Aeneid 1.36: aeternum servans sub pectore vulnus

"[Juno], preserving an eternal wound beneath her chest..."


The story begins: Aeneas and the survivors of the Trojan War are sailing to Italy. They leave Sicily in good spirits (laeti, l. 35), when Juno, whose reasons for being angry at the Trojans were catalogued in the previous lines, looks down from above, reflects upon the injustice of the Trojans' progress and how this is an insult to her position and divine power, and sets in motion events that lead to the Trojans shipwreck and arrival in Carthage. The line above is a participial phrase - there are no finite verbs - which, like most participial phrases, acts as a big adjective, giving us more information about Juno. This information is crucial to our understanding of the Aeneid as a whole. Juno has been wounded with an eternal wound, she feels it deeply and physically, and yet the reason that she feels it eternally is because of her own desire for preserving it. Some questions to ask ourselves: What does it mean for a divine force to be wounded? Can we think of other examples of divine powers in literature with eternal wounds? How does this compare with modern views of divine powers? What about mortals - do we know anyone who feels, and actively preserves, deep wounds? Finally, is there anything odd about this language, where a divine, immortal power is described in such physical terms - suffering a wound (a physical metaphor for emotional pain) beneath her chest?



One stylistic note, before looking at the words. aeternum modifies vulnus, which is the object of the participal servans and the two words - adjective, noun - frame the phrase as whole. Vergil's habit of using words to frame phrases and clauses can help you to translate his poetry- eventually your eyes will get used to looking ahead to the closing element of the frame, and you will learn to think of the unit as a whole, almost like a building block to the larger structure. But notice what else Vergil is able to accomplish with the frame - by putting aeternum at the beginning and the word it modifies, vulnus, at the end, he creates a word picture which helps us to visualize the size of the wound. aeternum is felt over the space of the phrase, and this reinforces the intensity of the wound.



Now to the words: each word in this phrase comes up frequently in English. The preposition sub, meaning 'beneath, under', is found in hundreds of compound English words - subatomic, submarine, subpar, etc. Derived from the adjective aeternum, , everlasting' , are eternal, eternity. It is actually a contracted form of aeviternus, with the root aevum- referring to uninterrupted, never-ending time, and is related to such English words as eon and ever (though not via Latin). The noun pectus, pectoris means 'chest' and is the source of the pectoral, ''relating to the chest.' From the noun vulnus, vulneris, we get vulnerable, vulnerability and, less commonly, vulnerary, which refers to something, such as an herb, that heals wounds. Finally, the participle servans, comes from servo, servare, to save, keep, protect, (not servio, servire, 'to serve). Whereas servo, -ire is the source of the verb serve, the noun, servant, and the adjective servile, from servo, -are, we get preserve (to keep alive), preservation, observe (to pay heed to, to watch), observatory and reserve (to keep back, save for future use), reservation.