110 Fun Facts About The Aeneid

Which poem about farming did Virgil finish just before he began work on the Aeneid?

The Georgics: Virgil is said to have read it aloud to Augustus over four days, his patron Maecenas taking over whenever his voice gave out, and he then gave the rest of his life to the Aeneid.

Which river's god appears to Aeneas in a dream and calms his own current so the Trojan ships can row upstream?

The Tiber: old Tiberinus rises from the water to tell the sleeping Aeneas that he has reached his true home, then holds the river smooth as a pond all night so the oars meet no resistance.

Which poem was rearranged into twelve books like the Aeneid?

Paradise Lost. For the second edition of 1674 Milton split two of his longest books in two, giving his Christian epic the same twelve-book shape as Virgil's poem.

Which familiar saying does Turnus use to rally his men against the landing Trojans in Book 10 of the Aeneid?

Fortune favours the bold. Turnus shouts it as he leads a charge on the Trojans while they are still stumbling ashore, though in the end fortune deserts him and he dies at Aeneas's hand.

In which meter is the Aeneid written?

Dactylic hexameter. Early Roman epics used the native Saturnian verse until Ennius borrowed the six-beat line of Greek epic for his Annales, and his choice made it the standard metre for Latin epic.

What are the famous opening words of the Aeneid?

Arma virumque cano. It means 'I sing of arms and the man', and Bernard Shaw borrowed the phrase for the title of his comedy Arms and the Man.

At a feast Aeneas joins on the future site of Rome, which hero is honoured for killing the fire-breathing Cacus?

Hercules. Cacus stole eight of his cattle and dragged them into his den backwards by their tails so the tracks pointed the wrong way, but one cow's answering bellow gave him away.

Who is Aeneas's divine mother?

Venus. She meets her shipwrecked son near Carthage disguised as a huntress and reveals herself only as she turns to go, and he protests that she always mocks him with false shapes.

Whom does Juno bribe with the offer of a nymph bride to wreck Aeneas's ships in Book 1?

Aeolus. Juno offers the keeper of the winds her loveliest nymph, Deiopea, as a wife, and he looses a storm; Neptune, angry that his sea was stirred without his leave, calms it.

Whom does Cupid impersonate to make Dido fall in love with Aeneas?

Ascanius, the hero's son. The real boy is carried off asleep to the groves of Idalium, and Cupid takes his shape to sit in Dido's lap at the banquet and breathe love into her.

Dido, queen of Carthage, had fled which Phoenician city after her brother murdered her husband?

Tyre. Her brother Pygmalion, its king, secretly murdered her rich husband for his gold; the dead man's ghost showed her where treasure lay buried, and she sailed with it to Africa.

Which Trojan priest speared the wooden horse and was then killed with his sons by sea serpents?

Laocoön. His warning gave us 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts', and when the serpents struck, the Trojans decided he had been punished for wounding the horse and hauled it inside.

Which Greek was left behind to convince the Trojans the horse was a harmless offering?

Sinon. Posing as a runaway the Greeks had meant to sacrifice, he swore the horse was an offering built too big for Troy's gates, then slipped its bolts that night to let the soldiers out.

Whose ghost appears to Aeneas in a dream and tells him to flee burning Troy?

Hector's. He appears torn and bloodied, as he was after Achilles dragged him behind a chariot, and entrusts Troy's household gods to Aeneas to carry to a new city overseas.

Whom does Aeneas famously carry on his back out of burning Troy?

His father Anchises. The old man holds the household gods as he rides on his son's shoulders, because Aeneas, fresh from the fighting, says his own bloodstained hands must not touch them.

What omen appears on Ascanius as his family argues over fleeing burning Troy?

Harmless flames on his head. The family tries to douse them in a panic, but thunder and a shooting star confirm the fire as a sign from Jupiter, and that settles the argument about leaving.

Which monsters foul the Trojans' feast and warn that hunger will make them eat their tables?

Harpies. Their leader Celaeno's curse comes true painlessly in Italy, when the hungry Trojans eat the flatbread they were using as plates and Aeneas's son jokes that they are eating their tables.

At Buthrotum, a replica of Troy, Aeneas meets which grieving Trojan widow?

Andromache. She is pouring offerings at an empty tomb she has raised for her first husband when Aeneas walks up, and at first she cannot believe the man in front of her is alive.

The Trojans rescue Achaemenides, a Greek castaway whom Ulysses had left behind in whose lair?

