The title 'Arms and the Man' is borrowed from the first line of Dryden's translation of Virgil's Aeneid. Arms and the Man is the English translation of the Latin phrase 'Arma Virumque cano' which occurs in the opening line of The Aeneid. In Aeneid, war is glorified and man is shown to be a creation of heroic militarism. But, according to Shaw man is more important than 'arms' and it is the absurd sentimentalism which has glorified 'arms' at the expense of 'man'.