Essay Example on Virgil's Aeneid: Exploring Juno's Hostility Toward Aeneas

Virgil starts his epic poem with a brief statement regarding its theme by saying that he will sing of war and Aeneas, who was a man motivated by fate sailing from shores of Troy to Italy, where he launched a city known as Lavinium. Virgil's Aeneid, in his poetry, asks why Juno, who is the queen of the gods, harasses such a good man like Aeneas. In his music poetry, Virgil speaks about two explicit reasons for the queen's hostility. The first reason Dido and Aeneas identifies is the queen's love for Carthage and conforming hatred that she has on the future Rome (Marlowe, 2019). The future Rome has a fate of overthrowing her favourite city. Another reason is her lingering resentment since she believes Paris is like a Trojan, which made her not to be awarded the golden apple, which is an award that is presented to the world's most beautiful girl. Besides, the queen is also angry for the reason that Jupiter gave the god's cupbearer to Ganymede, the Trojan prince. The book utilizes a literary device referred to as in medias res. This method is used to engage the attention of the reader to get the story underway at an important point. The technique is also used to show how Queen Dido, who is in love with Trojan warrior, finds more positive reasons of admiring him as he unintentionally gives himself to the queen as a model of heroism.

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All through the Aeneid, the activities of human beings go along with acts of the gods and goddesses, who continuously intervene in human affairs as enemies who are bizarrely human in their personal passions. For instance, this is expressed by Juno, who has apparently infinite grudges against the Trojans. The first voice heard in the poem is on the queen whose tone is full of outrage. The queen becomes the primary impediment to the unfortunate struggles faced by Aeneas in finding a homeland. In poetry, Virgil appears to paying more attention to divine actions rather than human concerns (Clausen, 2012). Besides Queen Juno consuming jealousy of Aeneas destined glory, the book portrays how territorial and petty her companion gods are. For instance, god Aeolus is easily manipulated by the queen through a promise of giving him a gorgeous nymph for wife in exchanging of sending a storm on Aeneas fleet by the queen. Though the actions of goddess Venus of protecting her son are applauded, she also manipulates humans the same way as Queen Juno. Nevertheless, since Aeneas is the epic hero, it is understandable to forgive the in the discretionary power of Venus. For instance, she makes Dido be in love with Aeneas due to the fear that the queen if not, will harm either her grandson or son or even both. Disconnected from the goddess passion and Trojan distress, Jupiter gives assurance to Venus that her son will be well, and no harm will befall him. Jupiter provides the first major prophecy in the Aeneid by forecasting the national glory of Rome. To sum up, based on the above discussion, it is evident gods and goddesses can be both sources of joy and sorrow (Harris, 2018). People normally have a perception that divinities are a source of order and security but Virgil gods and goddesses specifically Juno created chaos in a human world that is already disordered that Aeneas consistently endeavours to bring to order.

References

Clausen, W. V. (2012). Virgil's Aeneid: Decorum, Allusion, and Ideology. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter.

Harris, E. T. (2018). Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Marlowe, C. (2019). The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage. Independently Published.