Quote 10
(Aeneas):
"Triply lucky, all you men
To whom death came before your fathers' eyes
Below the wall at Troy! Bravest Danaan,
Diomedes, why could I not go down
When you had wounded me, and lose my life
On Ilium's battlefield? Our Hector lies there,
Torn by Achilles' weapon; there Sarpedon,
Our giant fighter, lies; and there the river
Simoïs washes down so many shields
And helmets, with strong bodies taken under!" (1.134-143)
These are the first words that we hear Aeneas speak. Given that you can think about the Aeneid as divided into a first half, in which the hero is thinking about the past, and a second half, in which he is directed toward the future, it is significant that we are introduced to Aeneas as nostalgic for home – and even wishing he had died there instead of setting off on this quest.
Quote 11
(Aeneas):
"My men, who have endured still greater dangers,
God will grant us an end to these as well.
You sailed by Scylla's rage, her booming crags,
You saw the Cyclops' boulders. Now call back
Your courage, and have done with fear and sorrow.
Some day, perhaps, remembering even this
Will be a pleasure." (1.271-278)
In contrast to the first quotation under this theme, these lines, which follow relatively closely upon them, show that not all reflection on the past is nostalgic. Thinking about the past can also provide directions for how to act in the present – as, in this case, Aeneas reminds his men of how they met past challenges, thereby encouraging them to endure new ones. (In fact, he even imagines how, in the future, they will be able to look back on present challenges as also in the past – try wrapping your head around that!) How do you think this theme relates to the idea of the Aeneid as a whole, which can be read as a poem set in what for Virgil was the distant past, yet which also alludes to the events of what for him was the present day?
Quote 12
(Aeneas):
'When faintness of dread left me,
I brought before the leaders of the people,
My father first, these portents of the gods
And asked their judgment.' (3.82-84)
The standard epithet Virgil uses to characterize Aeneas is "pius." Although it is related to our word "pious," for the Romans this word had a much stronger connotation of devotion to family – and especially to one's parents. As the quotations in this section will show, devotion to one's parents, especially to one's father, is a very, very prevalent theme in the Aeneid. Here, we see this love and respect symbolized in the fact that Aeneas singles out his father as the first of the Trojan leaders he consults about a message from the gods.