They now find themselves in the Blessed Groves, a region of beautiful meadows inhabited by blessed spirits, among them Anchises's. Also punished in Tartarus's realm are mortals who have sinned abhorrently, including adulterers, traitors, and incestuous perverts.Īt last Aeneas and Deiphobë reach Elysium, which they enter after Aeneas places the golden bough on its threshold as an offering. Looking back, Aeneas glimpses Tartarus, the prison of the Titans, whom the gods defeated, and of those who tried to rival Jupiter.

To the left lies the region of Tartarus, a place of eternal punishment for the wicked to the right lies Elysium, Aeneas's destination. Warned by Deiphobë that time is passing, Aeneas prepares to take his leave of Deïphobus, who describes the two possible paths available to Aeneas and the sibyl. Among the Trojans he meets is the spirit of Priam's son Deïphobus, who married Helen after the death of Paris, but who was betrayed by her and her first husband, Menelaus, who, with Ulysses, inflicted upon him hideous and fatal wounds that he still bears. Men who were Aeneas's former companions warmly greet him, but his former enemies fearfully shun him. Unforgiving, Dido's ghost withdraws from Aeneas and seeks the comforting presence of the spirit of her husband, Sychaeus, with whom she has been reunited.Īeneas and Deiphobë now come to the fields inhabited by the spirits of men famous in battle, Trojans and Greeks among them. Knowing now that Dido killed herself because he abandoned her, he tries to justify himself to her, saying that he left her unwillingly.

They come at last to the Fields of Mourning, the home of those who died of love. Disembarking on the other shore, Aeneas and the sibyl find themselves among the wailing souls of dead infants then, as they proceed, among the spirits of those who were executed for crimes they did not commit and then among the suicides. Deiphobë chides Palinurus for wanting to break a divine decree, but she also consoles him: In time, a tomb will be built for him, and a cape of land will be named in his honor.Ĭharon is at first reluctant to ferry Aeneas, a living man, across the river Acheron, but he changes his mind when Deiphobë, commending Aeneas, shows the boatman the golden bough. Among these, Aeneas encounters Palinurus, who begs to be allowed to cross over with him. The sibyl informs him that some of these spirits must wait a hundred years for passage over the river, or until their bodies on earth are buried. Here, Aeneas beholds Charon, the ancient boatman who ferries spirits of the dead across the river, and he observes that the bank on which he stands is suddenly crowded with other spirits, all anxious to cross the river. Aeneas and Deiphobë descend through a gloomy region haunted by dreadful spirits and monsters and eventually reach Acheron, one of the underworld's rivers. With these tasks completed, Deiphobë leads Aeneas to the underworld's entrance, a deep cavern at whose threshold sacrifices are made to the gods of darkness. Afterward, he and his companions give their fallen comrade the due rites of cremation and burial. The doves lead him to the golden bough, and Aeneas seizes it and takes it to the sibyl's cave. While hacking pine trees to construct a proper funeral pyre for Misenus, Aeneas sees twin doves, which he instinctively knows were sent by his mother, Venus. Returning to the beach, Aeneas discovers that the dead man whom the sibyl mentioned is the trumpeter Misenus, who was drowned by the sea god Triton for daring to challenge him in a trumpeting contest. First, however, he must find and bury the body of a dead comrade. The bough will allow him to enter the underworld.

The sibyl tells Aeneas that he must find and pluck a golden bough from a tree in an adjacent forest. Wanting to descend to the underworld in order to visit the spirit of his father, he begs her for help in going there. Aeneas tells the sibyl that he is accustomed to trouble and has already foreseen that many more difficulties lie ahead. Aeneas prays to Apollo for help in his endeavors to find a new homeland for his people.įollowing Aeneas's petition to Apollo, Deiphobë, possessed now by Apollo, predicts much hardship ahead for the Trojans in Italy: They will fight a bloody war, and Juno will continue to oppose them. She tells Aeneas to sacrifice seven young bulls and seven ewes to Apollo, after which she leads the Trojan prince into a cavern with a hundred mouths that amplify her voice when she delivers Apollo's prophecies. Saddened by the loss of Palinurus, Aeneas leads his fleet to Cumae, where Deiphobë, the sibyl of Cumae, is led by Achatës to Aeneas while he is visiting a temple built to honor Apollo.

Aeneid book 6 scansion