THE ENEID

Chapter I

JUNO INVOCATIONS
(The storm - Arrival on the coast of Libya - The prophecy of Jupiter - Appearance of
Venus - Carthage - Welcome of Dido - Feast)
The Trojans emerge victorious and head towards Italy. Seeing this, Juno and Aeolus
attack Aeneas and his crew. Being out to sea, the waves rage against the Trojans and
they ask the gods for help; Neptune, observing this, helps them by dragging them to the
Libyan island. Meanwhile Jupiter tells his daughter Cytherea what Aeneas' mission is,
which is to create Rome. Aeneas did not know where he was until a beautiful woman
told him, she was his mother Venus; In that country lived Queen Dido, who received the
Trojans very well with much attention; She too because of Cupid and Venus falls
deeply in love with Aeneas.

Chapter II

DESTRUCTION OF TROY
(The Wooden Horse - The Betrayal of Sinon - Laocoön)
They were all gathered and Aeneas begins to tell the stories they had had in the war;
like that of a horse that they gave to the Greeks and they despised it, damaging it; also
about Sinon, a man whom they planned to kill and they decided to spare his life if he
followed them but he ungratefully spoke ill of the Trojans, also about a priest called
Laocoön about how two horrible sea monsters killed him; and also how Hector appears
to Aeneas asking him to leave that land.

Chapter III
TRIP
(From Troy to Crete - The fight with the harpies - Meeting with Andromache - From
Spiro to Sicily - The Cyclops Polyphemus)
Here Aeneas tells how they made the land of Pergamon together with the company of
his father Anchises, his wife Creusa and his children Iulus and Ascanius, also about the
Harpies and the curse that one of them called Celeno places on them. He talks about the
meeting with his friend Andromache and the warnings she gives him to continue on his
path, recommending that he talk to Sibylia of Cumae since she would tell him the rest;
Thanks to the predictions of Palunior the astronomer, the journey continued; Of course
suffering because of storms! When we arrived at the Cyclops' island we met an Achaean
and he begged us to take him and explained how dangerous the Cyclops were. With fear
we left there and arrived at Carthage.

Chapter IV
 THE MISADVENTURES OF DIDO
(Dido and Ana - The hunting party - Mercury's message - Dido's fury - Suicide)
Aeneas finishes telling his story; Over time Dido tells her cousin Ana about the Love
she feels for Aeneas and she tells her to fight for him; Suddenly Yarbas, Dido's former
admirer, finds out and begs Jupiter to separate them. Jupiter complies, but by doing so
Dido becomes unhinged, thus seeking suicide.

Chapter V
IN SICILY
(Commemoration of Anchises - The Games - The Archers - The Burning of the Fleet -
The Last Voyage - Death of Palinuros)
Aeneas thinks he knows what happened to Dido but he doesn't want to be mortified;
Eventually his father Anchises dies but Aeneas tries to talk to him through the game and
his father feels proud, then to distract themselves they play with darts; The best was
Alcestes and thanks to him they received a prediction. It was not convenient for Juno
that they continue with their journey, so she sent Iris to destroy the ships by burning
them, this she did with the help of some Trojan warriors who were bored; Aeneas,
seeing this, resorts to the help of Jupiter and continues sailing with those who want to
continue; one of them named Polinuro dies, for challenging Morpheus, god of sleep and
night.

Chapter VI
DESCENT INTO HELL
(The Sibyl of Cumae - Funeral of Misenum - The infernal abodes - The passage of the
Styx - The Tertarus - The Elysian fields - The Roman descent - You will be Marcellus!)
Arriving in Italy Aeneas called Sibilia and she explained to him how to go to hell,
Miseno died in those days and served to perform the ritual, in this way Aeneas enters
hell in the company of Sibilia; There he looks at Dido, that makes him very sad,
suddenly the path divides in two, in one of them was the god with the ugly face, brother
of Jupiter and Neptune was Plato, in the other was Sisiphone. Finally he looks at his
father Anchises, Aeneas asks him what will the new land be? And he responds that
Roma, his father also tells him that he will have big problems but that the solution will
be Marcelo.

Chapter VII
JUNO'S IRRITATION
(The Lazio - The reception of the Latin king - The infernal Alecto - War between
Latins and Trojans)
Aeneas arrives in the land of Latium, who is a king, husband of Amata and father of
Lavinia; The warrior realizes that this is the earth; The king realizes that the warrior is
the oracle's boy, for this reason the King receives Aeneas and his people very well.
Seeing the success of the Trojans, Juno creates a plan, where Amata is harmed since she
is bitten by a snake and Aeneas because people think that he is the culprit, thus starting
a silly war.
Chapter VIII
EVANDER AND AENEAS
(Father Tiber - The Reign of Saturn - The Forge of Vulcan - The Shield of Aeneas)
When Aeneas sleeps, the Tiber appears to him, which tells him where there is a cave
that was inhabited by Cacus, half man and half beast; When Aeneas goes, he meets
Evandro and his son Palonte who tell him the history of those lands. For the war, Venus
asks Volcano to make armor for Aeneas and he accepts; The shield that Venus brought
to Aeneas was very beautiful.

Chapter IX
TURKISH TO THE TROJANS
(Siege of the camp - Nisus and Euryalus - The assault - Turn's fierceness)
Juno orders Aeneas' ships to be destroyed and Venus asks Jupiter not to do it. One
night two young men Nisus and Euryalus wanted to kill some Latins, the Rutulians
realized this and then killed them; Turnus was Lavinia's boyfriend, but she changes him
for Aeneas, sends a Thea lighting everything up; Ascanius out of rage kills Lomulo
known as Remulus; Turnus gets furious and goes in to kill them all, they cornered him
and Turnus chose to throw himself into the river.

