The Aeneid Love

This is only one of many passages in the Aeneid that suggest love should come with a warning label – CAUTION: CONTENTS ARE EXPLOSIVE. Why do you think Virgil chose to portray love in this way? On another note, does it strike you as strange that Dido is so charmed by what she thinks is Aeneas's son (but is actually the god of love). What is the psychology behind Virgil's making her fall in love through this intermediary?

Do you think Dido really cares about all this stuff? Or do you think she really just wants an excuse to listen to Aeneas talk? If you think the second option is the better one, how do you think this passage relates to the Aeneid's depiction of love more generally? To get the ball rolling, consider this: if love is powerful enough to unite people who have different interests, couldn't it also make people forget their own interests (such as, say, sailing to Italy and founding a new home for the Trojan people)? Hmm…

Echoes of these lines recur frequently in the Aeneid. They point out that love isn't a bowl of roses. Sometimes, it's more like all the thorns from those roses stabbing you all at once. It is important to note the emphasis these lines place on the fact that the pain of love is "inward" and "internal." How do you think this private aspect of love might play out in a poem that is so overwhelmingly concerned with the outward virtues of political and military action?

From these lines, it is clear that Dido totally got played. Not by Aeneas, initially (he seems pretty sincere about the thing to begin with) but by the gods. When the elemental powers themselves, plus the goddess of marriage – not to mention that chorus of nymphs – are setting the scene, you're probably not going to be thinking much about the consequences.

Now wait a second: what do you mean Dido "hid her fault" by "calling it marriage"? Was all that fancy-talk about the "Primal Earth herself and Nuptial Juno" just a product of Dido's imagination? (If so, it would be an instance of "focalization," whereby the narration is briefly skewed through the perspective, or "focus," of one of the characters; see the fifth quotation on Fate and Free Will.) But no, that can't be right: the main narrator has already clearly shown us Juno and Venus conspiring to set the scene for Dido and Aeneas's union. Clearly, love is unfair, and so are the gods. Beyond that, though, it is interesting to note how love distracts Dido from thinking about what is politically useful to her – in this case, not letting rumors of her affair get around to her enemies.

Virgil's depiction of the affection between the warriors Nisus and Euryalus is one of the Aeneid's most positive depictions of romantic love. In terms of general reflections on this human emotion, Virgil's emphasis on Euryalus's good looks calls to mind the view articulated by Yeats in his poem, "A Drinking Song": "Wine comes in at the mouth / And love comes in at the eye." And yet, it is important to note that Virgil doesn't explicitly say that Nisus's love for Euryalus "comes in at the eye" only. To see other reasons for this affection, look at the quotation from Book 9, below.

In this scene, the goddess Venus is using her charms to get Vulcan, her husband, to make a suit of armor for her (but not Vulcan's) son Aeneas. The irony, of course, is that Vulcan is the god of fire – and hence of metal-working – but the fire of love is of another order entirely, and he is powerless to resist it. This passage incorporates motifs found in many other depictions of love elsewhere in the book. Can you see any connections between it and the other quotations in this section?

With these words, Nisus seals his fate – calling attention to himself in a desperate (but failed) attempt to prevent his young lover, Euryalus, from being killed. Nisus's closing words here – in which he refers to Euryalus's loyalty in coming along with him on the night expedition – show that their relationship was based on more than just Euryalus's good looks. The same conclusion can be drawn from Nisus's spirit of sacrifice.

The "I" in these lines is Virgil, who is singling out individual warriors for praise. "Amor," of course, is the personification of love. Two things are noteworthy in this passage. The first is the little flashback of Cycnus (whose name means "swan") turning into a swan out of grief for his dead friend Phaëthon, a pretty striking allegory of the power of this emotion. The second is Cupavo himself, whose reaction to all this is to "reproach" the god and goddess of love. Do you think this reproach might be why Virgil singles him out for special praise?

These lines, like those introducing Nisus and Euryalus, show the undeniable influence appearances have on love (OK, maybe this is a bit closer to plain old lust than love). They also continue the typical Aeneid motif in which being in love makes you act like a complete fool – as, in this case. It makes Turnus eager for battle with Aeneas, which winds up getting him killed.