Venus in the Aeneid

[mwh]

She has to combine two roles: her traditional universal one of driving people crazy with sexual passion (via Cupid), and her particular role as Aeneas’ mom and protectrix. It’s an awkward combination, and the two clash badly when Aeneas hits Carthage (bks. 1 & 4). She has Queen Dido—infelix Dido—fall for Aeneas in a big way (role 1), which does her son no good at all (role 2 forgotten). Vergil has somehow to blow smoke over the irreconcilability. Seems to me it would be interesting to explore how he deals with the problem he’s landed himself with. Any thoughts, anyone? Or am I looking at it all wrong?

[Markos]

She has Queen Dido—infelix Dido—fall for Aeneas in a big way (role 1), which does her son no good at all (role 2 forgotten).

Had Aeneas stayed with unhappy Dido,

1. All roads would lead to Carthage.
2. It probably would not have taken as long to get a black president.

[Qimmik]

Once Venus has done her damage (which she undertakes to protect Aeneas), she disappears from the story. I think that's how Vergil deals with her role--she just vanishes. But she's really not necessary in the first place. The affair between Dido and Aeneas could have come about very naturally without divine intervention. It's a very human story--a man and a woman are attracted to one another, fall in love, and then the man deserts the woman--and that's why it has captivated readers for two millenia. Other than Book IV, Venus' main role in the Aeneid is to intercede with Jupiter. She doesn't directly intervene in the human sphere except at Carthage, if I'm not mistaken.

[Paul Derouda]

Sorry to veer out of subject, to which I don't have much to contribute anyway, since I've read only about half of the Aeneid and that in translation... Still, I'd venture to say that such irreconcilabilities are pretty much the rule in Homer as well; think about Zeus being at the same time the father of a quarreling Olympian family and the Master of the Universe.

Does Venus have a role in the foundation myth of Rome, other than that of being Aeneas' mother?

[Qimmik]

The gens Iulia claimed descent from Venus through Aeneas and his son Iulus. So Julius Caesar and Augustus, through his adoptive father, who were members of the gens, claimed descent from her. The teleological element in the Aeneid leads from Venus to Augustus. I think that's why Venus appears in the Aeneid, although I think in addition to the family connection to the gens Iulia, Venus was considered the special protectress of Rome.

But elsewhere in Vergil (as in Book IV), love is portrayed as destructive or at least disruptive to happiness (an Epicurean view). a Corydon, Corydon/a virgo infelix, quae te dementia cepit, ut uidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error, nunc scio quid sit amor, infurias ignemque ruunt: amor omnibus idem, etc.

[Paul Derouda]

Ok, thanks. But wasn't Aeneas somehow connected with the foundation of Rome already before Vergil?

[Qimmik]

wasn't Aeneas somehow connected with the foundation of Rome already before Vergil?

Yes, of course, but the supposed connection with the gens Iulia and hence Augustus is more or less the raison d'etre of the Aeneid. Which doesn't mean that the Aeneid doesn't rise above a mere piece of political propaganda, even if to some extent it is that.

[mwh]

Once Venus has done her damage (which she undertakes to protect Aeneas), she disappears from the story. I think that's how Vergil deals with her role--she just vanishes. But she's really not necessary in the first place. The affair between Dido and Aeneas could have come about very naturally without divine intervention. It's a very human story--a man and a woman are attracted to one another, fall in love, and then the man deserts the woman--and that's why it has captivated readers for two millenia. Other than Book IV, Venus' main role in the Aeneid is to intercede with Jupiter. She doesn't directly intervene in the human sphere except at Carthage, if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks Qimmik. But is that quite right? How does Venus inflict her damage in order to protect Aeneas? Perhaps I’ve misunderstood. She has Cupid (her other son) give Dido the hots for Aeneas, which inevitably ends up causing him (not to mention her) intense distress, reinforced in bk.6 when he encounters her in the underworld. That seems to be the very opposite of protecting him.

And she doesn’t disappear from the story, does she? After bk.4 she resumes the supportive role that she had at the outset of the poem, anxious for assurance of her protégés' safe landing at Carthage and a hospitable reception there. Think of the concern she shows in the very next book to get Aeneas to Italy, and all the support she gives him once he gets there—acquiring arms for him in 8, appealing to Jupiter in 10, intervening to cure his wound and save his life in the final book. But when she has Dido fall for him, and in cahoots with Juno (!) engineers the fatal tryst between them, all thought of her son’s welfare is forgotten—dolis risit Cytherea (4.128). Here’s she’s acting—against A’s interests—in her capacity as amoral sex goddess, who delights in wiles and deceits. You don’t have to be an Epicurean to find her force destructive. Of course the poem is immeasurably greater for what happens in this book, and you can’t blame Vergil for being unable to resist the lure of Apollonius’ Jason&Medea, but her copycat action here is quite at odds with her Aeneas-specific actions in the rest of the poem.

So the way I see it, the D&A interlude is just that, hard or impossible to square with Venus’ role vis-à-vis her son and his future, but explicable in terms of her more universal one, not to mention in terms of literary historyand of Rome's historical relations with Carthage. Vergil’s poem can accommodate both Venuses, but only just. Does this make sense?

PS — Incidentally, the story of Aeneas setting out from Troy to Italy avec père et fils is as old as Stesichorus (7th-6th cent.), who has them leaving Troy for Hesperia, which must mean Italy. It’s a tradition that goes way back, however much Vergil modified it to suit Octavian. Vergil will have known Stesichorus’ poem, along with so much else.

EDIT. As to Paul D.’s point about Zeus’ role(s) in the Iliad, well, yes, but isn’t there much more integration there? Zeus can weep over his son’s death,* but he can’t avert it because he doesn’t control fate. You don’t feel the same disconnect that you do (well, that I do) with Venus in Aeneid.

* My pic of the week is the magnificent Euphronios krater depicting Hypnos and Thanatos carrying away the body. If anyone doesn't know it, you have a treat in store.