But What Is Piety?

The marvelous chutzpah of Le Guin, to finish her career by writing a novel celebrating piety for an audience teeming with libertarian tech bros and lefty utopians! My delight in Lavinia grows and grows.

And having just got as far as Book VII in rereading the Aeneid, I'm staggered by a) how faithful she is to Virgil and b) how faithful she is to Ursula Le Guin. Her conversation with Virgil is a conversation between equals. 

The model of the book, maybe, is the intimate conversations in the sacred grove between Lavinia and the sending of Virgil: a girl speaking on equal terms with the incarnate Western Tradition. Just a conversation, between a girl and a dying poet. 

Le Guin is aware, no one better, that he is dying, and that we need to bring his lares and penates to a new shore.

"But what is piety?" asked Aeneas.
That brought a thoughtful silence.