Virgil, Aeneid Books IV & V
Readers of Books IV and V find themselves deep within Virgil's absorption, transformation, translation, and transmission of the Homeric epic into a vehicle for Aeneas' and Rome's immortalization. The project is similar to Ovid's, and a comparison might be fruitful, but for not, let us stick with Publius Vergilius Maro and let Publius Ovius Naso rest. (What's with the three names? See this site explaining the Roman custom of giving a praenomen (given name), nomen (family name), and cognomen (nickname). Vergil's name is usually spelled "Virgil" by English writers--who can fathom English orthography--but his nickname, "Maro," has not been traced to mean anything I can discover, though it's an anagram of "Roma" and "Amor." Ovid's nickname, as you probably guessed, was "Nose" [maybe a big honker?]) Now where was I? Yes, Virgil's process.
Book I was the poet's full-court press, charging the reader with a nearly continuous flow of Homeric allusion that increasingly alters the Greek values of independent, agonic kleos-seeking to Roman values of collective, empathic, empire-buiding. In Books II-III, Odysseus' successes become Ulysses' failures by a process of selective re-evaluation of Homeric events using Aeneas' point of view, and creative reinvention of Homeric episode or character types to develop the Greek critique and the poem's emerging doctrine of Rome's destiny embodied in Aeneas' behavior. Especially look for thematic repetitions that contrast Ulysses, a hero aided by the hard, masculine, virgin, warrior-goddess, Athena, with Aeneas, a hero aided by the soft, hyper-feminine, many-times-bedded mother of two, love goddess, Venus. In this poetic re-evaluation of the Pantheon the Romans inherited from the Greeks, Virgil strikes at the very core of Roman dependency upon the Greeks for their religious and poetic values, and begins to retake those values for Roman readers. Books IV-V take advantage of the readers' presumed engagement in Virgil's process by giving them some new poetic and political significance. In Book IV, love's power overturns not only the Carthagenian warrior-queen, Dido, but also Juno's plan to attempt to finesse fate by joining Roman and Carthagenian destinies in a forbidden marriage (like Helen's to Paris?). Score 1 for Venus. In Book V, Virgil takes a formulaic element of the Homeric epic, "funeral games," and makes of them a stunning demonstration of his poetic power by foretelling the war destinies of many players in ironic allusions to their fates, and in establishing a "metapoetic" dramatization of his combat with the Homeric Greek poetic inheritance. The second sort of poetic innovation, which we saw in Ovid's prologue and epilogue boasts, is embedded in the iconography of the boxing match between Dares and Entellus, and like Ovid's narrative weaving, Virgil's metapoesis challenges all later poets to rise to the heights of his poetic "brand": an epic that that teaches the arts of peace and the unforgetably terrible losses of war. In doing this, Virgil makes possible Dante, Chaucer, Milton, and Wordsworth, who I believe read and understood Entellus' challenge when they encountered Virgil as the Master Poet who reigned at the core of their classical Anglo-European education.
Having accomplished those three stages of reader-re-education, Virgil is finally ready for Book VI, which takes on the "journey to the Underworld," formerly Odysseus' distinguishing achievement. No character goes to the Iliad's Underworld and returns. After Virgil, at least until Wordsworth, the "journey to the Underworld" episode becomes a mandatory feat any great writer must achieve in order to compete with the Master. Note that I give you the entire weekend to read just this one book for Monday's class. It deserves that concentrated attention.
Book IV‑‑
1) How does Anna convince Dido to
love Aeneas? What possibility
does this speech raise, and how might it have seemed to the
Imperial Roman reader? (Also
see the goddesses' debate.)
2) What are Virgil's metaphors for
love, and why are they appropriate
to this narrative? How do they
locate Dido in the symbolic
universe of Aeneas' quest? [Note: a
metaphor is an implied comparison between an intangible abstraction and an
familiar (usually visual) phenomenon or event.
Like allegory, metaphor depends on making an analogy between the form or
function of the abstraction, and the physical circumstances of the phenomenon or
event.]
3) Virgil tells us twice how Aeneas
and Dido will be brought to make
love. Compare the portrayals of
Dido's love in each?
4) Virgil comments directly on the
propriety of Dido's behavior: neque
enim specie famane / movetur nec iam furtivum Dido /
mediatur amorem; coniugium / vocat: hoc praetexit nomine culpam
[no more does she dream of secret love; she calls it marriage and
with that name veils her sin: Loeb].
What does Virgil mean?
5) What kind of monster is Rumor,
and how is it appropriate for an
imperial poet? (Compare with
Scylla, etc. from the Odyssey.)
6) How does Virgil explain Aeneas'
decision to leave Dido? How
might a Homeric bard have done it, and how would those two
versions have differed?
(Hint: How does Aeneas represent
his dream to Dido, vs. the way Virgil represents it to us?)
7) Why does Virgil not claim to
know with what emotion Dido watched
Aeneas' fleet preparing to leave, asking her rhetorically
to tell him? Did he really
not know? If not, why say it?
8) What use does Virgil make of an
extended simile to describe Aeneas'
response to Dido's plea, and where else have we seen it?
9) When Dido stands at the altar
beside her funeral pyre, why is one
of her sandals loosened, and why is her robe unfastened?
10) One of the passages from
The Aeneid that passed into common
proverbial usage in medieval
11) What is the practical,
political consequence of Dido's curse and who is the "avenger"?
[See the Roman history handout.]
Book V‑‑
1) When Aeneas and the Trojans find
themselves blown back to Drepanum
where Anchises had died (at the end of Book III), they
celebrate funeral games in his honor.
Note the prizes, especially
the cloak. What has its story to do
with Aeneas' life?
(Check
2) How has Virgil changed the
boxing and archery competitions
found in the Odyssey, and what kind of effect is he after?
3) How does what Virgil expects his
audience to accept in a public game
differ from what you are willing to accept?
Where in this culture do we
most nearly approach such events?
4) When Juno's ally, Iris, attacks
the Trojans again, how does her
means of attack relate to Aeneid themes and to Homeric epics?
5) After their departure from
Drepanum, the Trojan fleet sails
for