Latin literature(라틴문학)의 Aeneis(아이네이스)

[시너먼]

Aeneas Flees Burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598 Galleria Borghese, Rome

Latin은

라티움 지방에 살던 고대 부족의 이름이다.

라틴어의 어원은 지명 라티움(Latium)에서 유래된 것이지만 그 발상지는 로마이다.

중부 이탈리아에 위치한 라티움은

로마를 비롯하여 라비니움과 아리키아 및 알바롱가 등의 도시로 결성된

라틴족의 군사동맹체의 일원이었다.

이곳은 BC 11세기 이전에는 에트루리아인의 소유였으나

BC 505년에는 라틴족이 장악했다.

이후 여러 차례의 전쟁에서 승리한 라틴족은

이탈리아 전역을 장악했으며

이에 따라 에트루리아어·오스카어·움브리아어 등이 주도하던

이탈리아 반도의 복잡한 언어상황은 라틴어에 흡수·통합되었다.

상고 라틴어(BC 6~3세기)의 강세는

두음절(頭音節)에 분포되었으며,

최고명문(BC 6세기)은

'마니우스는 누메리우스를 위해 나를 만들었다'(Manios med fhefhaked Numasioi)이다.

고대 라틴어(BC 3~1세기)의 강세는

두음절에서 전말음절(前末音節)로 이행되었는데

이는

라틴어가 여러 언어를 흡수·통합한 데서 기인된 것이며,

주요명문(BC 186)은

'바코스 축제에 대한 원로원의 결정'(Senatus Consultum de Bacchan libus)이다.

고전 라틴어(BC 1세기~AD 3세기) 시대는 라틴어의 황금기이며,

통속 라틴어(3~7세기)는

로마제국 전역의 언어를 석권했으나

이에 따라 고전 라틴어의 문법적 엄밀성에서 다소 이탈되었다.

이어 중세 라틴어(7~16세기)는

지방언어의 발음을 따랐으며,

로마제국의 정치력·군사력의 퇴조와 더불어

8세기에 로망스 제어로 분화되어 사어(死語)가 되었다.

그후 중세 라틴어에서 현대 라틴어(16세기~현재)에 이르기까지

라틴어는 종교계(로마 가톨릭)와 학계에서 계속 통용되고 있다.

  라틴문학은 라틴어로 씌어진 작품들의 총체이다.

라틴어가 구어로 쓰이던 로마 공화정과 로마 제국 시대로부터

종교의식·학문·관료계급의 언어로 사용되던 중세와 르네상스기에 걸쳐

라틴어로 씌어진 작품을 통틀어 라틴 문학이라고 한다.

고대(고전) 라틴 문학은

고대 그리스 문학에 기초를 두었다는 설도 있으나,

이는 전적으로 옳지는 않다.

라틴 문학은 초기 단계에서부터 나름대로의 뚜렷한 특성을 지녔으며,

그 아름다움과 활력은 그리스적 요소 위에

거친 라틴적 요소가 가미되어 생겨난 것이었다.

BC 1세기의 시인 베르길리우스가

라틴어로부터 〈아이네이스 Aeneid〉에서 볼 수 있는

섬세하고 세련된 시어(詩語)를 만들어냈을 때도,

BC 3세기 시인들의 미숙한 시에서 나타나는 거친 두운법 등 초기 특성들은 사라지지 않았다.

그러나 로마인들이 산출한 대부분의 문학 장르,

즉 서사시·극·서정시, 또다른 개인적 유형의 시들, 역사, 웅변, 철학 등은

그리스인들에게서 전수받은 것이 사실이다.

여기에 더하여

로마인들은 풍자(문자적으로는 '雜記'라는 뜻)와 소설(당시에는 뚜렷한 명칭이 없었음)을

창조했다.

  그 특징과 역사적 역할은

① 그리스문학을 계승하여 서유럽에 전한 헬레니즘적 역할

② 로마국민문학으로서의 면

③ 로마세계제국의 보편적 문학의 면

④ 그리스도교라틴문학의 성격이 있다는 것 등을 들 수 있다.

Aeneis(아이네이스)

Aeneid라고도함.

