Who She Is
Juno is the queen of the gods, wife of Jupiter, and the pursuer of Aeneas throughout the poem. The reasons the first book gives are two: she loves Carthage, the city that fate promises will be destroyed by the hands of the Trojans' descendants, and she holds an old grudge against Troy, dating from the judgment of Paris, who preferred Venus, and from the abduction of Ganymede. What she wants changes as she loses. At first she wants to keep the fleet from reaching Italy, then to see the marriage of Aeneas to Lavinia take place, and at the end she only wants to save what she can: to delay, to raise the price, and, last of all, to preserve the name of the Latins. She knows that fate is against her and fights anyway, and this is what gives her role its own weight: Juno is the opposition that measures the suffering the poem exacts for empire.
Trajectory
In Book I the narrator asks the Muse how so much wrath can dwell in the minds of the gods, and the answer is Juno, who sees the Trojan fleet on its way to Italy and wonders whether she, defeated, will give up. She bribes Aeolus with the promise of the nymph Deiopea, and he unleashes the storm. Jupiter, in his prophecy to Venus, promises that she herself will change her mind.
Tantaene animis coelestibus irae!, so much wrath in heavenly minds?
Mene incepto desistere victam? / Nec posse Italia Teucrorum avertere regem?, I, defeated, give up what I began? Not be able to turn the king of the Trojans away from Italy?
In Book II, when Venus clears the mist from Aeneas's eyes, he sees Juno guarding the Scaean Gate, together with Neptune and Pallas, and sees Jupiter lending strength to the Greeks. In Book III the seer Helenus says that the Fates and she forbid him to reveal the rest, and the first thing he tells Aeneas to do is pray to her, with humility, as the only way around the limit she imposes.
prohibent nam cetera Parcae / Scire Helenum farique vetat Saturnia Juno., for the Fates forbid Helenus to know the rest, and Saturnian Juno forbids him to speak of it.
In Book IV she changes method: since she could not sink the fleet, she proposes to Venus that Dido and Aeneas marry and unite the two peoples, so as to keep the hero held in Carthage. It is she who stirs up the storm of the hunt and presides, in the cave, over what Dido calls marriage. At the end of the book, moved to pity by Dido's long agony, she sends Iris to cut the lock of hair that Proserpina had not yet cut, and the narrator explains that the queen was not dying by fate nor by deserved death, but before her time, in a sudden frenzy.
Nam, quia nec fato, merita nec morte peribat, / Sed misera ante diem, subitoque accensa furore, / Nondum illi flavum Proserpina vertice crinem / Abstulerat, Stygioque caput damnaverat Orco, for she was perishing neither by fate nor by deserved death, but wretched and before her day, kindled by sudden fury; Proserpina had not yet taken the golden lock from her head, nor condemned her life to the Stygian Orcus.
In Book V she sends Iris to the fleet. The goddess, disguised as Beroe, finds the weary Trojan women on the beach, gives them what they want most, a city bearing the name of Troy, and adds a dream of Cassandra to turn desire into resolve. They decide to burn the ships once the goddess has risen through the sky, and Ascanius stops them, while the narrator says that Juno was torn from their hearts.
Nullane jam Trojae dicentur moenia? nusquam / Hectoreos amnes, Xanthum et Simoenta, videbo? / Quin agite, et mecum infaustas exurite puppes. / Nam mihi Cassandrae per somnum vatis imago / Ardentes dare visa faces: Hic quaerite Trojam, / Hic domus est, inquit, vobis., will there be no walls of Troy ever again said to exist? Shall I never see the rivers of Hector, the Xanthus and the Simois? Come, burn the ill-fated ships with me. For in a dream the image of the prophetess Cassandra seemed to give me blazing torches: here seek Troy, here is your home, she said.
In Book VII she is at the center of the book. She returns from Argos through the air, sees the Trojan fleet and Aeneas already setting up homes, and admits that she cannot prevent the marriage to Lavinia. She decides to delay it and soak it in blood: she descends to earth and summons Allecto from hell, to whom she assigns discord among kin and allies, and who kindles Amata, Turnus, and a quarrel over a stag. When King Latinus refuses to open the gates of War, she herself comes down from heaven and pushes the doors open.
Ast ego, magna Jovis conjux, nil linquere inausum / Quae potui infelix, quae memet in omnia verti, / Vincor ab Aenea! Quod si mea numina non sunt / Magna satis, dubitem haud equidem implorare quod usquam est: / Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo, but I, great wife of Jupiter, unhappy, who left nothing unattempted that I could do and turned myself to every means, am conquered by Aeneas! If my divinity is not great enough, I will not hesitate to implore whatever exists anywhere: if I cannot bend the gods above, I will move Acheron.
Non dabitur regnis (esto) prohibere Latinis, / Atque immota manet fatis Lavinia conjux: / At trahere, atque moras tantis licet addere rebus; / At licet amborum populos exscindere regum. / Hac gener atque socer coeant mercede suorum. / Sanguine Trojano et Rutulo dotabere, virgo; / Et Bellona manet te pronuba, I will not be allowed to keep the Latins from reigning (so be it), and Lavinia remains a wife fixed by the fates: but I may drag things out and place delays upon so great an enterprise; I may destroy the peoples of both kings. Let son-in-law and father-in-law unite at this price, the price of their own people. With Trojan and Rutulian blood you will be given a dowry, maiden; and Bellona awaits you as matron of honor.
Tum regina deum, coelo delapsa, morantes / Impulit ipsa manu portas, et cardine verso / Belli ferratos rupit Saturnia postes, then the queen of the gods, descended from heaven, pushed with her own hand the doors that delayed, and, the hinge turned, Saturnia broke the iron-bound posts of war.
In Book VIII the god of the Tiber orders Aeneas to pray to her, and he sacrifices the white sow with its whole litter to the goddess who pursues him, because the dream commanded it.
Candida per silvam cum fetu concolor albo / Procubuit, viridique in littore conspicitur sus: / Quam pius Aeneas tibi enim, tibi maxima Juno, / Mactat, sacra ferens, et cum grege sistit ad aram, a white sow, the same color as her white litter, lay down through the forest and is seen on the green shore: this the pious Aeneas sacrifices to you, to you, greatest Juno, bringing offerings, and with the herd he sets her at the altar.
In Book IX she takes advantage of Aeneas's absence: she sends Iris to Turnus with the news that he has left and that it is time to attack, and gives strength to Turnus when he enters the camp.
Turne, quod optanti divum promittere nemo / Auderet, volvenda dies en attulit ultro. [...] Quid dubitas? nunc tempus equos, nunc poscere currus; / Rumpe moras omnes, et turbata arripe castra., Turnus, what none of the gods would dare promise to one who wished for it, the turning day has brought you of its own accord. [...] Why do you hesitate? Now is the time to ask for horses, now for chariots; break every delay, and seize the camp in its confusion.
In Book X she answers Venus's charge in the council by returning the comparison, and asks Jupiter to take Turnus out of the fighting. Jupiter grants only a postponement, and she forms a shadow with the face and arms of Aeneas, which leads Turnus behind it to a ship and then out to sea. When Turnus, not understanding, tries three times to kill himself or to throw himself into the waves, it is she who holds him back, and the ship leaves him in his father's city.
Tu potes Aenean manibus subducere Graium, / Proque viro nebulam et ventos obtendere inanes; / Et potes in totidem classem convertere Nymphas: / Nos aliquid Rutulos contra juvisse, nefandum est!, you can snatch Aeneas from the hands of the Greeks, and put in his place a cloud and empty winds; and you can turn the fleet into as many nymphs: that we should have helped the Rutulians in anything is wicked!
Quo feror? unde abii? quae me fuga? quemve reducet? / Laurentesne iterum muros aut castra videbo? / Quid manus illa virum, qui me meaque arma secuti, / Quosque (nefas) omnes infanda in morte reliqui?, where am I being carried? Where have I come from? What flight is this, and who will bring me back? Shall I see the walls of Laurentum and the camp again? And that band of men who followed me and my arms, whom (a crime!) I left all in an unspeakable death?
In Book XII she tells Juturna, the nymph sister of Turnus, that she protected him while fate allowed, but that now he runs toward unequal fates, and she orders Juturna to save him or to break the treaty; this is why the pact lasts less than a hundred lines. In heaven, Jupiter forbids her to go on and reminds her that Aeneas is destined for heaven. She yields, and in exchange asks that the Latins keep their old name and speech, and that Troy fall with its name. Jupiter grants, smiling, that they will all be one Latin people.
Ne vetus indigenas nomen mutare Latinos, / Neu Troas fieri jubeas Teucrosque vocari, / Aut vocem mutare viros, aut vertere vestes. / Sit Latium, sint Albani per secula reges; / Sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago: / Occidit, occideritque sinas cum nomine Troja, let the native Latins not keep their old name, nor order them to become Trojans and be called Teucrians, nor let men change their speech or alter their dress. Let there be Latium; let there be Alban kings for centuries; let the Roman line be powerful through Italian valor: Troy has fallen, and may you allow it to have fallen with its name.
Sermonem Ausonii patrium moresque tenebunt; / Utque est, nomen erit: commixti corpore tanto / Subsident Teucri: morem ritusque sacrorum / Adjiciam, faciamque omnes uno ore Latinos, the Ausonians will keep their fathers' speech and customs; the name will be as it is: the Teucrians, mixed into so great a body, will settle down; I will add the custom and the sacred rites, and make all of them Latins with one voice.
Themes Embodied
Juno's figure is Fate and free will seen from below: a goddess who knows that fate is against her and chooses what it does not forbid, delay and cost, so that the conflict between will and fate gains a character who bets against it. The war in Italy is her work, from Allecto at the gates of War, and Dido's Passion was armed by her and by Venus. Empire and colonialism appear in what she defends, Carthage, whose ruin fate promises and whose enmity with Rome is born from Dido's curse, and in what she saves at the end, the Latin name. Home, Exile, and Return appear in the years of wandering that she imposes.
Her ending is a negotiation, not a clean defeat. In Book I fate defeats her, and she says so in anger; in Book XII she asks Jupiter for one last thing and obtains it, and what she obtains is the survival of a people, not of a hero. The same fact can be read another way: she loses what she wanted most and gains the shape of Rome's empire, so that the persecution that cost Aeneas so much also molds the outcome. The text sustains both readings.
Relationships
- Aeneas: the hero she pursues by sea and by land, and who sacrifices the white sow to her in Latium.
- Venus: the divine rival, with whom she negotiates Dido's marriage and whom she answers in council.
- Dido: the queen of Carthage, the city Juno loves, whose soul she sends to be freed at the end of Book IV.
- Turnus: the king of the Rutulians whom she kindles, protects, removes from the fight, and leaves to fate.
- Amata: the Latin queen on whom the Fury Allecto casts the serpent at her command.
- Jupiter: her husband and arbiter, who restrains her, postpones Turnus's punishment, and grants her the Latin name.
After Virgil
The line in which she says that, if she cannot bend the gods above, she will move Acheron, was taken by Sigmund Freud as the epigraph of The Interpretation of Dreams, to say that if conscious reason does not confess desire, analysis stirs up hell.