Receive, Dardanian, the song of dying Elissa; | |
What you read from me are the final words I have read. | |
As, when the fates call, cast down among damp plants, | |
The white swan sings on the streams of the Maeander, | |
And not that I hope to move you by my prayer, | 5 |
So do I speak: I have said these things, even though God is contrary. | |
But since I have undeservedly lost my good name | |
And my body and my chaste soul, it is nothing to lose words. | |
But you are determined to go and to leave behind an unhappy Dido, | |
And the same wind that blew your ship away, also blew away your faith. | 10 |
You are determined, Aeneas, to untie your ships along with you promises | |
And to pursue some Italian kingdom, you know not where. | |
And neither a new Carthage nor its rising battlements | |
Nor the supreme power handed over to your command moves you. | |
You flee what's done, you seek out what is to be done. Throughout the world | 15 |
You go to find one land, another you have already found. | |
Suppose you find this land: who will give it over to you that you might have it? | |
Who will give over their fields to be controlled by nobodies? | |
Another love is to be held by you, and another Dido | |
Whom you will again betray, with another promise. | 20 |
When will you build a city as good as Carthage | |
And when will you look down on your people from a high citadel? | |
Suppose all these things happen and the gods do not hinder your prayers, | |
Where will there be a wife for you who will love you as I do? | |
I burn like wax-covered torches covered in sulfur; | 25 |
Like holy incense added to smoky funeral pyres. | 25a |
Aeneas will always be firmly fixed in the eyes of her who watches for him, | 25b |
Both night and day bring back Aeneas to her mind. | |
But he, ingrate and deaf to my gifts | |
And one whom I would wish to be without--if I were not a fool. | |
Yet I do not hate Aeneas, although he has wicked intentions, | |
But I complain against his infidelity and, having complained, I love him more. | 30 |
Venus, have pity on your daughter-in-law and, brother Amor, embrace | |
Your hardhearted brother; let him fight in your army. | |
But he whom I began to love -- for I do not deny it -- | |
Supplies the cause for my grief. | |
I deceive myself and that image beats back and forth before my deceived eyes: | 35 |
He diverges from the natural inclination of his mother. | |
Rock and mountains and oaktrees native to high cliffs, | |
Fierce wild beasts gave you birth, | |
Or the sea, such as you now see beaten, like yourself, by the winds: | |
Where are you preparing to go against opposing waves? | 40 |
Where are you fleeing to? Stormy weather blocks the way. May the friendship of the storm do me good! | |
Notice how Eurus whips up the turbulent waters. | |
What I would have preferred for you, you rush to obtain without me. | |
Wind and waves are more just than your spirit. | |
I am not so important, that you will not leave off, traitor, | 45 |
So that you perish, while you flee from me across the broad seas. | |
You occupy yourself with a too costly and unchanging hatred | |
If, while you are away from me, dying is of no worth to you. | |
Now that the winds and the waves, made uniformly smooth, are dying down | |
Triton rides through the sea on his sea-green horses. | 50 |
Would that you also might be as changeable as the winds, | |
And you will be -- unless you exceed the oak in hardness. | |
What if you were not to know what the raging sea can do? | |
Do you so little trust the waters you have so often experienced? | |
Suppose, at the sea's persuasion, you even loosen the cables -- | 55 |
Many sorrows still does the wide sea contain. | |
There is no advantage for those testing the sea to have broken faith: | |
That place exacts penalties for perfidy, | |
Especially when love has been hurt, because the mother of Love | |
Was said to have been born naked from the waters of Cythera. | 60 |
Lost, I fear that I may lose, or injure him who injures me, | |
And not that my enemy, shipwrecked, will drink the waters of the sea. | |
Live, I pray! It is better that I lose you in that way than by your death,-- | |
May you rather be thought the cause of my death. | |
Imagine, do!, that you are caught by a sudden whirlwind-- | 65 |