BC 29경~19년경 로마의 시인 베르길리우스가 쓴 서사시.

  불에 타 폐허가 된 트로이를 빠져나온 아이네아스가

초자연적인 안내를 받아

서양에서 영광스런 운명을 지닐 새로운 터를 찾아내,

이곳에 라비니움(알바 롱가와 로마의 모체가 된 고대 도시)이라는 도시를 건설했다는

전설적인 이야기를 12권에 걸쳐 적고 있다.

  아이네아스는

트로이가 그리스와의 전쟁에서 패배하자

가족과 추종자들 및 가문의 수호신들과 트로이에서 도망친다.

그러나 불길에 휩싸인 도시에서 빠져나오다 혼란중에 아내를 잃어버리고 만다.

아내의 유령은

그에게 티베르 강이 흐르는 서쪽 땅으로 가라고 말한다.

그후 그는 긴 여행을 시작해

트라키아·크레타·시칠리아를 거치면서

많은 모험을 하게 되고

마침내 아프리카의 카르타고 근처 해안에서 난파당한다.

그곳에서 남편을 잃고 홀로 된 디도 여왕을 만나

자신이 거쳐온 일들을 이야기해준다.

그들은 사랑에 빠지고

아이네아스는 카르타고를 차마 떠나지 못하고 머물지만

메르쿠리우스는 그에게 목적지는 로마라는 사실을 준엄하게 일깨워준다.

이에 그는 즉시 디도를 버리고 떠나게 되며,

그녀는 자살한다.

아이네아스는

항해를 계속해 티베르 강 어구에 도달한다.

그곳 왕인 라티누스에게 환대를 받으나,

특히 라티누스의 아내와

루툴리인들의 지도자인 투라누스를 비롯한 다른 사람들은

트로이인들의 도착에 불쾌감을 표시하며

라티누스의 딸 라비니아와 아이네아스의 결혼을 반대한다.

전쟁이 일어나

트로이인들이 승리를 하고

투라누스는 죽게 되며

아이네아스는 라비니아와 결혼해

라비니움을 건설한다.

The Aeneid can be divided into two halves based on the disparate subject matter

of Books 1–6 (Aeneas' journey to Latium in Italy) and Books 7–12 (the war in Latium).

These two halves are commonly regarded as reflecting Virgil's ambition

to rival Homer by treating both the Odyssey's wandering theme

and the Iliad's warfare themes.

 This is, however, a rough correspondence,

the limitations of which should be borne in mind.

Journey to Italy (books 1–6)

  Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme (Arma virumque cano ...,

"I sing of arms and of a man ...")

and an invocation to the Muse, falling some seven lines

after the poem's inception: (Musa, mihi causas memora ...,

 "O Muse, recount to me the causes ...").

He then explains the reason for the principal conflict in the story:

the resentment held by the goddess Juno against the Trojan people.

This is consistent with her role throughout the Homeric epics.

Also in the manner of Homer,

the story proper begins in medias res,

with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, heading in the direction of Italy.

The fleet, led by Aeneas, is on a voyage to find a second home.

It has been foretold that in Italy,

he will give rise to a race both noble and courageous,

a race which will become known to all nations.

Juno is wrathful, because she had not been chosen in the judgment of Paris,

and because her favorite city, Carthage, will be destroyed by Aeneas' descendants.

Also, Ganymede, a Trojan prince, was chosen to be her husband Jupiter's cup bearer—replacing Juno's daughter Hebe.

Juno proceeds to Aeolus, King of the Winds,

and asks that he release the winds to stir up a storm in exchange for a bribe

(Deiopea, the loveliest of all her sea nymphs, as a wife).

Aeolus does not accept the bribe, but agrees to carry out Juno's orders

(line 77, "my task is to fulfill your commands");

the storm then devastates the fleet.

The suicide of Queen Dido (book 4), sculpture by Claude-Augustin Cayot (fr) (1667-1722)

Neptune takes notice:

although he himself is no friend of the Trojans,

he is infuriated by Juno's intrusion into his domain,

and stills the winds and calms the waters, after making sure

that Aeolus would not try again.

The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa.

