... closed to him for the sake of Italy. Kenneth Quinn describes this hero as an 'instrument of fate, commanded by prophecy, but uncomprehending' (152). Aeneas' mission, as far as Western civilization is concerned, was enormous. It is the stuff of legend and fairytale, but in the context of the poem and contemporaneous Rome, that his task was fulfilled was imperative. But Aeneas himself would never see the final outcome of his successes, and it is his obedience to duty (pieta) and Stoical way of thinking that makes him a very Roman hero. Clifford Herschel Moore articulates the idea that '...legendary epic foreshadows Virgil's own age and the hero Aeneas is the prototype of the actual hero of Actium - this founder of the Roman race, obedient to the call of duty, unbroken by toil and disaster, the victor over violence and lawless force, yet human withal, is the ancestor of ...

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