Aeneid Dido Quotes

Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?

The signs of the old flame, I know them well. I pray that the earth gape deep enough to take me down or the almighty Father blast me with one bolt to the shades, the pale, glimmering shades in hell, the pit of night, before I dishonor you, my conscience, break your laws.

Though far away, I will chase you with murky brands and, when chill death has severed soul and body, everywhere my shade shall haunt you.

non et vario noctem sermone trahebat infelix Dido, longumque bibebat amorem, multa super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore multa; nunc quibus Aurorae venisset filius armis, nunc quales Diomedis equi, nunc quantus Achilles.

I won’t hold you, I won’t even refute you — go! — strike out for Italy on the winds, your realm across the sea. I hope, I pray, if the just gods still have any power, wrecked on the rocks mid-sea you’ll drink your bowl of pain to the dregs, crying out the name of Dido over and over, and worlds away I’ll hound you then with pitch-black flames, and when icy death has severed my body from its breath, then my ghost will stalk you through the world! You’ll pay, you shameless, ruthless — and I will hear of it, yes, the report will reach me even among the deepest shades of Death!

If there is any power of righteousness in Heaven, you will drink to the dregs the cup of punishment amid sea rocks and as you suffer cry "Dido" againa and again. Though far, yet I shall be near, haunting you with flames of blackest pitch. And when death's chill has parted my body from its breath, wherever you go my spectre will be there,. You will have your punishment, you villain. And I shall hear, the news will reach me deep in the world of death.

Augustine said he wept more for the death of Dido than he did for the death of his own saviour. What about Book Four, the best book of the best poem of the best poet?

Horns and hounds awake the princely train; and issue early through the city gate, There more wakeful huntsmen ready wait, with nets and darts beside swift horse, and spartan dogs. Come the Tyrian peers and officers of state for the slow queen in antechambers waits; Her lofty courser in the court below who his majestic rider seems to know, proud of his purple trappings he paws the ground and champs the golden bit to spread the foam around. Queen Dido at length appears; flowered simar with golden fringe adorned, and at her back a golden quiver bore; her flowing hair a golden caul restrains, a golden clasp the Tyrian robe sustains.

before his trip to England, he had bought on account Harper’s Classical Library, which included John Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid. In Mardi, he had mentioned “Virgil my minstrel,” and in White-Jacket, the sight of Jack Chase encouraging the poet Lemsford had put him in mind of the Roman patron “Mecaenas listening to Virgil, with a book of the Aeneid in his hand.” But these pro forma nods toward the Roman poet had been conventionally reverent; it was not until sometime in 1850 that Melville had his true encounter with the Aeneid and found himself recapitulating Virgil’s story of a haunted mariner voyaging out to avenge a grievous loss.* The men of Moby-Dick are Virgilian wanderers. They long for home even as fate calls them away from “safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities.” Early in the book, one hears echoes of Virgil’s account of the Trojan mariners preparing, after brief respite, to set sail again with ships newly caulked as Queen Dido watches them from a hilltop in Carthage.