Lavinia

A Trojan warrior and a member of the Trojan royal family, Aeneas appears in The Iliad, but he’s a much less significant character than his second cousins, Hector and Paris. In escaping from Troy as it burns, Aeneas loses his wife, Creusa, but manages to save his father, Anchises, and his son, Ascanius. Creusa’s ghost tells Aeneas to travel west to establish a new homeland for the displaced Trojan survivors, and he takes her instructions seriously. He spends time in Carthage and falls in love with Queen Dido but he ultimately must leave to fulfill the prophecy. He arrives in Latium intending to create a peaceful alliance with Latinus, but he soon must fight again after his son shoots Silvia’s stag. He eventually kills Turnus but worries that doing so was impious.

All these events are narrated in the Aeneid, but the rest of Aeneas’s life is narrated in Lavinia (and various other mythical sources). Aeneas and Lavinia marry, drawn together primarily by omens and their shared piety. They genuinely love each other, even though they are together for only three years. They have a son, Silvius, and Lavinia is pregnant again when Aeneas suddenly dies. Aeneas’s defining trait is his piety, which serves him well when he rules as king of Lavinium. He wants to obey his own conscience, and Lavinia thinks that he would be deeply upset to know that he’s the product of a poet’s imagination. He’s aware that Lavinia knows some things about the future but never realizes the full extent of her foreknowledge. Aeneas has four major romances during his life: with Creusa, Dido, Lavinia, and Achates. Achates, who is with Aeneas when he dies, is overcome with grief. Aeneas doesn’t spend long in Latium, but his impact resonates across time. He’s a complete character, especially compared to the poet’s depiction of Lavinia.

Lavinia encounters the spirit of the dying poet Virgil (or Vergil, as in the novel) in the sacred grove in Albunea. They meet several times before he finally dies, and the encounters are meaningful for them both. When the poet meets Lavinia, he has already written as much of the Aeneid as he ever will, though he isn’t wholly satisfied with his work. He realizes that he has made a few mistakes (like the color of Lavinia’s hair), wants to change the ending, and regrets not giving Lavinia a voice in his work. Instead of being disturbed to find himself inhabiting his own poem, he’s comforted. He and Lavinia share a strong sense of love for one another even though they’re essentially strangers. Lavinia even says that she’s unsure whether she loved her poet or her husband more; she knew them both for only a short time.

The poet is a god figure in the sense that he invented Lavinia and many of the story’s other characters. He didn’t invent Aeneas, whom The Iliad mentions and who was already a known mythological character before the poet’s time, but he does bring his own interpretation of Aeneas’s character to his poem. However, as a flawed creator, he doesn’t fully understand his creation until it’s too late to change it. He tells Lavinia that he intends to have his poem burned, but that never happens. It would have been wrong to burn it; just like the other characters, the poet must reckon with fate, supporting the theme of Accepting and Resisting Fate. Burning the poem would mean resisting fate. He can’t escape his fate, which is to become a great poet and then a fictional character in the writing of others, any more than Lavinia or Aeneas can.

Aeneas arrives in Latium with many surviving Trojans, but only a few are named and have a major part in Lavinia. Besides Aeneas, the most important Trojan in the story by far is his son Ascanius. Ascanius is 15 when he arrives in Latium, and he starts the war when he who shoots Silvia’s stag, Cervulus. After the war, Aeneas gives Ascanius control over Alba Longa, which he rules for 30 years. However, Ascanius is a poor leader, prone to violence and easily overwhelmed by responsibility. He improves somewhat after Aeneas chastises him yet never achieves anything like his father’s greatness. Lavinia describes Ascanius’s grandfather, Anchises, but he dies before the Trojans arrive in Latium. Ascanius’s lover, Atys, becomes important at the end of the story when he dies in a skirmish. Ascanius is devastated, especially because the two of them had recently argued. Atys’s death destroys Ascanius, making it impossible for him to rule effectively and prompting his wife to leave him.

Like his son Ascanius, Aeneas has a close relationship with a fellow warrior: Achates. Lavinia expresses some jealousy toward Achates, since he enjoyed a longer but equally loving relationship with Aeneas. However, Lavinia and Achates ultimately become friends and help each other through their grief over Aeneas’s death. This friendship is particularly helpful for Achates, whose distress over his lover’s death is deep and enduring. The Trojans, under Aeneas’s leadership, form alliances with many other people living in and around Latium, including Etruscans and Greeks. While visiting the Greek king Evander, Aeneas persuades his son, Pallas, to fight against Turnus’s army. Turnus kills Pallas, and a large part of the reason that Aeneas kills Turnus is to avenge Pallas’s death. Nevertheless, Evander never really forgives Aeneas for his son’s death and never recovers from his grief.

Lavinia’s father, King Latinus, rules the Latins and lives in the city of Laurentum. He’s a beloved ruler who brought peace to his kingdom. He’s also a kind father who doesn’t want to force Lavinia to marry against her will. Like Lavinia, he’s pious and believes strongly in the oracle’s power, even when following its prophecies might mean allowing the war to continue. In reality, Latinus knows he can’t do anything to stop the fighting. He recognizes that Aeneas and Turnus must see their rivalry through to its conclusion. However, Latinus is blind to his wife’s grief and rage against him. He fails to recognize that Amata wants to marry Lavinia to Turnus so that she can have Turnus for herself. Amata’s anger makes her a character foil for Lavinia. While Amata is consumed by her emotions and her grief over the death of her two young sons, Lavinia is “doomed to sanity” (182). She worries that the curse in her mother’s bloodline is in her and knows that if she lost Silvius, she would succumb to the same grief that her mother did.

Turnus, who is Amata’s nephew and Lavinia’s suitor, is the primary aggressor in the war against the Trojans. Although many consider Turnus handsome and the perfect husband for Lavinia, she sees that he’s impious and thus has no interest in him; in addition, she recognizes and disapproves of her mother’s obvious lust for him. Turnus has no sense of duty or piety but is motivated by action, always moving forward but not always thinking his actions through. Aeneas sees him as “a man of immense talent” (88). After long resisting his fate and insisting on fighting the Trojans against Latinus’s orders, Turnus dies honorably because he accepts whatever fate Aeneas chooses for him. Aeneas is haunted by his decision to kill Turnus; he acted out of character, possibly because his actions aren’t his own but were dictated by a writer.

Other Laurentans important to Lavinia include Maruna, an enslaved Etruscan who is Lavinia’s close companion. Maruna’s mother is a wise woman who teaches Lavinia and Maruna how to read omens in “in the calls and flights of the birds in the fields and wild lands” (32). She often prompts Latinus to interpret omens. When Lavinia is an old woman, Maruna’s niece accompanies her to Albunea. Lavinia’s childhood best friend is Silvia, the daughter of a cowherd. Silvia is kind and has a gift for taming animals. She tames a stag, Cervulus. When Ascanius shoots the stag, wounding the animal and starting a war, Silvia’s brother, Almo, vows revenge. Almo is one of Lavinia’s suitors, though he can’t marry her because of his low social status. Almo is the first to die in the war between the Trojans and the Latins. Silvia never forgives Lavinia for what happens, and the two never reconcile.