family, discharging the duties
essential to the continuance and prosperity of that family with
cheerfulness as well as with _gravitas_; and that his _pietas_ here
takes a definite, practical, and truly Roman form, though it is not as
yet extended to its full connotation as the performance of duty towards
the State and its gods.

All this is quite in keeping with the little touches of characterisation
which we can also notice in this book. In the second line Aeneas pursues
his way _certus_, even while he gazes at the flames of Dido's funeral
pyre, not knowing what they meant. He presides at the games with the
dignity of a Roman magistrate, and reproachingly consoles the beaten
Dares with words which seem to reflect his late experience at Carthage
(v. 465):

infelix, quae tanta animum dementia cepit?
non vires alias conversaque numina sentis?
_cede deo_.

When the ships are burnt he does not give way to despair, as in the
storm of the first book, but prays for help to the omnipotent Jupiter,
in whose hand were the destinies of his descendants (v. 687 foll.). But
he is not yet perfect in his sense of duty; he feels the blow severely,
and for a moment wavers (v. 700 foll.):

... casu concussus acerbo
nunc huc ingentis, nunc illuc pectore curas
mutabat versans, Siculisne resideret arvis
oblitus fatorum, Italasne capesseret oras.

It needs the cheering advice of old Nautes (_quicquid erit, superanda
omnis fortuna ferendo est_), and the appearance of the shade of
Anchises, to confirm his wavering will with renewed sense of his
mission. This appearance of his father, "omnis curae casusque levamen,"
with the summons to meet him in Hades, is, as Heinze has seen,[897] a
turning-point in the fortunes and the character of Aeneas, and prepares
us for the final ordeal and initiation which he undergoes in the
following book.

I here use the word initiation because I have no doubt that Virgil had
in his mind when writing it the Greek idea of initiation into mysteries
preparatory to a new life. An actual initiation was, of course, out of
the question; on the other hand a _catabasis_, a descent into Hades, was
part of the epic inheritance he derived from Homer, and this, like the
funeral games in the fifth book, he might use with an earnestness of
purpose wanting in Homer, to work in with the great theme of his poem,
not merely as an artistic effort. The purpose here was to make of Aeneas
a new man,