"I sing of arms and of a man: his fate had made him fugitive: he was the first to journey from the coasts of Troy as far as Italy and the Lavinian shores." The resonant opening lines of Virgil's ...Aeneid rank among the most famous and consistently recited verses to have been passed down to later ages by antiquity. And after the Odyssey and the Iliad, Virgil's masterpiece is arguably the greatest classical text in the whole of Western literature. This sinuous and richly characterised epic vitally influenced the poetry of Dante, Petrarch and Milton. The doomed love of Dido and Aeneas inspired Purcell, while for T S Eliot Virgil's poem was 'the classic of all Europe'. The poet's stirring tale of a refugee Trojan prince, 'torn from Libyan waves' to found a new homeland in Italy, has provided much fertile material for writings on colonialism and for discourses of ethnic and national identity. The Aeneid has even been viewed as a template and a source of philosophical justification for British and American imperialism and adventurism. In his major new book Philip Hardie explores the many remarkable afterlives - ancient, medieval and modern - of the Aeneid in literature, music, politics, the visual arts and film.
This is the first direct literary adaptation of Vergil'sAeneid. The present study demonstrates how, in less than one thousand lines, Ovid revisits the epic world of Aeneas and subjects it to a ...reading that is a paradigm of critical analysis, a statement of originality, and a powerful claim to the epic heritage and Vergilian succession.
Walking through Elysium traces Vergil's influence on literary representations of underworlds, souls, afterlives, prophecies, journeys, and spaces, from sacred and profane to wild and civilized.
In the book titled Vergil's political commentary in Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid, the author examines Vergil’s political views by analyzing the whole of the poet’s work. He introduces the notion of ...the functional model suggesting that the poet often used this instrument when making a political statement. New interpretations of a number of the Eclogues and passages of the Georgics and the Aeneid are suggested and the author concludes that Vergil’s political engagement is visible in much of his work. During his whole career the poet was consistent in his views on several major political themes. These varied from, the distress caused by the violation of the countryside during and after the expropriations in the 40s B.C., to the horrors of the civil war and the violence of war in general, and the necessity of strong leadership. Vergil hoped and expected that Octavian would establish peace and order, and he supported a form of hereditary kingship for which he considered Octavian a suitable candidate. He held Cleopatra in high regard, and he appreciated a more meaningful role for women in society. Vergil wrote poetry that supported Augustus, but he had also the courage to criticize Octavian and his policies. He was a commentator with an independent mind and was not a member of Augustus’ putative propaganda machine.
Here James O'Hara shows how the deceptive nature of prophecy in the Aeneid complicates assessment of the poem's attitude toward its hero's achievement and toward the future of Rome under Augustus ...Caesar. This close study of the language and rhetorical context of the prophecies reveals that they regularly suppress discouraging material: the gods send promising messages to Aeneas and others to spur them on in their struggles, but these struggles often lead to untimely deaths or other disasters only darkly hinted at by the prophecies. O'Hara finds in these prophecies a persistent subtext that both stresses the human cost of Aeneas' mission and casts doubt on Jupiter's promise to Venus of an "endless empire" for the Romans. O'Hara considers the major prophecies that look confidently toward Augustus' Rome from the standpoint of Vergil's readers, who, like the characters within the poem, must struggle with the possibility that the optimism of the prophecies of Rome is undercut by darker material partially suppressed. The study shows that Vergil links the deception of his characters to the deceptiveness of Roman oratory, politics, and religion, and to the artifice of poetry itself. In response to recent debates about whether the Aeneid is optimistic or pessimistic, O'Hara argues that Vergil expresses both the Romans' hope for the peace of a Golden Age under Augustus and their fear that this hope might be illusory.
Originally published in 1990.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
What does it mean to “know” what a work of fiction tells us? In Vergil’s Aeneid, the promise and uncertainty of fama convey this challenge. Expansive and flexible, the Latin word fama can mean ...“fame,” long-lasting “tradition,” and useful “news,” but also ephemeral “rumor” and disruptive “scandal.” Fama is personified as a horrifying winged goddess who reports the truth while keeping an equally tight grip on what’s distorted or made up. Fama reflects the ways talk—or epic song—may merge past and present, human and divine, things remembered and things imagined.
Most importantly, fama marks the epic’s power to bring its story world into our own. The cognitive dynamics of metaphor share in this power, blending the Aeneid’s poetic authority with the imagined force of the gods. Characters and readers are encouraged—even impelled—to seek divine order amidst unsettling words and visions by linking new experiences with existing knowledge. Transformative moments of recognition set the perceptual stage both for the gods’ commands and for the epic’s persuasive efficacy, for pietas (remembrance of ritual and social obligations) and furor (madness).
Antonia Syson’s sensitive close readings offer fresh insights into questions of fictive knowledge and collective memory in the Aeneid. These perspectives invite readers to reconsider some of the epistemological premises underlying inquiry into ancient cultures. Drawing comparisons with the nineteenth-century English novel, Syson highlights continuities between two narrative genres whose cultural contributions and rhetorical claims have often seemed sharply opposed.
The Aeneid is a landmark of literary narrative and poetic sensibility. This 2004 guide gives a full account of the historical setting and significance of Virgil's epic, and discusses the poet's use ...of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, as well as the most celebrated episodes in the poem, including the tragedy of Dido and Aeneas' visit to the underworld. The volume examines Virgil's psychological and philosophical insights, and explains the poem's status as the central classic of European culture. The final chapter considers the Aeneid's influence on later writers including Dante and the Romantics. The guide to further reading has been updated and will prove to be an invaluable resource to students coming to The Aeneid for the first time.
Ascanius is the most prominent child hero in Virgil's Aeneid. He accompanies his father from Troy to Italy and is present from the first book of the epic to the last; he is destined to found the city ...of Alba Longa and the Julian family to which Caesar and Augustus both belonged; and he hunts, fights, makes speeches, and even makes a joke. In this first book-length study of Virgil's Ascanius, Anne Rogerson demonstrates the importance of this character not just to the Augustan family tree but to the texture and the meaning of the Aeneid. As a figure of prophecy and a symbol both of hopes for the future and of present uncertainties, Ascanius is a fusion of epic and dynastic desires. Compelling close readings of the representation and reception of this understudied character throughout the Aeneid expose the unexpectedly childish qualities of Virgil's heroic epic.
