I did not begin this project with answers.

Aurelia was born in the pauses of repeated reading:
when I found myself returning again and again to word order in Latin sentences,
when I recognized hesitation and contradiction within epic narrative,
when I stood before museum display cases and realized—that some things are preserved not because they are beautiful, but because they have been given meaning.

In The Aeneid,
I repeatedly encounter the same themes:
exile, gifts, power, inheritance, rules, and deception.

They are not problems of the past alone;
they have simply been written in an ancient language.

This project is not a reconstruction of the classical world, nor is it a direct response to the present.
It records my process as a learner,
moving back and forth between texts, objects, and lived reality.

Each chapter begins with a specific situation:
an object that is carried, a crown that is passed on, a sword that is misused, a branch that may be taken, a burden that cannot be refused, and a danger brought into the city as a gift.

Aurelia does not attempt to offer a unified interpretation.It is more like a series of unfolding nodes-points at which I pause, observe, question, and record, and try to temporarily fix understanding into a form that can be seen.