What They Are
The Penates are the household gods of Troy, the sacred images of the house and of the city that Aeneas snatches from the fire and carries across the sea to Italy. In Roman religion, the Penates guard the continuity of a family and, on a larger scale, of a city (Penates). In the Aeneid they are what Troy has that can be carried: no army, wall, or treasure survives, only the cult, and so the poem presents the founding of Rome as the transfer of a cult to another place, not as a beginning from nothing. They almost never speak: the poem makes them speak only once, in a dream, and in the other scenes they travel in the hands of Anchises, on the ships, and in the words of other characters.
Where They Appear
The Book I announces the subject in its first line, and soon Juno describes the Trojans as a people who carry Ilium to Italy along with the defeated Penates. The word "defeated" returns in Book VIII, when the Latin envoys ask Diomedes for help, saying that the Trojans bring their defeated gods into Latium.
In Book II, on the last night of Troy, Hector appears in a dream to Aeneas and gives him a task in place of the city's defense: to carry the sacred objects and the Penates and to seek out, for them, the walls he will found after crossing the sea.
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, after crossing the sea, you will at last found.
In the flight, Aeneas carries Anchises on his shoulders, Ascanius goes by the hand, and Creusa comes behind. The one who carries the Penates is the father, because Aeneas, stained with the blood of battle, cannot touch them before he has washed.
In Book III, the Trojans set out from Antandros with the Penates aboard, and it is with them that the poem corrects the first error of course. Apollo's oracle at Delos orders them to seek the "ancient mother"; Anchises concludes it is Crete, the Trojans found a city there, and a plague falls upon it. Then the Penates appear to Aeneas in a dream, by moonlight, and order a change of seat:
Mutandae sedes: non haec tibi littora suasit / Delius, aut Cretae jussit considere Apollo., the seat must be changed: it was not these shores that the Delian god advised you, nor did Apollo order you to settle in Crete.
In Book IV, when Dido confesses to her sister Anna that Aeneas was the first to shake her since the death of Sychaeus, she also speaks of her own Penates, scattered by the crime of her brother Pygmalion: the queen who founds Carthage is, like Aeneas, an exile who has lost her home.
Anna (fatebor enim), miseri post fata Sichaei / Conjugis, et sparsos fraterna caede Penates, / Solus hic inflexit sensus, animusque labantem / Impulit: agnosco veteris vestigia flammae, Anna, I will confess it: after the fate of the unhappy Sychaeus, my husband, and of the Penates scattered by my brother's crime, only this man has stirred my feelings and pushed my wavering spirit: I recognize the signs of the old flame.
In Book VII, after seven years of wandering, Aeneas reaches the promised land and greets it, and then directs his greeting to the Penates, who this time have somewhere to stay:
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, O faithful Penates of Troy, hail! Here is the home, this is the homeland.
In Book VIII, the god of the Tiber speaks to Aeneas as he sleeps and tells him that his Penates are now secure and that the wrath of the gods has yielded:
Hic tibi certa domus, certi, ne absiste, Penates; / Neu belli terrere minis: tumor omnis et irae / Concessere deum, here you have a certain home and certain Penates; do not give up; do not be frightened by the threats of war: all the swelling and anger of the gods has yielded.
In the same book, the shield forged by Vulcan shows Augustus on the stern at Actium, with the senators, the people, the Penates, and the great gods, so that the inheritance Aeneas brought from Troy reappears, centuries later, as the inheritance of all Rome.
Hinc Augustus agens Italos in praelia Caesar, / Cum patribus populoque, Penatibus et magnis diis, / Stans celsa in puppi; geminas cui tempora flammas / Laeta vomunt, patriumque aperitur vertice sidus, on one side Augustus Caesar, leading the Italians into battle, with the senators and the people, the Penates and the great gods, standing high on the stern; joyful flames pour from his twin temples, and the paternal star opens above his head.
Book XII closes the course of the gods. In swearing the treaty of the duel, Aeneas offers the Latins his rites and his gods, and leaves Latinus the arms and the command. In heaven, Juno asks that the Latins keep their name, language, and dress, and that Troy fall with its name; Jupiter grants that the Ausonians will keep their fathers' speech and customs, and adds that he will give custom and sacred rites:
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.
What They Mean
The object the poem chooses to save says what it understands by a city. Hector does not give Aeneas arms or treasure; he gives the cult, and the conclusion is that Rome is born as religious continuity: what crosses the sea is what makes a group of refugees into a home.
The authority of the Penates comes from loyalty, not greatness. In Book III they correct Apollo's oracle without denying it, say that it is Apollo himself who sends them to Aeneas's door, and rest on having followed the hero from burning Troy. Aeneas believes because he sees their faces, and the cold sweat that covers him says it was not sleep. The poem thus separates the divine source, which does not err, from human interpretation, which does: Anchises's mistake costs a city and a plague before it is undone.
At the end of the poem, the gods are the part of Troy that continues in Rome, and the Trojan name is the part that disappears. The text sustains two readings: the reconciliation of victor and vanquished in a mixed and pious people, or the erasure of Troy, which survives only as the memory of Rome.
The flight scene forms a chain: the son carries the father, and the father carries the gods. Pietas appears there as a path, not as a feeling: each link carries the one before it, and whoever loses a link, like Creusa, is left behind. The poem shows the Penates more as burden than as power, and it is that burden which gives Aeneas the right to say "here is the home."
Relationships
- Standard themes: Home, Exile, and Return, Duty, Fate and Free Will, Empire and Colonialism.
- Characters: Aeneas, Anchises, Ascanius, Creusa, Dido, Juno.
- Nearby symbols: The Trojan Horse, the ruin from which the Penates are saved, and Aeneas's Shield, where they reappear on Augustus's stern.