Referenced By / The Aeneid

Adaptations

Arts

• Laocoön and His Sons: An ancient Rome sculpture portraying Laocoön's torment at the fangs of the snakes the gods sicced onto him to silence him.

Literature

• The Troy Saga

Television

• Wishbone: The Grand Finale, "The Roamin' Nose", adapts The Aeneid, with Wishbone likening Joe, Sam, and David's anxieties about starting high school to it.

Theater

• Dido, Queen of Carthage

Video Games

• Warriors: Legends of Troy

Web Video

• Overly Sarcastic Productions
• Unbiased History

Shout Outs, Allusions, and other References

Comic Books

• Arne Anka: Arne's Roman ancestor slags off Virgil as a "fucking dilettante" who only writes about "shepherds and sheep-shaggery" (referencing Eclogiae, the original pastoral love poems and considered to be one of the high points of Roman literature) and "keeps going on and on and ON about the huge epic about the founding of the city he's going to start working on any day now...
• ODY-C folds in story elements from several epics, including the Thousand and One Nights and The Aeneid.
• Paperinik New Adventures: Being this an Italian comic, we get a Shout-Out to the freaking The Aeneid, of all things:
  Zentium: "Personally... I distrust the earthlings even when they bring gifts!"

Film

• Goodbye, Mr. Chips the byline "Hæc olim meminisse juvabit" originates from The Aeneid.
• The Empire Strikes Back: Chewbacca carrying the broken C-3PO on his back in the escape from Cloud City is an unmistakable reference (well, unmistakable to people who've studied classic literature, anyway) to the most identifiable image in the work; Aeneas, escaping from the sacking of Troy, carrying his father on his back.
• The Ten Commandments: The representative from Troy being dressed as a Roman centurion is wildly inaccurate, but is a Shout-Out to The Aeneid, in which the Trojans founded Rome.
• Troy: Paris hands off the sword of Troy to an escaping Aeneas, to the delight of Latin geeks in the audience... though Aeneas is a random teen civilian in the movie instead of a Trojan warrior. For bonus points, Aeneas is also guiding his aged father. His wife is nowhere to be seen, but maybe he already lost her.
• War Dogs is based on the Rolling Stone article "Arms and the Dudes" by Guy Lawson, the title of which is a Literary Allusion Title to The Aeneid.

Literature

• Confessions (Saint Augustine): Augustine attributes his hatred for school in large part to his distaste for math, preferring the idle stories of The Aeneid and other Latin epics.
• The Divine Comedy: Ulysses is in the Eight Circle for his trickery with the Wooden Horse and for false counsel during the Trojan War; while the Greeks admired his cunning, the Romans despised him for his deceitful nature during the War, since they believed themselves to be descended from the Trojans. Heck, that final suicidal voyage that drove Ulysses and his men to their deaths? Dante's own invention. Though it should be noted that Dante would not have access to Homer's The Odyssey and The Iliad when he wrote Inferno, only Virgil's The Aeneid, where he is dubbed "Cruel Ulysses".
• Haugtussa: Gislaug is not the first literary figure to walk through heaven and hell. Of course, Odysseus, Aeneas and Dante have all done the journey before her, but she is quite possibly the first girl to make the trip.
• Historia Brittonum: The book’s main theme is the struggle of Celtic Britons and Anglo-Saxons for control of Britain, and it does its best to paint the Anglo-Saxons as treacherous cutthroat barbarian riff-raff, while extolling the ancient and glorious history of the Britons. The book’s most extravagant claim - which serves to underpin the superior pedigree of the Britons - is that they are descendants of refugees from Troy, who were led to Britain by one Brutus, a descendant of Aeneas (or is he?), and from whom the island of Britain received its name.
• Historia Regum Britanniae: After a brief introduction the history of the Britons starts around The Trojan War after which Brutus, a great-grandson of Aeneas, sets sail with a group of his people to found a new empire, which happens to be Britain.
• Orlando Furioso contains an early Shout-Out to The Aeneid which begins with I sing of arms and the man. Compare this with the first verse of Orlando Furioso, where the author sings of women, knights, arms, and love . As the author was certainly familiar with the Aeneid, this is no coincidence.
• Punica serves as a sequel of sorts to The Aeneid.
• The Thebaid is a 1st-century epic modeled on The Aeneid.
• The Three Musketeers: In chapter 23, M. de Treville quotes The Aeneid by Virgil: "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes."

