The Aeneid Aeneas Quotes

In The Birth of Tragedy, the German philosopher (and former classics professor) Friedrich Nietzsche refers to the ancient "wisdom of Silenus" (a legendary half man, half beast), according to which the best thing for mortals was never to be born – and that second best was to die soon. Aeneas's view in this line isn't quite that extreme, but it's close – something like, "Once you've lived and died, why would you bother going through all that trouble again?" (For a great twentieth century poem that asks the same question – and that gives the final voice to the desire to go do it again, check out W. B. Yeats's "A Dialogue of Self and Soul".) Aeneas's words pose a more immediate problem, however, since they could be applied to his own situation: he is currently in the underworld; shouldn't he be a bit more excited about going back to the living? In the end, Anchises's explanation of future Roman history is enough to fire Aeneas up with excitement to finish his mission.

Of course, the greatest pain caused by death may be felt by the survivors. As Walt Whitman puts it in his famous poem for Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," "I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war; / But I saw they were not as was thought; / They themselves were fully at rest—they suffer'd not; / The living remain'd and suffer'd." In this case, the words Aeneas speaks to the dead Pallas are a common way of saying a last goodbye. For a precursor to these lines in Latin literature, check out this poem by the Roman poet Catullus.

Were we suggesting that Augustus might have been using religion as a pretext? We were. But hey, it isn't only real people who can do it – quasi-fictional characters like Aeneas can, too! In this case, Aeneas is invoking the gods to break up the boxing match between Entellus and Dares, saying that Entellus clearly has a divinity helping him. The only problem is, Virgil hasn't told us about any gods getting involved, so it's a safe bet Aeneas didn't see one either. So long as the gods often act invisibly, the chances are high that someone will claim they've been acting one way or the other when the moment calls for it.