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Book 14: Ardea
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Metamorphoses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Metamorphosis
Humanity vs. Nature
Love and Destruction
Gods and Humans
Time, Fate, and Poetry
Summary
Analysis
Now that Aeneas has proved his courage and his son is reaching adulthood, his mother Venus asks the gods to make Aeneas a god, too. She throws her arms around her father Jupiter’s neck and asks him to give his grandson Aeneas a place in heaven. Jupiter and all the gods agree, even Juno. Venus thanks Jupiter, then rides her chariot to the bank of a sacred river where she asks its god to purify Aeneas. The river-god cleanses Aeneas of his mortality. Venus then touches Aeneas’s lips with ambrosia, and he is transformed into a god.
The fact that Aeneas becomes a god proves that there is a connection between all strata of beings. Humans easily transform into animals—a lower strata—and can also be transformed into gods—the highest strata. This suggests that human beings have an immortal part of themselves that can leave their body and take on new forms, even forms like the gods that live forever.
Themes
