Who He Is
Aeneas is the Trojan hero whom the poem follows from the night Troy falls to the final duel with Turnus, in Italy. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the mortal Anchises, and he leaves the burning city with his father on his shoulders, his son Ascanius by the hand, and the Penates, the household gods, with the mission of founding a new city in Latium, from which Rome will be born. What he wants changes over the course of the poem: at first he wants to die with the city, then he wants only a place to rest, and only at the end does he accept acting as fate demands. Virgil defines him through Pietas, the duty owed to the gods, the homeland, and the family, and not through personal glory, and for this reason he shows him more often weeping, obeying, and carrying than winning. He already appears in the Iliad, but only here does he gain the development that makes him a protagonist.
Trajectory
In Book I he appears shipwrecked: the storm that Juno sent to scatter the fleet catches him at sea, and his first words in the poem are a lament, in which he envies the dead of Troy for having died before their fathers' eyes. On land he pretends hope for his companions, though he does not feel it. He meets his mother disguised as a huntress and does not recognize her, and he enters Carthage hidden by a mist, because that is how the gods lead him. In the temple he sees the war of Troy painted on the walls, weeps, and concludes that there are people there capable of compassion.
O terque quaterque beati / Queis ante ora patrum, Trojae sub moenibus altis, / Contigit oppetere!, O three and four times blessed are those to whom it fell to die before their fathers' eyes, beneath the lofty walls of Troy!
O, quam te memorem? virgo; namque haud tibi vultus / Mortalis, nec vox hominem sonat. O dea, certe, oh, what shall I call you? Maiden, for your face is not a mortal's, nor does your voice sound human. Goddess, surely!
In Book II he tells Dido about the last night of Troy and spares himself nothing: when recounting the entry of the horse, he says "we persisted," and places himself among the blind. Hector appears to him in a dream, orders him to flee, and hands him the Penates, but Aeneas wakes and takes up arms without reason, only because it occurs to him that it is fine to die fighting. He gathers young men with the argument that the only salvation for the defeated is not to expect salvation, and wants to kill Helen to avenge the homeland, until Venus takes him by the hand and reminds him that father, wife, and son remain surrounded by Greeks. He returns home, is stopped by the omen that convinces Anchises, and leaves carrying his father, with Ascanius by the hand and Creusa behind, whom he loses along the way.
Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troja Penates. / Hos cape fatorum comites: his moenia quaere, / Magna pererrato statues quae denique ponto., Troy entrusts to you its sacred objects and its Penates. Take them as companions of the fates: seek for them the walls that, once the great sea has been crossed, you will at last found.
Excessere omnes, adytis arisque relictis, / Di, quibus imperium hoc steterat: succurritis urbi / Incensae: moriamur, et in media arma ruamus. / Una salus victis, nullam sperare salutem., all the gods on whom this empire rested have departed, leaving their shrines and altars: you come to the aid of a burning city. Let us die, and rush into the midst of the arms. The only safety for the defeated is to hope for no safety.
In Book III he learns to read signs, and learns badly at first. He leaves Troy, carried by the fates, weeping, and abandons Thrace after the voice of Polydorus, who died precisely for having been given hospitality. He follows the reading that Anchises makes of Apollo's oracle up to the plague in Crete, and only then do the Penates, who appear to him in a dream, correct the course: the promised land is Italy. He heeds Helenus's warnings, avoids Scylla and Charybdis, and answers for the lives of all, and at parting tells Helenus and Andromache that they may live happily, because their fortune has already run its course, and his has not. The book ends at Drepanum, where he loses his father.
Vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta / Jam sua: nos alia ex aliis in fata vocamur., live happily, you whose fortune has already run its course: we are called from one fate to another.
