Guided Pathway

Virgil’s Aeneid begins with a storm at sea. Aeneas and his fleet of ships, in their gradual journey from vanquished Troy to Latium, have just left Sicily when Juno, furiously perceiving their clear progress towards their fate as founders of Rome, decides to block them with a storm. She is the jealous enemy of Troy, hence of Aeneas, because her husband, Jupiter, made Electra his mistress, and the Trojans were the descendants of that coupling.  Not only that! Troy’s prince, Paris, in the contest of the golden apple, had chosen Aphrodite above Juno and Athena, the two other contestants; Juno had promised Paris the sovereignty of Asia, (here we can recall that Juno’s name was engraved in the bordering area corresponding to the eastern sector of the sky on the Piacenza bronze model liver, which Warburg showed on panel 1 of the Atlas) and Athena had promised renown in war. Paris had chosen Aphrodite as the keeper of the apple, and in return he was to receive the most beautiful woman as his wife. So he carried Helen off from Sparta; the Greeks retaliated and besieged his city, Troy. Infuriated by Aeneas’ escape from the burning ruin, Juno approaches the lord of the winds, Aeolus (who must obey her since he had received his power as her gift) and she commands him to release a tempest from his stony keep: “Raise all thy winds; with night involve the skies” (Aeneid, Book 1, 105). Ships, goods and men are lost in the deluge.  When Neptune rises from the waves to notice the storm caused by the raging goddess, he calms the seas, restoring Aeneas’ remaining fleet to their fate (#6). Because of this storm, Aeneas and his seven surviving ships, blown off-course, land near Carthage, where the Trojan prince will spend a year in love with Dido, before recalling his destiny.