Roman concepts and institutions have been formative for Western political forms and the Romans’ thinking about power has had a deeper influence on Western traditions of political thought than is recognized in political theory. Recent developments have sparked the interest of political theorists in genres and artefacts that convey thinking about politics through means besides distinct argumentation. At the same time, the political turn in the study of Latin literature has opened the field to theoretical questions beyond the range of usual literary training. This chapter surveys issues, such as freedom, institutions, and foundation, which are central to Roman political thought, and maps a variety of methods for approaching how the Romans thought about politics. These include: close reading, rhetorical analysis, conceptual history, comparison with other media and cultural artefacts, and metaphorology. Illustrative interpretations span art and inscriptions, poetry and prose, with excurses on the reception and transformation of Roman political thinking in Augustine and Machiavelli. A sample reading of the death of Turnus in the Aeneid argues for a broad intellectual toolkit.

Human beings become scarcer than before in the simile world of the Aeneid, contributing to a tale about the loneliness and sorrow of human beings who struggle to connect with each other or to affect the world around them. Both Aeneas and the characters in the simile world are marked by solitude and isolation. The human characters in the simile world of the Aeneid share few strong ties with other creatures, and they often fail to affect the world around them in ways that their fellows in Greek epic would take for granted. In the story world, similes highlight moments of furor, the overpowering rage that underlies both love and war and threatens not simply Aeneas’ mission to found Rome but also the existence of a rational world order. Similes draw out isolation and overwhelming passion as two poles of emotion in the poem with little in between. They use new storytelling techniques that appear rarely or not at all in the similes of earlier epics, and they often lack an exit expression joining a simile to the story. These features weaken the conventional distinctions between similes and other components of epic narrative.

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.