Step One: Classify each of the following excerpts from the AP Vergil curriculum as coming from one of the AP curriculum books. All of these bits of text come from either Book I, II, IV, VI, X, or XII. On your own piece of paper, create six columns labeled "Book I," "Book II," "Book IV," "Book VI," "Book X," and "Book XII." Write the number each chunk in the correct column for the book that it comes from.
Step Two: Once the chunks are divided into books, within each book column, arrange the chunks into the order in which they appear in the poem. On that same piece of paper, below the columns you created for Step One, on six separate lines, write "Book I," "Book II," "Book IV," "Book VI," "Book X," and "Book XII." On the "Book I" line write the numbers of the chunks from Book I in the order in which they appear in the poem. Do the same for the other five books.
Hints: (1) Consider which characters are involved. If you think that, for example, the Sibyl is involved, it must be Book VI; however, if it is Pallas, it makes no sense for him to be mentioned until Book X or XII. (2) If there are quotations, consider who is speaking, to whom the quotation is spoken, and the circumstances of the quotation. (3) Consider places as you would names from hint (1). (4) Consider the narrative flow. You should know which books have Aeneas in Troy, Carthage, the Underworld, etc.
Here come the chunks!
1. Just as in new summer through the flowery countryside
work under the sun busies bees, when they lead forth
the grown broods of the race, or when they stuff the flowing honey
and stretch the cells with sweet nectar,
or they receive the loads of the ones coming, or, with a battle line
drawn,
the ward the drones, a lazy swarm, from the hives;
the work boils, and the fragrant honey smells of thyme.
O fortunate [they], whose walls are already rising!
2. Indeed according to custom she had suspended a handy bow on her shoulders
as a huntress and had given her hair to scatter in the winds
nude at the knee and having gathered her flowing folds in a knot.
And the former says, Ho, youths, point out
is you have seen any of my sisters, by chance, wandering here
girded up with a quiver and the skin of a spotted lynx,
or pursuing the course of a frothing boar with a shout.
3.
Why am I delaying? [Am I delaying] Until brother Pygmalion destroys
my walls
or Gaetulian Iarbas leads me, captured?
At least if there had been any offspring begotten from you
before your flight, if any little Aeneas for my benefit
were playing in the court, who would recall you, however, with his
face,
not indeed completely would I seem [to myself] captured and deserted.
4. And not having spoken more words, he looks around for a huge rock,
an ancient huge rock, which by chance was lying on the plain,
a boundary stone placed in the field so that it could divide a lawsuit
concerning farmlands.
Scarcely twice six chosen men could lift it on the neck,
such bodies of men as the land now produces;
That hero twisted it, having been snatched up, with anxious hand against
his enemy,
rising up taller and roused in his running.
But neither did he know himself running or going
or lifting or moving the huge rock with his hand;
His knees give way, his icy blood congeals with cold.
5.
There lies hidden on a shady tree
a bough, golden in both leaves and flexible twig,
said to be holy to nether Juno; the whole grove protects it,
and the shadows close it in with dark valleys.
But it is not granted to enter the hidden places of the earth
before one will have plucked the golden-leaved growth from a tree.
Beautiful Proserpina has ordained that this, her gift, be brought to
her.
At once the one having been torn off does not lack another
golden (branch), and the twig with like metal sprouts.
6.
then he confuses the crowd and the entire
mob, driving [it] with missiles within the leafy grove;
and he does not stop before as victor he pours out seven huge
bodies on the ground and equals their number with his ships.
From here he seeks the harbor and divides [them] into all of his comrades.
7.
I beseech you that which is held by no law of fate,
for Latium, for the majesty of your people:
when now they will construct peace with happy marriages (be it so!),
when now they will join laws and treaties,
that you not order the indigenous Latins to change their ancient name
nor that they become Trojans and be called Trojans
of that the men change their language or alter their clothes.
Let Latium be, let the Alban kings be though the ages,
let the Roman offspring be powerful in Italian virtue:
Troy fell, and may you allow it to have fallen with its name.
8.
Surely you have promised that from this with the years rolling by they
would some day be Romans,
from this that they would be leaders, from the restored blood of Teucer,
who would hold the sea, who would hold all the lands with their sway.
What opinion turns you, father?
With this indeed I found consolation for the fall and the sad ruin
of Troy
compensating opposing fates with [these] fates;
now the same fortune pursues men driven by so many misfortunes.
9. Out of my mind, whom both of men and of gods did I not blame,
or what crueler thing did I see in the destroyed city?
Ascanius and father Anchises and the Teucrian penates
I entrust to comrades and hide (them) in a curved valley;
I myself seek the city and I am girded with flashing arms.
10. Suddenly clouds snatch away both heaven and day
from the eyes of the Teucrians; black night lay upon the sea.
