Troy is fated to destruction so that Aeneas will fulfil World Fate in settling in Hesperia, as Hector and Creusa tell him, Venus and Creusa convincing him that his Homeric defence of Troy is contrary to fate. Latinus assents to Aeneas as the fated husband of his daughter Lavinia, but is forced to open the Gates of Janus against Aeneas by Amata, whose rejection of known fate sways the day. Turnus knows fate but resists it out of his Homeric sense of honour, which makes him commit mistakes on a general scale, as in the ambush on Aeneas’ troops. Ultimately, however, he comes to accept the importance of fate, and un-Homerically to face Aeneas alone as a sacrifice one-for-all. Aeneas gradually wishes to assent to fate, as when he follows the advice of Nautes to ‘follow’ where fate leads, and in particular when Anchises in the Underworld fires Aeneas with a desire for what is to be. He counters Turnus’ Homeric individualism by his focus on the wider vision of World Fate. However, when he kills Turnus he fails Stoicism, which commended clementia. He therefore remains a Stoic ‘progressor’, not a Sage, even though he does set the stage for World Fate and the formation of Rome.

The figures of Dido and Aeneas in Aeneid 4 illustrate how Virgil adopts Stoic belief in human responsibility. Dido’s naturally determined disposition to fall in love with Aeneas is indeed Homerically co-motivated with Venus and Juno (who can be viewed as Stoic ‘impressions’), but she allows it to resist ‘incognitively’ what she knows from Aeneas and the prophets is fate, Aeneas’ duty to ‘follow Italy’. She is ‘dragged’ by fate through her own noble disposition when she realises her wrongdoing and wishes for her death. Otherwise, her career and her curses on Rome illustrate perfectly the Stoic chain of fate’s causality. Aeneas, despite his growing knowledge of his fate and his natural disposition to fulfil it, at first rejects it because of his Stoically ‘incognitive’ loneliness. In his speech to Dido, he reveals that his assent to fate is still shaky when he states that he is not following Italy ‘of my own will’. The oak simile captures his situation: ‘his mind remains unmoved, tears roll to no purpose.’ But after Mercury urges him to perform his duty to fate, he obeys, ‘rejoicing’ , finally giving his assent to fate, but remaining very much a Stoic ‘moral progressor’.