• Craft Sequence: Telomere appears to be a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Italy. Temoc referenced a telomere legend in which the founder of an empire carried his father on his back.
• The Dresden Files: When Harry learns in Skin Game that their target is to break into Hades' vault he snidely alludes to The Aeneid, Herakles and The Odyssey when saying only about three guys had managed to walk in and out of Hades alive.
• Gone Girl: Amy makes a reference to The Aeneid when she calls their town New Carthage (Its real name is North Carthage; Carthage is the site of Aeneas' romance with Dido, which was, to say the least, destructive). Nick is annoyed that he doesn't get the reference.
• Harold Shea: In the stories, Harold Shea and other characters visit various universes from mythology and fiction. The primary setting for one story is The Aeneid.
• Illium: Most of the major players from The Iliad show up, including Odysseus and Achilles. Characters from The Tempest appear, such as Prospero and Caliban. The Aeneid and the Posthomerica also get a few cameos.
• Imperium: On the first page Tiro says of Cicero that "it is of power and the man that I sing." This is a play on the opening line of Vergil's The Aeneid, "Of arms and the man I sing" (Arma virumque cano).
• Knights of the Borrowed Dark: The Hardwick's and the Order's mottos are both taken from book 6 of The Aeneid.
• The Locked Tomb: Camilla's Meaningful Name is the name of a female warrior from The Aeneid, and was picked to match the syllable sound in Palamedes' name.
• Po-on: Istak, his wife Dalin, and all their relations leave Po-on when it's torched by colonial police, and spend the rest of the book's first half fleeing south à la The Aeneid, dodging headhunting tribes and man-eating snakes, crossing treacherous rivers and evading the Guardia Civil, until they settle and make a new home in the flatter Pangasinan plains.
• Radiance: One Meaningful Name has ties to the ancient epic. "Anchises" was a lover of Venus, most famous as the father of Aeneas.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Princess Nymeria acts as an Expy of Aeneas from The Aeneid. Both led their respective peoples across the sea to find a home after being all but exterminated in war
• Stalky & Co.: At one point, copying out several hundred lines of The Aeneid is imposed as a punishment.
• The Summer Before the War: Snout may be a messy street urchin, but he has great taste in literature, and knows The Aeneid better than anyone else.
• The entire book, The Vagina Ass of Lucifer Niggerbastard, is a vulgar reference to Virgil's The Aeneid.

Live Action TV

• Once Upon a Time: While interrogating Hook, Emma says, "So much for fortune favoring the brave" a reference to Latin phrase "AVDENTES FORTVNA IVVAT," found in The Aeneid.
• Red Dwarf: Kryten describes Virgil's Aeneid as "the epic story of Agamemnon's pursuit of Helen of Troy". That's at best a pretty loose and misleading description of what the story's actually about.
• Reign: Mary's ladies claim Lord Castleroy can redirect any conversation topic to the spices. They're probably right — Greer brings up Virgil and his Aeneid, and he manages to make the conversation about pepper.
• Shadowhunters has an episode titled "The Descent Into Hell Isn’t Easy".
• Torchwood: The expression "Greeks bearing gifts" from Virgil's The Aeneid is used for the title of one episode.
• Troy: Fall of a City: The last two shots of the final episode are of Aeneas gathering survivors, and Odysseus departing on his ship, setting up potential following seasons for The Odyssey and The Aeneid. The writers have stated that there will probably be a Season 2 covering the Odyssey.

Music

• The Cruxshadows: DreamCypher, references Virgil's The Aeneid, about the journey of refugees from Troy to what would later become Rome.
• Manilla Road's Gates of Fire is essentially three mini concept albums in one; tracks 1-3 are based on "The Frost-Giant's Daughter", tracks 4-6 on The Aeneid, and tracks 7-9 on the Battle of Thermopylae.
• The Mars Volta: "Facilis descenus Averni" is a slight misspelling of a quotation from Virgil's The Aeneid; the correct spelling is "Facilis descensus Averno" (or "Facilis dēscensus Avernō"). It appears in Book VI, Line 126.
• Stormlord: Hesperia (2013) is a concept album based on The Aeneid

Theater

• Arms and the Man: The title alludes to the first two words of The Aeneid.^note Arma virumque...
• A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino: The titular portrait, while never meant to be revealed directly (at least on stage), is described as depicting Aeneas carrying his decrepit father Anchises on his back as they flee the burning Troy. Don Lorenzo used his own likeness for both father and son—the former based on his current old age, the latter based on himself in his youth.
• Spring Awakening: At the beginning, background, and end of "All That's Known" there is a neat variation on the usual Ominous Latin Chanting: they're chanting a passage from The Aeneid as part of a Latin class.
• The Taming of the Shrew: Tranio is Lucentio's confidant, who compares him to a famous literary confidant from Virgil's The Aeneid: "That are to me as secret and as dear/As Anna to the Queen of Carthage was."

Video Games

• Journey (2012): The One-Woman Wail credits song, "I Was Born For This", consists of lyrics not only from many different languages but derived from several classic sources:
  Stat sua cuique dies
  To each his day is given (Latin, The Aeneid)
  Mæl is me to feran
  Time is it for me to go (Old English, Beowulf)
  Aleto men moi nostos
  Lost is my homecoming (Greek, The Iliad)
  C’est pour cela que je suis née
  I was born for this (French, Joan of Arc)
  Kono michi ya, Yuku hito nashini^note though the singer pronounces nashini as 'nishini'
  Kono michi ya, Aki no kure
  Along this road, goes no one
  Along this road, this Autumn eve (Japanese, Matsuo Basho)
  C’est pour cela que je suis née, ne me plaignez pas
  C’est pour cela que je suis née
  I was born for this, do not pity me
  I was born for this (French, Joan of Arc)
• The first level of Marathon Infinity is named "Ne cede malis", a direct quote from The Aeneid 6.95 (it means "Do Not Yield to Misfortune").

Real Life

• British MP Enoch Powell quoted from The Aeneid for his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech.