Heroes (213-227): “The Aeneid – Intro”
EQ: How and why is Virgil’s Aeneid a categorically different epic than Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey?
1. Why does Virgil invoke the Muse for a second time in Book 7?
1. Virgil is retelling the Homeric epics in reverse order. Hence, Book 7 is the beginning of a “new epic”
2. What is the main difference between Odysseus’ journey and that of Aeneas?
1. Aeneas’ journey is not a nostos, a return home; his is a journey into the unknown, to a new home and future empire.
3. In what ways does the second half of the Aeneid reflect the Iliad?
1. They both tell of a war between two peoples
2. The war is started b/c of a woman, a new Helen
3. Both texts employ the “absent hero” structure
4. Both heroes (Aeneas and Achilles) return to battle after the death of a friend
5. Both contain grisly battle descriptions, epic similes, and aristeiai (warrior’s finest moments)
6. Women are “more absent” in Books 7-12, as in Homer’s epic, than in Books 1-6, when we have a full characterization of Dido
4. How does the Aeneid reflect Virgil’s historical situation?
1. It reflects a profound historical shift, from the unstable civil wars and imperial rule of Julius Caesar during the 1st century B.C. to the rise of Empire of Octavian, Augustus Caesar in 31 B.C. (Battle of Actium, defeat of Antony).
2. It places Rome and its Emperor at the center of world history (looking to a world of peace under Roman law), making the Aeneid a “patriotic epic.”
3. Aeneas’ troubled relationship with Dido reflects the Punic Wars (264-146 B.C.)
4. Aeneas’ triumph over Turnus reflects the triumph of Augustus over the century of civil war.
5. Dido (like Cleopatra, who allied with Antony against Octavian, Augustus)
6. Conflict between Greece and Rome is one between Europe and Asia
5. Explain how and why Aeneas is different from the Homeric heroes.
1. Aeneas must transform from a sappy Odyssean hero weeping for his home to a future-oriented founder of Rome
2. Although he has characteristics of Achilles (savage and merciless), Odysseus (cunning, suffering hero), and Hector (concerned about community more than personal glory), he is categorically different in that “his sufferings are the labor pains of Rome’s birth.”
3. He is “father Aeneas . . . more Abraham than Achilles.”
6. What is pietas? How does Aeneas symbolize pietas in his escape from Troy?
1. Devotion to one’s duty (to God and/or others) . . . that has “public and political dimensions.”
2. He carries his father on his back (literally bears the burden, Anchises, of the past)
3. He brings Troy’s old gods (public religion)
4. He leads his son by the hand (his future)
7. What is furor? How is the conflict of pietas/fatum and furor reflected on various levels in the Aeneid?
1. Means “madness” or “frenzy.” It is opposition to fatum, Fate or destiny (itself a political idea).
2. Those who oppose Fate are impious
Level Pietas/Fatum Furor Result of Triumph of Piety
Divine Jupiter Juno Calm in Heaven
Personal Aeneas Aeneas Pius Aeneas
Story Aeneas Dido/Turnus New Troy
Sexual Male Female Harmony
Historical Augustus Civil War Empire
Heroes (228-239): “Carthage Is Not Ithaca, Books 1-4”
EQ: How does Virgil create a dynamic hero, one who struggles with the complexities of destiny’s call, the threat of the good, and the fear of a promised yet unrealized future?
1. How does Virgil hint that Carthage might be Aeneas’ new home, yet also a false one?
1. He sees in Dido’s achievement of civilization building a picture of what he is destined to achieve but has not. Since Dido identifies with Aeneas’ suffering and is “queenly,” she would be a worthy “Penelope,” but this would hamper Aeneas from going beyond “Odysseus.”
2. Describe Dido’s character. (What goddesses is she like? How is she an “Amazon”?) How do her character traits, office, and sex doom her to a life of furor?
