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Aeneid · Book V

The Games

Fate and Free WillDutyHome, Exile, and Return

Chapter summary

Aeneas is already sailing toward Italy when he sees, behind him, the walls of Carthage lit by a fire whose cause the Trojans do not know (the reader of Book IV knows it is the pyre of Dido), and the omen weighs on them: they know what a woman wounded by love can do. A storm closes the sky, and the pilot Palinurus says that in such weather he will not reach Italy even with Jupiter's guarantee, and proposes turning aside to Sicily. Aeneas agrees, because Sicily holds the Trojan king Acestes and the bones of his father, Anchises, buried there a year earlier.

Acestes welcomes them generously. The next day, Aeneas gathers his companions at the tomb and reminds them that a year has passed since Anchises' death: he would celebrate the day even if he were wandering over enemy seas, and he sees in the detour a will of the gods. He announces games for the ninth day. As he pours the libations, a serpent slides out of the tomb, tastes the offerings, and returns without doing harm. Aeneas, not knowing whether it is the genius of the place or his father's servant, renews the honors with greater devotion.

On the ninth day the games begin, and the first event is the four-ship race. Gyas leads to the turning mark and orders his pilot Menoetes to pass close to the rock, but Menoetes fears the hidden stones and keeps away, and Cloanthus passes on the inside. Furious at the loss of honor, Gyas throws the pilot into the sea and takes the helm. Sergestus strikes the rock, and Mnestheus, who now only asks not to come last, overtakes the other two. Cloanthus, almost caught, promises the sea gods a white bull, and Portunus pushes his ship forward: he wins. Aeneas gives a prize to everyone, and he consoles Sergestus, who arrived battered, with a slave woman.

In the footrace, Nisus, who is in front, slips in the blood of the sacrificed oxen and, falling, trips Salius so that his friend Euryalus can win. Salius protests, but the crowd likes the young man, and Aeneas keeps the prizes: he gives Salius a lion's skin and gives Nisus, who complains about what he lost, a shield, laughing.

In the boxing, no one dares to face Dares, and he claims the bull. Acestes calls on the old Entellus, a former pupil of the god Eryx, to live up to his fame. Entellus replies that he has not lost his courage, only his blood has cooled, and he throws down the gloves of Eryx, weighted with lead; Dares draws back. Entellus offers equal gloves to both. Dares is nimble, Entellus heavy and out of breath; Entellus misses a blow and falls, and, ashamed and furious, he goes back on the attack without respite, until Aeneas stops the fight and takes Dares out of it, and his companions carry him, bloodied, to the ships. Entellus kills the bull with a single punch between the horns, offers it to Eryx, and sets down the gloves.

In the archery contest, the target is a dove tied by a thread to a ship's mast; Eurytion brings it down. Acestes, the last to shoot, aims at the sky, and the arrow catches fire and vanishes like a falling star. Aeneas reads the sign as Jupiter's favor, gives Acestes a mixing bowl that had belonged to Anchises, and proclaims him first. Last, Ascanius leads the boys on horseback in maneuvers that recall a labyrinth. The narrator says that Ascanius brought the game to Alba, Alba passed it on to Rome, and the boys still call themselves the Trojan squadron.

Then luck turns. Juno, who has not yet soothed her old hurt, sends Iris to the fleet. Iris finds the Trojan women on the beach, weeping for Anchises and gazing at the sea: so much sea still to cross. Disguised as the old Beroe, she says they have seven years of wandering behind them, that the land of Acestes is right there, and that no one stops them from founding a city; she tells of a dream in which Cassandra gave her torches. Pyrgo, the old nurse of Priam's sons, recognizes the goddess by her gaze and her gait. The women, torn between the land at hand and the kingdoms that destiny calls them to, decide when the goddess rises into the sky, and they set fire to the ships.

Ascanius gallops to the camp, throws off his helmet, and begs them to stop; they flee in shame, but the fire persists. Aeneas prays to Jupiter, and a storm puts out the flames, at the cost of four ships. Shaken, Aeneas hesitates, and the old Nautes advises leaving the weary behind with Acestes, to found the city of Acesta. That night Anchises appears in a dream: he comes by Jupiter's order, approves the counsel, announces war against a hard people in Latium, and tells his son to go first down to Avernus, where the Sibyl will guide him. He vanishes like smoke, Aeneas tries to embrace him, and he tells everything to Acestes. The city is marked out with a plow.

After nine days of festivity, the wind calls them again, and Aeneas comforts those who stay and entrusts them to Acestes. Venus, fearing Juno, asks Neptune for a safe crossing to the Tiber, and he promises: only one life will be lost. That night Sleep comes down disguised as Phorbas and orders Palinurus to rest; Palinurus refuses, distrustful of the calm sea, but the god overcomes him with a dripping branch from the river of forgetfulness and throws him into the waves, helm and all. The fleet sails on safely. Near the rocks of the Sirens, Aeneas notices that the ship is going without a pilot, takes the helm himself, and mourns the dead man.

Analysis

Book V seems a pause between Dido and Avernus, but it is in this book that the poem shows Rome being founded through repetition. The games honor Anchises and, twice, the narrator steps out of the scene to say where those things still exist: the Roman families descended from the captains of the race (Mnestheus gives his name to the Memmii, Sergestus to the Sergii, Cloanthus to the Cluentii) and the squadron of boys on horseback. The continuity between Troy, Alba, and Rome runs through customs and names, not through battles. The opposing reading sees the book as a tribute to the Iliad: the games for Patroclus arise from fresh mourning and a vengeance still underway, while those of Aeneas honor a father dead a year, without the same heat. On this reading the book is an imitation, and its strength lies in its construction, not its subject.

In almost every episode someone acts out of honor or affection and pays a small price that the poem will collect on a larger scale later: Nisus's love for Euryalus, which here gives the victory to his friend, is what leads them to die together in Book IX; Palinurus, who refuses rest out of prudence, falls in the same way, and it is Neptune's bill, "one head for many." The counterpoint is Aeneas as arbiter: he gives a prize to Sergestus, Salius, Nisus, and Dares, and so keeps the contest from turning into enmity. This generosity contrasts with the providence of the gods, who save the entire fleet and collect from a single man, without warning.

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