Funeral games for Anchises

Driven from Carthage by storms, the fleet finds itself near western Sicily — the place where Anchises died and was buried a year before. Aeneas takes it as a sign and lands. He announces nine days of funeral games. Four ships race around an offshore rock; the captain in the lead grounds his ship by cutting the corner too tight, and the captain who had been third wins by reckless seamanship. A foot-race is won by the second runner when the leader slips in a pool of bull's blood. A boxing match pits the gigantic young Sicilian Dares against the aged Trojan veteran Entellus; Entellus wins. An archery contest produces an omen — the last archer's arrow catches fire and traces a path across the sky.

While the men are at the games, the Trojan women have been left on the beach. They are exhausted — seven years at sea — and a rumor, encouraged by Juno's messenger Iris in the disguise of an old Trojan matron, has been spreading: why keep going, why not settle here, why not burn the ships and force the issue? They set fire to the fleet. Aeneas runs to the harbor with the captains. Four ships are already lost. He prays to Jupiter; a sudden heavy rain comes down and saves the rest.

The disaster shakes Aeneas. The Trojan elder Nautes counsels him: leave the weary, take the willing, build a city here for those who cannot go on. That night Anchises appears to Aeneas in a dream and tells him to go to Italy as he has been told — and before he reaches the new kingdom, to come find him in the underworld; at Cumae, the Sibyl will guide him down. Aeneas founds a small Trojan settlement, leaves the weary in it, and sails on. Venus has gone meanwhile to Neptune to ask for safe passage. The god agrees, on a price: one Trojan must drown for the rest. The pilot Palinurus, falling asleep at the helm, is pulled overboard in the night.