The Aeneid Scholarship

Quinn

* The heroic ideal is not necessary nobler
* Aeneas has the urge to kill in its ugliest form, which disgraces his humanity
* The Aeneid stresses the inadequacy of the hero’s code, it’s a poor guide when the situation is not clear cut
* Augustus wanted from the Aeneid an Epic poem with himself as the hero
* Augustus did not just want the glorification of a figure, but a justification for his cause (his conduct during the civil war)
* Everything explicitly about Augustus within the poem amounts to very little - the story of a war and a man draws its own similarities
* Virgil used the Iliad and Odyssey in order to give the narrative a new dimension - to make new out of the old
* Virgil keeps Homer’s “divine machinery” but limits it, getting rid of arbitrary references
* Virgil’s use of divine intervention encourages a compassionate approach, people are less responsible for their actions (conventional stoicism)
* Virgil is “deeply influenced by Athenian tragedy”
* Virgil did not intend to create heroes and villains, but rather to create complex characters worthy of sympathy - intense but not uniform

Sowerby

* Both Homer and Virgil focus on a single story and a single period of time, giving their epics “unity of action”
* Turnus is the Trojans’ principal antagonist and his death constitutes the poems climax
* Most of the epic similes in Virgil has Homeric origin
* Aeneas, Ascanius and Anchises in Book 2 is “the patriarchal ideal of Roman society”, it is what pietas means to Virgil
* Father-son relationships are the “closest bond in the poem”
* Aeneas is “little more than a symbol, passively acquiescent towards the will of the gods”, he is not a vital character like Homer’s because his instincts and passions are subdued by patriarchal ideal
* Aeneas is a “defeated exile and victim of traumatic misfortune”
* Virgil’s Aeneas is “neither resourceful or successful”, traits associated with Odysseus
* The climax of the poem end “ironically with Aeneas for the first time having his heart truly in his task”
* Dido is the strongest of all of Virgil’s characters, “innocent victim of the Roman destiny”. She is perfect for Aeneas, they are “complementary reflections of one another”
* Turnus is a “foil to Aeneas” representing “older individual heroism”
* Turnus is sympathetic because his is “victim of inexorable fate”
* At its core the Aeneid is a “most fatalistic poem”
* Individual emotions cause human misery

Gransden

* The Aeneid is “a sort of counterpart of both” Homers epics, in doing so Virgil took on this “supreme challenge of literature”
* Virgil focuses on the story of a “hero renowned for pietas, wanting peace rather than war”
* The whole of the Aeneid is Odyssean, it theme and structure
* Thematic and structural parallels with Homer are frequent
* The themes and values of Homer and modified to fit the "sensibility of the Roman poet”
* Book 6 is the pivot of the poem, from Odyssean to Iliadic, from “exile and near despair… to a sense of mission and responsibility”
* The fall of Troy is viewed sadly, Virgil expresses empathy for the young men on both sides of the war
* Aeneas’ killing of Turnus could be seen as pious
* Furor dominates the last four books, rather than pietas
* Fathers and father figures are central to the Aeneid
* The Aeneid is a “text of shifting historical perspectives”
* “Most of the plot of the Aeneid is generated by Juno”, both halves begin with a soliloquy from her
* Juno “embodies the dreaded spirit of civil strife”
* Dido and Aeneas engage in a “pseudo-marriage”
* Virgil creates a new Stoic hero
* In Book 11, “the language of pax Augusta” is used in Aeneas’ desire for peace
* “The concept of fate… dominates the Aeneid”
* “divine intervention… by individual gods is direct, frequent and unpredictable”
* The gods in the Aeneid express themselves though “human wills and desires”
* Jupiter is more dignified than Homer’s Zeus

