[involans]

This is literally an essay topic for every high-school Latin program.

It is hard not to see the contrast between Vergil's pathos for the costs of war and the Iliad's celebration of aggressive machismo. And yet the Aeneid is ideologically committed to the Roman project of empire as a civilising force.

The best modern parallel is something like Saving Private Ryan, which combines sympathy for the costs and losses of war in general with full support of the motivations of the particular war. Neither work is remotely subversive (they skate close to being outright propaganda for their militaries and societies), but both are profoundly humanistic.

[ellius]

I took Latin a long time ago, but one passage supporting your point sticks in my brain. Virgil is recounting the many steps that led to the Empire, and he says something like, "Of such great difficulty was it to found the nation of Rome." To me it read like he recognized the awesome power and accomplishments of his civilization, but at the same time he saw the amount of blood that it cost to achieve that greatness. The two were not separable, and the theme was not about one or the other, but both as one.

[cycrutchfield]

That is literally from the first few lines of the Aeneid...