IN VIRGIL’S epic poem The Aeneid, the hero Aeneas leaves the smoking ruins of Troy with his aged father on his back and his young son by his hand. His destiny is to found a second home for his remnant people in Italy and to give birth to a new civilization. Not long after the Trojan armada embarks, Aeneas’ father, Anchises, dies and is buried in Sicily. A year later, after a sojourn in Carthage, Aeneas returns to the shores of Sicily and there observes the anniversary of his father’s death.

Ever conscious of his place in the chain of generations, bidden to undertake a dangerous and daunting task, Aeneas finds beauty and meaning in his duty toward the dead.

He is not a mere warrior or adventurer. As he stoops to his father’s grave, he pledges to remember forever. The Trojans have lost everything. They have only their will to survive and their few ships. Even so, a new world will be founded on the old, intermingled with the past as spring earth with the dust of the dead.

Here is the scene from Book V of the Robert Fagles translation:

When, in the following Dawn, bright day had put the stars
to flight, Aeneas called his companions together,
from the whole shore, and spoke from a high mound:
“Noble Trojans, people of the high lineage of the gods,
the year’s cycle is complete to the very month
when we laid the bones, all that was left of my divine father,
in the earth, and dedicated the sad altars. And now
the day is here (that the gods willed) if I am not wrong,
which I will always hold as bitter, always honoured.
If I were keeping it, exiled in Gaetulian Syrtes,
or caught on the Argive seas, or in Mycenae’s city,
I’d still conduct the yearly rite, and line of solemn
procession, and heap up the due offerings on the altar.
Now we even stand by the ashes and bones of my father
(not for my part I think without the will and power of the gods)
and carried to this place we have entered a friendly harbour.
So come and let us all celebrate the sacrifice with joy:
let us pray for a wind, and may he will me to offer these rites
each year when my city is founded, in temples that are his. (Book V, 42-55)

Aeneas goes to the grave and offers sacrifices:

Then he went with many thousands, from the gathering
to the grave-mound, in the midst of the vast accompanying throng.
Here with due offering he poured two bowls of pure wine
onto the ground, two of fresh milk, two of sacrificial blood,
and, scattering bright petals, he spoke as follows:
“Once more, hail, my sacred father: hail, spirit,
ghost, ashes of my father, whom I rescued in vain.
I was not allowed to search, with you, for Italy’s borders,
our destined fields, or Ausonia’s Tiber, wherever it might be.”
He had just finished speaking when a shining snake unwound
each of its seven coils from the base of the shrine,
in seven large loops, placidly encircling the mound, and gliding
among the altars, its back mottled with blue-green markings,
and its scales burning with a golden sheen, as a rainbow forms
a thousand varied colours in clouds opposite the sun.
Aeneas was stunned by the sight. Finally, with a long glide
among the bowls and polished drinking cups, the serpent
tasted the food, and, having fed, departed the altar,
retreating harmlessly again into the depths of the tomb.
Aeneas returned more eagerly to the tribute to his father,
uncertain whether to treat the snake as the guardian of the place,
or as his father’s attendant spirit: he killed two sheep as customary,
two pigs, and as many black-backed heifers:
and poured wine from the bowls, and called on the spirit
and shadow of great Anchises, released from Acheron.
And his companions as well, brought gifts gladly, of which
each had a store, piling high the altars, sacrificing bullocks:
others set out rows of cauldrons, and scattered among the grass,
placed live coals under the spits, and roasted the meat. (Book V, 75-103)

                                                                                                  — Comments —

Joe Long writes:

I think, perhaps, that chief among those “little platoons” of society which the Left cannot comprehend, which they react to with visceral fear and suspicion, are those which designate themselves as “Sons of…”  Sons, that is, who are organized to revere, and to perpetuate something related to, the values of their ancestors. 

The “Sons of Confederate Veterans” are of course the scariest to the assorted hysterics – but I wonder whether, in the end, the idea of revering forefathers at all is more alien, more terrifying to the current culture, than the particular identity of those forefathers. I have given history talks to “Sons of…” various wars, and “Daughters of…” them as well; at a “Sons of the American Revolution” meeting recently, I heard of the local camp’s work towards a new Francis Marion memorial, and I know another camp which quietly and tirelessly works to locate and mark veterans’ graves. The SCV gives a special medal to members who adopt, re-landscape and care for a Confederate grave; the Sons of Union Veterans has a grave identification program going on in our state, as well. 

Warriors inspire this generational deference, and careful genealogical searches to establish proud connections; governmental meddlers and other leftist heroes do not. There are no “Sons Of Prohibition,” that other romantic American lost cause – nor “Sons of Reconstruction,” “Sons of Suffrage,” “Daughters of Labor Agitation,” nor of course “Sons and Daughters of Reproductive Rights” (I suppose induction would always be posthumous). The leftist gaze is forward, to generations of the future which they believe SHOULD grow up grateful to THEM (and do not); but it is the traditionalists of the future he must court – only a traditionalist will remember or thank him; the next set of “progressives” will be ingrates by definition, too.

Laura writes:

The leftist gaze is forward, to generations of the future which they believe SHOULD grow up grateful to THEM.

You’ve hit the nail on the head. I never really thought of it that way, but you’re right. There will be no “sons of” leftist warriors. The leftist gaze is on the future, but even traditionalists of tomorrow will not honor their bones. Can you imagine anyone revering the graves of feminists or Fabian reformers 150 years from now? Unthinkable. By then, they will be widely recognized for what they were.

