The detailed funeral rites for Anchises would have been familiar to Virgil's contemporary readers. The exemplary piety of Aeneas as he performs the rites is another example of Virgil's infusing the Trojans with virtues that he considered uniquely Roman. He habitually imparts prestige to Roman practices, institutions, and ways of feeling and behaving by tracing their origins to these much-admired people of legend.
Likewise, the athletic games that follow the funeral rites have Roman associations with the Actian games, which Augustus inaugurated in 28 B.C., and which were held every four years thereafter to celebrate the emperor's decisive victory over Antony and Cleopatra in 31 B.C. Augustus was particularly fond of the "lusus Troiae," or "game of Troy," the display of horsemanship with which Virgil concludes the contests in Book V, thus attributing to it a prestigious Trojan origin. As Virgil notes, "Great Rome took up this glory of the founder." This ceremonial equine procession was customarily performed by noble Roman youths, some of whose families claimed descent from the Trojans, among them Ascanius, who was the reputed ancestor of Julius Caesar, the father by adoption of Augustus. Very neatly, Virgil ties all of the genealogical strings together, linking his real Roman present with the legendary Trojan past. His appealing to the past for legitimacy, exceptionally forceful at this point in the Aeneid, anticipates the revelation of Rome's future glory, which awaits Aeneas in the next book.
