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Aeneid
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Books 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 5 Summary
Aeneas looks back and sees the blaze of Dido’s pyre but is not sure what it means. A storm builds. His helmsman Palinurus suggests a detour to Sicily, where Aeneas’s half-brother Eryx lives and where his father was buried (22-23). Since it has been a year since Anchises’s death, Aeneas and another Trojan who lives there, Acestes, hold funeral games for him. Aeneas offers a ritual libation at the grave, and a beautiful supernatural snake slithers up from the tomb to partake in the offerings (84-96). On the ninth day of the festivities, the games begin.
The games consist of a boat race (113-243), a foot race (286-361), a boxing match (365-484), and an archery contest (485-544). Four Trojans compete in the boat race: Mnestheus (captain of the Pristis), Gyas (of the Chimaera), Sergestus (of the Centaur), and Cloanthus (of the Scylla). The young warrior Gyas takes the lead, but his helmsman, Menoetes, refuses his captain’s dangerous order to hug the shore, allowing Cloanthus and the Scylla to overtake them. Humiliated, Gyas dumps the elderly Menoetes overboard. Everyone laughs (172-82). In his rush to capitalize on Gyas’s fumble, Sergestus runs his ship, the Centaur, onto the reef (201-09). Now Mnestheus of the Pristis is Cloanthus’s only challenger for first place, but Cloanthus appeals to the gods of the sea and cinches the victory (233-43). Gifts are bestowed on all four competitors as the Trojans mock Sergestus and attempt to remove the Scylla from the reef.
Next up is the foot race. The most famous competitors are the lovers Nisus and Euryalus, who will appear again in Book 9. The elder Nisus takes an early lead but slips in a pool of blood from a bull sacrifice (327-33). Still, he trips Salius for Euryalus, who claims first place (338-40). Salius cries foul. Aeneas keeps the standings and prizes as they are but gives Salius a valuable lion hide for his trouble. Nisus, comically filthy from his fall, wants a prize, too. Aeneas laughs and gives him a shield (353-61).
The next event is boxing. At first it seems the massive Dares will be the victor by default, as no one wants to compete with him (368-79). However, Acestes, the co-sponsor of the games, convinces a local Sicilian fighter, Entellus, to stand up (387-400). An old man now, Entellus was trained by the legendary Eryx and saw him fight Hercules. Entellus throws Eryx’s massive gloves into the ring, stunning Dares and the crowd. Entellus used to wear these gloves, too, but he is too old now—he agrees to forgo them if Dares forgoes his as well. Both combatants suit up with basic bindings and start the fight (400-25). Dares is fast, but Entellus is patient; even after a humiliating fall, he gets back up (446-55). Angry now, Entellus almost goes too far, but Aeneas stops the fight before his “embittered rage turn[s] him into a monster” (462). As Dares’s friends help him back to his ship, Entellus vaunts. He punches his prize, a bull, directly between the horns, killing it instantly. He offers the spoils from his last match as a sacrifice to his teacher, Eryx (479-84).
In the archery contest, contestants must hit a fluttering dove on a cord attached to a ship mast. The first competitor, Hippocoön, hits the mast; the second, Mnestheus (the winner of the boat race), hits the cord. As the dove flies away, the third archer, Eurytion, hits the dove, winning the contest. Though the prize is already won, Acestes fires into the air, and his arrow bursts into flames: “That’s when an omen confronted their eyes” (522). Amazed, Aeneas awards him the archery prize and names him the supreme victor for the whole tournament (530-40). Before the games end, Aeneas arranges to have his son, Ascanius, lead the other boys in full armor on horseback in an elaborate display for the crowds. Virgil explains that this is now a Roman tradition called the “Troy” game (545-602).
As the festivities conclude, Juno sends Iris in disguise to convince the Trojan women, disgruntled at traveling for so long, to burn the ships and force Aeneas to settle here (623-40). One of the women realizes she is a goddess. When Iris speeds away into the air, leaving a rainbow in her wake, the women are energized to burn the fleet. They regret doing so by the time Ascanius and the men arrive, but the damage is done (675-79). Only four ships are lost when a storm sent by Jupiter quells the flames, but Aeneas is, once again, downhearted. The goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athena, cheers his thoughts: “Each turn of fortune we meet, we survive, and defeat, by endurance” (709-10). She suggests leaving those who refuse to go on to settle with Acestes. That night Aeneas dreams of Anchises, who supports Athena’s plan and tells Aeneas that, before the final fight in Italy, he must meet with him in the Underworld (731-3).
