The Aeneid

While the Greeks gave us philosophy, history, and much else that gives life value, the Romans were a simpler people--not given to speculative philosophy--they were more practical, more realistic, and far more prosperous and ambitious than the Greeks, who invent geometry, speculative mathematics; the Romans invent concrete and become engineers.

Roman philosophy concerned itself with the proper conduct of life. And the Roman gifts were in government and law. From their idea of world state, the medieval church derived its notion of a universal church.

One Roman legacy is the concept of the Law of Nations--the idea that beyond the statutes of any particular locality there was an abstract standard of right and wrong which all men recognized and were bound to.

A Greek, for example, had no rights outside his own city. But Paul, a Jew of Tarsus, could make a provincial governor revoke his sentence of flogging by merely saying, "I am a citizen of Rome." When someone appealed to Caesar, the only possible answer was "Thou hast appealed to Caesar; unto Caesar shalt thou go."

As a practical matter, whenever the Romans conquered a people they were slowly turned into citizens: first as vassals, then as subject allies, and last as full Roman citizens with all the rights thereto pertaining.

Three concepts were dear to them:

• Gravitas--means much the same as "dignity" though the quality was more important to the Romans than to us. (seriousness of attitude and purpose)
• Pietas--was close to duty; it meant performing one's duties in every relationship: as father, son, soldier, citizen, friend, slave-owner, worshipper, etc. Toward the gods this meant performing the proper ceremonies, but toward mankind this meant giving every man his due.
• Virtus was the quality that distinguished the man, vir, from the merely human creature, homo. There is no exact word for it (our concept of virtue derives from it and it is similar to the areté of the Greeks), but Roman literature is filled with stories of great men.

My favorite: In early 6th century B.C., Gaius Mucius slipped into the camp of the besieging Etruscan, Lars Porsena, to kill him, but was captured instead. He told Porsena that though he had failed three hundred men in Rome had sworn to attempt Porsena's life, one after another. When Porsena threatened him with torture unless he revealed their names, he smiled and held his own right hand in the brazier until it was burned off. . . .

Porsena thought it wiser to come to terms with the Romans and Gaius Mucius was given the name of Scaevola, or Left-handed, which was borne by his descendants down to imperial times.

The greatest Roman hero, though, is Aeneas.

I. Introduction:

The opening sentence of the poem--"he was the first to journey from the coasts of Troy as far as Italy and the Lavinian shores"--locates the action between two poles: past and future, Troy and Rome.

Does Aeneas accept this destiny as we first meet him?

His first speech (I.133-35) during the storm reveals that he wishes he were back in Troy, so that he might die among known companions. He calls aloud: "O, three and four times blessed were those who died before their fathers' eyes beneath the walls of Troy."

These words recall exactly those of Odysseus during a storm (V.316-23). But there are significant differences: Odysseus wishes he had died at Troy, instead of at sea, so that he might receive fitting funeral rites and have the Achaeans spread his glory. Aeneas seems unconcerned with glory--only with the comradery of his warriors. Both are on an "odyssey," but, where Odysseus is going home--with all that that means to his culture--Aeneas is leaving his home behind, reluctantly. Throughout the second book, the storming of Troy, Aeneas wishes only to die with his city (e.g., II.381-83).

II. The Storm at Sea as Prelude:

The opening of the poem is dominated by storm (I.75-310 in packet) which also introduces the basic motifs of the work.

The opposition of the two world powers is announced immediately upon the introduction of Rome's historic rival. At first, it is opposed geographically--a city facing Italy, l. 21--but the Latin contra is meant much more symbolically than geographically.

The rationale for Juno's hatred is given as her plan for Carthage's control of the world and her hatred of the Trojans (i.e., lost respect).

The first part of the Aeneid is framed by the appearances of the two major deities--Juno and Jupiter. This balance of scenes expresses the sense of formal "composition" that expresses classical balance, harmony, proportion. It also shows how human action is embedded in divine action. The contrast between Jupiter's quiet serenity/gravity (I.354-417) and Juno's angry passion underscores the inner tension of the poem.

• Jupiter represents the divine power that binds demonic forces through the basic strength of character that Romans valued and called serenitas--mental clarity and cheerfulness of soul.



• Juno, on the other hand, is the symbol of the demonic forces of violence and destruction who does not hesitate to call up the spirits of Acheron.

The contrast between these two highest divinities is symbolic of the struggle between light and darkness, mind and emotion, duty and pleasure, order and chaos, Dionysus and Apollo--which pervades the soul as well as the cosmos.

Virgil sees this as an on-going struggle, so he incorporates his ruler Augustus into the visionary glory of his poem, so that Jupiter, Aeneas and Augustus are seen as conquerors of the demonic where Juno, Dido, Turnus, and Antony are its conquered representatives.

At I.412-17 Jupiter announces that the pax Romana rests upon the conquest of furor impius: he gives us the basic idea of the whole poem is a symbolic picture with unholy rage bound in chains of bronze.

Jupiter and Juno surround the storm at sea, and into this larger frame is fitted a smaller one of Aeolus and Neptune: the contrast between ominous calm and Neptune's buoyant ocean corresponds to Juno/Jupiter also.

III. Aeneas as Roman Hero:

Let's look at the character of Aeneas by comparing him with Odysseus again. When Odysseus cheers his men as they approach Scylla, he reminds them of what they had already been through: (12.250-66).

Dear friends, surely we are not unlearned in evils./This is no greater evil now than it was when the Cyclops/ had us cooped in his hollow cave by force and violence....

The tone is hopeful, for he is confident that they can evade the danger that lies ahead. The speech ends with his saying "So I spoke, and they quickly obeyed my words." And they obey.

