A Safe Haven in Virgil

I began reading Virgil's The Aeneid this weekend, Robert Fagles' translation.  Somehow I escaped both high school and college without reading this.  My knowledge of Virgil came from a few Virgil's in my schools in small town Louisiana and Oklahoma, not to mention a Virgil at work in our credit department.  Seriously, I only knew of Virgil through Dante's depiction as his guide through Inferno and Purgatory.  It was time to read the real deal, albeit a translated Virgil.

The quotes below stood out in my reading of Book One: Safe Haven After the Storm.

On leadership:
Just as, all too often,
some huge crowd is seized by a vast uprising,
the rabble runs amok, ...
but then, if they chance to see a man among them,
one whose devotion and public service lend him weight,
they stand there, stock-still with their ears alert as
he rules their furor with his words and calms their passion. (1.174-181)

Brave words. 
Sick with mounting cares he assumes a look of hope
and keeps his anguish buried in his heart. (1.245-1.246)


On isolation:
"I myself am a stranger, utterly at a loss,
trekking over this wild Libyan wasteland,
forced from Europe, Asia too, an exile--" (Aeneas,1.465-467)


On suffering (including fame through suffering):
...he cried, "is there anywhere, any place on earth
not filled with our ordeals?...
Even here, merit will have its true reward...
even here, the world is a world of tears
and the burdens of mortality touch the heart." (Aeneas, 1.556-560)

"No, such pride, such violence has no place
in the hearts of beaten men." (Ilioneous, 1.637-638)

"Schooled in suffering, now I learn to comfort
those who suffer too."  (Dido, 1.751-752)

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