The poles thunder, and the upper air flashes with frequent fire,
and everything threatens instant death for the men.
11.
O three and four times blessed,
those who before the faces of their fathers under the lofty walls of
Troy
happened to meet [death]! O most brave of the race of Greeks
Diomedes! Could I not have fallen on Ilian plains
and have poured out my life by your right [hand]
12. But devout Aeneas seeks the strongholds which lofty Apollo
rules and far off the secret places of the revered Sibyl,
a huge cave, for whom the Delian seer inspires
a great mind and soul and reveals future things.
Already they enter the groves and golden house of Hecate.
Daedalus, so the rumor is, fleeing Minoan realms,
having dared to entrust himself to the sky on swift feathers,
flew forth through an unaccustomed route to the chilly Bear,
and above light he stood near the Chalcidian stronghold.
13.
Alas, was I the cause of death for you? I swear by the stars,
by the gods and if there is any pledge under the bottom of the earth,
unwilling, queen, did I retreat from your shore.
But the orders of the gods, which now compel me to go through these
shades,
through places rough with neglect and deep night,
drove me to their commands; and I was not able to believe
that I would bear this so great pain to you by me departure.
14. Then all-powerful Juno, having pitied the long pain
and difficult death, sent Iris down from Olympus
to free the struggling spirit and fastened limbs.
For because she was perishing neither by fate nor a merited death,
but wretched before her day and having been enflamed with sudden madness,
not yet had Proserpina taken the golden lock from her head for her
and had doomed her head [life] to Stygian Orcus.
15. O you finally finished from the great dangers of the sea
(but graver of the land remain), into the realms of Lavinium
the Dandanidae will come (send this concern from your heart),
but they will wish, too, that they had not come. Wars, horrible
wars,
and the Tiber foaming with much blood I do see.
You will not have lacked a Simois, nor a Xanthus, nor a Greek camp;
already in Latium has been born another Achilles,
himself also born of a goddess;
16.
A woman, who, wandering in our borders,
has placed a city scanty of worth, to whom a strand for plowing,
to whom we have given laws of the place,
has rebuffed our marriage and has received lord Aeneas into her realms.
17.
I am dutiful Aeneas, who carry with me in my ship
penates snatched from the enemy, known above the upper airs by my reputation.
I seek Italy as a fatherland and a race from highest Jupiter.
I embarked the Phrygian sea with twice twenty ships,
with my mother, a goddess, showing the way, having followed the given
fates;
scarcely seven remain, having been shattered by the waves and Eurus.
I myself, unknown, being in need, wander the deserts of Libya,
driven from Europe and Asia.
18. Behold, however, twin serpents from Tenedos through the tranquil
deep
(I shudder retelling!) with immeasurable coils
lay upon the sea and side by side stretch to the shores;
their breasts raised between the waves and
blood-red crests overcome the waves; the remaining part
skims the sea behind and the immense back winds in coils.
19. He burns to depart in flight and to leave behind the sweet lands,
having been thunderstruck by such a warning and by the command of the
gods.
Alas, what should he do? With what speech should he dare to conciliate
the furying queen?
What beginning should he take up as first?
And he divides his nimble mind now to this, now to that
and snatches it into different sides and turns through everything.
20. O wretched citizens, what so great madness (is this)?
Do you believe that the enemies have been carried away? Or do
you suppose that any
gifts of the Danaans [Greeks] lack deceits? Is Ulysses thus known?
21.
Thus it has pleased [me]. An age will come, with sacred seasons
gliding by,
when the house of Assaracus will subject Phthia and famous Mycenae
to slavery and will rule over the conquered Argives.
From this beautiful origin a Trojan Caesar will be born,
who will limit his empire with Ocean, his fame with the stars,
Julius, a name derived from great Iulus.
Untroubled, you, some day, will receive him in heaven,
laden with the spoils of the East; he too will be called in prayers.
22. Then in the doors of the goddess, in the middle of the vault of
the temple,
inclosed in arms and resting on her throne on high she sat down.
She was giving laws and decrees to the men, and was equalizing the
toil of the deeds
in fair shares or was drawing [them] by lot:
23.
Neither do I hold you nor will I refute your words:
go, follow Italy on the winds, seek realms through the waves.
Indeed I hope, if pious divinities avail anything,
that you will drink in tortures in the middle of crags
and that you will call Dido by name often. Absent, I will follow with
black fires
and, when cold death has separated body from spirit,
I, a shade, will be present in all places. You will pay the penalty,
wicked one.
I will listen, and this story shall come to me under the bottom of
Hades.
24. There are twin gates of Sleep, of which one is said
to be horn, where easy exit is given to true shadows,
the other gleaming, finished with shining ivory,
but the souls sent false dreams to the sky.