Now consider Aeneas' speech to his men after the storm: I.276-311. We get the impression of sorrow and suffering in the past, intimately shared--o socii it begins in Latin; we get a sense of the fearfulness of experience, of the burden of fate, and their longing for a peaceable kingdom.

Aeneas' last few lines emphasize the un-Homeric quality of this experience. These man are rather like ourselves--moody, hesitant, reflective--thrust into a situation that seems to call for heroic action. Nothing seems to comfort them. The meal that they eat does not ease them--whereas drinking and feasting in the Iliad and Odyssey are ritualistic means of comfort: private sorrow finds some solace and relief in the routine of life.

Aeneas and his men put aside their grief to share a meal, but their communal enjoyment gives way to private reminiscence and sorrow. As a hero, Aeneas is profoundly melancholy, half-paralyzed by fate.

One of the paradoxes of the Aeneid is that a poem celebrating the achievements of an exemplary hero and the founding of Rome itself should be largely a long history of defeat and loss.

Aeneas finally wins but at a terrible cost: he sees every human attachment broken except that which binds him to his son, Ascanius who is destined to succeed him and inherit Italy.

IV. Dido and Aeneas:

Aeneas is forced to abandon his native city; he loses his wife; his father dies in Sicily; in Africa he must desert the woman who loves him.

The reason that his love for Dido can be summed up in a word: duty. Virgil's attitude towards Dido is typically Roman. Dido has made the fatal slip; her good name is lost; she has fallen from her high estate. But nothing, of course, happens to Aeneas; his good name is not affected at all.

• To the Greeks, women were just commodities: the Trojan war was Paris' fault, not Helen's.
• Penelope, could only play a tricky waiting game, but had to depend on Telemachus or Odysseus.

But because Dido does not have to yield, Aeneas gets none of the blame; she gets it all. Some have seen the origins of a traditional western attitude toward women emerging from this episode--the view of women as "silly Angels" whose only refuge after stooping to folly is to die (while the man can simply marry someone else, as did Aeneas).

• Virgil emphasizes throughout Book IV that Dido's actions are characterized by furor (i.e., the same "unholy rage" that we have been warned about throught the poem). See IV.91, 495, 630, 667, 734, 795, 930.

• Virgil does make us aware that Dido once had the dignity of a Roman matron, one who had built a splendid city and avenged her brother's death. These are the reminiscences that console her as she dies. IV.898-913.

• Dido's dying curse (IV.817-44) marks the beginning of the long conflict between Carthage and Rome.

It is significant too that Virgil gives us some powerful and poignant love scenes--among the first where pure affection or emotion is allowed to surface. For example, their parting scene, or the scene in the Underworld:

• Aeneas tires desperately to explain to her when in the Underworld, she flees to her first husband, Sychaeus. And a little later, the shade of his father Anchises will also elude him.
• Significantly, Virgil uses this same repetitions in this scene "Three times he tried . . ." (VI.924-27), as he did at II.1067-70, when Aeneas attempted to embrace the elusive image of his wife on the fatal night in Troy. Here he reaches out vainly for a human relationship that no longer existed ... duty.

V. The Literary Epic:

Most literary scholars distinguish between two kinds of epic:

First, there are the traditional or primary epics that derive from oral cultures. These are shaped from the legends that developed in an heroic age when a nation was on the move and engaged in military conquest. In this group are the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer and Beowulf, the great Anglo-Saxon poem.

Then, there are the literary or secondary epics ... literary culture. These are written by sophisticated craftsmen in deliberate imitation of the earlier form. Virgil's Aeneid is the chief example (though many other poets continued the stories of the Trojan wars), and Virgil served as the prime model for Milton's literary epic, Paradise Lost. Other poems influenced by the Aeneid are sometimes loosely called epic, although they may depart radically from the formal qualities of the original; among these are Dante's Divine Comedy and Spenser's Faerie Queene. So a lot of poems utilize what are called epic conventions.

• The hero is a figure of great national or international importance: the greatest Greek warrior, Achilles; the founder of the Roman empire; Adam who incorporates in himself the entire race of man.



• The setting is ample in scale, sometimes world-wide, or even larger: Odysseus wanders all over the Mediterranean--the world known to the author--and he descends into the underworld; the scope of Paradise Lost is cosmic, embracing heaven, earth, and hell.



• The action involves heroic deeds in battle, such as the Trojan War, or a long, arduous journey intrepidly accomplished, such as the wanderings of Odysseus. Paradise Lost has a war in heaven, the journey of Satan to discover the newly created world, and an audacious psychological battle to corrupt mankind.



• In these great actions the gods and other supernatural beings take an interest--even an active part. The gods of Olympus in Homer and Virgil, and Jehovah, Christ, and the angels in Paradise Lost. [These supernatural agents are sometimes called the machinery.]

• An epic poem is a ceremonial performance and is deliberately given a ceremonial style proportionate to its great subject and architecture. Milton, for example, uses Latinate diction and stylized syntax, resounding lists of strange and sonorous names, and epic similes, that is, sustained similes in which the comparison is developed far beyond the specific points of parallel to the primary subject. E.g., Aeneid, I, 595-624: bees.

There are also numerous minor conventions of the epic, including:

• the poet begins by stating his theme, invoking the muse to help him in his great undertaking, and addressing to the muse an epic question, the answer to which inaugurates the narrative proper.



• this narration starts in medias res, or in the middle of the action; the events that happened before the narrative opening are introduced later on.



• there are catalogues of some of the main characters, introduced to the listener in formal detail (such as the names of the Greek warriors in the Odyssey or the procession of the fallen angels in Paradise Lost).