The Aeneid by Robert Fagles Virgil, Bernard Knox Page A

know.”
Cupid leaps at once
to his loving mother’s orders. Shedding his wings
he masquerades as Iulus, prancing with his stride.
But now Venus distills a deep, soothing sleep
into Iulus’ limbs, and warming him in her breast
the goddess spirits him off to her high Idalian grove
where beds of marjoram breathe and embrace him with aromatic
flowers and rustling shade.
Now Cupid is on the move,
under her orders, bringing the Tyrians royal gifts,
his spirits high as Achates leads him on.
Arriving, he finds the queen already poised
on a golden throne beneath the sumptuous hangings,
commanding the very center of her palace. Now Aeneas,
the good captain, enters, then the Trojan soldiers,
taking their seats on couches draped in purple.
Servants pour them water to rinse their hands,
quickly serving them bread from baskets, spreading
their laps with linens, napkins clipped and smooth.
In the kitchens are fifty serving-maids assigned
to lay out foods in a long line, course by course,
and honor the household gods by building fires high.
A hundred other maids and a hundred men, all matched in age,
are spreading the feast on trestles, setting out the cups.
And Tyrians join them, bustling through the doors,
filling the hall with joy, to take invited seats
on brocaded couches. They admire Aeneas’ gifts,
admire Iulus now—the glowing face of the god
and the god’s dissembling words—and Helen’s gown
and the veil adorned with a yellow acanthus border.
     
    But above all, tragic Dido, doomed to a plague
about to strike, cannot feast her eyes enough,
thrilled both by the boy and gifts he brings
and the more she looks the more the fire grows.
But once he’s embraced Aeneas, clung to his neck
to sate the deep love of his father, deluded father,
Cupid makes for the queen. Her gaze, her whole heart
is riveted on him now, and at times she even warms him
snugly in her breast, for how can she know, poor Dido,
what a mighty god is sinking into her, to her grief?
But he, recalling the wishes of his mother Venus,
blots out the memory of Sychaeus bit by bit,
trying to seize with a fresh, living love
a heart at rest for long—long numb to passion.
Then,
with the first lull in the feast, the tables cleared away,
they set out massive bowls and crown the wine with wreaths.
A vast din swells in the palace, voices reverberating
through the echoing halls. They light the lamps,
hung from the coffered ceilings sheathed in gilt,
and blazing torches burn the night away.
The queen calls for a heavy golden bowl,
studded with jewels and brimmed with unmixed wine,
the bowl that Belus and all of Belus’ sons had brimmed,
and the hall falls hushed as Dido lifts a prayer:
“Jupiter, you, they say, are the god who grants
the laws of host and guest. May this day be one
of joy for Tyrians here and exiles come from Troy,
a day our sons will long remember. Bacchus,
giver of bliss, and Juno, generous Juno,
bless us now. And come, my people, celebrate
with all good will this feast that makes us one!”
     
    With that prayer, she poured a libation to the gods,
tipping wine on the board, and tipping it, she was first
to take the bowl, brushing it lightly with her lips,
then gave it to Bitias—laughing, goading him on
and he took the plunge, draining the foaming bowl,
drenching himself in its brimming, overflowing gold,
and the other princes drank in turn. Then Iopas,
long-haired bard, strikes up his golden lyre
resounding through the halls. Giant Atlas
had been his teacher once, and now he sings
the wandering moon and laboring sun eclipsed,
the roots of the human race and the wild beasts,
the source of storms and the lightning bolts on high,
Arcturus, the rainy Hyades and the Great and Little Bears,
and why the winter suns so rush to bathe themselves in the sea
and what slows down the nights to a long lingering crawl . . .
And time and again the Tyrians burst into applause
and the Trojans took their lead. So Dido, doomed,
was lengthening out the night by trading