“Happy pair! if this my song has ought of potency, no lapse of days shall efface your names from the memory of time, so long as the house of Æneas shall dwell on the Capitol’s moveless rock, and a Roman father shall be the world’s lord.”
The Story
The story on which Virgil builds is, briefly, the fall of Troy, the voyaging of Trojan refugees under Æneas, and the successful wars of Æneas with Italian barbarians.
According to the ancient legend the Greeks had warred ten years under Troy’s walls, because the Trojan prince, Paris, having awarded the prize of beauty to Venus as against Juno and Minerva, and, having been promised as reward by Venus Helen the beautiful wife of the Greek Menelaus, had eloped with that fatal beauty to Troy, and his father King Priam had refused to make restitution.
The story then, as related by Æneas to Queen Dido in her palace at Carthage, takes up (in the second book of the Æneid) the downfall and destruction of Troy, with the escape of Æneas, his father and son, together with a band of Trojans. Then (in the third book) are depicted their voyagings, unsuccessful attempts to found cities, and arrival in Sicily. Here father Anchises dies. From Sicily they sail in the endeavor to reach Latium in Italy.
It is at this point that the epic begins. So after his invocation and introduction (in Book one), Virgil makes unrelenting Juno, through the storm-king Æolus, let loose upon the Trojan fleet a fierce tempest, which drives the remnant of the fleet far away to the Carthaginian coast. Æneas, directed by his disguised mother Venus, comes to the court of Dido by whom he is kindly received, banqueted; and at her request narrates (in Books two and three) his harsh experiences.
Book four continues the Dido episode. The queen madly loves Æneas—this through the influence of Venus, who else had feared Carthaginian hostility to her dear Trojans. Juno thinks to thwart the fates and Jove’s will that Æneas should create the Roman race; and she plans to hold Æneas as spouse of the Carthaginian queen. Jove intervenes, sending Mercury with explicit commands to Æneas to seek Italy. He sails, and Dido slays herself.
In Book five they reach Sicily again, and it being the anniversary of Anchises’ death, Æneas celebrates it with athletic contests. During these Juno again attempts to thwart the fates, sending a messenger to incite the Trojan women to set the fleet on fire. But this attempt is only successful in so far as it leads Æneas to leave the weaklings under the kindly sway of their kinsman, the Sicilian chief, Acestes. The rest sail for Italy, losing the faithful pilot, Palinurus.
Book six details the visit Æneas, under the guidance of the Sibyl, to the abode of the dead. There he meets again his father Anchises, who passes in review, as souls about to be reborn into the upper world, their heroic descendants.
So far, with the exception of Book two, which recorded the fall and sack of Troy, a theme omitted by Homer, Virgil has recorded the Odyssey or wanderings of his hero Æneas. Now in the succeeding six books is given the Iliad or wars of Æneas in Italy. As he lands, King Latinus is divinely led to promise Æneas his daughter Lavinia. But she has been betrothed to Turnus. Under Juno’s prompting then begins this tremendous duel between Æneas and Turnus. And here we note a curious likeness between Milton and Virgil. As our sympathies are aroused in the Paradise Lost for Lucifer, so Turnus, “the reckless one,” looms up a figure of heroic size, doomed by the fates to die that Rome may live.