Aeneid Essay Flashcards
Emily Gowers (University of Cambridge):
“Aeneas’s leadership is complex and often ambivalent. He is a figure torn between human emotion and divine mandate, embodying the tension between personal identity and public responsibility.”
Richard Tarrant (Harvard University):
“As a leader, Aeneas embodies the Roman virtues of pietas and gravitas. His actions are guided by a sense of duty to the gods, his family, and his future people, making him a figure of stability and moral authority.”
Philip Hardie (University of Cambridge):
“Aeneas embodies the paradox of leadership—his strength lies in his capacity to endure and sacrifice, even when it means subordinating his personal desires to the demands of fate and the collective good.”
Denis Feeney (Professor of Classics at Princeton University):
“The Aeneid is indispensable for understanding the Roman conception of their own history and identity. Virgil’s narrative is as much about the anxieties of empire as it is about its glories, making it a text that resonates powerfully in any age.”
Alessandro Barchiesi (Professor of Classics at New York University):
“The Aeneid is a work of extraordinary cultural and political significance. Virgil’s ability to weave together myth and history, personal and collective experience, makes it a text of enduring relevance and power.”
Book 2 Quotes
“I was still standing still and silent in the horror”
“The shadowy image of Creusa stands, Larger than life. Aghast I stood, with hair Erect: my voice clung to my throat. But she Thus spoke, and with these words allayed my pain:— “Sweet husband, what avails it to indulge This insane grief? These things do not occur Without divine consent.””
“I looked everywhere through the night”
Book 1 Quotes
“Persevere yourselves for better days”
“Such were the words he spoke, but he was sick at heart, for the cares he bore were heavy indeed”
“There stood Aeneas, shining in the light, with countenance and shoulders like a god”
“I sing of warfare and a man at war. He came to Italy by destiny”
