60 Fun Facts About The Aeneid

Which poem about farming did Virgil finish just before he began work on the Aeneid?

The Georgics: Virgil is said to have read it aloud to Augustus over four days, his patron Maecenas taking over whenever his voice gave out, and he then gave the rest of his life to the Aeneid.

Which river's god appears to Aeneas in a dream and calms his own current so the Trojan ships can row upstream?

The Tiber: old Tiberinus rises from the water to tell the sleeping Aeneas that he has reached his true home, then holds the river smooth as a pond all night so the oars meet no resistance.

Which poem was rearranged into twelve books like the Aeneid?

Paradise Lost. For the second edition of 1674 Milton split two of his longest books in two, giving his Christian epic the same twelve-book shape as Virgil's poem.

Which familiar saying does Turnus use to rally his men against the landing Trojans in Book 10 of the Aeneid?

Fortune favours the bold. Turnus shouts it as he leads a charge on the Trojans while they are still stumbling ashore, though in the end fortune deserts him and he dies at Aeneas's hand.

In which meter is the Aeneid written?

Dactylic hexameter. Early Roman epics used the native Saturnian verse until Ennius borrowed the six-beat line of Greek epic for his Annales, and his choice made it the standard metre for Latin epic.

What are the famous opening words of the Aeneid?

Arma virumque cano. It means 'I sing of arms and the man', and Bernard Shaw borrowed the phrase for the title of his comedy Arms and the Man.

At a feast Aeneas joins on the future site of Rome, which hero is honoured for killing the fire-breathing Cacus?

Hercules. Cacus stole eight of his cattle and dragged them into his den backwards by their tails so the tracks pointed the wrong way, but one cow's answering bellow gave him away.

Who is Aeneas's divine mother?

Venus. She meets her shipwrecked son near Carthage disguised as a huntress and reveals herself only as she turns to go, and he protests that she always mocks him with false shapes.

Whom does Juno bribe with the offer of a nymph bride to wreck Aeneas's ships in Book 1?

Aeolus. Juno offers the keeper of the winds her loveliest nymph, Deiopea, as a wife, and he looses a storm; Neptune, angry that his sea was stirred without his leave, calms it.

Whom does Cupid impersonate to make Dido fall in love with Aeneas?

Ascanius, the hero's son. The real boy is carried off asleep to the groves of Idalium, and Cupid takes his shape to sit in Dido's lap at the banquet and breathe love into her.

Dido, queen of Carthage, had fled which Phoenician city after her brother murdered her husband?

Tyre. Her brother Pygmalion, its king, secretly murdered her rich husband for his gold; the dead man's ghost showed her where treasure lay buried, and she sailed with it to Africa.

Which Trojan priest speared the wooden horse and was then killed with his sons by sea serpents?

Laocoön. His warning gave us 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts', and when the serpents struck, the Trojans decided he had been punished for wounding the horse and hauled it inside.

Which Greek was left behind to convince the Trojans the horse was a harmless offering?

Sinon. Posing as a runaway the Greeks had meant to sacrifice, he swore the horse was an offering built too big for Troy's gates, then slipped its bolts that night to let the soldiers out.

Whose ghost appears to Aeneas in a dream and tells him to flee burning Troy?

Hector's. He appears torn and bloodied, as he was after Achilles dragged him behind a chariot, and entrusts Troy's household gods to Aeneas to carry to a new city overseas.

Whom does Aeneas famously carry on his back out of burning Troy?

His father Anchises. The old man holds the household gods as he rides on his son's shoulders, because Aeneas, fresh from the fighting, says his own bloodstained hands must not touch them.

What omen appears on Ascanius as his family argues over fleeing burning Troy?

Harmless flames on his head. The family tries to douse them in a panic, but thunder and a shooting star confirm the fire as a sign from Jupiter, and that settles the argument about leaving.

Which monsters foul the Trojans' feast and warn that hunger will make them eat their tables?

Harpies. Their leader Celaeno's curse comes true painlessly in Italy, when the hungry Trojans eat the flatbread they were using as plates and Aeneas's son jokes that they are eating their tables.

At Buthrotum, a replica of Troy, Aeneas meets which grieving Trojan widow?

Andromache. She is pouring offerings at an empty tomb she has raised for her first husband when Aeneas walks up, and at first she cannot believe the man in front of her is alive.

The Trojans rescue Achaemenides, a Greek castaway whom Ulysses had left behind in whose lair?

Polyphemus. Starving and ragged, Achaemenides begs his old enemies to take him aboard, and as they row off the blinded Cyclops wades out after the sound of their oars, roaring.

Where do Dido and Aeneas shelter together from a storm during the royal hunt in Book 4 of the Aeneid?

A cave. Juno sends the storm to bring the pair together, with lightning for wedding torches, but Virgil adds that Dido only 'calls it marriage' and uses the name to cover her fault.

Which deity does Jupiter send to remind Aeneas of his duty and make him leave Dido?

Mercury. He finds Aeneas in a purple cloak Dido made him, laying out new houses for Carthage, and asks why he is building a fine city for a wife while forgetting the kingdom owed to his son.

How does Dido die?

She stabs herself on a pyre with Aeneas's sword. She had the pyre built on the pretence of a magic rite to burn his belongings and cure her love, and she dies on the bed they had shared.

On which island does Aeneas hold funeral games for his father in Book 5?

Sicily. Storms drive his ships back to the island exactly a year after his father died there, so Aeneas marks the anniversary at the tomb with races, boxing and archery.

What do the Trojan women, incited by Juno through Iris, try to burn in Book 5?

The fleet. Worn out by seven years of wandering, the women torch the ships to end the voyage; Jupiter's rainstorm saves all but four, and Aeneas founds a town for those who want to stay.

Which helmsman is put to sleep by Somnus and falls overboard as the price of safe passage to Italy?

Palinurus. Neptune had promised the Trojans a safe crossing at the price of one life; the helmsman's ghost later tells Aeneas he swam ashore alive and was killed there, near the cape still named after him.

Who guides Aeneas into the underworld in Book 6?

The Cumaean Sibyl. Apollo's aged priestess warns Aeneas that going down is easy, because death's door stands open night and day, and that the real labour is getting back up.

What must Aeneas pluck and carry as a gift for Proserpina before he can enter the underworld?

A golden bough. It comes away only for someone the fates have called, and two doves guide Aeneas to the tree; James Frazer later took the image as the title of his study of myth and religion.

Which figure of the underworld is put to sleep with a drugged honey cake so that Aeneas can pass?

Cerberus. The three-headed dog gulps the cake and sprawls asleep across his den, and in English a bribe that quiets a troublemaker is called 'a sop to Cerberus'.

Which king in Italy is told by his father's oracle to give his daughter to a foreign husband?

Latinus. The oracle of his father Faunus promises that a foreign son-in-law will lift the family's name to the stars, so he offers his daughter to Aeneas before the two have even met.

Which Fury does Juno summon from the underworld to stir up war between the Trojans and the Italians?

Alecto. Disguised as an old priestess, she urges the sleeping Turnus to fight; when he laughs at her, she shows her true form and hurls a torch into his chest, and he wakes shouting for weapons.

Turnus is the ruler of which Italian people?

The Rutuli. Turnus rules them from the city of Ardea, and a prophecy warns Aeneas that in him the Trojans will meet a second Achilles on Italian soil, so the war they fled begins again.

On the future site of Rome, Aeneas meets which friendly Greek king from Arcadia?

Evander. The old king rules a poor village of exiles, and he walks Aeneas past cattle lowing on the ground where the Roman Forum would one day stand.

Which battle fills the centre of the shield Vulcan forges for Aeneas?

Actium. Virgil shows Augustus on his flagship routing Antony and his Egyptian queen, a victory only a few years old when he began the poem, and Aeneas shoulders the shield delighted by scenes he cannot understand.

Which two Trojan friends die on a night raid through Turnus's camp in Book 9?

Nisus and Euryalus. A looted helmet catching the light betrays Euryalus to a patrol, and Nisus, already clear, runs back shouting that the blame is his and dies on his friend's body.

Which young ally, entrusted to Aeneas by his father, is killed by Turnus in Book 10?

Pallas. He dies on his first day of fighting, and the god he prays to, once a guest in his father's house, weeps in heaven because fate will not let him save the boy.

Which warrior maiden devoted to Diana fights bravely in Book 11 before being killed by Aruns?

Camilla. As a baby she was lashed to her fugitive father's spear and hurled across a flooded river, promised to Diana if she landed safely; grown up, she could outrun the wind.

Which immortal nymph breaks the truce in Book 12, then drives her doomed brother's chariot away from Aeneas?

Juturna. Jupiter made her immortal in payment for her virginity, and when a Fury comes to warn her off she cries that eternal life only means grieving for her brother forever.

What makes Aeneas kill the pleading Turnus at the end of the Aeneid?

A dead friend's sword-belt. Aeneas is wavering, moved by the plea, until he sees on Turnus's shoulder the belt stripped from a young ally; he strikes in fury, and the poem ends on that blow.

Which Roman leader's family claimed descent from Aeneas's son, a link the Aeneid celebrates?

Julius Caesar. His clan, the Julii, traced its name to Iulus, another name for Aeneas's son, so when Jupiter promises the boy's line an empire without end, Virgil is honouring Caesar's heir Augustus.

Whose name in Book 6 reportedly made Augustus's sister Octavia faint when Virgil read it aloud?

Her son Marcellus. Augustus's nephew and expected heir had died at nineteen, and Virgil closes his parade of future Romans with the boy's ghost and the words 'you will be Marcellus'.

What did the dying Virgil want done with the unfinished manuscript of the Aeneid?

