Virgil and the Aeneid
Rome's Greatest Epic
Dear Classical Wisdom Reader,
It’s one of the truly great epics of literature.
Virgil’s Aeneid was a Roman attempt to match the glory of Homer, and many believe it succeeded. It has influenced countless writers and artists across the centuries, and remains one of the ancient world’s undisputed masterpieces.
It’s the powerful tale of Aeneas, a soldier fleeing the fall of Troy, and entering into his destiny to become the founder of Rome.
Read on below to discover the ways Virgil’s masterwork links Greek and Roman culture together, how exactly it connects to Homer, and the nature of the epic poem’s relationship with Augustus, Rome’s first emperor…
Virgil and Homer, as well as other writers mentioned in today’s article, such as Horace and Ovid, are all featured in our stunning hardback anthology, The Essential Classics.
This 644 page volume collects together the greatest writings of the ancient world’s most celebrated poets, playwrights, philosophers and more into one unmissable book.
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It spans both the Greek and Roman worlds, and can help you understand both… Just like Aeneas!
All the best,
Sean Kelly
Managing Editor
Classical Wisdom
Virgil’s Aeneid: Rome’s Greatest Epic
By Ben Potter
Publius Vergilius Maro, better known simply as Virgil, was already a man of great fame and import by the time he came to write the Aeneid.
Much like his junior contemporary, Ovid, Virgil built up a head of steam before he dared to attempt his magnum opus and, again like Ovid, this work took the form of epic poetry.
However, this is where the two great scribes diverge – Ovid came up with a wild, witty and often wicked chronicle of the flights and follies of men and gods, the Metamorphoses. The Aeneid, on the other hand, is a much more sombre and serious piece designed to stand as the greatest and weightiest poetical work of the age, as the greatest work of literature since Homer.
The reference to Homer is no chance or fleeting one. Indeed, there are two things one must have some understanding of if one wishes to fully appreciate the Aeneid: the first is Virgil’s constant and conscious allusion to his Greek forebear, Homer, the second is the context of the epic in relation to Roman history; specifically to the contemporary political climate, and more specifically still to the emperor, Augustus.
Since the very inception of western literature Homer’s weighty tomes, the Odyssey and the Iliad, had been used as the building blocks of Greek (i.e. civilized) society, and with the Hellenization of the Roman aristocratic classes, they became key tenets in the education of every young nobleman.
However, though they were undoubtedly revered—indeed, they were the embodiment of literary excellence—they were still the work of an immoral and inferior Greek! Despite some notable attempts, no Roman had ever produced anything of comparable quantity and quality.
That an epic was desired is evident from the fact that the great literary patron of the Augustan age, Maecenas, seemed to put pressure on those in his pay to produce such a work (and also to glorify Augustus). Though the poets Horace and Propertius both openly declined to do so, Virgil picked up this most daunting of gauntlets.
It took Virgil ten years (29-19BC) to write the colossal story of the aftermath of the Trojan War, of the Trojan prince Aeneas’ flight from his devastated city and the ordeals he suffered in establishing a household for himself and his family.
If this brief snapshot above sounds eerily similar to the plot of the Odyssey, that’s because it is. Not only that, but the parallels run broadly and deeply throughout the text; every one of the epic’s twelve books contains an Homeric allusion or intertext.
Here’s just a flavour of the countless similarities between the two poems. Both epics:
- have a hero wandering the Mediterranean
- have specific gods helping and punishing the heroes as they go
- see the hero wind-tossed away from his desired goal and many of his boats wrecked along the way
- feature a powerful seductress who waylays the hero
- feature a large part of the action told to us via the hero as narrator
- feature oracles, wild and wonderful monsters, the land of
the Cyclopes, (slightly tedious) athletic games, a descent into the underworld and parleys with the dead
- see the heroes encounter fierce resistance upon arriving at their respective destinations which can only be resolved by bloodletting
Though perhaps the most famous Homeric intertext of the Aeneid does not actually come from the Odyssey at all. The triangular relationship of love, death, mercy and loyalty between Aeneas, Turnus and Pallas is strongly reminiscent of Achilles, Hector and Patroclus in the Iliad.
N.B. some scholars go a step further and classify the first six books of the epic as ‘Odyssean’ and the final six books as ‘Iliadic’.
