitality.

Dido

Come tell your hosts from the beginning about the treachery of the Greeks, the sufferings of your people and your own wanderings, for this is now the seventh summer that has carried you as a wanderer over every land and sea.

Dido