Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

Turnus

It's a tough call between picking Turnus or the goddess Juno as the poem's main antagonist. After all it is Juno who stirs up the most trouble for Aeneas, from the beginning of the poem to the end (and she even gets a shout-out to this effect in the opening lines of the poem). Still, because Aeneas never actually gets to confront Juno, but does fight and kill Turnus, we're picking him as the antagonist. Juno put him up to it, but Turnus and the armies he commands still stand as the most immediate threat to the success of Aeneas's mission in Italy.