A sign, saying or image that anticipates, sometimes only for those who reread, something that will happen later in the work.
In the Aeneid
But you will not gird with walls the city given to you until dire hunger and the outrage of our slaughter force you to devour the gnawed tables.
Celaeno announces that the Trojans will have walls only after “devouring the gnawed tables.” The strange image is left loose and comes true in Latium, when they eat the cakes that served as their table and Ascanius jokes about it.
Book III: The Wandering, Celaeno, the Harpy
You will reach safely the harbor of Avernus that you desire. There will be only one who, lost in the current, he will search for; a single head will be given for many.
But first enter the infernal dwellings of Dis and, through the depths of Avernus, come to meet me, son. The impious Tartarus does not hold me back, nor do the sad shadows; I dwell in the pleasant assemblies of the pious and in Elysium. There, with the blood of many black cattle, the chaste Sibyl will take you.
We are broken, alas, by the fates, he said, and carried off by the storm. You yourselves will pay for these penalties with sacrilegious blood, you unhappy ones! For you, Turnus, the crime, for you the wretched punishment awaits; and with late vows you will worship the gods. For me, rest is assured, the whole harbor is at my door; I am deprived of a happy death.
Book VII: The Arrival in Latium, Latinus
Each has his day, brief and without return is the span of life for all; but to extend fame through deeds, that is the work of virtue. Beneath the high walls of Troy so many sons of gods fell! With them died Sarpedon, my son; Turnus too is called by his fates, and he has reached the end of the time given to him.
O human mind, ignorant of the fate and the fortune to come, and incapable of keeping measure when prosperity exalts you! The time will come when Turnus will wish he had paid dearly to see Pallas unharmed, and will hate these spoils and that day.
Book X: The Battle, the narrator
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