aeneid scholarship Flashcards
Braund on Aeneas
“proto-Roman”
Harrison on Aeneas’ emotions
who for?
“suppression of emotion… a key virtue”
romans
Anderson on Aeneas’ emotions
when Aeneas suppresses emotions, he aligns himself with order
Harrison on how Aeneas feels
“Aeneas often feels depressed and isolated”
Williams on Aeneas’ heroism
“he is not less than Homeric in his heroism”
Williams on Aeneas’ narration of bk 2
“Aeneas’ character emerges from his own words”
Griffin on Aeneas’ family
“ideal Virgilian family”
Williams on Aeneas in Carthage
“furthest from Rome’s destiny”
Braund on Aeneas in book 5
“sees Aeneas growing as a leader”
Williams on Aeneas in book 6
“crucial for the development of Aeneas”
Harrison on Aeneas
warrior and general
“Number 1 warrior, 5 Star general”
Morgan on Aeneas and Turnus
“as Aeneas pursues Turnus, he is doing the only thing he can do”
because of Evander and Pallas
Braund on Aeneas’ killing of Turnus
“killing Turnus might be the act of a truly good leader”
Williams on Aeneas’ motives
Aeneas does not fight for personal glory, but to aid others’ success
Morgan on the morals of Aeneas’ actions
bk 10 especially
“morally disorientating”
Marshall on Aeneas and fate
“agent of fate”
Morgan on our thoughts abt Aeneas’ actions
“morally difficult for us to handle”
Morgan on Aeneas, Turnus and impiety
“it’s an act of extreme impiety to kill Turnus”
Kershaw on Aeneas’ piety
“he is Mr Pious”
Mac Gorain on Aeneas’ romanness
“he displays values that are quintessentially Roman”
Merriam on Ascanius
“agent of chaos”
Merriam on Ascanius’ symbolism
“identified with the future of the Trojan refugees and their Roman descendants”
Griffin on the fall of Troy and Aeneas
“the doom of Troy was fixed and unavoidable… it is stressed that Aeneas is very unwilling to accept these instructions”
Anderson on Aeneas and Dido
“Aeneas has no choice but to follow his duty and Dido is a tragic victim of impossible circumstances”
Camps on Aeneas and Fate
“though Aeneas is commanded by a higher power, he is not compelled”
Cowan on Furor
The poem is really about how to calm furor
book 1, soothing the storm
Hall on women and furor
“Women are the empty vessels into which the gods pour furor”
Boyle on Aeneas and Furor
Aeneas doesn’t succeed in overcoming furor
Braund on furor
“anger is perhaps neverending”
Gransden on Turnus’ heroism
“old-style homeric hero”
Gransden on Turnus’ furor
“brave but foolhardy… violent and uncontrolled”
Gransden on Turnus’ symbolism
“an archaic value system is superceded”
Camps on Turnus
We are meant to feel sympathy for him
Camps on Dido and Turnus
“victims of the destiny of Rome and Juno’s opposition to it”
Morgan on what Turnus could ‘turn’ (ha) into
“Turnus might turn into a kind of Antony figure”
Anderson on Turnus being Homeric, and what it means
“no better than the young Euryalus, and therefore the Italian cause is equally doomed”
Di Cesare on Turnus’ heroism
“has become, inevitably, an anachronism”
Harrison on Dido and Aeneas’ marriage
Virgil does not make judgements about the ‘marriage’ – any views are Dido’s own
Jenkyns on the relationship between Dido and Aeneas
A fit of passion, nobody was to blame
Giusti on Dido’s character
“intersection of multiple prejudices”
i.e. woman, foreigner
Anderson on the death of Dido
Death of Dido is a symbol for the defeated victims of Roman destiny
Nugent on perceptions of Dido
“Dido has been understood both as the most dangerous threat to the Roman Project and as an enormously sympathetic tragic figure”
Morgan on Priam’s death
“designed to recall Pompey the Great”
Braund on Aeneas and Augustus
“map onto one another”
Camps on the story of Hercules and Cacus
(book 8)
an allegory for civilisation v chaos, Augustus v civil war
Meban on the fight between Trojans and Rutulians
“this is not a victory over a foreign enemy, but rather a conflict between two peoples who are destined to be joined in a close bond”
Meban on friendship
“friendship was always an institution central to Roman Cultural life”
Meban on Nisus and Euryalus
“Virgil not only locates the relationship of Nisus and Euryalus in the past, but also orients it to the future”
Jenkyns about the poem as Augustan Propaganda
“if Augustus wanted a glorious poem about his glorious deeds, he never got it”
Marshall on what the poem shows about Rome
“human cost of founding Rome”
Boyle on the parade of Heroes
the empire that Anchises lays out will never be realised
Marshall on the pessimism of the Parade of Heroes
“Virgil ends that catalogue with the greatness that might have been”
Beard on the purpose of the Aeneid
“was using myth to explain the complexities of the rise of Rome and its empire”
Marshall on the shield of Aeneas
“Rome’s propensity to inner conflict… inner strife”
Cowan on Aeneas and Aug.
