VIRGIL’S AENEID, BOOK 8: AN EXPERIMENT IN TRANSLATION 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

by 
JOHN E. HAMEL 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A THESIS 
 

Presented to the Department of Classics 
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon 

in partial fulfillment of the requirements 
for the degree of 
Master of Arts  

June 2019 



 

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THESIS APPROVAL PAGE 
 
Student: John E. Hamel 
 
Title: Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 8; An Experiment in Translation 
 
This thesis has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for 
the Master of Arts degree in the Department of Classics by: 
 
Lowell Bowditch Chairperson 
Cristina Calhoon Co-Chair 
 
and 
 
Janet Woodruff-Borden Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School  
 
Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. 
 
Degree awarded June 2019 



 

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© 2019 John E. Hamel  
  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

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THESIS ABSTRACT 
 
John E. Hamel 
 
Master of Arts 
 
Department of Classics 
 
June 2019 
 
Title: Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 8; An Experiment in Translation 
 
 

English and Latin, though related, are very different languages, Latin with its 

inflections and small vocabulary, English with its overwhelming word order and expansive 

lexicon.  Any translation from Latin to English will necessarily involve explanatory 

additions to the text.  This is all the more true for Latin poetry, and above all for Virgil, 

who manages to create surprising and moving expressions line after line.  Most modern 

translators have aimed for a literal version of the Aeneid, at the expense of mirroring in 

English some of the verbal magic and power of Virgil’s Latin.  Dryden and Surrey strove to 

imitate these Virgilian features and in so doing created living poetry in English. 

This translation strives to render in English a hint of the power of Virgil’s 

expressions.  And Virgil’s own treatment of Homer and Greek literature and the whole 

translation-orientated project of early Latin literature lend weight to such an approach.   



 

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CURRICULUM VITAE 
 
NAME OF AUTHOR:  John E. Hamel 
 
 
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: 
 
 University of Oregon, Eugene 
 City University of New York, New York 
 Columbia University, New York 
  
 
DEGREES AWARDED: 
 
 Master of Arts, Classics, 2019, University of Oregon 

Doctor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, 1996, City University of New 
York 

 Bachelor of Arts, Ancient Greek, 1986, Columbia University 
 
 
 
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: 
 
 Latin Literature 
 
 English Translations from Latin, 1500-1700 
 
 Latin Pedagogy 
 
 
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: 
 
 Latin Teacher, Pinkerton Academy, 2008-2016  
 
 Lecturer, St. John’s University, 2001-2003 
 
 
 
GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: 
 
 Student Council Teacher of the Year Award, Pinkerton Academy, 2015 
 
 Rookie of the Year Teaching Award, Pinkerton Academy, 2009 
 
 Teacher Recognition Award, Buckley, 2000 
 
 Helaine Newstead Dissertation Award, City University of New York, 1993 



 

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PUBLICATIONS: 
 
 Hamel, John Eric. Province. New York: Briarwood Editions, 2018. 

Hamel, Eric. Anadromous Landscapes. New York: Briarwood Editions, 2008. 

Hamel, Eric. Change of Address. New York: Briarwood Editions, 2004. 

Hamel, Eric. 27 Poems, 9 Drawings. New York: Briarwood Editions, 2003. 

 



 

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 

I would like to thank Professors Bowditch and Calhoon for their patient assistance 

and learned comments during the preparation of this thesis.  I am especially grateful to 

Professor Bowditch, whose class on Virgil was the inspiration for the translation.  And to 

Geri Doran, who was an unofficial member of the committee, I add my special thanks for 

attentively reading the translation as English verse.  Without the help of these women and 

experts I might not have been able to complete this project straddling two worlds.  I also 

would like to thank Mary Jaeger who offered incisive and helpful comments on the 

introductory chapter.   



 

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For my father, with whom I shared the dream of universities and scholarly books, 

and for my mother who made my stay here possible. 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 



 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 
 
 
I. INTRODUCTION: VIRGIL, LATIN, AND ENGLISH .......................................... 1 

 1.1. Inflection ......................................................................................................... 3 

 1.2 Semantic Range ............................................................................................... 4 
 
 2.1 Latin Poetry ...................................................................................................... 5 
 
 2.2 Latin Poetry and the Greek Inheritance ........................................................... 6 

 2.3 The Latin Aspect of Latin Poetry..................................................................... 10 

 2.4 In Sum .............................................................................................................. 17 

 3. Translation and Cleaning Up ............................................................................. 18 

 4. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 30 

II. CHAPTER 1: VIRGIL’S AENEID, BOOK 8,  
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE .................................................................    32 
 
APPENDIX: ‘PRIMAL WORDS’ AND SURREALISM .......................................... 74 

REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 77 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

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I. INTRODUCTION: VIRGIL, LATIN, AND ENGLISH 
 
           Ours is an age when the act of translation is the subject of intense, professional 

scrutiny, yet simultaneously literary translations proliferate, when one might expect 

caution and restraint.  This dual phenomenon is enough to make one hesitate to undertake 

a translation, if not abandon the idea altogether.  Why another Aeneid, when at least four 

versions have come out in the past ten to fifteen years?  Why another, after Fitzgerald and 

the prose Loeb translations, which seem perfectly adequate? 

                Part of the problem is that Virgil, unlike Homer, demands translating.  There 

could never be a Lattimore translation of the Aeneid because Virgil’s Latin is too 

opaque.  Dryden of course represents the poetic end of the spectrum of translation, 

whereas modern versions seem to inhabit a grey zone between a poetic and literal 

translation.  There seemed to be room for at least an attempt in the realm of poetic 

translation, along the lines of Dryden but for the present age. 

The following translation makes no claims to being anything other than an 

experiment in poetry.  It is not meant to stand for a literal version, but it is an attempt to 

recognize, and try to imitate certain features in the text of Virgil which challenge the 

English language and poetry.  It seemed to me that contemplating the difference between 

Latin and English, especially Virgil’s Latin, by means of translation is a fruitful exercise 

for English poetry. 

In particular, I have sought to preserve the feeling of oddness and uncertain 

perception that haunts the original.  And I have done this through ways that attempt to be 

faithful to the ways Virgil does it, while yet remaining faithful to the demands of English 

poetry.  More concretely, this means the following: maximum use of simple words, with 



 

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archaisms sprinkled in; energizing verbs that can be used in a variety of contexts; various 

forms and means of parataxis; and attention to effects of sound in vowel and consonant 

without overt rhyme and a loose metrical structure (iambic pentameter).  I have 

proceeded by sentences, which scholars see as the Virgilian unit of meaning and perhaps 

composition.  This has resulted in my shifting of the order of information in the original, 

which is necessitated by the demands of English and the inflections and hyperbaton in 

Latin, all in the interest of making a more engaging poem in English. 

The intention is not to replace or displace the many excellent translations of the 

Aeneid.  I wanted to try to give Virgil some latitude in English, to be as lively, curious, 

sonorous, and rich, as he is in Latin.  Without these qualities, the poem can often seem 

lackluster, since the characters do not display vivid personalities as those in Homer, with 

the exception of Dido, of course.  

Virgil’s Aeneid is the quintessential poem of empire, or at least that is how it has 

been read until recently.  It has been seen as the classic of western literature, as T. S. Eliot 

put it.  A translation that plays more freely with words and tries to credit and bring out 

the linguistic ambiguities in the original would therefore be mildly subversive.  A denser, 

more risky translation that tries to allow the language to wander into more ‘surreal’ 

effects (as Virgil’s text does), at the risk of fast, easy surface intelligibility, would be to 

challenge the imperial, classical Virgil, and promote the poetry of the original which is 

often lost in English translations, because English and Latin tend in opposing directions: 

many words, no inflections vs few words, heavy inflections. 

The following is an attempt to outline the unusual and startling effects Virgil is 

able to create with his style. 



 

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1.1. Inflection 

 One way to conceptualize and investigate the problems faced by translators is to 

look at the chief problems facing those who are beginning to learn the language.  

Problems at the very beginning of learning, as, for example, absence of articles, complex 

verb systems and the like, are not as revealing as the problems faced when the learner 

makes the transition to reading literature.  In this realm, there are two things that beset the 

English-speaking learner of Latin: inflections and semantic range of words.  As it turns 

out these areas were intentionally and movingly exploited by Latin poets, particularly 

Virgil. 

Latin inflections demand that the reader hold attention for long periods of time 

between words.  A Latin verb can occur several lines from its subject or an adjective can 

radically be displaced from its noun.  Latin inflections usually demand that the reader, 

who in ancient as in modern times reads left to right, look backward to find a subject or 

to couple noun and adjective.  Thus inflections create a special experience of space-time 

duration.  The ancient Roman mind seems to have had less difficulty moving back and 

forth over a sentence than we do, whereas English readers go straight from A to Z.  In 

English one rarely has to look back or retain words in suspension as one does in Latin, 

where the words eddy and flow backwards as well as forwards.   

The poetic possibilities in this kind of displacement are obvious.  The poet is able 

to create small groups of meanings within the larger pattern of the sentence without 

seeming affected or obscure or excessively mannered.  The native English speaker finds 

these routine displacements difficult.  English has trouble reproducing these small eddies 

of meaning.   



 

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1.2. Semantic Range 

When one begins to learn Latin, especially as an English speaker, one is struck 

and often frustrated by the way in which Latin words do double, triple, sometimes 

quadruple time.  Whereas in English we have a separate word for each new thing, Latin 

uses the same word in many senses.  For example, cornu means ‘horn of an animal,’ 

‘mountain crag,’ ‘bow,’ ‘point of land’, and ‘wing of an army’.  Acies means ‘line of 

battle’ but also ‘line of sight, gaze’.  The student of Latin takes a long time to become 

comfortable with this.  One learns ducere as meaning ‘lead’,  but soon meets it meaning 

‘consider’, but then in a third context meaning ‘extend’ (as in extending a wall), without 

any apparent clue in the context to help one anticipate the shift in meaning.  When 

learners meet stringere meaning ‘tighten’ in one place but then meaning ‘skim’ in 

another, panic is understandable.  

This might be called a sort of ‘iceberg’ effect, where one meaning shows on the 

surface but a whole set of related sematic ideas remains under the surface (Knight, 

Roman 281).  As a utilitarian user of the language, one tends to latch on to one dimension 

of a word, keeping the other meanings submerged.  Some sort of membrane or film, as it 

were, separates one semantic field from another in the mind and this is a function of 

sanity.   

Latin, unlike English, proves rich in such extensions.  English has a massive and 

fast-growing vocabulary arising from complex relations with many languages over 

centuries, whereas Latin is a language known mostly from written literature with a very 

small vocabulary and very few loan words from languages not directly related to it.   



 

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Moreover, Latin even has many words that can designate contrary if not opposing 

concepts.  Sigmund Freud, following the linguist Karl Abel, refers to these as ‘primal 

words,’ the theory being (whether right or wrong according to theoretical linguistics) that 

older languages have more words that have mutually exclusive semantic poles (Freud 

239).  The typical examples are words like sacer in Latin and ‘cleave’ in English.  

Though rarer in English, such words do exist and can be culturally quite pregnant.  For 

example, at the moment ‘privilege’ is torn between two meanings, one positive, the other 

gaining negative moral connotations.  Attic tragedy is made out of this sort of conflict 

within a single word. 

