The Classical Tradition

At the beginning of the Aeneid Virgil related how the Trojan fleet, sailing to Carthage, was just out of sight of land when it was struck by a massive storm. The winds crashed upon the sea, sending huge breakers rolling to the shores. Sailors shouted out as the sky and daylight disappeared behind the dark clouds; thunder shook the poles; the only light came from constant flashes of lightning. Aeneas cried out to the heavens in despair as the north wind struck his ship's sail and flung the waves to the sky. Oars were smashed by a mountain of water that battered the ship with full force; the waves rose and then fell so as to expose the sea-bed. The south wind threw three ships onto the rocks; the east wind drove three others onto sandbanks. Before Aeneas's very eyes an enormous wave crashed onto another ship, throwing the helmsman overboard as the ship was sucked under in a whirlpool. Here and there drowning sailors could be seen in the water, amid floating wreckage and possessions (Aeneid 1.81–123). It is a scene of dramatic action and powerful emotion.

Virgil's opening scene became the obligatory model for subsequent storms at sea in classical literature. He himself looked back to the storms in the Odyssey, particularly the first storm that struck Odysseus on his journey towards Ithaca (5.291–370), a scene that Virgil reworked. In doing so, Virgil marked the Aeneid from the outset as epic, dealing with themes on a cosmic scale. As Poseidon summoned the storm in the Odyssey, so in the Aeneid Juno, attempting to prevent the Trojans from establishing themselves in her beloved Carthage, commanded Aeolus, king of the winds, to release the four winds from their prison and descend upon the sea. As Athene took pity on Odysseus and calmed the winds, so Neptune, outraged by Aeolus's usurpation of his powers, quelled the storm and rescued the Trojans. Virgil's storm introduces the key themes of the Aeneid: the fragility of the Trojans in their search for a home; the vulnerability and yet resilience of Aeneas himself; the cosmic struggle between the gods as it is to be played out in future generations in the struggles between Rome and her neighbours, particularly the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars.