Aeneid Books FOUR AND FIVE
Book Four of the Aenied is many things: it is a love story; it is drama of duty and betrayal; it is an essay on the nature of language, especially the languages of love and rumor. It is also one of the most famous pieces of literature ever written. Within decades of its composition, the Roman poet Ovid claimed it had more readers than any other part of the Aeneid. And, as we’ll see later in the course St. Augustine knew it, loved it, hated it, and stole from it. It’s best to approach the book first dramatically; then imagistically; then passionately.The book is in three sections:
The beginnings of Dido’s affair with Aeneas: M 1-345
The lovers’ progressive alienation from each other: M 346-695
The end: Aeneas’s leaving an Dido’s suicide: 696-end
What is the nature of Dido’s character; her infatuation with Aeneas; her relationship to her interior self (through dreams) and her public self (as queen, family member, widow)?
How does Aeneas handle himself as a lover; what is the nature of his speechmaking and argumentation in the book; is he more of or less of a hero by the end of the book?
Notice, first the argument with Dido’s sister, Anna: how is this like a forensic or legal argument; what is the nature of the imagery here; how does Dido describe Aeneas? (M 1-73)
What is the imagery of fire and burning in Dido, beginning at line 74? How does it anticipate Dido’s self-immolation at the end of the book?
What role do the gods play in this book? What is the nature of Juno’s plan (M 152 and following)?
What is the literary power of the scene in the cave (M 212-28)?
What is the idea behind Rumor and how does it fit into the poem as a whole (M229-61)?
What is the nature of Mercury’s speech to Aeneas; what is the nature of A’s vision/dream; what is the nature of deceit and betrayal; what is the function of the rhetorical question (see M 229-395).
Look closely at the exchange between A and D: 396-545.
What is the tone of the Virgilian narrator here; does he become a character in hi own fiction; notice his question at line 561.
More dreams and visions (e.g., 639-653; and look further on, at 768-805)
How does Dido commit suicide; how do Aeneas and his men see it (if at all) what is the nature of the sword (869-end).
Finally, the political allegory: Aeneas diverts his path from founding Rome to a love-affair with a doomed African Queen; Mark Antony had diverted his path from Roman leadership into a love-affair with a later African Queen, Cleopatra. In 31BC, Octavian/Augustus’ forces defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and the queen took her own life. The parallels are important: Virgil is showing his Aeneas a greater Roman hero than Mark Antony – he escapes his African entanglement. And in the process, Virgil takes sides in the aftermath of Rome’s bloody civil war. And, in the end, the Carthaginian exploit resonates with the defeat of Hannibal in the Punic War, as well as with the ultimate imperial annexation of Egypt after the defeat of Cleopatra.
BOOK V
The purposes of Book 5:
to offer a period of narrative quiet against the drama of 4 and the powerful philosophical narrative of 6;
to enable Virgil to develop, in the scene of the Trojan’s funeral games, a powerful response to Homer, whose description of the funeral games at Iliad book 23;
to take some of the attention away from Aeneas and let his companions come to the foreground in the competitions;
to present, in the course of the games, something of an allegory of narrative artistry.
Take, for example, the extended narrative of the boat-race. M144-377.
Four triremes take part; they are expected to row out to a rock in the bay, round the rock, and sail back. Throughout the course of this episode, we see tempers flare, we see comic relief, and we see an anticipation of drama in the course of the poem as a whole. The point here is to illustrate the nature of gaming itself: the development of a rule-governed behavior that has no social purpose other than to demonstrate command of that rule governed behavior. Yes, games have a broader allegorical or symbolic purpose: they are domestications of warfare; they enable the honing of competitive instincts; they foster a construction of a rule-based, goal-based association of men in order to reinforce societal bonds. Performance in the games is a skill. So too is writing poetry. In a sense, the scene of the games is also a refraction of the story of the Trojan Horse: only here, you’ve got men in a wooden boat rather than in a wooden horse.
Notice the use of similes in this section, in particular.