Lavinia

Many characters in Lavinia receive and heed guidance from omens about how to act, what is right, and what’s to come. The first major omen in the story is Lavinia’s dream at Albunea, in which she sees a city and a river running red. This dream foreshadows the war between the Trojans and the Latins, as well as the later creation of the city of Lavinium. The swarm of bees is an omen that suggests that foreigners will soon arrive. Lavinia’s hair catching fire portends war, which is a particularly significant moment because it happens in the Aeneid, not just in Lavinia. Just as the poet tells Lavinia that she’ll marry Aeneas, Latinus sees an omen at Albunea that tells him his daughter must marry a foreigner.

Aeneas knows of a prophecy that when his people eat their tables, they’ve found home; this prophecy comes true when Ascanius makes an offhand comment about flatbreads. Maruna and other Etruscans often correctly foretell the future by reading the offal of sacrificed animals. Lavinia justifies her decision to live in the woods with Silvius because of an omen, and she takes the return of Aeneas’s gods to Lavinium as an omen that their exile has ended. These religious rites are extremely serious in her world, to the point that an omen can override a king’s order.

Pious characters like Lavinia, Latinus, Aeneas, and even Ascanius heed these omens even when they’re inconvenient. Those who favor their own will, like Turnus, tend to ignore them. In some cases, omens can mislead characters or turn out not to be true: Amata dreams that Lavinia will marry Turnus, and Ascanius hears a prophecy that Alba Longa will be an important city. The duel between Turnus and Aeneas initially doesn’t occur because a fighter mistakenly thinks he saw an omen calling all men to fight. Usually, however, omens are essential tools that allow characters to understand the world around them. Omens are reliable partly because the characters are in a story. As Lavinia’s hair catching fire exemplifies, the poet who invented the characters had the opportunity to invent omens that lined up with the story he wanted to tell.