Aeneas The Hero?

          Aeneas, as the primary actor in the first book of Virgil's Aeneid, does not conform to the modern expectations of a hero, but he might also not conform to the expectations of a hero from earlier Greek poetry either. Virgil, writing at the time of Octavian, modeled The Aeneid after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.¹ However, at such and advanced time in the history of Rome, it is doubtful that anything of the “original” tale survived, if there ever was, indeed, such a story from the Greek tradition. The Aeneid, instead of being an accurate retelling of some legend from time immemorial, is a motivated work of utter fiction that carried a political intention of an emperor and a poet, and as such, Aeneas is the hero that was hoped to bring the Roman Empire back to religion.² Aeneas is a refugee that brings an idealized view of his culture forward into the Rome Empire.

          In both Greek and modern heroic tales, the thing that marks the hero is that they are the primary agent that does, even though they have things that happen to them first, and along the way. Achilles goes to Troy with 50 ships, fights the Trojans, and calls out Hector in order to kill him; Hercules undertakes the twelve labors; Leonidas defends Thermopylae to his last. Likewise, in modern times we set up people, and, far more often, archetypes or professions as heroes based on their actions, real and fictionalized. Firefighters rush into burning buildings, doctors and EMTs save people, soldiers defend nations; specific people noted for their supererogatory actions serve as token examples of heroes, but always for what they do. In Book 1 Aeneas does next to nothing, but much happens to him.

“The Trojan Fleet Encounters a Storm at Sea,” Virgilius Romanus, 5th Century Illuminated Manuscript, (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Vat. lat. 3867, fol. 77r, detail).

          The first action Aeneas takes in the entire epic is to groan. With his fleet beset by winds and storms, he cries out to the heavens, and wishes that he would have died at the hands of the Greeks.³ He then, presumably (given the omniscient perspective of the narrator), watches his fleet be scattered and destroyed. The Trojans are not saved by anything that Aeneas does, or says, but rather, they are saved by Neptune's concern that Juno and Aeolus had overstepped their bounds and used powers reserved for him.⁴ It shows that Aeneas is not the main actor of the opening of the epic, but rather the victim of the gods, caught in a struggle of dominance beyond anything which he could affect. All the Trojans with him are failures, given the story begins after their inability to defend their city. In this tale, Aeneas is impotent, and wishing for death.

          If this poem is viewed in historical context, then the first book can be taken as a post hoc justification for the sacking of Carthage, and the Punic wars. Juno's anger and plots, which Virgil elaborates upon for the first 80 lines, can be seen as a way to shift the blame from the real political actors, like Cato the Elder's famed calls for the destruction of Carthage, to the anger of the gods. Taken with the political motives of Octavian, making the ultimate source of Punic wars into something that could be attributed to Juno's irrational hatred of the Trojans clears the Romans of any criticism. Aeneas, who would found Alba Longa, convey the fathers of the Roman people, and save the gods of the Trojans, at least in fiction, fits the role of a hero for the Roman Imperial religion/cult.⁵
Aeneas in Troy

 

Pompeo Batoni, Aeneas Fleeing From Troy, Oil on Canvas, c.1740.

        The opening of Book Two places Aeneas at some narrative distance from the action. From the decision to pull the wooden horse into the city to the Greeks taking the walls, Aeneas tells the story as if he was not an actor in those scenes, but a witness to them.⁶ Having been awoken by the sounds of battle, Aeneas wastes no time in gathering his weapons intent on fighting the Greek invaders.⁷ Unlike the depiction of him in Book One, Aeneas takes decisive actions in Book Two that are closer to the concept of a Greek hero, but still shows some of the differences between the Classical Greek and early Roman Empire's poetic concepts.

          Not all of their actions were as noble as they might seem. While Aeneas and his Trojan compatriots are quick to rush back and join the battle, they detract from the honor of their feats by wearing the armor of the Greeks to facilitate their slaughter.⁸ I can recall no instance of this kind of deception in either the works Herodotus or Thucydides. The latter does describe the Plataeans waiting for a cold, stormy night to assault the siege walls the Peloponnesians had built to hedge them into their own city; in the darkness about 200 Plataeans scaled the walls, killed the guards and shot anyone approaching with a torch, allowing them to slip away into the night.⁹ The cunning of the plan was weakened by the fact that it was less honorable than a head-on assault and it relied upon the confusion of a storm to succeed. The remaining people left in the city voluntarily surrendered themselves to the Spartans—the men were killed and the women taken as slaves.¹⁰ While the Greeks esteemed both bravery and cunning, courageous actions were written into poetry, but tricks that went beyond battlefield stratagems were scorned and punished. Having no creditable reason to think that they were loosing the fight from what Aeneas could have known, it seems his choice to take up the arms of the enemy was a stratagem that the Greeks would have found cowardly.