Part of the issue is how words extend their meaning.  For example, fructus does 

not simply mean ‘fruit’ but ‘proceeds, profit, income, produce’, but then also 

‘enjoyment’, ‘enjoying’.  The semantic range of the word encompasses the thing to be 

enjoyed and the act of enjoying.  In other words, the extension of meaning here involves 

a species of division between active and passive or subject and object.  Similarly the 

word ‘rich’ in English can signify what contains or possesses a great quantity of 

something (‘a rich man’) but also something that yields or gives a great quantity of a 

thing (‘a rich mine’).  Virgil uses laus in the sense of ‘praise bestowed on one for a deed’ 

and of ‘the deed’ itself (see Aeneid 8.273).  Both English and Latin have such words, but 

Latin has more and English has an opposing tendency to multiply words (lexically and 

syntactically). 

2.1. Latin Poetry 

These things apply to translating any piece of Latin.  What about Latin poetry?  

Of course a translation from Latin will encounter the obstacles faced in translating from 



 

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any language: poetic history, poetic forms, meters, genres and traditions.  The translator 

obviously needs to know about these things, but in Latin poetry the problem is 

complicated by the way in which its entire literature is in dialogue with Greek literature 

and the Greek language (Mendell 2).  For Virgil, who set out to write a Roman Homeric 

poem, this means principally Homer (Camps 53; G. W. Williams 736).  Everything 

Homeric was of some concern to Virgil, whether to dismiss or to modify or to accept by 

direct imitation or translation (G. W. Williams 255; Mendell 81; West 14).   

Moreover, this tradition also involves previous translations and imitations of 

Homer in Latin, especially Ennius (G. W. Williams 260; Camps 62).  And in a third 

complication, all of Greek culture in some degree or other comes filtered through or 

accompanied by Hellenistic revision (Knight, Roman 47).   Homer also came to Virgil via 

Alexandria and the Hellenistic poetic tradition with its antiquarian predilection for 

Homeric minutia and simultaneously with its critique of Homeric prolixity and 

preference for shorter epics like the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (G. W. Williams 

374).  Scholars of Virgil have many layers to tease out in order to be able to speak about 

his poetry accurately.  For the purposes of translation these can be summarized.  The 

following is a brief outline of problems in Latin poetry and Virgilian poetics, all of which 

will affect how the Aeneid is translated. 

 

2.2. Latin Poetry And Greek Inheritance 

From the start the Romans had to face a major difficulty: the lack of a native 

poetic (oral) tradition.  The Romans had “no commonly recognized tradition of public 

poetry” comparable to the Greeks, whether Homer or local varieties of song and epos 



 

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(Mayer 1).  This absence resulted in a lack of poetic language.  Even in so rich a source 

as Cicero’s speeches, there is a lack of poetical words (except ensis, letum G. W. 

Williams 737; Martindale 255).  Without this tradition, Virgil had to invent just enough 

of a sufficiently convincing impression of epic grandeur (Camps 62; Martindale 265-6). 

Virgil’s task was eased by the precedent of Ennius who in his Annals went far to 

create a kind of Homeric Latin poetry.  Through Ennius Virgil adopts many overt 

Homeric trappings, such as: plot elements, characters, mythic narratives, epithets, meter, 

repeated phrases, including direct translations of Homer (for example, in scenes of eating 

or sacrificing) and echoes of Ennius translating Homer and echoes of Ennius not 

translating Homer.  

This Homeric veneer aimed to create the appearance or sensation of epic (G. W. 

Williams 736).  Virgil colors his language without dominating it in a mannered way, 

sufficiently to convince contemporaries of an authentic epic feel or to create distance 

from common speech/modes of communication (G. W. Williams 737; Camps 62).  This 

is primarily achieved by use of the same meter as Homer.  To accompany the meter 

Virgil creates powerful packets of meaning and long verse paragraphs (Knight, Roman 

185).  He uses parataxis rather than the subordination, hypotaxis and argumentation used 

by Lucretius (Horsfall 225; Camps 62; Martindale 247).  We find, for example in Book 8 

of the Aeneid, a translation/imitation of a stock Homeric scene of feasting (8.184), of 

nightfall (8.26), and of Homeric epithets (8.521).   

Virgil also uses various kinds of linguistic effects, chiefly archaisms.  To give an 

antique flavor Virgil uses words and phrases from Ennius but also “lexical and 

morphological archaism from prayers and laws creating the impression of poetic 



 

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medium” out of the material at hand (Martindale 252; cf Knight, Roman 184).  Virgil 

creates “archaic coloring” and uses archaisms echoing his predecessors, especially 

Lucretius and Ennius (Palmer 98-112; cf Camps 62).  But he also echoes laws and texts 

like the Sibylline Oracles (Mayer 1; Martindale 252; Knight, Roman 184).  We find 

Virgil using old Latin forms like olli for ille, aquai for aquae, fuat for sit, and ast for at 

(Camps 61; Martindale 255; G. W. Williams 737).  We also see what scholars generally 

consider high poetic words like ensis, many of which are from Ennius.  Virgil employed 

inherited imitations of Homer and created new compound adjectives or epithets in the 

manner of Homer’s Greek (Camps 61).  We also find the following, which create a sense 

of poetic grandeur or a distant poetic realm (Camps 64): -abilis suffixes; “emotive” 

prefixes in verbs (circumvolare; subremigare); -osus adjectives; -ax adjective with quasi-

participial force (nidis loquacibus of chirping birds or chicks in a nest; ignis edax); -to 

verbs (frequentative) and –esco verbs (inceptive).  Almost all of these effects will not 

translate. 

The result is that Virgil achieves a Homeric veneer but not a stiff archaistic 

imitation (Martindale 254).  He created a poem rich in “evocation of or dialogue with 

earlier poetry” specifically Homer and Ennius (Martindale 254).  One is never sure what 

is an imitation, or what is a translation of Greek sources (lost or extant), and what is 

original to Virgil (Horsfall 228; Knight, Roman 224).  While many things are known, it is 

a complex field of study.  Latin literature is haunted by the ghostly presence of Greek but 

Virgil gains many fortuitous results from trying to be faithful to Greek but also 

questioning the Homeric model (Johnson 57).  The struggle with Homer, the Greek 

language, and Greek literary precedent led Virgil to draw out latent aspects of the Latin 



 

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language in its ancestral connection with Greek (Knight, Roman 219; G. W. Williams 

737). 

Without going into the problem too deeply, it is necessary to outline some aspects 

of this relationship between Virgil’s text and Greek literature and language.  At least one 

scholar claims it is essential to know Greek grammar and syntax in order to appreciate 

Virgil fully (Horsfall 228).  As noted above, Virgil translates and mimics Greek syntax 

and wording in Latin.  These are usually called Grecisms.  These often subtle imitations 

of Greek in Latin are not merely decorative devices but are in the service of compression 

and expressivity as well as imitating the original (Knight, Roman 222).   

Grecisms are used to distance the reader from familiar usages (Mayer 65).  We 

find a preference for Greek elements like the use of –que…-que (Knight, Roman 224; 

Horsfall 227-8; Lyne Words 16).  According to at least one scholar, Virgil’s Latin 

occasionally works in literal Greek (Horsfall 229).  Virgil uses, in a Greek manner, 

oblique cases without prepositions or familiar governing adjectives to widen the range of 

values in language and reduce the number of words (Mayer 11; Knight, Roman 217).1 

The so called Greek or internal accusative is used as an aid to compression (itaque 

reditque viam totiens; “so often goes and returns his way” 6.122; Knight, Roman 217).  

However, the extent to which Grecisms are alien to Latin is questioned (Mayer 79).  The 

natural tendency of Latin is to use the accusative case adverbially (Knight, Roman 219).  

It is hard to tell whether Virgil is just bringing out an old, latent aspect of the language or 

imitating Greek (Knight, Roman 219).  For example, at first it seems strange that tremens, 

                                                 
1 It is a vexing but open question to what extent imitating Homer creates the perspectivism or 

‘voices’ noted in Virgil (Lyne, Words 42; for example, Aeneid 11.382 (Horsfall 245).  The locus classicus 
for this reading is Parry, "The Two Voices of Virgil's "Aeneid". 
 



 

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which usually is intransitive meaning ‘trembling’ often takes a direct object (Aeneid 

8.520; 8.665).  This seems to be part of the overall meaning of the word.  Latin seems to 

have many of these kinds of verbs which can have active/passive or transitive/intransitive 

duality.2 

 

2.3. The Latin Aspect Of Latin Poetry 

To create the impression of a special discourse for poetry, as we have seen, most 

Roman poets used Greek models.  Some went to extremes of severe dislocation of word 

order like Catullus, often to imitate Hellenistic or Alexandrian sophistication (G. W. 

Williams 726).  Not only does Latin lack a native poetic tradition comparable to Greek, 

but Latin also has a small and neutral vocabulary.  Scholars agree that certain few Latin 

words have a high poetic sense but the list is very short and unimpressive (G. W. 

Williams 738).  On the other hand, Virgil also uses demonstrably low/colloquial words, 

but again in small numbers (Knight, Roman 262).  It turns out that the majority of 

Virgil’s words have no special register (Mayer 3).  The style is unexpectedly prose 

dominated, even prosaic (Mayer 8).  It is the combinations of these words in unexpected 

ways that is characteristic of Virgil (Camps 62; G. W. Williams 738).  And yet scholars 

find that Latin “poets in most genres were more tolerant than orators or historians of 

usages across a wide stylistic spectrum from archaic to colloquial” and that an “archaic 

precedent may have been dropped from educated language while surviving in lower-class 

speech” and poetry (Mayer 9-10). 

                                                 
2 Though it is probably useless speculation, one wonders if Virgil is not deliberately tapping into this level 
of the language because it allows him to problematize the whole idea of agency and individual efficacy 
(Knight, Roman 219). 



 

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Ninety-Five percent of Virgil’s words are common to verse and prose (G. W. 

Williams 737); “No words were too prosaic to appear in even the highest poetic contexts” 

(Mayer 21).  Therefore, Virgil had to invent ways to avoid sounding prosaic (G. W. 

Williams 737).  Virgil has “an amazing ‘nose’ for the character and resonance of the 

individual word” in prose authors and uses flat colorless words but fuses them in 

pregnant and suggestive ways (Horsfall 221). 

Literary scholars of a linguistic bent analyze the ‘tone’ of words by arranging 

schemes like the following as a test for acceptability.  To discover “how deviant” a 

phrase is, Geoffrey Leech arranges Dylan Thomas’s phrase “a wedding ago” in a series 

from acceptable to unacceptable (Leech 31): 

1. Many moons ago   5. Three overcoats ago 
2. Ten games ago   6. Two wives ago 
3. Several performances ago  7. A grief ago 
4. A few cigarettes ago  8. A humanity ago 

 
Where on the scale of acceptability would it clamor (Aeneid 8.595) and it timor (8.557) 

go?  If soldiers rush to their destruction in battle (in ferrum ruebant 8.648), how startling 

would it be for a Roman reader to read of night rushing (nox ruit 8.369)?  Can we even 

make such a chart for a language no longer spoken?  It would be useful to attempt such 

charts but we have to face a dramatic lack of evidence in Latin. 

While there is general agreement that Virgil uses colloquial language, some 

scholars take this use of colloquialisms as a shift in perspective marked by a shift in 

register of language (G. W. Williams 738).  Lyne remarks that “Virgil intrudes a 



 

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questioning voice by discrete manipulation of invention and argument as well as imagery 

and we must not resist the implications” (Further 27).3 

Generally, it is recognized that there is a difference in tone between certain words 

in Latin.  The classic example is the common gladius over against the heroic ensis 

(Martindale 254).  These near synonyms give the poet latitude and lend the poem a sense 

of grandeur, a “sense that the poem belongs to ‘a far off imaginary world’” (Martindale 

254; cf G. W. Williams 737).  Paradoxically, in Virgil, epic and “prosaic ordinariness” 

dovetail (especially in the Aeneid books 9-12; Martindale 254). 

