relationships between parents and children

• Aeneas' relationships with his father and son are essential to the Aeneid
• little evidence as to how Aeneas relates to his family
• the family bond between the generations, the responsibility has for the other and the respect shown to elders is more Virgil's concern
• Aeneas looks up to Anchises
• he will not abandon his father in Troy, and even after his father died, Aeneas still seems to rely on him
• he tells Dido that his father has been continually warning him in dreams to leave for Italy
• when he visits the Sibyl to get Apollo's prophecies, he asks to make the journey to see his father
• the wisdom of the forefathers is precious, and very relevant in a poem in which a return to traditional values is a key theme
• only scene that shows human warmth is in the Underworld
• a cruel reminder of the finality of death
• Aeneas stretches out his arms out to hug his father, but the insubstantial ghost slips through his grasp
• the image is made more poignant for being a repetition of what happened when Aeneas met the ghost of Creusa
• the fact that it is his father who shows him the parade of Roman heroes reinforces the sense of continuity between the age of the heroes and Augustan Rome
• relationship between Aeneas and Iulus is best summed up in book 12
• he kisses his soon affectionately (but through the helmet, with no great show of emotion), and instils in him the importance of following good examples of his elders
• Aeneas has no real relationship with his mother
• she intervenes to help him throughout the story, but never engages with him as a mother
• Ascanius makes a brief reference to Creusa in bk 9, when he promises that he will care for Euryalus' mother as though she were his own
• when she laments for her son (bk 9), Ascanius sends her back into the house because she is 'fanning the flames of their grief'
• Virgil doesn't explore Amata and Lavinia's relationship
• he shoes a very strong bond between Amata and Turnus who addresses her as a mother (bk 12)
• the relationships of Mezentius and Lausus, and Evander and Pallas are strong