Aeneid

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Template:Expand The Aeneid is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC (between 29 and 19 BC) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is written in dactylic hexameter.

1 Form and tradition
2 Influence
3 Story
4 Context
5 The history of the Aeneid
6 See also
7 Further reading
8 External links

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Form and tradition

The Aeneid (IPA English pronunciation: Template:IPA; in Latin Aeneis, pronounced Template:IPA — the title is Greek in form: genitive case Aeneidos): is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy where he founded the Roman race.

The hero Aeneas was already a subject of Roman legend and myth; Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome and a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous piety, and fashioned this into a compelling nationalist epic that at once tied Rome to the legends of Troy, glorified traditional Roman virtues and legitimated the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes and gods of Rome and Troy.

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Influence

The Aeneid is one of a small group of writings from Latin literature that has traditionally been required for students of Latin. Traditionally, after reading the works of Julius Caesar, Cicero, Ovid and Catullus, students would then read the Aeneid. As a result, many phrases from this poem entered the Latin language, much as passages from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope have entered the English language. One example is from Aeneas' reaction to a painting of the sack of Troy: Sunt lacrimae rērum et mentem mortālia tangunt—"There tears for the mortal way of the world brush our minds." (Aeneid I, 462) (Template:Perseus).

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Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme (Arma virumque cano…, "I sing of arms and the man...") and an invocation to his Muse (Musa, mihi causas memora…, "O Muse, relate to me the reasons…"). He then explains the cause of the principal conflict of the plot; in this case, the resentment held by Juno against the Trojan people. This is in keeping with the style of the Homeric epics, except in that Virgil states the theme and then invokes his Muse, whereas Homer invokes the Muse and then states the theme.

Also in the manner of Homer, the story proper begins in medias res, with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, heading in the direction of Italy. Juno stirs up a storm which is on the verge of sinking the fleet. Neptune takes notice: although he himself is no friend of the Trojans, he is infuriated by Juno's intrusion into his domain, and stills the winds and calms the waters. The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa, where Aeneas gains the favor of Dido, queen of Carthage, a city which has only recently been founded by refugees from Tyre and which will later become Rome's greatest enemy.

At a banquet given in the honor of the Trojans, Aeneas recounts the events which occasioned the Trojans' fortuitous arrival. He begins the tale shortly after the events described in the Iliad, and tells of the end of the Trojan War, the ruse of the Trojan Horse, the sack of Troy by the Greek armies, and his escape with his son Ascanius and father Anchises, his wife Creusa having been separated from the others and subsequently killed in the general catastrophe. He tells of how, rallying the other survivors, he built a fleet of ships and made landfall at various locations in the Mediterranean (including Thrace, Crete and Epirus) before being divinely advised to seek out the land of Italy (also known as Ausonia), where his descendants would not only prosper, but in time rule the entire known world. The fleet reached as far as Sicily and was making for the mainland, until Juno raised up the storm which drove it back across the sea to Carthage.

During the banquet, Dido realizes that she has fallen madly in love with Aeneas, although she had previously sworn fidelity to the soul of her late husband, Sychaeus, who was murdered by her cupidinous brother Pygmalion. Juno seizes upon this opportunity to make a deal with Venus, Aeneas' mother, with the intention of distracting him from his destiny of founding a city in Italy. Aeneas is inclined to return Dido's love, and is only too happy when Juno, disguised as a bridesmaid, marries him to his beloved in a cave during a storm, but when Jupiter sends Mercury to remind him of his duty, he has no choice but to part. Her heart broken, Dido commits suicide by stabbing herself upon a pyre with a sword. Before dying, she predicts eternal strife between Aeneas's people and hers; "rise up from my bones, avenging spirit" is an obvious invocation to Hannibal. Looking back from the deck of his ship, Aeneas sees Dido's funeral pyre's smoke and knows its meaning only too clearly. However, destiny calls and the Trojan fleet sails on to Italy.

Aeneas's father Anchises having been hastily interred on Sicily during the fleet's previous landfall there, the Trojans returned to the island to hold funeral games in his honor.

Eventually, the fleet lands on the mainland of Italy and further adventures ensue. Aeneas descends to the underworld through an opening at Cumae, where he speaks with the spirit of his father and has a prophetic vision of the destiny of Rome. Returning to the land of the living, he leads the Trojans to settle in the land of Latium, where he courts Lavinia, the daughter of king Latinus. A war ensues between the Trojans and some of the indigenous peoples of Italy, which is brought to a close when Lavinia's rejected suitor Turnus, king of the Rutuli, challenges Aeneas to a duel in which Turnus is slain.

This is where the Aeneid ends, although we know that it is incomplete. Virgil died before finishing his work, and many people have felt that the poem is not complete without an account of Aeneas' marriage to Lavinia and his founding of the Roman race. To fill this perceived deficiency, the fifteenth-century Italian poet Maffeo Vegio (also known as Mapheus Vegius) composed a "supplement to the Aeneid", which was widely printed in Renaissance editions of the work. Others, on the other hand, see the violent ending to the Aeneid as a typically Virgilian comment on the darker, vengeful side of humanity.

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Context

The work was written at a time of major change in Rome, both political and social. The Republic had fallen, civil war had ripped apart society, and the sudden return of prosperity and peace after a generation of chaos had badly eroded traditional social roles and cultural norms. In reaction, the emperor Augustus was trying to re-introduce traditional Roman moral values, and the Aeneid is thought to reflect that aim. Aeneas was depicted as a man devoted and loyal to his country and its prominence, rather than personal gains. He went off on a journey for the better of the Rome. In addition, the Aeneid attempts to legitimize the rule of Julius Caesar (and by extension, of his adopted son Augustus and his heirs). Aeneas' son Ascanius is called Ilus (from Ilium, meaning Troy), is renamed Iulus and offered by Virgil as an ancestor of the gens Julia, the family of Julius Caesar. When making his way through the underworld, Aeneas is given a prophecy of the greatness of his imperial descendants. Furthermore, Aeneas receives weapons and armour from Vulcan, including a shield which illustrates the future of Rome and lays stress once again upon the emperors, including Augustus.

One might also note the relationship between the Trojans and Greeks in the Aeneid. The Trojans were the ancestors of the Romans according to the Aenead and their enemies were the Greek forces who had besieged and sacked Troy yet at the time the Aeneid was written the Greeks were part of the Roman Empire and a respected people, being considered cultured and civilised. This situation is resolved by the fact that the Greeks only beat the Trojans through the use of a trick, the wooden horse, not on the open field of battle and thus Roman dignity is saved.

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The history of the Aeneid

The poetry of the Aeneid is polished and complex; legend has it that Virgil wrote only three lines of the poem each day.

Although the work is complete, with the same length and scope as Homer's epics which it imitates, it is unfinished: a number of lines are only half-complete. It is common, however, for epic poems to have incomplete, disputed, or badly adulterated text, and because it was composed and preserved in writing rather than orally, the Aeneid is more complete than most epics. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether Virgil intended to complete such lines. Some of them would be difficult to complete, and in some instances the shortness of the lines adds to the dramatic finality of the sentence.

On his death, Virgil left instructions for the Aeneid to be destroyed since the work was unfinished. Virgil had also come to disfavor one of the sequences in Book VIII wherein Venus and Vulcan have marital relations, and had intentions of altering this sequence to conform better with Roman virtues. For this reason as well he wished the epic to be destroyed after his death. Augustus, however, ordered that the poet's wishes be disregarded, and after minor modifications, the Aeneid was published.

In the 15th century, there were two attempts to produce an addition to the Aeneid. One was made by Pier Candido Decembrio (which was never completed) and one was made by Maffeo Vegio, which was often included in 15th and 16th century printings of the Aeneid as the Supplementum.

The most famous translation of the Aeneid is the English translation by the 17th-century poet John Dryden. Although it takes numerous small liberties with the text, it is one of the very few examples of a poetic translation that retains the power and flow of the original in a new language, and it is often regarded as a classic in its own right.

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