Scholarship Flashcards
Eleanor Powers celebrating Augustus
‘future glory [of Rome] must include Augustus Caesar at the forefront’
Andrew Laird celebrating Augustus
‘And many have come to the conclusion that the Aeneid was designed to meet a specific need: to justify Augustus’ questionable regime.’
Mark Pobjoy celebrating Ausustus
‘there are many puzzling features of Vergil’s poems which make no sense at all on the standard view of his work…that it was supportive of Augustus…’
Stephen Harrison characterisation of Aeneas
‘Vergil’s characterisation of Aeneas as a man of pietas.’
Gerry Nusbaum characterisation of Aeneas
‘ideal Roman father-figure!’
Bob Cowan characterisation of Aeneas
‘Pius Aeneas…He is a model for the Emperor Augustus, a template for what a good Roman is expected to be.’
Susanna Morton Braund the ending
‘We’ve all been told that the Aeneid is a great poem; this is one of the things that makes it that.’
Feeney the ending
Release of tension built up to Turnus’ death makes it good.
Bob Cowan competing with Homer
Ancient rule of aemulatio (one-up-manship)- ‘Virgil sets about making sure that his sequel is even better than the original, even down to the pettiest details.’
Ian Du Quesnay competing with Homer
‘It was the poet’s intentions, according to Roman scholar Servius, to imitate Homer and to praise Augustus through his ancestors.’
Stephen Harrison Dido
‘Dido is neither mad not bad, indeed she is highly sympathetic to modern readers.’
Damien Nelis Dido
‘Dido is beautiful, generous, and kind.’
Emma Buckley writing a good story
‘Virgil narrates a personal struggle for survival and success that we can empathize with and follow.’
Susanna Morton Braund killing Turnus
‘whether, in the end, he simply reverts back to the Homeric warrior’s wrath.’
Richard Rutherford Turnus
‘Orthodoxy has it that Turnus is a ‘Homeric’ hero…who must give way to the new style hero, the proto-Roman Aeneas’
Richard Rutherford the ending
‘violent revenge and thoughts of clemency forgotten’
Damien Nelis Carthage
‘reeks with the kind of oriental luxury every decent Roman was taught to despise’
Emma Buckley killing Turnus
‘When Aeneas puts Turnus to the sword, he sets in motion the foundation of the Roman race’. Virgil uses the verb ‘condere’ which means both to stab and to found
R.D. Williams civil war
‘concentrates on the pathos and folly of the civil war’
R.D. Williams Roman history
pageant of heroes is ‘the most powerful patriotic message in the whole poem.’
Denis Feeney history
‘Virgil can even make it read like a book of history at times’
