Aeneid Modern Scholarship

Question 1

W.H Auden- how Virgil promotes Rome

Answer 1

He criticises Virgil for promoting Rome as the culmination of history.

Question 2

Philip Hardie- the prophetic passages

Answer 2

Even the great prophetic passages can be understood as muting any triumphalism or even as pessimistic. The death of Marcellus, the resisting golden bough and the exit through the gate of false dreams undermine any authoritative reading of prophetic passages as celebrating Rome’s imperial destiny.

Question 3

Jasper Griffin: characterisation of Aeneas

Answer 3

The characterisation of Aeneas as prototype upholder of the values of pietas can be seen as template on how to rule in age of Augustus. The morals taught like despising wealth, devotion t father son relationships, warring down the proud and pardoning the defeated could all be read as lessons for Roman rulers to come.

Question 4

Harvard School: counteracting triumphalism

Answer 4

Emphasise the aspects of the Aeneid that counteract any Roman triumphalism, e.g doomed youths, tragedy of Dido, frightened mothers, sons dying before fathers

Question 5

Richard Jenkins: Creusa

Answer 5

Creusa as the ideal roman matrona who allows Aeneas to move on and start the roman race

Question 6

Hardie: Dido and Camilla

Answer 6

Argues that these images of dangerous women would remind the romans of Cleopatras recent threat to Romes existence itself.

Question 7

David West: Venus + Juno’s intervention

Answer 7

The intervention allows the reader to see Dido as doubly motivated by both her own feelings and as a manipulated victim of the goddesses

Question 8

Optimists; Turnus death

Answer 8

Read Turnus’ death as the final victory of fate and pietas over the irrational forces that seek to oppose Romes destiny

Question 9

Pessimists on Turnus death

Answer 9

See Aeneas’ killing of Turnus as the same furor that overcame him on the night of the sack of Troy and in book 10.

Question 10

West on Turnus’ characterisation

Answer 10

Points out the increasing attractiveness and complexity of Turnus’s character in Book 12, which causes the reader to been drawn closer to him in bonds of sympathy

Question 11

Hardie: Turnus’ death

Answer 11

Points out Turnus’ dying groan can be read as the poems last protest by the ‘suffering individual’ against the “juggernaut of roman destiny”

Question 12

Jasper Griffin on Aeneid being an epic

Answer 12

Argues the epic form of the Aeneid serves to elevate the theme of Rome’s imperial destiny into the realms of high seriousness: it is fate; its Jupiters will.

Question 13

Olivia Lyme on minor characters

Answer 13

Argues that the minor characters of Amata, Latinus, Lavinia, and Juturna disappear from book 12 in the interest of the dominant theme of Roman destiny, to be seen almost as collateral damage.

Question 14

Jasper Griffin on Virgil views of Augustus’ reign

Answer 14

Suggests that Virgil may have take an optimistic view of Augustus’ reign as he was the ruler who would “restore peace and order to the world.” He had ended nearly a century of civil wars.

Question 15

Stephen Harrison on the anger of the gods

Answer 15

Talks about the ‘sublime frivolity’ of the gods of the epic. Virgil in the proem complains of the ‘anger’ of the gods.

Question 16

Harrison on Aeneas

Answer 16

Emphasises the isolation of Aeneas which adds a melancholy tone to the poem

Question 17

Bob Cowan on Homeric hero’s

Answer 17

Argues that the spoils of war desired by Nisus and Euryalus mark them as Homeric hero’s. The deaths of young warriors due to spoils of war becomes a motif; Camilla, Turnus, and Euryalus all die because of this.