Aeneid Book 1, lines 254 - 296

Jupiter’s prophecy

by Virgil

As the narrative of the Aeneid develops, there is no shortage of excitement, drama and suspense. Inevitably, however, the degree of jeopardy that Virgil can create is limited by our knowing the end of the story before it has begun: Aeneas will succeed in founding a city in Italy which has its roots in Troy, his son, Ascanius, will consolidate that success by founding the Kingdom of Alba, leading as the centuries pass to Romulus and Remus, the foundation of Rome, and the City’s eventual imperial dominance. Virgil’s purpose is to look back from the culmination of that history to its legendary beginnings and proclaim that Augustus’s rule is set to bring a new golden age of peace and empire; and in the process to assert Augustus’s divine pedigree as the descendant of Aeneas, and hence of the Gods themselves, through Aeneas and his mother, Venus.

This extract, early in Book One, spells all this out as clearly as can be, in the form of a pledge given by Jupiter, the ruler of the Gods, to Venus, who has complained to him that Juno’s enmity and her attempts to destroy Aeneas and his fleet are threatening to frustrate his divine will. It may hold less excitement for the modern general reader than much of the Aeneid, but it is an important passage because it expresses succinctly the practical purpose of Virgil’s poetic enterprise: to express and enhance the personal greatness and divine aura of Augustus and glorify his political programme for Rome. The Julius Caesar whose birth Jupiter foresees must be Augustus, so called after Julius Caesar, his great-uncle and adoptive father, whose advent can hardly be said to have ended civil strife.

See the illustrated blog post here.

To follow the story of Aeneas in sequence, use this link to the full Pantheon Poets selection of extracts from the Aeneid. See the next episode here.

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Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum,
voltu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat,
oscula libavit natae, dehinc talia fatur:
“Parce metu, Cytherea: manent immota tuorum
fata tibi; cernes urbem et promissa Lavini
moenia, sublimemque feres ad sidera caeli
magnanimum Aenean; neque me sententia vertit.
hic tibi (fabor enim, quando haec te cura remordet,
longius et volvens fatorum arcana movebo)
bellum ingens geret Italia, populosque feroces
contundet, moresque viris et moenia ponet,
tertia dum Latio regnantem viderit aestas,
ternaque transierint Rutulis hiberna subactis.
at puer Ascanius, cui nunc cognomen Iulo
additur,—Ilus erat, dum res stetit Ilia regno,—
triginta magnos volvendis mensibus orbis
imperio explebit, regnumque ab sede Lavini
transferet, et longam multa vi muniet Albam.
hic iam ter centum totos regnabitur annos
gente sub Hectorea, donec regina sacerdos,
Marte gravis, geminam partu dabit Ilia prolem.
inde lupae fulvo nutricis tegmine laetus
Romulus excipiet gentem, et Mavortia condet
moenia, Romanosque suo de nomine dicet.
his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono;
imperium sine fine dedi. Quin aspera Iuno,
quae mare nunc terrasque metu caelumque fatigat,
consilia in melius referet, mecumque fovebit
Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam:
sic placitum. veniet lustris labentibus aetas,
cum domus Assaraci Phthiam clarasque Mycenas
servitio premet, ac victis dominabitur Argis.
nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar,
imperium oceano, famam qui terminet astris,—
Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo.
hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum,
accipies secura; vocabitur hic quoque votis.
aspera tum positis mitescent saecula bellis;
cana Fides, et Vesta, Remo cum fratre Quirinus,
iura dabunt; dirae ferro et compagibus artis
claudentur Belli portae; Furor impius intus,
saeva sedens super arma, et centum vinctus aenis
post tergum nodis, fremet horridus ore cruento.”

With the smiling face with which he calms the heavens and the tempest, the creator of men and Gods kissed his daughter lightly on the lips and said: “Have no fear, Cytherea, the destiny of your people remains unchanged. You shall see the city and walls of Lanuvium, as promised, and lift great-souled Aeneas aloft to the stars of heaven – no afterthought has swayed me. Aeneas – since anxiety gnaws you, I shall speak, tell you the secrets of fate and unwind them more fully – will fight a great war in Italy, crush its redoubtable people and, until the third summer has seen him ruling in Latium and the third winter has passed after his defeat of the Rutuli, will establish both a city and customs for his people. Then young Ascanius, to whom as Iulus a new name is now given – it was Ilus, when the Trojan state stood in its power – will thirty times complete the great cycle of the year with his rule as the months come round, move the seat of power from Lanuvium and be the stout defence of the enduring city of Alba. There the race of Hector will reign for three hundred years, until a queenly priestess, Ilia, pregnant by the God of war, shall bear twins. Thence Romulus, rejoicing in the golden pelt of the she-wolf, his nurse, founding a stronghold worthy of the war-God, shall bring forth his people, calling them Romans after himself. For them I set no bounds of fortune or limit of time, and have granted them unending imperial sway. Even cruel Juno, who now in her fear troubles sea, land and heavens, will soften her views, and with me will foster the Romans, wearers of the toga, as the overlords of all. This is my will. With the long passing of time, there will come an age when Rome shall reduce the land of Achilles and illustrious Mycenae to servitude, in mastery over a conquered Greece. From the fairest stock shall be born a Trojan Caesar, destined to bound his rule by the Ocean and his fame by the stars – Julius, a name come down from the great Iulus. Rest assured that you shall one day welcome him, too, to Heaven, laden with the spoils of the Orient, and he too shall be invoked with vows. Then the harshness of the ages shall soften: grey-haired Honesty, Vesta  and Romulus, with Remus his brother, shall be the lawgivers; the gates of war, fearsome with their clenched bars and irons, shall be closed; confined within, wicked Madness, frightful on a seat of cruel arms, and pinioned behind by a hundred brazen knots, shall roar from his bloodstained maw.”

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More Poems by Virgil

  1. Dido and Aeneas: royal hunt and royal affair
  2. The Harpy’s prophecy
  3. Vulcan’s forge
  4. Virgil begins the Georgics
  5. Juno throws open the gates of war
  6. Omens for Princess Lavinia
  7. How Aeneas will know the site of his city
  8. Into battle
  9. Fire strikes Aeneas’s fleet
  10. Aeneas reaches the Elysian Fields
  11. Dido’s release
  12. King Mezentius meets his match
  13. Aeneas rescues his Father Anchises
  14. New allies for Aeneas
  15. A Fury rouses Turnus to war
  16. Catastrophe for Rome?
  17. The Aeneid begins
  18. The farmer’s starry calendar
  19. The Trojans prepare to set sail from Carthage
  20. Charon, the ferryman
  21. Sea-nymphs
  22. Virgil’s perils on the sea
  23. The infant Camilla
  24. The death of Priam
  25. What is this wooden horse?
  26. Aeneas is wounded
  27. Aeneas tours the site of Rome
  28. The portals of sleep
  29. Aeneas’s oath
  30. The death of Pallas
  31. The Fury Allecto blows the alarm
  32. The death of Euryalus and Nisus
  33. Aeneas joins the fray
  34. Mourning for Pallas
  35. Aeneas’s ships are transformed
  36. The journey to Hades begins
  37. Mercury’s journey to Carthage
  38. More from Virgil’s farming Utopia
  39. Virgil’s poetic temple to Caesar
  40. The death of Dido.
  41. Juno’s anger
  42. Laocoon warns against the Trojan horse
  43. Storm at sea!
  44. Cassandra is taken
  45. Anchises’s ghost invites Aeneas to visit the underworld
  46. Aeneas prepares to tell Dido his story
  47. Help for Father Aeneas from Father Tiber
  48. Turnus the wolf
  49. Dido and Aeneas: Hell hath no fury …
  50. The Trojan horse opens
  51. The Syrian hostess
  52. The farmer’s happy lot
  53. Rumour
  54. King Latinus grants the Trojans’ request
  55. Aeneas’s vision of Augustus
  56. Turnus is lured away from battle
  57. Palinurus the helmsman is lost
  58. Turnus at bay
  59. Rites for the allies’ dead
  60. Signs of bad weather
  61. Aeneas sees Marcellus, Augustus’s tragic heir
  62. The Trojans reach Carthage
  63. The Trojan Horse enters the city
  64. Aeneas saves his son and father, but at a cost
  65. Love is the same for all
  66. Dido falls in love
  67. Virgil predicts a forthcoming birth and a new golden age
  68. Dido’s story
  69. Juno is reconciled
  70. Laocoon and the snakes
  71. Hector visits Aeneas in a dream
  72. The natural history of bees
  73. Aeneas comes to the Hell of Tartarus
  74. In King Latinus’s hall
  75. Souls awaiting punishment in Tartarus, and the crimes that brought them there.
  76. Aeneas learns the way to the underworld
  77. Aeneas prepares for a hopeless fight
  78. Aeneas finds Dido among the shades
  79. Aeneas and Dido meet
  80. Aeneas arrives in Italy
  81. Aristaeus’s bees
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