Do the Gods Influence Our Emotions?

Strong Feelings in The Aeneid

Dido casts herself upon the pyre in despairing love—Aeneas leaves, determined to follow his fate. She has let her fidelity to her dead husband be consumed by an attraction to Aeneas, one that rose up in her from the moment he appeared before her in Carthage with his bedraggled people. And now she sees Aeneas’ departure as a condemnation of her broken vow to her dead husband. Her initial attraction to Aeneas is understandable. Here is this son of a goddess, who appears before her with all the glory his divine inheritance can give him. Who would not find him attractive? At the moment of their meeting, his mother, Venus, breathed “upon him beauty of hair and bloom of youth and kindled brilliance in his eyes” (I, 802-3).¹ Even further, Venus then sent Cupid to foster this desire further. But perhaps, the arrival of Cupid is a symbol for her embracing of an already-present attraction. Dido’s wrestling with her emotion is so relatable, so human:

The queen, for her part, all that evening ached
With longing that her heart’s blood fed, a wound
Or inward fire eating her away.
The manhood of the man, his pride of birth,
Came home to her time and again; his looks, 
His words remained with her to haunt her mind,
And desire for him gave her no rest. (IV.1-7)

These strong, well-described emotions are part of what make The Aeneid memorable. For myself, Dido on her funeral pyre was the only part of the book I remembered from my first read of the epic back in college. This time around, due to the ten years I spent homeschooling my children in the classics, I understood much more, and I think it will stick with me in more detail.

There are many things that make The Aenied a great book. By presenting how characters embrace or reject emotions that rise within them, Virgil gives us an in-depth, first-person experience of their emotions. Virgil describes human emotion as influenced by the gods, but when closely examined these descriptions are more like our experience than we might at first think. Sometimes we experience our strong emotions as if they are given to us from outside ourselves, as if a god had sent an arrow of love into us or a fury had dropped her snake on our bosom. And sometimes, when we embrace an emotion, it feels like it is the emotion acting and not us, as if our will is absorbed into it, or, as Virgil might put it, as if a nymph were directing our feelings.

Aeneas

A friend pointed out that The Aeneid is a story for those in the middle years of life, painting a picture of Aeneas having to care for both his aging father and his son, who will be soon coming of age. In Book IV, we see Aeneas amid his “mid-life-crisis.” His city is destroyed, his wife has perished, he has been seeking a new homeland for years, his aged father has recently died, and now he is feeling a little guilty about stopping in Carthage for the winter and having his affair with Dido. His conscience has been pricking him:

But in my dreams my father’s troubled ghost
Admonishes and frightens me. Then, too,
Each night thoughts come of young Ascanius,
My dear boy wronged, defrauded of his destiny. (VI, 489-91)

He knows it is wrong to indulge himself in his passion for Dido, that he is neglecting his responsibility to his son Ascanius and his people. When Mercury comes with a message from Jupiter, telling him to go and fulfill his fate of founding a new city for the Trojans in Italy, Aeneas immediately prepares his ships. He knew all along that Dido was not his destiny. And yes, it does seem harsh to Dido, who was manipulated by the gods into her passion. But, like I said above, the description of Cupid’s influence on her also showed that she was ready to love. One cannot really fall in love without being disposed to do so. But Dido, in her frenzy to make him stay, ultimately pushes Aeneas away. Her love begins to feel oppressive. And Aeneas is ready to go, saying that they were not really married. In his heart he did not make a full commitment to her, always knowing that Italy was his fate.

Death of Dido, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Public Domain.

Like Aeneas, we all stall when we have something else to do (like checking email when we are supposed to be writing a post for a blog). Doing what we are meant to do often takes more effort than does letting ourselves be distracted by various passions. But when we choose the right thing and begin on it, we often have the same excitement and relief that Aeneas and his people had upon leaving Carthage. Would it all have turned out differently if Dido had kept her vow to her dead husband, and simply been a gracious and generous hostess, and then sent them happily on their way?

As it is, we see the emotion of regret aptly presented when Aeneas is sent to Hades to see his father. He encounters Dido’s shade among the suicides: “The Trojan captain paused nearby and knew her dim form in the dark” (VI.608-9). Then “he wept and spoke tenderly to her” of hearing how she died, “Was I, was I the cause?” (VI.611-12, 616) His words pierce the readers heart, as the reader might remember their own regret at the tragic effects of choices.

And I could not believe that I would hurt you
So terribly by going. Wait a little. 
Do not leave my sight. (VI, 624-26)

She only glares at him in reply, leaving with the shade of her husband. And Aeneas is left by her, unforgiven and “Shaken by her ill fate and pitying her” (VI.639). But he is also compelled by his sense of duty to move on; his son’s future is what matters to him now.

Amata

The reader first encounters Amata, the wife of Latinus and mother of Lavinia, after Aeneas and his ships have arrived in Latium. This is where fate has been directing Aeneas all along, where the future Romans will be born. Latinus, the king of Latium, has welcomed Aeneas with open arms. He knows through prophecies that it is fated for Lavinia to marry a foreigner and he is ready to make Aeneas his son-in-law. Amata, however, has been counting on the neighboring Turnus, king of the Rutuli, to be her son-in-law. Thus, at Juno’s instigation, the Fury Allecto finds Amata on the verge of a wifely rebellion.