 There, Aeneas' mother, Venus,

 in the form of a hunting woman very similar to the goddess Diana,

encourages him and tells him the history of the city.

Eventually, Aeneas ventures in, and in the temple of Juno,

seeks and gains the favor of Dido, Queen of Carthage,

the city which has only recently been founded by refugees from Tyre

and which will later become one of Rome's greatest imperial rivals and enemies.

At a banquet given in the honour of the Trojans,

Aeneas recounts sadly the events which occasioned the Trojans' fortuitous arrival.

He begins the tale shortly after the events described in the Iliad.

Crafty Ulysses devised a way for Greek warriors to gain entry into Troy

by hiding in a large wooden horse.

The Greeks pretended to sail away, leaving a man, Sinon,

to tell the Trojans that the horse was an offering and that if it were taken into the city,

the Trojans would be able to conquer Greece.

The Trojan priest Laocoön saw through the Greek plot

and urged the horse's destruction but his protests fell on deaf ears,

so he hurled his spear at the wooden horse.

Then, in what would be seen by the Trojans as punishment from the gods,

two serpents emerged from the sea and devoured Laocoön along with his two sons.

The Trojans thus welcomed the horse inside the fortified walls,

and after nightfall the armed Greeks slaughtered the city's inhabitants.

Hector, the fallen Trojan prince,

told Aeneas in a dream to flee with his family.

Aeneas woke up and saw with horror what was happening to his beloved city.

At first he tried to fight against the enemy,

but soon he lost his comrades and was left alone to fend off tens of Greeks.

He witnessed the murder of Priam by Achilles' Son Neoptolemus,

here referred to as Pyrrhus. His mother Venus appeared to him

and led him back to his House. Aeneas tells of his escape

with his son Ascanius and father Anchises after various omens

(his son Ascanius' head catches fire without his being harmed, and then there is a clap of thunder and a shooting star),

his wife Creusa having been separated from the others and subsequently killed

in the general catastrophe.

After getting outside Troy,

he goes back for his wife.

Her ghost appears before him and tells him that his destiny

is to found a new city in the West.

He tells of how, rallying the other survivors,

 he built a fleet of ships and made landfall at various locations in the Mediterranean:

 Thrace, where they find the last remains of a fellow Trojan, Polydorus;

The Strophades, where they encounter the Harpy Celaeno; Crete,

which they believe to be the land where they are to build their city

(but they are set straight by Apollo); and Buthrotum.

This last city had been built in an attempt to replicate Troy.

In Buthrotum, Aeneas meets Andromache,

the widow of Hector. She is still lamenting the loss of her valiant husband

and beloved child.

There, too, Aeneas sees and meets Helenus,

one of Priam's sons, who has the gift of prophecy.

Through him, Aeneas learns the destiny laid out for him:

he is divinely advised to seek out the land of Italy (also known as Ausonia or Hesperia),

where his descendants will not only prosper,

but in time rule the entire known world. In addition,

Helenus also bids him go to the Sibyl in Cumae.

Boxing scene from the Aeneid (book 5), mosaic floor from a Gallo-Roman villa in Villelaure (France), ca. 175 AD, Getty Villa (71.AH.106)

Heading out into the open sea,

Aeneas leaves Buthrotum, rounding Italy's cape and making his way towards Sicily (Trinacria). There, they are caught in the whirlpool of Charybdis and driven out to sea.

Soon they come ashore at the land of the Cyclops.

There they meet a Greek, Achaemenides, one of Ulysses' men,

who has been left behind when his comrades escaped the cave of Polyphemus.

They take Achaemenides on board and narrowly escape Polyphemus.

Shortly after these events, Anchises dies peacefully of old age.

Meanwhile, Venus has her own plans.

She goes to her son, Aeneas' half-brother Cupid,

and tells him to imitate Ascanius.

Disguised as such, he goes to Dido,

and offers the gifts expected from a guest.

With her motherly love revived in the presence of the boy,

 her heart is pierced and she falls in love with the boy and his father.

During the banquet, Dido realizes that she has fallen madly in love with Aeneas,

although she had previously sworn fidelity to the soul of her late husband, Sychaeus,

who had been murdered by her brother Pygmalion.

