Glossary of Key Latin Terms
The Aeneid, Virgil’s Latin epic on the Trojan Aeneas and the origins of Rome, is built around a small set of Latin terms that English translation renders in several ways. This glossary defines those terms and ties each to events in the twelve books of the poem.
Terms of duty and destiny
The Latin term for dutiful devotion to the gods, to family and to country. In the Aeneid it is the characteristic virtue of Aeneas, and it is displayed when he carries his father Anchises from burning Troy while leading his son by the hand (Book 2). In Book 10 the poem sets Lausus, a pious and virtuous youth, against Mezentius, whom Book 7 calls contemptor divum, a scorner of the gods.
Fate, the destiny fixed for persons and peoples, from the Latin verb for “to speak.” In the poem the fates assign Aeneas to Italy, and his father Anchises shows him in the underworld the race of heroes that will descend from him (Book 6).
The household gods of a Roman family or city. In Book 2 Aeneas is persuaded to leave Troy and settle his household gods in another country. In Book 3 the same gods give him, in a dream, the true sense of the oracle of Delos, after he has settled in Crete through a mistake about its answer.
Terms of the divine and the dead
The spirits of the dead, honored by Roman ritual. In Book 5 Aeneas celebrates his father’s memory with funeral games and prizes. In Book 11 he sends home the body of Pallas, and grants a truce for burying the dead.
A prophetess who speaks for a god. In Book 6 the Sibyl foretells to Aeneas the adventures awaiting him in Italy and accompanies him through the underworld to his father Anchises.
The Latin term for a divine response given at a sacred site. In Book 3 Aeneas asks the oracle at Delos where the gods have appointed his dwelling.