A New Order for the Ages

[Valin]

National Review

Joseph Loconte

September 12, 2021

This essay series explores Italy’s unique contribution to the rich inheritance of Western civilization, offering a defense of the West’s political and cultural achievements. Find previous installments here, here, and here.

Naples, Italy — At a crisis moment in his life, the epic hero of Virgil’s mythic account of the founding of Rome turns to a woman for counsel. Aeneas, the prince of Troy, had fled the ruins of his city when it fell to the Greeks and arrived in Cumae, west of Naples, anxious and uncertain about his fate. He asks the Sibyl of Cumae, one of the most revered prophets of the ancient world, to guide him in his journey to the underworld. She agrees, but not before delivering a message filled with foreboding:

You have braved the terrors of the sea, though worse remain on land — you Trojans will reach Lavinium’s realm — lift that care from your hearts — but you will rue your arrival. Wars, horrendous wars, and the Tiber foaming with tides of blood, I see it all!

The Aeneid has been described by one scholar as “the single most influential literary work of European civilization for the better part of two millennia.” It is a story about origins, written by Rome’s greatest poet when his nation was in the throes of an identity crisis. The Roman people had discarded their republican form of government in favor of an empire run by autocrats. Virgil, probably prompted by the Emperor Augustus, sought to give Rome a revived sense of its civilizing mission in the world — to somehow reconcile the ideals of the republic with the fearsome realities of the empire.

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It does not occur to the leftist literati that there are other, legitimate ways of appreciating Virgil’s achievement that avoid these crude tropes. The English classicist Bernard Knox, for example, identified three major virtues on display in the work. All of them, it turns out, are essential for republican government.

There is the concept of auctoritas, the respect that is earned by those who lead and govern wisely and bravely, whether in war or peacetime. It suggests an intangible yet widely acknowledged moral authority. There is the idea of gravitas, a deep seriousness about political and religious matters. It requires maturity, a grasp of the ultimate issues at stake in the contest at hand.

Lastly, there is pietas, which signifies duty and devotion: honoring one’s binding commitments regardless of the personal costs. In the early lines of the poem, Aeneas is called “a man outstanding in his piety.” This quality was immensely significant to C. S. Lewis, the Christian author and scholar of English literature at Oxford University. Lewis regarded the Aeneid, with its emphasis on pietas, as one of the most important influences on his professional life. “It is the nature of a vocation to appear to men in the double character of a duty and a desire, and Virgil does justice to both,” he wrote. “To follow the vocation does not mean happiness: but once it has been heard, there is no happiness for those who do not follow.”

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Today, however, the United States, lacerated by divisions and self-doubt, seems to sit on the edge of a knife. After years of civil war, the Romans looked to Virgil to recover the virtues that helped to establish and sustain their republic. In the end, their political project collapsed into tyranny. Now in the throes of a culture war over the moral legitimacy of our political order, Americans are uncertain where to turn for guidance or inspiration. Rather than pietas, impiety is all the rage.

Words from the Sibyl come to mind: “Man of Troy, the descent to the Underworld is easy. Night and day the gates of shadowy Death stand open wide, but to retrace your steps, to climb back to the upper air — there the struggle, there the labor lies.”