One night while Aeneas is sleeping, the god of the Tiber River appears in a dream and tells the Trojan prince that he will find on the shore a white sow and her litter, which symbolically represent Alba Longa, to be founded by Ascanius after thirty years have passed — […]

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Virgil now introduces King Latinus of Latium, who is descended from the god Saturn. Latinus and his wife, Amata, have a daughter, Lavinia, their only surviving child, who is of marriageable age and has many suitors, including Turnus, the leader of the Rutulian tribe. At the exact time that the […]

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Following Aeneas’s petition to Apollo, Deiphobe, possessed now by Apollo, predicts much hardship ahead for the Trojans in Italy: They will fight a bloody war, and Juno will continue to oppose them. Aeneas tells the sibyl that he is accustomed to trouble and has already foreseen that many more difficulties […]

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The next morning, Aeneas summons his people and announces that he is going to celebrate funeral rites in memory of his father, Anchises, who died on their previous visit to Drepanum and was buried here. Additionally, Aeneas will hold various athletic games in Anchises’s honor. He then makes ceremonial sacrifices […]

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Dido and Aeneas’s relationship catches the attention of Juno and Venus. For very different reasons — Juno wants to delay Aeneas’s reaching Italy, and Venus wants to ensure his safety — the two goddesses jointly conspire to bring about a sexual union of the pair. While Aeneas and Dido are […]

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After performing funeral rites for Polydorus, the Trojans left bloodstained Thrace and sailed to the island of Delos, sacred to Apollo, from whom Aeneas sought counsel. Apollo declared through his oracle — his priest, through whose mouth he spoke — that the Trojans should seek their “mother of old,” which […]

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Fooled by this stratagem, Troy’s citizens believed that the Greeks had indeed sailed home. Some wanted to bring the wooden horse into the city; others, rightly suspicious, wanted to destroy it. Laocoon, a priest of Neptune, warned the Trojans that the wooden horse was either full of soldiers or a […]

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Seeing the Trojans set sail for Italy, Juno commands Aeolus, the god of the winds, to raise a storm that will capsize their ships and drown them all. Aeolus obeys her. Many of the ships appear to be lost at sea. Neptune, the god of the sea, angry because Aeolus […]

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Achaemenides (a-kuh-mihn-ih-deez) A Greek crewman of Ulysses, he is accidentally abandoned on Sicily, home of the Cyclopes, when his companions flee from the angry one-eyed giants. The Trojans rescue him in Book III. Achates (uh-kay-teez) Known as “the faithful Achates,” he is Aeneas’s armor-bearer and a devoted follower of the […]

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Long before Virgil’s time, Romans liked to believe that among their ancestors were the legendary Trojans, who, under Aeneas’s leadership, sailed from Troy, in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), westward across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy and settled in Latium, site of the future Rome. This legend of Aeneas’s voyage, which […]

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