Hunting is a frequent and thematically important activity in the Aeneid. Aeneas hunts in book one then meets his mother who is dressed like a huntress. He hunts along with Dido and Ascanius in book four and the latter precipitates a war by hunting in book seven. Similes in books two and twelve present Aeneas in the guise of a hunter. Similes in books one and four compare Dido and Aeneas respectively to the huntress Diana and the hunter Apollo. Aeneas is compared to a hunting dog in book twelve. There has been no lack of scholarship on the problem of the hunting motif in the Aeneid. In this criticism there seems to be general agreement that Vergil intended the hunting motif to be symbolic. The repeated use of this motif urges the reader to look for a significance beyond the literal and for crossreference among the occurrences of the motif. As Hornsby has written citing the motif of hunting as an example: ‘We have come to see that motifs, themes and ideas are repeated in a variety of ways and in each repetition a new aspect of the motif, theme or idea is illuminated. But, further, each occurrence reflects on the previous ones, so that we have a series of crosscurrents created in the work, which … reveal not only how the Aeneid is organized but what it signifies.’ However, despite previous scholarship's recognition that hunting in the Aeneid is symbolic, there has not been an attempt to analyze the meaning of the symbol itself.