Polyphemus. Starving and ragged, Achaemenides begs his old enemies to take him aboard, and as they row off the blinded Cyclops wades out after the sound of their oars, roaring.

Where do Dido and Aeneas shelter together from a storm during the royal hunt in Book 4 of the Aeneid?

A cave. Juno sends the storm to bring the pair together, with lightning for wedding torches, but Virgil adds that Dido only 'calls it marriage' and uses the name to cover her fault.

Which deity does Jupiter send to remind Aeneas of his duty and make him leave Dido?

Mercury. He finds Aeneas in a purple cloak Dido made him, laying out new houses for Carthage, and asks why he is building a fine city for a wife while forgetting the kingdom owed to his son.

How does Dido die?

She stabs herself on a pyre with Aeneas's sword. She had the pyre built on the pretence of a magic rite to burn his belongings and cure her love, and she dies on the bed they had shared.

On which island does Aeneas hold funeral games for his father in Book 5?

Sicily. Storms drive his ships back to the island exactly a year after his father died there, so Aeneas marks the anniversary at the tomb with races, boxing and archery.

What do the Trojan women, incited by Juno through Iris, try to burn in Book 5?

The fleet. Worn out by seven years of wandering, the women torch the ships to end the voyage; Jupiter's rainstorm saves all but four, and Aeneas founds a town for those who want to stay.

Which helmsman is put to sleep by Somnus and falls overboard as the price of safe passage to Italy?

Palinurus. Neptune had promised the Trojans a safe crossing at the price of one life; the helmsman's ghost later tells Aeneas he swam ashore alive and was killed there, near the cape still named after him.

Who guides Aeneas into the underworld in Book 6?

The Cumaean Sibyl. Apollo's aged priestess warns Aeneas that going down is easy, because death's door stands open night and day, and that the real labour is getting back up.

What must Aeneas pluck and carry as a gift for Proserpina before he can enter the underworld?

A golden bough. It comes away only for someone the fates have called, and two doves guide Aeneas to the tree; James Frazer later took the image as the title of his study of myth and religion.

Which figure of the underworld is put to sleep with a drugged honey cake so that Aeneas can pass?

Cerberus. The three-headed dog gulps the cake and sprawls asleep across his den, and in English a bribe that quiets a troublemaker is called 'a sop to Cerberus'.

Which king in Italy is told by his father's oracle to give his daughter to a foreign husband?

Latinus. The oracle of his father Faunus promises that a foreign son-in-law will lift the family's name to the stars, so he offers his daughter to Aeneas before the two have even met.

Which Fury does Juno summon from the underworld to stir up war between the Trojans and the Italians?

Alecto. Disguised as an old priestess, she urges the sleeping Turnus to fight; when he laughs at her, she shows her true form and hurls a torch into his chest, and he wakes shouting for weapons.

Turnus is the ruler of which Italian people?

The Rutuli. Turnus rules them from the city of Ardea, and a prophecy warns Aeneas that in him the Trojans will meet a second Achilles on Italian soil, so the war they fled begins again.

On the future site of Rome, Aeneas meets which friendly Greek king from Arcadia?

Evander. The old king rules a poor village of exiles, and he walks Aeneas past cattle lowing on the ground where the Roman Forum would one day stand.

Which battle fills the centre of the shield Vulcan forges for Aeneas?

Actium. Virgil shows Augustus on his flagship routing Antony and his Egyptian queen, a victory only a few years old when he began the poem, and Aeneas shoulders the shield delighted by scenes he cannot understand.

Which two Trojan friends die on a night raid through Turnus's camp in Book 9?

Nisus and Euryalus. A looted helmet catching the light betrays Euryalus to a patrol, and Nisus, already clear, runs back shouting that the blame is his and dies on his friend's body.

Which young ally, entrusted to Aeneas by his father, is killed by Turnus in Book 10?

Pallas. He dies on his first day of fighting, and the god he prays to, once a guest in his father's house, weeps in heaven because fate will not let him save the boy.

Which warrior maiden devoted to Diana fights bravely in Book 11 before being killed by Aruns?

Camilla. As a baby she was lashed to her fugitive father's spear and hurled across a flooded river, promised to Diana if she landed safely; grown up, she could outrun the wind.

Which immortal nymph breaks the truce in Book 12, then drives her doomed brother's chariot away from Aeneas?

Juturna. Jupiter made her immortal in payment for her virginity, and when a Fury comes to warn her off she cries that eternal life only means grieving for her brother forever.

What makes Aeneas kill the pleading Turnus at the end of the Aeneid?

