The World of The Hero scholarship

Jones on the Household

‘The odyssey makes the household…the centre of the world’

Halverson on Oikos/household

‘everything centres on the oikos, the ferocity of Odysseus’ revenge is an index of the supreme value placed on the household’

Jones on Odysseus

‘He is an anti-hero, a mean, selfish, time-server who employs disguise and deceit often to gain the most disreputable ends’

Camps on Odysseus

He has the ‘capacity to inspire affection and regard

Morrison on Odysseus

‘It is that ‘muchenduring’ characteristic that adds to his heroism’

Fagles on Penelope and Odysseus

‘The marriage between Odysseus and Penelope is a partnership of intellectual equals, based on true love and a shared outlook on life’

Schein on Penelope

‘The ‘reverse simile’ where Penelope seeing her husband is like a shipwreck survivor seeing the shore … reverses the normal male female roles and is a way for Homer to value Penelope’s heroism’

Finely on Penelope

She is a ‘key motivator for the poem’

Bowra on the Suitors

The suitors are the ‘degenerate corruption of heroes’

Morrison on the Suitors

‘Their death is the ‘triumph of good dealing over evil and is firmly ascribed with the gods’ 

Nimhealliagh on women and Penelope

‘As an ancient Greek…about the ideal women, and his or her answer would probably say something about weaving’

Wilson on Women

‘There is a vision of empowered femininity in the Odyssey, but it is conveyed not in the mortal world but in that of the gods’

Griffin on Book 9

‘Odysseus is forced to learn the power of self-control, to keep silent and not go for easy heroism’

Parry on Aeneas

‘Aeneas never asserts himself like Odysseus. He is always the victim of forces greater than himself’

Gransden on Aeneas

‘Perhaps Troy’s greatest after hector’

Williams on Aeneas

‘Aeneas belongs to the heroic age, yet he also has to be a proto-Augustan. Virgil’s problem is to depict a new kind of hero, a hero for an age no longer ‘heroic’

Ross on Aeneas

He is a ‘mere emblematic automation, a wooden puppet lacking in genuine human emotion’

Ross on Fate

‘The Aeneid is not a poem about religion… and yet Fate and the Gods are everywhere’

Hamilton on Rome

‘The real subject of the Aeneid is not Aeneas…it is Rome and the glories of her Empire’

Griffin on Augustus

His shield in book 8 'endorses the fullest claims of Roman imperialism’

Powell on Augustus

The Aeneid is ‘purposeful propaganda, aimed at proving that Augustsus deserved his place in the world’

Griffin on Augustus

‘It would be absurd to suppose that Virgil embarked on an epic poem simply in order to flatter Augustus’

Quinn on Augustus

‘When everything that is said about Augustus is put together, it amounts to precious little’

Kershaw on Turnus

‘Turnus seems boy-like in comparison to Aeneas’