Aeneid Scholarship

Aeneid Scholarship

1. Virgil

   • KW GRANSDEN: "produced one of the most authentic records of human suffering."
   • A LAIRD: "Virgil can develop character just by explicitly mentioning personal attributes."
   • RJ TARRANT: "seems at first an unlikely political writer."

2. Plot

   • JEG ZETZEL: "1-4 anticipates Punic wars, 9-12 anticipates civil wars"
   • D FOWLER: "like Aeneas, readers will be reminded of past pain or future glory."
   • J GRIFFIN: "the lack of a neat conclusion has a haunting effect."
   • KW GRANSDEN: "Most of the plot is generated by Juno."
   • PR HARDIE: " the ending is very untragic due to abruptness."

3. Virgillian style

   • RD WILLIAMS: "Virgil was moved by the vision of Rome's destiny, yet he saw some of the unhappy implications."
   • KW GRANSDEN: "The Aeneid is dominated by fathers/ father figures."
   • "(6) Achises' language is strongly redolent of Stoicism, Platonism + Pythagoreanism."
   • DF KENNEDY: "incorporates elegy, lyric + tragedy."

4. Virgil as narrator

   • D FOWLER: "(2) ends with Pyrrhus' sword plunged into Priam, which is mirrored at the end of (12)."
   • A LAIRD: "Virgil is himself a character, always present."

5. Homeric resonance/ imitatio

   • D FOWLER: "In the second half, Turnus becomes Hector and Aeneas the 'Achilles II' Sibyl prophesied (6)."
   • KW GRANSDEN: "allusion, correspondence and parallelism to Homer."
   • S MORTON BRAUND: "Aeneas is the homeric ideal of a 'good king'"
   • DF KENNEDY: "The opening words signal a return to Homer."

6. Augustus

   • D FOWLER: "In the proem, virgil sings of Aeneas and Prophesies Augustus ('cano' means 'I sing'/ 'I prophesy."
   • J GRIFFIN: "a second Aeneas."
   • RJ TARRANT: "is seen in an appropriately ambivalent light."

7. Aeneas

   • RD WILLIAMS: "We mustn't judge him adversely because we think he ought to be like Achilles."
   • KW GRANSDEN: "A new type of Stoic hero."
   • E OLIENSIS: "Aeneas has quite an effeminate role- linking to Paris."
   • S MORTON BRAUND: "a proto-Roman."
   • PR HARDIE: "His colourless quality is his role forced on him."
   • RJ TARRANT: "never simply Augustus' heroic equivalent."

8. Mortal Characters

   • JEG ZETZEL: "the contrasts between civilised Trojans and barbarous Italians dissolves on closer inspection"
   • KW GRANSDEN: "Latinus is an Italian Priam."
   • E OLIENSIS: "the second half splits Dido's character into Amata + Lavinia. Amata absorbs her passion, leaving Lavinia blank."
   • A LAIRD: "Dido is the only one to address herself by name, suggesting her association with Aeneas may have been happy (not just impious)."
   • PR HARDIE: "Mezentius' tyrrannical bestiality and parental piety is paradoxical."

9. Gods

   • RD WILLIAMS: "Juno exemplifies the theme of suffering"
     • E OLIENSIS: "Vulcan plays the part of the dutiful housewife."
   • S MORTON BRAUND: "the Gods and morality are inextricably linked."

10. Propaganda

    • JEG ZETZEL: "Aeneid= aeteological link between Troy and Rome."
    • PR HARDIE: "the decision not to write 'the Augusteid' is the freedom to problematise issues of roman history and empire."
    • C MARTINDALE: "(8) Virgil produces a narrative of either progress or decline."

11. Negative Propaganda

    • JEG ZETZEL: "In the pageant of heroes, Virgil records the decline of Monarchy into Tyranny."
    • RJ TARRANT: "pessimistic readings have origins in the poem's conception of human nature."
    • C MARTINDALE: "(8) a pessimistic reading would be pastoral idyll giving way to vulgar modernist luxury."

12. Positive Propaganda

    • JEG ZETZEL: "In all 3 prophecies, Virgil links rule of Augustus with end of external war and internal discord."
    • C MARTINDALE: "(8) an optimistic reading would give us the rise of Rome from primitive settlement to an empire without end."

13. Prophecy

    • JEG ZETZEL: "(8) shield of Aeneas extends the panegyrical elements of Jupiter's prophecy (1) + pageant of heroes (6)."
    • J GRIFFIN: "Nothing happens by chance."
    • RJ TARRANT: "the prophecies (1,6,8) give an Augustan outlook without appearing solely Virgil's own."

14. Speeches

    • D FOWLER: "death frequently contains direct speech."
    • J GRIFFIN: "rhetorical speeches are often of a political character."
      • A LAIRD: "Speeches in direct discord rarely convey a speaker's sentiments."

15. Pathos

    • J GRIFFIN: "the second half is pervaded by touching deaths."

16. Piety

    • J GRIFFIN: "the use of prophecy shows the necessity to be pious."

17. Furor

    • RD WILLIAMS: "Aeneas attempts- with incomplete success- to conquer his angry passion."
    • RJ TARRANT: "the last image is not of peace but furious rage."

18. War/ Conflict

    • J GRIFFIN: "War is not compatible with calm rationality."
    • KW GRANSDEN: "Virgil's attitude to war is ambivalent."
    • RJ TARRANT: "the conflict evokes Rome's civil wars.'

19. Death/ Mortality

    • KW GRANSDEN: "(9) Nisus' suicide charge may be Virgil romanticising death."

20. Similes

    • J GRIFFIN: "(1) In the first simile, by comparing a natural event to a scene from human life, Virgil reverses the normal Homeric procedure."

21. Women/ Gender

    • KW GRANSDEN: "Aeneas' worst enemy is a female (immortal)- Juno."
      • E OLIENSIS: "Women are associated with origins; men are associated with ends."

22. Fate

    • KW GRANSDEN: "The will of Jupiter was the expression of fate, fate itself the sum of individual destinies."
    • DF KENNEDY: "self-reflexivity characterised as the term epos (Greek for 'word'/ 'song'- epic comes from)"