Meanwhile, Aeneas’s mother, Venus, appeals to the god of the sea, Neptune, to thwart Juno and finally get the Trojans safely to the Italian mainland. He agrees—but says that one man will be lost on the way to save the rest (814-15). That night, once the Trojans have embarked, the personification of Sleep convinces Aeneas’s faithful helmsman Palinurus to take a nap. He falls overboard and is not rescued (838-61).
Book 6 Summary
The Trojans finally arrive in mainland Italy. As directed by the dream of Anchises in Book 5, they moor at Cumae, where the Sibyl Deiphobe lives. An oracle of Apollo, she will guide Aeneas through the Underworld. Aeneas lingers in a temple decorated with the myths of Crete (Daedalus and Icarus, the Minotaur, etc.) until Deiphobe arrives (13-33). She tells Aeneas to stop wasting time and gather the necessary sacrifices, then is possessed by Apollo. The god responds positively to Aeneas’s promise of worship in Rome but warns of horrible bloodshed in Italy (69-97).
Once the Sibyl is herself again, Aeneas requests her help in entering the Underworld to visit his father (109-23). Deiphobe interrupts. She agrees to guide him, but first he must find a mysterious golden bough deep in the woods to offer to Proserpina, the queen of the Underworld. If he is fated to pluck it, it will come away easily. He also must give proper funeral rites to an unnamed, unburied friend (136-53).
At first Aeneas is crestfallen—he doesn’t know who this friend might be—but then he stumbles on the corpse of Misenus, who was drowned by Neptune for impiety (161-76). Once Misenus’s funeral has begun, Aeneas strikes into the woods, where Venus, in the form of doves, leads him to the golden bough. Aeneas eagerly snatches at it; the bough hesitates but gives way (197-210). Deiphobe makes the appropriate sacrifices to the gods of the Underworld, and she and Aeneas venture beneath the earth (237-63).
They first pass through a vestibule filled with personifications of human suffering and mythological monsters. Aeneas slashes at them with his sword but finds they are only visions. In the center of this area is a great elm tree; its leaves are dreams (273-94). Next, they come to a marshy area where the ferryman Charon ports souls into the afterlife. Virgil famously describes the spirits thronging here as “countless as leaves, during autumn’s first frost, falling in forests” (309-10). Aeneas pities those who cannot cross because they are unburied, especially those he knows. Palinurus, who fell overboard at the end of Book 5 (835-71), survived the ordeal but was killed once he reached the shore. Aeneas promises to give him proper funeral rites (331-83). At first Charon resists ferrying Aeneas and Deiphobe across, as Aeneas is alive, but he relents when Deiphobe shows him the golden bough (385-416). On the other side, the three-headed dog Cerberus barks at them, but the Sibyl mollifies him with a drugged honey cake (417-25).
They arrive in a court filled with people who died violently or before their time. Minos, the judge of the Underworld, separates the falsely accused from the guilty (426-39). Nearby, people who died for love wander the Grieving Meadows (440-50). Aeneas is stunned to see Dido, who he did not know was dead. He apologizes profusely, claiming, “It was no choice of my will, good queen, to withdraw from your country […] Rather, [the] commands of the gods” (460-61). Dido ignores him. She is now with her first husband, Sychaeus.
In the next area, the field of heroes, Aeneas meets warriors who died in the Trojan War. He spends time with Deiphobus, who was mutilated by the Greeks for marrying Helen, but the Sibyl keeps Aeneas moving (494-539). From here, on the right is the heavenly Elysium, while on the left is Tartarus, a fiery fortress of punishment for the damned. Groans and the crack of whips are heard from within. Aeneas cannot enter here (no pure soul can), but the Sibyl describes how within its walls another judge, Rhadamanthus, extracts confessions and hands the guilty over to the Furies for punishment. Virgil lists famous mythological sinners like Sisyphus, but also commonplace criminals who committed civil crimes against the state and family (565-627).
After the presentation of the golden bough to Proserpina, Aeneas and the Sibyl enter Elysium, a paradisiacal meadow with its own celestial bodies. The spirits of famous poets, artists, warriors, and people who lived good lives reside here (639-65). Aeneas reunites with Anchises, who describes the complex process of metempsychosis, through which the soul is purified via wind, water, or fire. For some spirits Elysium is a brief reward for their good deeds before they drink from the waters of forgetfulness and are reincarnated. For others who have already been reincarnated many times, it is a pitstop on the way to the soul’s eternal celestial home (709-51).
Anchises points out and names a long and illustrious line of Roman historical figures waiting to be born, including Marcellus, a contemporary of Virgil and the nephew of the emperor Augustus, who died at a young age (756-846; 860-85). Anchises defines for Aeneas the key aspects of being Roman: “These will be your special ‘Arts’: the enforcement of peace as a habit, / Mercy for those cast down and relentless war upon proud men” (852-53).
With this newfound knowledge, Aeneas is ready to exit the Underworld. Aeneas and Anchises reach the mysterious gates of sleep. One gate, marked for “true ghosts,” is made of horn; the other, for “deceptive dreams,” is made of ivory (893-97). Anchises sends Aeneas and the Sibyl through the ivory gate.
Books 5-6 Analysis
Book 5 slows the pace significantly, providing emotional relief from the dramatic events of Book 4. Aeneas, in a typically pious gesture, holds funeral games for the anniversary of his father’s death, evoking, again, a Homeric model: the funeral games of Patroclus from the Iliad. Aeneas here begins to try out the standout leadership role he will need to play in the second half of the poem. As the referee of the games, he is referred to as “Father Aeneas,” shifting his identity further in the paternal direction from the more filial status he enjoys in the earlier books (129). Aeneas is a kindly figure here, and the games are characterized by their largely light-hearted tone; there are many descriptions of joking and laughing.
Book 5 gives a brief respite before a metaphorical (and literal) journey into darkness. In Book 6 Aeneas ventures beneath the earth, an act representing the “death” of his Homeric self before he rises again as a proto-Roman. His journey to the Underworld is—as are many such narratives—a voyage for knowledge. At the end of his journey, Aeneas will finally hear a more complete explanation of Roman destiny, which had been largely limited to divine conversation before, such as between Jupiter and Venus in Book 1—prophecies we knew as the audience, but that Aeneas could not. Ironically, though Aeneas finally sees the march of heroes and hears their stories from Anchises, he cannot understand their significance to the degree Virgil’s audience would. This ignorance underlines Aeneas’s role in the Aeneid: He is a pawn of Fate, a man driven on by destiny and the gods, sometimes without real understanding of the significance and impact of his actions.
Before Aeneas enters the Underworld proper, he receives yet another prophecy—this time from Apollo, who is speaking through the Sibyl. There are three components to his message: 1) The dangers Aeneas will face on land are more serious than anything he has experienced yet; 2) the Trojans will wish they did not come to Italy; 3) there will be a terrible replica of the war at Troy in Italy—and a new Achilles.
Book 6 concludes the Odyssey portion of the Aeneid and marks the transition into the Iliad portion. Interestingly, while Aeneas resembled Odysseus in his wanderings in the first half, the reader is explicitly told that Aeneas will not be the new Achilles in the second. In fact, Virgil does not directly map Hector or Achilles onto any single character but instead shifts aspects of their identities onto different heroes, both Trojan/proto-Roman and Italian.
Virgil’s Underworld is a pastiche of various Greek and Roman visions of the afterlife. The reader should not be too bothered by apparent contradictions in this picture. Virgil is reworking ideas from previous literary depictions of the Underworld and also various ancient philosophies (Epicureanism, Pythagoreanism, Orphism, Stoicism, and others), but his overall eschatological view is defined by its deep sense of morality. Good behavior is rewarded; bad behavior is punished. This idea fits into the Aeneid’s strong moral code, which suited the moralistic agenda of the emperor Augustus.
Under the earth, Aeneas encounters many of the people he knew in life. We see him at his most pitiable when he meets the shade of Dido, a regression for his character to the emotional strife of Book 4, with all its hopelessly misunderstood intentions. It becomes clear now that what had seemed a harsh but necessary step in Book 4 had a very real human cost. Aeneas wants not only to appease Dido’s anger, but also to receive a show of emotion, much as she wanted a show of emotion from him. There is a strong reversal of roles: Only now, when it is far too late, can Aeneas experience what it is like to tearfully plead with someone you love and be met with stony silence. Dido rejects him. If she has any lingering feelings for Aeneas, they are hidden as skillfully as Aeneas hid his own feelings from her. For all appearances, Dido is now completely opposed to Aeneas, as Carthage will be to Rome. Dido is part of Aeneas’s past, and in Book 6, Aeneas must say goodbye to this past, a painful but necessary process.
The most important aspect of Aeneas’s past that he must leave behind is his father, Anchises. To found the Roman people, he must transition from identifying as a son to identifying as a father. Father and son weep when they reunite (695-702), and Anchises reveals the Roman destiny. In his speech to Aeneas, for the first time Aeneas is called a Roman and is told what it means to be Roman: to defeat your enemies, but to spare them when they have been vanquished (851-53). This is an address not only to Aeneas, but to the Rome of Virgil’s day, and possibly to Augustus himself. Anchises’s words have great significance for the poem; they directly impact the interpretation of Aeneas’s actions at the very end of Book 12.
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