A dead friend's sword-belt. Aeneas is wavering, moved by the plea, until he sees on Turnus's shoulder the belt stripped from a young ally; he strikes in fury, and the poem ends on that blow.

Which Roman leader's family claimed descent from Aeneas's son, a link the Aeneid celebrates?

Julius Caesar. His clan, the Julii, traced its name to Iulus, another name for Aeneas's son, so when Jupiter promises the boy's line an empire without end, Virgil is honouring Caesar's heir Augustus.

Whose name in Book 6 reportedly made Augustus's sister Octavia faint when Virgil read it aloud?

Her son Marcellus. Augustus's nephew and expected heir had died at nineteen, and Virgil closes his parade of future Romans with the boy's ghost and the words 'you will be Marcellus'.

What did the dying Virgil want done with the unfinished manuscript of the Aeneid?

That it be burned. Virgil had planned three more years of revision when he caught a fever on a trip to Greece; Augustus overruled his wish and ordered the poem published.

Near which town was Virgil, the poet of the Aeneid, born?

Mantua. Virgil pays his home town a compliment in Book 10, where its founder Ocnus, who named it after his mother, the prophetess Manto, sails to fight on Aeneas's side.

Virgil, the Aeneid's author, appears as the narrator's guide in which later masterpiece?

Dante's Divine Comedy. Dante follows Virgil through Hell and most of Purgatory, where the Roman poet hands him over to Beatrice, the guide who leads him on through Heaven.

Which English composer wrote the opera Dido and Aeneas, famous for the aria known as Dido's Lament?

Henry Purcell. Its first known performance was not at court or in a public theatre but by the pupils of a girls' school in Chelsea, to a libretto by Nahum Tate.

Ursula K. Le Guin's 2008 novel retells the second half of the Aeneid through which character's eyes?

Lavinia. Virgil's princess never speaks a word in the poem, so Le Guin lets her tell the whole story herself, including her talks with the shade of the dying poet who created her.

Which English poet's translation of the Aeneid into rhyming couplets was published in 1697?

John Dryden. England's first official Poet Laureate lost the post after the revolution of 1688 and had to live by his pen; his complete Virgil, sold by subscription, was the great work of his last years.

Which phrase does Aeneas sigh as he weeps before paintings of the Trojan War in Carthage?

Sunt lacrimae rerum. Roughly 'there are tears for things': Aeneas takes heart from the murals, reasoning that a city which pities Troy will be kind to its survivors, though the temple is Juno's.

Dido tricked the locals into granting her the land for Carthage by cutting what into thin strips?

An oxhide. She was sold only as much land as one hide could cover, so she cut it into a strip long enough to ring a hill, and the puzzle of enclosing the most land with a fixed length is still called Dido's problem.

Books 1-6 of the Aeneid are commonly likened to which Homeric epic?

The Odyssey. Aeneas's sea wanderings echo those of Odysseus, and the war of the second half then echoes Homer's other epic, because Virgil set out to match both poems within a single work.

What was the name of Aeneas's first wife, lost during the escape from Troy?

Creusa. Aeneas runs back into the burning city shouting her name until her ghost appears, tells him a kingdom and a royal bride wait in the west, and slips three times through his arms.

Who was Dido's late husband, murdered for his gold by her brother Pygmalion?

Sychaeus. Dido had sworn never to remarry after his murder, and when Aeneas meets her in the underworld she turns away without a word and goes back to him.

On which island do the Trojans build and then abandon the city of Pergamea after a plague?

Crete. Anchises guessed that Apollo's 'ancient mother' meant the island of their ancestor Teucer, until plague struck and the household gods told Aeneas in a dream that the oracle meant Italy.

Which prophetic son of Priam does Aeneas find ruling a Greek city at Buthrotum?

Helenus. Carried off as a slave by Achilles's son, he ended up inheriting part of his captor's kingdom, where he has built a small copy of Troy, down to a dry stream named after the Xanthus.

Which rejected African king prays angrily to Jupiter after Fama spreads news of Dido and Aeneas?

Iarbas. A son of Jupiter Ammon whom Dido had refused to marry, he sneers at Aeneas as a second Paris with perfumed hair and an unmanly following, and his prayer is what turns Jupiter's eyes to Carthage.

In the Aeneid, which queen champions Turnus as her daughter's husband, then hangs herself believing him dead?

Amata. Maddened by a snake from a Fury's hair, she fakes a Bacchic rite to hide her daughter in the hills; when the Trojans reach the walls she blames herself for the war and hangs herself.

