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The goddess Venus is Aeneas\' mother. Like all mothers, she would like to see her son succeed. In fact, she wants him to succeed so much that she doesn\'t really care how hard it may be on him. For example, Venus agrees with Juno\'s scheme to have Dido and Aeneas marry in a mock ceremony. Venus doesn\'t care because she knows that Aeneas will have to leave anyway. But she doesn\'t stop to think about Aeneas\' feelings when he has to leave. Venus isn\'t very warm. She\'s not interested in having long chats with her son, and she enjoys tricking him by disguising herself.
Like Juno, Venus loves to intervene in human affairs and helps Aeneas out of several difficult spots, but like Juno she can\'t change the basic course of fate. All she does is restore the balance after Juno has tipped it against Aeneas. But Venus\' actions never restore order; in fact, they sometimes make matters worse. She\'s just another competing force against Juno. While she\'s not angry and destructive like Juno, she\'s not particularly admirable, either. Basically, Venus is concerned only about what she wants. If people like Dido get hurt in the process, Venus doesn\'t care.
In Roman mythology Venus was the goddess of love. It\'s no accident that she\'s Aeneas\' mother. After all doesn\'t his great sense of responsibility come from his love of his family and country? But in Virgil\'s world you also see that love isn\'t necessarily as positive an emotion as we think it is today. Venus is responsible for Dido\'s uncontrollable passion. And Venus herself seems to be more a goddess of self-interest than one of true love and generosity.
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