Deliberately anachronistic, Virgil also shows how Roman customs and a Roman spirit are already at work in the context of Rome's legendary past. For example, the Trojans perform religious rites in connection with oracular pronouncements and sacrifices to the gods. Repeatedly, Aeneas prays to the gods, both when the Trojans abandon a country and when they arrive at a new one. A notable example of the Trojans's piety is when they take the time to give Polydorus a proper funeral.
The most important divinity in Book III is Apollo. Although he does not appear in person — he reveals himself only once during the entire epic, and then only briefly, in Book IX — he makes his powerful and benign presence felt through every prophecy Aeneas receives. The Penatës, or Trojan hearth gods, who tell Aeneas to sail for Italy, acknowledge Apollo's rule over them; when Aeneas meets Celaeno, the Harpies's leader, she too speaks of how Apollo, the god of prophecy, instructed her to foretell of the Trojan's future; and Helenus, the "Trojan interpreter of the gods's will," receives his gift of revelation from Apollo. The Penatës, Celaeno, and the prophet Helenus strengthen Aeneas's resolve to complete his mission successfully and convince him that a glorious future lies beyond the hardships that he and his followers must endure.
In the course of Book III, we see Aeneas growing into his role as the founder and national hero of a new society. Little by little, the uncertainty that Aeneas revealed in the preceding books gives way to assurance. For example, when the Trojans reach Thrace, Aeneas reports, "I plotted out / On that curved shore the walls of a colony — / Though fate opposed it — and I devised the name / Aeneadae for the people, my own." Later, when Polydorus advises the Trojans to leave Thrace as quickly as possible, Aeneas first consults other leaders of his people: He is a good ruler who does not abuse his power. And before the plague decimates the Trojans and forces their evacuation from Crete, he is well on his way to founding a homeland. The "hoped-for city walls" that he is anxious to erect symbolize the society he so desperately wants to create; his parceling homesteads and decreeing laws are his attempts to bring order and security to his people.