R.D. Williams

* Aeneas is not a supernatural figure - “he is very much an ordinary mortal”
* The tragedies within the poem are due to the “violent and unreasoning” nature of humanity
* “a major intention of the Aeneid was to glorify Virgil’s own country”
* The most intriguing part of the poem is the “tension between optimism and pessimism”. Pessimism comes in the form of the “undeserved blows of ill-fortune which best the human race”, such as the war.
* The final book of the poem focus “not on Aeneas’ triumph but on the pitiless slaughter of the suppliant Turnus”, “an act of savagery” for which there is little explanation.
* Virgil has been appreciated as the “poet of the world’s sorrows”
* Aeneas is “unreal, puppet-like, a symbol” and his “behaviour is on occasions unacceptable and unforgivable” - somethings Williams disagrees with and thinks is either :untrue” or makes him “complex”
* Aeneas is not a “brilliant and breath-catching hero like Odysseus” but instead has to “reject the heroic way of life for a more co-operative and self-denying attitude”. In Book 2, Aeneas still has this “innate desire to make the heroic gesture”.
* The ideal within the poem is to control “irrational behaviour”
* The poem expects men to live in accordance to the will of the gods and never question it, in spite of their own suffering
* The presence of the divine elevates and dignifies the human episodes
* The gods are “people in their own right”, although less vivid than Homer’s are.
* The gods’ interventions are symbols of human emotion
* Aeneas had to put aside aims for personal satisfaction for the benefit of his group or society, we cannot judge him through the expectation that he be Achilles

Pattie

* The second half of the epic is not as captivating to later generations as Books 2, 4 and 6
* Virgil’s handling of the mythological founding of Rome reflects the feelings of guilt caused by the civil wars - “Aeneas does in warfare what has to be done, but he is generally deeply unhappy about it”
* The episodes in the Aeneid reflect Homeric events, but the mood and tone of the writing presents them “to seem unacceptable”
* The poem is “Augustan in its presentation of Roman values”
* Virgil loves to depict “scenes which the human eye does not see”
* He argues that Aeneas it not tied to duty, he can “decide that his mission is too hard”. The fact he continues is because “of acts of his own free will”.
* “In contrast to Aeneas both Dido and Turnus are characters drawn very simply, on Homeric lines…”, treated poorly by circumstance but unable to compromise.

Glover

* “There is perhaps a closer bond of union between Virgil and Euripides than linked him to any other author”
* Virgil and Augustus were friends - he approved of his rule because he was Italian, not Roman
* “Virgil’s whole nature was on the side of peace”
* Aeneas should be read as Augustus in diguise - he was a “sort of painter’s model”

Muir

Virgil is driven by the need to “connect an ancient, unfamilliar and heroic past” to the new urban culture, and to “reconstruct the generous formulaic structure of oral poetry” in order to benefit from both tradition and freedom.

How to “make formal use of two very different Homeric epics”.

Hardie

Aeneas’ ‘colourless’ character is “the result of the roles forced on him by the plot of the Aeneid”. Rather than driven by desire or ambition, Aeneas is “forced into a mission by circumstance”.

Lyne

Aeneas’ interaction with others’ within the epic is “minimal”. “Vergil appears to neglect” Aeneas’ interpersonal relationships.

Gildenhard

The issues raised by Dido’s story, such as “sexual ethics, the use and abuse of power, interaction with the other, imperialism, personal choice and historical necessity, or rhetorical spin in the (mis) representation of facts” are all still important today.

Mackie

“Aeneas’ general concern to facilitate fate is the corner stone of his pietas”

Gordon Williams

“It is Aeneas who loses in the end”

Griffin

* The end of the poem is “haunting, complex, and in harmony with the rest of the poem” deliberately
* The shame of the civil wars had given “place to the enlightened supremacy of one man, divinely chosen” who could restore peace to Rome
* Virgil did have many reasons to feel opposite to this propagandistic approach - Augustus was “a man whose whole career was illegal, whose first act had been to raise an army and march on Rome,… signed the lists which proscribed citizens, committed unforgotten crimes in the civil wars, and climbed to tyranny over the bodies of his enemies and the ruin of the ruin of the constitution.”

Tennyson

Virgil’s poetry is the “statelist measure ever moulded by the lips of man”

Fox

Aeneas is “always either insipid or odious”

Page

When “compared with Achilles, Aeneas is a shadow of a man”