Until the final pages of the Aeneid, Juno, the Queen of the gods, will be the implacable enemy of Aeneas and his Trojans. Why? Near the beginning, Virgil feels the need to tell us. He adds a new grievance to the ones familiar to us from the Iliad and Odyssey: Juno is the protectress and patron of the new city of Carthage, knows that it is fated that the Romans, descended from Trojan stock, will destroy it one day, but is determined to do her utmost to obstruct the fulfilment of the prophecy.
Carthage had been utterly destroyed more than a century before Virgil wrote, but, in three bitter wars over a hundred and twenty years it had been a deadly threat to Rome’s position of power in the Mediterranean world, and to its very existence. This would still have been prominent in the Roman collective memory. Later in the poem, Virgil will tell a tragic story of love and betrayal to explain the origins of the enmity between the two cities.
In the judgement of Paris, the Trojan prince awarded the prize for beauty to Venus in preference to Juno and Minerva. As an inducement, Venus had offered Paris possession of the most beautiful woman in the world. This would lead him to steal Helen from her husband Menelaus the King of Sparta, causing the Trojan war. Ganymede, a mythical Trojan youth famous for his beauty, was abducted by Jupiter to be his cup-bearer and lover, and hence one of Juno’s many rivals for her husband’s attentions.
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