That it be burned. Virgil had planned three more years of revision when he caught a fever on a trip to Greece; Augustus overruled his wish and ordered the poem published.

Near which town was Virgil, the poet of the Aeneid, born?

Mantua. Virgil pays his home town a compliment in Book 10, where its founder Ocnus, who named it after his mother, the prophetess Manto, sails to fight on Aeneas's side.

Virgil, the Aeneid's author, appears as the narrator's guide in which later masterpiece?

Dante's Divine Comedy. Dante follows Virgil through Hell and most of Purgatory, where the Roman poet hands him over to Beatrice, the guide who leads him on through Heaven.

Which English composer wrote the opera Dido and Aeneas, famous for the aria known as Dido's Lament?

Henry Purcell. Its first known performance was not at court or in a public theatre but by the pupils of a girls' school in Chelsea, to a libretto by Nahum Tate.

Ursula K. Le Guin's 2008 novel retells the second half of the Aeneid through which character's eyes?

Lavinia. Virgil's princess never speaks a word in the poem, so Le Guin lets her tell the whole story herself, including her talks with the shade of the dying poet who created her.

Which English poet's translation of the Aeneid into rhyming couplets was published in 1697?

John Dryden. England's first official Poet Laureate lost the post after the revolution of 1688 and had to live by his pen; his complete Virgil, sold by subscription, was the great work of his last years.

Which phrase does Aeneas sigh as he weeps before paintings of the Trojan War in Carthage?

Sunt lacrimae rerum. Roughly 'there are tears for things': Aeneas takes heart from the murals, reasoning that a city which pities Troy will be kind to its survivors, though the temple is Juno's.

Dido tricked the locals into granting her the land for Carthage by cutting what into thin strips?

An oxhide. She was sold only as much land as one hide could cover, so she cut it into a strip long enough to ring a hill, and the puzzle of enclosing the most land with a fixed length is still called Dido's problem.

Books 1-6 of the Aeneid are commonly likened to which Homeric epic?

The Odyssey. Aeneas's sea wanderings echo those of Odysseus, and the war of the second half then echoes Homer's other epic, because Virgil set out to match both poems within a single work.

What was the name of Aeneas's first wife, lost during the escape from Troy?

Creusa. Aeneas runs back into the burning city shouting her name until her ghost appears, tells him a kingdom and a royal bride wait in the west, and slips three times through his arms.

Who was Dido's late husband, murdered for his gold by her brother Pygmalion?

Sychaeus. Dido had sworn never to remarry after his murder, and when Aeneas meets her in the underworld she turns away without a word and goes back to him.

On which island do the Trojans build and then abandon the city of Pergamea after a plague?

Crete. Anchises guessed that Apollo's 'ancient mother' meant the island of their ancestor Teucer, until plague struck and the household gods told Aeneas in a dream that the oracle meant Italy.

Which prophetic son of Priam does Aeneas find ruling a Greek city at Buthrotum?

Helenus. Carried off as a slave by Achilles's son, he ended up inheriting part of his captor's kingdom, where he has built a small copy of Troy, down to a dry stream named after the Xanthus.

Which rejected African king prays angrily to Jupiter after Fama spreads news of Dido and Aeneas?

Iarbas. A son of Jupiter Ammon whom Dido had refused to marry, he sneers at Aeneas as a second Paris with perfumed hair and an unmanly following, and his prayer is what turns Jupiter's eyes to Carthage.

In the Aeneid, which queen champions Turnus as her daughter's husband, then hangs herself believing him dead?

Amata. Maddened by a snake from a Fury's hair, she fakes a Bacchic rite to hide her daughter in the hills; when the Trojans reach the walls she blames herself for the war and hangs herself.

Which exiled Etruscan tyrant fights for Turnus until Aeneas kills first his son, then him?

Mezentius. His own subjects drove him out for tortures such as binding the living to corpses, yet when Lausus dies shielding him he rides back wounded to face Aeneas and asks only to share his son's grave.

Which two friends of Virgil did Augustus order to edit and publish the Aeneid after his death?

Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca. The two changed so little that the poem's incomplete lines were left just as they stood, and a number of verses in the Aeneid still break off halfway.

Jupiter foretells that Aeneas's son will found which city, where his line rules for 300 years before Rome?

Alba Longa. Jupiter's prophecy gives Aeneas three years of rule, his son thirty and the new city three hundred, ending when a priestess there bears Mars the twins Romulus and Remus.

Which French composer turned the Aeneid into the grand opera Les Troyens?

Hector Berlioz. He wrote the libretto himself, and the huge two-part opera then lay neglected for decades, only winning its place on the stage in the twentieth century.

Which Nobel-winning Irish poet translated Book 6 of the Aeneid?

Seamus Heaney. He began it after his own father died in 1986, drawn to the hero's quest to meet his father's shade, and his family published the finished version in 2016, after his death in 2013.