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Jupiter is the only god in the Aeneid who acts the way you would think a god should. He\'s calm, rational, impartial. But in one way he\'s very different from what you would think a god should be. He\'s not particularly interested in goodness. His major interest is to see that everything goes according to fate. As a result he, unlike Juno and Venus, tends not to intervene unless things get seriously out of control.
Jupiter is the only god who really has the power to change things. For example, he can stop Juno from making trouble. He doesn\'t simply try to foil her the way Venus does. In some ways you might decide that there really is only one god, Jupiter, in the Aeneid and that the other gods are just symbols of natural and human forces.
You may ask why Jupiter doesn\'t intervene sooner and stop Juno from her futile but destructive efforts to change fate and prevent Aeneas from reaching Italy. If you think of Jupiter as a personality instead of a god, it\'s easy to understand why. He\'s married to Juno and has learned to indulge her a bit. It\'s easier for him to let her defuse her anger on the Trojans than to have her raging around him all day. But even if you view Jupiter as a god, his delay suggests that he himself is also a part of nature. He represents a basic force toward order but other chaotic forces also exist (like Juno) and he must let them run their course. Jupiter and the forces of order may ultimately win, but there may have to be a thunderstorm before the sky clears. Juno has to rant and rave for a while before her anger can abate.
Virgil also uses Jupiter as a way of giving official and religious approval to the Roman Empire. When Jupiter predicts that the Roman Empire will reach the stars and that it will last forever, Romans of Virgil\'s day must have felt that their power over the world was not only right but inevitable.
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