The theme of the Aeneid, explicitly announced in crucial passages, is the hope of escaping from history as an ironic cycle, the hope that the tragedy of the fall of Troy does not have to become the model for all of human history. Virgil hoped that Augustus could establish not just a more just society but one that would bring justice and civilization to the whole world, that history might become progressive. But he does not minimize the cost, and focuses upon the deaths of a number of innocent, idealistic young men as representing the price to be paid. The two friends Nisus and Euryalus die together, young Pallas goes up against Turnus and is killed, Mezentius’ son Lausus is killed by Aeneas in an attempt to rescue his father. Turnus is a complex figure. His arrogance and hot-headedness result in his being trapped alone in the Trojan fort, yet along with his male pride is a real grievance against the Trojans, who we remember did bring the Trojan War upon themselves in the past.

Aeneas is in one way an imperialist, establishing his people in a foreign land despite the resistance of its native peoples. Yet he longs for a just war and a just peace, wishing that this conflict might be a war to end war, renouncing any intention of dominating the Italian peoples. Virgil clearly intends a parallel with Augustus, who conquered his own version of Turnus, Mark Antony, and wished to end decades of civil war and establish justice. But Virgil counterpoises this ideal against the reality of war, of the death especially of young men cut off in their prime, especially Pallas, the son of Evander, Aeneas’s ally. On the other side, a motley crew of revolutionaries, from the woman warrior Camilla to the psychotic sadist Mezentius.

Aeneas and the Sibyl leave the Underworld by the Gate of Ivory. The new world of Italy, and the native people there. Aeneas forms an alliance with King Latinus, to be sealed by marriage with Lavinia, but Juno sends the Fury Allecto to demonically possess Queen Amata and Turnus. Against the progressive vision of history that Anchises spoke of in the Underworld, Juno represents the vision of history as an ironic cycle, so that Aeneas is the new Paris, and the new Troy will suffer the same fate as the old.

Aeneas meets with his father Anchises in Elysium in the Underworld. Anchises’s speech expands the Aeneid into a cosmic dimension, with a World Soul instead of a creator deity, a system of rewards for the good and punishments of evildoers, then reincarnation in this world. The mystery of where Virgil derived this imagery. Finally, a vision of Aeneas’s descendants, culminating in Augustus Caesar.

The struggle to reach the goal. Funeral games for Anchises. The women set fire to the ships because they don’t want to go on. The death of Palinurus, “one life given for many.” The mysterious imagery of the entrance to the underworld, created by Daedalus. The Cumaean Sibyl, Aeneas’s guide, and the golden bough, talisman that Aeneas needs to take with him on his journey.

The famous tragic love affair between the passionate, impulsive Dido and the restrained, disciplined, responsible Aeneas. Dido’s madness and suicide. The Aeneid’s greatness lies in its double vision: cyclical pessimism and progressive optimism held in creative tension.

Aeneas loses his loving wife Creusa at the end of Book 2, and wanders with his people for seven years, comparable to the Wanderings of Odysseus, for the entirety of Book 3. His father Anchises dies at the end of Book 3.

Aeneas, taken in by Queen Dido of Carthage, recounts his adventures, beginning with a vivid, book-length account of the fall of Troy.

Jupiter’s long speech to Venus about the glorious destiny of the line descending from her son Aeneas, the future history of Rome. Aeneas and his people land and are taken in by Dido, Queen of Carthage, in what should be a happy ending—but which the audience knows will end in tragedy. The happy ending is for a future Rome, not for Aeneas personally, who knows only self-sacrifice and loss.

A new type of hero, “duty-bound” Aeneas, sacrificing himself for a higher cause, not merely for a future home for his people but for the cause of law, order, and higher civilization. The unique organization of the Aeneid through a series of parallels with Homer’s epics.