Aeneid

Virgil opens with a traditional invocation to the Muse to help him tell his story, which will center on warfare and a certain unnamed hero. This man, a refugee from the city of Troy, will make a long voyage over sea and land to Italy, where he will found the Roman nation (1-7).

His journey will not be easy. Juno, the queen of the gods, is already predisposed to dislike any Trojan; she had taken the side of their opponents in the Trojan War, the Greeks, due to Trojan slights against her (e.g., the rape of Ganymede, the Judgment of Paris). Worst of all, Juno has now heard that the descendants of these Trojan refugees, the Romans, will eventually bring down her favorite city Carthage (12-22). She knows this fate is inevitable, but until then, she will do her best to frustrate the Trojans. Her first salvo is to go to the island of Aeolia, where she convinces the storm god Aeolus to release the winds against the Trojan fleet (39-91).

When the storm hits the Trojans, we meet the hero of the story, Aeneas. As the winds destroy his ships, he wishes he could have died in the war with great Trojan heroes like his cousin Hector (94-101). Neptune, the god of the sea, surfaces to dispel the winds, but the damage is done. The fleet limps to Libya, on the northern coast of Africa. On shore Aeneas gives a rousing pep talk about how the Trojans have weathered worse than this and might one day even look back fondly on this moment, but he feels deeply dejected (198-209).

Meanwhile, in heaven, the goddess Venus approaches her father, Jupiter, the king of the gods. She is upset because Jupiter had promised that her son Aeneas would carry on the Trojan line and found Rome, but “now it’s the same old fortune pursuing men driven by countless / Random disasters” (240-41). Jupiter assures her that Aeneas’s founding of Rome and Rome’s ascendance as a powerful empire is still the end game. He describes various outstanding Roman historical figures up to Octavian Augustus, the first emperor and the ruler during Virgil’s day (255-96).

At dawn, Aeneas heads out early to hunt deer for his crews and scout the terrain. He encounters his mother, Venus, disguised as a huntress (314-20). She tells him that this land is ruled by queen Dido. Dido fled her hometown of Tyre after her brother, Pygmalion, killed her husband, Sychaeus, and tried to kill her (341-64). She founded Carthage here on the northern coast of Africa, where, against all odds, it thrives. Still pretending to be a mortal, Venus asks who Aeneas is and, hearing of his many troubles since Troy fell, assures him that he is still favored by the gods. She reveals herself as Venus and shrouds Aeneas in a supernatural mist so he can enter Carthage undetected.

Aeneas marvels at the city and its hard-working citizens, but especially at Dido, who is directing the construction of a temple to the city’s patron goddess, Juno (418-47). He is surprised to see that scenes from the Trojan War are told in relief on the temple walls, and he weeps (450-93). He and his companion, Achates, notice that some of their Trojan comrades who they’d thought had drowned in the storm have entered town to ask for Dido’s help on their journey to Italy. Dido generously responds that all the Carthaginians know of the heroism of the Trojans and that she is happy to either help them on their way or welcome them as equal citizens of Carthage (561-78). Venus suddenly lifts the veil and reveals Aeneas to everyone, taking care to make him look especially attractive. Aeneas thanks Dido for showing the Trojans pity, and again, Dido invites them to settle here, saying, “I am no stranger to hardship. I’m learning to help those who suffer” (629-30). Aeneas sends for the rest of the Trojans on shore, including his dear son, Ascanius (also called Iulus).

Dido arranges a feast to celebrate the Trojans’ arrival, but Venus worries that Dido is delaying Aeneas from pursuing his true goal of founding Rome. She schemes to hold the real Ascanius safe in one of her temples and sends his half-brother Cupid to impersonate him instead (657-96). Sitting on Dido’s lap, Cupid makes Dido fall madly in love with Aeneas. As they feast, Dido asks Aeneas to tell the story of the fall of Troy, the subject of Book 2 (749-56).

At Dido’s request, Aeneas agrees to tell the events of the Trojan War: “I was a major part of them all” (6). Books 2 and 3 are an inset narrative told by Aeneas.

After 10 long years of sieging Troy, the Greeks construct a giant wooden horse and left it behind on the beach. The Trojans disagree on how to deal with the horse. Some want to pull it into the city. Others, especially the priest Laocoon, want it destroyed: “I am afraid of Danaans,” he said, referring to the Greeks, “not least when they offer donations” (49).