Juno seizes upon this opportunity to make a deal with Venus, Aeneas' mother,

with the intention of distracting him from his destiny of founding a city in Italy.

Aeneas is inclined to return Dido's love, and during a hunting expedition,

a storm drives them into a cave in which Aeneas and Dido presumably have sex,

an event that Dido takes to indicate a marriage between them.

But when Jupiter sends Mercury to remind Aeneas of his duty,

he has no choice but to part. Her heart broken, Dido commits suicide by stabbing herself

upon a pyre with Aeneas' sword.

Before dying, she predicts eternal strife between Aeneas' people and hers;

"rise up from my bones, avenging spirit" (4.625, trans. Fitzgerald)

is an obvious invocation to Hannibal.

Looking back from the deck of his ship,

Aeneas sees the smoke of Dido's funeral pyre and knows its meaning only too clearly. However, destiny calls and the Trojan fleet sails on to Italy.

Book 5 takes place on Sicily

and centers on the funeral games that Aeneas organizes for the anniversary

of his father's death.

Aeneas and his men have left Carthage for Sicily where,

one year after the death of his father,

Aeneas organizes a nine-day anniversary which includes celebratory games –

a boat race, a foot race, a boxing match, and a shooting contest.

In all those contests, Aeneas is careful to reward winners and losers,

 showing his leadership qualities by not allowing for antagonism even after foul play.

Afterward, Ascanius leads a military parade and demonstration, prefiguring Rome's future predilection for war. During these events (in which only men participate),

Juno incites the womenfolk to burn the fleet and prevent them from ever reaching Italy,

but her plan is thwarted when Ascanius and then Aeneas intervene.

Aeneas prays to Jupiter to quench the fires, which the god does with a torrential rainstorm.

An anxious Aeneas is comforted by a vision of his father,

who tells him to go down to the underworld to receive a vision of his and Rome's future,

which he will do in Book 6. In return for safe passage to Italy,

the gods, by order of Jupiter, will receive one of Aeneas' men as a sacrifice:

Palinurus, who steers Aeneas' ship by night, falls overboard.

In Book 6, Aeneas, with the guidance of the Cumaean Sibyl,

descends into the underworld through an opening at Cumae;

there he speaks with the spirit of his father and is offered a prophetic vision

of the destiny of Rome.

War in Italy (books 7–12)

Roman bas-relief, 2nd century: Aeneas lands in Latium, leading Ascanius; the sow identifies the place to found his city (book 8).

Upon returning to the land of the living,

Aeneas leads the Trojans to settle in the land of Latium,

where he courts Lavinia, the daughter of king Latinus.

Although Aeneas would have wished to avoid it,

war eventually breaks out.

Juno is heavily involved in causing this war—

she convinces the Queen of Latium to demand that Lavinia be married to Turnus,

the king of a local people, the Rutuli. Juno continues to stir up trouble,

even summoning the Fury Alecto to ensure that a war takes place.

Seeing the masses of Italians that Turnus has brought against him,

Aeneas seeks help from the Tuscans, enemies of Turnus.

He meets King Evander from Arcadia,

whose son Pallas agrees to lead troops against the other Italians.

Meanwhile, the Trojan camp is being attacked,

and a midnight raid leads to the deaths of Nisus and his companion Euryalus,

in one of the most emotional passages in the book.

The gates, however, are defended until Aeneas returns

with his Tuscan and Arcadian reinforcements.

Aeneas' defeat of Turnus (book 12), painting by Luca Giordano

In the battling that follows, many heroes are killed—notably Pallas,

who is killed by Turnus, and Mezentius, Turnus' close associate.

The latter, who has inadvertently allowed his son to be killed

while he himself fled, reproaches himself and faces Aeneas in single combat

—an honourable but essentially futile pursuit.

Another notable hero, Camilla, a sort of Amazon character, fights bravely

but is eventually killed.

She has been a virgin devoted to Diana and to her nation;

the man who kills her is struck dead by Diana's sentinel Opis after doing so,

even though he tries to escape.

