The Aeneid is not a work for times of peace. Its verses do not seem "relevant" when everything is going well. The song of Aeneas is intended for the moment when we experience the urgent need to orient ourselves to a future that baffles us precisely because it is entirely different from the past, where we always lived. Aeneas leaves behind the ruins of his homeland and wanders the world carrying the elderly and small children on his shoulders. He seeks to find a new place where he will attempt to make a fresh start. He is the defeated man, the one who has nothing left but the most precious weapons, the strength to resist and the strength to hope. He is the modern man. To put it in meteorological terms: the Aeneid is the recommended reading when we are in the middle of a storm, and indeed without an umbrella. After all, it has been like this from the very beginning. Virgil wrote about the toil of Aeneas while trying to remain as steady as he could within a historical climate where the Roman Empire arrogantly raised its head from the ruins of the Republic. The Aeneid begins in the ruins of Troy – and does nothing but demolish what we believe we want and feel, while we are sitting on our own ruins. Fear above all.