Laocoon is persuasive, but the Greeks have an ace up their sleeve: Sinon, a prisoner-of-war who pretends to be a Greek defector but is actually a double agent. Sinon tells the Trojans a dramatic story. Ulysses (Odysseus, in the Greek tradition) framed and executed Sinon’s friend Palamedes. Fearing reprisal—and sensing opportunity in the supernatural storms that seemed to prevent the Greeks from leaving—Ulysses convinced the Greeks to sacrifice Sinon to the gods to calm the seas, but Sinon escaped (75-144).

The kind-hearted Trojans embrace Sinon as one of their own. Pretending to be thankful, Sinon reveals that the horse is an offering to the goddess Minerva, whom the Greeks have offended. He warns that Minerva would be angry at the Trojans if they destroyed the horse, and the gods seem to confirm his story: The dissenter priest Laocoon and his sons are dramatically strangled by snakes that emerge from the sea (189-227). Awestruck and convinced, the Trojans drag the horse into the city and throw a party to celebrate the end of the war.

In reality, Ulysses and a squadron of Greeks are hidden inside the horse’s belly. Under cover of night, Sinon opens the hatch. The crew kills the Trojan guards and lets the Greek army into the city (252-67). Aeneas is sleeping and unaware but dreams of his cousin Hector, the great Trojan hero who was killed by Achilles. Hector warns that Troy has fallen and urges Aeneas to take the household gods and flee (268-97). When Aeneas awakes, he sees fire and carnage spreading through the city from the roof of his father’s house. Forgetting Hector’s advice, he takes up arms and jumps into the fray, saying, “Fight! That’s the fire in my soul. Wrath and fury have jettisoned reason” (316).

Aeneas inspires a small group of Trojans to go on a suicide mission to take down as many Greeks as possible with the words: “So, let’s die, let’s rush to the thick of the fighting. There’s just one way to live with defeat: Don’t hope to outlive it!” (353-54). They infiltrate the Greek ranks and kill a few but cannot turn the tides (370-401).

In his narration of events, Aeneas describes the horrible realities of war. Cassandra—a priestess of Minerva who was cursed to always prophesy the truth but never to be believed—is raped by the Greek warrior Ajax. Many of Aeneas’s comrades are killed (402-34). Aeneas takes a hidden passage into the Trojan king Priam’s palace, where the fighting is fiercest.

In his retelling, Aeneas takes a moment to describe Priam’s tragic fate. A feeble old man, Priam puts on his armor to face the Greek threat. He goes to a great altar in the center of the palace, where his wife, Hecuba, and their daughters have taken sanctuary. Hecuba gently chides him for arming himself when he is no longer able to fight. The cruel son of Achilles, Pyrrhus, sieges the palace’s inner sanctum; he kills Priam and Hecuba’s son, Polites, in front of their eyes. Priam, who was shown mercy by Achilles at the end of Homer’s Iliad, attempts to shame Pyrrhus for his outrageous behavior, but Pyrrhus is undeterred. He kills the helpless Priam at the altar, an act of great sacrilege. Virgil refers to Priam’s body as “[…] now a huge trunk lying dead on the seashore, / Head torn away from his shoulders, a thing without name, a cadaver” (557-58).

Seeing Priam’s pitiful death, Aeneas remembers his own father, Anchises. On the way back home he almost kills Helen of Troy, whom he blames as the cause of the war, but Venus appears and urges him to hurry to his family (589-631). Back at home, Anchises refuses to leave his ancestral home until two signs from the gods—a harmless flame, lit on Aeneas’s son Ascanius’s head, and a shooting star—convince the whole family it is right to leave (680-704). Aeneas carries Anchises on his shoulders and takes Ascanius’s hand; his wife, Creusa, follows behind. In the chaos, Creusa is separated from the rest of the family. Aeneas tries desperately to find her, but her ghost appears to him, telling him she has already died and that he must move on. She knows there is “a blessed state, royal power and a royal / Partner in marriage” waiting for him in Italy (793-95). Traumatized, Aeneas leads the Trojan survivors into the mountains.