Reverence and piety are dead in the leftist universe. They are evil. All history books must be rewritten to remove the slightest trace of veneration for our ancestors.

When I was reading this passage from The Aeneid, it struck me how this powerful scene most have defined the spiritual institution of fatherhood for generations. What could be more natural than a son honoring his father? And yet one doesn’t feel that it is entirely natural when Aeneas does it. It is almost supernatural. It seems the expression of the most elevated and refined of human emotions.

Fred Owens writes:

My great-grandfather marched through Georgia with General Sherman and they took care of those troublemakers. They trampled up the vintage where the grapes of wrath were stored. Thanks for reminding us of that glorious triumph.

My great-grandfather came from Switzerland just a few years before the war began. He settled in Chicago but he enlisted in the Union cause because he wanted to become an American. He came back to Chicago after the victory and started a business and raised a family and lived to be 98, the last man living in his regiment.

I haven’t been back to Chicago in years to visit his grave, but it might be time for that journey or remembrance.

Laura writes:

The Confederate cause was wrong despite serious grievances of the South against the North and the outrageous demonization of the South by leftists. Many soldiers in that cause fought bravely and courageously. As far as tending Confederate graves, they should be honored, but without orchestrated fanfare that suggests the Union should have been sundered.

Fred writes:

The Confederate dead should be honored.

I had a remarkable experience in 1977, driving through Mississippi. Just for something to do, we toured the battlefield of Vicksburg. I was very surprised at my own intense emotional reaction at seeing this battleground — it was the most peaceful and beautiful feeling. It was the peace that comes after a meaningful struggle. Those men, on either side, did not die in vain.

Michael S. writes:

Fred Owens writes:

“My great-grandfather marched through Georgia with General Sherman… Thanks for reminding us of that glorious triumph.”

I fail to see what’s so “glorious” about destroying everything in your path.

Laura wrote:

“As far as tending Confederate graves, they should be honored, but without orchestrated fanfare that suggests the Union should have been sundered.”

I also fail to see why it would have been inherently wrong to let those states end their participation in the Union and form their own Union.

Laura writes:

It would have been wrong because several countries, formed by any states deciding to secede for whatever reason, would likely have been formed in what is now the United States, creating a condition of perpetual division. Not that secession would necessarily be wrong in the future for some states, but at that point it threatened a nation that did possess some historical and cultural unity.   I can see the arguments for the distinctiveness, even the superiority, of Southern society, but preservation of the Union was a higher good.

Lawrence Auster writes:

Laura wrote:

The Confederate cause was wrong despite serious grievances of the South against the North and the outrageous demonization of the South by leftists. Many soldiers in that cause fought bravely and courageously. As far as tending Confederate graves, they should be honored, but without orchestrated fanfare that suggests the Union should have been sundered.

That is well put. 

Also, the reader who writes, “I also fail to see why it would have been inherently wrong to let those states end their participation in the Union and form their own Union,” is repeating the same falsehood that the South told at the time and that neo-confederates still tell today. The secessionists said all they wanted was to be left alone. Yet they started a war against the United States. They seized federal forts. They beseiged a a federal fort in Charleston Harbor, trying to starve it into submission, and when it didn’t surrender, they bombarded it for almost a day with thousands of shells until it surrendered. They deliberately did this because they knew that the secessionist cause would fall apart without a war to enliven it. 

Also, the Southerners claimed to be doing no more than the colonies did when they declared independence from Britain. But Britain had been waging war with the colonies for 14 months before the colonies declared independence. The only thing the United States had done to the South was to elect a president the South didn’t like and to remain in possession of a United States fort.

Hurricane Betsy writes:

My hope is for the USA to break apart into smaller nations. It was too large, too rich, too strong and is now falling from its own weight. It cannot be reconstituted. These new nations can federate for defence purposes if they wish & if necessary (not more empire building). It is time to reject the call for obedience to the Constitution (Ron Paul et al); this is not doable at all.

What might be a good way for the USA to separate? Well, just for sake of discussion, how about according to ideology? Let the traditionalists have their own country; the phony conservative warmongers can have theirs; the liberals in their own new country will soon die out, stupid and helpless louts that they are, and their area can be divided up by the first two.

Laura writes:

I highly recommend this thought-provoking proposal by a writer named Jeffersonian for dividing the nation.

Joe Long writes:

I hadn’t the slightest intent of starting a fight about The War – that’s why I was so carefully inclusive of the Sons of Union Veterans, who are, truth to tell, rather scarce around here. Personally, I believe the men themselves when I read what THEY said they fought for; I find in that the greatest tragedy of the war, for there were noble motives on both sides (and some ignoble ones, of course). You can find Confederate politicians a-plenty saying that they were seceding, largely or partially, over slavery, you will have terrible trouble trying to find a single Southern soldier who says he fought for slavery – no more than the Trojans fought to keep Helen. 

I would hope that Odysseus’ great-great-grandsons (or, in this context, I really should say “Ulysses”, shouldn’t I?!!) and pious Aeneas’, would have acknowledged one anothers’ proper impulses to veneration without quibbling over a historic war which, truth to tell, might have accrued JUST a little myth in the re-telling over the years. The Rebs (yes, and Yanks) raised the heroes of San Juan Hill and the St. Mihiel sailent, who in turn raised men who sank the Japanese fleet at Midway; in their honor, I refuse to be to pick back up a fight over which great-great-granddaddy (William Berrien Long, Private, 57th Georgia) was a big enough man to put down. 

Anyway that was far from my point, and Mrs. Wood saw my point exactly.

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