In Book IV Aeneas is the guest whom Dido calls husband, a name he never uses for himself. Mercury finds him raising the walls of Carthage with the sword and the cloak she gave him, and rebukes him; he falls silent, wants to flee, and decides to have the fleet readied in secret, because he believes Dido cannot imagine an end to so great a love. When she confronts him, he answers with steady eyes and hidden pain: he promised no marriage, the oracles send him to Italy, his father visits him in dreams, Ascanius loses his kingdom if he stays, and Mercury himself was seen and heard. He obeys because the reasons come from outside him, and for this reason the poem does not absolve him: the price is paid by Dido.
Sed nunc Italiam magnam Grynaeus Apollo, / Italiam Lyciae jussere capessere sortes: / Hic amor, haec patria est, but now Grynean Apollo and the Lycian oracles have ordered me to make for great Italy: there is my love, this is my homeland.
Ac velut annoso validam cum robore quercum / Alpini Boreae, nunc hinc, nunc flatibus illinc / Eruere inter se certant [...] Ipsa haeret scopulis, et quantum vertice ad auras / Aethereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit: / Haud secus assiduis atque hinc vocibus heros / Tunditur, et magno persentit pectore curas; / Mens immota manet, lacrymae volvuntur inanes, and as when the Alpine winds of Boreas, from this side and that, contend to tear up a sturdy oak with its ancient roots [...] it clings to the crags, and as far as its crown rises toward the aethereal air, so far its root reaches down to Tartarus: not otherwise the hero is battered by endless voices and feels deep anxieties in his great heart; his mind remains unmoved, and useless tears roll down.
In Book V he sails, looking back at the walls of Carthage lit by the fire, and the Trojans read the pyre as a bad omen, because they know what a woman wounded by love can do. He veers toward Sicily, where Acestes and Anchises's bones are, and presides over the funeral games for his father, awarding a prize to almost everyone so that the contest does not turn into enmity. When the Trojan women, urged on by Iris, set fire to the ships, he prays to Jupiter, and the rain puts out the fire at the cost of four ships. Anchises appears to him in a dream and orders him to descend to Avernus. The crossing costs Palinurus, whom he laments without understanding how the pilot fell.
Jupiter omnipotens, si nondum exosus ad unum / Trojanos, si quid pietas antiqua labores / Respicit humanos; da flammam evadere classi / Nunc, Pater, et tenues Teucrum res eripe leto; / Vel tu, quod superest, infesto fulmine morti, / Si mereor, demitte, tuaque hic obrue dextra., Jupiter Almighty, if you do not yet hate the Trojans down to the last one, if ancient piety regards human labors at all, let the fleet escape the flames now, Father, and snatch the meager remnant of the Teucrians from death; or, if I deserve it, send what remains of us to death with your hostile thunderbolt, and bury me here with your own hand.
O nimium coelo et pelago confise sereno, / Nudus in ignota, Palinure, jacebis arena!, o you who trusted too much in the calm sky and sea, Palinurus, you will lie naked on an unknown shore!
In Book VI he does not ask the Sibyl for the future, which she says she has already foreseen: he asks to see his father, and bases the request on what he did for him in the flames of Troy. Two doves of Venus lead him to the golden bough, and he breaks it off eagerly, though the bough hesitates. In the land of the dead he swears to Dido that he left her shore against his will, and she, eyes on the ground, flees to join Sychaeus without answering. With Anchises he tries three times to embrace him, and the shade escapes, like Creusa's. From him he receives the procession of future Romans and Rome's mission, and he leaves through the gate of ivory.
Ire ad conspectum cari genitoris et ora / Contingat; doceas iter, et sacra ostia pandas. / Illum ego per flammas et mille sequentia tela / Eripui his humeris, medioque ex hoste recepi, may it be granted to me to go and see the face of my dear father; show the way and open the sacred gates. I carried him out of there on these shoulders, through flames and a thousand spears that came after, and rescued him from the midst of the enemy
Funeris heu tibi causa fui! Per sidera juro, / Per Superos, et si qua fides tellure sub ima est, / Invitus, regina, tuo de littore cessi, alas, I was the cause of your death! I swear by the stars, by the gods above, and by whatever faith there is beneath the deep earth: against my will, O queen, I left your shore
Ter conatus ibi collo dare brachia circum; / Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, / Par levibus ventis, volucrique simillima somno, three times there he tried to throw his arms around the neck; three times the image, grasped in vain, escaped his hands, like the light winds, most like a flying sleep
In Book VII he reaches the Tiber and is the only one to understand Iulus's joke about eating their own tables, because only he kept the prediction his father left: the hunger that would make them gnaw the tables would mark the end of the wandering. He greets the land and the Penates, and sends a hundred envoys to Latinus. The war that follows is born without him, from Juno's will, Allecto's serpent, and a wounded stag.
Salve, fatis mihi debita tellus; / Vosque, ait, o fidi Trojae, salvete, Penates. / Hic domus, haec patria est, hail, land owed to me by the fates; and you, he said, faithful Penates of Troy, hail! Here is the home, this is the homeland.
In Book VIII the god of the Tiber promises him a sure home and sure Penates, and a white sow with thirty piglets appears as a sign: he sacrifices her to Juno, the goddess who pursues him, because the dream commanded it. He sails up the river, forms an alliance with Evander, receives from him his son Pallas and the horsemen, and gets from his mother the arms that Vulcan forged. He admires the shield, on which the history of his descendants is engraved, without knowing how to read what it carries.
Hic tibi certa domus, certi, ne absiste, Penates; / Neu belli terrere minis: tumor omnis et irae / Concessere deum, here you have a sure home, sure Penates; do not give up, and do not be frightened by the threats of war: all the swelling of the gods' anger has yielded.
Talia per clypeum Vulcani, dona parentis, / Miratur, rerumque ignarus, imagine gaudet, / Attollens humero famamque et fata nepotum, such things, through the shield of Vulcan, a gift from his mother, he admires, and, ignorant of their meaning, rejoices in the image, raising on his shoulder the fame and fates of his descendants.
In Book IX he does not appear, and yet everything starts from him: his absence opens the breach through which Turnus attacks, the order he left keeps the Trojans behind the wall, and it is to him that Nisus and Euryalus want to carry the warning.
In Book X he returns to the war, warned by the nymphs, and the death of Pallas transforms him. He refuses Mago's ransom, saying that Turnus ended the exchanges of war when he killed the young man, and he takes eight young men captive for Pallas's pyre. With Lausus, who throws himself against him to save his father Mezentius, it is different: he gives warning before striking, and after the blow he returns to the dead man his arms and body, because the image of Lausus's love for his father comes to his mind.
Argenti atque auri memoras quae multa talenta, / Gnatis parce tuis: belli commercia Turnus / Sustulit ista prior, jam tum Pallante perempto. / Hoc patris Anchisae Manes, hoc sentit Iulus, the silver and gold of which you speak in so many talents, keep it for your sons: Turnus was the first to abolish these dealings of war, when he killed Pallas. This is what the shades of my father Anchises and Iulus feel.
Quid tibi nunc, miserande puer, pro laudibus istis, / Quid pius Aeneas tanta dabit indole dignum? / Arma, quibus laetatus, habe tua: teque parentum / Manibus et cineri (si qua est ea cura) remitto. / Hoc tamen infelix miseram solabere mortem; / Aeneae magni dextra cadis, what will the pious Aeneas now give you in return for such praise, poor boy, what will he give worthy of such a noble nature? Keep the arms in which you took pride; and I return you to the spirits and ashes of your fathers, if that matters to them. Yet you will have this comfort in your unhappy death: you fall by the hand of great Aeneas.
In Book XI he raises the arms of Mezentius as a trophy, and before the body of Pallas he recognizes that he did not keep what he promised the father. He grants the truce the Latins ask for in order to bury the dead, with the remark that he would give peace to the living as well, and receives from Evander the reproach that his hand owes Turnus to son and father.
