Symbolism works under the surface to tie the story's external action to the theme. The Aeneid of Virgil is closely related to the Iliad and the Odyssey in that it refers back to them frequently and uses similar ideas to make comment on the Trojan War. In Virgil's Aeneid, certain symbols refer to the actions of war, while others amplify the side stories within the epic. Some symbols represent in the Aeneid are flames, the golden bough, the gates of war, the Trojan hearth gods, and the weather. .
Strong in its will, fire is seen throughout the epic. Fire symbolizes two things: destruction and desire or love. It shows the heat of desire and love in that one is set ablaze by their passions for another, but it demonstrates destruction by Virgil connecting the two. For instance, Dido's love for Aeneas is seen as her being "eaten by a secret flame" (81). When Dido confesses her love for Aeneas to her sister she says,.
. .Were it not .
my sure, immovable decision not.
to marry anyone since my first love .
turned traitor, when he cheated me by death, .
were I not weary of the couch and torch, .
I might perhaps give way to this one fault (81). .
Here she knows that she feels something deep for him, but she does not want to fall into love again. She has already been done with the flames of desire, and once already they have consumed her. Words such as couch and torch are symbolic here, also. The couch representing the bed. The bed is the love nest where passions are consummated. In consummation of your passions for another, you may be wholly consumed by the feeling, leaving one unreliable and dazed. She dos not want to feel dazed by love. She does not want to be consumed by her feelings and left in ashes by love again. .
Another key symbol in the Aeneid is weather. The gods use weather to express their will. Bin the beginning of the poem it says, "Across the lands and waters he was battered beneath the violence of High Ones, for the savage Juno's unforgetting anger" (1).