Book 6 — BOOK VI

Visit of Æneas to Anchises in the world of the dead. Much of the philosophy is Stoic pantheism. The theory of the vision appears to include the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis. Ulysses in Odyssey, Book XI, visited the world of shades.

“A recent writer has reminded us that dreams after midnight were accounted true both by the Greeks and the Romans. Hence he concluded that Virgil, in making Æneas issue by the gate of false dreams, is indicating that Æneas comes forth from the underworld before midnight. As to the time of Æneas’ stay in the lower world see lines 255, 535-539. He is in the land of the shades from dawn until nearly midnight.”—Knapp.

“By those who think this book a symbolic exhibition of certain mysteries, the legend of the Gate, with the dismissal of Æneas from the ivory one, is considered a warning that the language may not be taken literally, or understood except by the initiated.”—Greenough.

“Anchises conducts Æneas and the Sibyl to the ivory gate as the one which affords the easiest and quickest ascent to the upper world. They are thus saved the toil of ascending by the way they came, which, according to the words of the Sibyl, 128, 129, would have been a work of great labor.”—Frieze.