When people think about women, what is the first image that pops into their mind? Is it a picture of a beautiful woman in the kitchen cooking for her husband and kids, a woman cleaning up her home, or is it a woman who cries often? In the Roman era women are seen as a side-piece to a men, but people usually forget how strong these women truly are. They are the ones who take on the burdens of caring for the family, whether that is at home or out working in the workforce. Women are also the ones who carry the tremendous burden of having children. In Virgil’s Roman epic, The Aeneid, the women were seen as unequal to men. In allowing for this unequalness to happen, the Trojans made the women more susceptible to the power of the gods. Although women can endure a great deal of pain, they are also easier to manipulate due to certain characteristics that make up a woman’s being.
In The Aeneid, Virgil characterizes women as being more emotional than men. Characterizing women in this manner allows for the women to be more easily controlled by Juno and other gods to do their bidding. In the fifth book of The Aeneid, the women are gathered around crying out “with one voice. A city is what they prayed for. / All were sick of struggling with the sea” (Virgil 5.680-681). In that moment, it is clear that they are all emotionally drained from sailing from place to place and are longing for a place to finally call home. With the women’s emotion out in the open like that, it is all too easy for Juno to manipulate them. Juno sends Iris down to earth disguised as “Beroë, aged wife of Doryclus the Tmarian” (Virgil 5.685-686) and feeds the women's desire to settle in the land where they have landed. However, they do not fully give into the desire until Iris reveals herself and leaves the women, departing on a giant rainbow in the sky. With fuel added to the fire of the woman’s emotions, some take to Juno’s suggestion with madness and try to burn the ships to the ground. Through the woman’s longing for a place that they can finally call home, Juno twists the women’s hearts and has them go against the men in order to try to achieve the desire of wanting a home there. The emotionality of women also carries on to not just the women with Aeneid, but with women throughout the book. When Virgil first introduced Queen Dido, she seems like a very level headed person ,but once Aeneid comes to town and his mother manipulates the situation; all bets are off. After the influence of Aeneid’s mother, Queen Dido ends up falling for Aeneid. Venus’s influence causes Dido’s little crush to be thrown completely out of proportion and makes her become obsessed with him. Venus’s then plans on binding “them in lasting marriage” after she has already sent Cupid to shoot one of his arrows at Dido (Virgil 4.155). In doing this she is trying to keep her son there in Carthage where Juno couldn’t really do anything to him. However for Dido this badly backfires on her. When Aeneid tries to “steal away //in silence from” Queen Dido’s shore, she loses it and ends up killing herself when Aeneid leaves her (Virgil 4.380-381). Dido kills herself out of self pity and dread, because she feels that bad things only happen to her. In killing herself, she does it without a level head and clear emotions. With the death of Dido and the women burning the ships, it is clear that a women’s emotions are a dangerous tool not only to others but to themselves also if they are not controlled.
Another way the woman are used as pawns in the gods’ games and driven mad is because woman have no consequences for their actions and so they can get away with what the gods do through them. After the women burn the ships, the men do nothing to them. All Aeneas does is say, “Madness, beyond belief! // Wretched women of Troy, it’s not the enemy camp, the Greeks—you’re burning your own best hopes!” (Virgil 5.739-742). He then goes to pray to Jove and attend to the ships, leaving the women alone. Due to the women just getting a stern talking to, it could be possible that Aeneid takes mercy on them and leaves them to tend to the ships. However it is more likely that he does not see the women as being worth punishing. Women having no consequences can also be seen in the seventh book as well. Queen Amata basically dogs her husband out about giving their daughter to Aeneas, saying, “So, Lavinia goes in wedlock to these Trojans-exile?” (Virgil 7.419). In this stanza, the queen is questioning the king’s competence and pride for his country, all of which should anger the king, yet he just rolls it off and thinks nothing of it. This allows for us to see that the women could do and say whatever they wanted and get away with it. With women having no consequences for their actions, this making them the perfect targets for Juno to carry out her plan through.
Even though women in Virgil’s Aeneid were not seen as equal to men, they were the pawns through which the gods used to do their bidding. No matter their status or class, women are still emotional and given a slap on the wrist for their crimes. In doing so, women can get away with using their emotions to accomplish their own goals or the goals of others and get away with it. They are the outlets that the gods use, because they are easier to control than men due to women wearing their emotions out for everyone to see. Without the women in the Aeneid the gods would not of been able to accomplish their manipulative planes as easily.
Works Cited
Maro, Vergilius. The Aeneid. New York: The Penguin Group, 2006. Print.
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