Book 10 Pallas and Mezentius
A mighty conference of the gods is called on Mount Olympus. Jupiter is puzzled why war has broken out. Aeneas’s mother, Venus, makes a long complaint, saying the Trojans have faithfully done everything they were asked to, and yet Aeolus sank them in his storms, Iris drove the women mad on Sicily and now Allecto has come up from hell to stir up war. For heaven’s sake, please can he at least spare her grandson, Ascanius?
Juno, Jupiter’s wife and inveterate opponent of Aeneas and the Trojans, replies, twisting the truth and making it all look like the impious Trojans’ fault, denying that any Fates told him to come to Italy and blaming him for starting the war. Juno blames Venus for starting the entire thing when she helped Paris to abduct Menelaus’s lawful bride, Helen. She should have thought about her precious Trojans then. And now the Trojans are doing the same again, same as Paris, coming to a foreign country and ravishing away women pledged to local fiancées.
For the root of the war between the natives and Aeneas and the Trojans is that King Latinus, king of the area around the Tiber, has one daughter Lavinia and she had for some time been promised to virile young Turnus, king of the neighbouring Rutuli. But when Aeneas and his men arrive at his court, the king is warned by prophecies that he should break that marriage arrangement and give his daughter to the newcomer. Turnus is, understandably, enraged. And so the cause of the massacre and bloodshed which dominates the second half of the Aeneid is this fighting over a royal princess, and the rights to territory, inheritance, breeding and lineage which she represents. Obviously poor Lavinia has little or no say in the matter but, like Helen, can only watch helplessly as the strong men around her launch a prolonged and ruinous war.
Anyway, after Juno’s speech has muddied the issues, all the gods burst out in confused opinions until Jupiter silences them all and says he’s not interested in the rights and wrongs of the affair: he washes his hands of it. Let each man face his fortune. The Fates will find a way. Then he nods and the earth shakes, which is his way of making a final decision, and the conference of gods breaks up.
Back on earth, the Trojans are desperately defending their camp against the fierce attack of the besieging Rutulians. Meanwhile Aeneas has left them to sail north to meet the Etruscans led by King Tarchon who wants their treacherous former leader, Mezentius (who has fled to join Turnus in his fight against the Trojans) brought to justice. So Aeneas secures the Etruscans as allies. Then their joint fleet sails back south along the coast of Italy to the mouth of the river Tiber to rejoin the battle.
At which point Virgil writes a conventional invocation to the Muses of Mount Helicon, asking their help in describing the names and lineages of all the Etruscan warriors. Catalogue of the Etruscan leaders (the catalogue of warriors was a well known aspect of a good epic poem, as pioneered by Homer in the Iliad).
Aeneas is leading the fleet of the Etruscan allies when they are approached by frolicking nymphs who reveal that they are his former fleet which the goddess changed into sea nymphs. They explain she did this because the Rutulians were about to fire them and go on to tell him his son and the Trojans are in dire straits, besieged in their camp.
As dawn rises Aeneas’s fleet sail up the Tiber and arrive at the camp. He flashes his great shield in the sunlight and the Trojans in the camp roar with delight. The fleet rams into the banks of the river and warriors leap into the shallows or slide down oars to land.
A long passage describing the many Rutulians massacred. Young Pallas speaks to rally the Arcadians, and sets about his own massacres. Eventually Turnus tells all his troops to stand down and back away and walks into an open space for single combat with Pallas. Pallas calls on his city’s god, Hercules, and cast his spear, which breaches Turnus’s armour at the shoulder but only grazes him. Hercules up in heaven weeps. Jupiter tells him every man has his time. Then Turnus throws his spear which pierces Pallas’s shield, armour and chest, and he falls to the ground gouting out his life blood. Turnus stands over him and says his father (Evander) is well rewarded for his hospitality to the invaders.
Pallas’s body is carried back by Arcadians to the camp. Virgil editorialises that Turnus will rue the day he killed Pallas and stole his armour. Hearing of new friend’s son’s death, Aeneas goes on a turbo-charged killing spree, like a raging torrent, like a storm of black wind, killing without mercy, even warriors who clutch his knees and beg.
