
Moreau’s Creusa Pleads with Aeneas depicts the moment in the Trojan War when Aeneas must decide whether to continue to defend Troy or save his family from certain death. This was a final preparatory drawing for an engraving, which would appear in the book of a French translation of Virgil’s Aeneid published in 1804. The inscription’s Latin text is spoken by Aeneas’s wife, Creusa: “If you are going out to die, take us to face it with you.”