Virgil is using the resources of the language to carry the language beyond prose 

statement, and yet by means of prosaic language (Knight, Roman 191).  He drops into 

pure prose even at dramatic moments (Knight, Roman 192) and uses simple verbs with 

vague meaning which is completed only with other words (Camps 63; Knight, Roman 

263).  We find the paradoxical combination of compression and copiousness with 

repeating variations of similar meaning (Knight, Roman 192) and a theme and variation, 

where two expressions near each other convey the same idea but require the reader to 

compare and resolve them (Martindale 248).  Some scholars see this as Virgil’s interest 

in “looking at matter from more than one perspective” (Martindale 248). 

Virgil has strings of repeating synonyms, for example in words for kill, die, ship, 

woman, man, shield, Trojan (Horsfall 224; Camps 62).  He also uses the same word in 

slightly different senses, as, for example, superbus meaning ‘proud’ and ‘over proud, 

                                                 
3 Lyne sees shifting in the Aeneid between public and private voices and he calls these shifts “further 
voices” (Further 217).   



 

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arrogant’.  He has alternatives for common words fari-dicere, gemini-duo, superi-dei, 

planta-pes (part for whole); ensis-gladius (Camps 64).4 

Verbs in Virgil are often “remarkably poor in semantic content” in that they have 

no limited set of ‘expected objects’ as do more specific verbs (Knight, Roman 192; 

Mayer 15).  Camps sees as a “specifically Virgilian” feature the poet’s “coining of 

expressive, original phrases out of extremely elemental words” (63).  For example, vim 

viribus exit is describes a combatant: “struggling with an armed assailant he eludes the 

other’s efforts” but the literal meaning of the sentence is ‘he leaves force with strength’ 

(Camps 63; Mayer 15).  The verb exit is usually intransitive and would take an ablative 

with ex (‘out of’), a preposition which is left out here. 

 These phrases of Virgil have a meaning that is “apprehended rather than 

understood” (G. W. Williams 389), exploiting what Putnam calls the “lexical milieu” of a 

word (Putnam 166).  Ambiguities in the Aeneid are “partly a result of the qualities of the 

Latin language which enable it to express more than might be expected, but neither the 

poet nor the language are different in kind from all other poets and languages” (Knight, 

Roman 204).  The poet seems to use a purposefully limited vocabulary and have favorite 

words (Knight, Roman 192). 

Horace appears to have noted something of this when he spoke of callida iuntura 

or ‘felicitous combinations’ (literally ‘clever junctures’ Ars Poetica 47-49; Martindale 

254).  Knight, uses the word “fulcrum” for the element “on which meaning swivels” from 

the dimension of one word to another; exploiting the power of words to do three things:  

to induce in each other and make active meanings that are latent or potential; to 

                                                 
4 Some of these will have a further dimension as noted: historical-imitative as in an echo of Ennius/Homer, 
or of suggestive meaning, like fari which brings with it a string of important related words: fas/nefas, 
fatum. 



 

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make more than one meaning emerge in this way, and coexist simultaneously 
with sharp economy of expression for a larger context of meaning; and to make 
such meanings emerge and coexist, but not simultaneously, so that one meaning 
momentarily dies into another to create the larger system, perhaps exercizing  
reflex action also that newly developed meaning is reflected back on to a word 
that has already helped differently in the process. (Roman 196-7).   
 

Knight, adds that “external meanings are added to words through relations of other words 

to these internal meanings, actual and potential” (Roman 195).5   

 A related phenomenon is the frequent use of the same word in different forms 

(polyptoton), which Ovid so gleefully exploited in the Metamorphoses.  For example, in 

book 8 of the Aeneid we find double uses of similem…similem (8.649); labores…laborem 

(8.378-380); lustrans…lustrabat (8.229-231; impulit…impulsu (8.239); 

montis…montibus (8.692); tenebat…tenebant (8.653-657). 

Sometimes this repetition seems schematic and rich interpretatively, but just as 

often creates a puzzle.6  For example, Virgil uses superbus in serval important places in 

Book 8 of the Aeneid: of Hercules (8.202), of Cacus (8.196 superbis foribus) of 

Mezentius (8.481) and then of Augustus (8.721 superbis postibus).  He also uses 

superbus in proximity tabo (of Cacus 8.197; of Mezentius 8.487).  It is as if Virgil creates 

a verbal echo tying Cacus and Mezentius (superbus/tabo) where superbus means 

‘tyrannically arrogant’ but then what do we do with the echo with Augusts and his “proud 

doorposts” over against Cacus’ bloody “arrogant entrance way”?7 

                                                 
5 For example: Charon’s eyes; at 6.300 Virgil has stant lumina flamma, which Knight calls “strange,” 
where the literal meaning is “His lights stand with flames” (Roman 209). 
 
6 Sometimes this pairing is very loaded: the verb condere (‘to bury, to establish’) opens and closes Virgil’s 
poem at 1.6 and 12.950 (James 623) and yet Virgil seems to avoid using condere for sepelire (James 628). 
 
7 For superbus see note on 8.118 (Fordyce 218). 
 



 

15 
 

Virgil often uses intransitive verbs in a transitive senses.  Scholars find these 

usages challenging if also a bit puzzling (Horsfall 227). 8  Knight, remarks that Virgil 

seems to “exploit language by making verbs unexpectedly transitive or unexpectedly 

intransitive” especially passive participles (Knight, Roman 211).  The verb properare (‘to 

hasten’) is used transitively (Aeneid 8.423; see Fordyce 254).  Knight, goes so far as to 

call such effects “surrealist”, adding that “Virgil never meant to write like James Joyce 

[sacrificing rationality] but he prepared a way for him” (Roman 212).  With such puzzles, 

“the alert reader is torn between wonder and exasperation” (Horsfall 227).  One wonders 

again if this is not a result of Latin itself, and of Virgil’s simply pressing his medium.  

Latin contains many words which seem to have active and passive meanings in the same 

word (rumpere – ‘break/cause to break, burst (out)’: rupta rima, Aeneid 8.391-2). 

Much has been written about the way Virgil seems to create a variety of 

perspectives in the poem.  This phenomenon has been termed “deviant focalization” 

(Martindale 266-67) or “embedded focalization” (Martindale 254).9  The narrative will 

“shift from nearness to distance” (Mayer 279), or shift to a less familiar object of a verb, 

creating “an all-embracing picture” (Mayer 280) by shifting points of view.10  For 

example, motion is often seen in different directions.  At Aeneid 8.62-63, the river 

Thybris/Tiber says:  

ego sum pleno quem flumine cernis 
stringentem ripas et pinguia culta secantem. 

 

                                                 
8 Knight says of Aeneid 5.673 (galeam ante pedes poiecit inanem)  “The literal sense is almost absurd” 
(Roman 211). 
 
9 See note 4. 
 
10 Or is this but an imitation of Homer, whose Iliad shifts perspective from peace to war?\ 
 



 

16 
 

The literal translation is: ‘I am whom you see drawing the banks with full river/in the full 

river and cutting through the rich tilth.’  The word stringere is often used of drawing a 

sword; how does the river draw the river banks?  It seems it is a description of an optical 

illusion. 11 

Perhaps a change of perspective or logic is involved here.  Scholars generally 

agree that Virgil’s style is puzzling but stimulating and suggestive, bizarre at times yet 

carried through on a surface that never allows one to dwell too long on oddities, such that 

one begins to forget and accept as normal this poetic surface.   

As a summary of all these elements in Virgil, the following are to be found in 

Book 8 of the Aeneid: 

Grecisms: 
 Hesiod; translation of Theogony 140; 8.425 (R. D. Williams 256) 
 Homeric line; 8.184 (R. D. William 240) 
 Troiugenas, Homeric epithet; 8.117 (R. D. Williams 236) 
 Nubigenas…bimembris epithets with double –que; 8.293 (R. D. Williams 247) 
 Amphitryoniadae, Homeric patronymic; 8.163 (R. D. Williams 237) 
 Homer-esque description of night; 8.26 
 repeated lines; 8.20-21; 4.285-6; (R. D. Williams  230) 
 insueta; ; 8.248; adverbial accusative (R. D. Williams  243) 
 expleri; middle voice; 8.265 (R. D. Williams 244) 
 inducitur artus; 8.457; “retained accusative” (R. D. Williams 259; cf 8.29; 8.265; 
8.286; 8.662); or middle voice (Fordyce 257: ‘he clothes his limbs with a tunic’) 
 fervere; 8.677; archaic form (R. D. Williams  271) 
 omnigenum; 8.698; archaic genitive (R. D. Williams 274) 
 turbatus pectora; 8.29; Greek Accusative (R. D. Williams  236) 
 Panos; Greek genitive; 8.344 (R. D. Williams 250) 
 enim; 8.84;  Archaic/Greek usage (R. D. Williams 234) 
 cernere erat; 8.676; Greek idiom (Fordyce 277) 
Prosaic phrases or technical language: 
 diplomatic phrasing; 8.17 (R. D. Williams 230) 
 quin clause “common prose formula”; 8.147 (R. D. Williams 238) 
 it timor; 8.557 (Fordyce 264; a “Virgilian mannerism”;  
 spem custodita fefellit; 8.218: “the unusual relationship between the word 
meanings which constitute the phrase is typically Virgilian – ‘the cow kept captive 
                                                 
11 Compare: totumque adlabi classibus aequor 10.269; “all the sea’s expanse aglide with shipping” the fleet 
goes by (Knight Roman 209; Mayer 279). 



 

17 
 

frustrated his hope’ ie the captive cow frustrated his hope of keeping her so”; R. D. 
Williams 242) 
 tomenti genus; 8.487 (Fordyce 259; “the phrase is strangely prosaic”) 
Alexandiranisms: 
 Simile echoing the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius 3.756ff. (R. D. Williams 
230-231; Fordyce 207) 
 Etymology; 8.64 (caeruleus…caelo; Fordyce 211) 
Unusual diction: 
 quocuque; 8.74-5 (this pronoun used in early Latin prayers, R. D. Williams 234)   
 “unusual diction”; 8.276ff; (R. D. Williams 244-5) 
 dare; 8.570; used in a causative (Fordyce 266; “Virgil makes very free use of the 
‘causative’ sense of dare”) 
 remigio= oarage, oarsmen, even rowing; 8.80 (Fordyce 214; Mayer 280) 
Perspectivism: 
 double clauses; 8.85ff (the passage reflects Virgil’s “practice of conveying a 
complex action under two aspects in two clauses connected by et or –que without regard 
to the order in which these aspects present themselves in time” Fordyce 214) 
 above/below; 8.243; shifting perspective (R. D. Williams 243) 
 cavus; 8.598; relativity of this word (Fordyce 267-8) 
Virgilian inventions: 
 indubitare; 8.404 (R. D. Williams 255) 
 ignipotens; 8.414 (R. D. Williams 255) 
Ennianisms: 
 flos…virum; 8.500 (R. D. Williams  260) 
 teque pater Tiberine tuo cum flumine sancto) 8.72, with Greek vocative Thybri 
(R. D. Williams 233)  
 tremulum lumen (Fordyce 207; cf 8.72 Fordyce 212; 8.150 Fordyce 221) 
 

2.4. In Sum 

Scholars have resorted to colorful phrases when generalizing about Virgil’s style: 

“dense, teasing, often puzzling” (Lyne, Words, 18);12 “The alert reader is torn between 

wonder and exasperation” (Horsfall 227); “real, serious, startling oddities” that give a 

kaleidoscopic, shifting surface with an alienating effect (Horsfall 227).  We have far from 

understood Virgil’s “verbal gymnastics” (Horsfall 226).  Virgil’s Aeneid is “rich in 

ambiguities of grammar, lexicon, syntax” (Horsfall 224).  These “authentically 

ambiguous” phrases are not merely arbitrary but rather “dreamlike” in which there is 

                                                 
12 Aeneid 3.418 prompts Horsfall to ask “is this a joke?”.   



 

18 
 

access to surrealistic material in the unconscious mind (Knight, Roman 202-3 cf 205-6).  

