Aeneid 2
A Feast and a Promise
The seven ships Aeneas has are in safe harbor, for now. His men have fire going and are recovering and grinding grain. Aeneas climbs a rock and first, he looks out to sea. Have any of his other ships made it to safety? Where is the ship of Anteus? Of Capys? Of Caicus? He sees neither these three, nor any other Trojan ships out at sea, but looking down on the shore, he sees three stags wandering, leading their herds to feed in the valleys. He carries the bow and arrows, tools given him by Achates, and brings down first the three leading stags, then, having thrown the herds in confusion, he continues his harvest until he has stretched the bodies of seven huge animals on the ground, one for each of his remaining ships.
Returning to the harbor, he divides them among his men. He distributes wine, too, from the casks that King Acestes, the Sicilian king born of a Trojan mother, loaded on their ships in Sicily. And now he speaks to soothe the sorrow of his men:
“To you my companions: We have known misfortune before, and you have suffered worse than this. God will put an end to this as well. You made it through the straits between Sicily and Scylla, undefeated by the cliffs or the rocks. Recall your spirits and dismiss your sorrowing fear. There may come a time when even these memories are happy. We are going through trials and calamities, but our goal is Latium, where the fates have decreed that we will have a peaceful settlement and the return of the kingdom of Troy. Endure, and you will prosper again.”
So he speaks, pretending to hope, though he is sick with anxiety and hides his grief deep within his heart. The men butcher the meat and cook it on spits; others cook in cauldrons. They banquet on grain and fat venison and old wine, recovering their strength, and when they have cleared the tables, speak on and on of their lost companions, wavering between hope and fear, wondering whether they are alive or beyond the call of any human voice. Devout Aeneas, especially, silently mourns the fate, now of bold Orontes, now of Amycus, now Lycus, Gyas, and Cloanthus.
Meanwhile, Venus, wet-eyed, addresses Jove, who has been looking down from heaven on Libya.
“You rule Men and gods with eternal commands, and terrify them with the thunderbolt. What crime could my Aeneas commit against you, or could the Trojans commit against you, that even after suffering so many deaths, you let every place be closed to them, to keep them from Italy? Didn’t you promise that the time would come when Romans, sprung from Trojan blood, would rule the lands again? What has changed your judgment? I consoled myself for the fall of Troy with this other fate; but now the same sad fate follows his men as well? Will it never end?
“You let Trojan Antenor escape from the Greeks, reach safely the bays of Illyria, go through the inmost realms of the Liburnians, past the sources of the Timavus river, to finally plant a Trojan colony at Patavium in Italy, where they are settled peacefully. But we, your own offspring, whom you have given a place in heaven itself, are betrayed, because of the rage of one, and kept far from the shores of Italy! Is this how you reward devotion to the gods? Is this how you restore our rule?”
He smiled on his daughter, he who was the father of Men and of gods, with the face he used to calm the sky and the storms, touched his daughter’s lips, and said:
“Do not fear, Venus from Cytherea; your race will see its destiny in your city, the walls of Lavinium, and Aeneas will be brought to heaven; my judgment has not changed. And I will speak further, since you are so anxious and distressed.
“He will wage a mighty war in Italy for you, crush fierce peoples, and establish customs and city walls for them; so will he rule over Latium for three summers and three times make winter quarters. Then his son Ascanius, name changed from Ilus to Iulus, will rule for thirty years, and move the seat of the empire from Lavinium and fortify Alba Longa with great strength. From there it will be ruled for three hundred years by the descendants of Hector until the royal priestess Ilia, pregnant by Mars, brings forth twins, one of whom, Romulus, will build the walls of the city of Mars, and name its people Romans, after his own name.
“I will not limit the Romans in fortune or in time; I have given them empire without end. In addition – cruel Juno who harasses heaven and earth with her alarms will change and come to cherish, with me, the Romans, masters of all things, and the race that wears the toga. So does it please me to do.
“So will the house of Assarakos, whence comes your son Aeneas, make subject Phthia, the land of Achilles, and famous Mycene of Agamemnon and conquered Argos, whence came Diomede. Caesar [Augustus Caesar is meant here] shall be born a Trojan of brilliant line, whose empire will be limited only by the sea, and whose fame only by the stars – Julius, from the great Iulus. Him shall you receive into heaven laden with the spoils of the east, and they will pray to him.
“Then shall the savage generations lay war aside; the trusty goddess Fides, and Vesta of the hearth, the heroes Romulus at peace with Remus, all together shall give laws. So shall be shut the dreadful gates of war; unholy Rage will be shut within, with cruel weapons, bound with a hundred chains behind his back, roaring with blood stained lips.”
Having spoken, Jove sends Mercury, his son by Maia, to Dido to make sure Carthage does not drive the Trojans from her realm out of ignorance. At his words, the Carthaginians lay aside their fierce hearts in obedience to the god; their queen’s spirit becomes peaceful and her mind gracious to the Trojans.
Some thoughts:
Although by calling her Cytherea, after the Greek island where she arose from the sea, this section makes a nod to the myth that Venus is motherless, and the result of the castration of Uranus by Saturn, it seems clear in this section that she is, in fact, Jove's daughter. By the other myth of her origin, that would make her mother Dione. So the Aeneid gives Juno another reason to be jealous of Venus.
In fact, the Aeneid seems to go out of its way to point out the connection between the Trojans and Jove’s infidelity to Juno.
The first king of Troy, Tros, had three sons.
The eldest, Ilus, was the grandfather of Priam, king of Troy, and father of Paris. Paris chose the beauty of Venus, daughter of her husband by Dione, over her own beauty, because Venus promised him Helen, the daughter of her husband by Leda.
The second, Assarakos, was the grandfather of Anchises, the father of Aeneas. Aeneas was the son of Venus, the daughter of her husband by Dione.
The third, Ganymede, was taken up to heaven by Jove to be his lover. (Juno is inflamed by the honors he gave to ravished Ganymede.)
This is particularly interesting since Virgil, in predicting the coming Pax Romana to be ushered in by Augustus Caesar, specifically named the goddess Fides, who among other things stands for marital fidelity, along with the goddess Vesta and the heroes Romulus and Remus, as those who will set up the laws of Rome. It is apparently more important to show that Aeneas is not just descended from Venus, but also specifically descended from Jove as well, than to show Jove being faithful to Juno.
On the other hand, Venus being born of Dione doesn’t automatically mean he was unfaithful to Juno. At the time Virgil wrote, a man could not have more than one wife, but he could divorce a wife. In one version of the story I found, Jove was married to Dione when Venus was born, so if he afterwards divorced her, he would not have been unfaithful to Juno.
Hmm. Also mentioned here is that Mercury was Jove’s son by Maia. She was the oldest of the seven Pleiades, whom he doesn’t seem to have married, so that would clearly seem to be Jove’s infidelity.
As I pointed out, I don’t know the whole story of the Aeneid, so I’m curious to see how Virgil casts Jove’s other liaisons. The one with Ganymede shouldn’t count, since a man couldn’t “cheat” with another man. The one with Helen’s mother, Leda, should count as adultery on his part, though, since Leda was married to Tyndareus, king of Lacedaemon, at the time. The way I understand it, Augustus, at the time this was written, was attempting to shore up Roman sexual morality. So I wonder how he’s going to handle Juno’s jealousy and Jove’s liaisons.