The Aeneid Fate and Free Will Quotes Page 3

Compare this quotation with the first one for this theme. Notice any connection? That's right: if there's anything Juno can't stop talking about, it's how, even though Fate says the Trojans are going to found an awesome empire, she's determined to make things difficult for them.

These lines illustrate Aeneas's reaction after receiving the armor made for him by the god Vulcan. (In case you don't remember, the shield is decorated with many scenes from future Roman history.) Do you think the fact that the future is already, in some sense, written (OK, engraved) means that Aeneas acts without free will? Or is it more complicated than that? Does the fact that Aeneas knows "nothing of the events themselves" change anything?

These lines echo a concept of Fate that recurs many times in the Aeneid: even though the general pattern is determined in advance, there is some leeway in how things actually play out. What makes Jupiter's words a bit different is that they come from the horse's mouth; from this speech, Jupiter sounds like the guy who enforces the rule of Fate, and gives permission for small divergences from the overall plan. We say "enforces" because Jupiter isn't the one who decides what's fated; that job falls to the three goddesses known as the Parcae, who spin out fate like a thread, as the beginning of the poem tells us: "so the Parcae spun" (1.35). Virgil's original audience would have been familiar enough with Homer to hear this line as a contrast with the beginning of the Iliad, which attributes the entire story to "the will of Zeus." Zeus, of course, is the Greek version of Jupiter. What do you make of Homer and Virgil's different perspectives on fate and the king of the gods?