A Formidable Explanation

From the creation of humanity, mankind has devised countless ways to explain the difficulties and tragedies of everyday life. While some ancient cultures blamed fate for their difficulties, others believed that the gods were to blame for humankind’s troubles. In the Aeneid, Virgil uses Aeolus’s storm and the havoc it causes to illustrate that the gods hold ultimate power over both mortal and immortal lives. 

Aeolus’s attempt to eliminate the Trojan people greatly disrupts the lives of Aeneas’s crew. Juno hates the Trojan people and wants to drown them all (17-80). Upon her request, Aeolus frees the spirits of the winds, which heave up mammoth waves from the depths of the ocean that crash against the crew’s ships. Immediately after the waves form, the sun is blotted out, temporarily blinding the crew while thunder crashes in the background (1.100-1.109). Virgil writes that some Trojan soldiers are killed instantly by the violent storm, demonstrating that Juno possesses the power to end human life (1.109-110). Although Aeolus fails to completely wipe out the Trojan people, his storm terrifies the surviving soldiers. The surviving crew is left exhausted, soaked, and desperate for dry land (1.203-204). Upon reaching land, Aeneas and his crew cannot find the rest of the soldiers who were sailing alongside them and fear that they had perished in the storm (1.215-2.129, 2.256-2.570). These illustrations of the consequences of Juno’s wrath perfectly illustrate that she possesses the power to harm entire crews of men, even those who are well accustomed to pain.

Aeolus’s attempt to eliminate the Trojan people sends Aeneas into a state of depression. Aeneas is the demigod son of Venus and a Trojan general (1.495). Once Aeneas and the remaining members of his crew reach land, Aeneas attempts to encourage them by telling them to “call up your courage again,” and to “dismiss your grief and fear” (2.38). However, Virgil indicates that Aeneas himself fears for the lives of his men when he states that Aeneas is “sick with mounting cares” and has “anguish buried in his heart” (1.246). After first detailing Aeneas’s private worries about his men, Virgil demonstrates the soldiers’ public worries through their contemplations on the fates of their missing comrades (1.253-254). Unfortunately, the remaining crew’s discussion about the fate of the missing men only serves to deepen Aeneas’s fear (1.258-263). Aeneas is not a soft man—Prince Ilioneus himself states that Aeneas is the bravest man alive—but Juno is still able to hurt Aeneas emotionally by separating him from his men (1.657-658). Virgil uses the character of Aeneas, the strongest among an entire crew of soldiers, to demonstrate that the gods can hurt even the strongest men.

By threatening the lives of Aphrodite’s son and the rest of the Trojans, Juno hurts Venus. Venus, who is one of the original twelve Roman gods, is devastated when she learns about the terrible fate that Aeneas and the rest of the Trojans have suffered. However, Venus blames her father, Jupiter, for the storm and begins to believe that he has abandoned the Trojan people (1.284). By attacking the Trojans, Juno causes Venus to distrust her own father. The pain that Aeneas and his brethren are going through is enough to make the goddess of love, who is rarely unhappy, cry and beg Zeus to save the Trojans (1.270-271). Juno, by attacking the Trojans, unwittingly causes Venus to degrade herself by begging Jupiter to show mercy on her child. In illustrating the powerful ways in which Juno was able to affect Venus, Virgil shows that the gods hold ultimate power over one another. 

Virgil uses Aeolus’s storm in the Aeneid to demonstrate the absolute power the gods hold over human life and one another. In the very beginning of the book, the goddess Juno and her accomplice, Aeolus, attempt to kill a group of Trojan soldiers, permanently altering the lives of these men. Virgil shows that Aeolus is able to single-handedly kill several of Aeneas’s men and nearly drown the rest. Next, he demonstrates that Juno is able to emotionally scar and frighten Aeneas, who is not only a demigod but also one of the bravest men alive. Finally, he shows that Juno’s power is not limited to humans but also extends to other gods. A comprehensive demonstration of the absolute power that the Roman gods held over the lives of others is perfectly illustrated in the Aeneid through the characters of the Trojan crew, Aeneas, and Aphrodite.