Aeneas “is the model for the Emperor Augustus, a template for what a good Roman is expected to be”
W.H. Auden on the Parade of Heroes
“history in the future tense”
Hardie on the Parade of Heroes
Parade suggests that “the Roman Empire is part of the pre-ordained working of the universe”
Mac Gorain on the purpose of the Aeneid
“Virgil’s Epic aimed to explore the concerns of Roman History through the vehicle of myth”
Anderson on the role of the Gods
“do gods inspire men with their eager, burning desires, or do men make gods of the passion inside them? Virgil’s answer… seems to be both”
Feeney on Juno at the end of the poem
“Juno is still biding her time, still nursing one of her two grudges”
Braund on Juno in the poem
“the story of the wrath of Juno”
Morgan on the role of the Gods
“all of this is scripted by the gods”
Harrison on Juno
“the classic soap-opera bitch”
Morgan on Allecto’s speech
(bk 7)
“a splendid piece of wicked rhetoric”
Harrison on Virgil’s wartime narrative
“someone who appreciates a fine kill… not a pea-shooting pacifist”
Harrison on Virgil and the portrayal of violence
“interested in the artistic portrayal of violence”
Anderson on Virgil’s portrayal of war
Virgil shows war to brutalise men and invites his audience to sympathise with Aeneas’ victims
Cowan on the mission
“the mission to found the Roman people, a mission founded upon the self-denial which made Aeneas abandon Dido”
Gransden on the structure of the poem
odd-numbered books are less important than even-numbered ones
Putnam on ekphrasis
“ambiguous potential of Virgilian ekphrasis”
Hardie on the mural of Troy
(bk 1)
“passage is framed by tears”
Gransden on bk 6
“pivoting point of Aeneid”
Williams on bk 6
“crucial for the development of Aeneas”
Duckworth on the structure of the poem
Parallel books (1/7, 2/8…)
Hall on women
“Women are the empty vessels into which the gods pour furor”
Hardie on women
“there are no powerful successful women in the Aeneid”
Heinze on Euryalus’ mother
“enters into the text not as a subject but as a topic of men’s discussion”
Morgan on women’s license
“license to perform in the poem for as long as they behave like men”
Oliensis on women’s vs men’s focus
“women tend towards origins, men are oriented towards ends”
Pillinger on the place of women
“don’t fit well with the future-facing mission that Aeneas has”
Giusti on the comparison of Dido to Penthesileia
“double vision of Penthesileia and Dido… potentially threatening”
Hines on ‘epic’
“all male, all war, all the time”
Morgan on Camilla and Juturna, and what they show
“skewed and inverted pictures of marriage and sexuality” (they show the impropriety of Turnus’ match with Lavinia)
Gildenhard and Henderson on Camilla
“her masculine side enables her to triumph temporarily; her feminine side will be responsible for her ultimate tragedy”
Gransden on Latinus
“an Italian Priam”
Vandiver on a theme of men in the Aenied
theme in the Aeneid of a young man and an older man who are “especially devoted to each other” (Nisus/Euryalus, Aeneas/Pallas)
Braund on the death of Euryalus
an attempt is made to feminise Euryalus
Vandiver on the sword belt of Pallas
theme of ruined marriages
Braund on the sword-belt of Pallas
theme of excessive violence
O’Higgins on the image on the sword-belt of Pallas
“matrimonial abbatoir”
Spence on the image of the sword-belt of Pallas
the belt shows the Danaids. In the temple of Palatine Apollo Augustus had a depiction of the women, so Virgil shows the reverse here
Cowan on people dying young
“Wider theme of anthems for doomed youth”
Harvard School
Negative views on all Augustan propaganda
Gransden on fathers/sons
“the Aeneid is dominated by fathers and father-figures”
Morgan on being a young man
“being a young man is not a good condition in the Aeneid”
Natalie Haynes on Venus and Aeneas
“in spite of her physical distance from Aeneas… [Venus] is deeply invested in his wellbeing”
Kershaw on Aeneas’s response to Pallas’s death
“a mixture of mad anger (furor) and pietas”
Kershaw on the ending
“did furor win in the end, or pietas? The emotional and moral effects of the ending are highly ambiguous”
Sforza on Aeneas
“practically impossible to find a passage, where Aeneas appears, that does not in some way indict him with dastardly, criminal, or stupid actions”
Fearn and Laird on the epic’s themes
“though the epic is about war, it is also about human values and human emotions”
Bragg on Ascanius, Aeneas and Anchises
“the past, the present, the future of what will be Rome”
Edwards on Aeneas and duty
‘he must overcome emotion to pursue duty”
Braund on books 6-8
Roman middle
Merriam on Ascanius’ symbolism (bad thing)
“the happiness and security that the Trojan refugees dream of can be compromised by human folly, childish enthusiasm and heedless selfishness”
Southon on Virgil’s addition of Marcellus to the parade
“a legitimately wild piece of sucking up”
Morgan on Lausus, Aeneas and Mezentius
“Aeneas and Mezentius are brought back to normality by the figure of Lausus” he works to “humanise” them
Mattes on the killing of Turnus
“leaves the reader questioning the glory of Roman history”
Mattes on the Aeneid’s purpose
“the Aeneid is really anti-Augustan while feigning to be pro-Augustan”
Bartsch on the poem as a whole
“a deeply thoughtful poem by a man who’d lived through the horrors of war and the compromises of peace”
Hardie on the poem as a whole
“a natural text for successive installments of the transfer of power”
Bartsch on Aeneas’ piety
“it is this piety… that drives him onward in the search for a new homeland”
Bartsch on the poem’s ending
“an ending so bleak and startling that many have wondered whether Vergil intended to write more”
Bartsch on the purpose of the poem (divine approval)
“sets the stamp of divine approval on imperial expansion”
Bartsch on the poem (foundation)
“tells a story of foundation but puts on display the fault lines at the base of its own edifice”
Bartsch on how Virgil uses Aeneas
“with Aeneas as his hero, Vergil could avoid dealing with contemporary politics and still address Augustus’ declared values”
Bartsch on the whole ‘Aeneas is a traitor’ spiel
the original character of Aeneas is a traitor - maybe Vergil makes him a new person to help the Romans adjust to Augustus instead of Octavian
Bartsch on why Virgil allegedly changed the story
“this revision serves an imperial purpose… we are being asked to forget”
Bartsch on what Virgil did
“Vergil did with Aeneas what Augustus did with Octavian - that is, wrote a new version of a tainted figure”
Bartsch on the poem as Augustan Propaganda
“the Aeneid is not a cipher with which to unlock Augustan Propaganda”
Bartsch on the violent ending
“the poem’s violent ending is not random but picks up and resonates with its major themes”
Bartsch on the end of the poem (aeneas//juno)
“the furious goddess has subsided but the rabid Roman takes her place”
