Tag Archives: Virgil

THE AENEID: FOURTH AND FINAL PART

FOR THE FIRST PART CLICK HERE. FOR THE SECOND PART CLICK HERE. FOR THE THIRD PART CLICK HERE.

FOUR – A council of the gods is held on Mount Olympus as the goddesses Venus and Juno make their cases for and against Aeneas and his fellow survivors of fallen Troy. Venus argues for them since Aeneas is her son, while Juno retains her position against Aeneas because she wants to prevent the founding of Rome.

Events move back to the battlefield as Aeneas finally arrives back at the Trojan camp with an army of his Tuscan and Arcadian allies. In the following battle casualties are again high. King Turnus – Aeneas’s rival for the hand of King Latinus’s daughter Lavinia – kills the Arcadian Prince Pallas, whose father King Evander had sent him forth to fight on the Trojan side.

Elsewhere on the battlefield, Aeneas wounds Mezentius, but the man’s son Lausus leaps between his father and Aeneas. While the two younger warriors fight each other, Mezentius flees back to his camp and Aeneas kills Lausus. Continue reading

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THE AENEID: SECOND PART

FOR THE FIRST PART CLICK HERE.

TWO – Aeneas and his companions, the survivors of the Fall of Troy, are still lingering in Carthage. Queen Dido, not knowing that the Roman State which Aeneas will spawn will also be the future destroyer of Carthage, remains deeply in love with Aeneas.

He returns her love, and having Aeneas remain with Dido and never found Rome fits the schemes of the goddess Juno (Naturally, Roman names are used for the gods and goddesses throughout this epic poem by Virgil). During a Royal Hunt in which Dido and Aeneas are accompanied by their courtiers, Juno causes a storm that drives the entire hunting party to seek shelter in an extensive system of caves.

Playing into (or maybe establishing) the enduring cliche about people in a burgeoning romance being driven closer by needing relief from a downpour, Dido and Aeneas start to feel even friskier. Juno manipulates things further by having nature and animal life in the cave behave in ways that parallel a wedding ceremony.

Dido is convinced that she and our hero really are married in the eyes of the gods now, so she and Aeneas not only consummate their love but openly live as man and wife during the days that the supernatural storm confines them and their respective retinues to the caves. They continue this arrangement even after returning to Queen Dido’s palace. Continue reading

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