          Aeneas' flight from the city is likewise marked by other behaviors that fit the Roman concepts of filial piety rather than Greek heroism. When Ascanius refuses to leave the city intent on killing himself, Aeneas chastises him and prepares to run into the fight again.¹¹ While this fits the narrative of a Roman son's dedication of his paterfamilias, it doesn't fit the Greek narrative pasterns where personal actions are generally placed before family connections. It should not have taken Ascanius' protest to having his home destroyed for a Greek hero, or rather a Trojan, to willingly fight an invading enemy, regardless of family entanglements. Likewise, Creusa trying to persuade Aeneas to stay and defend her and their son seems more like a Roman action than that of a Greek/Trojan as, according to Plutarch, the classic send-off of a Spartan soldier was that they should either bring back their shield or be brought back on it.¹²

          While it might seem a small thing, the way the characters interact definitely strike me as being decidedly more Roman than Greek. It does change how I read the story, and view Aeneas as I am unable to see him in the same fictional light as I do the Homeric heroes; he simply does not act like a Trojan hero. Nonetheless, given the situation he finds himself in, the choice to save his family and friends does make him seem more heroic, in modern terms, than he seemed in Book One, even as it informs the self-loathing he expresses at the opening of The Aeneid.

Dido and Aeneas

Francesco Solimena, The Royal Hunt of Dido and Aeneas, Oil on Canvas, c.1712-4.

          The simile of Dido as a wounded doe and Aeneas as the hunter is used to foreshadow the death of Dido in the end of Book Four, but it does not capture the nature of their relationship. In Book 4, lines 1-53, Dido and her sister Anna talk about her developing feelings for Aeneas. Dido betrays that she is tempted by Aeneas, and is falling for him, the first man she has loved since the death of her husband Sychaeus. Reminding Dido of her obligations and history, the best Anna can offer her in the way of comfort is the hope that Aeneas would remain in their city for the winter. There never was any hope that Aeneas would be staying beyond the winter, and although Juno and Venus plotted to keep him there longer by binding them in marriage, Dido was in full knowledge that Aeneas would be departing as some future time.

          If anyone could be said to have killed Dido (apart from herself) it was Juno and Venus. While they were both aware that Jupiter had plans for Aeneas, they choose, instead, to plot to fan the flames of Dido's affection, and drive the two into a cave with a storm to be married.¹³ Instead of clarifying the points of Jupiter's plans, they decide to take matters into their own hands, and further bind the two together, even though it was never a real possibility. Since Dido and Anna were both aware of the fleeting nature of Aeneas' stay in Carthage and the possibility of full relationship with him, the cave “wedding” was, if anything, the arrow that slays Dido, which makes the goddesses the cause of Dido's death.

          Jupiter's message to Aeneas leaves no question that his intentions for Aeneas were always to sail to Italy, and Mercury's challenge reinforced the temporary nature of his time in Libya.¹⁴ If there had been any question, as Venus attempted to claim, that Jupiter did not mind the mixing of the two peoples, then with Jupiter's stated intent would have still required that Aeneas leave Carthage for Italy, and Dido's status would still require that she stay. The goddesses prepared for the issue of Dido's reputation, forcing them into hiding in a cave where they would be given to Dido's passions, and in the dark hidden place, she could begin to device herself by calling their affair a “marriage”.¹⁵ With Mercury's message, Aeneas is recalled to his duty, but there is no indication that Aeneas had intended to deceive Dido before the god's appearance. He was even helping the building of Carthage, dressed in the gifts from Dido.
          To paint Aeneas as the killer of Dido because of his deception would require that he had intended to deceive. It seems that he was not the author of the plot that caused her to kill herself, but likewise the victim of the machinations of the two goddesses. Had he planned to take her to the cave and convince her they were married instead of having an illicit affair, then his would be the lion's share of the blame. He failed to keep himself from being distracted from Jupiter's mission, and became the pawn of the goddesses. Dido deceived herself, having prior knowledge that a relationship between them could never last. It was her own self that called it “marriage” when she knew it could not be. The goddesses set the trap with Aeneas is the unwitting bait, but Dido's willingness to self-deception was the hunter and the arrow.¹⁶

Aeneas and the Games

          The Aeneid Book 5 opens with the ships sailing away from Dido's funeral pyre and toward their destiny. The heavy seas and bad weather force them to seek refuge in friendly ports on Sicily. While most of the chapter deals with the games hosted upon their arrival, aspects of Aeneas are shown through the temporary normality, or, more exactly, what counts for normality in Virgil's supernatural world.

          Although existing in a narrative where gods and spirits are active agents, and with his own linage from Venus, Aeneas is struck dumb at nearly every encounter. When he sets up an alter to memorialize his father, as he is performing rites a rainbow serpent, somehow previously unseen, unwraps itself from the alter and eats the sacrificed food.¹⁷ Seemingly pleased with the offering, the snake departs. Aeneas is dumbfounded by the snake, unsure of what to make of it, if it was some spirit associated with his father or the alter, but he decides to sacrifice a great deal more. While the unexpected appearance of a snake would be surprising, the number of times that Aeneas had been personally visited by the gods should have steeled him to such otherworldly displays. Still, the apparent appeasement of spirits, local or familial, shocks him even as he invokes his own father.

Entellus and Dares Wrestling in the Nude, Detail from Illuminated Manuscript, King's 24, f.88.

          Even though Aeneas is depicted as having fled the falling Troy with little beyond his life and the Trojan gods, each one of the games shows that he managed to save a fortune of treasures that he bestows as awards for the games. At the opening of the games the awards are placed in the center of the field, and while some of the items were ceremonial, having been made of palm, others were expensive, like armor, purple dyed robes, and large amounts of silver and gold.¹⁸ While it is possible that not all of the awards for the games were provided by Aeneas, he personally took credit for the items offered for the foot race, which included a number of items decorated with gold and sliver.¹⁹ One gift he gave might be explained by their time in Africa, the lion pelt with claws gilded with gold.²⁰ Even the opulence of such a prize speaks of Aeneas not as an impoverished refugee fleeing from his fallen home, chased by the wrath of the gods, but as a very wealthy individual that managed to gain more trappings as he wandered the seas in exile.

          The games end abruptly when some of the surviving Trojans, urged on by cruel Juno's agent Iris, attempt to burn the ships and trap the band of travelers in Sicily. Aeneas, once again torn as to what to do, is advised by old Nautes, a diviner of the moods of the gods and the course of fate, and he was visited by the ghost of his father sent by Jove's command.²¹ Taken as a reprise of the previous narrative in Carthage, the games represent a different form of distraction from the will of the gods and destiny. While Dido promised luxury as a subject of a foreign land, Sicily offered a normal life, of which some of Aeneas' chose to avail themselves. For those that sailed on, the promise of future fate was greater than the familiar.
          Aeneas' mental tossing about on every issue, having to be resolved by a god or a ghost reinforces his being led by the supernatural, and his path being dictated by the gods. His continual forgetting and surprise at unusual appearances, despite their regular occurrence, is a humanizing feature of an otherwise flat character. It allows the reader to empathize with him. His apparent wealth, his former luxurious situations, his brave and skilled followers, all could have been enough to turn any man (especially Roman men of the late Republic / early Empire) away from the path of fate and Jove, the righteous path fraught with dangers. Aeneas' respect for his paterfamilias, even in death, and his obedience to the gods drives him (and the intended Roman readers) teleologically onward toward the foundation of high walls of lofty Rome.

Notes

1 Clyde Pharr, Vergil's Aeneid, Books I-VI. Rev. ed. Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1998, 1-2.

2 Ibid, 6.

3 The Aeneid, 1.92-101.

4 Ibid, 1.124-156.

5 Ibid, 1.1-7.

6 The Aeneid, 2.1-297.

7 Ibid, 2.298-315.

8 Ibid, 2.355-401.

9 Thucydides, 3.20-23.

10 Ibid, 3.52-68.

11 The Aeneid, 2.624-670.

12 Ibid., 2.671-679. For Plutarch, see: Lacaenarum Apophthegmata 6.16. He also records a number of similar rebukes of soldiers by their mothers, indicating that encouraging bravery in the face of grievous wounds and death was a motherly duty in Sparta, and by extinction, part of Grecian culture.

13 Ibid, 4.90-128.

14 Ibid, 4.219-278.

15 Ibid, 4.172.

16 I would note that Aeneas is not free from all guilt, but it would be necessary to fully understand both Trojan and Carthaginian cultures to determine their attitudes and practices of sex and marriage. If Aeneas could have reasonably expected Dido to commit suicide or otherwise be grievously harmed by the ending of their relationship, not merely of the timing, but by the nature of it, then he would be morally wrong to have “entered the cave”. Given that he was tarrying in Carthage, assisting with the building of the town, and wearing her gifts, it does not appear that he intended deception, or did not return her feelings. His duty overrode his personal feeling.

17 The Aeneid, 5.72.103.

18 Ibid, 5.104-13.

19 Ibid, 5.286-318.

20 Ibid, 5.348-361.

21 Ibid, 5.700-45.