Does the Aeneid provide a damning indictment of war?.
In a typically 'Homeric fashion', Virgil depicts war in all its splendour and all its folly in equal measure. The Latin wars that Virgil describes bring fearsome heroes together in search of glory and the upholding of family honour, yet these battles are shown to rend families apart as loved ones set out in search of kleos yet, inevitably, never return. Virgil condones war for the sake of his patron, Augustus Caesar, whose recent victory at Actium, three years before the creation of Virgil's epic, had quelled the rebellion of the Roman commander Marcus Antonius. For this reason, Virgil has drawn comparisons to his patron's success with that of his protagonist, Aeneas, who has been portrayed to be an excellent warrior and fatherly figure, as the consistent use of the stock epithet "Father Aeneas" attests to. According to Roman mythology, Augustus Caesar was a descendant of Aeneas, from the stock of the sky-father Jupiter himself. Jupiter's divine power is often portrayed; even among other gods he displays his omnipotent judgment and retains their respect, "But now let it be. A treaty has been decided upon. Accept it, and be content." By flaunting his patron's supposedly divine lineage and by using metaphors and similes to describe Aeneas as, for example, Aegaeon, who had the courage and strength to stand against Jupiter himself, Virgil gains the respect of his audience.
But Virgil also addresses war as a barbaric, inhumane occupation that tears families apart and shatters nations. In book II, Virgil shows how Greek victory at Troy was won only by the deceit of Ulixes, an inglorious success which Virgil uses as a device to create dramatic tension and irony as the story of Sidon's duplicity is told by Aeneas retrospectively. Similarly, Virgil's mythological wars create great pathos for his characters. Evander, for example, is a man whose simple, peaceful existence suggests he is a character who the audience will want to sympathise with.
