The sources of the Aeneid

The sources of the Aeneid

1. Mentioned in Naevius

   • Dido
     • A Carthagian Queen
       • Carthage in North Africa
         • Foreshadows triumph
         • Rome gets grain from Egypt
           • Trade links vital
             • Carthage poses threat to this

2. Homer

   • Techniques
     • Similies
     • Divine action
     • Catalogue of forces
     • Metre, hexameter
   • Whole episodes
     • Descent to underworld
     • Funeral games
     • Storm and ship wreck
   • Frequent verbal reminiscences
   • Homeric heroic age
   • Puts Homeric values side by side with Roman values
     • Weighing the nature and validity of Aeneas' more social virtues
       • In comparison with with direct and impetuous individualism of heroes of Iliad and Odyssey
   • Starts in the middle of things

3. Greek tragedy

   • Dido's story is a tragedy
     • Largely his own creation
   • Turnus' story is a tragedy
   • Greek writer Apollonius of Rhodes, wrote of Argonauts and Jason/Medea love, provided a source for some features of Dido/Aeneas love
     • 'Man that leaves woman'

4. Ennius

   • Patriotic epic
   • Imitates phraseology and diction
     • Passages of pathos
       • Death of Euryalus
       • Funeral of Pallas
       • Dido

5. Catullus

   • 64th poem which contains account of Theseus' desertion of Ariadne
   • The sorrow of the lonely individual
   • Intricate
   • Only a few years before Virgil
   • Another 'man leaves woman standed'
   • Rude

6. Tradition with Romans to use work of literary predecessors