From Aeneid Book 6 Aeneas has met his his father, Anchises, in the underworld, among the dead. Anchises shows his son the marvels of the place, including a riverbank where the souls of the dead are crowding, in the hope of a second chance at life...

Anchises and his son then made
Their way through a green wooded glade
To where a quiet river roams
Meanderingly past peaceful homes.
Beneath a sky without a cloud,
Innumerable humans crowd,
Determined as the bees who swarm
About the blossom in the warm
And sensuous spring. Not knowing who
These people are, or what they do,
Aeneas asks his father: What
Can bring so many to this spot?

Anchises tells him: These, my son,
Are souls quite privileged; each one
Is owed a second life by fate,
A new chance in embodied state
To live again, but each must first
With Lethe water quench their thirst,
So gaining sweet forgetfulness
Of previous woes and life’s duress.

But father, why should any man
Desire to leave this place, and can
He truly wish to live again
The human life of stress and pain?

Anchises told his doubting son:
Do understand  - all things are one.
The glorious sun, the moon and all
The stars and, on our spinning  ball,
Birds, fish and beasts of every kind
Are fragments of eternal mind.
There is a great and goodly force
That fiercely runs its mighty course
Through earthly bodies born to die
Beneath the vast enveloping sky.
Poor humans, with their joys and tears,
Their bodily desires and fears,
Penned in the dungeon of the flesh
Can rarely glimpse how all things mesh.
They see but dimly heaven’s light
While worldly burdens are their plight.
But when the last of life has fled,
And they see clearly, being dead,
They realise an earthly taint
Still keeps their beings in constraint.
They’re still infected; so begins
A proper purging of their sins.
Some, exposed to air and sky,
The cleansing winds will purify;
Swirling floods and pelting rain
Will wash away another’s stain;
Yet others need the heat of fire
To burn away impure desire.
It takes an age to shift the stain;
Then some, the finest, will attain
Elisium, and these you see
Are souls who by divine decree
Are shepherded to Lethe’s brink
And permitted then to drink
Forgetfulness; then with one taste
All memories will be effaced.
Forgetting human lives are pain,
They are prepared to live again.
P. Vergilius Maro

Translated by George Simmers


The poet Virgil - a Neapolitan bust.


If you have any thoughts on this free  translation,  George Simmers would be pleased to hear them.