Portrayal of war - Scholarship - Aeneid Flashcards
Which Scholars quotes reference war in the Aeneid
- Steele Commager
- Hadas
- Anderson
- J.W. Mackail
- Jasper Griffin
- Hardie
- Guy de la Bédoyère
Who wrote
“If, then, the Aeneid is a story of success, it is also a story of what success costs”
Steele Commager
Who wrote
“It is characteristic of Virgil that we should remember not the victors but the defeated, Camilla, Nisus and Euryalus, Pallas, Lausus, Turnus and even Mezentius”
Steele Commager
Who wrote
“[The cost to Aeneas himself] he becomes increasingly isolated from any human contact”
Steele Commager
Who wrote
“An inevitable civil war… had happily come to its period. All had fought well… All bitterness and all passion was now laid at rest, and all could now join hands.. to meet a shining future”
Moses Hadas
Also parallel to Augustus and contemporary period that recovered from the civil wars and now live together under Augustus like the Trojans and Italians did when they became Romans
Who wrote
“Killing Turnus is a victory for the cause, but not for Aeneas. In his final struggle… Aeneas can only be the loser”
Anderson
Who wrote
“[the killing of Turnus is] the final proof by Virgil that ‘pius Aeneas’ is not passive, but more tragic than Dido and Turnus together”
Anderson
Who wrote
“He [Aeneas] hates bloodshed and has no joy in battle, yet he has to wage a sanguinary war”
J.W. Mackail
Who wrote
“[the image of the triumphant Augustus on the shield of Aeneas in book 8] endorses the fullest claims of Roman imperialism”
Jasper Griffin
Who wrote
“the parade of Roman heroes at the end of book 6 is.. a virtuoso intertwining positive optimism with pathos and dispair”
Jasper Griffin
Who wrote
“The whole poem, with its interplay of moods and directions - the story of a triumphant career which opens with the hero wishing he were dead, and ends with him forced to kill a helpless opponant in a storm of passionate rage - is itself an example of this calculated ambiguity”
Jasper Griffin
Who wrote
“The optimists read in the violent death of Turnus the final victory of fate and pietas over irrational forces…. a foreshadowing of the legitimate vengence of Octavian against the assasins of his adoptive father”
Philip Hardie
Who wrote
“The pessimists see in Aeneas’ killings of a now defenceless Turnus the recrudescence in the hero of the same furor that had overmastered him on the night of the sack of Troy, blinding him.”
Philip Hardie
recrudenscence = the recurrence of an undesirable condition.
What were Steele Commager’s contributions on the portrayal of war in the Aeneid
- “If, then, the Aeneid is a story of success, it is also a story of what success costs”
- “It is characteristic of Virgil that we should remember not the victors but the defeated, Camilla, Nisus and Euryalus, Pallas, Lausus, Turnus and even Mezentius”
- “The cost to Aeneas himself… he becomes increasingly isolated from any human contact”
What were Moses Hadas’ contributions on the portrayal of war in the Aeneid
“An inevitable civil war… had happily come to its period. All had fought well… All bitterness and all passion was now laid at rest, and all could now join hands.. to meet a shining future”
Also parallel to Augustus and contemporary period that recovered from the civil wars and now live together under Augustus like the Trojans and Italians did when they became Romans
