(12/17/95)
Juno favored Queen Dido's city, Carthage, above all other cities, and feared that the Trojans would lead to Carthage's destruction. The Trojans posed a threat not only in the immediate present, with Aeneas' obvious effects on Dido, but in the future as well, as the progenitors of the Roman race which would eventually completely destroy Carthage in the Third Punic War. She also maintained a grudge against the Trojans for the ill-fated judgment of Paris, who chose Aphrodite (Venus) over Hera (Iuno) as the most beautiful. The taking of Ganymede, a Trojan prince favored by Iuppiter, had also contributed to her intense hatred of all things Trojan.
Juno unleashes a host of misfortunes upon Aeneas and his comrades in order to defer them from their chosen course, but ultimately to no avail. She bribed Aeolus, King of Winds, to loose his winds upon the Trojans on the open sea; she plotted the marriage between Dido and Aeneas, designed to keep him in Carthage forever; she incited the Trojan women to burn the ships during Anchises' funeral games, and later aroused the Latin women, Queen Amata included, to fury by Allecto, a Fury from hell; she goaded Turnus into war and finally opened the Gate of War herself when Latinus would not; when ultimately none of her machinations could prevent the Trojans from fulfilling what had been prophesied, she begged Iuppiter to give the new race the name and language of the Latins, and not the Trojans, so that if the blood line must be continued, at very least the memory of Troy might be erased.
(12/17/95)