By the end of this lesson, you will be able to identify key Augustan themes in the Aeneid, explain how they relate to Augustus's programme, and analyse how Virgil develops them.
Theme as Ideology
The Aeneid's themes align with Augustan ideology: pietas, restoration of traditional values, peace through victory, the Golden Age returned. This alignment is not coincidenceâVirgil chose themes that mattered to his moment. But great poetry transforms ideology into something richer.
Pietas is duty, devotion, proper relationshipâto gods, family, and country. It is Aeneas's defining virtue ("pious Aeneas") and the poem's central value. Augustus claimed to restore pietas after the impiety of civil war.
Aeneas's Pietas
Aeneas carries his father, leads his son, saves the household gods. He sacrifices personal desire (Dido) for divine mission. He descends to the Underworld to see his father. He fights the war fate demands. Every major action demonstrates pietas.
Augustan Pietas
Augustus rebuilt temples, revived priesthoods, honoured his adoptive father Caesar. The Res Gestae (his autobiography) emphasises his religious restorations. Pietas was inscribed on his coins. The virtue linked Augustus to Aeneas and Rome's origins.
Pietas and Violence
The complication: Aeneas's pietas includes violence. He kills Turnus partly for pietas to Pallas and Evander. The virtue that requires temple-building also requires killing. Virgil shows that pietas is not simple gentlenessâit has iron in it.
Peace and War
Pax Augusta
Augustus's great achievement was peace after a century of civil war. The Ara Pacis altar celebrated this. The Temple of Janus (open in war, closed in peace) was closed three times under Augustusârare in Roman history. Peace defined the new age.
War in the Aeneid
Yet half the Aeneid is warfare. Peace requires war to establish it. Anchises's formulaâ"spare the conquered and war down the proud"âcaptures this: war serves peace by defeating those who disturb it.
The Cost of War
Virgil doesn't sanitise warfare. Young men die; mothers grieve; communities are destroyed. The war books show violence in graphic detail. This is not contradiction with the peace themeâit makes peace more valuable by showing what it replaces.
The Ending's Problem
The Aeneid ends with killing, not peace. We know peace followsâTrojans and Latins uniteâbut Virgil doesn't show it. The absence may emphasise that peace cannot be represented, only the violence that precedes it. Or it may question whether violence ever fully ends.
The Golden Age
The Myth
Roman poets described a Golden Age under Saturn: no war, no labour, no property, nature spontaneously abundant. This idyllic past had declined through Silver, Bronze, and Iron ages. Augustus claimed to restore the Golden Age.
Anchises's Promise
"Augustus Caesar... will establish again a golden age (aurea saecula) in Latium through the fields where Saturn once reigned" (6.792-94). This explicit prophecy links Augustus to cosmic renewal.
The Shield
The Shield's imagery of Actium and the triple triumph shows Augustus as bringer of order from chaos. Egypt's "monstrous gods" defeated by Roman rationality; nations streaming to submit. This is Golden Age ideology visualised.
Complicating the Theme
But the Golden Age is also lost: Evander's Pallanteum is humble, not golden; the Parade of Heroes ends with Marcellus's grief; the Shield shows only history's violence. The Golden Age is promised but not presentâalways coming, never here.
Theme Summary
Key Augustan themesâpietas, peace, Golden Ageâstructure the Aeneid. Virgil develops each with complexity: pietas requires violence; peace is won through war; the Golden Age is promised but its arrival deferred. The themes serve Augustan ideology while also exceeding simple propaganda through their contradictions and depths.