Aeolus does not accept the bribe, but agrees to carry out Juno's orders (line 77, "My task is / To fulfill your commands") the storm then devastates the fleet.
Juno proceeds to Aeolus, King of the Winds, and asks that he release the winds to stir up a storm in exchange for a bribe ( Deiopea, the loveliest of all her sea nymphs, as a wife). Also, Ganymede, a Trojan prince, was chosen to be the cup bearer to her husband, Jupiter-replacing Juno's daughter, Hebe. Juno is wrathful, because she had not been chosen in the judgment of Paris, and because her favorite city, Carthage, will be destroyed by Aeneas's descendants. It has been foretold that in Italy, he will give rise to a race both noble and courageous, a race which will become known to all nations. The fleet, led by Aeneas, is on a voyage to find a second home. Flight from TroyĪlso in the manner of Homer, the story proper begins in medias res (in the middle of things), with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, heading in the direction of Italy. This is consistent with her role throughout the Homeric epics. He then explains the reason for the principal conflict in the story: the resentment held by the goddess Juno against the Trojan people. ") and an invocation to the Muse, falling some seven lines after the poem's inception ( Musa, mihi causas memora. Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme ( Arma virumque cano. This is, however, a rough correspondence, the limitations of which should be borne in mind. These two halves are commonly regarded as reflecting Virgil's ambition to rival Homer by treating both the Odyssey's wandering theme and the Iliad's warfare themes. The Aeneid can be divided into two halves based on the disparate subject matter of Books 1–6 (Aeneas's journey to Latium in Italy) and Books 7–12 (the war in Latium). Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas's wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome and a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous pietas, and fashioned this into a compelling founding myth or national epic that at once tied Rome to the legends of Troy, explained the Punic Wars, glorified traditional Roman virtues, and legitimized the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of Rome and Troy. The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the Iliad. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas's wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.
It comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The Aeneid ( / ᵻ ˈ n iː ɪ d/ Latin : Aeneis ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans.