The Aeneid by Robert Fagles Virgil, Bernard Knox

wars to come in Italy, ushers his son and the Sibyl out of the land of the dead by the ivory gates along which the dead “send false dreams up toward the sky” (6.1033). And Aeneas heads for his ships and his waiting men.
    The Gate of Ivory is adapted from the Odyssey (19.634-38), where Penelope speaks of the two gates for our dreams:
    “one is made of ivory, the other made of horn.
Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved
are will-o’-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.
The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn
are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them.”
     
    There has been much discussion of the passage in Virgil. Aeneas and the Sibyl are not dreams to start with; and why must they go out of the land of the dead through the gate of false dreams? The obvious answer is that since the other party, the shades of noble Romans to come, must go through the Gate of Horn, which “offers easy passage to all true shades” (6.1031), Aeneas and the Sibyl must go out through the Gate of Ivory. But the real question is: why did Virgil use the Odyssean gates of dreams for the two exits from the land of the dead, one for the living, one for the Roman spirits, back to temporary oblivion? The answer is suggested by Goold in his revision of Fairclough’s Virgil (1999, note 6.57), where he writes: “By making Aeneas leave by the gate of delusive dreams Virgil represents his vision of Rome’s destiny as a dream which he is not to remember on his return to the real world; the poet will have us know that from the beginning of Book 7 his hero has not been endowed with superhuman knowledge to confront the problems which face him.”
    This interpretation is strengthened by the passage in Virgil’s poem that deals with the other display given to Aeneas of Roman history and Roman heroes and villains to come: the pictures on the shield that Vulcan at the request of Venus makes for him in Book 8. After the long recital of the pageant of Roman history right up to Virgil’s own day, that Aeneas sees on the shield, we are told:
    He fills with wonder—
he knows nothing of these events but takes delight
in their likeness.
    (8.855-57)
     
    Once again, as in Book 6, he has seen the future, but will not remember it.

THE SHIELD OF AENEAS
     
    The vision Aeneas sees, the pictures on the shield, is another image of Rome’s future. The incident is clearly modeled on the shield of Achilles in the Iliad (Book 18.558-709). Both shields were made by the smith-god at a mother’s request, but they could not be more different. Aeneas’ shield is decorated with the deeds and names of those who through the ages have brought Rome to its position of world mastery, but the shield made for Achilles has no names but those drawn from myth, no history; it is a picture of the world and human life. On it the smith-god Hephaestus makes the earth, sky, and sea, the sun, moon, and constellations and two cities “filled / with mortal men” (18.572-73). One is at peace and celebrates a wedding, “choir on choir the wedding song rose high” (18.576). And elsewhere, in the marketplace a quarrel breaks out and is to be settled by a judge. The other city is attacked and the horrors of wounding and killing on the battlefield parallel the wedding songs in the city at peace.
    The god made also a broad plowland, a king’s estate where harvesters are working, a thriving vineyard, a herd of longhorn cattle, and a dancing circle on which young boys and girls “danced and danced” (18.694). And round it all “he forged the Ocean River’s mighty power girdling / round the outmost rim of the welded indestructible shield” (18.708-9). It is a whole world and it has no history.
    On the shield of Aeneas, however, the smith-god forged
    . . . the story of Italy,
Rome in all her triumphs . . .
all in order the generations born of Ascanius’ stock
and all the wars they waged.
    (8.738-42)
     
    Vulcan forged the mother wolf, with Romulus and