Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

My relief and joy at seeing him, embracing him, was so great it set all else aside. I felt that night that to have known such fulfillment was to be, in some part of my being, forever safe from absolute despair, from the ruin of the soul. Joy my shield.

I do not know if that is true, but I would not deny it, even later, even now.

Everything was bustle at first, getting baths and food for the tired men. Aeneas had time to tell me that he had patched up a month’s truce with Camers and brought Ascanius back “to talk about what went wrong.” Serestus and Mnestheus were left in charge of Alba Longa and the restive borderlands.

Ascanius had indeed caused most of the trouble, by claiming as Latin ground certain winter pastures used by the Rutulians, and putting settlers in a stream valley the Rutulians considered their summer pasture, and sending his soldiers to harass any Rutulians who crossed the border. Since the border was a vague one in many places, and traditionally porous, these were sure means of rousing bad feeling. Camers’ attempts to protect Rutulian farmers by sending out armed men had resulted in some bloody skirmishes and much menacing talk from Ascanius about leveling the walls of Ardea, to which Camers responded by threatening to annex Velitrae and obliterate Alba Longa.

Achates told me about the meeting with Camers. He praised Aeneas’ peacemaking skill, which as he described it consisted in saying almost nothing. Camers had wanted to come round, but could not admit it. His failed attack had left him sore, chastened, ready to let well enough alone; but Ascanius had been making boasts and threats which he would not endure. Aeneas listened patiently to a long list of offenses, without either apologising for them or justifying them, before he could even suggest a truce. Achates said he had been so patient and so firm that Camers, who was not much older than Ascanius, ended up talking to him, the man who had killed Camers’ father in the battle before Laurentum, as to a father.

So the truce was made, and made in good faith, though both Achates and Aeneas thought that Camers would have a problem controlling the rough farmers of his borderlands. Aeneas’ problem, evidently, was how to control his son.

Although Ascanius had been brought back in apparent disgrace, nothing was said of it that night: he was made welcome at the impromptu feast we set out for the homecomers. He showed neither shame nor defiance, but behaved much as usual. He had been very well trained in manners, and they stood him in good stead at a time like this. He must have been puzzling over the question of what Aeneas was finally going to say or do. So was I. But the evening went off cheerily enough, and father and son embraced as they used to at parting for the night.

And the question continued unanswered. Aeneas had done what he had said he’d do: deprive Ascanius of command and bring him back to Lavinium. And that was all. He said nothing. He was not a man to waste words. He did, and let be. He spoke when he had to.

Ascanius stewed quite a while, fretted, sulked, and once or twice tried to bring the situation to a head. Aeneas evaded his attempts. The nearest he would come to discussing Ascanius’ position was through a kind of running conversation they had about virtue. Manly virtue, that is, in the original sense of the word—manliness itself, manhood. Ascanius said one day, with his youthful pompousness, that the only true proof of manhood was in battle: true virtue was skill in fighting, courage to fight, will to win, and victory. Aeneas said, “Victory?”

“What’s the use of skill and courage if you’re dead?”

“Hector had no virtue?”

“Of course he did. He won all his battles, till the last one.”

“We all do,” Aeneas remarked.

That was a little beyond Ascanius, perhaps, and the subject was dropped; but Aeneas brought it up again soon, at dinner one day.

“So a man can prove his manhood only in war,” he said meditatively.

“A certain kind of manhood,” Achates suggested. “Surely wisdom is as much a virtue as battle prowess?”

“But perhaps one that isn’t limited to men,” I said.

I will say here that the Trojans had not been used to including women in conversation, nor were any Greeks I ever met. For men and women to sit together at table and speak as equals was our Latin custom, which I think we may have learned from the Etruscans. As queen, I could have my way in such matters. Some of the rougher Trojans needed a lesson in respect, in table manners, which they got both from Aeneas and from me. But others like Achates and Serestus took to this as to our other customs without any trouble. When I invited them to the Regia, their wives came with them and sat with us above the salt, and often I invited the women to come when their husbands were away.

“Indeed. Women can gain wisdom,” Ascanius announced, with his irritating, touching pomposity. “But not true virtue.”

“But what is piety?” Aeneas asked.

That brought a thoughtful silence.

“Obedience to the will of the powers of earth and sky?” I said at last, making my statement a question, as women so often do.

“The effort to fulfill one’s destiny,” Achates said.

“Doing right,” said Illivia, Serestus’ wife, a calm, forceful woman from Tusculum, who had become one of my dearest friends.

“What is right in battle, in war?” Aeneas asked.

“Skill, courage, strength,” Ascanius answered promptly. “In war, virtue is piety. Fighting to win!”

“So victory makes right?”

“Yes,” Ascanius said, and several of the men nodded vigorously; but the older Trojans, some of them, did not. Nor did the women.

“I cannot make it out,” Aeneas said in his quiet voice. “I thought what a man knew he ought to do was what he must do. But what if they’re not the same? Then, to win a victory is to be defeated. To uphold order is to cause disorder, ruin, death. Virtue and piety destroy each other. I cannot make it out.”

Even Ascanius had no answer for that.

I doubt if anyone there knew what was on Aeneas’ mind, when he said that to obey one’s fate might be to disobey one’s conscience. Only I could know how the death of Turnus weighed on his soul. I know Achates thought he was speaking of the Greek victory over Troy in a war which, though they might be justified in waging it, brought almost as much ruin on the Greeks as on the Trojans. Perhaps he was.

At any rate, he did not let Ascanius’ definition of manhood as battle courage rest. He returned to the discussion next day. We had no visitors, and the three of us had gathered around the hearth after the day’s work was done, I with my distaff, Aeneas with a little whetstone and my small ritual knife, which had grown dull. He drew it lightly and patiently across the stone. “If a man believes his virtue can be proved only in war,” he said to Ascanius, “then he sees time spent on anything else as wasted. Farming, if he’s a farmer—government, if he’s a ruler—worship, the acts of religion—all inferior to prowess in war.”

“Yes, just so!” Ascanius said, pleased, thinking he had convinced his father.

“I would not trust that man to farm, or govern, or serve the powers that rule us,” Aeneas said. “Because whatever he was doing, he’d seek to make war.”

Ascanius got the drift now, and recoiled uneasily. “Not necessarily—,” he began.

“Necessarily,” Aeneas said, with grim finality. “I spent my life among such men, Ascanius. I proved my virtue among them.”

“Yes, you did, father! You were the best, the best among them all!” There were tears in Ascanius’ eyes and his voice trembled.

“Except for Hector,” Aeneas said. “And on the other side, Achilles, the great hero, and Diomedes, who both defeated me. I would probably have lost to Odysseus, big Ajax, maybe Agamemnon. I think I could have beaten Menelaus. And what if I had? Would I be a better man for it? Would my virtue be greater than it is? Am I who I am because I killed men? Am I Aeneas because I killed Turnus?”