Carrying a Community on Their Shoulders: Virgil’s Aeneas and the Duty of Healthcare Workers

Abstract

The term “duty’ has occurred frequently in discussions about the role of healthcare professionals in the current pandemic. Duty can take multiple forms in the professional and private worlds of those working to save the lives of others. At times, different forms of duty create confliciting demands, necessitating some kind of sacrifice. This dilemma is not new; it was a central theme of Virgil’s Aeneid, the best known epic poem of ancient Rome. Statues and paintings of a scene from this poem, in which a man carries his father on his shoulders to safety from a burning city, became the most common representation of duty in Rome after the first century BCE and were frequently copied in later ages. Examining how Virgil’s poem and these images communicate the rewards, complexity, ambiguity, and costs of duty can contribute to our understanding of the experiences of those who work to heal others in this lethal pandemic. Like Aeneas, the mythical Roman, healthcare workers have been called heroes of duty as they are asked to carry their entire communities on their shoulders.