[the petitioners continue]

Not to drive into your land is our aim

Nor do we seek plunder and fame

To such the vanquished dare not aspire

Our prows the land of old Hesperia

The soil good and its men bold

The Cenotrians held it once we are told

Now called Italia after its king

Thence were we journeying

When wind and wrack taught us fear

Those few you see escaped here

.

What inhuman race

What savage customs of the place

Would deny harbor to drowning men

And drive us to the cruel seas again

.

Aeneas was our lord

An excellent bearer of the sword

His regard for the Word pious

If he lives he will uphold your laws

.

If our anchorage you permit

From your woods planks to refit

That if our lord lives we may continue

Our destined course and Italy pursue

.

But if the sea drank Aeneas

Please from consideration dismiss us

Back we will go to mourn

He to whom we are sworn

.

[so spoke Ilioneus]

The Trojan crews

Seconded his sober news

End 17

 

Notes

In the second stanza of the crew’s petition to Dido, and earlier in the descriptions of her just rule over uncivilized indigenes, there is an inference that Punic and Trojan folk have a common culture not shared with the native tribes of North Africa. Indeed, their language is mutually intelligible and the assertion that Aeneas abides by the sanctity of the word indicates a shared metaphysics and cultural combability between folk describes as being of different races. The idea of race in premodern times is closer to the postmodern idea of ethnicity. Do note, though, that the various folk are not defined as being as biologically diverse as the Indian band of Memnon at Troy, who would have been of Arуan lineage. This argues for a shared sense of a related cultural diaspora by men of Vergil’s age. Vergil lived from 70 to 19 B.C. He stands as far in our past as the emergence of his Arуan forefathers into Europe and the Middle East stood in his past.