Study Guide

The Aeneid, Books 1-2

For an excellent overall view of the epic, including a character list and brief outlines of a couple of major problems and themes, click here. You might also want to look at this page, which makes an interesting and rather provocative comparison between Aeneas and Heracles. Lastly, you might want to look at this page on how the circumstances under which Virgil's Aeneid was composed affected its structure.

By the way, Virgil's full name was Publius Vergilius Maro. It is acceptable to spell the shortened form either "Virgil" or "Vergil." Neither version is more correct than the other.

Looking for pictures? See these images from the Virtual Virgil Museum.

I'm not going to give line numbers here, because I'm using Allen Mandelbaum's translation (Bantam Classics edition--only $5.95) and although it's an excellent translation overall its line numbers don't match up with those of the epic itself. His lines are shorter. If you're using Mandelbaum, too, you should keep that in mind.

The invocation and Juno's wrath

The invocation of the Aeneid begins "Arms and the man I sing..." Although the Odyssey begins in a similar way ("I sing of the man"), the type of man is very different. "Pius Aeneas" is characterized by his selfless sense of duty to the gods, to his family, and to his people, while "wily Odysseus" is characterized by... Well, we've already been into that.

Virgil asks the Muse to tell him the reason for why such a powerful goddess as Juno could have been so angry with such a good man. This is perhaps one of the first examples in literature of "why bad things happen to good people."

Oddly enough, it is not the Judgment of Paris/Golden Apple beauty contest that has Juno upset (though that is mentioned, along with Jupiter's infatuation with the boy Ganymede, a Trojan Prince), but her concern for the city of Carthage. Virgil says that Juno feels an affection for Carthage even greater than for her traditional seat of power at Samos. Virgil's reason for describing this affection and Carthage itself in such detail is political, not mythological.

As Powell points out on page 595 of Classical Myth, Carthage was "utterly destroyed by Rome in 146 B.C. after a hundred years of war." To give you an idea of just how utter the destruction was--and of how angry that must indicate the Romans were--have you ever seen the first Star Wars movie? The scenes of Luke Skywalker's desert home on Tatooine, the desert planet, were filmed in modern Tunisia right outside the archaeological site of Carthage. That's what Powell means by "utterly destroyed."

Virgil is playing into Rome's fear and hatred of Carthage, and to its dreams of empire, by showing that in this ancient rivalry it was the Romans who were fated to overcome. It is Rome that is destined to rule the world, even if the Queen of the Gods has to be foiled before this can take place.

The emphasis on Carthage here is a typical case of "myth as propaganda" (the Athenians were good at this, but the Romans were better). The depiction of Dido, the attractive temptress, is another case. Remember how back when we were discussing Medea we talked about how ancient myth accounts frequently drew upon current events? Virgil draws upon the war with Carthage, which was not so very long ago, but also upon the even more recent liaison between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. We'll get more into that when we look at Book 4.

Notice that Virgil says at the end of the invocation that it was because of Juno's anger that "it was so hard to found the race of Rome." Remember that Aeneas is not the founder of Rome itself--that was an honor due to his descendant Romulus--but of the Roman people.

In her soliloquy, Juno mentions that Pallas (Minerva) was "powerful enough/to set the Argive fleet on fire, to drown/the crewmen in the deep, for an outrage done/by only one infuriated man..." You might be wondering what on earth happened here, and why our old friend Athena has done such an abrupt about-face. After all, it was she who was so dead set against the Trojans and in favor of the Greeks she even cheated by disguising herself as Hector's brother so she could bring about his death.

The answer is Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Cassandra was a priestess of Apollo, sworn to eternal virginity: you may recall her as the woman Apollo himself cursed because after she'd promised to sleep with him in return for the gift of prophecy she decided to go back on her promise. Apollo's curse was that although she would always prophesy truly, no one would ever believe her--which is why the Trojans were so unwilling to listen to her about the wooden horse.

Cassandra was raped at the altar of Minerva by the younger Ajax (not to be confused with the big guy who vied with Odysseus for the armor of Achilles). Minerva was so furious at this act of impiety and desecration of her altar, she vowed to kill a great many Greeks on their way home and to make the homecoming miserable for many more.

Juno, not unnaturally, is really put out by the fact that while she, Jupiter's own Queen, had to make war against the Greeks for a full decade, Daddy's Little Girl was given permission to wipe out a huge portion of the Argive fleet just because of one man's actions.

The way Juno requests Aeolus's aid here is really pretty funny, I think. He agrees to help her because she's supported him in the past; it's a sort of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" corporate mentality. And it's typically Roman.

I also think it's interesting the way Neptune so jealously defends his turf and sends Aeolus packing. Even though he was vehemently anti-Trojan during the war over that whole incident where King Laomedon refused to pay him for building Troy's walls, he isn't willing to let an old grudge keep him from preventing that upstart god of the winds from usurping his right to create storms at sea.

To try to get his crew's spirits back up after they have weathered the storm, Aeneas mentions the difficulties they have come through, including "Scylla and her caves' resounding rocks" and "the Cyclops' crags." They're not about to be outdone by a mere Greek. They've had all the adventures Odysseus had--they're just not going to boast about them the way he did. Nor is that their focus. Unlike Odysseus, they've got a glorious destiny before them and they have their eye on the big picture: founding a new race of people. Beside this great goal, Odysseus's goal of just getting home in one piece sounds a bit piddly.

Also, pius Aeneas's strong faith might make the conservatively religious Romans cluck their tongues a bit at Odysseus's frequent questioning of the gods. Aeneas reminds his men that they are fated to make it through and found the Latin race. Unlike Odysseus, he never loses faith. Also unlike Odysseus, he sometimes has a little trouble recognizing his patron goddess when she disguises herself--and in his case, it's his own mother! But nobody ever said that staunch piety was the same thing as cleverness.

And speaking of Aeneas's mother...

Poor Jupiter! First all that trouble with Thetis coming to demand his aid for her son in the Iliad, and now here's Venus demanding aid for her son. And both times, he knows he's likely to get into trouble with his wife. Luckily, she and Juno will pair up in Book 4 to bring about the "marriage" of Dido and Aeneas, though admittedly they'll have vastly different reasons for doing so.

Jupiter's omniscient nature enables him to give Venus--and, through her, us--a preview of what is in store for Aeneas's descendants. He agrees to "unroll the secret scroll of the Fates" enough to tell her about Romulus and Remus, and even Augustus's immediate predecessor, Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was worshipped as a god after he was assassinated, and that's what Jupiter means when he talks about how "he [Julius], too, shall be invoked with prayers." When he goes on to tell how the "gruesome gates of war, with tightly welded iron plates, shall be shut fast" he is referring to how Augustus himself will bring about an age of peace during which the gate of Janus in the Forum will be shut. See? All this was ordained!

If you think this part is heavy handed, wait until you hit Book 6 and Aeneas's voyage to the underworld...

Venus prepares Dido for Aeneas's reception by sending her a dream. Virgil is using the typical epic convention of prophetic dreams, as we saw in the case of Agamemnon in the Iliad (though in that case it was a false one), Penelope in the Odyssey, and even Enkidu in the much older Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh.

Venus wraps Aeneas and Achates in a helpful mist and sends them on their way. I've always wondered why the locals didn't notice these two little clouds floating through their city, but I guess this is just a way of saying they were made invisible, just as Odysseus was in the Nausicaä episode. He, too, was described as being wrapped in a cloud.

Carthage is described as a typical Roman city: bustling and meticulously organized (and notice the importance of building the "sacred Senate"--a Roman institution). The carvings of the Trojan War on Dido's stupendous temple to Juno, however, are somewhat remarkable both in their choice of subject and in their craftsmanship. The fact that even the Carthaginians are founding their new city with a base of Trojan (not Greek!) values shows the importance of the Trojans....and through them the Roman bloodline.

The busy Carthaginians are given an extended simile in which they are described as being like bees. Bees were a favorite subject of Roman authors, and especially of Virgil, who kept bees on his estate in Mantua. In later literature they would come to represent the idea of Sweetness and Light (honey and wax) and the ability to gather the produce of a hundred flowers and distill it. Virgil's metaphor was thus adapted by the Renaissance several hundred years later as an image for its own intellectual flowering.

If we didn't know it already, those images of the Trojan War should prepare us for the probability that Queen Dido (pronounced with a long "i"--it is not "ditto") is going to be fascinated by real live Trojans. We also know that, loyal widow that she is, Dido is devoted to Juno. That fact ought to prepare us for her being pro-Trojan, and indeed we find that to be the case.

After apologizing for her people's initial rudeness to the Trojans on the grounds that the new nation's precarious nature has led them to neglect the xenia tradition of hospitality, Dido offers to make up for it by holding a huge feast at which she will unite the Trojans who have become separated from one another. She doesn't want her people to seem like bumpkins; when she says "We Tyrians do not have minds so dull, and we are not beyond the circuit of the sun's yoked horses" she is in essence saying "We're not a total backwater here! We are civilized, and of course we have heard of Aeneas and his men."

After that's cleared up, Dido and Aeneas exchange xenia gifts, and everything is very civilized and friendly indeed. So friendly, in fact, that "luckless Dido" makes the mistake of allowing the family-oriented Aeneas to send for his father and son who are back at the ship. Ooops! How was she to know that Venus was going to disguise her own son Cupid as Aeneas's little Ascanius, or that he would climb into her lap and prick her with his arrows?

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Dido almost immediately establishes an anti-Greek stance by asking Aeneas to tell her about "Grecian guile." The Romans prided themselves on being upstanding, honest, straightforward people. Aeneas, like the ideal Roman, is blunt and soldierly in his mien. We've come very far from the Odyssey, as Virgil intends we should: the Greeks, who had recently been conquered by the Romans, are shown here as morally inferior. In fact, they come off as downright sneaky, and Odysseus and his follower Sinon are the worst of them.

As she listens to his story--just as Nausicaä and her family listened to Odysseus's--Dido is about to find out the literal meaning of that cliché that is possibly the most famous line from Virgil's work: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."

Book 2 is Aeneas's account of the final fall of Troy. For a detailed study guide, try Andrew Wilson's excellent hypertext version with full annotations. The hypertext uses frames so you'll need to make your window as wide as possible. The link will open a new window.

I am going to ask you to think about Book 2 for this week's discussion topic, where I will ask you to post on the following:

Aeneas's account to Dido fills in a number of blanks in the traditional Trojan War story as we've had it in our textbook. His tale is very anecdotal, taking in a number of individual events that he witnessed or was a part of. Which of these described events did you find most interesting, most moving, or most exciting, and why? Be specific, giving examples to illustrate why you reacted as you did.

To earn 40 points of credit, bring in a reference to something outside the Aeneid, such as something in Classical Myth or the Iliad or Odyssey. For 10 points of extra credit, create a hyperlink to a website that is related to something you say in your post and that will give an added dimension to what you have to say.

He does not have any other books of the Aeneid on line.