World of the Hero Modern Scholarship

odyssey and Aeneid

Peter Jones - oikos is central to everything

“The Odyssey makes the household… rather than the battlefield, the centre of its world”

Griffin - oikos vs kleos

“Odysseus comes from a close and affectionate human family, and his attitude to Penelope and Telemachus is that of the good husband and father. Such a man does not know away his life for glory.”

W. A. Camps - Loved by others

“Odysseus has the capacity to inspire affection and regard as husband, man and king.”

C.M. Bowra - stupidity paves the way for resourcefulness

“His need for cunning is enforced by his own recklessness”

Peter Jones - HIs story allows him to show off his heroism

his storytelling is “an extended exercise in heroic self-revelation”

Mandzuka - fate removes Odysseus from blame

“Homer frees Odysseys of any responsibilities over the deaths of his comrades and the executions [of the suitors] because they all had to die for reasons of fate”

Griffin - fidelity and a contrast to Clytaemnestra

“The fidelity of Odysseus’ wife is crucial to the story, and the contrast between her and the disloyal wife of Agamemnon is repeatedly emphasised”

Peter Jones - Justice?

“Whatever one may thing of the severity of Odysseus’ revenge, no Greek would have argued that he did not have a right to take it”

Peter Jones - Gods helping the mortals is a positive

“It is tempting to say that Athene’s continuing presence diminishes the stature of Odysseus. But it is important to emphasise that in Homer the gods help only those who are worthy of it”

Nimheallaigh - stereotype of women

“Ask an ancient Greek or Roman about the ideal virtuous woman, and his or her answer would probably say something about weaving.”

Emily Wilson - Penelope

“She’s uncanny, strong-willed, has grit, a vivid imagination, is loyal”

Farrell - Composition of the Aeneid

“The Aeneid begins as an Odyssey but ends, with no ambiguity at all, as an Iliad”

K.W. Grasden - Book 6

“Pivot” “The transition from the Odyssean to the Iliadic Aeneid as it is Aeneas’ personal transition from the role of a wanderer to that of a dux, from exile and near-despair to a sense of mission and responsibility”

O’ross - Suffering of a Virgilian hero

“To be the hero of Virgil’s Roman epic is to suffer personal loss, again and again, and to do so is to be left alone, abandoned”

Jenkyns - on Dido’s death (pro Aeneas)

“It is a bad mistake to say Aeneas is in the wrong”

Sowbery - Aeneas at the end of book 2

“The patriarchal ideal of Roman society” and “This image and all that is contained in it express what pietas means for Virgil”

Ross - Aeneas lacking emotion

“mere embematic automation, a wooden puppet lacking genuine human emotion”

Williams - Dido as a pawn

“The Carthaginian Queen is the plaything, the pawn, of both Juno and Venus”

Williams - Lavinia

“Lavinia is the casus belli rather than a character in her own right”

Williams - on Dido’s death (anti Aeneas)

“Her [Dido’s] death was directly due to Aeneas’ resolve to pursue his mission rather than to stay with her”

Sowbery - Turnus as a foil

“He is a kind of foil to Aeneas, representing an older individual heroism”

Jenkyns - Turnus as iliadic heroes

“The Sibyl calls Turnus a second Achilles but in the end he will play the role of Hector”

Chomse - Camilla defying gender expectations

“She is an inherently transgressive figure who destabilises categories of gender and challenges epic expectations both on and off the battlefield”

Cowan - Juno affecting the plot

“It’s Juno who starts the storm and sets the whole story in motion”

Gransden - War

“Virgil expresses a profound empathy for the young men on both sides”

Williams - Mezentius

“Mezentius looks far less like a monster and more like a fried-stricken old man who was resigned to death but will go down fighting”

Sowbery - Father-son

“The relationship between father and son is the closest bond in the poem”

Sowbery - Dido and Aeneas

“Aeneas and Dido seem deliberately designed by Virgil to be complimentary reflections of one another”

Griffin - Virgil’s intentions with the epic

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

Gransden - Book 6 in terms of propaganda

The parade of heroes in Book 6 “is a celebration of Roman people and Roman achievements”