Peppering his work with Homeric hints does by no means show a lack of originality or ability on the part of Virgil. Indeed, to incorporate so many comparisons in such a fantastic and fertile manner, without being overtly crass and obvious, would have been a taxing strain on the poet’s creative faculties. Indeed, his aim was actually an extremely bold one, to directly declare that this, this Italian epic, this masterpiece of Latin verse, will be the rival of Homer, that it will be a work of art of which all Roman can truly be proud.
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Though the point of choosing this ‘Homeric’ theme (i.e. the Trojan War and its diaspora) was not done simply in order to tie in with epic’s literary legacy, it was a deeply political choice.
The Aeneid is a ktistic (foundation) story and, as such, was used to glorify Rome’s origins, legitimise and venerate the emperor and provide a divinely-sanctioned and pre-ordained seal on Rome’s rise to greatness.
Aeneas’ ultimate goal in his own personal (lower-case) odyssey is the town of Lavinium, 33 miles south of Rome. It is here that he eventually conquers his foes and establishes a new homeland for the Trojan race, a race that will one day become the Romans themselves.
Indeed, it is Aeneas’ son Ascanius (also known as Iulus/Julus) who will prove to be the founder of the Julian clan of which Julius Caesar and Augustus will eventually become members.
The fact that Aeneas’ mother is the goddess Venus can leave us with only one conclusion about the man currently in charge of Rome!
Though this grand conclusion is anything but a dramatic twist, we have been well prepped for this every step of the way. Not even 300 lines into the poem the king of the gods, Jupiter, praises Caesar (whether Augustus or his adopted father, Julius Caesar, is ambiguous, though of little importance) in hallowed terms. That Augustus’ deification was imminent may not have been as hard a sell to the Roman people as it instinctively feels to us. His adopted father and great uncle, Julius Caesar, had already been deified – the appearance of a comet at his funeral must have seemed like an astonishing and supernatural intervention to all those who witnessed it. Additionally, Augustus already was a god in Egypt, as the office of Pharaoh carried with it automatic divinity.
Although the whole poem can be viewed as one, long, relentless panegyric aimed at glorifying Augustus, Book VIII’s description of Aeneas’ shield on which are depicted important events in the history of Rome, notably Augustus’ decisive victory over Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31BC, borders on the gratuitous.
Not that Virgil was incapable of subtlety. The most commonly used epithet for Aeneas is pius and he often went against his own base desires in pursuit of the greater good (notably in abandoning the Carthaginian Queen, Dido). These are such traits that Augustus, with his relentless pursuit of wholesome fecundity, piety, and general high morality, would have seen as just and apt for one who planted the seed from which sprouted the whole Roman race.
Likewise the erroneous and interpolated idea within the poem that Italy was a clear, distinct and common land would have helped banish the memories of the Social War – an ‘Italian’ civil war still within living memory.
In a similar manner, Dido’s curse of Aeneas and Troy’s destruction at the hands of the Greeks provide retrospective casus belli for the Romans against the Carthaginians and the Greeks, respectively, thus offering a legitimate cause for why those countries were now under Roman hegemony. Not that the argument is without its pitfalls. Some scholars even claim that the epic is anti-Augustan.
Though there are incidents to which one can point in order to cast a shadow over Aeneas’ (and by association, Augustus’) character – his capricious cruelty to Dido, his lack of mercy to Turnus, his poor politicking, his questionable leadership, and the inevitable homosexual undertone of the Aeneas, Turnus, Pallas/Achilles, Hector, Patroclus association – these can be excused either through the massive weight of evidence in the other column, or by dismissing them as part of the flawed nature of the Homeric hero (Achilles and Odysseus were far from perfect and Homer revelled in their weaknesses) that Virgil was trying to emulate.
Though this near-invisible thread of ambiguity regarding Virgil’s feelings vis-à-vis the emperor does exist and is almost impossible to wholly refute, the success of the piece as the true heir to Homer is more or less universally accepted. Though most can and do argue the toss as regards personal preference or poetical quality, there is little debate that these two scribes and their three epic poems belong firmly in the same bracket.
Probably the most significant piece of evidence for this, and indeed Virgil’s crowning glory, was that what he did with Homer’s epics, others thereafter did with the Aeneid.
This is the true and enduring thread of Virgil’s legacy, that long after the emperors and the empire had returned to dust, the works of the likes of Ovid, Dante and Milton, men who continued to build upon the foundations he and Homer had so successfully laid, continue to flourish and fascinate throughout the ages.