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Virgil's Aeneid: AEneas

In Homer, AEneas stands alongside Hector as one of the great champions of Troy. When the city falls he is one of the few Trojans to escape destruction. With his venerable father Anchises on his shoulders, his son held by the hand, and his wife following, he makes his way to the shore and takes ship with a large company of his following to seek a new land and found a new kingdom. But he has hanging over him the inveterate hostility of the goddess Juno, the persistent foe of all that was Trojan. It is at this point that Virgil takes up the tale of his Man of Destiny. After the fashion advised by Horace, he plunges into the midst of things.

After some six years of wandering AEneas sets sail for Italy, after he has lost his father in Sicily. His wife had long since perished. At Juno's orders the god of the winds sends forth a tempest which drives the ships to Africa. His mother, the goddess Venus, does her best to make up for the harshness of Juno, foretells to him the greatness that lies in store for him and his race, and directs him to Carthage, the rising city of Queen Dido. Happy chance brings the hero and the queen together, a generous and kindly hospitality follows, the ever-watchful Venus produces in place of AEneas's son Ascanius her own mischievous Cupid. The Queen of Carthage can no more resist. A regal entertainment is set before the visitors in a scene of vast magnificence. At the end of the banquet the queen demands his story from the royal wanderer, just as King Alcinous had asked the same from Odysseus. With all the magnates of her court gathered around, with AEneas's companions as well, the queen fondling the little Ascanius in her arms--remember that rogue Cupid was playing the part--the prince began the famous tale of the last night of Troy, the stratagem of the wooden horse, the story of Laocoon, and all the rest, to which follow his own escape with his people, and his many years' wanderings, his meeting with Andromache in Epirus, and all the events that had taken the six years of his life.

Then follows the famous fourth book of the "AEneid," the great story of the passionate love of Dido for the Man of Destiny. It is one of the most widely read, the most admired, the most discussed stories in the world's literature. Virgil summoned to it his greatest art; he did not hesitate to borrow from the great writers of the past, particularly from the "Medea" of Apollonius Rhodius, the fine tale of romantic love which has come from Alexandria in the late days of the Greek genius. Virgil is not a supreme artist in the portrayal of character as Homer was, but in the picture of the tender and pathetic passion of the queen he rose to his highest point. The queen's confession of her love to her sister; the great hunting-party for her lover's entertainment; the storm that separates the hunters and drives the royal pair to a cave alone; the queen's tenderness; and then the flight of the pious AEneas; the queen's entreaties; the portrayal of all the passion of a slighted woman; and finally her own self-inflicted death as the hero flees to a higher duty--it is splendidly done. For the hero as an individual there can be nothing but the most perfect contempt. His only excuse is that he is the Man of Destiny; individuals must play a subordinate role in the great drama of a race. The Italian who reads the story remembers the bitter enmity between Rome and Carthage, remembers the years of trouble Hannibal was later to lay on the descendants of AEneas, and must have a reason for it all. The modern reader has a different point of view and wishes that the poet had found a more glorious role for the national hero, the mighty founder of a race destined to rule the world. For AEneas thoroughly deserved the imprecations heaped upon his head by the dying Dido. Homer would have found a more human way out of the difficulty.

For the modern world the interest in the "AEneid" grows less after the great tale of Dido's passion is told. The Trojans set sail for Italy once more, and once more are driven to Sicily. There the prince celebrates great funeral games on the anniversary of his father's death, after the fashion of those which Homer pictures Achilles celebrating in honor of the dead Patroclus. The Trojan women, weary of the long wanderings, try to burn the ships, but are only partly successful. AEneas leaves them and all who wish to tarry, and at last reaches Italy, where he makes the famous descent to the lower regions to consult his father; he perhaps, after the episode of Dido, feels the need of being told again of the great destiny of himself and his race. The journey is, of course, in imitation of Odysseus's descent to Hades, and was the great model for Dante.

AEneas journeys on to the mouth of the Tiber and forms an alliance with King Latinus, which includes marriage with the king's daughter, Lavinia. If the reader is inclined to murmur: "What, again? Naughty man!" the answer is that good AEneas has been under the burden from the first of being the Man of Destiny, and the union with the daughter of King Latinus is to produce the Latin race. But not without a final struggle on the part of the jealous Juno, who raises up enmity under the leadership of Turnus, one of the suitors for the hand of Lavinia. He can compete with fate no more successfully than could poor Dido, and after glorious battles perished in single combat at the hand of the Man of Destiny.