The Aenead
(a brief summary)

Aeneas, a Trojan prince in flight from the Greek sack of Troy with his father, his young son, and the statues of his household gods, sails west in search of the new home promised him by the gods in a score of prophecies. Virgil opens his narrative at a moment when Aeneas has almost reached his goal--the plain of Latium in Italy where he will eventually found a city, Alba Longa, from which will come after his death the founders of Rome. Aeneas and his fleet are off Sicily, almost in sight of their destination, when Juno (the Roman equivalent of Hera), who hates even the survivors of ruined Troy, sends a storm to scatter the ships.

Aeneas, with his one ship, is driven south to the African coast, to the territory of Dido, queen of Carthage, a new city for which Juno plans a glorious future as master of the Mediterranean world (the same destiny Jupiter [Zeus] and Venus [Aphrodite] plan for Rome). Dido welcomes Aeneas, as well as the crews of his scattered ships who also come ashore; she offers Aeneas and the Trojans a partnership in the city which she is building. At a banquet she gives for them, Aeneas is prevailed upon to tell the story of his wanderings since he left Troy.

He begins with the fall of the city: the Greek stratagem of the wooden horse, the lying story of Sinon which tricks the Trojans into admitting it to the city, the fate of Laocoon who warned against it, and the night assault of the Greeks, led into the city by the Greek warriors concealed in the horse. Aeneas fights but in a losing battle; he sees Priam killed at the a1tar of his palace by Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, and returns to his own house, where he collects his father Anchises, his wife Creusa, and his son Iulus and leads them out of the burning city. On the way, Creusa is lost; her ghost appears to him urging him on and promises him a kingdom in the west. From Troy, Aeneas sets sail and, after a series of adventures like those of Odysseus (one of them in fact is a meeting with a Cyclops), reaches Sicily, where his father Anchises dies.

Book IV opens with Dido passionately in love with Aeneas; during a hunt they are overtaken by a storm and shelter alone in a cave. There they become lovers but, though Dido regards her union as a marriage, Aeneas will later insist that it is not binding. For meanwhile the gods who have imposed on Aeneas the responsibility for Rome's future have become impatient with his long stay at Carthage and his cooperation with Dido in the foundation of Carthage, a city which will one day be Rome's mortal enemy.

Jupiter sends Mercury (Hermes) to order him to put to sea. As he prepares to obey, Dido summons him, pleads with him, denounces him, and threatens him--all to no avail; he must obey the commands of heaven, think of his son and the kingdom he is to inherit in Italy. As Aeneas puts out to sea, Dido, after cursing him and promising unceasing war between her descendants and his, kills herself.

Aeneas, back in Sicily, holds funeral games for Anchises (like those Achilles held for Patroclus in The Iliad) and then sails for Italy. There he is led by the Sibyl down to the realm of the dead, where he sees, as Odysseus does in The Odyssey, the great sinners and great men of the past but also, unlike Odysseus, the great men of the future, who will impose Roman dominion on the whole of the known world.

The Trojans become involved in a war with the Italians, who are roused to battle by Juno, anxious to forestall the foundation of the city which will be the rival and conqueror of her favored Carthage. Venus brings to her son Aeneas, as Thetis brought to her son Achilles in The Iliad, armor newly forged by Vulcan (Hephaestus); on the shield (cf. the shield of Achilles) Vulcan has depicted the glorious exploits of the Roman descendants of Aeneas.

We follow the ebb and flow of battle which with the death of Turnus at the hand of Aeneas and Juno's acceptance of the Roman destiny. She accepts on the condition that the Trojans, whom she still hates, abandon their language and nationality, merge their identity in the new Roman nation which is to conquer the world.