Who He Is
Latinus is the old king of Latium, the land where the Trojans arrive in the second half of the Aeneid, and the father of Lavinia. He has ruled in peace for a long time and no longer has a male heir, because the only son he had died young, and so the future of the kingdom depends on whom his daughter marries. What he wants is peace and a successor, and he is a king who reads the signs well but cannot act on them. His role in the poem is that of the sovereign who welcomes Aeneas, recognizing in him the son-in-law announced by the oracle, and who later, pushed by Queen Amata, by Turnus, and by the people, gives up power and lets the war run its course: the man from whom war takes the peaceful death he had expected, and who knows it.
Trajectory
In Book VII, Latinus is presented as already old, at peace, with many suitors for his daughter, among them Turnus, and with Amata hurrying the wedding. Prodigies stall the marriage: bees in the sacred laurel of the palace, Lavinia's hair in flames during a sacrifice. Uneasy, Latinus consults the oracle of his father, Faunus, in a grove, and hears a voice that names no one: he must not marry his daughter to a Latin, because foreign sons-in-law will come and carry the name of the people up to the heavens.
Ne pete connubiis natam sociare Latinis, / O mea progenies, thalamis neu crede paratis. / Externi venient generi, qui sanguine nostrum / Nomen in astra ferent, quorumque ab stirpe nepotes / Omnia sub pedibus, qua Sol utrumque recurrens / Aspicit Oceanum, vertique regique videbunt, do not seek to join your daughter in marriage to a Latin, O my offspring, nor trust the bridal chambers already prepared. Foreign sons-in-law will come, who will carry our name to the stars with their blood, and from whose line grandchildren will see everything turn and be ruled beneath their feet, wherever the Sun, returning, looks upon both Oceans.
When Aeneas sends envoys, Latinus barely looks at the gifts Ilioneus offers, because his daughter's marriage occupies him: he concludes on his own that Aeneas is the son-in-law Faunus spoke of, promises land, invites Aeneas to come, and sends horses to the envoys. He applies the oracle to a foreigner without proof, which may be an exact reading of the sign or the gamble of a king who needs a successor.
The poison that Alecto pours into Amata changes the game: she asks him whether he will give his daughter to exiles, and Latinus does not give in, but the queen flees to the mountains with Lavinia. When Silvia's tame stag sets off the first fight and the herdsmen carry the dead to the palace, Turnus accuses the Trojans and the people demand war. Latinus stands firm like a rock in the sea, and then gives way: he says the fates break him, that Turnus will pay for the crime, that he himself has a secured rest and is deprived of a happy death, and he withdraws home, letting go of the reins of the kingdom.
Frangimur, heu! fatis, inquit, ferimurque procella. / Ipsi has sacrilego pendetis sanguine poenas, / O miseri! te, Turne, nefas, te triste manebit / Supplicium; votisque deos venerabere seris. / Nam mihi parta quies, omnisque in limine portus; / Funere felici spolior, we are broken, alas, by the fates, he said, and carried off by the storm. You yourselves will pay these penalties with sacrilegious blood, O wretched ones! For you, Turnus, the crime; for you the grim punishment awaits; and with tardy vows you will pay reverence to the gods. For me rest is assured, and every harbor is at my door; I am robbed of a happy death.
It was for the king to open the gates of War, a custom Rome still observes when the consul opens them. Latinus refuses to touch them, because opening them would mean taking up war as his own decision, and it is Juno herself who comes down from heaven and pushes the doors open.
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, with the hinge turned, Saturnia broke the iron-bound posts of war.
In Book VIII, Latinus does not appear: it is the Latin chieftains who send Venulus to the city of Diomedes to ask for help, arguing that the Trojans have arrived, bring defeated gods with them, that Aeneas calls himself a king summoned by destiny, and that many peoples have joined him.
In Book XI, during the truce, Diomedes refuses a new alliance and advises peace with Aeneas. Latinus then says he should have decided earlier and proposes ceding land along the Tiber or building ships for the Trojans. Drances adds that the king should give his daughter to Aeneas and challenges Turnus to fight alone, and the news of the Trojan advance interrupts the council before any proposal is settled: Latinus blames himself for not having welcomed Aeneas.
In Book XII, Latinus tries to dissuade Turnus from fighting. He offers him his father's kingdom and other brides, and confesses why he gave way: defeated by the love he has for him, by kinship, and by his wife's tears, he broke every bond, took away the daughter promised to his son-in-law, and took up impious arms. In effect, he confesses that he broke an oracle and a promise to Aeneas under the pressure of affection.
Victus amore tui, cognato sanguine victus, / Conjugis et moestae lacrymis, vincla omnia rupi, / Promissam eripui genero, arma impia sumpsi, defeated by the love I bear you, defeated by kinship and by the tears of my anxious wife, I broke every bond, took away the daughter promised to my son-in-law, and took up impious arms.
Before the duel, he swears the pact before the armies by the scepter in his hand, comparing peace to a branch cut from the trunk, which does not turn green again. The treaty lasts only a few lines: Juturna, on Juno's orders, breaks it, and Latinus flees carrying the gods. Later he sees the fire and Amata's death, tears his clothes, and blames himself for not having accepted Aeneas as his son-in-law.
Ut sceptrum hoc (dextra sceptrum nam forte gerebat) / Nunquam fronde levi fundet virgulta nec umbras, / Cum semel in silvis imo de stirpe recisum / Matre caret posuitque comas et brachia ferro, just as this scepter (for by chance he was holding it in his right hand) will never put forth light foliage or shade, now that, once cut in the woods at the root, it has lost its mother and laid down its leaves and branches beneath the iron.
A greater agreement than his decides the end: Jupiter promises Juno that the Ausonians will keep their fathers' speech and customs, and that the name will remain as it is. It is the promise that preserves what Latinus represents, the name and the Latin language, within the mixture that the poem announces.
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; I will add custom and sacred rites, and make all of them Latins with a single voice.
Themes Embodied
Latinus embodies Duty as the sovereign's duty in the face of what he cannot contain: he opens the land to exiles, but does not hold his decision against the pressure of the queen, of Turnus, and of the people. He embodies Fate and Free Will because he is the man who receives from the oracle an answer without a name and applies it to the foreigner, and who later says that fate breaks him. He embodies War as the one he does not want and cannot stop, and Empire and Colonialism from the side of the one who receives: Latium is the land the poem turns into the origin of Rome, but it keeps the Latin name and language as the survival of those who welcomed. And he embodies Home, Exile, and Return, because he is the king who offers land to an exiled people and who stops being master of the house he offered.
Book VII admits two readings of Latinus, and the rest of the poem does not choose between them. One can see in him the lucid king, who foresees Turnus's punishment and withdraws so as not to be complicit, or the king who abdicates when the reins weigh too heavily. In Book XII the poem has him confess what he did, which reinforces the second reading without eliminating the first: he says he broke everything out of affection, and the only decision the text attributes to him without pressure is that of welcoming Aeneas.
Relationships
- Lavinia: the only daughter, on whose marriage the kingdom depends.
- Amata: the wife, who wants Turnus as son-in-law and whose tears later make him give way.
- Turnus: the suitor he comes to promise to his daughter and whom he later tries to dissuade from the duel.
- Aeneas: the stranger he recognizes as son-in-law through the oracle and to whom he later owes the war.
- Juno: the goddess who opens the gates of War that he refuses to touch.