But it is not as if every line of Virgil is full of ambiguities (Horsfall 224), nor is every 

meaning always relevant at each instance; nevertheless, it is true that “all possible 

meanings are there, and should be noticed, but that one is the main meaning and should 

be distinguished from the others” (Knight, Roman 204). 

Virgil “achieved a general linguistic originality of such wide significance that his 

effect was nothing less than an alteration of the Latin language” (G. W. Williams 737).  

He “extended the range of poetic usage so that at one end of the scale he applied Greek 

syntactical rules to Latin words; at the other end, he allowed various forms of colloquial 

usage into epic poetry” (G. W. Williams 737; Knight, Roman 269).  The greatest danger 

for the reader of Virgil is that one is “lulled into a sense of familiarity in which the 

originality escapes unnoticed” (G. W. Williams 738) or that one find ambiguity 

everywhere.  Knight, concludes, “Virgil’s ambiguities are partly a result of the qualities 

of the Latin language which enable it to express more than might be expected.  But 

neither the poet nor the language are different in kind from all other poets and languages” 

(Knight, Roman 204). 

 

3. Translation And Cleaning Up 

Most of these effects seem remote from English.  But as Knight, observes above, 

all languages have such poetic resources; it is just they do not occur in the same place, or 

the same ways (Roman 204).  Although, arguably, English with its headlong movement 

fosters a determined sense of prior and subsequent (perhaps also cause and effect) and its 

expanding vocabulary and small grammar fosters a tendency to literalism, we too have 



 

19 
 

our long lists of synonyms like Virgil.  Though English etymology is nowhere near as 

rich as the cognates in Latin, we have many ways to make suggestive phrases out of 

simple words.  For example, Chapman, in his Odyssey, has this fine passage which is 

arguably more Virgil than Homer (Chapman 108): 

  …fate would be paid 
Grief’s whole sum due from me, at sea, before 
I reach’d the dear touch of my country’s shore. 

 

Here “touch” has resonance beyond its surface meaning, describing Odysseus ‘touching’ 

land but also the effect on Odysseus of this return to his homeland.  Or this Virgilian and 

very poetic passage from Surrey’s translation of Book 2 of the Aeneid (Surrey 43): 

Out of the skie, by the dark night there fell 
A blasting sterre, dragging a brand of flame, 
Which, with much light gliding on the house top, 
In the forest of Ida hid her beames; 
The which full bright cendleing a furrow shone, 
By a long tract appointing us thee way.   
 

Often Dryden is very successful both in imitating Virgilian manners but also in making 

good English poetry.  For example, this passage from Book 8 (Dryden 227; 8.559-570; 

Latin text 8.422-432): 

Hether, the Father of the Fire, by Night, 
Through the brown Air precipitates his Flight. 
On their Eternal Anvils here he found 
The Brethren beating, and the Blows go round: 
A load of pointless Thunder now there lies 
Before their Hands, to ripen for the Skies: 
These Darts, for angry Jove, they dayly cast: 
Consum’d on Mortals with prodigious waste. 
Three Rays of writhen Rain, of Fire three more, 
Of winged Southern Winds, and cloudy Store 
As many parts, the dreadful Mixture frame: 
And Fears are added, and avenging Flame. 

 



 

20 
 

Here Dryden has many words working double time.  Even if “pointless” and “waste” 

mean something different to us (here meaning ‘without a tip’ and ‘destruction’ and in ‘lay 

waste’), Dryden has the curious detail of “brown” and resonant usages “ripen” and 

“writhen” meaning ‘entwined, subject to twisting’). 

But at the same time Dryden’s less successful phrases, like the Augustan poetic 

cliché “sylvan scene”, result from trying to imitate Virgil.  G. W. Williams suggests that 

Virgil’s original silvis scaena coruscis (Aeneid 1.164) is the source of this particular 

cliché (642).  Virgil’s bold (‘visual’) use of scaena where the trees are the “backdrop” to 

a “sudden, striking vision” was not understood and so not imitated by later poets (G. W. 

Williams 642).  These sort of phrases were picked up and reused without fully 

understanding the source, and in the process fossilized into clichés.  The Modernist revolt 

freed poets from such poeticisms but it also brought about an ultimate impoverishing of 

English poetic resources, for it became harder to press words in this manner.   

Modern translators in English have to struggle against this fossilization of poetic 

resource into cliché, but they also have to avoid simplifying and ‘cleaning up’ Virgil in 

order to make sense in English.  Nearly all modern English translations present a clean, 

tame, version of the Aeneid, without much verbal daring.  This can be shown with 

reference to three passages, illustrating three different kinds of ‘cleaning up.’  

A) Cleaning up metaphors: 

In her speech to her husband Vulcan, Venus asks for armor for Aeneas, and points 

out the nature and combatants in the threatening war in Latium: 

aspice qui coeant populi, quae moenia clausis               385 
ferrum acuant portis in me excidiumque meorum. 
 

 



 

21 
 

The passage is characteristically direct and clipped but full of richness.  The sense 

is: ‘Cities close their gates, fortify their walls and sharpen weapons against me and 

this will result in or intends (the) destruction of/for my people.’  There is a series of 

equivalencies (cities=walls; iron=swords/weapons) and a metaphor (literally, ‘walls 

sharpen iron’).  But the metaphor in acuant seems to apply to exidium too in a kind 

of zeugma yoking two disparate objects (‘walls sharpen iron and destruction’).  Or 

the phrase means ‘they sharpen iron and sharpen it to the point of destruction of my 

people.’  Both meanings are present.  This sort of double reading is so common in 

Virgil as to go unnoticed by commentaries. 

Various translations show something of Virgil’s original, striking metaphor to 

remain: 

(Humphries 221) 
…behold what people  

Unite against me, what cities sharpen weapons 
Behind closed gates, intent on our destruction.   

 
 

(Ferry 252) 
How many nations now are gathered against me 
And sharpening their swords against my people.”  

 
 

(Knight, Aeneid 212) 
And see what nations gather, what walled cities have shut their gates and sharpen 
against me the blade which is to destroy my people!    

 
 

(Day Lewis 191) 
See, what people are mustering, what cities have barred their gates 
And are sharpening weapons against me, to exterminate those I love! 

 
 

(Sisson 217) 
  Look now, and see 

What nations are assembling and what cities 



 

22 
 

Behind closed gates are sharpening their swords 
Against me for the ruin of my people. 

 
 

(Mandelbaum 200) 
Just see what nations join, what cities shut 
Their gates and sharpen swords for me and mine. 

 
 

(Fitzgerald 243) 
Look now, and see what masses throng together,  
See what cities lock their gates and whet 
The sword against me, to cut down my own! 

 
 

(Johnston 180) 
  Look now at what forces are 

Gathering, at what cities are honing their weapons behind 
Gates closed for war, directed at me and the fall of my people. 

 
 

(Ahl 196) 
Look at those peoples coming together!  See how many strongholds 
Seal their gates tight, whetting blades to bring me and my loved ones to ruin. 

 
 

(Lombardo 202) 
See the nations mustering, the walled cities 
Whetting steel to destroy my people. 

 
 

(Fagles 254) 
  Look at the armies massing, 

Cities bolting their gates, honing swords against me 
To cut my loved ones down. 

 
 
To turn back in time, chronologically, here are Morris, Dryden, and Gavin Douglas: 
 
 

(Morris 204) 
Look round, what peoples gather now; what cities shut within 
Their barred gates are whetting swords to slay me and my kin.   

 
 

(Dryden 226) 



 

23 
 

Behold, what haughty nations are combin’d 
Against the relics of the Phrygian kind, 
With fire and sword my people to destroy, 
And conquer Venus twice, in conqu’ring Troy. 

 
 

(Gawin Douglas 387) 
Behald what people, lo! Assemblit been, 
What wallit towns, with yetts closit in teen, 
Grinds their weapons against me and mine, 
To bring us to destruction and ruin. 

 
I have tried to keep some of the boldness of the conception in Virgil: 
 
 

Consider who assembles there, what walls 
Against me file the iron, close gates 
And sharpen ruin for my people. 

 
 
 

B) Cleaning up variation 

Scholars describe the Virgilian sentence as parenthetical, additive and usually 

operating through theme and variation, where two expressions near each other convey the 

same idea but requir the reader to compare and resolve them (Martindale 247-8).  In the 

following example, a simile, there are three statements of nearly the same information 

with slight variation: 

• Vulcan suddenly received a flame that he is used to feel 

• A known warmth entered Vulcan’s marrow 

• The warmth ran thought Vulcan’s bones that had been made to totter 

or slip (by the warmth and a pun on his lameness) 

The simile is very condensed.  The basic sentence is: ‘the crack runs through clouds’ but 

the crack has three modifiers, and there are two ablatives which either add further 

description or offer circumstance or instrument.  The literal meaning of the whole 



 

24 
 

passage is: ‘That man suddenly received an accustomed flame, and the known warmth 

entered his marrow and ran through his tottering/slipping bones not otherwise than when 

sometimes a fiery crack having burst forth by means of thunder/when it thunders runs 

through clouds with glittering light.’ 

ille repente 
accepit solitam flammam, notusque medullas 
intravit calor et labefacta per ossa cucurrit,               390 
non secus atque olim tonitru cum rupta corusco 
ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos; 
 

 
Translations vary in quantity of detail and power of expression:  

 
(Humphries 221) 
The goddess flung her snowy arms around him 
In fondlement, in soft embrace, and fire  
Ran through him; warmth, familiar to the marrow, 
Softened his sternness, as at time in thunder  
Light runs through cloud.  She knew her charms…   

 
 

(Johnston 180) 
Vulcan feels the old flame growing; the well-known fires 
Burn and run through his bones, melting them – just as when, with a 
Roar of thunder, a bright flash of lightning breaks through the clouds. 

 
 

(Fitzgerald 243) 
And instantly he felt the flame of love 
Invading him as ever; into his marrow 
Ran the fire he knew, and through his bones,  
As when sometimes, ripped by a thunder peal, 
A fiery flash goes jagged through the clouds. 

 
 

(Mandelbaum 200) 
   At once 
He caught the customary flame; familiar 
Heat reached into his marrow, riding through 
His agitated bones – just as at times 
A streak of fire will rip through flashing thunder 



 

25 
 

And race across the clouds with glittering light. 
 
 
(Day Lewis 191) 
   Of a sudden 
He caught the familiar spark and felt the old warmth darting 
Into his marrow, coursing right through his body, melting him; 
Just as it often happened a thunderclap starts a flaming 
Rent which ladders the dark cloud, a quivering streak of fire. 
 
 
(Lombardo 202) 
He felt the familiar heat flash through his bones, 
 Like lightning splitting a thunderhead, 
 A crackling flash in the rumbling sky. 
 
 
(Ahl 197) 
He felt the same old flame flare up, the familiar hotness 
Surged through his bones’ very marrow and raced through his loosened 
Joints, just as sometimes a dazzling fracture of fire spurts brightness 
Clear through a cloud when it bursts from a brilliant explosion of thunder. 
 
 
(Sisson 217) 
 He felt the usual fire 
And the familiar heat entered his marrows 
And ran on till his bones seemed to be liquid; 
It was like lightning racing through the storm-clouds 
And bursting out with thunder. 
 
 
(Knight, Aeneid 212-3) 
And suddenly, as always, he caught the flame; the familiar glow penetrated into 
his marrow and sped down his quivering bones; like the lightning-crack which 
will sometimes dart gleaming and sparkling through storm-clouds bust apart by 
the thunder-flash. 
 
 
(Fagles 254) 
And suddenly he caught fire – the same old story, 
The flame he knew by heart went running through him, 
Melting him to the marrow of his bones.  As thunder 
At times will split the sky and a trail of fire goes 
Rippling through the clouds, flashing, blinding light –  
 



 

26 
 

 
(Connington; Grandsen 201-2) 
The wonted fire at once he feels: 
Through all his veins the passion steals, 
Swift as the lightnings’s fiery glare 
Runs glimmering through the thunderous air. 
 
 
(Morris 205) 
Sudden the wonted fire struck home; unto his inmost drew 
The old familiar heat, and all his melting bones ran through: 
No otherwise than whiles it is when rolls the thunder loud, 
And gleaming of the fiery rent breaks up the world of cloud. 
 
 
(Dryden 226) 
His bones and marrow sudden warmth inspire’ 
And all the godhead feels the wonted fire; 
Not half so swift the rattling thunder flies, 
Or forky lightnings flash along the skies. 
 
 
(Gawin Douglas 387) 
 ...that het fire slee 
Of love bekend anon receivit he. 
The natural heat into the merch did glide, 
Piercing the banes made soft in every side: 
Nae other wise than as sometime we see 
The shining broken thunder’s lichtning flee 
With subtle fiery streams thought a rift, 
Piercing the watery clouds in the lift. 

 
 
In my version I tried to keep the variation and keep the variety of modifiers all working 

together: 

A flame familiar to him, 
A known heat takes and roots his spine awake,   
And melting hidden bones, as when a crack 
Of fire will burst with thunder’s shining flash, 
At times a tear of running light in clouds. 

 
 
 

C) Cleaning up anacolouthon 



 

27 
 

Lastly, often the differences between English and Latin lead translators to 

smooth out breaks in thought.  In Vulcan’s speech to Venus, he is telling her that she 

need only ask and he will comply.  In fact, he could have helped Troy much more if 

she had only mentioned.  In the present case too, he is happy to grant Venus’s wish.  

He begins to say that he will do what he can with his skills, give whatever the arts of 

metallurgy can effect, but then he loses track and returns to his first words to Venus, 

namely why do you beg and plead for reasons.  The passage goes like this, with the 

breaks, or anacolutha, added for clarity: ‘And [whatever we might have done in the 

past at Troy] now if you are prepared (for) war and your mind has this intention, 

{break} whatever concern I am able to promise/send forth in my art/skill, what is 

possible to be made/done with iron or liquid electrum, how much avail fires and 

breaths [from bellows], {break} stop doubting your power by your praying.’ 

The sentence begins with a present condition protasis but the apodosis is 

never given (first break).  The sense is: ‘If you are sure you want this, I can help 

with all that my skill can do.’  Vulcan begins to enumerate the things he can do, 

each instance given in a more and more impersonal expression.  Then suddenly he 

breaks off into an imperative, having lost all patience.  There are no connectives, 

causal or temporal, and his impatient command returns to his first words quid causas 

petis ex alto (“why do you seek reasons out of the deep”).  Most translations 

establish some causal or temporal or logical fluidity where there are breaks 

indicating Vulcan’s mental state (see bold type). 

et nunc, si bellare paras atque haec tibi mens est,               400 
quidquid in arte mea possum promittere curae, 
quod fieri ferro liquidove potest electro, 



 

28 
 

quantum ignes animaeque valent, absiste precando 
viribus indubitare tuis.'  

 

(Johnston 180) 
If you are now preparing to 
Fight, and your mind is set on this, then I can promise 
Whatsoever careful skill my art allows – 
All that can be made from iron and molten electrum, 
All that fire and blasts from bellows are capable of – so  
Stop beseeching me or doubting your powers. 
 
 
(Fitzgerald 243) 
 If you are ready now 
To arm for war and have a mind to wage it, 
All the devoted craft that I can promise, 
All that is forgeable in steel and molten 
Alloy by the strength of a blast-fire – 
You need not beg me for these gifts.  Have done 
With doubting your own powers! 
 
 
(Mandelbaum 201) 
And now if you prepare for battle, if 
This war is what you want, then I can promise 
Whatever care is in my art, what can 
Be done by fire and steel, by bellows and 
Molten electrum.  Now do not entreat 
Me anymore or put your powers in doubt. 
 
 
(Day Lewis 191) 
And now, if your purpose is to make all ready for warfare, 
And effort that’s mine to give in the exercise of my craft, 
Whatever can be done with iron and molten alloys, 
All work of furnace and bellows – nay, plead no more; why need you 
Cast doubt upon your influence over me? 
 
 
(Sisson 217) 
 And now, if you want war 
And this is really what is on your mind, 
Whatever help I can promise through my skill, 
What can be done with iron or molten metals, 
What fire and bellows can achieve, I’ll do it, 



 

29 
 

So stop asking as if you doubted your powers. 
 
 
(Knight, Aeneid 213) 
So now, if you are making ready for war and such is your will, why, then, for any 
service which my craft can offer, for anything which can be made from iron or 
molten silver-gold, and for all might of the fires and the bellows-blast -- , give 
over begging, and doubting your own powers. 
 
 
(Ahl 197) 
Now, too, if you’re preparing to fight, and your mind is set in this way, 
I will extend my art to its fullest potential to lighten 
Your cares: whatever one can forge from steel or from molten electrum, 
Pushing the limits of bellows and fire, I’ll forge it.  But your begging 
Shows it’s your own power you doubt.  Stop it now! 
 
 
(Lombardo 202-3) 
Now, if your mind is set on war, 
All the care I can promise in my craft, 
All that can be done with iron or electrum, 
All that fire and air can avail – well, stop praying 
And just trust your powers.” 
 
 
(Fagles 254-5) 
 But now, 
If you are gearing up for war, your mind set, 
Whatever my pains and all my skills can promise, 
Whatever molten electrum and iron can bring to life, 
Whatever the bellow’s fiery blasts can do – enough!  
Don’t pray to me now.  Never doubt your powers. 
 
 
(Morris 205) 
And now if thou wouldst wage the war, if thus thy soul is set, 
Thy longing shall have whatsoe’er this craft of mine may lend; 
Whate’er in iron my be done, or silver-golden blend; 
Whatever wind and fire may do: I prithee pray no more, 
But trust the glory of thy might. 
 
 
(Dryden 226) 
And, if you now desire new wars to wage,  
My skill I promise, and my pains engage. 



 

30 
 

Whatever melting metals can conspire, 
Or breathing bellows, or the forming fire, 
Is freely yours: your anxious fears remove, 
And think no task is difficult to love.” 
 
 
(Gawin Douglas 388) 
And not, if thou thee graiths for to fecht, 
And thereto be thy mind set, I thee hicht 
All manner thing, with solist diligence, 
That may be wrought in my craft or science, 
Or yet me be forgeit in iron or steel, 
Or molten metal grave and burnished weel, 
Sae far as fire and wind and heich ingine 
Into our art may compass or divine. 
Therefore desist of they strength to have dreid, 
Or me to pray in ocht that thou has need; 
Am I nocht ready to fulfil thy behest? 
 

I have tried to retain the broken thought of Vulcan: 

But now, if war is your angle and intent 
Whatever I am able, how much avail 
The arts of iron and liquid running ore, 
How so much the fire and bellow blasts, 
Enough of prayers and doubts, now your strength 
As suppliant prevails.”   
 
 
 

4. Conclusion 

The various virtues and vices of these translations demonstrate the truth of 

Knight,’s observation that a translator can secure “some of the required correspondences, 

but certainly not all at once” (Roman 279).  I have tried to preserve some of the “poetic 

surprises” in Virgil by using poetic language in English (Knight, Roman 279), which is 

the way I could best address opposing demands and come in some small way or in some 

different light a little closer to Virgil’s poem.  Given these details of Virgil’s style and the 

history of literal translation in the modern era at the expense of poetical translation, I 



 

31 
 

thought it appropriate to attempt the poetical, keeping in mind the kinds of phrases Virgil 

most commonly uses.  The result is an English poem “founded on” Virgil (Knight, 

Roman 279).  Before this important question of translation and its loaded decisions, 

“whether the rendering is to be verbally accurate, or poetically like the original” (Knight, 

Roman 279), I risked the poetical, sadly aware how often I have failed, but not failing in 

my intention to evoke a side of Virgil that seems under-represented in modern 

translations.  

 

 

 



 

32 
 

 

II. CHAPTER 1: VIRGIL’S AENEID, BOOK 8, TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH 

VERSE 

 

From defensive heights Turnus runs the banners up 

And bellowing trumpets simultaneous resound, 

And Turnus claps his shield and snorting horse, 

And all of Latium’s mind alerted swears 

An agitated oath while a rout of youths 

Rages simultaneously there, whom chiefly 

Messapus led and Ufens and Mezentius 

Who ever flouted gods, and from the corners  

Of their land together herd auxiliary troops 

And fields are threshed of able-bodied husband- 

Men.  Off goes Venulus in embassy 

To ask great Diomedes’s city’s help 

By giving him the news: Aeneas stakes 

The Latin shore, says he’s the king the fates 

Demand, his Teucrians and fleet import 

Defeated gods, to him the people flock 

And multiply his praises throughout the land;   14 in Latin 

They ask, for Diomedes must clearer see 

Aeneas, for Latinus never fought at Troy:           



 

33 
 

What rigs the Dardan man begins to forge, 

What follows if fortune favors him. 

Aeneas, descendant of ancient Laomedon,  

On expanding tide of trouble, seeing all, 

Wavers, sways his quick mind side to side, 

Sifting, ponders pressing matters, his thought 

Scouts the regions of an argument, 

For, against, as when an agitated sun 

Reflected from the liquid in a jar, 

Or duplicate moon, strikes a maze 

Of coffers on the ceiling, light shoots, 

Quivers, plays along the distance here 

And there.   

It was night and later than 

When animals of those that fly or herd 

Weary sink in sleep.  Father Aeneas, 

His thoughts still spinning on the gloomy point 

Of war, by the river bank stretched himself 

Under the turning pole of gelid space, 

Released his rest throughout his limbs at last.  30 in Latin 

To him it seems the very god of that place, 

The mild ancient, Tiberinus river god 

Is rising up into the knitted poplar branches, 



 

34 
 

His bulk veiled with linen cape, his hair 

With rushes shadowed green and blue, seems 

To raise himself and speak and wick away 

The cares of Aeneas with his words:    35 in Latin 

‘O Sprung from race of gods, you return to us, 

You save from enemies, eternal Pergama 

Kept alive, you the gods of this very soil, 

Laurentian loam and Latin ground, 

Await you build a stable home amid 

Unwavering local gods; don’t shrink in fear 

From swollen threats of war, for wrath of gods 

Here gives place.  Don’t suppose your sleep invents 

Some empty dream; already now you find 

There under littoral oaks a giant sow 

Delivered new of thirty young; and white 

She’ll lie and at her teats her brood is white.   45 in Latin 

[A city here found, and rest from trials assured.] 

From that day of prodigy return  

Thirty years when Ascanius will found Alba, 

Of famous name.  This oracular song 

Of mine predicts assured no uncertain thing. 

Now learn in short the plan by which 

You extricate a victory from all 



 

35 
 

That presses you around: Arcadians, 

A people whose first step Pallas made,  

Allies on the move, following Evander and the signs  

To these shores, established here a city, 

Their chosen spot a mountain, the city called 

Pallenteum after father Pallas first; 

These apply assiduous war to the Latin people:   55 in Latin 

To these Arcadians appeal alliance, 

Join camp and pacts.  And I myself unknot 

The river bends and guide you by my banks 

So carried under oars you win the place 

Despite opposing currents.  Come, rise,  

Goddess-born son, offer prayers 

To Juno first thing the falling stars dawn, 

According to due rite and rise above 

Her threats and wrath with vows of suppliants. 

Your victory will pay to me all debt 

And honor, me you see with full influx 

Comb banks, cut through rich arable land, 

Most dear to sky whose blue and green I wear. 

My home is here, my headwaters rush 

The rivulets down from cities and heights.”     65 in Latin 

            He said.   



 

36 
 

The night and sleep abandoned Aeneas who 

On seeing light from atmospheric sun 

Arose and cupping river in his palms raised 

As ritual demands the water and his voice. 

“Laurentian nymphs, o nymphs who animate 

All rivers and you, O father Thybris, force 

Of holy current, progenitor, receive  

Aeneas, deflect away his last dangers. 

You, who wear the horn, ruler of Hesperian streams, 

My gifts, and always my offerings, will celebrate, 

Wherever you pool your spring waters that 

Have pitied us our baffled way, and from 

Whatever ground your beauty issues un- 

Surpassed, be near, intensify your force 

By simply being near.”  He spoke and chose 

A pair of ships, outfitted oarsman and 

Aligned remaining men in allied ranks.   80 in Latin 

But first behold, an eye-arresting sight: 

A sow and brood, their mass of blended white  

Shows through branches in the shore’s green 

Distance.  These Aeneas sacrifices to you, 

Greatest Juno, to you, standing at the altar 

Wielding rites, offering sow and whelps. 



 

37 
 

Thybris unstrings his slowing swells all night;  86 in Latin 

Reversing waters overlay a flat 

Expanding slick like a brimming pool 

So that oars slice resistless, free of strain. 

Auspicious cheers speed on the ships at which 

The waves marvel, the over-growing trees 

Marvel at the strangely shining, the shields, the keels, 

The bronze and paint make new swimming sounds, 

Slip through a grove of water trees imaged 

On the channel’s surface.  Their oars exhaust 

The day and night and gently thread a myriad of trees. 96 in Latin 

They see now wall and citadel and roofs 

Of houses scattered under sun mid-course, 

Hilltop houses of Evander’s minor holdings, 

Now the heights of Roman power equal to the sky, 

Toward which they faster prow and reach the city. 

It happened that day Arcadians, the king,  

And Pallas his son, accompanied by the best,  

The foremost youths and moneyless senate, give due 

To the son of Amphitryon and the gods 

In a stand of trees before the city, solemn, 

When they see strange prows and oars 

That lean in silent strokes, sleek boards 



 

38 
 

Slide into a cove beside the grove; the sight, 

Silent, sudden, starts them up; the feast  

Is lost, but Pallas forward bold himself 

Outrushed to forbid arrivers break the time 

Solemn and sacred, interposing spear from by 

The altar’s mound, atop of which he speaks: 

“Shipmen, what cause has driven you here 

To probe this unfamiliar stream?  Where aim?  113 in Latin 

What people, whence, what home?  With arms or peace?” 

He spoke.  Returns Aeneas voice from tall stern, 

Extending hand and peaceful olive branch. 

“A Trojan, born of Troy, a man with arms 

Now hostile to the Latins who slash at us 

With arrogant war, at us mere refugees.   

Evander we seek; to him let word report: 

A Dardan chief and chosen men have come 

To ask alliance and for arms.”  In awe 

At names so fabled young Pallas reverses words:  121 in Latin 

“Whomever you be, address in presence king 

Evander.  Disembark, approach our gods 

As holy guests.”  He welcomes Aeneas ashore 

And hand embraces hand a lingering shake. 

They mount the grove and leave the river behind. 



 

39 
 

Aeneas greets the king with friendly words: 

“O best of Greek-born men, god Fortune wished 

I stretch a suppliant’s branching prayer dressed 

In trailing fillets to you who are descended from  

A common stem sapped by the Atride house. 

I came myself, no fronting embassies, 

No fear or thought Arcadian chief who led 

The Danaans once would hate a Trojan man 

At sight, but risking virtue and holy verse 

Of oracular gods, related fathers and  

Your wide fame, these things have drawn  

Me to you joining cause acceptingly by fates.  133 in Latin 

Dardanus, father-founder, established Troy, 

Having reached the Teucrians by sail, ancestor born 

To Electra, child of Atlas, as Greeks give out, 

Great Atlas who uplifts the ethereal orb,   

But I, myself, this head I risk and come 

A suppliant to you and to your door. 

The Daunians vex you the same as us 

With bloody war, for they believe that if 

They squeeze us from the land they subject 

At a stroke Hesperia entire beneath 

Their rule and rule peninsular seas from north 



 

40 
 

To south.  Let us receive and give our trust. 

We have the courage for this war, both mind 

And heart, and youthful troops well seen in war.”  151 in Latin 

Aeneas had voice, the while Evander sets  

His eyes to limning mouth and face and looks 

That speak, his body up and down, at last 

Has some few words in answer thus: “Of all 

The Teucrians, you bravest, how I welcome you, 

How glad I recognize and recall 

The voice, the face of great Anchises, for I 

Remember him a guest at Salamis, 

The kingdom of his sister Hesione; 

He sought for Priam, son of Laomadon, 

Fresh from his visit to cold Arcadia.    159 in Latin 

The time was then first beards addressed my cheeks; 

I dwelt in awe of Trojan chiefs, in awe 

Of Priam, son of Laomedon himself, 

But most, in stature above the rest walks 

Anchises whom I longed my hand to join 

His hand in youthful ardor and to speak; 

I come forth at last, to lead the towering man 

Beneath the walls of Pheneus.  Departing he 

Gave such gifts to me, Lycian bolts and quiver, 



 

41 
 

A cloak inwrought with gold, and double bridles which 

Young Pallas now possesses.  Right hand meets  

Right hand allied, agreed, yours and mine. 

The moment tomorrow’s light returns itself 

To us and to the land I will speed 

You happy with my stores and welcome aid.   171 in Latin 

Til then, come, celebrate with us the rites 

We cannot postpone, auspicious arrival, 

A friend and guest at annual sacred rites; 

These tables of allies become your second home.” 

Evander thus; he orders interrupted feasts 

And cups be cleared and seats his men on grass, 

Himself on lion skin, and Aeneas on 

The throne of maple wood.  Chosen youths 

And altar priests bring meats and load the gifts 

Of Ceres worked with skill in baskets, 

And pour the wine of Bacchus, competing each 

With each until both guests, Aeneas and the Trojan youth, 

Are fed with abundant strips of roasted offerings.  183 in Latin 

After hunger and pleasure of food had met, 

King Evander spoke: “These acts, these feasts, 

Solemnities of custom and customary rites, 

This altar to so great a presence, divine 



 

42 
 

And efficacious, do not arise from superstition, 

Objectless awe, or dread, or ignorance 

Of ancient gods, no, these rituals mark 

Our salvation from savagery and peril, 

An offering of due, historic gratitude. 

There, eye that cliff which tumbles down with rocks; 

The distant hollow there, a den deserted,   

Around it scattered rocks, a hillside wreck. 

Within that hollow, hidden more, a cave 

Receding from the tensile rays of light,   

The home of Cacus, dire shape, half- 

Human; the ground there ever swamps with blood, 

His door and posts affixed with faces, pale 

And dangling rot; his arrogance thus  

Proclaims itself.  His father Vulcan, he 

A monster belching blackened fire, his bulk 

A great Vulcanic paunch.  One season, 

A point within a span of time, brought help   200 in Latin 

To our constant prayers, a god’s advent; 

The great avenger, son of Alceus, 

For Hercules showed up, leading cattle fresh 

From crushing Geryon, proud in herd 

And spoils, a victor, pasturing bulls around 



 

43 
 

These hills and rivers, now their home. 

These comely, irresistible bulls – so mad 

Was Cacus he could leave untasted, unpulled 

No morsel, no trick of wickedness and risked 

His very person, fury savaged so 

His mind, to steal these kine of surpassing trim.  

Which he dragged into his hollow by the tail, 

And made advance retreat and thieving tracks 

Unreadable to any who would read. 

The rustler holes up in his shady rocks.   212 in Latin 

The son of Amphitryon meanwhile starts 

To drive his pastured cattle from the field 

Homeward when they bellow out departure. 

Their moaning fills the grove and valley plaintively. 

From deep within the pouch a bellow flies: 

A sequestered cow returns a fellow voice 

And deceives the hopes of Cacus, the deceiving guard. 

This grievance fires Hercules with fury full 

Of black bile.  His hands fly to arms, 

His club dense with heavy knots and oak. 

He dashes forth, makes for the beetling cliff. 

Here first our eyes witnessed Cacus tremble, 

His dread and turmoil.  Faster than 



 

44 
 

The eastern wind he flees forthwith into 

His depths and den.  Fear fledges his feet.   224 in Latin 

When Cacus, once in his mew, enclosed himself 

By casting down immense rock chained up 

In irons with father Vulcan’s craftiness, 

And heaped and bolted shut the buttressed posts, 

Already, look, the man of Tiryns scans 

The scene, trying every access point, 

He rages up and down, poking in 

Head here and there, and gnashing teeth, his mind 

At peak of rage.  Boiling with wrath he doubles 

Around the Aventine Hill three times, three times 

He shoulders threshold stays, again as many 

Times sits him down mid-valley spent. 

Along the gorge (all sides are shattered rocks) 

There stands a spar of sharp basalt, solid,    233 in Latin 

Rising above the ridge of his cave, cloud-high 

To eyes below, a welcome home to 

The nests of filthy, omen-bearing birds. 

This rock which leaned leftward of the river  

Hercules, pushing from the right 

Struck, loosed, plucked the missile out 

From lowest roots, hurling it suddenly torn 



 

45 
 

Away, with impact such that highest air 

Thundered, river banks leap aside, 

The stream in terror lurches water up. 

The massy palace cave appears unroofed, laid bare 

His shadowy hollow, not unlike should earth, 

By some force unlocked reveal Hades’ seat 

And show pale kingdoms hated by the gods,  

A Gaping vision, immense abyss straight down,  

Where Manes tremble at light thrown in.   245 in Latin 

So Cacus caught by unexpected light 

And shuttered in his dented rock roars 

Outlandishly, as sudden Hercules 

Is on him pressing weapons, calling down 

All weapons handy, logs and branches; with 

Dense grinding boulders he give press 

Until escape from danger flees from Cacus 

And he takes to belching plumes of rotten smoke 

(Unbelievable to tell) and wraps his home 

In impenetrable dark born from his jaws. 

Condensing smoke walls the cave with clouds, 

A night of smoke shot through with sparks and fire. 

Intolerable to the mind of Hercules    256 in Latin 

This black cloud boiling noise and fumes; 



 

46 
 

He hurls himself with sprinting dash headlong 

Into the densest wave driving from the grot. 

Grabbing Cacus as he vomits void,    

Empty conflagration in the darkness, 

Hercules bears him with knotting arms,   

And strangling, his hold prolonged and clinging, last 

Throttles Cacus, whose eyes pop and throat 

Cinched dry of blood.  Forthwith the doors 

Lept back, the black abode, the stolen cows, 

The ravagement swearingly denied, all shown 

To the sky; the baggy carcass dragged 

Forth by the feet.  Who could have enough 

Of staring, hearts relieved yet terrified, 

The terrible eyes, his mug and chest uncouth 

With brambling hair, bristling semi-wild, 

The fires extinguished lately in his jaws.   267 in Latin 

From that time hence we’ve solemnized and made 

These rites of offerings.  Descendants now 

Still keep the happy day established first 

By one Potitius, founder and guardian 

Of the Pinarian house of sacred Hercules, 

By him was set the grassy altar of the grove, 

Whichever will be called and be to us 



 

47 
 

The greatest.  Wherefore, youths, in celebration 

Of such great glories praiseworthy, encircle 

With sprigs your hair, raise up right handed cups, 

Invoke the god we hold in common, pour 

The wine without the asking.”  He had voiced, 

When Herculean popular boughs had veiled 

Their hair with dappled sun and shade, the leaves 

Of poplar making interwoven bangs, 

And filled right hands with cups.  All happy they 

More eagerly libations poured and prayed 

Divinities.   

And Versper leans and nears 

In Olympus sky, already there as they 

Proceed, the priests and Potitius first, enwrapped 

In customary pelts; they carry flame.     282 in Latin 

A second table and feasting rites resumed, 

They bring these welcome gifts again and stack 

The loaded plates on second loaded altar. 

The Salii there are present encircling song 

And the offerings and the burnt altar, 

Who wear like poplar boughs.  And present too 

A chorus young and old, men to sing 

The praise and deeds of Hercules, how his 



 

48 
 

Two infant hands cinch twin snakes sent 

By stepmother Juno, squeezed life out; 

How the same man threw down Oechalia 

And Troy famous in war, and bore to the end 

Unyielding trials, countless, set by king 

Eurytheus, enforced and caused by fates 

Of arbitrary Juno.  “You, by hand, 

Unconquered one, you overcame by hand 

The cloud-born, mixed double bodied forms 

Of Centaurs, Hylaeus and Pholus both,  

You sacrificed the prodigy of Crete, 

And outsized lion under Nemean rock.   295 in Latin 

You sent all-trembling fear through Stygian lakes 

And through the guard of Orcus gate who beds 

On bones half-eaten in his bloody cave. 

No shape frightened you, no, not Typhoeus  

That tower of weaponry, nor Lernean snakes 

Enwrapping you in heady turmoil froze  

Your wits; to you our greetings, true offspring 

Of Jupiter, supplemental honor to    

Divinities; to us be present and 

To our rites, that we proceed auspiciously.’   

With hymns like this they celebrate,    303 in Latin 



 

49 
 

Eager to leave no point of Cacus out, 

His cave, his very bulk that breathed with fire   

These rituals performed they climb toward 

The city; with Aeneas at his side, 

Companion, king Evander, sown with age, 

Keeps close his son and on the way diverts 

Their walk with meandering converse. 

Aeneas marvels and swivels eyes on all, 

And brimming, smitten with the place, inquires 

Of each thing one by one and hears of men 

And earlier times.  Then king Evander speaks, 

The founder of the Roman citadel:    313 in Latin 

“Indigenous Fauns and Nymphs once called this home,  

A race of men born from fibrous oaks. 

For these no cultivated arts, no bounds 

Conventional, no knowledge yoking bulls, 

Nor to amass a surplus nor to store 

Spare grain, but fruit of branches and hard won food 

Of hunting nourished them.  This was the time 

When Saturn first appears in these lands, 

Olympian exile fleeing Jupiter, 

Whose filial weapons stole his kingship sky, 

And teaches the refractory and isolated  



 

50 
 

Clans to gather and have laws; promotes 

The name of Latium, having hidden here 

In margins safely.  This was the age called gold, 

In this calm peace Saturn ruled 

For centuries until unnoticeably slow 

A tarnished and declining age ensued, 

And war’s madness and insanity of greed.       327 in Latin 

A band of Ausonians came and Sicanians then 

As Saturn’s name, the habit of its use 

Faded; then came kings and rough Thybris vast  

In body, after whom we Italians call 

The river Thybris, later name among 

Names lost, like that of ancient Albula. 

Omnipotent fortune and unpersuadable fate 

Have planted me here, from fatherland pushed out,   

To follow farthest seas, here the god 

And author Phoebus with tremendous signs 

And warnings of Carmentis, mother, nymph.” 

He had hardly spoken thus, when next he points 

The altar out and gate which Romans call 

The Porta Carmentalis, honoring 

From old the nymph Carmentis, prophetess 

Who speaks the fates and spoke of how great 



 

51 
 

Aeneas becomes, how noble Pallentium.   341 in Latin 

From here he pointed a massive stand of trees, 

Which fierce Romulus retains to be    

Asylum, indicates the Lupercal 

Below the cold cave called by custom Pan’s, 

Lycaean Pan, the custom Parrhasian. 

As well he shows the Argiletum grove, 

Attests and teaches how to Argus guest 

The place is lethal.  Thence he leads toward 

Tarpeian bedrock and the Capitolium 

All golden now, then thick with forest brush. 

Already then the peasant farmers felt 

Religious awe and dread, fearful of 

The place, and quaked before the rocks and trees.  350 in Latin 

Evander spoke: “A god – which god unknown – 

Inhabits holte and leafy peak here where 

Arcadians say they see Jupiter himself 

With right hand shake the blackening pelt, 

The often aegis storming clouds.  These towns, 

Twin walls thrown down, you furthermore behold, 

Remains and monuments of ancient men. 

That citadel paternal Janus set      

And this was founded by Saturn, that 



 

52 
 

Ianiculum and this Saturnia once 

Had been and called.”   

With such words said 

Between themselves they mount up to the halls  

Of scant Evander seeing cattle low 

Scattered where the Roman Forum is 

And fashionable strip of Carinae now.   361 in Latin 

Upon arriving to Evander’s seat, he said 

“This threshold Hercules to entered stooped, 

A victor whom this palace overwon.     

Dare despise, o guest, riches, make 

Yourself likewise worthy of the god, 

And undespising come to this place of want.” 

Evander spoke and led Aeneas huge   

Beneath steeply culminating rooves, 

And settles him on bolsters stuffed with leaves 

And blankets of Libyan bear: night pours   

Embraces on the earth with wings obscure. 

But Venus knows substantial fear in threats 

Of Laurentian tumult hard to quell, which drives 

Her aim the harder on to Vulcan in 

Their marriage chamber; addressing him these words, 

Which breathe the divinity of her love, begins: 



 

53 
 

“Those years the Argive kings were razing Troy, 

Indebted Pergama set to fall to hostile fire, 

All those years I asked for no help, 

No weapons wrought by godly skill and brawn, 

Asked nothing, husband most dear, nothing for 

The downtrodden, no wish of mine to see 

Your efforts vain, although I was indebted much 

To sons of Priam, much, and wept the hard, 

Unyielding trials of my Aeneas much.   380 in Latin 

And now by Jove’s command Aeneas takes 

A stand on Rutulian shores; therefore I come, 

Same as I was, a suppliant now, to ask 

Of your divinity, sacred to me, 

A mother on her son’s behalf, for arms. 

The daughter of old Nereus, the wife 

Of Tithonus could both mold you with tears. 

Consider who assembles there, what walls 

Against me file the iron, close gates 

And sharpen ruin for my people.”   

She spoke, 

And now she fondles him suspended in  

Her soft embraces, arms divine and sleek  

This side and that.  A flame familiar to him, 



 

54 
 

A known heat takes and roots his spine awake,   

And melting hidden bones, as when a crack 

Of fire will burst with thunder’s shining flash, 

At times a tear of running light in clouds. 

Venus felt it, happy in her tricks, 

A wife conscious of her beauty’s power.   393 in Latin 

The father Vulcan chained by eternal love 

Speaks: “Why go fish for reasons?  Where has 

Your trust in me, divine one, fled?  If you 

Had been solicitous as then as now, 

No fates, no father omnipotent forbade 

To us to arm the Teucrians so that 

King Priam stand and live ten further years. 

But now, if you intent on war angle this, 

Whatever I am able, how much avail 

The arts of iron and liquid running ore, 

How so much the fire and bellow blasts, 

Enough of prayers and doubts, now your strength 

As suppliant prevails.”  These said, he gives 

Embraces wished and pours himself into  

The lap of Venus and there sought his sleep. 

As when initial rest of night breaks sleep, 

In middle course of dark when first awakes 



 

55 
 

The woman who endures the weaving life 

And thin Minerva’s art, by duty bound 

She wakes a groggy fire from ashen bed, 

The night’s further work; at dawn she makes 

The house and slaves thrum with the work of wool, 

To keep chaste the bed and raise the boys.   

Just so, no less dispatch, the god of fire 

Arises in like hour from softer sheets 

To work the ore.   

There is an island near  416 in Latin 

The flanks of Sicanian land and Aeolia 

Which steep Liparen pushed up a smoking rock; 

Under this thunder Aetnan caves, 

Hollowed by Cyclopean forges out, 

Corroded out by Cyclopean heat, 

Where mighty strokes on stithes are heard and groans 

Rebound reechoing, and ready ore 

Throughout the caverns hisses, fires pant 

In furnaces; this the house of Vulcan, 

These lands Vulcania called.  To here descends 

The fire-bending god and leaves the sky. 

The Cyclopes were working iron there, 

Brontes and Steropes and Pyragmon bare 



 

56 
 

To the waist, under the cave’s vast vault.   425 in Latin 

A thunderbolt was in the works, in part 

Already polished by their working hands, 

Of kind the father showers down from blue 

Onto the earth; to parts unfinished, three rays 

They add of storm cloud’s twisted strands, more beams  

Of drenching clouds and more red fire 

In fibers of the winging southern wind they add, 

But at that moment they were mixing in 

The terror-flash and clap of Fear and Wrath, 

A work of dogging flames.  In nearby nook   

They knead out Mars’ chariot and wheels 

By which the flying god wakes men up,  

By which he stirs the cities.  Vyingly 

They burnish in the aegis serpent scales 

Of gold, horrific weapon of Pallas when 

Disturbed; the interwoven snakes which shield 

The goddess on her breast, the Gorgon’s head, 

Whose turning eyes jut from the severed head, 

“Stop everything,” he said, “Aetna’s smiths, 

My Cyclopes, and stow your started work; 

A new job, attend: to forge the arms 

For a fierce man; now use your strength and deft 



 

57 
 

Dexterity in matercraftsmenship, 

Cast impediments away and sloth.”    443 in Latin 

He said no more but all apply the more   443 in Latin 

Alacrity to his request, and lots 

Make equal distribution of the work. 

Bronze flows in rivulets and golden ore 

And wound-causing ready iron melts 

In vast furnaces.  They shape the mass 

Of shield, one shield to face all Latin points, 

Embedding seven ply circle on circle;   

Some force the alternating breaths of bellows, 

The others sink the screaming bronze in pools.  

The cave groans with hammers laying on.   

Between them all their many rhythmic arms 

Pulse with heavy force and grapple and turn 

The weight with tongs.   

While on Aeolian shore  453/4 in Latin 

The god of Lemnos hurries on these tasks, 

The nourishing light and under humble eaves 

The morning songs of birds wake the aged 

Evander, who rising threads his tunic limbs, 

Encases foot and sole in Tuscan straps. 

He then ties under shoulder down his flank 



 

58 
 

Tegean sword and twists behind his back 

A panther skin hanging from his left. 

Twin dogs appear and run before their master, 

As he steps down from his hilltop home.  462 in Latin 

Remembering words from yesterday, his aid 

And offering, the hero seeks his guest, 

Aeneas, secluded in a private wing, 

Who as early rises.  The two approach companioned, 

To one Pallas his son, the other Achates, 

And join right hands.  They sit in middle hall 

And at last enjoy a lawful interchange. 

