The Role Of Fire In Romantic And Family Love On Reading The Aeneid

There are two integral pieces of love in Virgil's epic Aeneid: the romantic, lustful love (as felt by Dido for Aeneas) and the grounded, honest, family love (as felt between Aeneas and Anchises). There is a dynamic relationship between the two sides of love which causes each to emphasize the other - an emphasis that is facilitated by Virgil's common use of fire and flame imagery to describe both types of love.

Upon analyzing the lustful episode between Dido and Aeneas and the image of Aeneas fleeing troy bearing his father, Anchises, on his back and holding his sons hand (beautifully sculpted by Bernini, see attached), it becomes clear that the love in each situation is very different, despite the common use of the Latin words flamma (flame) and ignis (fire).

In Book 4, Virgil used the flame/fire motif in a number of different fashions, all of which end up conveying a more lustful type of love.

This man alone has wrought upon me so / And moved my soul to yield. I recognize / The signs of the old flame, of old desire. (IV.30-32)

Love is described as a "flame." Now a popular nuance in contemporary love "Jack and Diane" love stories, the "burning passion" idiom has been "burned" into our minds as a common emotion. However, this passage carries with it a supreme sense of lust, hinted at by the use of the word "desire," that is not implicit in the now hackneyed idiom.

Dido is repugnant to the idea of recanting on her promise to her former husband.

Had I not set my face against remarriage / After my first love died and failed me, left me / Barren and bereaved - and sick to death / At the mere thought of torch and bridal bed / I could perhaps give way in this one case / To frailty. (IV.22-27)

Here, the "torch" indicates love and passion. Yet, the reference to the "bridal bed" again implies sexual love rather than emotional passion, as does the idea that her former husband had "failed" her by dying.

Later, as Dido prays to various gods, Virgil hypothesizes that it doesn't matter, essentially, what the gods think, because Dido is "maddened" by her "inward fire."

What good are shrines and vows to maddened lovers? / The inward fire eats the soft marrow away... (IV. 92-93)

Here, the "inward fire" most likely refers to Dido's longing desire, as bestowed in her by Cupid, to pursue Aeneas. However, because their love will be consummated sexually, this desire could literally be a sense of physical arousal.

As Aeneas tells Dido of his destiny to "sail for Italy not of [his] own free will," (IV.499) he begs Dido to release him from the pain that their love causes.

So please, no more / Of these appeals that set us both afire.

(IV.497-498)

Literally, he begs for it to end. He begs for the fire to be put out and the romantic, lustful love to cease.

As Aeneas leaves, Dido is overcome with a maddened "fire."

From far away I shall come after you / With my black fires, and when cold death has parted / Body from soul I shall be everywhere / A shade to haunt you! (IV.533-536)

Dido is now consumed by her own "inward fire" and it causes her to pledge to haunt Aeneas with "black fire," a sign of pure evil. She vows that Aeneas "will pay for this," (IV.536). Noting the transformation from the use of "inward fire" as a medium for "desire" to a more hysterical, crazed type of passion is essential in understanding the ultimate failure of romantic and lustful love in the Aeneid.

Finally, as Dido unleashes her own "inward fire" all over Aeneas' instrument of war, Virgil equates her level of despair to the devastation that the fall of her city would bring in a siege similar to the Trojan War.

With women's outcry echoed in the palace / And heaven's high air gave back the beating din, / As though all Carthage or old Tyre fell / To storming enemies, and,