Ovid's Heroides: Dido to Aeneas

Translation and Overview

An extensive amount of the work of the Roman poet Ovid has come down to us today. His ‘Heroides’ are a series of poems that use the metre of elegaic couplets and take the form of letters written by women expressing grievances to their male lovers in Greek and Roman mythology. Letter seven is the epistle of Queen Dido of Carthage to the Trojan prince Aeneas, who came to Africa’s shores after fleeing Troy and being shipwrecked. Aeneas became Dido’s lover, before choosing to abandon her to sail to Italy where he was destined to establish the precursor of the Roman realm. Devastated, Dido then committed suicide. The story itself is best remembered in Virgil’s epic Aeneid.

I came across Ovid’s epistle in more recent times while reading the Historia Romanorum (“History of the Romans”), which is essentially the second volume of 13th-century Toledan archbishop Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada’s ‘History of Spain’ project. The primary purpose of that volume is to explain how the Romans contributed to the series of invasions and calamities that befell Spain, and includes an account of how the Romans came to be. While it is an interesting question about whether Virgil and/or Ovid thought that Aeneas actually met Dido, Rodrigo treats the story as historical fact and even tries to situate it in parallel with Biblical chronology, citing Ovid’s poem as evidence of Dido’s pleading and address to the Trojan hero! Here I provide my translation of the poem (generally close to the Latin text, but also readable) together with annotations. The poem reflects Dido’s wild sways of emotion as she eventually resolves to commit suicide. The edition of the Latin text used is that contained in Corpus Poetarum Latinorum (ed. William Sidney Walker, 1840).

I would like to dedicate this post to my friend Jerome Drevon, the most recent paying subscriber to this publication and author recently of a new volume on Syrian jihadists and how they have related to politics over the course of the civil war there. The book is published by Oxford University Press and is open access here. I have had the great pleasure of knowing Jerome for a number of years and have always appreciated his feedback on my own.

