Fate In The Aeneid

The concept of fate is immensely significant in The Aeneid and drives the story to what it is today. When Virgil describes the souls of the Roman soldiers from the Underworld, it foreshadows the Trojans being successful in the end. One could suspect that this gives away the poem and loses the suspense, but the readers of then did not have a good understanding of fate. In The Aeneid, the goddess Juno keeps reminding the reader that destiny ends up determining that the Trojans will eventually make a city in Italy, though she does not specify how they execute this. Juno ends up using this as her advantage to make the Trojans face an astounding amount of difficulty. The other side is even though the readers believed in the concept of fate, this

does not mean they did not believe in the concept of free will. When Aeneas tells Dido, “I sail for Italy not of my own free will,” he explains that it is not the Gods or of fate to go to Italy. Aeneas has the free will to travel there, which he is pursuing even though he was prompted to leave everything in Carthage behind and found a new city.
In The Aeneid, fate seems to control the epic poem from the start, most noticeably from the Gods that Virgil featured and the way they impact the decisions being made.

This is mainly because the Gods are closely connected to the idea of destiny. After Aeneas destroys the town of Troy, he leads the survivors in search of a new town in Italy. Aeneas and his crew of men are seen travelling from Troy across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy by Juno. She absolutely hates the Trojans because she is holding onto a grudge from a past beauty contest. Paris, a Trojan prince, picked Venus over her and another goddess, Minerva. Because of this outcome, it forces Venus and Minerva to choose the Greeks’ side during the Trojan War. The Trojans are supposedly bound to become the Romans, who eventually end up destroying Carthage which is Juno’s favorite city. She ends up scheming with the god of winds and together they send a brutal storm. This windstorm forces the Trojans to take refuge in the town of Carthage. In the town, Aeneas meets Dido, who recently lost her husband. With the help of gods and goddesses, the two fall in love. The soldiers end up settling in with Aeneas in Carthage. While all of this is happening, Jupiter starts to get worried that Aeneas is losing his sight on going to found a new city in Rome. Mercury is sent by Jupiter to Earth to tell him that he needs to get moving on the quest, and so Aeneas and his men take off. After he leaves, Dido ends up killing herself. When

another storm hits the boats on the Mediterranean, the Trojans are forced to head and stay in Sicily. This location is significant because it is where Aeneas buried his father around a year before. The soldiers have games to honor him, but while they are all distracted, Juno comes in contact with the women of Sicily. She tells them that they need to go destroy the boats that the Trojans came on. After Aeneas and his soldiers leave Sicily, they stop at Cumae in the Bay of Naples. There, they end up meeting the prophetess, Sibyl. She guides Aeneas into the Underworld. While they are down there, Aeneas speaks to his deceased father and the souls of future Roman soldiers. Aeneas is inflamed at what he saw down there, and so he takes off to Latium. As all of this is happening, the King of Latium wants his daughter, Lavinia, to marry a foreigner while the Queen wants her to marry the local prince, Turnus. Juno sends down a Fury upon both the Queen and Turnus, making them both full of rage. Conflict ensues, and before the reader knows it, there is a war happening between the Italians and Trojans. While both sides are scrambling for alliances, Aeneas has a dream where the god of rivers, Tiberinus, tells him to go and make alliances with the Arcadian King, Evander. When Aeneas asks him for soldiers, he gives him many including his son, Pallas. Aeneas also becomes allies with the Etruscans. After Aeneas gets his alliances, Venus is sent by Vulcan with armor that features scenes of what Rome would look like someday. While Aeneas is gone, the fighting between the Italians and Trojans starts up. It only takes around 7 days for the war to get to the finish, which is between Turnus and Aeneas. Eventually, Turnus loses his sword in the battle and Aeneas is contemplating sparing his life. Then, he sees that Turnus is wearing a belt from Pallas, whom he killed earlier. This is the point where Aeneas decides to eventually end Turnus’s life.