May there be no power in the omen -- what will be in your mind? | |
The perjuries of your lying tongue will immediately rush forward | |
And Dido will be forced to die by Phrygian deceit; | |
The image of your deceived wife will stand before your eyes | |
Sad and bloodstained, with scattered locks. | 70 |
Whatever it is, "This much," you may say, "I have deserved depart!" | |
And the thunderbolts which strike you will think have been sent against you! | |
Give a brief space to the sea's madness--and your own; | |
A safe path will be the grand prize for your delay. | |
And have no anxiety about me; cease for the sake of you son Julus! | 75 |
It is enough that you can claim credit for my death. | |
What does you son Ascanius, what do the Penate gods deserve? | |
Will waves drown gods that were snatched from the flames? | |
But you do not carry them with you nor do the sacred objects and your father | |
Weigh down your shoulders, as you, liar, boasted to me. | 80 |
You lied about everything; for your tongue does not begin to deceive, | |
Deceiving us, and I am not the first to be afflicted: | |
If you ask where the mother of lovely Julus may be -- | |
She died, left behind, alone, by her stony-hearted husband. | |
You told me these things, but to move me to sadness. | 85 |
Therefore your punishment will not be as much as your guilt deserves. | |
There is no doubt in my mind that your own gods damn you: | |
Over sea, over lands a seventh winter hurls you. | |
I received you, cast up by the waves, into a safe harbor | |
And, barely having heard your name, I handed over my kingdom. | 90 |
Yet I wish that I had been content with these services | |
And that the report of my sleeping with you had been buried! | |
That was a harmful day, in which a dark storm, | |
With its sudden downpour, forced us into the sloping cave. | |
I had heard voices, I thought nymphs were warbling. | 95 |
The Furies marked the signposts for my fate. | |
Exact penalties, betrayed modesty!, and do not let the violated vows | |
Of the marriage bed nor my reputation be preserved for my ashes! | |
And you, my own angels, and the spirits and ashes of Sychaeus, | |
To whom I go full of shame and misery. | 100 |
Sychaeus was honored as sacred by me in a noble sanctuary; | |
Intertwined Branches and white fleeces cover it. | |
Here I felt myself summoned four times by a familiar voice; | |
It spoke in a quiet tone: "Elissa, come!" | |
There is no delay; I am coming, I am coming, your own devoted wife, -- | 105 |
But I am yet held back by my lost modesty! | |
Pardon my fault; its capable author deceived me; | |
He removes the ill-will due for my offense. | |
His goddess mother and aged father, the pious burden of a son, | |
Gave me hope of a husband who would stay with me. | 110 |
If there had to be fall into error, it was an error that had honorable causes. | |
Add to it only faithfulness, and there would not have been any need for regrets. | |
The curse of fate, which existed before, lasts to the end | |
And accompanies the final events of my life: | |
As my slaughtered spouse falls at the Tyrian altars | 115 |
And my brother receives the reward for his great crime, | |
I am driven off, an exile, and I leave the ashes of my husband and my homeland, | |
And I am driven along hard paths with enemies at my heels; | |
I am brought to unknown peoples, having escaped both my brother and the sea; | |
I gain the shore, which I gave you, traitor. | 120 |
I built a city and erected walls spreading out far and near, | |
Walls raising the envy of its neighbors. | |
Wars are ready to break out. A stranger and a woman, I am threatened by wars, | |
And am scarcely able to prepare the rough gates of my city and my weapons. | |
I have pleased a thousand wooers, who have joined together in their complaints | 125 |
That I have preferred I know no whom to their marriage beds. | |
Why do you hesitate to hand me over in chains to the Gaetulian Iarbas? | |
I would surrender my arms to your crime. | |
There is also my brother, whose impious hand, stained | |
With the blood of my husband, demands also to be spattered with mine. | 130 |
Put down your gods and those sacred objects which you profane by touching! | |
Your impious right hand does not rightly reverence the heavenly gods. | |
If you were about to become a priest of those who escaped the fire, | |
