Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Flames
Fire symbolizes both destruction and erotic desire or
love. With images of flames, Virgil connects the two. Paris’s desire
for Helen eventually leads to the fires of the siege of Troy. When
Dido confesses her love for Aeneas to Anna, her sister, she begins,
“I recognize / the signs of the old flame, of old desire” (IV.31–32).
Dido also recalls her previous marriage in “the thought of the torch
and the bridal bed” (IV.25). Torches limit
the power of flames by controlling them, but the new love ignited
in Dido’s heart is never regulated by the institution of marriage,
“the bridal bed.” The flames she feels do not keep her warm but
rather consume her mind. Virgil describes the way she dies in the
synonymous terms “enflamed and driven mad” (IV.965).
The Golden Bough
According to the Sibyl, the priestess of Apollo, the golden
bough is the symbol Aeneas must carry in order to gain access to
the underworld. It is unusual for mortals to be allowed to visit
the realm of the dead and then return to life. The golden bough
is therefore the sign of Aeneas’s special privilege.
The Gates of War
The opening of these gates indicates a declaration of
war in a tradition that was still recognized even in Virgil’s own
day. That it is Juno rather than a king or even Turnus who opens
the gates emphasizes the way immortal beings use mortals to settle
scores. The Gates of War thus symbolize the chaos of a world in
which divine force, often antagonistic to the health and welfare
of mortals, overpowers human will and desire.
The Trojan Hearth Gods
The hearth gods of Troy, or penates as
they are called in Latin, are mentioned repeatedly throughout the
epic. They are symbols of locality and ancestry, tribal gods associated
specifically with the city of Troy, who reside in the household
hearth. Aeneas gathers them up along with his family when he departs
from his devastated home, and they symbolize the continuity of Troy
as it is transplanted to a new physical location.
Weather
The gods use weather as a force to express their will.
The storm that Juno sends at the beginning of the epic symbolizes
her rage. Venus, on the other hand, shows her affection for the
Trojans by bidding the sea god, Neptune, to protect them. In Book
IV, Venus and Juno conspire to isolate Dido and Aeneas in a cave
by sending a storm to disrupt their hunting trip, symbolizing the
rupture of normal social codes as well. Greek and Roman mythology
has a tendency to make its symbols literal in this way—to connect
the seen (a storm, for example) with the unseen (divine will) causally
and dramatically.