Chapter X
THE WAR CONTINUES
(The assembly of the gods - Aeneas' friends - Death of Pallas - Death of Lauso and
Mezencio)
Jupiter gathers the gods on Olympus and tells them not to fight among themselves
anymore. Aeneas's warriors are scared since their leader is not there but they continue
fighting. Turnus looks for Aeneas to fight, then Pallas gets in and they kill him.
Mezencio replaces Turnus and fights with Aeneas, he ends up wounded and his son
Lauso enters the defense, who dies. When Mezencio finds out about this, he also dies.

Chapter XI
CAMILA
(Palante's funeral - The great Latin council - Siege of the Laurentian capital - History of
Camila - Death of Camila)
Everyone was very sad about the death of their friend and Aeneas swore that he would
found the Trojan land. The Latins realized that their opponents were very difficult and
they did not want to fight anymore but Turnus did, no one helped him, only the virgin
Camilla, a brave warrior woman who died because of Chloreo because of a spear in her
chest.

Chapter XII
THE VICTORY OF AENEAS
 (The frustrated duel - The broken peace - Aeneas and Turnus - Jupiter and Juno - Death
of Turnus)
Lacio, Amata and Lavinia herself ask Turnus to give up the idea but he does not want
to, being ready to fight Turnus's sister Yuturna arrives asking him not to do it. Suddenly
everyone is scandalized and everyone starts fighting, until Aeneas tells them not to. On
Olympus, Juno, tired of the war, tells Jupiter that whoever wins should not take away
the other's customs, Jupiter agrees. Turnus picks up a stone and throws it at Aeneas but
nothing happens to him, instead Aeneas takes his spear and buries it in his chest, thus
killing Turnus; Over time Aeneas and Lavinia created Rome.

TEXT COMMENTARY. THE ENEID . VIRGIL

«Frightful pain is what you send,

oh queen, renew with this story

of the decline of Ilion, of how the kingdom,

that it is impossible to remember without crying,

the Greek demolished: miserable ruin

(…) But if your love inspires you so much interest

for knowing our pities, and in short

what Troy was in its last hour,

although the mere memory shakes me,

and the soul avoids its pain, I begin.

Of Fate refuted, so many years,

The leaders of Greece, tired of fighting,

with art worthy of the exalted Pallas,

a horse builds—the sides,

fir beams, a wooden mount—;

and they spread the word that it was the ex-voto

for a fortunate return.(…)

(The Aeneid, Virgil)

  Explain the content of the fragment and relate it to the entire work

This is a fragment of the Aeneid , by the Latin poet Virgil, in which Aeneas is preparing
to tell Queen Dido, at her request, the terrible end suffered by the city of Troy from which
he came. Aeneas fled Troy with his elderly father, Anchises, on his shoulders and his son
Ascanius by the hand. He assembled a fleet and set sail with the surviving Trojans for
Thrace, Crete, Epirus and Sicily, before being boarded off the coast of Africa. There, Dido,
queen of Carthage, fell in love with him to the point of committing suicide after his
departure. After docking at the mouth of the Tiber River and killing Turnus, king of the
Rutulians, he won the hand of Lavinia, princess of Latium. According to this story, the
Roman people descend directly from his son Ascanius, since he was the founder of Alba
Longa, ancient Rome. In this way, the Latin poet fills an important gap in the history of
Latin literature, since it lacked a founding epic. This fragment is Aeneas' response to
Queen Dido, who has asked him to narrate the end of Troy, despite the pain that this
memory causes him. He begins by recognizing the wisdom of the Greeks, whom he
identifies with Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom who, during the Trojan War,
supported the Greek people and inspired them in the horse trap. What Aeneas relates in this
text is the trick perpetrated, which consisted of leaving a wooden horse with soldiers inside
on the beach, once he had abandoned it, as if it were a votive offering. Votive offerings
were objects that were offered to the gods as thanks for some favor or as a pledge to
achieve it. In this way, the Trojans decide to introduce the horse inside the city, causing
their own destruction, because that same night the troops leave the interior, attack from
within and open the doors to the army waiting outside.

 Analyze the formal aspects of the text

The complete text of the Aeneid is written in verse, a common vehicle of Greek epic
and later Latin epic, which was the first to introduce the dactylic hexameter into Latin epic
poetry. Virgil introduced the musicality and technical precision of his meter into his work
in such a subtle way that his verse has since been considered a model of literary perfection.
Although it was written much later than the Iliad , it shares many of its features, due to
the need to maintain the line of continuity. In this way, the text preserves the sublime tone
of the great epics, marked by exclamations ( oh queen ), the lexicon related to the suffering
of the heroes ( Terrible pain, our pities ), hyperboles with superlatives ( it is impossible to
remember without crying, miserable ruin, the mere memory shivers me ) and hyperboles
with metaphors ( a wooden mountain ). The allusion to adverse fate is another of the most
typical elements of the epic ( Del Hado rebatidos ), as well as the presence of gods, such as
Pallas. In the classical epic, the coexistence between gods and heroes is frequent. On the
other hand, the hyperbaton produces estrangement and distancing in the reader or listener (
a horse edifican ).
The text is structured as a dialogue text, although it corresponds to the speech of a
single character, Aeneas, in direct style, so there are numerous verbs in the present
(inspires, is), which coexist with the verbs in the past typical of the narration (knocked
down).
The language, therefore, is sublime, with an adequate selection of vocabulary, far from
colloquial language due to its marked cultured and literary character ( ocaso, misérrima,
rebatidos and venturosos ).