The Aeneid Read online

  Many of these Roman characteristics appear early in Virgil’s poem in the simile that describes how Neptune restored order to the chaos created by Juno, who had loosed all of the Aeolian winds against the Trojan fleet:

  Just as, all too often,

  some huge crowd is seized by a vast uprising,

  the rabble runs amok, all slaves to passion,

  rocks, firebrands flying. Rage finds them arms

  but then, if they chance to see a man among them,

  one whose devotion and public service lend him weight [pietate

  gravem],

  they stand there, stock-still with their ears alert as

  he rules their furor with his words and calms their passion.

  (1.174-81)

  Here pietas, gravitas, and the auctoritas conferred by his public service (meritis) are enough to calm the mob and restore order.

  The continuation of the Iliad, the Iliou Persis (The Sack of Troy), exists now only in fragmentary quotations, but it records Aeneas’ exit from the burning city and his stay with his family and followers on Mount Ida, near Troy, before departing on his travels to the West. These are mentioned by the Greek writer Hellanicus of Lesbos as early as the fifth century B.C., and the final object of his travels was established as Italy perhaps as early as the fifth century but certainly by the third. As the Romans in that century began to find themselves opposed by Macedonian and Greek powers in the East, the legend of Rome’s Trojan ancestry became increasingly popular; it was eagerly embraced when in 280 B.C. Pyrrhus of Epirus invaded Italy, claiming descent from Achilles and labeling Rome a second Troy. He defeated several Roman armies, with increasing losses—hence the phrase Pyrrhic victory—but finally left Italy in 275 B.C. and was killed soon afterward. In Rome the legend of Aeneas’ arrival in Italy and the founding by his son Ascanius of Alba Longa, where many centuries later, Romulus, founder of Rome, would be born, was celebrated in the Annales of Ennius, written in hexameter verse, which carried on the history of Rome from its founding until Ennius’ own time—the second century B.C.

  The first six books of the Aeneid contain many references to and imitations of incidents and passages found in the Homeric Odyssey. Aeneas’ stay at Carthage with Dido corresponds to Odysseus’ stay (much longer and against his will) with the nymph Calypso, and his account of his wanderings from Troy, told to Dido in Book 3, to Odysseus’ long account of his wanderings told to the Phaeacians in Books 9 through 12 of the Odyssey. Aeneas encounters and rescues one of Odysseus’ sailors who has been left behind on the island of the Cyclops, where Aeneas too encounters Polyphemus and his Cyclopean relatives. The funeral games for Anchises in Book 5 of the Aeneid are modeled on those for Patroclus in Book 23 of the Iliad, except that a ship-race in the Aeneid replaces a horse race in the Iliad. And of course Aeneas visits the land of the dead in Book 6 of the Aeneid to see his father, just as Odysseus goes there to meet his mother in Book 11 of the Odyssey. Yet these correspondences are of quite different episodes: the stay with Calypso is long and uneventful, that with Dido is short and tragic; the encounters in the lower world are very different in length as in nature. And many correspondences in the later books, such as the shield made for Achilles by Hephaestus and that made for Aeneas by Vulcan are superficial resemblances between entirely different objects. As for the fact that the last six books of the Aeneid resemble the Iliad more than the Odyssey, because they deal with war not voyaging, this is not their only resemblance. In both epics an older man has entrusted to the hero a companion to fight with him and sustain his cause. In the Iliad Achilles’ father gives him an older companion, Patroclus, and in the Aeneid Evander gives his young son Pallas to fight at Aeneas’ side. In both cases this man is killed by the enemy chieftain, and in both cases that killing is avenged by the hero’s killing of the enemy champion, of Hector in the Iliad, and in the last lines of the Aeneid, of Turnus.

  The Aeneid is to be Rome’s Iliad and Odyssey, and it derives also from Homer its picture of two different worlds, each with its own passions and actions. One is the world of heaven above, in Homer the world of Zeus, the supreme god, his wife and sister, Hera, the love-goddess Aphrodite, the smith-god Hephaestus, the sea-god Poseidon and the others; and below, on earth, the world of Achilles, Patroclus, Diomedes and of Hector, his wife Andromache, and his father Priam. In the Aeneid the heavens are the home of Jupiter (or Jove) the supreme god, his wife and sister Juno, the love-goddess Venus, the smith-god Vulcan, the sea-god Neptune, and the minor gods. They preside over the world of the heroes—Aeneas, Turnus, Evander, Pallas, and Camilla down below. As in Homer, the passions and actions of the gods affect the actions and passions of the heroes on earth.

