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The Role of Fire in

Romantic and Family Love

On Reading Virgil’s Aeneid

Alex Thorn

English 550A

Mr. McGraw

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, out of hand, / Flames billowed on the roofs of men and gods.

She climbs on top of a funeral fire to kill herself out of her maddened “inward flame” out of anger of the torch of her passion after pledging to haunt Aeneas with “black fires” as he pursues his destiny and begs her to end her “appeals” that set them both “afire.”

Book 4 serves as a complete view at the romantic and lustful branch of Virgil’s love. The transformation of Dido’s love from a romantic infatuation to a psychotic, maddened passion shows the ultimate shortcoming of romantic love when poised against the more family oriented love displayed at the beginning of the epic.

As the story goes, by the time of the Trojan Wars, Anchises, Aeneas’ father, was to old and infirm to take part in the fighting but refused to escape the ravaged city with his family until the occurrence of two omens: a flame could be observed on the head of his grandson Ascanius (Iulus) and, a meteor fell to earth. Only then, carried on the back of his son, did Anchises leave the city and accompany Aeneas on the voyage to discover the site of new a new Troy (which would eventually become the Roman Empire).

Burning Troy behind him, Aeneas carries his unable father and holds his young son’s hand. This image is one of continuity, rebirth (as fire tends to portray) and the deepest of father-son love. When Aeneas founds the Roman Empire, he is creating a new home – not just for the Trojans – but for his own family, and it is the love he has for his father and his sons that follows Aeneas down the path of success, not the romantic love Dido offers him.

It is impossible to overlook the prolificacy of flame and fire uses in reference to love and passion in Virgil’s Aeneid. What’s most interesting, though, is not only how there are two distinct categories of love/fire references (lustful, romantic love vs. family love), but that one actually triumphs over the other. The love between Dido and Aeneas is not strong enough to keep Aeneas from what he loves – needs – more: to give his Trojans, his sons, his family a home.

There is nothing more powerful or vital to a man than his family and home, and it is for that reason that Aeneas must leave Dido and continue on his voyage to Italy. Virgil is able to show this decision in Aeneas and value of family over romantic love through his use of flame and fire in both types of love. But, as the romantic love between Dido and Aeneas in Book 4 falls short, Aeneas’ love for his family burns on. A man’s family and home are his sanctuary, his Troy, which must be defended at all costs. Through Virgil’s use of flame and fire to illustrate both types of love, the triumph of Aeneas’ love for the Home over his love for romantic, passionate lust shows which type of fire burns forever and, therefore, which is most vital to a man: Family.