57) and capable of destroying everything in their path (I.58-59). Here she enlists the wind god Aeolus, whose function is to forcibly subdue ( uentos tempestatesque…imperio premit ac uinclis et carcere frenat I.53-54 ) and release the winds, which are raging elements that are inherently out of control ( furentibus Austris, I.50 indignantes, I. She is a character who embodies all the stubborn jealousy, rage, hostility to higher authority, and unconstrained destructiveness that are the hallmarks of furor, along with the imagery of death and destruction, blood, snakes, wind, fire - the earthly fire that consumes and destroys, not the celestial one that plays over the head of Iulus and does anything but harm (II.679-686). The conflicting forces that these terms represent confront the reader in exemplary fashion in the first scene of the poem, when the destiny of Aeneas and his fleet, their ability to reach Italy and found a city, and thus their fated future, is menaced by a sudden, violent storm roused by the angry goddess Juno. In addition, the hero who is pius strives to attain the ability to resist, control, or suppress the powerful set of emotions ranging from sexual desire to murderous violence that are expressed by the words and images related to the keyword that is the opposite of pietas, namely furor and its derivatives and synonyms: they are associated with self-destructive behavior, often coupled with frenzied, brutal killing of others, an utter loss of self-control, and a refusal to accept the demands of fate and the higher powers. As the luminous studies of Michael Putnam and others have made clear, pietas represents a hard-won ideal of self-mastery that includes respect for higher powers, a hero’s sense of duty to the history of his people as inscribed by fate, a willing submission of personal needs and wants to the long destiny of Rome, especially as manifested in the patriarchal obligations of fathers to sons and sons to fathers.
It is news to no one that within the Aeneid, and not necessarily anywhere else in the literary history that preceded it, the adjective pius and its noun pietas are key terms, vital elements of a complex of ideas, terms, and imagery that the hero continually encounters in his narrative trajectory through the poetic world in which he moves.
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