Epistle VII
Dido to Aeneas

Where the fates call, cast away in the wet grassland,
The white swan thus sings for the marshes of Meander.[i]
And I do not address you because I hope you can be swayed by our entreaty:
We[ii] have begun these words with a god in opposition to us!
But since I have badly lost my merits, fame, body and chaste mind
It is a small thing to waste away my words.
You are nonetheless certain to go, and abandon poor Dido,
And the same winds will carry away the sails and the promise you made to me.
You are resolved, oh Aeneas, to set sail together with the pact we made:
And to seek out your kingdom of Italy, even though you do not know where it is.
You are touched by a new Carthage, nor a growing city,
Nor a position of supreme authority handed over to your sceptre.
You are fleeing realities, and seek out things to be done.
One land is to be sought throughout the world, another has already been sought by you.
Who will hand you a land to possess so that you can find it?
Who will give their tracts of land to be held by strangers?
You must acquire the love of another, and another Dido:
You must give another promise so that you can break it again.
When will you establish a city like Carthage,
And see your peoples from on high while on your citadel?
From where will you have a wife who will thus love you,
So that everything will turn out successfully, and your wishes do not hold you back?
I am burning, as when sulphur has been added to a wax torch,
As when pious frankincense has been added to the smoky hearths.
Aeneas clings to my eyes while I always stay awake,
And the night and the day bring back Aeneas to my mind.
Indeed he is ungrateful, and deaf to my gifts.
And if I were not foolish, I would like to be rid of him.
Nonetheless, I do not hate Aeneas, however bad his thinking is:
But rather I complain of his infidelity, and having complained I am a worse lover.
Spare, oh Venus, your daughter-in-law,[iii] and embrace your harsh brother,
Oh Brother Love: let that man serve in your camps.
Or may the one whom I first loved in our relationship (I do not disdain having done so)
Provide real requital for my care.
I am deceived, and this image falsely torments me.
That Aeneas is at odds with his mother’s character.
You were begotten by the rocks, mountains,
The innately-strong high cliffs, the wild beasts,
Or the sea, such as you see is now also being stirred by the winds.
Even so, you are preparing to embark upon it, despite the adverse waves.
Whither are you fleeing? Winter stands in your way. May the grace of winter benefit me.
Look how the east wind rouses the tossing waters.
I would prefer this for you: that you should be destined for the storms without me.
The wind and wave are more just than your mind.
I am not worth so much that you should perish (although you deserve to, unjust one)
While you flee from me via the long straits of the sea.
You keep yourself busy with costly grudges, and constancy is highly esteemed by you,
If dying is a cheap thing for you as long as you do not have me.
Now the winds will put the conditions in place, and with the wave equally laid low,
Triton[iv] will run along the sea with his blue chariots.
If only you were also changeable with the winds,
And you will be, unless you overcome your strength with your harshness of heart!
What? Do you not know what the mad seas are capable of?
How often do you misplace your trust in the water you have tested!
While you also undo the holdings of the ship as the sea urges you to do so,
The wide ocean nonetheless has many sorrows in store.
For those who test the waters, it is no benefit for them to have violated their promise.
That place demands punishments for perfidy,
Particularly since Love has been hurt: for Love’s mother
Is said to have been born naked in the waters of Cythera.[v]
I fear that I will lose what has been lost, or harm the one who brings harm;
And that the ship-wrecked enemy will drink the waters of the sea.
Live I pray: thus I will lose you better than through your death.
You should rather be called the cause of my own demise.
Come on, suppose you get caught in a rapid whirlwind (may there no weight in this omen):
What plan will you have for that?
The false oaths of your lying tongue will immediately upon you,
And Dido has been driven to death by your Phrygian trickery.[vi]
The gloomy image of your deceived wife will stand before your eyes,
Bloodstained with her hair spread out.
You should at least say: “Whatever it is, I have deserved it all.”
And you should think that the lightning bolts that will fall have been sent against you.
Give a small space to your cruelty and that of the sea.
The grand reward for your delay is a safe path in the future.
May I not be spared; may your boy Iulus be spared.[vii]
It is sufficient that you should be the reason for my death.
What has the boy Ascanius deserved, what have the household gods deserved?
The wave will bury the gods snatched away from the fires.
But you do not carry with you or throw away what is mine, perfidious one.
The sacred rites and your father have weighed upon your shoulders.
You lie about everything: for deception with your tongue did not begin with us,
And I am the first to have been afflicted by it.
If you should ask where the mother of handsome Iulus is:
She has perished, abandoned in her loneliness by her harsh husband.
You had told me these things. They did not move me.
Burn me: I deserve it. The punishment to come is less than my fault.
I have no doubt in my mind that your gods will damn you.
Throughout the sea, throughout the lands, the seventh winter tossed you about.[viii]
I received you at a safe stopping point after you were cast out by the waves,
After barely having heard well of your name, I gave you a kingdom.
Would that I had only been content with these duties:
And that the renown of our union had been buried for me!
That day was harmful, when the sudden rain-shower from the sky
Drove us into a cave on a slope.
I had heard a voice: I thought that the nymphs had howled.
The Furies gave the signal to my fate.[ix]
Oh defiled chastity, exact justice for Sychaeus[x] whom I transgressed against:
To whom I now go, full of shame (woe is me!).
Sychaeus was consecrated by me in the marble temple,
Laid foliage and white fleeces cover him.
From here I felt that I was being called four times by a known voice:
He said in a soft sound: “Elissa,[xi] come!”
There is to be no delay now: I come, I come as the wife who is rightfully yours.
But nonetheless I come late with the shame of my crime.
Grant mercy for my fault; the resourceful instigator of it deceived me.
He detracts from the odium of my sin.
His goddess mother, his elderly father and the bundle of compassion in his son
Gave me hope of a husband who would rightfully remain.
If there was to be error, that error was the result of honest mistakes.
Add trustworthiness: there will be no cause for displeasure about that:
It lasts to the end, and the course of our fate that was there before
Follows us till the very end of our life.
My husband was slaughtered at the altars in the temple and thus perished:
And his brother has the punishment due for such a great crime.
I was driven away as an exile, and I left my husband’s ashes and my country
And I was borne away upon harsh routes, while my enemy pursued me.
I was driven to unknown realms, and after escaping my brother and the sea
I bought this shore that I gave to you, oh perfidious one!
I established a city, and I placed walls that extended far and wide,
A source of envy for the neighbouring localities.
Wars raged: as a foreigner and woman, I was tested by them.
I hardly prepared the city’s rudimentary gates and arms.
I was pleasing to a thousand suitors, who met with me, complaining
That I had preferred someone else to their own bed-chambers.
What? Do you hesitate to hand me in chains to Iarbas the Gaetulian?[xii]
I should lend a hand for your crime.
There is also a brother, whose hand could be sprinkled with our blood,
Having already been splattered with my husband’s blood.
Set up your gods’ altars and their sacred rites, so you can profane them with your touch.
Your impious right hand does not worship the heavenly beings well.
If you were to be the worshipper of those altars that escaped from the fire,
Then those gods regret having escaped from the fires.
Perhaps you are also abandoning a pregnant Dido, oh wicked one,
And a part of you is lying hidden within my body.
A wretched child will be added to the mother’s fate,
And you will be responsible for the death of a child not yet born,
And Iulus’ brother will die with his parent
And one punishment will take away the two of us bound together.
But a god orders you to go. How I wish he had forbidden you to approach,
And that the Punic[xiii] soil had not been set upon by the Trojans’ feet!
Certainly with this god guiding you, you will be driven by unjust winds
And you will waste a lot of time on the rapid straits of the sea.
Pergamum[xiv] should hardly be sought out by you again through such great toil,
If it were as great as it was while Hector was still alive.
Nor do you seek your father’s Simois,[xv] but rather the waves of the Tiber.
Certainly, you will be a guest when you reach where you want to be.
And as this land lies hidden, and hidden away it evades the notice of your boats,
You will hardly come upon your sought out land even when you are an old man.
Rather, lay aside this labyrinth and accept this people of mine as a gift,
And the wealth of Pygmalion that I brought over.
With great felicity, transfer Ilium[xvi] to the Tyrian city.[xvii]
And have this place as your kingdom, as well as its sacred sceptres.
If your mind is eager for war, if Iulus is asking
From where will triumph come that is to be brought about through his waging war,
We will provide an enemy for him to overcome- lest anything should be lacking.
This place has laws of peace, and it has arms.
But you- through your mother, your brother’s weapons and arrows,
Your companions of flight, the Dardan sacred rites, and gods,
Those of your people you carry away- may they overcome.
May that sort of savage warfare also be the limit of your losses.
And may Ascanius happily spend his years,
And may the bones of the old man Anchises have a gentle rest.
Spare, I beseech, the home that hands itself over to your possession.
What crime do you say I have committed, except to have loved you?
I am not a Phthian woman,[xviii] and I have not originated from great Mycenae:[xix]
Nor did my husband and father commit transgression against you.
If you are ashamed of me as a wife, I will not be called your spouse, but hostess.
She will tolerate being anything, so long as she is your Dido.
The waves that crash upon the African shore are known to me:
At certain times, they grant the way, and at other times, they deny the way.
When the breeze grants a way, you will put your sails to the winds.
Now light seaweed holds the cast-out boat.
Order me to observe the time; you will go with more resoluteness:
And I will not let you stay, if you wish to do so.
And your companions demand rest, and the wrecked fleet
Still half-repaired demands a slight delay.
For the sake of our merits, and if will provide you anything else you need,
For the hope of marriage, I seek a little time:
While the straits and Love grow soft,
While through time and experience I learn to bravely endure sorrows.
Otherwise, it is our intent to shed our life-spirit.
You cannot be cruel to me for long.
If only you would observe, what is the image of the one writing these words!
As we write, the Trojan sword is on our lap.[xx]
And through the cheeks, the tears fall onto the drawn sword,
And so it will now be tinged with blood because of these tears.
How well do your gifts suit our fate?
You build our tombs at little expense.
Now my breast is struck by your first weapon:
That site bears the wound of wild Love.
Anna my sister, Anna my sister, you who are aware of my wicked fault,
Now you will bestow the funeral rites over my ashes,
And once I am consumed by the pyres, I will not be deemed Elissa the wife of Sychaeus.
Nonetheless, this poem will be inscribed on the marble of my tomb.
Aeneas has provided both the cause of my death and the sword,
And Dido falls, making use of her own hand.


Notes

---

[i] A river in Asia Minor.

[ii] Royal plural.

[iii] Referring to the fact that Aeneas is the son of Venus (corresponding to the Greek goddess Aphrodite).

[iv] The son of Poseidon/Neptune and a god of the sea.

[v] Referring to the birth of Venus/Aphrodite.

[vi] Referring to Aeneas’ origins in Phrygia (northwest Asia Minor).

[vii] Aeneas’ son, also called Ascanius.

[viii] i.e. Aeneas was wandering for seven years before he came to Carthage’s shores.

[ix] Cf. Aeneid IV, with its iconic scene in which Dido and Aeneas come into a cave together to escape a sudden storm, and then have intercourse, which Dido interprets as marriage. That scene similarly features the howling of the nymphs etc.

[x] Dido’s former husband, who was killed by her brother Pygmalion.

[xi] Another name for Dido.

[xii] Iarbas was a suitor of Dido. The Gaetulians were a North African people (probably Berber).

[xiii] Carthaginian.

[xiv] In this context, referring to Troy.

[xv] A river of the Trojan plain.

[xvi] Another name for Troy.

[xvii] Referring to Carthage, which originated as a Phoenician colony. Tyrian refers to Tyre in Lebanon.

[xviii] Phthia was the region from which Achilles and his Myrmidons came to fight in the Trojan War.

[xix] Mycenae was the city ruled by Agamemnon, who led the Greeks in the Trojan War.

[xx] Referring to the sword that Aeneas gifted Dido.