Meanwhile Juno goes to Jupiter and begs for the life of Turnus. Jupiter grants him a brief respite but says he cannot avoid his ultimate fate. So Juno flies down to the battlefield and creates a phantom effigy of Aeneas. She has Turnus confront him and the phantom Aeneas turn and run. Unable to believe his luck, Turnus sets off in pursuit. Phantom Aeneas jumps onto a ship moored to the bank and Turnus jumps after him but Juno immediately makes the phantom disappear, cuts the ship’s cables and quickly propels it out on the tide.
Meanwhile Aeneas roams the battlefield calling out for Turnus but Turnus is nowhere to be seen. He is on a ship being swept far from the battlefield. He calls out on Father Jupiter, asking why he is being submitted to this disgrace, pleading to be allowed to return to the battlefield, weeping for the humiliation of seeming to have run away in front of his own men and his allies. He tries to jump overboard to swim to shore but Juno prevents him, so then tries to throw himself on his sword, but Juno protects him, too. Eventually the ship touches land up the coast at the ancient city of his father, Daunus (10.689).
Turnus’s place is taken by Mezentius who goes on a similar sadistic killing spree, rejoicing in his power to kill. Pitiless Mars is dealing out death to both sides. The gods look on in pity and grief to see so many fine men suffering.
Finally Aeneas confronts Mezentius. This is Mezentius’s aristeia. The word aristeia is Greek and means ‘excellence’, by extension ‘moment of excellence’ or ‘moment of prowess’ (as Richard Jenkyns puts it, p.10). Greek literary critics analysed and named all aspects of their literary genres, different types of scene or incident or character. An aristeia is a scene in the conventions of epic poetry where a hero in battle has his finest moments (aristos = ‘best’). Very often an aristeia depicts the moment when a warrior both reaches his peak as a fighter but also meets his death at his physical and psychological peak. A climax to his career.
So Mezentius makes a prayer and bravely throws his spear. But it bounces off Aeneas’s shield and kills nearby Antores. Then Aeneas casts his spear which enters Mezentius’s groin. He is limping away as Aeneas closes in but then his son, Lausus, leaps between them. He parries a blow from Aeneas’s sword and all Lausus’s comrades raise a cheer and start pelting Aeneas with rocks and stones. Aeneas ducks and protects himself with his shield biding his time, and then, when the bombardment slackens, buries his sword up to the hilt in the young man’s midriff.
But as he watches Lausus’s beautiful young face bleach white of life, Aeneas is overcome with pity and holds his hand. When he is dead, he turns on Lausus’s colleagues and rails at them.
Meanwhile his father Mezentius is bathing his wound in the river, his armour half off, surrounded by his entourage. He hears lamenting approaching and then his colleagues bring in his dead son’s body on his shield. Mezentius laments that his bad behaviour led to them being exiled and contributed to the death of the only thing valuable to him.
So Mezentius has his horse Rhaebius brought to him, mounts him, and rides into the heart of the battle clutching two javelins. He rides round shouting Aeneas’s name till he confronts him and, riding round him three times, launches spear after spear at him. All these stick in Aeneas’s shield, till he is tired of this and throws his own javelin which hits the horse between the temples and brings it crashing down, pinning Mezentius to the ground.
Dazed, Mezentius, unable to move, makes a last request, that he be properly buried, alongside his son. Then Aeneas runs him through with his sword, and he pours out his life’s breath in wave after wave of blood all over his armour and the narrative just stops with no comment.
Book 11 Drances and Camilla
As so often in Virgil, I found the segue to the next book abrupt and unexplained. The sun is coming up but we never heard of it going down. Aeneas piously sets up the armour of the killed Mezentius, which is described in loving detail, at a shrine. Then he addresses his men at what Virgil calls ‘the hour of their triumph’ and tells them the majority of their work is now over.
None of this quite makes sense. Surely the ‘hour’ of their triumph was the day before when Turnus disappeared and he killed Mezentius? Why wait a night and a calm unfighting morning of hanging up armour before giving this speech?
This is just one of the puzzling places which I suspect Virgil knew he had to come back and adjust and finalise, and explains why he asked his friends to burn the poem.
First Aeneas tells them to bury their dead and he himself turns to address the body of beautiful young dead Pallas: ‘Oh the pity of it.’ Compare Wilfred Owen:
I mean the truth untold:
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
They place it on a soft wickerwork bier with a green canopy and Aeneas orders a thousand soldiers to escort the body back to his poor old father in a huge procession which includes arms, horses and captives taken from the enemy, Aeneas orders leaders of the army to carry inn their arms ‘tree trunks’ draped in weapons captured from the enemy and inscribed with their names; enemy chariots drenched in Rutulian blood and Pallas’s own warhorse. It is all sent off in a long funeral procession upriver towards Pallantium.
