Duty-bound Aeneas stood on the salty shore, his eyes fixed on the westward horizon, blazing with the sinking sun. He felt neither the sharp wind stinging the exposed skin of his chest nor the tears shining on his cheeks, only the waves lapping gently at his ankles.

His clothing and weapons lay strewn across the golden sand; his comrades were missing or dead. Even dry land could not soothe the clamor in his burning heart after so long a time at sea.

Where was his mother, Venus? His loyal companion, Achates? His wife, father, son Iulus? “O friends,” he sighed through cracked and sun-dried lips, “would that you were here.” Raising his hands to the sky, he moved his eyes away from the sun to look up at the darkening heavens, imagining the gods watching him with pity. “Or I there.”

Hearing no response to his quiet plea, Aeneas stopped, let his hands fall to his sides, and collapsed to his knees in the receding shallows. Weary fingers clutched at the sand; now faithless, he whispered a final prayer to the heavens and allowed himself to slowly drift to sleep.

Many of noble Aeneas’ troubles had been driven by the wrath of the sea. And so would they end.