Meanwhile with a great murmer the sky begins

to confuse, a raincloud with hail mixed in follows,

and here and there Tyrian comrades and Trojan youth

and the Trojan grandson of Venus sought different roofs

through the fields in fear; streams rush from the mountains.

Dido and the Trojan chief arrive at the same

cave. Both Mother Earth and Juno the bride-woman

gave the sign; lightning flashed and the heavens were witness

to the marriage, and the nymphs shouted at the top of the peak.

That first day was the cause of death and the first of misfortune

and indeed Dido was not moved by (concern for her) appearance or reputation

nor did she now meditate on her secret love:

she called it marriage, with this name she cloaked her fault.

Immediately Rumor went through the great cities of Libya,

Rumor, than whom there is no other evil more swift:

She thrives in motion and gains strenth by going,

at first small out of fear, soon she raises itself into the breezes

and proceeds on the ground and hides her head between the clouds.

Mother Earth, provoked by anger at the gods, bore

her last, as they say, sister to Coeus and Enceladus,

swift by foot and nimble wings,

a horrible monster, huge, for whom there are as many feathers on her body

as there are watchful eyes below them (marvelous to tell),

as tongues, the same number of mouths roar, so many ears she raises.

At night she flies in the middle of sky and earth, rustling

through shadow, and she does not droop her eyes in sweet sleep;

in day she sits as guard either at the peak of the highest roof

or lofty turrets, and alarms the great cities,

as tenacious of fiction and wrong as messenger of truth.  

Then she, rejoicing, was filling the people with manifold

gossip, and she was singing fact and fiction equally:

that Aeneas had come, sprung from Trojan blood,

to which man beautiful Dido deigns to join herself;

now in luxury they were cherishing each other through the winter, however long,

forgetful of their kingdoms and captured by shameful desire.

All about the goddess was scattering these things into the loathsome speech of men.

Immediately she turned her course to King Iarbas

and inflamed his mind with words and increased his anger.

He, begotten by Hammon and a snatched nymph of the Garamantes,

placed a hundred huge shrines to Jupiter in the wide kingdoms,

a hundred altars, and had consecrated a sleepless flame,

an eternal sentinel of the gods, and the rich ground with

the blood of animals, and the flowering thresholds with different wreaths.

And he, crazy in mind and inflamed by bitter rumor

is said to have often entreated Jupiter, as a suppliant with hands upturned,

before the altars amid the divine presences of the gods:

“All-powerful Jupiter, for whom now the Moorish people,

feasting on embroidered couches, pour a Lenaean offering,

do you see these things? Or, father, do we shudder at you in vain,

when you hurl thunderbolts, and hidden lightning in the clouds

terrifies our spirits and stir up useless murmurs?

The woman, who, wandering in our country, established

her small city for a price, to whom we gave shore for planting

and to whom we gave the laws of the place, has rejected

our wedding and received lord Aeneas into the kingdom.

And now that Paris with his half-man company,

tying his beard and reeking hair with a Maeonian cap,

obtains the plunder: indeed we bring gifts

to your temples and we cherish an idle story.”