Then Aeneas marches back to the camp and his present concerns. Envoys come from the Latins and ask for a truce to bury their dead. Aeneas delivers a long gracious speech lamenting that it ever came to war, saying he came in peace, saying he could have fought Turnus in single combat to decide everything, but they are all the victims of ‘cruel Fortune’. Or, as the reader knows, Juno’s implacable hate.
Old Drances speaks in reply, saying Aeneas is wise and honourable, he’s never liked Turnus, they will go back to King Latinus and try and make peace. There follow a 12-day truce while both sides roam the hills to cut down trees to make funeral pyres for the dead.
The arrival of the procession at Pallantium. King Evander falls on his body weeping and delivers a long speech. This is a slightly uneasy moment for the poem because the obvious thing to do would be to have him bitterly regret taking Aeneas in and sending his son off to die in a pointless war. Instead Virgil has to tread carefully and make him proud of allying with Aeneas:
I would not wish to blame you, Trojans, nor our treaties, nor regret the joining of our right hands in friendship. (11.165)
And proud his son died in battle, after killing ‘thousands of Volscians’ (11.168). He would not wish his son any other kind of funeral than that of a brave warrior who fell in battle. And he tells the huge processions which has brought his son to return to the fight. And says Aeneas now owes the death of Turnus to him and his son. The logic of war.
Virgil describes a grim day full of burning funeral pyres, the living riding round each pyre three times, wailing, the hecatombs of animals slaughtered, the arms thrown onto the flames, the clamour of men and screaming of dying beasts. A black day of lamentation.
The Latins, on their side, bury their dead, but also build a mound of nameless corpses and burn it. Lamentation in the court of King Latinus where mothers lament the loss of so many sons and call on Turnus to fight it out in single combat. But others speak up for Turnus and his right to Lavinia, led by the queen, a sort of Juno figure.
The Latins had sent an embassy to King Diomede of the Aetolians asking for his help in the war but now they return empty handed. Diomede won’t help. Latinus loses heart. He calls a great council and asks the envoys to repeat what Diomede said. They repeat Diomede’s speech and it is noble and stirring. He describes how the siege of Troy in which he fought took so long solely because of the might of Hector and Aeneas, and the latter was the more pious (a very conscious bigging-up of the founder of Rome). And that the war was impious and that is why all of the Greek survivors have been swept by fate to the four corners of the earth or struck down, like proud Agamemnon, all cursed. He counts himself lucky to have survived, albeit exiled from his homeland, never to see his wife again, and building a new settlement in Italy. Therefore he won’t tempt fate a second time, he will not fight the Trojans again. Instead he advises Latinus to make peace with the Trojans and accept their evident destiny.
King Latinus then laments that they ever got involved in this war. This thought is taken much further by old Drances who, although he speaks for the Trojans, is portrayed as a shifty and sneaky courtier. In another sudden, unexpected and unexplained Jump, it now appears that Turnus – who we last saw raging aboard the ship Juno had lured him onto and being swept out at sea, before making landfall up the coast at the ancient city of his father, Daunus (10.689) – Turnus has magically reappeared in the court of King Latinus. This isn’t impossible or unlikely – obviously he’d make his way back to base. It’s just odd that it goes completely undescribed and even remarked on. Virgil makes no mention of his return journey, just as the very end of book 6 is strangely throwaway – in a dozen or so words Virgil tells us Aeneas made his way back to his ships and comrades. I think it’s loose ends like this that Virgil wanted to go carefully back through his poem and tie up and prompted his request to have it destroyed.
King Latinus proposes that they give a tract of land they own to the Trojans to settle and send 100 men bearing the branch of peace and gifts.
Drances (his voice was ‘always a force for discord’) accuses Turnus of ‘fatal recklessness’, says he is the sole cause of all this grief and lamentation, and says Turnus must accept the loss of his bride and her gift to Aeneas.
Infuriated Turnus refutes all his arguments, calls Drances a coward, says the Trojans have been twice defeated before, the dead have fallen nobly, this is the time to test their vigour and virtue, they must fight on, Italy has many more allies they can call on etc. If Aeneas challenges him to single combat, so be it. This is a moment for courage and glory.
