Rhadamanthus’s practice of listening to sinners and then
sentencing them is remarkably similar to the Christian conception
of judgment after death: souls who fail to repent for their sins
on Earth pay more dearly for them in hell. Of course, one major
difference is that Virgil does not have a separate equivalent of
Christian heaven. All souls migrate to Dis, and the good ones occupy
a better place, the Fields of Gladness, within the grand dungeon.
However, in a way this scheme still fits with Christian theology,
which postulates that before Christ’s death and resurrection, all
souls—good or bad—went to purgatory. To a Christian mindset, then, it
was theologically accurate for Virgil, who died nineteen years before
Christ’s birth, to place even the good souls in Dis. Though this
connection may seem tenuous to us, Virgil’s influence among Christian
poets and scholars increased because of these affinities.
Aeneas’s trip to the underworld is also Virgil’s opportunity
to indulge in an extensive account of Rome’s future glory, particularly in
his glorification of the Caesars. Virgil renders Augustus—his own ruler
and benefactor—the epitome of the Roman Empire, the promised ruler
who presides over the Golden Age. That Augustus was a patron of
Virgil should not necessarily cause us to dismiss these passages
as pure propaganda, however. Virgil had good reason to think he
was living at the high point of history—after all, Rome ruled most
of the known world and seemed invincible. In this context, Augustus
emerges as the natural counterpart to Aeneas, bringing to perfect
fruition the city whose history the Trojan hero initiated.
