Vergil and the Aeneid
I. Life and Career of Vergil
A. Early Life
1. Born in Mantua on October 15, 70 BC as Publius Vergilius Maro.
2. Probably his family had money enough to secure for him a good education.
a. Associated with an Epicurean group in Naples.
3. The Civil Wars
a. Julius Caesar vs. Pompey and the senatorial forces.
b. Mark Antony and Octavian against the tyrannicides (Brutus and Cassius).
c. Mark Antony and Cleopatra vs. Octavian.
d. Battle of Actium leaves Octavian in power; title of Augustus conferred on him by the senate.
e. Vergil's paternal estate had been confiscated to supply land to the soldiers.
B. Early Work
1. The Eclogues, pastoral poems, written between 42 and 37 BC.
2. Vergil enters the Circle of Maecenas
a. Maecenas, a close associate of Augustus.
b. Augustus becomes Vergil's patron.
3. The Georgics, books praising the simple life of the farmer, written between 37 and 30 BC.
C. The Aeneid
1. Purpose: imitate Homer; glorify Rome and Augustus; unite Romans after the horrors of civil war.
2. Structure.
a. First six books like the Odyssey: wanderings of Aeneas.
b. Last six books like the Iliad: conquest of Latium.
3. The work was not completely finished at his death.
a. Legend says that Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca were instructed to burn it. Augustus said no.
D. Death
1. Returning from a visit to Greece.
2. Contracted a fever.
3. Died September 20, 19 BC at Brundisium.
a. Buried at Naples.
4.Tombstone:
Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope; cecini pascua rura duces.
'Mantua bore me, Calabria snatched me away, now
Naples holds me: I sang of pastures, fields, and kings.
The great Roman poet Vergil (also spelled Virgil) was born Publius Vergilius Maro on Oct. 15, 70 BC, in Andes, a village near Mantua in northern Italy. Vergil spent his childhood on his father's farm and was educated at Cremona, Milan, and then Rome, where he studied rhetoric. There he met poets and statesmen who were to play an important part in his life. When civil war broke out in 49 BC, he retired to Naples where he studied philosophy with the Epicurean Siro.
Beginning in 45 BC, encouraged by the statesman Pollio, Vergil spent eight or ten years composing the Eclogues, which were greatly admired in literary circles. They were adapted to the stage as mimes, and thus made him a popular, if elusive, figure. After the publication of the Eclogues, Vergil joined the literary circle of Gaius Maecenas, which would later include the poets Horace and Propertius. Over a period of seven years he wrote the Georgics, a didactic poem on farming, described by the poet John Dryden as "the best Poem of the best Poet." The last years of Vergil's life were devoted to writing his epic poem, the Aeneid. He died in Brundisium on Sept. 21, 19 BC, after catching a fever on a trip to Greece and Asia, during which he had intended to complete the Aeneid. Before setting out on the voyage, Vergil had asked that the Aeneid be destroyed if anything should happen to him before the poem was complete, but the emperor Augustus overturned the request and had it published. (Also attributed to Vergil in his youth is a collection of poems known as the Appendix Vergiliana. The authenticity of most of these poems is now disputed or rejected.)
The Eclogues, written from 45 to 37 (or 35) BC, were praised for the quiet beauty and charm with which they captured the pastoral landscape. Vergil arranged these ten poems to fit the design of the book as a whole, a new development in poetry. Poems of Theocritus provide a model for some of Vergil's Eclogues, which depict an idyllic Arcadia, with Roman political concerns and real people in pastoral guise intruding on the peaceful setting. The fourth Eclogue prophesies a new golden age that will begin with the birth of an unnamed child. The sixth is a unique blend of cosmology and myths.
The Georgics, written from 36 to 29 BC, is a didactic poem in four books purporting to teach farming. The poem's overall plan is summed up in the opening lines: what to plant and when, the cultivation of trees, especially the vine, and of livestock, and the art of beekeeping. The influence of Hesiod, Aratus, Callimachus, Varro, and Lucretius, as well as other poets in lesser degree, is evident in the poem. Vergil weaves together his diverse materials into a stunning creation that has been compared by many to a musical composition. Masterfully balancing the somber and the joyous, he evokes a love of the land that has seldom, if ever, been matched. Italy emerges as the "Saturnian land," fertile and varied in its produce, the beautiful land over which Saturnus ruled during the golden age. The horror of disease, embodied in the ravages of a plague, is relieved by the picture of the light and joyous bees, whose cultivation is said to have resulted from the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. (Vergil's poem is the classic formulation of the details of this myth.) The poem ends with Aristaeus appeasing the offended deities and in the process discovering the art of beekeeping.
The Aeneid ("the story of Aeneas"), written from 26 to 19 BC, became the national epic and established Vergil, with Homer, as one of the great epic poets. Roman poets before Vergil, including Naevius and Ennius, had already written of Aeneas's adventures. Vergil succeeded in unifying around the figure of Aeneas the theme of Homer's Odyssey (the search for a new home) in the first six books and that of the Iliad (the war and final reconciliation of the Trojans and the Latins) in the last six books, with multiple correspondences between the two halves.
