The Aeneid begins, with an echo of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and using the same metrical verse form. Virgil’s purpose in writing it is not just poetical, but also political – to establish that Rome’s origins and mission were divine, and so were those of its new ruler, Augustus. These first words assert that Aeneas, a near relative of King Priam, founded the state that became Rome, and brought with him the protection of the patron Gods of Troy. Later, Virgil will establish Aeneas as the ancestor of Julius Caesar and the Emperor Augustus. As Venus is Aeneas’s mother, this shows that the Caesars are descended from a God (Julius had already been posthumously deified in 42 BCE). Lavinium was the location of Aeneas’s first Italian settlement. This was followed by another settlement at Alba (hence the mention of “Alban fathers”) and finally by the foundation of Rome.
The mention of the anger of Juno, wife of Jupiter the King of the Gods, is a reference to the mythical origin of the Trojan War, the “judgement of Paris”. Paris, simultaneously a royal Trojan prince and a shepherd, was invited to judge a beauty contest between Juno, Venus the Goddess of love and Minerva the goddess of wisdom. Each goddess offered a bribe: he chose Venus’s as she promised him the most beautiful woman in the world. His choice gained him the (married) Helen of Troy, started the Trojan War and earned Trojans the “unforgetting anger of Juno”, who was the patron god of marriage as well as a very poor loser. She will be on Aeneas’s case as the Aeneid continues.
See the illustrated blog post here.
You can compare this beginning with the opening of the Iliad of Homer here and the Odyssey here: the original Greek is recited with an English translation.
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.
To listen, press play: