Examples Of Pietas In The Aeneid
Aeneas’s Choice to Leave Dido: Pietas
Aeneas is one of the few survivors who managed to escape when Troy fell. When Troy, a city on the coast of Asia Minor, was sacked by Greeks, he assembled a force and then traveled around Mediterranean Sea to find the promised lands, Italy. The Aeneid is about his journey from Troy to Italy, which enables him to accomplish his destiny. After six years of overcoming many hardships posed by gods and several failed attempts to found the city, his group made landfall at a Carthage, a city she brought into being on the coast of North Africa. Characterized by a reverence for the will of the gods, Aeneas subordinates all other concerns to the task, founding Roman race in Italy. Before Aeneas’s arrival, Dido is …show more content…
As a result, Virgil had to show the supremacy of Roman virtues: gravitas, dignitas, and pietas. Among these Aeneas particularly embodies in pietas, and is emblematic of it in book II of the Aeneid when he flees burning Troy bearing his father, who carries the household gods, on his back. Since pietas means to be dutiful to family –specifically to the father which is expanded to the community and to the state in ancient Roman world, Aeneas is not culpable for leaving Dido if we follow the author’s viewpoints. With that said, Virgil seemed to use the love affair between Dido and Aeneas to show superiority of Roman race over Carthage and to provide rightful reason for Roman’s ruling over the world. Dido descends from an ideal leader who 'bore herself joyfully among her people..like Diana'(Bk1,502) to a woman dominated by her passion who 'raged and raved round the whole city like a Bacchant.'(Bk4,307). In contrast, Aeneas is forced to endure his own suffering, to 'fight down the anguish in his heart'(Bk4,580) and to remain 'faithful to his duty much as he longed to sooth her sorrow.'(Bk4,583) His decision to abandon Dido becomes 'a heroic and kingly choice of virtue' (Cairns, 50) an expression of Pietas, an an action worthy of great admiration in the Roman
Aeneas is one of the few survivors who managed to escape when Troy fell. When Troy, a city on the coast of Asia Minor, was sacked by Greeks, he assembled a force and then traveled around Mediterranean Sea to find the promised lands, Italy. The Aeneid is about his journey from Troy to Italy, which enables him to accomplish his destiny. After six years of overcoming many hardships posed by gods and several failed attempts to found the city, his group made landfall at a Carthage, a city she brought into being on the coast of North Africa. Characterized by a reverence for the will of the gods, Aeneas subordinates all other concerns to the task, founding Roman race in Italy. Before Aeneas’s arrival, Dido is …show more content…
As a result, Virgil had to show the supremacy of Roman virtues: gravitas, dignitas, and pietas. Among these Aeneas particularly embodies in pietas, and is emblematic of it in book II of the Aeneid when he flees burning Troy bearing his father, who carries the household gods, on his back. Since pietas means to be dutiful to family –specifically to the father which is expanded to the community and to the state in ancient Roman world, Aeneas is not culpable for leaving Dido if we follow the author’s viewpoints. With that said, Virgil seemed to use the love affair between Dido and Aeneas to show superiority of Roman race over Carthage and to provide rightful reason for Roman’s ruling over the world. Dido descends from an ideal leader who 'bore herself joyfully among her people..like Diana'(Bk1,502) to a woman dominated by her passion who 'raged and raved round the whole city like a Bacchant.'(Bk4,307). In contrast, Aeneas is forced to endure his own suffering, to 'fight down the anguish in his heart'(Bk4,580) and to remain 'faithful to his duty much as he longed to sooth her sorrow.'(Bk4,583) His decision to abandon Dido becomes 'a heroic and kingly choice of virtue' (Cairns, 50) an expression of Pietas, an an action worthy of great admiration in the Roman