  Jupiter knows what the Fates have decreed, what will happen in the end—that Aeneas will reach Italy and found Lavinium, the beginning of the process that over the centuries will lead to the founding of Rome. But Juno is bitterly opposed to this vision of the future; she hated Troy while it stood, and all Trojans since with a vicious aversion, and she is determined that Aeneas will not reach Italy. This hatred of Trojans has many causes: the fact that their ancestor was Dardanus, the son of Zeus and Electra, daughter of Atlas—“the Trojan stock she loathed” (1.35); the fact that Ganymede, a beautiful boy whose father was Laomedon, a Trojan prince, had been carried up to Olympus by Zeus, who assumed the shape of an eagle, to be his cupbearer—“the honors showered on Ganymede” (1.35)—and lastly the so-called Judgment of Paris, delivered while Troy still stood secure at peace behind its walls. Three goddesses, Juno, Athena, and Venus, disputed which was the most beautiful and finally decided on a beauty contest to be judged by Paris, a son of Priam, king of Troy. As he surveyed their charms, each one offered him a bribe to win his vote. The virgin goddess Athena offered him success in war, Juno success in every walk of life, but Venus offered the love and the hand of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta in Greece. He judges Venus the most beautiful, goes to Sparta, runs off to Troy with Helen, and the ten-year war begins. Juno never forgot this insult; it is mentioned at the beginning of Virgil’s poem, “the judgment of Paris, the unjust slight to her beauty” (1.34). And this is one of the reasons why she

  drove over endless oceans

  Trojans left by the Greeks . . .

  Juno kept them far from Latium, forced by the Fates

  to wander round the seas of the world, year in, year out.

  Such a long hard labor it was to found the Roman people.

  (1.37-41)

  NARRATIVE

  After this line the narrative begins. It is the opening of an epic poem, divided into twelve books containing roughly ten thousand lines. The story plunges, in Horace’s famous phrase, in medias res, into the middle of events. Aeneas’ fleet is just off Sicily when Juno arrives, bribes the divine keeper of the winds, Aeolus, to let them loose in a storm that scatters Aeneas’ fleet and lands him, with only seven of his ships, on the African shore. But Neptune suddenly realizes that a vast storm has raged without his permission; he rebukes Aeolus and calms the weather, and the rest of Aeneas’ fleet re-forms in quiet waters.

  On the African shore Aeneas tries to cheer his despondent crews in words that summarize their hard lot and their final reward promised by Fate:

  “A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this.

  Through so many hard straits, so many twists and turns

  our course holds firm for Latium. There Fate holds out

  a homeland, calm, at peace. There the gods decree

  the kingdom of Troy will rise again. Bear up.

  Save your strength for better times to come.”

  (1.239-44)

  Meanwhile there are fresh developments in heaven above. Venus reminds Jupiter of his promises about Aeneas’ future and complains of Juno’s interference. Why is Aeneas kept away from the Rome he was promised? Jupiter’s reply is long and favorable: “the fate of your children stands unchanged,” he reassures her, and “unrolling the s
croll of Fate” (1.308-13) he tells her that

  “Aeneas will wage

  a long, costly war in Italy . . .

  and build high city walls for the people there . . .

  But his son Ascanius, now that he gains the name

  of Iulus . . .

  [will] raise up Alba Longa’s mighty ramparts.”

  (1.314-25)

  There, after three hundred years, the priestess Ilia will bear to the Roman war-god Mars twin sons; one of them, Romulus, will build Rome’s walls and call his people Romans. Jupiter goes on: “On them I set no limits, space or time: / I have granted them power, empire without end” (1.333-34). And he concludes with a vision of the future, the Roman conquest of Greece, the coming of a Trojan Caesar, Julius, “a name passed down from Iulus, his great forebear” (1.344). This is Augustus, under whom “the violent centuries, battles set aside, / [will] grow gentle, kind” (1.348-49).

