The Role Of The Gods And Fate

In Virgil’s Aeneid Essay, Research Paper

THE ROLE OF THE GODS AND FATE IN VIRGIL’S AENEID

Are the deeds of mortal characters in the Aeneid controlled by the gods or by fate? Aeneas must fulfill the will of the gods, while enduring the wrath of other gods, all the while being a worthy predecessor of Augustus and founder of the Roman people. Of course, the Trojan is successful because he gives himself up to these other obligations, while those who resist the will of the gods, Dido and Turnus, die sad deaths.

Juno, the queen of gods, attempts to destroy Aeneas and his men in Book I of the Aeneid. The city of Carthage is Juno’s favorite, and it has been prophesized that the race of the Trojans will one day destroy that city. This is too much for Juno to bear as another Trojan, Paris, has already scorned her. And so she calls on King Aeolus, the god of the winds, telling him to bring a great storm down upon Aeneas’ fleet. Aeolus obeys and unleashes a fierce hurricane upon the battle-wearied Trojans. However, Neptune, the god of the sea, feels the storm over his dominion; he criticizes Aeolus for overstepping his bounds, and calms the waters just as Aeneas’ fleet seems doomed. Seven ships are left, and they head for the nearest land in sight, the coast of Libya. Aeneas’s mother, Venus sees the Trojans’ poor state and pleads to Jupiter to end their suffering. Jupiter assures her that Aeneas will eventually find his promised home in Italy, and that two of his descendants, Romulus and Remus, will found the mightiest empire in the world. Then Jupiter sends a god down to the Phoenicians, the people of Carthage, to make sure they are welcoming to the Trojans. Juno hears that the Trojans are destined to found a city that will destroy her Carthage. That city is Rome, and Virgil here is alluding to the Punic Wars in which Rome battled, and eventually conquered, Carthage. Enraged that the Trojans who slighted her could defeat her again, Juno attempts to break this chain of events by destroying Aeneas’ fleet. Thanks to Neptune, though, they are only thrown off course, and Venus assures that they will not be harmed in Carthage. At times in the Aeneid, it seems as if the story is less about the deeds of the mortal characters than about the bickering of the gods, who continuously disrupt or manipulate events on Earth. The one common theme, though, is that fate always comes true. Aeneas is destined to settle in Italy, and nothing can prevent this. Jupiter sees to it that his overall plan will come to pass by helping out Venus.

The fall of Troy was brought about because the god Minerva helped to fool the Trojans into accepting the wooden horse. Sinon tells the Greeks, “if your hands should harm Minerva’s gift, / then vast destruction…would fall on Priam’s kingdom and the Phrygians; / but if it climbed by your hands into Troy, then Asia would repel the Greeks” (II.268-273). Minerva sends a strange sign to confirm this story: two giant serpents rise up from the sea, devour a priest and his two sons, and then slither up to the shrine of Minerva. The Trojans took this as a sign that they must appease the goddess, and so they wheeled the horse into the city of Troy. Throughout the book Aeneas is convinced that the gods are out to get him: “Had the outcome not / been fated by the gods…Troy, you would be standing yet” (II.75-79); “But oh, it is not right for anyone / to trust reluctant gods!” (II.540-541). Later on, Venus reaffirms this to him: she says, “it is the gods’ relentlessness, the gods’, / that overturns these riches, tumbles Troy / from its high pinnacle” (II.815-817). Thus, while Aeneas and the Trojans did lose a battle they could have won, in the end they had no choice but to follow the will of the gods anyway. On the other hand, if it were not for the help of the gods no one would have escaped from Troy; again, behind all the infighting on Olympus, fate is always fulfilled. The sufferings of Aeneas in Troy will be made up, eventually, by his glory in Italy. The soul of his wife comforts him with this message, and from here forward Aeneas will always have at least one eye on his foretold destiny in Italy.

Apollo spoke to Aeneas, instructing him to go to the land of his ancestors. Anchises took this to mean the island of Crete, where one of the great Trojan ancestors had long ago ruled. Aeneas and his group sailed there and began to build a new city, but a terrible plague soon came over them. The gods of Troy appeared to Aeneas in a dream and explained that his father had been mistaken; Italy, not Crete, is the true land of their ancestors, and thence must they sail. At the beginning of Book III, Aeneas’ destiny has already been established: he will found the race that will become the Romans. By the end of Book III, though, Virgil has made the role of Fate more complex, so that his hero’s success does not seem a foregone conclusion. The dangers that Aeneas and his crew face are real, even if we know that he will survive them. This paradox is prevalent throughout the Aeneid, in many forms. The gods, for example, know what the fates hold for Aeneas, and yet some of them try to alter his path as if it were possible to cheat the future. In the end, though, Virgil’s message is that fate must be obeyed; in fact, the more one tries to delay or avoid fate, the more one suffers. The fleeing Trojans keep looking for the nearest place to settle and make a new life. This i