THE AENEID OF VIRGIL
Points to Ponder:
-- What is the origin of the city of Rome according to Virgil?
-- How are religious myths and history mixed in this poem?
-- What political uses did this story serve?
-- What was the purpose of Roman civilization?
The Aeneid of Virgil
Of arms and of a man I sing, his fate had made him fugitive: he was the first to journey from the coasts of Troy ... until he brought a city into being and carried in his gods to Latium; from this have come the Latin race, the lords of Alba, and the ramparts of high Rome.
... the saddened Venus, her bright eyes dimmed and tearful, speaks [to Jupiter]... "O you who, with eternal rule, command and govern the events of gods and men, what great offense has my Aeneas given, what is his crime, what have the Trojans done? ... Surely you have sworn that out of them, in time to come, with turning years, the Romans will be born ..."
...Jupiter, father of men and gods ... lightly kissed his daughter's lips; these were his words to Venus:
"... that's enough of fear; your children's fate is firm; you'll surely see the walls I promised you; and you shall carry your great-hearted son, Aeneas, high as heaven's stars. My will is still the same; I have not changed. Your son (I now speak out of - I know this anxiousness is gnawing at you; I unroll the secret scroll of the Fates, awake its distant pages) shall wage tremendous war in Italy and crush ferocious nations and establish a way of life and walls for his own people - until the time of his third summer as the king of Latium, until he has passed three winters since he overcame the Latins.
Then the boy Ascanius [Aeneas's son], ... with his rule shall fill the wheeling months of thirty mighty years. He shall move and, powerful, build Alba Longa's walls. For full three hundred years, the capitol and rule of Hector's race [the Trojans] shall be at Alba, until a royal priestess, Ilia, with child by Mars [God of War], has brought to birth twin sons. And then, rejoicing in the tawny hide of his nursemaid, the she-wolf, Romulus shall take the rulership and build walls of Mars' own city.
Romulus shall call that people 'Romans' after his own name. I set no limits to their fortunes and no time; I give them empire without end. Then even bitter Juno [wife of Jupiter and chief goddess] shall be changed; for she, who now harasses lands and heavens with terror, then shall hold the Romans dear together with me, cherishing the masters of all things, and the race that wears the toga.
This is what I decree. An age shall come along the way of gliding lustra when ... a Trojan Caesar shall rise out of that splendid line. His empire's boundary shall be the Ocean; the only border to his fame, the stars. His name shall be derived from great Iulus, and shall be Julius. In time to come, no longer troubled, you shall welcome him to heaven, weighted with the Orient's wealth; he, too, shall be invoked with prayers. With battle forgotten, savage generations shall grow generous. And aged Faith, and Vesta, together with the brothers, Romulus and Remus, shall make laws. The gruesome gates of war, with tightly welded iron plates, shall be shut fast. Within, unholy Rage shall sit on his ferocious weapons, bound behind his back by a hundred knots of brass; he shall groan horribly with bloody lips."