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The Embodiment Of Piety In Vergil's The Aeneid

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In his epic poem, The Aeneid, Vergil depicts Aeneas, who seeks to establish a new home for his people in Italy. Along the way, Aeneas is faced with many challenges, including his war against Turnus and the Rutulians. However, Aeneas is depicted as determined to accomplish his goal of establishing Rome. This paper will explore Vergil’s choice to portraying Aeneas as a nontraditional epic hero, driven by his sense of duty towards his country, family, and religion, known as the Roman ideal of piety while also exploring Vergil 's depiction of Turnus as the opposite. In his epic poem The Aeneid, Vergil portrays Aeneas as an embodiment of the Roman ideal of piety, while depicting Turnus as a brash and reckless leader who lacks piety in order to emphasize the significance of one’s duty to their family, the gods, and Rome as a whole.

This contributes to the idea that Aeneas is the embodiment of piety because Vergil uses an epithet to depict Aeneas, him as “duty-bound,” ultimately tying the character of Aeneas to this idea of piety or one’s duty. In doing so, Vergil is highlighting Aeneas’ piety as his defining characteristic that will shape his actions throughout the book as he seeks to establish Rome, which is also made apparent in this book when he brings him household gods, or penates, with him, with the diction of snatched them showing that he prioritizes them to save them from the enemy showing that he is not only dutiful to his country but also the gods, which further

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