After this, single combat is proposed between Aeneas and Turnus,

but Aeneas is so obviously superior that the Italians,

urged on by Turnus's divine sister, Juturna, break the truce.

Aeneas is injured, but returns to the battle shortly afterwards.

Turnus and Aeneas dominate the battle on opposite wings,

but when Aeneas makes a daring attack at the city of Latium

(causing the queen of Latium to hang herself in despair),

he forces Turnus into single combat once more.

In a dramatic scene,

Turnus's strength deserts him as he tries to hurl a rock,

and he is struck by Aeneas' spear in the leg.

As Turnus is begging on his knees for his life, the poem ends with Aeneas killing him in rage when he sees that Turnus is wearing the belt of his friend Pallas as a trophy.

Reception of the Aeneid

Critics of the Aeneid focus on a variety of issues.

 The tone of the poem as a whole is a particular matter of debate;

some see the poem as ultimately pessimistic and politically subversive

to the Augustan regime, while others view it as a celebration of the new imperial dynasty.

Virgil makes use of the symbolism of the Augustan regime,

and some scholars see strong associations between Augustus and Aeneas,

the one as founder and the other as re-founder of Rome.

A strong teleology, or drive towards a climax,

has been detected in the poem.

The Aeneid is full of prophecies about the future of Rome,

the deeds of Augustus, his ancestors, and famous Romans,

and the Carthaginian Wars; the shield of Aeneas even depicts Augustus' victory

at Actium in 31 BC.

A further focus of study is the character of Aeneas.

As the protagonist of the poem,

Aeneas seems to constantly waver between his emotions and commitment

to his prophetic duty to found Rome;

critics note the breakdown of Aeneas' emotional control

 in the last sections of the poem where the "pious"

and "righteous" Aeneas mercilessly slaughters Turnus.

The Aeneid appears to have been a great success.

Virgil is said to have recited Books 2, 4 and 6 to Augustus;

 the mention of her son,

Marcellus, in book 6 apparently caused Augustus' sister Octavia to faint.

The poem was unfinished at Virgil's death in 19 BC.

Virgil's death and editing of the Aeneid

According to tradition,

Virgil traveled to Greece around 19 BC to revise the Aeneid.

After meeting Augustus in Athens and deciding to return home,

Virgil caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara.

Virgil crossed to Italy by ship, weakened with disease,

and died in Brundisium harbour on 21 September 19 BC,

 leaving a wish that the manuscript of the Aeneid was to be burned.

Augustus ordered Virgil's literary executors,

Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca,

to disregard that wish, instead ordering the Aeneid to be published

with as few editorial changes as possible.

 As a result,

the existing text of the Aeneid may contain faults

which Virgil was planning to correct before publication.

However, the only obvious imperfections are a few lines of verse

that are metrically unfinished (i.e., not a complete line of dactylic hexameter).

Other alleged "imperfections" are subject to scholarly debate.

History

Folio 22 from the Vergilius Vaticanus—flight from Troy

The Aeneid was written in a time of major political and social change in Rome,

with the fall of the Republic and the Final War of the Roman Republic

having torn through society and many Romans' faith

in the "Greatness of Rome" severely faltering.

However, the new emperor, Augustus Caesar,

began to institute a new era of prosperity and peace,

specifically through the re-introduction of traditional Roman moral values.

The Aeneid was seen as reflecting this aim,

by depicting the heroic Aeneas as a man devoted and loyal to his country

and its prominence, rather than personal gains, and going off on a journey

for the betterment of Rome.

 In addition,

the Aeneid attempted to legitimize the rule of Julius Caesar

(and by extension, of his adopted son Augustus and his heirs)

 by renaming Aeneas' son, Ascanius (called Ilus from Ilium, meaning Troy),

Iulus and offering him as an ancestor of the gens Julia,

the family of Julius Caesar,

and many other great imperial descendants as part of the prophecy given to him

in the Underworld.

Despite the polished and complex nature of the Aeneid

(legend stating that Virgil wrote only three lines of the poem each day),

 the number of half-complete lines and the abrupt ending are generally seen

as evidence that Virgil died before he could finish the work.

Because this poem was composed and preserved in writing rather than orally,

the Aeneid is more complete than most classical epics.

Furthermore,

it is possible to debate whether Virgil intended to rewrite and add to such lines.

Some of them would be difficult to complete, and in some instances,

the brevity of a line increases its dramatic impact

(some arguing the violent ending as a typically Virgilian comment on the darker,

vengeful side of humanity).

However,

these arguments may be anachronistic—half-finished lines might equally,

to Roman readers, have been a clear indication of an unfinished poem

and have added nothing whatsoever to the dramatic effect.

The perceived deficiency of any account of Aeneas' marriage to Lavinia

or his founding of the Roman race led some writers,

such as the 15th-century Italian poet Maffeo Vegio

(through his Mapheus Vegius widely printed in the Renaissance),

Pier Candido Decembrio (whose attempt was never completed),

Claudio Salvucci (in his 1994 epic poem The Laviniad),

and Ursula K. Le Guin (in her 2008 novel Lavinia) to compose their own supplements.

Some legends state that Virgil,

fearing that he would die before he had properly revised the poem,

gave instructions to friends (including the current emperor, Augustus)

that the Aeneid should be burned upon his death,

owing to its unfinished state

and because he had come to dislike one of the sequences in Book VIII,

in which Venus and Vulcan have sexual intercourse,

for its nonconformity to Roman moral virtues.

The friends did not comply with Virgil's wishes and Augustus himself ordered

that they be disregarded.

After minor modifications, the Aeneid was published.

The first full and faithful rendering of the poem in an Anglic language

 is the Scots translation by Gavin Douglas—his Eneados, completed in 1513,

which also included Maffeo Vegio's supplement. Even in the 20th century,

 Ezra Pound considered this still to be the best Aeneid translation,

praising the "richness and fervour" of its language and its hallmark fidelity to the original.

 The English translation by the 17th-century poet John Dryden

is another important version.

Most classic translations, including both Douglas and Dryden,

employed a rhyme scheme, a very non-Roman convention

that is not usually followed in modern versions.

Recent English verse translations include those by British Poet Laureate Cecil Day

-Lewis (1963) which strove to render Virgil's original hexameter line,

Allen Mandelbaum (honoured by a 1973 National Book Award),

Library of Congress Poet Laureate Robert Fitzgerald (1981),

Stanley Lombardo (2005),

Robert Fagles (2006), and Sarah Ruden (2008).

Style

  The Aeneid, like other classical epics,

is written in dactylic hexameter:

each line consists of six metrical feet made up of dactyls

(one long syllable followed by two short syllables)

and spondees (two long syllables).

As with other classical Latin poetry,

the meter is based on the length of syllables rather than the stress,

though the interplay of meter and stress is also important.

Virgil also incorporated such poetic devices as alliteration, onomatopoeia, synecdoche,

and assonance.

Furthermore,

he uses personification, metaphor and simile in his work,

usually to add drama and tension to the scene.

An example of a simile can be found in book II

when Aeneas is compared to a shepherd who stood on the high top

of a rock unaware of what is going on around him.

 It can be seen that just as the shepherd is a protector of his sheep,

so too is Aeneas to his people.

As was the rule in classical antiquity,

an author's style was seen as an expression‎ of his personality and character.

Virgil's Latin has been praised for its evenness, subtlety and dignity.

Themes

Pietas

  The Roman ideal of pietas ("piety, dutiful respect"),

which can be loosely translated from the Latin as a selfless sense of duty

toward one's filial, religious, and societal obligations,

was a crux of ancient Roman morality.

Throughout The Aeneid, Aeneas serves as the embodiment of pietas,

with the phrase "pious Aeneas" occurring 20 times throughout the poem,

 thereby fulfilling his capacity as the father of the Roman people.

 For instance,

in Book 2

Aeneas describes how he carried his father Anchises from the burning city of Troy:

 "No help/

Or hope of help existed./

So I resigned myself, picked up my father,/

 And turned my face toward the mountain range."

 Furthermore,

Aeneas ventures into the underworld,

thereby fulfilling Anchises' wishes.

His father's gratitude is presented in the text by the following lines:

"Have you at last come, has that loyalty/ Your father counted on conquered the journey?