With these words Anchises then escorts his son and at the same time
the Sibyl
and he send them forth from the ivory gate;
He cleaves the way to his ships and revisits his comrades.
25. Others will strike out breathing bronze more gracefully
(surely I believe), they will draw living expressions out of marble,
they will plead cases better, and they will mark out the motion of
the sky
with a rod and will (fore)tell the rising stars:
You, Roman, shall remember to rule nations with sway
(you will have these skills), and to impose the custom of peace,
to spare the vanquished and to war down the proud.
26. Alas! flee, goddess-born, and rescue yourself from these flames.
The enemy holds the walls; Troy falls from a lofty pinnacle.
Enough has been given to fatherland and Priam (by you): if the Pergama
were able to be defended by a right hand, yet it would have been defended
by this one.
Troy commits her sacred rites and her penates to you;
take these comrades of the fates, seek great walls for them,
which you will set up finally with the sea having been traversed.
27. Dido and the Trojan leader arrive at the same cave.
Both Primeval Earth and Juno as matron of honor
give the sign; flames flashed and the upper air is witness
to the nuptuals, and nymphs wail on the highest peak.
That day was the first to be a reason for death and the first to be
a reason for evils;
28. The others gird themselves for spoils and the coming banquet:
they tear the hide from the ribs and bare the flesh;
part cuts it into pieces and fix it, quivering, on spits,
others place bronze [pots] on the shore and tend the flames.
29. Scarcely had he spoken these things when by chance twin doves
flying from heaven came under the very face of the man,
and they settled on the green ground. Then the very great hero
recognizes his mothers birds and happy he prays:
You shall be leaders, O, if there is any way, and through the breezes
direct a course into the groves where a rich bough shadows
fertile soil. And you, O, do not fail from doubtful matters,
divine parent.
30. Me to cease from something begun defeated.
and not to be able to avert the king of the Teucrians from Italy?
Surely I am forbidden by the fates. Was Pallas able to burn up
an Argive fleet
and to sink the same men in the sea
because of the crime of one and the frenzy of Ajax of Oileus?
31. Turnus, standing by above him
says, Arcadians, mindful of these things, report my words
to Evander: he has earned as much, I am sending Pallas back.
Whatever honor of a tomb there is, whatever consolation of burying,
I bestow it. Scarcely to him will the hospitalities of Aeneas
remain with little cost.
And he, having spoken such things, pressed with his left foot
the lifeless man, snatching the immense weight of his baldric
and the imprinted crime:
32. When he believed that he would be close for a spear going to be
sent,
Pallas was the earlier to go, if any luck would help him having dared
with unequal strength, and thus he speaks a great [word] to the upper
air:
By the hospitality of my father and his tables, which you attended
as a stranger,
I beseech you, Hercules, that you be present at mighty undertakings.
Let him perceive me snatch away from him, half-dead, his bloody arms
and may the dying eyes of Turnus carry me as victor.
33. When she saw, however, Priam himself with youthful arms having been
taken up,
she said, What mind so dreadful, most wretched husband,
has compelled you to be girded with these weapons? Or where are
you rushing?
The occasion does not require such help and these defenders of yours;
(it would) not if my Hector himself were present.
Finally come here; this altar will protect everyone,
or at once you will perish.
34. Hence should you, clothed in the spoils of my people
be snatched away from me. Pallas [sacrifices] you with this wound,
Pallas sacrifices and exacts the punishment from defile blood.
Saying this, he buries the iron beneath the facing breast,
burning; but for that one, his limbs are slackened with chill
and his life flees with a groan, indignant, under the shades.
35. Unlucky Dido is being burned up and wanders the entire
city, raving, just like a doe with an arrow having been shot,
whom unplanned within Cretan groves from afar
a shepherd shooting with missiles has struck, and has left the winged
iron
unknowing: in flight she roams the woods and glades
of Mt. Dicte; the lethal reed sticks in her side.
36.
You will have a long exile and have to plow the vast water of the sea,
and you will come to the land of Hesperia, where the Lydian Tiber
flows in a gentle course between fields rich of men:
there a happy time and a kingdom and a royal wife
has been produced for you; dispel tears for beloved Creusa.
37.
Who, out of her mind, would
refuse such things or prefer to contend with you in war?
If only fortune would follow the exploit which you say.
But I am carried by the fates uncertain, whether Jupiter wishes
for Tyrians, having set out, and Troy to have one city,
or whether he would approve for the nations to be mingled or treaties
to be joined.
You (are) his wife, it is right for you to test his mind by entreating.
Go on, I will follow.
38. This end of the fates of Priam, this exit bore him
by chance, seeing Troy burned and the Pergama having fallen,
once the proud ruler for so many peoples and lands
of Asia. A mighty body lies on the strand,
and a head torn from its shoulders and a body without a name.