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By Publius Vergilius Maro, Known as Vergil–or Virgil (70-19 B.C.) A Study Guide |
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Plot Summary By Michael J. Cummings...© 2003 .. . ........When Troy falls to the marauding Greeks, Aeneas rescues his father and son but loses his wife, Creusa, in the burning city. She dies. After escaping to nearby Phrygia, Aeneas rounds up other Trojan refugees, builds a fleet, and sets sail for a new land and a new life. But a powerful enemy–Juno, queen of the Olympian gods–imperils his voyage at every opportunity. She despises the Trojan race for  two
reasons. First, a Trojan, Paris, had insulted her when he selected Aphrodite
over her in a beauty contest before the war. Second, another Trojan, Aeneas,
had been selected by the Fates to found a civilization that would one day
vanquish her favorite city, Carthage. Consequently, she visits calamity
upon Aeneas time and again, tossing and whirling his ships and pointing
their prows into uncharted waters.
........For seven years, Aeneas and his followers–including his father, Anchises, and son, Ascanius, known alternately as Iulus–roam the trackless oceans as Juno’s playthings. In a final attempt to thwart Aeneas, Juno persuades the king of the winds, Aeolus, to loose powerful tempests against Aeneas’ fleet. Many ships go down, and their crews and passengers with them. However, the great god of the sea–earth-shaking Neptune, who had built Troy’s walls and who had once saved Aeneas on the Trojan battlefield from terrible Achilles–calms the waters to the smoothness of glass. The remaining ships, seven in all, find safe harbor in north Africa. There, the refugees kill stags, make fire, and pacify raging hunger. Aeneas heartens his followers, reminding them that on their voyage they had survived monsters, treachery, and roiling seas. ........When Venus–the mother of Aeneas–appears to him in disguise, she directs him to Carthage, ruled by beautiful Dido. Dido had founded the city after abandoning her native Phoenicia to escape her brother, who had murdered her husband for his wealth. After her husband's death, Dido took a vow of celibacy. However, Venus the goddess of love, directs her son Cupid, the god of love, to smite Dido with overpowering love for Aeneas to ensure his safety in Carthage. . ........After receiving the Trojans, Dido orders a sumptuous banquet for them and bids Aeneas tell of Troy and his wanderings across the seas. Dutifully, Aeneas tells the tale, though it grieves him to recall the horror of it all. Here is his story: ........Ten years of war between the Greeks and the Trojans bring only a stalemate. One day, the Greeks abandon the battlefield and leave behind a gigantic wooden horse, apparently a peace offering. It is a wondrous thing, a mountain of planking cut from fir trees, that stands at the gates of Troy. As the Trojans gaze upon the horse in amazement, shepherds bring into the city a Greek captive, Sinon, bound at the wrists. A talented liar who had allowed himself to be captured, Sinon persuades the Trojans that the horse is an offering to the goddess Minerva. If they accept it, they will prosper as a mighty Asian power; if they destroy it, they will bring calamity upon themselves. A Trojan priest, Laocoön, warns the people not to receive it. “Beware the Greeks bearing gifts,” he cries, hurling a spear into its side. At that moment, two serpents rise from the sea, come ashore, and seize Laocoön and his two sons, girding them in coils, then disappear. The Trojans interpret this ghastly event as a sign that the gods prize the horse as a holy offering; Laocoön had received just punishment for desecrating it. ........Because of its size–verily, its breadth spans a hundred cubits and its mane touches the clouds–the Trojans take hammer and axe to the city walls, opening a breach big enough to receive the horse into Troy. Cassandra–the daughter of Troy’s king, Priam–admonishes her countrymen to cease their madness. The horse, she says, is indeed a trick that will bring ruin to Troy. Cassandra is singularly talented in the prophetic arts; she can see into the future and beyond, knowing the outcome events before they happen. But the god who gave her this gift of prophecy, Apollo, also emplaced in her a most cruel and debilitating handicap: Whenever she pronounces a prophecy, no one will believe her. So it is that the Trojans ignore her and pull the horse into the city. ........After nightfall, its belly opens and releases armed Greeks who bring sword and torch to sleeping Troy. The rest of the Greek  horde–hidden
all along behind rocks and hills and in folds of valleys–merge into a river
of destruction that rages through the breach in the wall. They burn, pillage,
destroy. Aeneas saves his father and son but, in the tumult of fire and
smoke and fleeing citizens, loses his wife, Creusa, who later dies.
........In Phrygia, the surviving Trojans construct ships, gather wind in their unfolding sails, and set a course for Thrace. There Aeneas founds a city, Aeneadae. But the voice of a dead Trojan warns Aeneas to seek haven elsewhere, for Thrace is an evil land that betrayed Troy during the war, first stealing Trojan gold sent to Thrace for safekeeping, then pledging allegiance to the Greeks. ........Aeneas puts to sea again, sailing to an island sacred to the prophecy god Apollo. After a priest of Apollo welcomes them, the god tells Aeneas through the priest that he must settle in the land of his ancestors. On the advice of his father, Anchises, Aeneas sails to Crete, where once lived an early settler of Troy. There, Aeneas establishes another city, Pergamea, and his men plow the fields while he makes laws and plans for the future. But after pestilence descends upon the land, the harvest fails and hunger rules. In a dream, Aeneas learns that Italy, not Crete, is to be the home of the “new Troy,” for Italy was the birthplace of the progenitor of the Trojan race, Dardanus. ........After Aeneas and his followers take to their ships once more, peril and misfortune beset them in the form of winged beasts, famine, and raging seas until, at long last, Neptune intervenes and Aeneas lands in North Africa in the realm of Dido. The tale is complete. . ........In the following months, Dido–now desperately in love with Aeneas–spends all her time with him, and he with her. They seem frozen in time, unaware of past or present, and scandalous tales are told about them. Mighty Jove then sends the messenger god, Mercury, to Carthage to remind Aeneas of his destiny. It is wrong for him to dally, Mercury says, when he has an important mission awaiting him. When heedful Aeneas secretly prepares to leave, Dido discovers his plans and implores him to stay. But he is deaf to her pleas. Wounded, angry, bitter, she curses him and his kind and importunes the gods to drive a wedge of everlasting hatred between his future country and Carthage. As the Trojans set sail, she falls on a sword left behind by Aeneas and dies in the arms of her sister. ........Far from shore now, as the fleet gathers wind and speed and Carthage glows with the flames of Dido’s funeral pyre, a storm forces Aeneas off course to Sicily. There, a Trojan, Acestes, who has founded a kingdom near Mount Eryx, welcomes Aeneas. While Aeneas holds funeral games in memory of his father, ever meddlesome Juno stirs dissent among the Trojan women, who are weary of traveling from port to port. When they set the ships ablaze, great Jupiter–answering a hurried prayer of Aeneas–quenches the fire with rain. Before leaving Sicily, Aeneas learns from the ghost of his father that he is to travel next to Cumae, Italy, to meet with his father in the Underworld. At Cumae a prophetess called the Sybil informs Aeneas that the land in which he will establish the new Troy is Latium, a region along the west coast of central Italy. But he first must fight a war caused by his marriage to a woman of Latium. After the Sybil escorts Aeneas into Hades, he sees wondrous and terrifying sights–centaurs, giants, serpents, hideous monsters, crying babies, the wandering ghosts of the unburied dead, the pitiful forms of those who died by their own hand, and the personifications of Disease, Hunger, War, Grief, and Old Age. And he sees Dido, too. But she turns away, preferring darkest hell to the still-burning embers of love in his eyes. . ........By and by, Aeneas and his guide come upon a world of light–a world of grassy meadows, gentle streams, and shaded groves. In this heavenly corner of the Underworld, he meets and embraces his father, Anchises, who tells Aeneas of the glorious future in store for him and the Roman civilization he is to found. Aeneas’ progeny will become rulers of the world, he says. Anchises even mentions mention Augustus Caesar by name, saying he will preside over a great golden age in which Rome rules a vast empire that is the jewel of human civilization. ........When Aeneas at last arrives in his new home, Latium, a local ruler, Latinus, welcomes him and arranges a marriage between him and his only daughter, Lavinia. However, Lavinia has already been pledged