AENEID SCHOLARS Flashcards
Aeneas is a new
type of hero, an unheroic type. His strength is limited, his resolution sometimes frail.
- Williams
one of the tensions
the portrayal between Aeneas and Dido assumes is one between passion and patriotic duty.
- Wallace-Hadrill
Aeneas and Dido are both
victims of external forces, love and duty, brought to bear on them by the gods.
- Wallace-Hadrill
Aeneas’ general concern
to facilitate fate is the cornerstone of his pietas
- Mackie
the effect, haunting,
complex and in harmony with the rest of the poem is deliberate
- Griffin
Aeneas comes off
badly at Carthage and that his killing of Turnus in the closing stages of the epic hurts him in our eyes.
- Anderson
Virgil created in Aeneas a new type
of Stoic hero willing and ready to subordinate his individual will to that of destiny
- Gransden
all great poets
draw on and modify the works of the predecessors
- Gransden
book 6 is the
pivot and turning point of the whole poem - Gransden
the Aeneid is dominated
by fathers and father-figures
- Gransden
Dido and Turnus are minorities who
are trampled over by the great Roman juggernaut
- Williams
the frivolity
found in Homer’s Olympians does not belong in Virgil’s scheme of things
- Gransden
The Aeneid is a search
for a vision of peace and order for Rome and for humanity.
- West
Aeneas is not
simply Augustus.
- Anderson
Gender in the Aeneid
follows Roman stereotypes.
Virgil associates the feminine with unruly passion, the masculine with reasoned self-mastery. Women make trouble and men restore order.
- Oliensis
the Aeneid is not a poem about
religion… yet fate and the gods are everywhere throughout the poem, seeming to be always in control.
- Ross
Virgil uses divine
conversations as a means of including Roman historical and propaganda elements.
- Quinn
the reader’s first impression
is that the human action is dominated constantly by a divine machinery designed strictly in the Homeric tradition.
- Quinn
furor is the most
pervasive and destructive force in the Aeneid. It can take the form of sexual obsession or murderous greed.
- Cowan
the Aeneid generally equates
order and reason with masculinity, chaos and passion with femininity.
- Cowan
Creusa upholds her role as a wife
her nobility in death is that she wants to comfort her husband
- Jenkyns
the uncomplicatedly virtuous
women of the epic, Creusa and Lavinia, prove their virtue by submitting to the masculine plot of history - Creusa by accepting her relegation to the past, Lavinia by not resisting her exploitation for the future.
- Oliensis
we need our heroes to be human
and not too great
to be human is to experience failure and suffer defeat.
- Ross
Aeneas is a mere
emblematic automaton, a wooden puppet lacking in genuine human emotion.
- Ross
there is a sense
of loss, giving a mood of frustration, loss and sadness
- Parry
To a Roman audience
Dido deserved her fate for breaking her oath, and suicide was the only way to regain her honour
the violation of an oath involves inevitably a tragic fate
- Teames
ancient sentiment
did not look for faithfulness in a husband
Aeneas would not have been blamed for Dido’s death
- Teames
Virgil portrays characters
in a way that serves as a threat to traditional gender roles in Roman society while also providing an example of ideal Roman values.
foreign females: Dido, Camilla - possess Roman qualities but are doomed to fail in a male-dominated world, threaten cultural norms
- Reilly
book 4 is like a tragedy
with scenes between the protagonists (Aeneas, Dido, Anna), divine messengers and interventions, with the author as chorus, not only narrating but commenting on the action.
- Gransden
Jupiter’s prophecy
assures the Romans of an empire without end; Dido promises them war without end.
Jupiter emphasises victory, Dido reminds us of the costs of that victory.
- O’Gorman
Aeneas is an instrument
of the gods and of a bigger mission
emerges as little more than a symbol, passively acquiescent towards the will of the gods or of his father
Aeneas is not a vital character like the heroes of Homer, because all his vital instincts and passions are subdued in the service of the patriarchal ideal
- Sowerby
the events in the Underworld
act not as reminders but as means to forget
- Powers
the underworld has provided
a perfectly plausible means for men of the future to feature in the poem
- Powers
Aeneas from the start is absorbed in
his own destiny.
A destiny which does not ultimately relate to him, but something later, larger and less personal.
Throughout he has no choice. He is always the victim of forces greater than himself, and the one lesson he must learn is, not to resist them
- Parry
Aeneas shows none of the
zest of adventure or resourcefulness associated with the Homeric Odysseus.
- Sowerby
war must be portrayed
at least somewhat positively, as war and the making of an empire was very positive for the Romans.
Aeneas must be portrayed as an ancestor of Rome, a prototype of historic qualities Romans had consolidated their country in strength, unity and peace.
- Semple
Lavinia and Dido
symbolise their nations geographically.
proper Latin woman contrasted to foreign, wilder and chaotic Dido.
- Syed
most of the plot is generated
by Juno
her reconciliation to the Roman destiny is the true resolution of the poem
- Gransden
war is shown
as a necessary evil leading to a greater good
- Anderson
Aeneas is compared to Hercules
a man for who his deeds to improve civilisation was destined for deification
same for Augustus
- Williams
the heroic,
brave and self-sacrificing ideal is not necessarily the nobler ideal
- Quinn
the military bravery
and leadership of Aeneas is very sadly missed
- Williams
absence reflects his responsibility, Turnus breaches the walls (book 9)
it is to Aeneas
that Virgil ascribes the urge to kill in it ugliest form…Aeneas has surrendered to an impulse that disgraces his humanity
- Quinn
women who step
out of traditional gender roles are doomed to fail, even if they portray virtues that a Roman man should hold
- Reilly
Turnus’ death
is inevitable and natural so the cutting off of the story along with the cutting off of Turnus’ life is not shocking
- Feeney
Dido and Turnus resemble each other
as obstacles to the divine will that must be overcome
yet there is sympathy and a feeling of injustice
puppets of the gods
- Williams
furor is the
chief failing of humans
the tragedy and disasters are due to the violent and unreasoning element in human nature
- Williams
Virgil is trying to depict
a character upon whom Romans of his day could model themselves.
- Williams
Homeric heroes are great
individualists but Aeneas has to be the social man, who succeeds in leading his group and not aiming to achieve personal satisfaction
- Williams
in book 2 Aeneas
is the typical soldier who cannot resist a battle
- Quinn
Aeneas is sometimes,
under provocation, ruthless and savage.
- Williams
Aeneas fights because he
must fight, in the bitter fulfilment of duty
- Williams
Turnus primarily cares for
himself and Aeneas for others
- Williams
