The only way out of the underworld for Aeneas is through one of the “twin Gates of Sleep.” The question of why Aeneas passes through the gate he does has been a literary mystery for the past two thousand years. First, let’s take a look at Virgil’s scene:

On one level, the level of form, Virgil’s statement again closely connects the realm of death with the realm of sleep – the visions of the underworld with dream visions. Aeneas’ decent into Hades, the underworld, is at the same time a “decent” into a dream world, where visions are not materially real, but rather are representations of the real, as in dreams. The very fact that Aeneas and the Sibyl enter a cave to enter the underworld evokes Plato’s allegory of the cave in which cave-dwellers look upon shadows cast upon a wall as actual things and have no way of discovering that they are only looking at a projection or illusion. But why would Aeneas go all the way into the underworld in search of his father only to gain “false” or illusory visions of Rome’s future? Is the vision of Rome’s future offered by Anchises an idealistic or mythical account, impossible to match in reality, existing only in the poetic imagination? Is history itself – that is, reality – a mythic vision or a “false dream,” an imperfect reflection of a Platonic ideal?