Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Prophecies and Predictions
Prophecy and prediction take many forms in the Aeneid, including dreams,
visitations from the dead, mysterious signs and omens, and direct
visitations of the gods or their divine messengers. These windows
onto the future orient mortal characters toward fate as they try
to glean, sometimes clearly and sometimes dimly, what is to come.
Virgil’s audience, however, hears these predictions with the advantage
of hindsight, looking backward to observe the realization of an
already accomplished fate. As observers who know about the future,
the audience is in the same position as the gods, and the tension
between the audience’s and the characters’ perspectives therefore
emulates the difference between the position of mortals and that
of gods.
Founding a New City
The mission to build a new city is an obsession for Aeneas
and the Trojans. In Book II, Aeneas relates the story of Troy’s
destruction to Dido, who is herself recently displaced and in the
process of founding a new city of her own. In Book III, Virgil relates
several attempts undertaken by the Trojans to lay the foundations
for a city, all of which were thwarted by ill omens or plague. Aeneas
also frequently uses the image of the realized city to inspire his
people when their spirits flag. The walls, foundation, or towers
of a city stand for civilization and order itself, a remedy for
the uncertainty, irrationality, and confusion that result from wandering
without a home.
Vengeance
Avenging a wrong, especially the death of a loved one,
is an important element of heroic culture and a pervasive motif
in the Aeneid. The most prominent instance of vengeance
comes in the final lines of the poem. Aeneas, having decided to
spare Turnus, changes his mind when reminded of the slain Pallas,
whose belt Turnus wears as a trophy. It would be considered dishonorable
and disloyal to allow Pallas’s death go unpunished. Vengeance comes
in other, perhaps less noble, forms as well. Dido’s suicide is at
least partly an act of revenge on Aeneas, and she curses him as
one of her last acts. The Harpies act out of vengefulness when they
curse Aeneas for having killed their livestock. Similarly, the struggles
of the gods against one another are likewise motivated by spite
and revenge: the history of bruised vanity, left over from Paris’s
judgment of Venus as the fairest goddess, largely motivates Juno’s
aggressive behavior against the Trojans and Venus, their divine
protector.