However,

Aeneas' pietas extends beyond his devotion to his father;

we also see several examples of his religious fervour.

Aeneas is consistently subservient to the gods,

even if it is contradictory to his own desires,

as he responds to one such divine command,

 "I sail to Italy not of my own free will."

  In addition to his religious and familial pietas,

Aeneas also displays fervent patriotism and devotion to his people,

particularly in a military capacity.

For instance, as he and his followers leave Troy, Aeneas swears

that he will "take up/ The combat once again.

We shall not all/ Die this day unavenged."

Aeneas is a symbol of pietas in all of its forms,

serving as a moral paragon to which a Roman should aspire.

Divine Intervention

  One of the themes that occurs

in The Aeneid is that of divine intervention.

 Throughout the poem,

the gods are constantly influencing the main characters and trying

to change and impact the outcome, regardless of the fate that they all know will occur.

 For example,

Juno comes down and acts as a phantom Aeneas to drive Turnus away

from the real Aeneas and all of his rage from the death of Pallas.

 Even though Juno knows in the end that Aeneas will triumph over Turnus,

she does all she can to delay and avoid this outcome.

Divine intervention occurs multiple times in Book 4 especially.

Aeneas falls in love with Dido,

delaying his ultimate fate of traveling to Italy.

However,

it is actually the gods who inspired the love, as Juno plots:

Dido and the Trojan captain [will come]
To one same cavern. I shall be on hand,
And if I can be certain you are willing,
There I shall marry them and call her his.
A wedding, this will be.

Juno is speaking to Venus,

making an agreement and influencing the lives

and emotions of both Dido and Aeneas.

Later in the same book,

Jupiter steps in and restores what is the true fate and path for Aeneas,

sending Mercury down to Aeneas' dreams,

telling him that he must travel to Italy and leave his new-found lover.

As Aeneas later pleads with Dido:

The gods' interpreter, sent by Jove himself--
I swear it by your head and mine-- has brought
Commands down through the racing winds!.....
I sail for Italy not of my own free will.

  Several of the gods try to intervene against the powers of fate,

even though they know what the eventual outcome will be.

The interventions are really just distractions to continue the conflict

and postpone the inevitable.

If the gods represent humans,

just as the human characters engage in conflicts and power struggles,

so too do the gods.

Fate

Fate,

described as a preordained destiny that men and gods have to follow,

is a major theme in The Aeneid.

One example is when Aeneas is reminded of his fate through Jupiter and Mercury

while he is falling in love with Dido.

Mercury urges,

 "Think of your expectations of your heir,/

Iulus, to whom the whole Italian realm, the land/

Of Rome, are due."

Mercury is referring to Aeneas' preordained fate to found Rome,

as well as Rome's preordained fate to rule the world:

He was to be rule of Italy,
Potential empire, armorer of war;
To father men from Teucer's noble blood
And bring the whole world under law's dominion.

  It is important to recognize that there is a marked difference

between fate and divine intervention,

as even though the gods might remind mortals of their eventual fate,

the gods themselves are not in control of it.

 For example,

the opening lines of the poem specify that Aeneas "came to Italy by destiny,"

 but is also harassed by the separate force of "baleful Juno in her sleepless rage."

Even though Juno might intervene,

Aeneas' fate is set in stone and cannot be changed.

Later in Book 6 when Aeneas vistis the underworld,

his father Anchises introduces him to the larger fate of the Roman people,

as contrasted against his own personal fate to found Rome:

So raptly, everywhere, father and son
Wandered the airy plain and viewed it all.
After Anchises had conducted him
To every region and had fired his love
Of glory in the years to come, he spoke
Of wars that he might fight, of Laurentines,
And of Latinus' city, then of how
He might avoid or bear each toil to come.

Violence and Conflict

From the very beginning of The Aeneid,

violence and conflict are used as a means of survival and conquest.

Aeneas' voyage is caused by the Trojan War and the destruction of Troy.

 Aeneas describes to Dido in Book 2 the massive amount of destruction

that occurs after the Greeks sneak into Troy.

He recalls that he asks his men to

"defend/

A city lost in flames. Come, let us die,/

We'll make a rush into the thick of it."

