In this passage, Aeneas gazes at a mural found in a Carthaginian temple dedicated to Juno that depicts battles of the Trojan War and the deaths of his friends and countrymen.
The scholar David Wharton observes that the "semantic and referential indeterminacy is both intentional and poetically productive, lending it an implicational richness most readers find attractive.
"[4] In his television series Civilisation, episode 1, Kenneth Clark translated this line as "These men know the pathos of life, and mortal things touch their hearts.
In the poem the phrase appears as Aeneas realizes that he need not fear for his safety, because he is among people who have compassion and an understanding of human sorrow.
[citation needed] "Sunt Lacrimae rerum" is the fifth piece in Franz Liszt's third and last volume of his Years of Pilgrimage (Années de pèlerinage).
David Mitchell uses the phrase as the last sign-off in the letters from Robert Frobisher to his friend Sixsmith in the penultimate section of his novel Cloud Atlas.
The line was cited by Pope Francis in the 2020 papal encyclical Fratelli tutti, "On fraternity and social friendship," in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic.