The Theme in the Work
Virgil announces the war in Book VII as a subject greater than that of the journeys, and makes it begin without anyone deciding it. The Fury Allecto casts a serpent upon Amata and drives a torch into Turnus; Ascanius wounds Silvia's tame stag, and countrymen and Trojans kill one another over the animal. Latinus refuses to open the gates of War, and it is Juno who comes down from heaven and pushes the doors open.
Before it, Book II had already shown war seen from inside a conquered city. Aeneas takes up arms without reason, only because it occurs to him that it is fine to die fighting, and the group that follows him wears the armor of the dead Greeks and is struck down by its own companions, who take them for enemies. He sees Priam dead before the altar and only lets go of the sword when Venus shows him the gods tearing down the walls.
The war in Italy consumes the young. In Book IX, the Trojans obey Aeneas's order not to leave the walls while Turnus prowls the camp like a hungry wolf, and Nisus and Euryalus die in a raid that mixes service, slaughter beyond what is needed, and the desire for fame. In Book X, Pallas dies by Turnus's spear, which strips him of his baldric, and the young man's death makes Aeneas implacable: he refuses Mago's ransom and kills Lausus, to whom he later returns the arms and the body.
In Book XI, the war could have stopped. Aeneas grants twelve days of truce to bury the dead and says he would give peace to the living as well, Diomedes refuses to fight again, Latinus proposes to cede land, but the news of the Trojan advance interrupts the council. In Book XII, the two sides swear a treaty and break it in less than a hundred lines, through the work of Juno and of the nymph Juturna, Turnus's sister, and the war ends in a duel in which Aeneas kills a man who asks him for his life.
The poem sings of war and does not celebrate it. Nearly everyone who conducts it wants to end it: Latinus blames himself, Aeneas offers peace, Turnus accepts the duel to spare his own people, and in Book X Jupiter postpones the hatred until the time when Carthage will attack Rome. What keeps it going are the gods, vanity, and haste. The opposite reading also holds: Jupiter only postpones the hatred, he does not erase it, and treats war as part of the price of Rome.
Where It Appears
- Book II: Aeneas takes up arms without reason, only because dying while fighting seems fine to him, and his group, dressed in Greek armor, is struck down by its own companions.
- Book VII: Allecto casts a serpent upon Amata and a torch upon Turnus, and Juno pushes open the gates of War that King Latinus refuses to open.
- Book VIII: Turnus raises the signal of war in Laurentum, and Vulcan forges, at Venus's request, a shield against all the Latins' darts.
- Book IX: Turnus prowls the Trojan camp like a hungry wolf, and Nisus and Euryalus die on a night raid into the Rutulian field.
- Book X: Turnus kills Pallas and strips him of his baldric, and Aeneas, without pause, refuses Mago's ransom.
- Book XI: Aeneas grants twelve days of truce to bury the dead, but Diomedes refuses to fight again and the news of the Trojan advance interrupts the Latin council.
- Book XII: The two sides swear a pact and break it at once, through the work of Juno and Juturna, and the war ends in the duel in which Aeneas kills Turnus.
Passages
The poet warns that his subject has grown.
Tu vatem, tu, diva, mone: dicam horrida bella; / Dicam acies actosque animis in funera reges, / Tyrrhenamque manum, totamque sub arma coactam / Hesperiam. Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo; / Majus opus moveo, you, goddess, inspire the poet: I shall sing of dreadful wars, battle lines, and kings driven by their spirit to death, the Tyrrhenian band and all of Hesperia gathered under arms. A greater order of events is born for me; I set in motion a greater work.
Juno, defeated by fate, chooses what she can still have: delay and cost.
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.
Turnus, prowling the wall, is a wolf waiting for its prey.
Ac veluti pleno lupus insidiatus ovili, / Cum fremit ad caulas, ventos perpessus et imbres, / Nocte super media; tuti sub matribus agni / Balatum exercent: ille, asper et improbus ira, / Saevit in absentes; collecta fatigat edendi / Ex longo rabies, et siccae sanguine fauces: / Haud aliter Rutulo muros et castra tuenti / Ignescunt irae, et duris dolor ossibus ardet, as a wolf lying in wait by a full sheepfold, which snarls at the pens after enduring winds and rain in the middle of the night, while the lambs safe beneath their mothers bleat: fierce and savage with rage, it rages against those it cannot reach; the hunger gathered over a long time wears it down, and its jaws are dry of blood. Not otherwise, in Turnus, who guards the walls and camp, anger is kindled and grief burns in his hard bones.
The narrator tells Turnus, about Pallas's baldric, what he does not yet know.
Nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae, / Et servare modum, rebus sublata secundis! / Turno tempus erit, magno cum optaverit emptum / Intactum Pallanta, et cum spolia ista diemque / Oderit, O human mind, ignorant of fate and of the lot to come, and unable to keep measure when lifted up by favorable circumstances! The time will come for Turnus when he will wish he had paid dearly to see Pallas unharmed, and he will hate these spoils and that day.
Jupiter postpones the hatred until the time when Carthage attacks Rome.
Adveniet justum pugnae (ne arcessite) tempus, / Cum fera Carthago Romanis arcibus olim / Exitium magnum atque Alpes immittet apertas. / Tum certare odiis, tum res rapuisse licebit: / Nunc sinite, et placitum laeti componite foedus, the just time for battle will come (do not hasten it), when fierce Carthage will one day hurl a great ruin upon the Roman citadels and open the Alps. Then it will be lawful to contend with hatred and to plunder; now let it be, and with joy settle the peace agreed upon.
The poem ends in the blow, without a wedding, without a foundation, and without mourning.
Hoc dicens, ferrum adverso sub pectore condit / Fervidus: ast illi solvuntur frigore membra, / Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras, saying this, he buries the sword, burning, in the chest before him; his limbs loosen with cold, and life, with a groan, flees indignant into the shades.