The gods would regret having escaped the fires. | |
Perhaps also, you criminal, you leave Dido pregnant | 135 |
And part of you lies hidden, shut up in my body. | |
A wretched infant will emulate the fate of its wretched mother, | |
And you will cause the death of one not yet born. | |
And along with his mother the brother of Iulus will die, | |
And one torment will carry two away joined together. | 140 |
"But a god orders me to go!" I wish he had forbidden you to come | |
And the Punic earth had not been trod upon by Trojans. | |
At this god's command, I'm sure, you are being battered by wicked winds | |
And you wear away the slowly passing time in a rushing sea. | |
Pergama (the Trojan citadel) would scarcely have had to be sought out again by you | 145 |
With such great labor if it had been as great while Hector was alive. | |
You do not look for your native Simois, but for the Tiber's waves; | |
Suppose you arrive where you wish, you will be nothing but a stranger. | |
And since a safe path lies concealed from your ships, | |
The land you seek will hardly be achieved by the time you're an old man. | 150 |
So, without any ambiguity about the terms, accept as my dowry this people | |
And the wealth of Pygmalion carried off (by me). | |
Convert Ilion into a Tyre, a more blessed city | |
And hold the place you already rule and its sacred scepter! | |
If your mind is set on war, if Iulus seeks, | 155 |
Where he might go triumphing, begotten by his own Mars, | |
One whom he might conquer, we will find an enemy so that nothing may be wanting; | |
Here the laws of peace, this place embraces the weapons of war. | |
??? If only it had been you -- because of your mother and your brother's shafts, his arrows, | |
And because of the companions of your flight, the Dardanian holy objects, the gods! -- | 160 |
Thus they might win victory, those whatevers you are bringing back from your people, | |
Fierce Mars may also set the limit to the damage you do | |
And Ascanius may live out his years in happiness | |
And the old bones of Anchises rest softly! -- | |
Spare, I beg, the home which gives itself up to be possessed by you! | 165 |
What crime have I committed except to have loved? | |
I am not a Phthian and descended from great Mycenis (i.e., Iphigenia), | |
Nor have both my husband and father stood against you. | |
If you are ashamed of me as a wife let me not be called spouse but house-guest; | |
While Dido is yours, she will bear to be anything at all. | 170 |
The seas which beat against the African shore are known to me; | |
At times they offer, and at times refuse, passage: | |
When the breezes will offer passage, you will surrender your sails to the winds; | |
Now slippery seaweed holds your vessel, thrown up on the shore. | |
Leave it to me, that I might watch for the right time: you will go more confidently | 175 |
And I myself will not allow you to remain, if you wish it. | |
And your companions demand rest and your tattered fleet, | |
Half-repaired, requires a short respite. | |
We will be indebted to you for what we deserve, and if at all more, | |
I beg a little time because there was some hope of marriage. | 180 |
When the seas grow calm and when love balances the lessons of experience, | |
I will learn to be able to suffer sorrows bravely. | |
If that doesn't happen, I am determined to pour out my life; | |
You will not for long be able to be cruel toward me. | |
I wish that you could see how the one who writes this appears; | 185 |
I am writing with your Trojan sword lying in my lap; | |
And from my cheeks the tears drip down upon the drawn sword, | |
Which soon will be stained with blood instead of tears. | |
How well your gifts are fashioned for my fate! | |
You adorn my sepulchre at very little expense. | 190 |
And my breast is not now being pierced for the first time by a weapon of yours: | |
That place already bears the wound of your fierce love. | |
Anna my sister, my sister Anna, sad confidante of my sin, | |
Soon you will give to my ashes their final gifts, | |
And, consumed by the funeral pyre, I will not be accounted "Elissa, wife of Sychaeus." | 195 |
Yet this song will be on the marble of my tomb: | |
"Aeneas provided both the reason for my death, and the sword. | |
Dido fell, struck down by her own hand." |