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Complete Summary of Virgil's Aeneid

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A detailed, chapter-by-chapter summary of the entire book. Themes are colour-coded. Quotes as well as general events are included for each chapter

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  • June 12, 2023
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  • 2022/2023
  • Summary
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Aeneid Summary


Aeneid Chapter Summary
Key
Fate and the power of the gods
Women
Familial relationships (mostly fathers and sons)
Aeneas’ and his heroic traits
War
Ritual + xenia
Homeric features
Propaganda
Turnus



Book 1 Storm and Banquet
Virgil introduces us to the plot, ‘I sing of arms and the man fated to be an exile’
➔ ‘Can there be so much anger in the heart of the gods?’
➔ ‘There was rising from the blood of Troy, a race of men who in days to come would
overthrow this Tyrian Citadel’
Juno loves Carthage, and she would have given it ‘sovereignty over the peoples of the
earth, if the Fates would allow it’
The Trojans are described as ‘proud in war, and rulers of a great empire’
Juno is upset because: Paris’ slight to her beauty, ‘the whole stock of Dardanus’ and ‘the
honours’ Zeus gave to Ganymede making him into his immortal boy toy
Juno has a speech about how she isn’t free to do what she wants, nobody prays to her
anymore, and other goddesses such as Athene may do as they wish
Juno visits Aeolia, ‘a place teeming with the raging winds of the South’
Juno makes supplication to Aeolus and asks him to ‘whip up your winds and overwhelm their
ships and sink them’
She offers him 14 nymphs ‘of the rarest beauty’ and offers ‘the loveliest, Deiopea’ for Aeolus
to marry under lawful wedlock
Aeolus sends a hurricane to ‘blow over the whole earth’
We finally get to meet Aeneas as he’s caught mid-storm, and he laments about how he
wishes he’d died at Troy
Calm Neptune ‘observed the loud disturbance’ and figures out very quickly that Juno is
behind it
Speech about how his ‘divine authority’ is being questioned, the he calms the ocean
Aeneas heads for Libya
Achates, Aeneas’ close friend light a fire and they eat
Aeneas meanwhile climbs a rock to get a view of the ocean, then he sees some deer and
kills seven (unlike Odysseus who only kills 1) + proof he’s skilled with the bow
Aeneas comforts his mourning men with a speech, he mentions that they’ve been to Scylla
and the Cyclops island like Odysseus
‘He showed them the face of hope and kept his misery deep in his heart’
Description of them preparing food, then they talk and Aeneas ‘who loved his men’ mourns 5
of his men (who each get named)
Venus comes to Jupiter asking why the Trojans ‘should suffer all this loss of life’
‘Leaders of men who would hold power over every land and sea’

, Aeneid Summary


Jupiter explains the prophecy in store for the Trojans:
➔ ‘He will wage a great war in Italy and crush its fierce tribes’
➔ He will build walls for his people’
➔ Ascanius will rule after Aeneas for 30 years
➔ ‘The race of Hector will last for 300 long years’
➔ ‘Then Romulus (son of Mars) shall receive the people) and will give his own name to
his people, the Romans’
➔ ‘On them I impose no limits of time or place. I have given them an empire that will
know no end’
Jupiter sends Mercury to encourage the Carthiginians ‘hospitable to the Trojans’
Venus comes disguised as a Spartan girl to visit Aeneas
She tells Aeneas about Dido, how she was married to Sychaeus, and her brother ‘the
godless Pygmallion’ killed him. Dido is lovesick, and later Sychaeus appears as a ghost,
telling her to escape, and then she runs away with a bunch of men and founds Carthage
Aeneas tells disguised Venus where he is from, ‘I am Aeneas, known for my devotion…
and my fame has reached beyond the skies’
As Venus walks away she reveals that she’s a goddess, and Aeneas is sad because he is
‘never allowed to take your hand’
Venus covers Aeneas in a thick mist (like Odysseus) so they can’t be seen as they walk
through the city
Aeneas sees the citizens working hard, long description of this, ‘they were like bees’
Aeneas is jealous that ‘they’re walls are already rising!’
Dido is building a temple for Juno, and Aeneas sees on the walls the depiction of the Trojan
War
A long description of the war with biassed connotations, their ‘tents has been betrayed’, ‘a
mere boy and no match for Achilles’, the women of Troy went to supplicate to Athene, ‘but
she was hostile to them’, and Achilles was selling Hector's dead body for gold
Dido comes in, likened to Diana, ‘giving laws and rules of conduct to her people’
Aeneas’ thought-to-be-dead comrades talk to Dido, ‘he had no equal for his piety and his
care for justice, and no equal on the battlefield’
Dido practises xenia, offers safe passage from her country and supplies, also offers them to
stay, ‘the city I am founding is yours’ ‘Tyrian shall be as one in my eyes’
Venus dolls up Aeneas like Athene does to Odysseus, makes his hair nice
Even Aeneas’ enemy Teucer, ‘held the people of Troy in highest respect’
Dido appoints sacrifices then gets food for Aeneas and his crewmates
Aeneas sends for some gifts for Dido
Venus plots, sends Cupid in place of Ascanius, and tells him to ‘breathe fire and poison into
her’ when she supposedly will take the young boy onto her lap. Venus meanwhile puts the
real Ascanius into deep sleep and takes care of him
Cupid erases the memory of Sychaeus
Dido asks Aeneas to tell his story, about ‘the treachery of the Greeks’



Book 2 The Fall of Troy
Aeneas begins his speech about Troy to Dido
➔ ‘I am afraid of Greeks even when they bring gifts
➔ ‘From this one indictment learn the ways of a whole people’
➔ ‘He went on with his lies’

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