  Below, on earth, Aeneas, who now sets out with one companion, Achates, to explore the territory, has landed in the area where Dido, an exile from Tyre, is building her new city, Carthage. His mother, Venus, disguised as a girl huntress, tells him the story of Dido, and he eventually comes to the city that is being built, to find the rest of his surviving crews being welcomed by the queen. She realizes who he is and invites him to a banquet, at which, in Books 2 and 3, he tells her the story of the fall of Troy, his escape with his father and young son, and the long voyage west with his Trojans toward their destined home. Meanwhile, not without the intervention of Venus, Dido has fallen madly in love with Aeneas, and on the next day, in Book 4, at a hunt Juno sends down a storm that drives the pair to take refuge in a cave, where their love is consummated. Dido regards this as a marriage, and Aeneas seems to agree, since he takes part in the building of her new city. But Jupiter soon sends his messenger, Mercury, to remind Aeneas of his duty, and in spite of Dido’s appeals and denunciations, he sets sail with his fleet. Dido curses him and all his race and calls for an avenger to arise from her bones as she commits suicide. In Book 5, Aeneas in Sicily organizes the funeral games for Anchises. Juno attempts, unsuccessfully, to burn his ships. In a dream he sees his dead father, Anchises, who tells him he must go to the land of the dead, guided by the Sibyl, to meet him in Elysium, “the luminous fields where the true / and faithful gather” (5.814-15). His guide to the Underworld will be the Sibyl whom he will find in Italy. And in Book 6, after his journey with the Sibyl through the darker regions of the world below, he meets Anchises and is shown a pageant of the great Romans, who in future days will establish the Roman Empire and the peace of the world.

  In Book 7 Aeneas finally reaches the Tiber River, and the second part of the Aeneid starts: the wandering is over and the wars begin. Virgil invokes the Muse Erato to tell “who were the kings, the tides and times, how stood / the old Latin state” (7.40-41). He asks the goddess

  “inspire your singer, come!

  I will tell of horrendous wars

  . . . all Hesperia called to arms . . .

  I launch a greater labor.”

  (7.45-50)

  Erato is the Muse of lyric poetry and love; she seems an unusual Muse to call on for inspiration in a tale of “horrendous wars.” Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, might seem more appropriate, but these wars are waged because of a marriage contested between the two champions, Aeneas and Turnus. Since there is no Muse specifically associated with war, Erato is the natural choice.

  In Book 7 Aeneas establishes a fortified camp on the shore by the river Tiber,

  And Aeneas himself lines up

  his walls with a shallow trench, he starts to work the site

  and rings his first settlement on the coast with mounds,

  redoubts and ramparts built like an armed camp.

  (7.180-83)

  The words used—fossa, pinnis, aggere, castrorum—identify it with the camps (castra) that in the future Roman legionary soldiers will build at the end of the day’s march—castra, which will be built all over Europe and have often left their mark on the names of the cities that occupy those sites—Lancaster, Manchester, Worcester. From this camp Aeneas sends an embassy to King Latinus, asking for a grant of land and the hand of his daughter Lavinia in marriage. The king has been warned of such an approach by visions and seers, and is agreeable. But Juno intervenes again—this is where she makes her famous proclamation: “if I cannot sway the heavens, I’ll wake the powers of hell!” Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo (7.365). (Many centuries later these words would appear on the title page of Sigmund Freud’s book The Interpretation of Dreams, a clear announcement that he is drawing some sort of analogy between the psychic and the infernal, and the dark energies of both.) Juno sends the Fury Allecto to rouse against the marriage first Lavinia’s mother Amata, and then the Rutulian leader Turnus, who presumes that Lavinia will become his bride. Both are filled with furious rage against the new proposal, and Turnus (and Juno) stir Italy against its terms. War against the intruders is declared, and Book 7 ends with a long catalog of the Italian forces and leaders, prominent among them Mezentius, the Etruscan king whose own people (who eventually fight on the Trojan side) had driven him out because of his cruelty; and Turnus, the leader of the fight against Aeneas, and the virgin cavalry leader Camilla, the Volscian.

  As Book 8 opens, the god of the river Tiber appears to Aeneas in a dream, explains to him that Evander, whose kingdom lies upriver, is an enemy of the Latins and will help Aeneas. The river-god himself will help him on his way in his ships. Aeneas chooses a pair of galleys and sets off for Evander’s town, which is on the site, with its hills, where Rome will one day rise. They are hailed by Pallas, Evander’s son, and welcomed by the king. He has been celebrating their liberation by Hercules from the fire-breathing monster Cacus, which lived in a cave on what later, in Roman times, was named the Aventine hill. And Evander tells the long story of Hercules’ ultimate destruction of Cacus. He then shows Aeneas all around his kingdom, the places that will in later times be famous, the future sites of the Capitol—“they saw herds of cattle . . . / in the Roman Forum and Carinae’s elegant district” (8.423-24). That night, as they sleep, Venus persuades her husband, the smith-god Vulcan, to make arms and a shield for Aeneas. Meanwhile Evander tells Aeneas of certain allies for him—the Etruscans, who have expelled their cruel king, Mezentius, and burn to fight the Rutulian forces of Turnus but have been told by a seer to await a captain from overseas. Aeneas and Pallas ride for Etruria with their cavalry, meet the Etruscan forces and, as the “weary troops take rest” (8.716), Venus gives her son his new arms and shield. And on the shield “There is the story of Italy, / Rome in all her triumphs” (8.738-39). Across its surface is pictured the whole history of Rome, from the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus to the battle of Actium, which made Augustus master of the world. Aeneas

  knows nothing of these events but takes delight

  in their likeness, lifting onto his shoulders now

  the fame and fates of all his children’s children.

  (8.856-58)

  Back at the seashore Turnus, spurred on by Juno, leads his troops against the Trojan camp, but unable to breach the walls, attacks with fire the ships of Aeneas, moored by the camp. But these ships were built outside Troy from trees in a wood sacred to Jupiter’s mother, Cybebe (Cybele), and she now calls on her son to save them. He changes them into sea-nymphs, and Turnus calls off the attack on the camp until the next day. One of the Trojans, Nisus, proposes to steal at night through the sleeping enemy contingents to go and warn Aeneas of the danger to his base, and his young lover, Euryalus, insists, in spite of Nisus’ protests, on accompanying him. They carry out a wild slaughter among the sleeping Italians but as they move off, toward the river perhaps, they are intercepted and killed by a fresh enemy contingent just arriving. The next day Turnus renews the attack on the camp and even manages to get in alone through a gate that has been opened by overconfident Trojans. He creates great slaughter among the Trojans as he f
ights his way to the water and swims to safety.

  At the beginning of Book 10, which follows, Jupiter calls together an assembly of the gods at which both Venus and Juno make their long complaints, but Jupiter declares neutrality. He will leave the outcome to the champions themselves:

  “How each man weaves

  his web will bring him to glory or to grief . . .

  The Fates will find the way.”

  (10.135-38)

  The attack on the camp resumes, while far upriver, Aeneas joins the Etruscan leaders, who combine their fleet with his to sail down to the relief of the Trojan camp. At this point (10.202ff.) Virgil names and describes the Etruscan leaders, another of those catalogs in which he lovingly recites the various parts of Italy from which they come . . . Pisa, Caere, Liguria, Mantua—part of that hymn of praise of Italy that is a main feature of the Aeneid. As Aeneas sails down the river, the nymph Cymodocea, who had been one of the nymphs that had been changed into a ship outside the camp, warns him that the camp is under attack by Turnus, and as Aeneas comes in sight of it he raises the shield his mother had made for him, and the signal is greeted with joy and relief by the Trojans in the camp. There follows a vivid account of an opposed landing and an equally fierce battle afterward “on Italy’s very doorstep” (10.420), in which, as young Pallas’ troops begin to fall back, he rallies them and kills one enemy chieftain after another, until Turnus comes to the rescue and routs the Arcadians, killing Pallas and taking from him as a trophy Pallas’ engraved sword-belt, which will turn out to be his own death warrant.

  Aeneas hears the news and comes on, slaughtering enemy champions right and left as he looks for Turnus. But Juno obtains from Jupiter a respite, no more, for Turnus, and full of grief she spirits him out of the fighting to his home. Book 10 ends with an account of the many successful duels of Mezentius, the Etruscan king fighting on the Latin side. He kills one Trojan champion after another until he meets Aeneas, who wounds him and then kills his son Lausus, as he comes to his father’s aid. Aeneas, thinking no doubt of Pallas, is sorry for him, but goes on to kill his father, Mezentius. In Book 11 Aeneas, his camp no longer besieged, proceeds to the burial of the dead. He mourns over the body of Pallas and sends it off with his arms, his warhorse, and a huge escort, to his father. He gives envoys from the Latin city permission to bury their dead, and Drances, an enemy of Turnus, announces his intention to seek peace. Evander mourns over the body of Pallas and sends word to Aeneas that his “right arm / . . . owes . . . the life of Turnus / to son and father both” (11.210-12).