The Journey to the Underworld — The Aeneid

Aeneas lands at Cumae and climbs to Apollo's temple to consult the Sibyl, Deiphobe, who speaks for the god in terrifying bursts of prophecy. She warns that Italy awaits but brings worse wars than Troy: a new Achilles, a hostile queen, and rivers running red. Aeneas answers that he is already inured to suffering and asks only to descend to the underworld to see Anchises. The Sibyl explains the rules: find the golden bough in the forest, bury the unburied dead, then enter through Avernus with proper sacrifices. Aeneas obeys. Venus sends doves to guide him to the bough; the Trojans cremate Misenus with full honors; then priest and prince descend past Care, Death, and Sleep at the gates, cross Charon's ferry with the sacred branch, drug Cerberus, and walk the roads of the dead.

The underworld is a geography of consequence. Unburied souls wait a hundred years on the shore; suicides grieve in the Myrtles; warriors from Troy greet Aeneas, while Greeks flee his arms even in death. Palinurus begs burial and learns his name will mark a future place. Dido appears among lovers wounded by passion. She will not speak or even look at Aeneas. He weeps and protests that the gods compelled his departure, but she turns to Sichaeus, making clear that some wounds outlive explanation. The scene is among the poem's cruelest: duty may be justified and still unredeemable in the eyes of the harmed.