Their great debate is interrupted when news arrives that Aeneas has brought his great army of Trojans and allies out of their camp, across the plain and is threatening their city. Turnus takes control, shouting instructions to his commanders and rousing the young men for renewed battle.
The mothers mount the battlements, the queen escorting young Lavinia, ‘the cause of all this suffering’. Poor young woman. Like Helen, made the scapegoat for thousands of toxic men hacking each other to death. A lot is written about Dido because her emotional suffering is fully dramatised. But next to nothing about poor Lavinia and the guilt and trauma she must be suffering.
While the women lament Turnus dresses in his glowing armour, tossing his head like a virile stallion at the peak of his powers. Camilla joins him and asks the honour of facing the enemy first. Turnus replies he has heard Aeneas is sending his light-armed cavalry into the plain, but bringing his forces on a secret route. Turnus plans to ambush them; Camilla can lead the armies which face the cavalry.
Cut to the goddess Diana, in heaven, who tells us Camilla’s life story, brought up in the wild by Metabus, rejected by his own people. When he had fled them he came to a raging river, dedicated his baby’s life to Diana, tied the baby Camilla to a javelin and threw it across the river to embed in a tree, then swam across himself and retrieved her. She was raised in the wild, fed on wild milk and berries, taught to handle weapons from childhood, dressed in a tiger skin.
Now Diana laments that she will die in this pointless war but sends one of her entourage of nymphs, Opis, down with arrows and instructions to avenge whoever kills Camilla.
The two cavalry forces line up on the plain in front of Latinum, then charge. The usual role call of huge warriors who hack each other to death. But the descriptions lead up to Camilla’s aristeia, her moment of warrior excellence, as she fells fighter after fighter, with mocking taunts.
All this rouses Tarchon leader of the Etruscans to fury and he berates his comrades as cowards, before killing Venulus, racing across the battlefield like fire.
Camilla is pursuing a man named Chloreus, but unknown to her Arruns is stalking her. He makes a prayer to Phoebus Apollo then throws his spear. It pierces Camilla’s chest, she falls and her life bleeds away as she has a last death speech to her closest companion, Acca, telling her to go fetch Aeneas. Then her spirit departs for the underworld.
Opis sees all this. Charged with avenging Camilla by Diana, she now speaks words of revenge, feathers her bow and shoots Arruns, who falls in the dust of the plain, while Opis flew back up to heaven.
Meanwhile the Latins break and flee back to their city pursued by the Trojans and their allies. Panic stricken Latins close the gates behind them, locking out many of their comrades who are crushed in the press or slaughtered. Mothers pack the ramparts and throw down rocks and logs onto the attackers.
Acca brings news of all this to Turnus who bitterly abandons his planned ambush in the woods, and turns his forces back towards the city. Moments later Aeneas and his forces enter the valley where Turnus had planned to ambush him. The fortunes of war. The two columns of troops hear each other and see each other’s dust but night is falling, it is too late for a battle. They both camp under the city walls.
Book 12 Truce and duel
Another one of those non-sequiturs or jumps. Book 11 ends with night falling and Turnus’s army apparently camped outside the city walls not far from Aeneas’s: ‘They both encamped before the city and built stockades on their ramparts’ (11.914).
But the first line of book 12 describes Turnus in the process of watching the Latin line broken and the tide of battle going against them, as if it was back in the middle of the fight, on the day Camilla is killed and the Trojans take heart. Not only that but, once he’s seen this, he turns and addresses King Latinus i.e. he is no longer in a camp outside the walls, but somewhere in the king’s chambers inside the city, maybe on the battlements.
Anyway, he tells Latinus to draw up a treaty, call for peace and allow Turnus to go out and fight Aeneas in single combat. Latinus gives a long winded reply, appears to vacillate, laments never being able to make his mind up. Queen Amata weighs in, still insisting that that Lavinia must marry Turnus, still seeing Turnus as the sole support for her family and kingship, and so weeping at the thought of him confronting Aeneas. Nonetheless, Turnus orders an officer, Idmon, to carry a challenge to Aeneas of single combat at dawn the next day.
At which point he ‘rushes back into the palace’ – so where were they all standing during this conversation? On the battlements?
Anyway, Turnus arrays himself in his magnificent armour – which seems a little pointless because the duel isn’t scheduled until the next morning. Next morning dawn comes and men from both sides set out the duelling field. But Juno, troublesome to the last, goes to see Juturna, a nymph and sister of Turnus, tells her he risks dying today and encouraging her to do whatever she can to save him.
Latinus arrives dressed in splendour. Devout Aeneas, Father of Rome, arrives and makes a great invocation to the gods and swears that if he loses the Trojans will withdraw, but that if he wins they will live in peace with the Latins. Latinus swears a similarly solemn vow, then they murder beasts and rip out their entrails while they’re still alive to festoon the altars. (God, the sadness of things.)
But remember Juturna? Now she takes the form of Camers and wanders through the Rutulians and Laurentines, telling them it is a shame to let Turnus die, a shame on them to let their lands be taken by the incomers, pointing out how few they are, how easy it would be to defeat them etc. And then she inspires an omen in the sky when an eagle swoops down on a swan and is carrying it away when a flock of smaller birds all attack it and force it to drop its prey i.e. Aeneas is the eagle, Turnus the beautiful swan, and the Rutulians and Laurentines the men she is whipping up to break the truce.
At the sight Tolumnius the augur cries out and throws his spear. It kills one of nine brothers and the other eight grab their swords and spears and run shouting towards the Laurentine ranks. And that is how easy it is to restart a war. The violence, the lust for violence, sitting just beneath the surface of things.
More slaughter. Aeneas tries to restore the peace, calling his men to stop fighting but out of nowhere an arrow strikes him. Turnus sees him withdrawing from the field and a wild hope inflames him. Turnus runs through his enemies, massacring and murdering.
Aeneas is helped limping to his camp by an entourage of soldiers and is attended by Iapyx but he can do nothing, the arrow is embedded deep. Meanwhile the raging Rutulians approach closer, the sound of battle gets louder, the cavalry rides up to the walls and arrows fly into the camp.
So Venus flies to Mount Ida and plucks the herb dittany, returns to the Trojans camp and, unseen, infuses the water with it, and with it panacea and juices of ambrosia. When washed with this the arrow comes out and Aeneas’s wound is healed. Iapyx immediately realises this was done by the power of some god.
So Aeneas takes his huge spear (there is much emphasis on the sheer size of this spear) and returns to the battlefield and the Rutulians quail and Juturna runs and hides. The Trojans pursue but Aeneas disdains to fight anyone except Turnus.
Once again Juturna intervenes, this time changing herself into the shape of Turnus’s charioteer, and deliberately driving Turnus away from the hottest parts of the battle. Aeneas doggedly tries to spy and chase him but is getting worn out when someone flings a spear at him which cuts off the plume of his helmet and he really loses it, going fighting mad. The poem matches the massacres and blood-lust frenzied killing of both Aeneas and Turnus.
Then Venus puts it into his head to attack the city of the Latins, terrify them and, if Turnus won’t confront him, burn it to the ground. He rallies his men and they storm the city, siege ladders, javelins, fire, cut to pieces the guards at the gate. Terror spreads in the city, some wanting to open the gates, others vowing to defend it and chucking rocks down on the besiegers.
Queen Amata thinks Turnus must be dead, and it’s her fault, and hangs herself. Lavinia is distraught and tears her golden hair and rosy cheeks. Latinus wanders the palace corridors strewing his hair with dirt and dust.
Far away on the battlefield Turnus hears the sounds of lamentation carried on the wind and pauses. Juturna tries to egg him on to fight but Turnus tells her he realised who she was some time ago, but acknowledges she is sent by some higher power. Now he is tired. He has seen too many of his comrades cut down. He is ready to die honourably and go down to the underworld with honour.
Saces rides up and tells him the city is under attack, Queen Amata is dead, the Trojans are storming the gates, they are throwing firebrands over the walls to torch it. Only he can save them!
Turnus tells his sister he recognises his destiny. The time has come. The fates are too strong. He abandons his grieving sister and runs across the battlefield up to the walls where the fighting is fiercest. He calls out to both sides to cease fire and proclaims he will keep the words of the treaty and fight in single combat.
Throughout the poem Aeneas has been getting bigger, as symbolised by his steadily swelling javelin. And now he is as immense as Mount Athos or Mount Eryx as he comes running towards Turnus. The two go straight into fierce combat without any pauses or fancy speeches. They throw spears then run on to attack each other with swords.
But when Turnus brings his down with a mighty crash is shatters on the armour of Vulcan. Weaponless he takes to flight and Aeneas chases him. The poem has become more punctuated with epic similes and now they come thick and fast and become evermore extended, stretching to a quarter and even a third of a page long, comparing the fighters to mountains, bulls, a stag chased by a hunting dog, as Aeneas flies after Turnus, threatening anyone who tries to help him with instant death.
Aeneas comes up to the tree stump where the spear he through at the start of the contest has stuck fast. While he is struggling to wangle it free Juturna (again) comes forward and gives Turnus the sword he has been seeking so long. So that now the two huge heroes can turn to face each other fully armed.
And now Jupiter makes a final speech to Juno, telling the end of her vendetta has come. She has brought pain and suffering and death on countless houses. Now is the time to give up her anger.
Juno finally acquiesces, but with just one demand. That the people of Latium not give up their name and be absorbed by the Trojans, but the reverse: that the descendants of the peace and marriages which will follow retain the name of Latins and Italians. And here, at the climax of the poem, Jupiter agrees. He will make them one people, Latins, speaking one tongue and no other race will be their equals in doing her honour.
Satisfied, Juno withdraws, and that clears the path for this long tale of violence, finally, to come to an end. Next the Father of the Gods sends down a Dira, one of the dire creatures which sharpen the fears of suffering mortals in times of plague or war. This flies down and takes the form of a bird and batters again and again into Turnus’s face. A strange numbness came over him and he melted with fear. Hardly fair, is it, but then nothing the gods do is fair.
Juturna recognises the dira for what it is and has a page-long lament at the bitterness of the eternal life she has been granted if it is to be spent for her dear brother, but she realises the game is up and plunges down into the depths of her river.
Back on the level of mortals, Aeneas continues his pursuit of Turnus, taunting him, saying this is not a race. Turnus halts and picks up an enormous rock, so big it would take 12 men of the modern age to lift it, and throws it at Aeneas. But his strength fails, his knees give way, he drops it and it rolls harmlessly away. Turnus is like one in a dream, unable to move, unable to escape. He looks around, at the soldiers surrounding him, up at the city, and trembles at the death that is upon him.
Then Aeneas throws his spear big as a tree which crashes like a thunderbolt through Turnus’s armour and pierces his thigh. On his knees Turnus stretches out his arms in supplication, begging Aeneas to think of his father, granting him victory and the hand of Lavinia but begging for mercy.
Aeneas hesitates, but then he catches sight of the baldric – the belt warriors wear over one shoulder and hang their swords from – which belonged to Pallas and which Turnus took from the beautiful young man’s body after he killed him. And the sight drives him wild with anger and he declares he is exacting vengeance for Pallas and plunges his sword up to the hilt in Turnus’s chest.
The limbs of Turnus were dissolved in cold and his life left him with a groan, fleeing in anger down to the shades.
Anger is the dominant mode, right to the bitter end.
Anger management
More than anything, more than love or destiny or patriotism or heroism, the poem is about anger. Almost all the characters are angry, almost all the time. Juno is furious at the Trojans, at Venus, and at Jupiter for protecting the Trojans. Venus is furious at the way her son is being treated. The Greeks who destroy Troy and massacre its population are driven by insensate rage. Dido has a brief spell of happiness and then is driven into a frenzy of anger at Aeneas’s betrayal. The Trojan women on Sicily are driven into wild fury by Juno. And Juno creates the entire second half of the book by commissioning Allecto to inspire wild anger in the hearts of Queen Amata, Turnus and then the farmers whose stag Ascanius kills. And once war escalates, then everyone is inspired to further fury by someone they loved or are related to being killed. And so the poem paints a terrifying picture of an entire world consumed with anger.
Anger is, after all, the subject of the Iliad, the first and greatest epic in the European tradition, whose opening words are:
Sing, goddess, of the anger of Achilles
Maybe an epic poem is a long poem about male rage.
Sore loser
But then – when it comes down to it, the entire poem lasts so long because of a woman, because of Juno’s sustained opposition to Aeneas’s predestined fate. For 12 long books she opposes and delays his inevitable destiny. And for why? Her enmity stems from not being chosen as the most beautiful goddess by Paris. The Aeneid is so long because Juno was the sore loser in a beauty contest. Male rage and female fury.
Books & Boots 