Like Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey before it, Virgil's Aeneid ranks as one of the most important heroic epics of the ancient world.  A Roman citizen in the first century B.C.. Publius Virgilius Maro (70 - 19 B.C.) selected the Trojan War as the source for his own hero, Aeneas, a survivor of the sacking of Troy who accepts as his burden and duty the founding of a city fit for the relocation of the Trojan gods. Alive at the time  of Julius Caesar's assassination in Rome in 44 B.C., Virgil was in a position to witness the first stages of the flowering of Roman culture and influence that would materialize as the "Pax Romana," the "Roman Peace," over the next 250 years.  Following two other works, just as important in their genres, the Bucolics, a pastoral, and Georgics, "a didactic poem on farming" (text), Virgil's Aeneid, unfinished at his death, presents a character committed to the sense of Roman duty, the highest calling of his culture--a duty to the service of state--that ranked above other responsibilities, even to one's soul mate, even to one's very lover.

Aeneas returns from the Trojan War with his son and father with the purpose of founding a city worthy of the displaced Trojan gods and the foundation for an empire.  In Carthage, he becomes the romantic object of Dido, the queen of the city state, who is willing to sacrifice herself for the love he spurns in tribute to his higher calling from the gods.  Returning to Italy, he follows the instructions of the Sibyl, a prophetess, who directs him to the underworld where he will experience the vision of his own and the future of the city state that he will found. Venus fashions a shield to protect him against the challenges that he still must face and the battles yet unfought.  On that shield are emblazoned the future history of Rome.

Readings

The Introduction to Virgil, pp. 814 - 817
The Aeneid, pp. 817 - 895

Study Questions

1) What might the images of Aeneas's departure from Troy with his father and son in escort represent, relative to the purpose that the gods have declared for him?

2) Why was Aeneas wrong to spurn Dido's adulterous love for Aeneas?  Why was he right to do so?  What Roman values are represented in the affair between them?

3) If anger spurs Achilles to battle and to the conditions at hand, Odysseus, his desire to return home to his wife and family, what drives Aeneas in his return from the Trojan War back to Italy?

4) What central Roman value does Aeneas's decision to leave love and Carthage represent?

Key Concepts

Supremacy of the State
No other value, even its attention to form, freedom, and order, so lifted the allegiance of Roman citizens as did the concept of duty.  Aeneas is captive to this value and driven even into the underworld to pursue his destiny in the service of Roman duty.

Roman/Greek Relations
The Romans tended to follow Greek patterns and models relative to things intellectual, political, and artistic.  They adopted Greek literary forms as their own, emulated Greek architecture in their civic and ceremonial structures, and even adapted the pantheon of the Greek gods and their myths into their own system of religion, in many cases, assigning Latin names to their Greek counterparts and adopting their narratives and relationships for their own.  Likewise, it was to the Greek mythologies that all Latin poets turned for the content of their finest works.