1. Dido is a strong woman: she is an Amazon, ruling men in a man’s world, and looks like Diana (Artemis), the huntress. She is also like Juno, both of whom suffer and nurse terrible emotional wounds of passion. She is also full of empathy for Aeneas, having suffered a similar fatum. Her being hit by arrows of passion (empathy), queenly status (looking for a possible Carthaginian King), and feminine frailty (as opposed to masculine machismo) all contribute to her overwhelming desire (furor)to keep Aeneas for herself, for her family, for her country . . . at the expense of all three b/c of Jupiter’s irrevocable call upon Aeneas’ destiny.
3. Describe the significance of the “serpent-like flame” / “flame-like serpents” imagery, in addition to the further significance of Sinon’s name.
1. First sign: Trojan horse – Neptune sends twin flame-like snakes (Trojans misread) that kill the protesting Laocoon
2. Second sign: Burning Troy – Jupiter confirms the snake-like flame on Iulus’ head (Anchises reads properly)
3. Sinon – name is similar to the Latin word for “snake’s coils” (sinus) and the undulating motion of a snake (insinuat). Sinon is a snake, a deceiver, like all Greeks.
4. When the snakes slither to the temple of Minerva, place where the horse is to be taken, Virgil is saying that the horse is a serpentine deception, holding the serpentine progeny inside its womb. Although “Troy is overthrown by treacherous Greek serpents, a serpent-like flame promises deliverance and a new beginning.
4. What is the significance of Aeneas’ visit to Buthrotum?
1. Buthrotum is a sub-standard, sentimental, nostalgic wannabe Troy. The past is not sufficient to house Aeneas, the Roman future.
5. How is Aeneas’ departure from Carthage (his suppression of personal desire beneath public duty) significant on the political, philosophical, geographical, gender, and cosmic levels?
1. He is acting like the model Roman and model Stoic, choosing the simplicity of the West over the luxury of the East, choosing masculine reason over feminine passion, and choosing Jupiter’s principle of order over Juno’s principle of irrationality.
6. What do many modern critics suggest Virgil is doing with Dido’s suicide? How does Leithart qualify their gross over-simplification?
1. Many believe that Virgil is criticizing Augustus and Roman Imperialism by showing a land and queen devastated by “Roman” meddling. Leithart suggests that he is both for Roman Imperialism and rule but also aware of its cost in blood. He is the best sort of patriot: one who is for country while being critical of it.
Heroes (240-251): “Return to Daylight, Books 5-6”
EQ: How and why does Anchises help Aeneas truly transform from an impious Trojan into a pius Roman?
1. Throughout the first four books, how does Virgil show Aeneas’ lack of pietas, his reluctance to “repent” from his lamentation over his lost past?
1. Aeneas laments not dying in the storm of Book 1
2. He falls under the spell of Dido’s furor
3. Leaving Carthage, he gazes longingly at his lost romance
2. What role does Anchises (Aeneas’ father) play in Aeneas’ transformation?
1. When alive, Anchises functioned as Aeneas’ future-orienting guide
2. Although dead, his funeral games serve to begin confirming his pius submission to fatum.
3. Book 6 shows Anchises’ shade in the underworld give guidance and cast a vision of Aeneas’ future that will confirm him to the end
3. How is Book 5 (“The Funeral Games of Anchises”) an “Iliadic scene inserted into an Odyssean context”?
1. Both the Trojan women’s burning of their ships (echoing Hector’s attempt to burn the Greeks’ mainstay and the funeral games mimic the Iliad (Aeneas is the new Achilles celebrating not Patroclus, but Anchises), while the general shape of the first half of the Aeneid follows the contours of the Odyssey. The games in Homer show the prowess of warriors who have been fighting, while those in Virgil preview that of those who shortly will . . . and will conquer.
4. How does Aeneas’ descent into the underworld go “beyond” Odysseus’?
1. Aeneas learns that the war to found Rome will not be a despairing Greek standoff but will lead to universal peace and justice.
2. Impious Aeneas descends a Trojan and pius Aeneas emerges a Roman, a new man
3. Aeneas also meets three people from his past in reverse chronological order: Palinurus (journey - captain of his ship who died), Dido (Carthage), and Deiphobus (Troy - Helen’s second Trojan husband). This is a picture in miniature of Aeneas’ departure from the past as he goes to the Elysian fields, where Anchises shows him a picture of his future, a picture that is his prophetic vision.
5. In his descent, Aeneas asks why a soul would want to return to daylight. What is Anchises’ answer(s)?
1. Having drunk from the River Lethe, souls “forget” how brutal fleshly existence is, so they don’t remember the former pain (plus they have no choice).
2. The returning souls will be reincarnated into the bodies of those who will become the great empire of Rome.
6. How is the Roman “art of war” different from that of the Greek? What does this mean in the context of the epic?
1. Roman war was not merely for personal glory but for the “peace of order and the rule of law.”
2. This conception “sets out not only Rome’s mission, but the ideal to which Aeneas must conform in the coming Italian conflict.”
Heroes (252-262): “The Fury of Hell, Books 7-9”
EQ: Why does Virgil consider the second half of his epic more significant than the first, and how does he transfigure the Iliadic sections of the Aeneid into a distinctly Roman war epic?
1. How is the conflict of pietas with furor different in Books 7-12 than in 1-6?
a. Conflict shifts from within Aeneas and becomes public through the Italian war.
2. How is Aeneas’ arrival in Italy like Odysseus’s homecoming?
a. Lavinia = Penelope
b. Aeneas = Odysseus
c. Turnus = false suitor
d. Aeneas’ coming is a nostos, a homecoming b/c of his double origins
e. King Latinus recognizes Aeneas as the “true” husband
3. For Virgil, what is the significance of Aeneas’ prospective marriage to Lavinia?
a. He wants to show how Rome descended from Troy
b. How the native Latins made their contribution to Roman character
c. How east plus west equals world-dominating Rome
4. How does Juno conceive of the situation in Italy? Is this the way things really are?
a. She sees Aeneas as a Paris, or every Trojan as a Paris
b. No. Lavinia is not a married woman.
5. How does Virgil show the difference(s) between Achilles and Aeneas?
a. Aeneas leaves the battle out of pietas, not b/c of a glory-mongering pity party
b. Aeneas fights not for personal glory, but for the glory of Rome
6. Virgil shifts the locus of madness from warrior to war itself. Why?
a. War is a kind of madness, a public expression of irrational fury and anger
7. How does Virgil challenge the Homeric heroic ideal?
a. Aeneas fights reluctantly, for the sake of peace and Roman glory, not as a means to personal glory
8. How does Book 8 provide glimpses of Rome’s future?
a. Evander’s kingdom is where future Rome will be
b. Aeneas’ shield depicts future Roman history
9. What does Aeneas’ shield depict?
a. Future Roman history, the Battle of Actium at the center, Augustus Caesar at the center of that.
b. It includes Vulcan below and Apollo above; thus, heaven and hell encompass Rome at the “center” of world history.
c. Violence (both Trojan and Grecian) is not the center of history, as in Achilles’ shield; Roman conquering and peace is for Virgil.
10. From whom does Aeneas receive his shield, and how is it significant?
a. He receives it from his mother: honor parents
b. He take it to his shoulder, “shouldering” his future descendants
Heroes (263-270): “Fury in the Service of Piety, Books 10-12”
EQ: How is it possible for furor to serve pietas if they are at odds, and what is the Christian answer to and irony surrounding this Roman (secular?) approach to imperial expansion?
1. Explain the similarities and contrasts between Books 4 and 10, addressing a) Aeneas’ responsibility for a death, b) the role of the absent father, and c) Aeneas’ response to furor.
a. Aeneas is responsible for a death
1. Book 4 – Dido’s, but he is possessed by a passion contrary to pietas
2. Book 10 – Pallas’, but he acts from pure pietas toward Evander, Pallas’ father
b. Role of the absent father is crucial (Evander is home and Anchises is dead)
1. Book 4 – impius toward his father by dallying with Dido
2. Book 10 – pius toward Evander, and thus to his father (especially since Evander was once a recipient of an Anchises gift).
c. Aeneas’ response to furor
1. Book 4 – Dido’s furor nearly turns Aeneas from his fatum
2. Book 10 – Turnus’ battle furor almost does the same
2. Explain the tripartite structure of Book 10 and explain some of the significances of each episode, specifically addressing a) the council of the gods, b) the return of Aeneas, and c) the death of Pallas.
