Hold on, and prepare yourself for more favourable days

"Durate et vosmet rebus servate secundis."

The title really isn't an exact translation - it's something one of my classmates came up with when pressed - but it serves and it is adequate. It's also one of very few inspirational-sounding things I can actually stand, and in context it is actually meant to be inspirational: it rounds off a rousing talk Aeneas gives to his men as they rest and seek shelter in an inlet off the African coast after escaping a storm sent by Juno (epics have complex plots rooted in complex myths).

It's a good line - very spondaic (made up of long syllables) to emphasise that one must plod on, even if the journey's hard, and "durate" (hold on) is emphatically positioned at the beginning of the line, stressing the importance of endurance above all else; "secundis" (roughly meaning favourable) is also emphatically positioned at the end of the line and highlights the reward for endurance.

The two lines following it are also good:
talia voce refert, curisque intentibus aeger
spem vultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem.

Roughly (and less strangely - Latin has some weird poetic phrases) they translate as:
Speaking such things, though sick with huge cares
he feigns hope on his face, he presses his deep grief in his heart.

It's a beautiful dark phrase, showing that Aeneas can and does say one thing and think another; I like dark undertones. I like the contrast between his message to his men encouraging hope, while he himself is weighed down with worries and pain, and how Virgil brings it out so well.

"aeger" (sick) is emphatically positioned at the end of the line, stressing the fact that Aeneas is sick with huge cares (carisque ingentibus), and "spem" is also emphatically positioned at the beginning of the next line, perhaps raising the audience's spirits before revealing that Aeneas is actually feigning (simulat) this hope. It also makes a nice contrast with another emphatically positioned word in the line, "dolorem" (grief), which by being placed right at the end of the line emphasises that for all the happy faces he puts on, Aeneas is profoundly grieved. His "corde" (heart) is also positioned between "altum" (deep) and "dolorem" in the line, showing how Aeneas's heart is (quite literally) in the middle of all this deep grief.

Ille regit

"ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet"

He rules people's minds with his words and softens their hearts.

If you know anything at all about Latin, this is not strictly speaking a literal translation - but it's rough and it gets the meaning across. It's from Book I of the Aeneid and actually refers to Neptune calming the sea after Juno asks Aeolus to release his winds upon Aeneas's fleet in return for taking the nymph Deiopea as wife and Neptune gets massively pissed off - not because he likes Aeneas, but because he dislikes Aeolus and his winds tearing up the realm that is rightfully his. As for why Juno dislikes Aeneas? Because he's a Trojan (Juno is pissed off at Troy because of the Judgement of Paris) and because Romulus, founder of Rome (which later destroys Carthage, the city Juno is said to love most in the Aeneid), is a direct descendant of his.

Yeah, ancient mythology is complex as fuck, Aeneas does some truly stupid things (which is apparently part of Virgilian humour - the poet himself liked his references and wordplay, including puns, as well, and is also supposed to make Aeneas more human and therefore more like an actual relatable man instead of a standard hero), and as for the gods? They're a large, incestuous, dysfunctional and utterly capricious family.

The saddest thing is that this isn't even my field.

Anyway, what was I talking about?...Yes, this quote describes Neptune, but some (for which read my academic tutor at the JACT Latin Summer School) believe that it's set up to eventually describe Aeneas, hence why I included it.

Speaking of my tutor, he has a thing about Virgil - he really does. He's trying to convince us that Virgil is the greatest Roman poet. Now, don't get me wrong - Virgil is great; his descriptions, for example, are breathtaking and much better in Latin than they ever could be (for various reasons to do with the way the languages work) in English. But I find that the Aeneid can also be very staid, in a way, with its preaching of pietas (essentially, super patriotism) and the view that it's just a propaganda vehicle for the Augustan regime, if a particularly elaborate and well-written one. Give me some Ovid any day; give me his wit, his wisdom, his passion, and his mockery. Give me all his talent with none of that adherence to outdated ideals. Sure, his work annoys me at times - I've admitted this - but for all that it doesn't take itself seriously, and that makes it more tolerable.