Which exiled Etruscan tyrant fights for Turnus until Aeneas kills first his son, then him?

Mezentius. His own subjects drove him out for tortures such as binding the living to corpses, yet when Lausus dies shielding him he rides back wounded to face Aeneas and asks only to share his son's grave.

Which two friends of Virgil did Augustus order to edit and publish the Aeneid after his death?

Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca. The two changed so little that the poem's incomplete lines were left just as they stood, and a number of verses in the Aeneid still break off halfway.

Jupiter foretells that Aeneas's son will found which city, where his line rules for 300 years before Rome?

Alba Longa. Jupiter's prophecy gives Aeneas three years of rule, his son thirty and the new city three hundred, ending when a priestess there bears Mars the twins Romulus and Remus.

Which French composer turned the Aeneid into the grand opera Les Troyens?

Hector Berlioz. He wrote the libretto himself, and the huge two-part opera then lay neglected for decades, only winning its place on the stage in the twentieth century.

Which Nobel-winning Irish poet translated Book 6 of the Aeneid?

Seamus Heaney. He began it after his own father died in 1986, drawn to the hero's quest to meet his father's shade, and his family published the finished version in 2016, after his death in 2013.

Which god, furious at Juno's meddling in his realm, calms the storm that scatters Aeneas's ships?

Neptune treats a storm raised without his leave as an insult to his rule of the sea, so he scolds the winds home and smooths the waves.

Dido's dying curse of endless hatred for Aeneas's descendants foreshadows which later conflicts?

The Punic Wars, three struggles that ended with Rome razing Carthage in 146 BC, get a mythical cause here. Many readers take the avenger Dido calls for to be Hannibal.

Which underworld figure in a rust-coloured boat at first refuses to take the living Aeneas aboard?

Charon protests that his boat is for the dead and relents only at the sight of Aeneas's token. The patched skiff groans and leaks under the weight of a living man.

Aeneas leaves the underworld through the gate of false dreams, which Virgil makes of what material?

Ivory forms the gate that sends deceptive dreams to the living, while true visions pass through its twin of horn. Why Virgil sends his hero out the false way has puzzled readers ever since.

How does Dido's shade respond when Aeneas tearfully pleads with her in the underworld in Book 6?

She turns away in silence, eyes fixed on the ground and as unmoved as flint, then slips back to her first husband's shade. It is Aeneas who is left weeping.

Into what does the goddess Cybele transform Aeneas's ships when Turnus attacks the Trojan camp?

Sea nymphs surface where the ships plunged under. The hulls were cut from Cybele's sacred pines, and Jupiter had sworn they would become immortal once they reached Italy.

Aeneas's son Iulus sparks war in Latium by shooting which pet of the royal herdsman's family?

A stag, hand-reared by the herdsman's daughter Silvia, who twined its antlers with garlands, limps home wounded. The furious farmers grab weapons, and the first blood is shed.

Besides his family, what sacred objects does Aeneas carry from burning Troy to a new home in Italy?

The household gods are entrusted to Aeneas by a ghost on Troy's last night, with orders to find them a new city. His aged father carries them out in his own hands.

In Aeneid Book 1, Jupiter promises an empire without end to the people of which wolf-nursed founder?

Romulus, Jupiter foretells, will wear the tawny hide of the she-wolf that nursed him and name his people after himself, centuries after Aeneas lands in Italy.

Which sister and confidante persuades the widowed Dido to give in to her love for Aeneas in Book 4?

Anna argues that a Trojan marriage would bring Carthage glory, advice that ends in disaster. Ovid later tells a legend that she became Anna Perenna, a Roman goddess of the year.

Which loyal Trojan, whose name became a byword for a devoted companion, scouts Carthage with Aeneas?

Achates is so constantly called faithful that the Latin phrase fidus Achates passed into English for a trusted sidekick. He slips into Carthage unseen at Aeneas's side.

Juno's hatred of Aeneas's people goes back to a beauty contest judged by which prince of Troy?

Paris awarded the prize to Aeneas's own mother instead of Juno. Virgil lists the snub among her grudges, beside the prophecy that Troy's heirs will one day destroy her beloved Carthage.

In which part of the underworld, lit by its own sun and stars, does Aeneas find his father's spirit?

Elysium is where the good dwell in Virgil's afterlife. Three times Aeneas tries to embrace his father there, and three times his arms close on empty air.

From which underworld river do souls drink in Aeneid Book 6 before returning to earth in new bodies?

Lethe wipes their memories clean after a thousand years of purification. Among the crowd waiting on its banks, Aeneas is shown the Romans who will one day descend from him.

Aeneas's ships slip by night past an island echoing with the roars of which enchantress's beasts?

Circe had turned men into the lions, bears, swine and wolves heard howling in the dark, and a helpful wind hurries the Trojans safely past her shore.

In Thrace, Aeneas uproots a bush that bleeds and speaks as which murdered son of Priam?

Polydorus had been sent to Thrace with Troy's gold and was killed for it by the king meant to shelter him. The spears that pierced him took root and grew into the thicket.

Which volcano thunders over the shore where Aeneas's crew spends a fearful night near the Cyclopes?

Mount Etna hurls fire and molten rock into the night sky. Virgil repeats the tale that the giant Enceladus lies pinned beneath it and shakes the whole island whenever he turns over.

The Aeneid opens partway through its story, a storytelling device known by which Latin phrase?

In medias res means 'into the middle of things'. The poem opens with a storm seven years after Troy fell, and the fall itself comes later as a tale told at a banquet.

When the truce collapses in Book 12, what wounds Aeneas and forces him to limp from the battlefield?

A stray arrow hits him, and Virgil says nobody ever claimed the shot. The camp doctor cannot pull it out until Aeneas's goddess mother secretly drops a healing herb into the water.

Beside which volcanic lake near Naples does Aeneas enter the underworld in Book 6 of the Aeneid?

Lake Avernus was said to kill any bird that flew over it, hence its Greek name meaning 'birdless'. Aeneas is warned that the way down is easy; the hard part is climbing back.

In which Italian port did Virgil die, the Aeneid unrevised, after falling ill on a trip to Greece?

Brindisi, then called Brundisium, was the landing place for ships from Greece. Virgil had gone east to polish the poem, caught a fever near Megara, and died soon after landing on his way home.

Which adviser of Augustus, whose name came to mean a patron of the arts, backed Virgil as he wrote?

Maecenas gathered Virgil, Horace and other poets around the future emperor. Virgil dedicated his earlier poem on country life to him before starting the epic.

The Earl of Surrey's translation of two Aeneid books introduced which poetic form to English?

Blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, was Surrey's answer to Virgil's unrhymed Latin in Books 2 and 4. Within a few decades it was the standard line of the Elizabethan stage.

Gavin Douglas's Eneados of 1513, a pioneering full translation of the Aeneid, is in which language?

Scots was the bishop-poet's own tongue. He finished only weeks before the Battle of Flodden and gave each book an original prologue of his own.

Which Elizabethan playwright drew on the Aeneid for the stage tragedy Dido, Queen of Carthage?

Marlowe, possibly helped by Thomas Nashe, has Aeneas reach Carthage dressed like a beggar. The play was printed in 1594, a year after the playwright's early death.

In the practice called the Sortes Vergilianae, people opened Virgil's poems at random to do what?

To predict the future, readers took whatever line the page fell open at as a personal omen. The emperor Hadrian is said to have drawn a passage that foretold his own rise to power.

Besides its abrupt ending, what feature of the Aeneid's text suggests Virgil died before finishing?

Scattered half-lines break off midway throughout the poem, and his editors left the gaps alone. Legend adds that Virgil polished slowly, writing only about three lines a day.

Which book of pastoral poems, sung by shepherds, made Virgil's name long before the Aeneid?

The Eclogues came first, around 39 BC. Their fourth poem, which hails the birth of a wondrous child, was later read by Christians as a prophecy of the Messiah.

Which sea hazard, also met by Ulysses, sweeps Aeneas's ships off course near Italy's toe in Book 3?

Charybdis swallows the sea and hurls it skyward three times as the Trojans row for their lives. A prophet had warned them to sail the long way round rather than risk the strait.

Which young warrior dies shielding his wounded father, a hated tyrant, from Aeneas in Book 10?

Lausus fights so bravely for a father who hardly deserves him that Aeneas, struck by remorse, lifts the boy's body from the ground himself and lets him keep his armour.

Aeneas first appears as a Trojan fighter twice rescued by the gods in which older Greek epic?

The Iliad twice has gods whisk him out of a fatal duel, once with the remark that he is destined to rule the surviving Trojans, a loose thread Virgil spun into a whole epic.

Pyrrhus, who kills old King Priam at his own altar in Aeneid Book 2, is the son of which Greek hero?

Achilles had once shown the old king mercy, and Priam says so to the son's face. Pyrrhus tells him to carry the complaint to his father in person, then kills him.

Which Trojan princess, fated never to be believed, warns of doom as the wooden horse enters Troy?

Cassandra is ignored yet again, and that night Aeneas sees her dragged by the hair from Minerva's temple, an outrage that drives her suitor to a suicidal rescue attempt.

In her final bargain with Jupiter, Juno accepts Aeneas's victory only if the Trojans give up what?

Their name and language must vanish, Juno insists, so the merged people will be Latins in speech and dress. Jupiter agrees, and her long war on Troy's survivors ends.

In Aeneid Book 10, Juno saves Turnus from battle by luring him onto a ship with what decoy?

A phantom Aeneas, shaped by Juno out of mist, taunts Turnus and flees up a gangway. She snaps the hawser, and the ship carries the raging hero out to sea and out of danger.

In the final duel of the Aeneid, Turnus's strength fails as he tries to hurl what at Aeneas?

A huge boundary stone, which twelve men could scarcely lift, falls short as his knees give way. Virgil likens his helplessness to trying to run in a dream.

Which Greek veteran of Troy, settled in Italy, refuses the Latins' plea to fight Aeneas again?

Diomedes says he has fought enough Trojans for one lifetime and urges the envoys to make peace. The refusal lands just as the Latins are counting their dead.

By which other name, her Phoenician one, does Virgil sometimes refer to Queen Dido in the Aeneid?

Elissa is what earlier historians called Carthage's founder. Virgil reaches for it where the form 'Dido' would be awkward, as when Aeneas vows he will never regret remembering her.

Which drowned Trojan trumpeter must Aeneas bury before he can enter the underworld in Book 6?

Misenus had challenged the gods to a contest on the conch and was drowned for it by the sea god Triton. Cape Miseno, on the Bay of Naples, is said to take its name from his tomb.

Which mutilated son of Priam, betrayed by Helen as Troy fell, meets Aeneas in the underworld?

Deiphobus had become Helen's husband late in the war. He tells Aeneas she hid his weapons while he slept and called her first husband into the bedroom.

Which ageing champion leaves retirement to beat the boastful boxer Dares in Aeneid Book 5?

Entellus is goaded into the ring by his king, misses a wild swing and crashes to the ground, then gets up so furious that Aeneas has to stop the fight to save his opponent.

What does the winning boxer kill with a single punch after his bout in Aeneid Book 5?

His prize bull drops lifeless from one gloved blow between the horns. The old fighter calls it a better offering than his beaten rival's life, then hangs up his gloves for good.

Which captain wins the Aeneid's Book 5 boat race after shouting a vow to the gods of the sea?

Cloanthus edges home when the sea powers hear his vow and one of them shoves his ship into harbour with his own hand. Virgil makes him the ancestor of Rome's Cluentius family.

In the Aeneid's boat race, what does furious captain Gyas do to his cautious helmsman Menoetes?

Gyas flings him into the sea and grabs the tiller himself. The old man swims to the turning rock and sits there dripping while the spectators laugh at him spitting out seawater.

What living target is tied to the top of a ship's mast for the archery contest in Aeneid Book 5?

A dove flutters on a cord at the masthead. One archer hits the mast, the next cuts the cord, and a third shoots the bird as it escapes towards the clouds.

What happens to the arrow old King Acestes shoots skyward in the Aeneid's Book 5 archery contest?

It catches fire and streaks across the sky like a shooting star. Aeneas reads it as a sign from heaven and names the old king the winner, though he hit nothing.

Virgil likens the weaving ride of the boys' cavalry show in Aeneid Book 5 to which mythical wonder?

The Labyrinth, with its thousand blind turnings, is his image for the riders' interlocking circles. Romans called the drill 'Troy', and Augustus made it a regular spectacle.

What does Jupiter send when Aeneas prays for help during the fire the Trojan women start in Book 5?

A rainstorm bursts from a black sky and soaks the blaze out. Shaken, Aeneas takes an old seer's advice to leave the weary behind in a new town named after their host.

What creature emerges from the tomb and tastes the offerings as Aeneas honours his father in Book 5?

A great snake with seven coils and scales glittering like a rainbow feeds, then slides back under the tomb. Aeneas cannot tell whether it is the spirit of the place or his father's attendant.

In the Aeneid's Book 5 foot race, what does the leading runner slip on just short of the finish?

Blood from a sacrifice of oxen has soaked the grass. As he falls he trips the next runner on purpose so that his own close companion wins, and Aeneas calms the row with extra prizes.