a. Council of the gods
1. the only council of its type in the book
2. highlights the pivotal character of the book
3. Jupiter becomes sick of Venus and Juno’s bickering
4. Goes back on his promise to Venus to secure Aeneas’ fate: ironically leaves all to fate
b. The return of Aeneas
1. hinge of Book 10 and the entire Iliadic half of the epic
2. his return “reshuffles all the Iliadic roles”
1. Trojans go from Trojan to the conquering “Greeks”
2. Aeneas, accused of being a Paris and becoming a Hector, returns an Achilles
3. Shield is at the center of the reviving, Octavian at the center of the shield, the victory at Actium at the center of the shield, foretelling the victory at hand
4. Flames on Aeneas associate with Iulus and Augustas’ at Actium (in the shield)
c. The death of Pallas
1. Pallas is the “Patroclus” of Virgil’s “Iliad”
1. Achilles is motivated by passion due to deep personal loss (childhood friend)
2. Aeneas is motivated by Roman pietas, having just met Pallas (duty to Evander)
3. How does Virgil set up the battle scene, especially the fight with Gaston . . . I mean, Turnus, to highlight Aeneas’ pietas?
a. While Turnus stalks and gloats over killing a younger warrior, even taunting Pallas’ father, Evander, Aeneas is “forced” to kill a youngster (Lausus) who comes after him, even warning the young warrior to stand aside, and even seeing a reflection of his own filial piety in Lausus’ action. Aeneas does not gloat; rather, he laments.
4. After Pallas’ death, Aeneas is filled with furor, Virgil heaping on the flame imagery while Aeneas rampages across the battlefield and the furor language especially in connection with Turnus’ death. Since Aeneas’ furor is what ultimately conquers Turnus, how does Leithart defend the thesis he has maintained thus far, that Aeneas’ pietas is supposed to conquer furor?
a. All Aeneas’ actions, including his furor, are motivated by pietas.
b. The vocation of Rome was to beat down the proud (Turnus); Aeneas was just obeying, being the archetypal Roman.
c. Aeneas, in becoming Pallas’ surrogate father, was required to avenge Pallas’ death in pietas toward Evander.
d. Thus, the opposition of pietas and furor is not absolute: furor is a servant in the pursuit of pietas.
e. There is a battle madness that is an express of pietas rather than a rebellion against it.
f. Reflected in the heavenly realm: Juno is not cast out of heaven; she merely submits to Jupiter, the Father of pietas, and his plan for rational order.
5. In his City of God, St. Augustine explains the reason Rome rose to world dominance. What was the dominant motive driving their program and how was the imperial expansion related to the civil strife that preceded it?
a. Motive was lust for dominion through sinful domination.
b. This lust was the motive behind the civil wars and is what fueled Rome’s fires of imperial expansion.
c. Rome’s Empire was merely its civil war pushed to the four corners of the earth.
6. Read Philippians 2: 3-11. What is the difference between the Roman world conquest and that of Jesus Christ and His Church?
a. In St. Augustine’s view, Aeneas and Augustus, while putting down the proud, were proud themselves; they were mad for using madness as a means to peace.
b. While Virgil knew of the dangers of furor, he accepted it as a necessary means to Rome’s Imperial end.
c. Roman style is prideful; Christian style is humble
d. Christ, on the other hand, destroyed death, not by taking blood, but by giving his; not by killing, but by being killed; not by furor, but by obedience to an ignominious death on a cross, a Roman instrument of torture, terror, and symbol for world expansion. Christ transfigured the cross from a Roman emblem to a Christian one, making it a picture of the way we are supposed to embrace the world.
7. Your last question is not one: read the following piece on Roman crucifixion and muse on the cross as a Roman symbol of world domination and peace keeping vs. the cross having been transfigured into a symbol of Christ’s triumph over the world and his subduing of the nations. Consider also how the cross should “shape” the way you are called to live your life as a follower of Christ.
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