Aeneid 4: end of book 1
Venus Schemes
Dido proclaims sacrifices in the temples of the gods, as she leads Aeneas into her palace. She also sends gifts to the shore for his companions: 20 bulls, 100 swine, 100 lambs with 100 ewes. But inside the palace is finer still, for the banqueting. Embroidered purple cloth, silver plate on the tables, with the brave deeds of the fathers embossed in gold, a long, long history back to the ancient source of the race.
A father’s love, fond and anxious, moves Aeneas to send Achates to fetch his son, Ascanius. Achates is also to bring back royal gifts for Dido: gold and yellow wedding garments that Helen fetched to Troy for her lawless marriage; the sceptre of Priam’s eldest daughter, Illione; a necklace and a double crown of jewels and gold.
Venus, though, doesn’t trust Dido. The Tyrians are a treacherous house; it doesn’t help that Juno inflames Venus, making her anxious. She plots with her son Cupid, who can change his form and features, and is not affected by the thunderbolts of Jove? She fears that Juno will use Dido to attack Aeneas somehow. To keep this from happening, Venus sends Cupid to force Dido to fall in love with Aeneas, to put her out of Juno’s reach. While Achates is fetching Aeneas’s son, Ascanius, also called Iulus, Cupid will pretend to be the boy himself, while Venus spirits the true son away and puts him to sleep, so he can’t show up at the wrong time. This will give Cupid a chance to get close enough to Dido to make her fall in love with Aeneas.
The richness of the banquet is described in detail. Dido reclines on a golden couch. Father Aeneas and the Trojans recline on purple padding.
Now, the manservants enter with water and towels for washing hands, and baskets of bread. Then fifty handmaids pile up provisions in long lines, and honor the household gods with fire. Then another hundred handmaids, with an equal number of young manservants, set the food on the boards and place the cups.
Now throngs of Tyrians come in and recline in their places upon the embroidered couches. They marvel at the gifts brought in by Achates and Iulus; especially the divine features of the god pretending to be Iulus, and the gold and yellow clothes Helen brought to Troy for her wedding, given to Helen by her mother, Ledo. After hugging his supposed father, Cupid seeks out the luckless queen, who has no idea that a god is taking possession of her. But he knows what he is doing: he wears down her memories of her dead husband, Sycheus, and stirs up, once more, passionate love in a heart grown unaccustomed to it.
The first pause in the feast comes. The tables are removed. Lighted lamps descend from the golden ceiling, torches are lit, against the night. Wine is poured in the queen’s goblet, gold and massive with jewels, that her father Belus had been wont to use.
She makes a speech in honor of her guests, showing honor to and calling down blessings from Jove and Bacchus and Juno, has the wine poured, and makes the libations to the gods. Only then does she take a sip, and pass her cup around, starting with Bitias, and then the other chiefs follow suit. Iopas, taught to play by Atlas himself, plays and sings song after song. Dido keeps the party going, not realizing she drinking in a long draught of love, asking about Priam and Hector, and about their foes. What arms did Memnon, son of Aurora, use? What were the horses of Diomedes like? How tall was Achilles?
Then she changes and says, “My guest, why don’t you come here and tell us yourself about what the Greeks did and the misfortunes of your people and your wanderings. You are now in your seventh summer of wandering over all the lands and seas.”
Notes:
Aeneas is referred to over and over as being a father, which means caring for his son and his people. Dido is made into a pawn of Venus, in her war with Juno over Aeneas. Her piety is stressed, I would say, as much as that of Aeneas, so far. So far, the Aeneid is about the war between the daughter of Jupiter (Jove), Venus, and the wife of Jupiter, Juno. This is particularly interesting because it insists that Jupiter is the father of Venus, instead of the other story that she was born from the blood and/or semen of Uranus that fell into the sea after he was castrated by his son, Saturn. The fact that the Aeneid refers to Venus as being from Cytherea appears to refer to the location of this story, but the Aeneid does not seem to agree with the paternity of the story.
I think it is interesting that the Aeneid seems to make more of the rich clothes that Aeneas gives Dido, than the rich jewelry, the sceptre of King Priam’s eldest daughter, or even the jeweled crown. The rich clothes were Helen’s, and are somehow connected with both her mother, Jove’s lover Ledo, and also with her unlawful marriage (to Paris, I presume?).