he summons a council of the silent people,
and inquires of their lives and charges. Next in order have these
mourners their place whose own innocent hands dealt them death, who
flung away their souls in hatred of the day. How fain were they now in
upper air to endure their poverty and [438-472]sore travail! It may not
be; the unlovely pool locks them in her gloomy wave, and Styx pours her
ninefold barrier between. And not far from here are shewn stretching on
every side the Wailing Fields; so they call them by name. Here they whom
pitiless love hath wasted in cruel decay hide among untrodden ways,
shrouded in embosoming myrtle thickets; not death itself ends their
distresses. In this region he discerns Phaedra and Procris and woeful
Eriphyle, shewing on her the wounds of her merciless son, and Evadne and
Pasiphae; Laodamia goes in their company, and she who was once Caeneus
and a man, now woman, and again returned by fate into her shape of old.
Among whom Dido the Phoenician, fresh from her death-wound, wandered in
the vast forest; by her the Trojan hero stood, and knew the dim form
through the darkness, even as the moon at the month's beginning to him
who sees or thinks he sees her rising through the vapours; he let tears
fall, and spoke to her lovingly and sweet:

'Alas, Dido! so the news was true that reached me; thou didst perish,
and the sword sealed thy doom! Ah me, was I cause of thy death? By the
stars I swear, by the heavenly powers and all that is sacred beneath the
earth, unwillingly, O queen, I left thy shore. But the gods, at whose
orders now I pass through this shadowy place, this land of mouldering
overgrowth and deep night, the gods' commands drove me forth; nor could
I deem my departure would bring thee pain so great as this. Stay thy
footstep, and withdraw not from our gaze. From whom fliest thou? the
last speech of thee fate ordains me is this.'

In such words and with starting tears Aeneas soothed the burning and
fierce-eyed soul. She turned away with looks fixed fast on the ground,
stirred no more in countenance by the speech he essays than if she stood
in iron flint or Marpesian stone. At length she started, and fled
wrathfully [473-508]into the shadowy woodland, where Sychaeus, her
ancient husband, responds to her distresses and equals her affection.
Yet Aeneas, dismayed by her cruel doom, follows her far on her way with
pitying tears.

Thence he pursues his appointed path. And now they trod tho