Burning already at the Trojan’s coming,
 The plans for Turnus’s marriage broken off,
Amata tossed and turned with womanly
Anxiety and anger. . . (VII, 472-75)

The feeling is already there in the depth of her being; it is up to her whether to accept it or reject it, and she chooses to embrace it. Will she give into her frustration at disrupted and changed plans? Turnus, we see later, seems to be very dear to her. Is she upset at her husband not consulting her? The Fury, Allecto, is just waiting for Amata to be ready to embrace her anger. Virgil shows us the moment of her giving in:

. . .Now the goddess
Plucked one of the snakes, her gloomy tresses, 
And tossed it at the woman, sent it down
Her bosom to her midriff and her heart, 
So that by this black reptile driven wild
She might disrupt her whole house. And the serpent
Slipping between her gown and her smooth breasts
Went writhing on, though imperceptible
To the fevered woman’s touch or sight, and breathed
Viper’s breath into her. . . (VII.475-84)

One can almost feel the snake of fury writhing down the breast of Amata as she embraces her emotion. We all know the moment of giving in to a strong emotion, where we let it take over and disrupt our day, our family, our workplace. And once we give into it, it is nearly impossible to stop. But Virgil tells us that she has “not responded fully to the flame” (VII.493), and she takes a moment to tell her complaint to her husband as tears run down her face. She offers him the worst-case-scenario—those Trojans can’t be trusted, since they kidnapped Helen. Plus, they can know and trust Turnus, and isn’t he in one sense “foreign,” and so could fulfil the prophecy? She uses every reason she can think of for rejecting Aeneas, mulling it all over in her inmost being until she is internally and externally in a frenzy, fighting with all that is within her against her husband’s will. When he rejects her plea, she gives fully in:

The serpent’s evil madness circulated,
Suffusing her, the poor queen, now enflamed
By prodigies of hell, went wild indeed
And with insane abandon roamed the city. (VII, 517-520) 

Her giving into these feelings is the impetus for the war between the newly arrived Trojans and the Rutulians, led by Turnus, who has his own encounter with Allecto, the Fury who goads him on to war.

Turnus and his Soldiers

Upon leaving Amata, the Fury finds Turnus sleeping peacefully, and one could interpret his conversation with Allecto upon being awakened as one that a man might have with himself. She says things like:

Turnus, can you bear to see 
So many efforts wasted . . . 
And your own rule made over to the Dardan 
Colonists? (VII, 581-84)

Turnus responds that this is fated and that he can’t change fate. However, a protest grows inside him, and he gives in to the fury as he realizes the depths of the insult of losing his promised bride. He decides to not give her up without a fight. At that point the Fury is said to have:

. . .hurled a torch and planted it
Below the man’s chest, smoking with hellish light. 
Enormous terror woke him, a cold sweat
Broke out all over him and soaked his body.
Then driven wild, shouting for arms, for arms
He ransacked house and chamber. Lust of steel
Raged in him, brute insanity of war,
And wrath above all. . . (VII.629-36) 

Then we hear about the mustering of the troops, and in Book VIII Aeneas finds some local allies. The rest of The Aenied is taken up with battles and war, in which things don’t go very well for the Trojans.

In the final book, we are presented with a planned singled combat between Aeneas and Turnus, to determine who will marry Lavinia and becomes heir to the throne the of Latium. Everyone knows that Aeneas is fated to win this duel, and everyone knows that Aeneas is the superior soldier, though Turnus far surpasses all the other soldiers in the field. Virgil, in this part and others, describes accurately the feelings of a crowd, how they can sometimes feel like one unit. The Rutulians and their allies far outnumbered Aeneas’ force, and as they waited for the single combat, they were fearful and troubled: “This disquiet multiplied now as Turnus walked in silence” (XII.302-3). Their emotions are primed for the next step, they just need an instigator to give in. A nymph, who is a sister of Turnus, sees the “troops in commotion,” and, determined to help her brother, takes on the guise of an officer, speaking aloud the feelings of the soldiers. She says that they outnumber the enemy, and were they to fight as army against army, they would “barely find a foe” for each of them, and if they lose, they will end up as slaves. (XII.320-27)

This fueled the fire of what the soldiers thought, And louder murmuring crept through the ranks. (XII.328-29)

Then the nymph sends them the sign of a golden bird swooping upon a swan, which is then proclaimed by the auger, Tolumnius, to be the sign that he “often looked for in [his] prayers” (XII.354). Again, we see a character with emotions already primed and ready before the interference of a nymph—he just wants a sign to jump into battle, to keep the single combat from occurring. So, by throwing a spear into the Trojan companies, everyone is suddenly caught up in the heat of battle, the final battle of the book.

There are many other places where one can see the progression of an emotion welling up in a person—harbored anger, love, friendship, and so on—that the gods use as a foothold to apparently manipulate the choices of the humans. We too often experience our strong emotions in this way, as if outside forces were guiding them and the actions based on them.

Escape of Aeneas from Troy by Federico Barocci. Public Domain.

But, like Aeneas, we can also be moderate in our emotions; like him, we can pause before they take over, and reason with ourselves. As his city is burning and he has seen Priam and his family murdered before him, Aeneas almost makes the decision to go after Helen and kill her before the Greeks can bring her back with them. He is ready to give up his life. But he, as one sees throughout the poem, is virtuous and can receive good direction from his mother, Venus, who asks him:

Why let such suffering goad you on to fury
Past control? (II.781-82)

She then gives him the plan of action, of collecting his family, leaving the ruined city, and going to found the civilization that will become Rome. Aeneas could have been swept away by a Fury or with Dido been disposed to allow Cupid to sink an arrow into his breast. But he does not let his guard down to let his passions control him. And while that does not make for exciting emotional poetry about him, it does show us how we ought to live.

1. All quotations from The Aeneid are from the translation by Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Vintage, 1990).