Hi nostri reditus, exspectatique triumphi? / Haec mea magna fides!, is this our return, are these the triumphs we awaited? This is my great faith!
Pacem me exanimis et Martis sorte peremptis / Oratis? equidem et vivis concedere vellem., do you ask me for peace for the lifeless and for those cut down by the lot of Mars? I would gladly grant it to the living as well.
In Book XII he swears that he wants no kingdom, that the two peoples will have equal laws, and that Latinus will command; and when the treaty breaks, he takes off his helmet and extends an open hand to halt the fighting. An arrow of unknown origin wounds him, Venus heals the wound in secret, and he kisses Ascanius over the helmet before returning to the battle. At Venus's suggestion he threatens to raze the city of Latinus, which contradicts what he swore. In the end he hesitates before the fallen Turnus, who begs him for his life in the name of his father, until he sees on the shoulder of the vanquished the baldric of Pallas, and kills him.
Quo ruitis? quaeve ista repens discordia surgit? / O cohibete iras! ictum jam foedus et omnes / Compositae leges, mihi jus concurrere soli, where are you rushing? What sudden discord is this that rises? Oh, restrain your anger! The treaty has already been struck and all the terms agreed upon: to me alone belongs the right to fight.
Tune hinc spoliis indute meorum / Eripiare mihi? Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas / Immolat et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit, will you, clad in the spoils of my own men, escape me from here? Pallas, Pallas sacrifices you with this blow and exacts the penalty from your guilty blood.
Themes Embodied
The theme that defines him is Duty: Aeneas acts on the orders of Hector, of the Penates, of Mercury, and of Anchises, and the poem measures how much this costs those close to him, from Creusa to Dido and Palinurus. Linked to it are Fate and free will, because he tells Dido that he does not follow Italy of his own will and, in the end, chooses the blow against Turnus out of anger, and not only because Evander asked. Home, Exile, and Return appear in the image that defines him, the man who carries the Penates and the father of a city lost to a place he has never seen, and Empire and colonialism in the foundation he prepares without knowing it, as the shield shows. Passion enters through his relationship with Dido, and War through the change that Pallas's death provokes in him in Book X.
Book I presents the founder of Rome as a shipwrecked man who envies the dead, and Book XII shows him killing a suppliant in the name of a dead youth. Between the two extremes, the poem makes Aeneas someone who carries more than he decides, and it charges him for every choice in other people's lives. The same fact can be read another way: whoever carries without deciding is not merely an instrument, because in the moments when he hesitates, in Book IV and in Book XII, the hesitation is his, and the poem records it.
Relationships
- Anchises: the father he carries on his shoulders, who decides the course of the wandering for him until he dies at Drepanum and afterward calls him to Avernus.
- Ascanius: the son who walks by his hand, the future that justifies the abandonment of Dido and to whom he leaves the lesson of valor.
- Creusa: the first wife, lost in the flight, whose shade foretells the exile.
- Dido: the queen who welcomes him and whom he leaves by the gods' order, and who in Avernus does not answer him.
- Venus: the mother who protects him, guides him in disguise, and hands him the arms.
- Juno: the goddess who pursues him for seven years of wandering and then through the war in Latium.
- Turnus: the rival in Latium, whom he kills in the poem's final line.
- Pallas and Evander: the young ally whose death changes him, and the father who demands his vengeance.
In the Iliad, Before Virgil
In the Iliad he is saved by gods twice, and both times for the same reason: he has a destiny of his own, outside that war. In Canto V, wounded by a stone thrown by Diomedes, he is protected by Aphrodite herself, who covers him with her body and is wounded in his place. In Canto XX, under attack from Achilles, it is Poseidon who removes him from the fight, against the Greek party of the gods, because fate reserves for him survival of Troy's fall. Homer marks this destiny without developing it, and it is what Virgil narrates centuries later.
In Art
The flight from Troy, with the father on the shoulders and the son by the hand, appears in the painting The Flight of Aeneas from Troy and in the sculpture Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius.