The Aeneid by Virgil

*contains spoilers*

Virgil’s The Aeneid continues where Homer left off at the end of The Iliad, though instead of following the fate of the Greeks, as Homer did with his exquisite follow up epic, The Odyssey, Virgil focuses on the troublesome journey that the Trojans must face having escaped the sacked and still-burning Troy. There is one key reason for this being Virgil’s focus, and that is that Virgil was a Roman poet writing at the time of the reign of Caesar Augustus. Indeed, Caesar Augustus himself commissioned the piece, and it is not merely coincidence that the fate of the Trojans is invariably linked with the establishment of Rome; Caesar Augustus wanted his reign further validated, and the way to do that was to insinuate himself in the established mythical tales of the time. The Aeneid is, therefore, more than just an admirable mythical epic poem - it was a powerful political tool put to very good use.

Considering the context in which the piece was written (a Rome that had already then suffered decades of unstable stewardship, flitting between the authority of the democratic Republic and the tyranny of Gaius Julius Caesar), we can see clearly that Virgil sought to add weight to Rome’s stability under Augustus by justifying the bloodshed by which Rome was conceived and governed up until then. We have, therefore, Aeneas retrieving the golden bough so as to gain entry into the Underworld to speak with his father, only to find Augustus awaiting reincarnation in Heaven; “And here, here is the man, the promised one you know of - / Caesar Augustus, son of a god, destined to rule…” (Book VI) With the benefit of hindsight we can see Virgil’s blatant nod to his Caesar, but at the time this would have been considered by the credulous masses as a validation of their ruler’s greatness.

As well as adding his own tastes to the established mythological tales of Archaic Greece, Virgil completely departs with some of the rules as we see the heroes of the hard-fought wars appear in the underworld still mangled from their wounds; “Just then Aeneas caught sight of Deiphobus, his whole body / A mass of wounds, most horribly about the face…head mutilated with ears / Torn off…” (Book VI) As Aeneas gains access to the Underworld and reaches the River Styx, he meets many of his fallen comrades and enemies – without a proper ritualistic burial, they will never cross the river to find peace. There are, however, profound parallels with the Homeric texts, as we find Aeneas’s reaction to Pallas’s untimely death at the hand of Turnus not dissimilar to Achilles’s emotional (and deadly) response to Patroclus’s demise at the hand of Hector in The Iliad. The reaction could rightly be considered as somewhat forced on Virgil’s part, when keeping in mind Achilles’s devotion to Patroclus (and vice versa) during the lengthy siege at Troy in comparison to Aeneid’s only recently formed connection with the young Pallas, son of the Etruscan king, Evander, before the battle in Latium. It is the brave and merciless Turnus, wearing in his final duel with Aeneas the bloody armour of Pallas in celebration of his defeat, who incites Aeneas’s resolute rage so that he casts the fatal blow and ends the war and wins him the hand of the much sought after Lavinia; Their unity, as decreed by the gods, cements the fate of the Roman line.

Virgil took eleven years to write this masterpiece, and it clearly shows, though he wanted another three years to edit and refine. Before this could happen, however, he fell ill and died, after pleading for the (what he considered) unfinished manuscript to be burned. Thankfully, it wasn’t, though niggling mistakes can be found here and there if you look, well, not even very closely. For instance, the nymph, Juturna (a concoction of Virgil’s own) uses powers to help her brother, the powerful Turnus, which only the mighty Jupiter (Zeus in the Greek texts) should possess. Virgil also endows Aeneas with a battlefield prowess that is inconsistent with Homer’s Aeneas in The Iliad. Homer states that Aeneas will lead the Trojans to glory one day, yes, but Virgil goes as far as presenting Aeneas and Hector as warriors of equal power and skill – even claiming that Aeneas “Stood first in devotion of heart” (Book XI). This, of course, is Virgil imbuing Rome’s ancestral stock with as much power as he can muster so as to please the noble and proud Roman people.

One can’t write about the classical texts without addressing what ultimately drives them along in the first place: the will of the gods. In doing so, it’s only right that I go right back to the reason the siege at Troy occurred in the first place: Juno’s jealousy. Paris, in his impudence, claimed Venus (Aphrodite in the Greek texts) to be more beautiful than Juno (Hera in the Greek texts), and in her jealous spite (let’s be honest, all the gods are whiny little children: Triton, as another example, kills Misenus by drowning him, after Misenus claims to blow his conch more beautifully than Triton – how dare he!), Juno manipulates events in order to bring about Troy’s destruction. Along Aeneas’s way, it is Juno who continues to set up antagonising obstacles for him and his people so as to plague them, carrying over her spite even once the Trojans are left homeless, even as Jupiter has clearly and authoritatively declared the fate of the Trojan people does in fact lie in glory in Italy. From the beginning, and leading all the way up to the final book, Book XII, Juno refuses to let up, causing storms and wars, only for her to finally succumb to the mocking Jupiter’s will; “This is the end, I say. You had the power to harry the Trojans / All over lands and seas, to kindle accursed war…I forbid you to carry the feud any further.” (Book XII) One, at this point, tangibly understands the pathos in the suffering of all the mortal humans at the hands of the gods. Even as Aeneas finds love amongst the Carthaginians in Dido, he realises that fate overrules all and that he must set sail. Dido, in her grief, commits suicide and Aeneas witnesses her burning palace from his departing ship. It is only once Aeneas gains access to the Underworld that he learns of Dido’s fate, and sheds a lamenting tear. At this point, in Book VI, however, the pain has only just begun!