First the king: “ Greatest leader of the Teucrians, 

With you safe never will I own the cause 

And realm of Troy defeated.  Strength in us 

Is scant, for all our name, but meagre help 

In war to offer you.  From this side here 

The Tuscan river cuts us off; from there 

Rutulians press: our walls resound with bronze.  474 in Latin 

But I’m prepared to join to you a mass 

Of men and outposts stocked from royal stores, 

Protection unexpected, which fortune shows 

To you, who come at bidding of the fates. 

Not far from here, founded on an ancient rock 



 

59 
 

The city of Agylina, Lydian settlement, 

Inhabited by a people known for war, 

Who flourished on their Tuscan slopes for years; 

High-handed king then gripped them sore, the lout, 

Mezentius cruel and violent – why mention his 

Unspeakable acts of slaughter, why his deeds 

Tyrannical, savage?  May the gods return it all 

On his head and family, each and every act. 

Yes, he joined dead bodied to live, 

Hand together hand and face to face – 

This torment his signature and seal. 

He murdered thus with lingering death; flowing gore 

And rotten ooze, the miserable twins embrace. 

At last fed up the citizens took arms;    489 in Latin 

Surrounding him within his den whose rage 

Mounts to unspeakable acts, they volley fire 

Onto his roofs and slaughter every friend. 

But Mezentius escapes amid the blood, 

Into Rutulian land where Turnus his host 

Defends his safety with his arms and sway. 

With ready war, those citizens demand the king 

For punishment.  To this multitude I graft 

Your leadership; know our entire coast 



 

60 
 

Is buzzing with compacted fleets, whose ships 

Command the men to raise their flags.  What holds 

Them back?  An aged seer who speaks the fates:  499 in Latin 

‘O choice Maeonian youth, heroic bloom 

Of courage, righteous grief impels 

You on the enemy; Mezentius fires 

You with a justified wrath, but fates deny 

Italian leader aid and join so great 

A people: choose an immigrant.’  The Tuscan lines 

Of battle settled then on this plain, 

In terror of the warning of the gods. 

One Tarchon sent to me this kingdom’s crown 

And scepter, and entrusted war’s insignia, 

Through speeches of his legates, that I accede, 

And head the camps and all the Tuscan realm.  507 in Latin 

Old age in me, worn slow, cold 

By decades, hates to rule.  I would promote 

My son did not his Sabine mother mix 

A patrimony drawn from here.  But you,  

Whose years and heritage the fates approve,   

Whom godly powers call, o brave, proceed, 

O guide of Teucrians and Italians.    

This lad besides, our solace and sole hope, 



 

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Our Pallas I conjoin to you to learn 

From you endurance and the habits gain 

Of military service under you, 

His teacher, learn the heavy work of Mars, 

And see your deeds, admire you with his youth.  517 in Latin  

And I will add to him two hundred horse 

As many more will Pallas give as peers, 

The chosen mettle of Arcadian youth.” 

He’d hardly finished words, they held their gaze, 

Aeneas son of Anchises and trusted Achates, 

And ponder many difficult things with hearts 

Disheartened, had not Venus goddess of 

Cytherea shown sign in the open sky. 

For lightning sudden in vibrating air 

And sound cascades a sudden seeming fall 

In everything and peals of Tuscan horns. 

They look to sky; again the mountainous rumble, 

Again.  They see a set of armor set 

Amid the clouds in calm quarter of the sky 

And turning red in clarity and bright 

And rolling peals of thunder as if struck.   529 in Latin 

All were amazed but the Trojan hero knew 

The sound and promises of parentage  



 

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Divine and spoke: “Don’t ask, my friend, host, 

Of this display, what chance the portents tell. 

I am demanded by Olympus. 

The mother divine foretold that she would send 

This sign, if war break out, would bear as help 

Through air the weapons Vulcan made.  Alas, 

How great the slaughter that will overwhelm 

Laurentians miserably!  What price to me 

Will you pay, Turnus!  Many, father Thybris, 

How many shields and bodies of brave men 

And helmets will you roll beneath your waves! 

Let them demand the battle line and break 

The pacts.”   

When he gave forth those words, he raised 

Himself from the high throne and woke the fire 

That slept on altars to Hercules, 

Goes to delighted hearth and worship’s place 

Of yesterday, Penates low and Lar. 

Evander equally with him and youth 

Of Troy as equally make sacrifice 

Of chosen animals as custom holds.    545 in Latin 

And then from here he reunites with ships 

And comrades, chooses from the willing youth 



 

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To follow him in war the topping brave. 

Remaining men are borne downstream on flows   

Of lazy flats and favoring water down, 

A missive ship of news to Ascanius, 

Of recent deeds and future and father on his way.  550 in Latin 

The Teucrians heading for Tuscan fields 

Are given horses; to Aeneas they  

Give one above the rest, which tawny pelt 

Of lion saddles over and shining claws 

Of gold.   

Immediately abroad rumor flies 

Through settlement and city: Tuscan horse 

Are flocking to the palace of the king.   555 in Latin 

The fearful matrons pray in double time, 

And fear advances; the nearer dangers come 

More vivid now appear images of war. 

Evander clasps a right and lingering hand; 

As father weeping insatiably he says such things: 

“If only Jupiter would remake me 

Such as I was years past when I mowed down 

Front lines beneath Praeneste’s height, when I 

A victor set ablaze a heap of shields, 

And this right hand sent under Tartarus  



 

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The king Erulus and his triple souls, 

Which his Feronian mother gave at birth, 

His triple set of armor to be swung 

(Horrible to say), three times cut into death, 

And yet this hand reaped all those lives and spoil.  567 in Latin 

And so returned, I never would tear  

Myself from sweet embrace of you, my son; 

Mezentius would never cluck and spur 

To death with savage iron multitudes, 

As many dead as he voided the cities of, 

Nor insult this neighbor’s head of mine.   571 in Latin 

But you, o gods above, and you, I pray, 

O greatest ruler of divinities, 

Pity the Arcadian king and hear a father’s 

Prayers.  If your divine power, if fates 

Keep Pallas safe and save him back to me, 

If I will live to see us reunited, 

I pray for life and suffer and endure 

Whatsoever trials may come to me.    577 in Latin 

If you impend, o Fortune, some unspeakable turn, 

Now, o now, let me lawfully break from life, 

From cruel life, while hope obtains, while I 

Embrace you yet, dear boy, my only, late 



 

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Delight, lest worse news pierce my hears.”  These words 

The father pours forth at last departure. 

He collapsed, was carried into the house.   584 in Latin 

Already cavalry is halfway out 

The gate, Aeneas first, and faithful Achates, 

And other Trojan nobles; mid-column goes 

Pallas himself, conspicuous in cloak 

And painted armor, just as when the star 

Of Dawn, which Venus cherishes beyond 

The rest of firing stars, has lifted drenched 

In waves of Ocean his sacred face 

And dissolves the darkness in the sky.   591 in Latin 

The matrons stand on pale and fearful walls, 

And follow with their eyes a cloud of dust 

That shines with the bronze of the troops, which stretch 

Through thickets on toward the first goal of their way. 

A shout goes up when columns form and hooves 

Shake clod and ground in four beat time. 

There is a grove, expansive, shady, near 

The river of Caeres, held sacred anciently 

By fathers far and wide, enclosed all sides 

By hollow hills which lap the grove in furs. 

The rumor flies that ancient Pelagians 



 

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Preserve this stand and day as owed the god 

Silvanus, deity of cattle and field, 

Who held the Latin territory once.    602 in Latin 

Near this grove Tarcho and his Tuscan troops 

Held camp in safety.  From high hills the force 

Entire that snakes broad fields appears.  To here 

Aeneas arrived with youth select for war; 

They care for both tired bodies and their horse.   607 in Latin 

But Venus was present, amid the airy clouds, 

The shining goddess bearing gifts.  Far off  

She sees her son in fold of interval 

By cold and bounding stream secluded there.  611 in Latin 

“Behold my husband’s gifts, promised by his art 

And wrought.  Don’t doubt, don’t hesitate; demand 

But soon in battle arrogant Laurentines 

Or eager Turnus himself.”  Cytherea spoke 

And sought to embrace her son opposite whom 

She placed the glinting arms against an oak. 

Happy in the gifts of the goddess, in    617 in Latin 

The magnitude of honor, that man cast 

A wandering eye unquenchably around 

The shield, scene on scene; his wonder turns 

In hands, on limbs, the fate-bearing sword, 



 

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The helmet striking terror with its crest 

That vomits flames, and cuirass stiff with bronze,  

And blood-red, as when bluish clouds catch fire 

With rays of sun and shoot light far and wide;  623 in Latin 

In turn the greaves in smooth electrum cast, 

And spear and shield arrayed with figures bossed 

That wind about in ways beyond this craft. 

There he wrought the matter of Italy   626 in Latin 

And Roman triumphs, god of fire’s might, 

Who had his knowledge of the age to come, 

Not ignorant of prophets; there he wrought 

The entire family and future, stock and stem, 

Ascanius on down, and battles fought 

In order.  He’d there made the she-wolf 

Who’s lain down pregnant in the green 

Cave of Mars, her twin boys hang and play 

Around her udder; fearless mother licks 

And fondles them, the one, the other, neck 

Bent smoothly back to lick and form their limbs.  634 in Latin 

Not far from this he’d added Rome and games, 

Great gathering in hollow Circus seats 

For races and Sabine women snatched 

Away, all custom waved, and sudden war 



 

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Between the sons of Romulus and old 

Man Tatius and dour Curii newly breaks.   638 in Latin 

And after this the same kings standing armed 

Before the altars of Jupiter; 

Their struggles put aside, they offer wine 

From bowls and join in pacts, once the pig 

Was slaughtered up.  And near this he’d wrought 

Chariots each with four horses fast 

That pull in different ways Mettus apart 

(But Alban, you ought to have kept your word) 

And Tullus drags the liar’s guts through woods 

And spattered brambles shine with bloody dew.  645 in Latin 

Porsenna here was ordering Rome admit 

Expelled Tarquin and was squeezing siege 

With massive works on Rome; descendants of 

Aeneas on behalf of freedom rush  

Into swords; and here would you discern 

In likeness that indignant, threatening man, 

For Cocles dared pluck out the bridge; and here 

Cloelia, her chains asunder, swims the stream.  651 in Latin 

And here Tarpeian citadel and height 

With Manlius its guardian before 

The temple; he holds the lofty Capitoline 



 

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And new the Romulean bristling thatch  

Of palace gables.  Here the silver geese 

In golden colonnades sing warning that 

The Gauls attain the doorstep; present there 

And through the thickets present here, they hold 

The citadel, for darkness and the gift  

Of night’s opacity protected them.    658 in Latin 

The Gauls sport long and golden hair and cloaks 

All golden, shining, striped, and milky necks 

Enwrapped with golden torques and Alpine spears; 

They brandish these two to a hand, their long 

Shields front their bodies.  Here he’d hammered out 

The leaping Salii and naked Luperci 

With fleecy hats and there the buckler which 

Had fallen from the sky; chaste matrons lead 

The sacred rites in city litters soft. 

Removed from here he added Tartarus,   666 in Latain 

Deep seat and gates of Dis and punishment 

The wicked meet; you, Catilina, here 

From beetling cliff hanging, trembling face 

The visage of the Furies; pious souls 

Are set apart and Cato gives them laws.   670 in Latin 

Between these scenes the image of the sea, 



 

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Brimming gold, spreads across the width, 

Cerulean, and white with surging breakers foams; 

Bright silver