to Turnus, King of the Rutulians, a tribe in Latium. News of the betrothal to Aeneas infuriates him. Turnus has an ally in the wife of Latinus, Amata, who has been poisoned against Aeneas by Alecto, a snake-haired goddess of vengeance, at the behest of Juno. Together, Turnus and Amata sow discord. A mighty conflict ensues, in which Etruscans under Mezentius ally with Turnus and Greek colonists under Evander ally with Aeneas. The fury of the warfare is reminiscent of the raging violence of the Trojan War. In the end, the conflict comes down to hand-to-hand combat between Aeneas and Turnus. When Aeneas drives his sword through Turnus, peace descends over the land and Aeneas becomes the founder and progenitor of the greatest nation in history: glorious Rome. .  Pronunciations Aeneid:
uh NE id
The time is the Twelfth Century, BC. The action takes place in lands in the Mediterranean region, including Troy (in flashback), Carthage, Sicily, Italy, and various islands. Troy was in northern Anatolia, a region in Asia Minor that is part of modern-day Turkey. Anatolia is east of Greece (across the Aegean Sea) and north of Egypt (across the Mediterranean Sea). Carthage was on the northern coast of Africa in present-day Tunisia. In the language of the Phoenicians, who founded Carthage, the city was Kart-hadasht, meaning New Town. Sicily, an island off the southwestern coast of Italy, is about 100 miles northeast of Tunisia. Characters
.The Aeneid is an epic, a long poem in a lofty style about the exploits of heroic figures. It contains twelve books, which are actually long chapters. Vergil wrote The Aeneid between 30 and 19 B.C. The climax occurs in the showdown between Aeneas and Turnus. The greatest of all civilizations
is mighty Rome, which grew from the seeds of courage, nobility, perseverance,
and ingenuity planted by Aeneas after he arrived in Italy.
Vergil mainly imitates the lofty tone and style of Homer’s great epics–The Iliad and The Odyssey, in particular the latter–and incorporates some of their content. Like Odysseus in The Odyssey, Aeneas wanders the Mediterranean after the Trojan War, encountering perils and diversions, but never loses sight of his ultimate goal. Like Odysseus, he has a love affair, visits the Underworld, retells parts of his adventures in flashback, and faces one last fight upon reaching his destination. Vergil also borrows freely from Annales, an epic poem by Quintus Ennius (239-169 B.C.) that recounts the Aeneas legend. In The Aeneid Vergil uses the verse form Ennius introduced, dactylic hexameter. This form contains six metrical feet that each consist of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables. Finally, Vergil draws to a limited extent upon the style and content of Argonautica, by Apollonius of Rhodes (295-215 B.C.), which tells the story of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece and his love affair with Medea. Vergil's goal in writing The Aeneid was to glorify Rome and exalt its emperor. During Vergil’s lifetime, Rome achieved the pinnacle of its greatness under Augustus Caesar, earlier known as Octavian, who was by adoption the grandnephew of Julius Caesar. Octavian (63 B.C.-14 A.D.) became emperor in 29 B.C., two years after defeating Mark Antony in the Battle of Actium. In 27 B.C., the senate bestowed on Octavian the title “Augustus” to call attention to his superior qualities. Augustus Caesar instituted many political and social reforms, constructed roads linking imperial cities, promoted the arts, and inaugurated an era of peace (known as the pax romana) that endured long after his death. Vergil, who benefited from the emperor’s patronage, decided to extol Caesar in The Aeneid, conferring on him a noble heritage and lineage brought from Troy to Italy in the person of the princely lionheart, Aeneas. Although Aeneas was a figure of myth, not fact, all-powerful Augustus welcomed Vergil’s tale as a fitting metaphor for historical truth. Study Questions and Essay Topics 1. Identify other heroes
in myth or history who traveled a great distance to found new civilizations,
reap the riches of virgin lands, find new .....navigation
routes, or institute trade with native cultures.
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