The Aeneid Heroism

In the grand Roman empire, pietas became the quintessential belief of how a transcendent ruler oughts to endure by to formulate and establish an enlightening environment for their community auspiciously. As an important virtue of Roman tradition, pietas became defined as a leader who is dutiful, mindful, and accepts their duties to the gods, their family, and most necessarily their empire. Moreover, heroism intertwines with pietas which demonstrate the ability to make sacrifices for the benefit of an empire. Hence, in the epic poem of Virgil’s The Aeneid, the protagonist Aeneas is a well-known leader who is also simultaneously an apprehensive and dynamic character that agonizes with fully committing himself to the ideology of heroism and pietas.
Aeneas's conflict for pietas became elucidated when he becomes astray from his fate and remains as an exile of Carthage and chooses to marry Queen Dido wrongfully. Moreover, the passage that will become evaluated illuminates that the gods and fate serve as a motif of what Roman piety calls for and is also an embodiment of Aeneas's consciousness that influences him into becoming the Roman ideal of a leader. Hence, a leader who sacrifices his human emotions to prioritize his sovereign responsibilities. With this in mind, amidst the odyssey to founding Rome, Aeneas becomes distracted by Dido and falls out of his pious trait. Where then soon after, Mercury comes forth to Aeneas and shames him for “wasting time in Libya” and “doting on [his] wife,” thus, becoming “blind to [his] own realm” and “oblivious to [his] fate.” Therefore, the harsh words of Mercury creates a tone that is apprehensive and hostile that then sets a mood of distress to underline Aeneas's urgency to accept pietas entirely; hence, revealing that it can become achieved only by an internal change and disregarding his current wife. By having the gods serve as the consciousness and guidance of Aeneas, it leads him to realize that his personal wants are
Consequent to experiencing the sacrifice of his individual wants, leaving Dido became logical, his logic and reasoning when the god “[vanishes] from “sight into empty air” and reminds him of “Ascanius rising into his prime” and how he “[owes] him Italy’s realm, the land of Rome”. The act of Mercury scolding Aeneas and leaving him abruptly devised a fearful and haunting barren mood that highlights Aeneas's duty and power to serve his people and give them the empire they deserve. It is then that he “yearns to be gone” as a result of becoming “thunderstruck by the warnings” that he becomes flushed with embarrassment at the fact that he has left his people in a foreign land and acknowledging that they are aware of their homeland still being missing because of his passionate distraction. Therefore, causing him to decide to “desert this land he loves”. Moreover, the “land” of Carthage that he “loves,” portrays that Aeneas has the free will to continue living with his lover, because although fate became written by the gods, they remain a mere symbol of human consciousness and authority. Therefore, Aeneas has the power to act as Dido did and write his fate and become savaged by the lust of his emotions, but he chooses to