1. Discuss the nature of fate and how it operates in the epic poem.
2. What esteemed Roman virtues are embodied in Aeneas?
3. Compare Aeneas and Dido. Is Dido as grand a figure as Aeneas? Why or why not?
4. Compare Venus’s and Juno’s reasons for wanting to see Aeneas and Dido married. Why does Aeneas and Dido’s love affair, which Juno surprisingly favors, actually defeat the queen of the gods’s purpose in the long run?
5. What do Lausus’s and Pallas’s deaths signify?
6. Compare Priam, Troy’s king, to Latinus. Are both ineffective rulers, or are their desires to strike peace with their respective foes admirable?
7. Discuss the nature and function of the gods and goddesses. In what ways do they resemble human beings? Do you find any of them admirable?
8. Why does Virgil end the Aeneid, a national epic, with a dark, gloomy description of the death of Turnus, the Trojans’s major mortal enemy?
