Chapter summary
The poem opens by announcing its subject: arms and the man who, fleeing burning Troy, will reach Italy by the order of fate, after suffering on land and sea the wrath of Juno, and from whose line Rome will be born. The narrator asks the Muse why a goddess pursues so relentlessly a man known for his piety. The answer is the first movement of the story: Juno loves Carthage, the city that fate promises will be destroyed by the hands of descendants of the Trojans, and she holds an old grudge against Troy (the judgment of Paris, who preferred Venus, and the abduction of Ganymede). When she sees the fleet of Aeneas leave Sicily for Italy, after seven years of wandering, she bribes Aeolus, king of the winds, promising him the nymph Deiopea in marriage, and he unleashes the storm.
The storm scatters the ships and sinks one of them. Aeneas, numb with fear, envies those who died beneath the walls of Troy, before their fathers' eyes. Neptune notices the sea stirred up without his leave, rebukes the winds and calms the waves, because the sea is his domain and not Aeolus's. Seven ships reach the coast of Libya. Aeneas hunts seven stags for his companions and comforts them with a hope he himself does not feel.
In Olympus, Venus, mother of Aeneas, complains to Jupiter: what have the Trojans done that the whole world closes its road to them? Jupiter reassures her with a prophecy, because the destiny of the Trojans has not changed: Aeneas will found a city in Latium, his son Ascanius will reign in Alba, Romulus will found Rome, and to the Romans he gives an empire without limit of space or time, which will culminate in a Caesar of the line of Iulus. To secure their welcome, he sends Mercury to Carthage to soften the hearts of the Carthaginians.
The next morning, Venus appears to her son disguised as a huntress and tells him the story of the queen of the land: Dido, widow of Sychaeus, who was murdered out of greed by her brother, Pygmalion, king of Tyre; she fled with a group of malcontents and is founding Carthage. Only when she leaves does Venus reveal herself, through her gait and her scent, and Aeneas complains that his mother always deceives him with false shapes. Covered by a mist she casts over him and Achates, Aeneas enters the city while it is under construction, unseen, admires the collective work of the Carthaginians and, in the temple that Dido raises to Juno, finds the war of Troy painted on the walls. He weeps before it and understands that there they know and mourn the Trojan disaster.
Dido comes to the temple to hold court and receives Ilioneus and the companions whom Aeneas believed lost in the storm. They ask for shelter, and the queen, who knows the name of Troy and the fame of Aeneas, offers it without hesitation. The mist dissolves, Aeneas appears made radiant by his mother, and Dido invites him to the palace. Venus, who fears the instability of the Tyrians and the wrath of Juno, has Cupid take the form of Ascanius so that, in Dido's lap, he may kindle her passion for Aeneas. At the banquet, the queen receives the false boy, gradually forgets her dead husband and, at the end of the night, asks Aeneas to tell from the beginning the fall of Troy and the seven years of voyage.
Analysis
Book I does not open with Aeneas the hero; it opens with Aeneas the shipwrecked man, and it is from this position of weakness that the poem builds the legitimacy of the promised empire. The storm and Aeneas's helplessness come before Jupiter's prophecy and support it; the disguise of his own mother, which he does not recognize, comes after it. The founder of Rome appears without a full fleet, without recognition, and without even his mother's true face. The same material can be read the other way round: a poem that asks the Muse the cause of divine anger is interested in the disproportion of suffering, and Juno has no motive worthy of seven years of persecution. The book leaves both readings standing.
The disguise appears three times, and in all three it is the work of Venus: Venus disguises herself before her son without his knowing who she is, Aeneas enters Carthage covered by the mist to see without being seen, and Cupid takes Ascanius's face to change Dido's heart without her consent. From the first book on, Aeneas is a piece in a project larger than his own will, and so is Dido.
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