Terms

Penates Household gods that protect the house and family in Roman worship, kept beside the hearth. In the Aeneid they are what Aeneas holds most sacred: Hector asks him in a dream to carry them away from Troy, his father Anchises carries them in the escape because... Pietas Central Roman virtue, pietas, which means piety: the duty of loyalty to the gods, parents, children and homeland. Aeneas is the man of pietas, and the poem shows its cost, because the same duty leads him to leave Dido and to kill Turnus. The virtue is not his... Fate Order of destiny fixed by Jupiter and known through prophecies, which not even the gods undo. Juno, who hates the Trojans, can delay the fulfillment of the fates, but cannot prevent them: that Aeneas reaches Latium and that Rome is born from his line has been... Latium Region of central Italy, between the Tiber and the Tyrrhenian coast, which the poem presents as Aeneas's promised land, with King Latinus and the city of Laurentum. There the Trojans land in Book VII, there the war against Turnus begins, and there Alba and,... Avernus Volcanic lake near Cumae, in Campania, which the Romans regarded as the entrance to the world of the dead. In Book VI the name also serves for the underworld itself, and the Sibyl warns that going down to Avernus is easy and coming back is the task. Aeneas... Sibyl Prophetess of Apollo, who speaks possessed by the god. The Cumaean Sibyl guides Aeneas in Book VI, answers his request in riddles, demands the golden bough for the descent, and leads him among the dead, describing the punishments of Tartarus, where no one... Augury Reading of signs sent by the gods, above all the flight and song of birds, done by an augur. In the poem augury appears at the moments of decision: Ramnetes, Turnus's augur, is killed by Nisus in the night raid, and an eagle that drops the swan it carries is... Hospitality Sacred duty to welcome the stranger and the suppliant, protected by Jupiter and inherited from the Odyssey. The Aeneid measures people by it all the time: Dido welcomes the Trojans without hesitation, the king of Thrace kills Polydorus and breaks the law, the... Manes In Roman worship, the souls of the dead, regarded as divinities of the family and honored in funeral rites. In the poem they appear as the shadows of the underworld and as witnesses of the living: Aeneas refuses Magus's ransom, saying that the manes of his... Baldric Leather strap that crosses the chest and holds the sword, often adorned with metal. The baldric of Pallas has engraved on it the massacre of husbands by the daughters of Danaus. Turnus tears it from the boy's body and wears it as a trophy, and the narrator...