Vergil's greatness was recognized in his own lifetime, soon after which the Aeneid was made a standard school text. In subsequent ages Vergil was viewed as the supreme poet, orator, philosopher, prophet, and theologian. Copies of the Aeneid were placed in temples for consultation. In 4th-century Rome the pagan opposition to the church used Vergil as its Bible, and Fulgentius turned the Aeneid into an allegory of the stages of human life. Dante made Vergil his guide in the Divine Comedy. More recent scholarship has emphasized the continuity of Vergil's work, his art of cumulative imagery, his use of language, and the music of his hexameters: "the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man" (Tennyson). (Grolier Encyclopedia)
II. Aeneid
A. Book 1
1. Hatred of Juno for the Trojans.
a. Prophecy about Rome.
2. Wanderings of Aeneas.
a. Seven years.
b. Now approaching Italy.
3. Juno persuades Aeolus to send a storm.
4.Neptune calms the sea.
5. Trojans land near Carthage.
a. Dido had escaped from Phoenicia and was building a new city.
6. Venus tells Aeneas, her son, to ask Dido for help.
a. Cupid will take the place of Ascanius, Aeneas' son and make Dido fall in love with Aeneas.
7. At banquet, Dido asks Aeneas to tell the story of the fall of Troy and his wanderings.
B. Book 2.
1. The wooden horse.
a. Most Greeks sail to a nearby island
b. Laocoon and his sons killed by serpents.
c. Sinon, the Greek spy, opens the horse and frees the Greek soldiers. The other Greeks return from the island.
2. Dream of Aeneas.
a. Hector alerts him.
3. The hopeless contest.
a. Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) kills Priam on an altar.
b. He had opportunity to kill Helen but Venus said no.
4. Flight.
a. Carries Anchises and leads Ascanius.
b. His wife Creusa is lost; her ghost appears.
c. Joins with many other Trojans and they escape.
C. Book 3
1. Building a fleet and setting sail.
a. They go to Thrace; Polydorus warns them not to settle there.
2.Delos.
a. Oracle tells them to go to the land of their fathers.
3.Crete.
a. Images of the Trojan gods tell them to go to Italy where Dardanus had been born.
4. The Harpies.
a. They will eat their plates.
5. Buthrotum in Epirus.
a. They find Helenus and Andromache now married.
b. Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus) had married Hesione.
c. Orestes had killed him and Helenus inherited part of his land.
d. Prophecy of Helenus: white sow and 30 piglets.
e. Warnings and advice: Circe; Scylla and Charybdis; pray to Juno; consult the Cumaean sibyl.
f. Encounter with the Cyclopedes.
g. Anchises dies.
D. Book 4.
1. Dido falls in love.
a. Role of Venus and Cupid.
b. Her sister Anna advises her to forget Sychaeus and pursue the new love affair.
2. The hunt.
a. It rains and they seek shelter in a cave.
b. Their love is consummated.
3. They live together.
a. Rumor spreads the news.
b. Aeneas decides to stay in Carthage.
4. Mercury sent by Jupiter to remind him of his destiny in Italy.
a. Aeneas is afraid to confront Dido.
b. Dido finds out and confronts him.
c. His excuse is that he is following the command of the gods.
5. Dido's despair.
a. The pyre for all mememtos of Aeneas.
b. Aeneas sails away.
c. The curse of Dido: enmity between Carthage and Rome; Hannibal the future avenger.
d. Her suicide.
E. Book 5
1. Aeneas sees the smoke of the funeral pyre.
2. He arrives in Sicily.
a. He meets a Trojan Acestes.
3. Funeral games for Aeneas.
4. Juno sends Iris to cause Trojan women to set fire to the ships so they can stay in Sicily.
b. Jupiter sends rain and extinguishes the fire.
5. Ghost of Anchises tells Aeneas to visit him in the Underworld.
a. The Cumaean Sibyl will be his guide.
6.Neptune promises a smooth sail to Italy.
a. Neptune wants one life in exchange for many.
b. Palinurus falls asleep and falls overboard.
F. Book 6
1. Visit to the Sibyl.
a. She prophesies a bloody war in Italy, but the Trojans will be victorious and found a new kingdom in Latium.
b. Aeneas will marry Lavinia, a Latin princess.
2. Visit to the Underworld.
a. He must find a golden bough, a talisman, if he wants to enter the Underworld. Two doves, the birds of Venus, lead him to it.
b. Entrance through a cave at Avernus.
c. Monsters at the entrance.
d. Those who cannot cross the river Styx: Palinurus.
e. Charon and Cerberus.
f. Infants.
g. The ghost of Dido: his apology and her reaction.
h. The warriors especially Deiphobus.
i. Tartarus.
j. The Elysian Fields and Anchises.
k. Anchises shows him the souls of famous Romans: Silvius; Romulus; Caesar Augustus; Julius Caesar; Pompey; Cato; the Gracchi; Scipio Africanus; M. Claudius Marcellus.
l. Gates of horn (true shades) and ivory (false dreams).