Education Quote by Virgil

A warning disguised as a humble aside, Virgil’s line works because it flatters the reader into thinking they’re being invited into moral clarity, then quietly yokes justice to religious reverence. “From my example” frames the speaker as evidence, not preacher; it’s the posture of Roman authority at its smoothest, where personal story becomes civic lesson. The imperative “learn” assumes the audience is educable and, more pointedly, correctable: you have been tempted to do the opposite.

The pairing is the real pressure point. “Be just” sounds like secular ethics, the kind of virtue any orderly society can applaud. “Not to despise the gods” drags that virtue back under divine jurisdiction. Virgil isn’t merely saying piety is good; he’s suggesting that justice unmoored from reverence collapses into arrogance. “Despise” is sharper than “forget” or “ignore.” It implies contempt, a willful sneer at limits. The subtext: injustice begins as a refusal to acknowledge anything above your own appetite or power.

Context matters because Virgil is writing in an Augustan moment obsessed with stability after civil war. The Aeneid doesn’t just tell a myth; it manufactures a moral operating system for empire, where duty (pietas) is the glue holding family, state, and cosmos together. The line speaks to readers who have watched strongmen and factions treat laws as props. Virgil’s intent isn’t cozy spirituality. It’s a political theology: respect the gods, accept constraint, and you might get a Rome that doesn’t devour itself.