Postponing until Book II the account of Troy’s invasion by the Greeks, which is the chronological starting point of his poem, Virgil begins the Aeneid at what may well be its most crucial and dramatic moment: at the very instant when the Trojans, after many years of wandering, are swept away from their goal of finding a homeland and are stranded on foreign shores that Virgil’s readers would have recognized as enemy territory. The elation that the Trojans all felt as they sailed from Sicily is changed to horror and despair, and although by this time Aeneas has been given many prophecies of his eventual success, he must struggle to summon up a brave front for the benefit of his disconsolate companions.
This opening book offers an excellent example of the literary device known as in medias res, a Latin expression meaning “in the middle of things.” Common to ancient epics, this narrative technique immediately engages readers’s attention by getting the story under way at a crucial point in the action. Virgil’s beginning Aeneas’s story this way allows the events surrounding the fall of Troy and the adventures that ensue to be narrated afterwards by Aeneas himself. Carthage’s Queen Dido, already in love with the Trojan warrior, will find many more good reasons to admire him as he unintentionally presents himself to her as a model of heroism.
Throughout the Aeneid, the actions of human beings are accompanied by the actions of gods and goddesses, who constantly intervene in human affairs as partisans or enemies, and who are remarkably human in their own passions. Juno, for example, possesses a seemingly inexhaustible supply of grudges against the Trojans. Fittingly, her voice is heard first in the poem, and its tone is outrage: She will be the major impediment to Aeneas’s unfortunate struggles to found a homeland. Also dramatically significant is that her appearance as the epic’s chief divine antagonist should be followed soon afterward by the entrance of Venus, who, as the hero’s indulgent and protective mother, opposes Juno with a force that will ultimately prevail.
In Book I, Virgil seems to pay more attention to divine actions than to human concerns. In addition to our learning about Juno’s all-consuming jealousy of Aeneas’s fated glory, we see how petty and territorial her fellow gods are. For example, Aeolus is easily bribed to wreak havoc against Aeneas’s fleet by Juno’s promising him an exquisite nymph for a wife. Juno has obviously favored him in the past: He concedes that he owes her for everything she has done for him. However, like a pair of bickering children, the territorial sea god Neptune chastises his sister Juno and calms his seas.
Although we applaud Venus’s protection of her son, she is as manipulative of humans as Juno is. However, because Aeneas is the epic’s hero, we are more likely to forgive Venus’s indiscretionary power. For example, she causes Dido to fall in love with Aeneas out of fear that the queen otherwise might harm either her son or grandson, or both. However, Venus is not personally against Dido; rather, she is for Aeneas. She does not harm Dido as Juno would the Trojan prince.
Detached from the Trojans’s distress and the goddesses’s passions, Jupiter assures Venus that all is going to be well for her son. He delivers the first major prophecy in the Aeneid, a forecast of Rome’s national glory. This prophetic vision will be mirrored by the ghost of Anchises, Aeneas’s father, when he meets Aeneas in the underworld in Book VI, at the poem’s halfway point, and again by Jupiter near the very end of the epic, when the king of the gods tells Juno about Rome’s future greatness.
Whereas we typically think of divinities as sources of security and order, Virgil’s gods and goddesses—especially Juno—create chaos in an already disordered human world that Aeneas constantly strives to bring to order. Throughout Book I, Virgil emphasizes the continual cause/effect relationship between Aeneas and the deities: Aeolus causes winds to pummel the Trojan ships, and many ships are lost; Neptune causes the winds to dissipate, and Aeneas heads for the nearest shore—which just happens to be near Carthage; and Venus causes Dido to fall instantly and completely in love with Aeneas, who will then languish in Carthage longer than he should.
Against this chaotic backdrop, Aeneas never loses sight of his goal—except temporarily in Carthage—to found a new Trojan state and establish order in his and his countrymen’s lives. The theme of order versus disorder is evident in many seemingly unimportant remarks that Virgil makes. For example, when Aeneas anchors his boat off the Carthaginian shore, Virgil writes that he does so “longing for the firm earth underfoot.” Aeneas feels more secure on land—a symbol of order—than on sea—a symbol of disorder.
Insignificant tasks assume greater importance than they normally would because they represent the ordered state that Aeneas seeks. When the Trojans land on Libyan shores, one of their first actions is to prepare a meal. Virgil draws noticeable attention to how they set about this task: “They skinned the deer, bared ribs and viscera, / Then one lot sliced the flesh and skewered it / On spits, all quivering, while others filled / Bronze cooking pots and tended the beach fires.” The Trojans work together, each group of crewmen performing a specified task that, when joined with the other crewmen’s tasks, ensures an ordered outcome, even if what is being performed is only the usually mundane cooking of a meal.
Lest we feel that Virgil is more concerned with gods than humans, he provides a well-rounded portrait of his Trojan hero. Almost all of Aeneas’s major roles are presented by the end of Book I. His shooting seven stags—one for each of the remaining ships—highlights his role as provider to his people. He is both comforter and motivator when he addresses his companions, rousing their spirits and reminding them that fate has decreed their success. And twice Virgil draws attention to how good a father Aeneas is to Ascanius, describing him as “father Aeneas” and “fond father, as always thoughtful of his son.”