  This is one of the first examples of how violence begets violence:

even though the Trojans know they have lost the battle,

they continue to fight for their country.

This violence continues as Aeneas makes his journey.

Dido kills herself in an excessively violent way over a pyre in order to end

and escape her worldly problem:

being heartbroken over the departure of her "husband" Aeneas.

Queen Dido's suicide is a double edged sword.

While releasing herself from the burden of her pain through violence,

her last words implore her people to view Aeneas' people with hate for all eternity:

This is my last cry, as my last blood flows.
Then, O my Tyrians, besiege with hate
His progeny and all his race to come:
Make this your offering to my dust. No love,
No pact must be between our peoples.

Furthermore,

her people, hearing of their queen's death,

have only one avenue on which to direct the blame:

the already-departed Trojans.

Thus, Dido's request of her people and her people's only recourse for closure align

in their mutual hate for Aeneas and his Trojans.

In effect, Dido's violent suicide leads to the violent nature

of the later relationship between Carthage and Rome.

Finally,

when Aeneas arrives in Latium,

conflict inevitably arises.

 Juno sends Alecto, one of the Furies,

to cause Turnus to go against Aeneas.

In the ensuing battles,

Turnus kills Pallas, who is supposed to be under Aeneas' protection.

This act of violence causes Aeneas to be consumed with fury.

Although Turnus asks for mercy in their final encounter, when Aeneas sees

that Turnus has taken Pallas' sword belt, Aeneas proclaims:

You in your plunder, torn from one of mine,
Shall I be robbed of you? This wound will come
From Pallas: Pallas makes this offering
And from your criminal blood exacts his due.

  This final act of violence shows how Turnus' violence—the act of killing Pallas

—inevitably leads to more violence and his own death.

It is possible that the recurring theme of violence

in The Aeneid is a subtle commentary

on the bloody violence contemporary readers would have just experienced

during the Late Republican civil wars.

The Aeneid potentially explores whether the violence of the civil wars

was necessary to establish a lasting peace under Augustus,

or whether it would just lead to more violence in the future.

Propaganda

  Written under the reign of Augustus,

The Aeneid presents the hero Aeneas as a strong and powerful leader.

The favorable representation of Aeneas parallels Augustus in that it portrays his reign

in a progressive and admirable light,

and allows Augustus to be positively associated with the portrayal of Aeneas.

Although Virgil's patron Maecenas was obviously not Augustus himself,

he was still a high figure within Augustus' administration

and could have personally benefitted from representing Aeneas in a positive light.

In The Aeneid, Aeneas is portrayed as the singular hope for the rebirth

of the Trojan people.

Charged with the preservation of his people by divine authority,

Aeneas is utilized as symbolic of Augustus' own accompliments in establishing order

after the long period of chaos of the Roman civil wars.

Augustus as the light of savior and the last hope of the Roman people

is a parallel to Aeneas as the savior of the Trojans.

This parallel functions as propaganda in support of Augustus,

 as it depicts the Trojan people, future Romans themselves,

as uniting behind a single leader who will lead them out of ruin:

New refugees in a great crowd: men and women
Gathered for exile, young-pitiful people
Coming from every quarter, minds made up,
With their belongings, for whatever lands
I'd lead them to by sea.

  Later in Book 6,

Aeneas travels to the underworld where he sees his father Anchises,

who tells him of his own destiny as well as that of the Roman people.

Anchises describes how Aeneas' descendant Romulus

will found the great city of Rome,

which will eventually be ruled by Caesar Augustus:

Turn your two eyes
This was and see this people, your own Romans.
Here is Caesar, and all the line of Iulus,
All who shall one day pass under the dome
Of the great sky: this is the man, this one,
Of whom so often you have heard the promise,
Caesar Augustus, son of the deified,
Who shall bring once again an Age of Gold
To Latium, to the land where Saturn reigned
In early times.

Virgil writes about the fated future of the city that Aeneas will found,

which will in turn lead directly to the golden reign of Augustus.

Virgil is using a form of literary propaganda to demonstrate the Augustan regime's destiny

to bring glory and peace to Rome.

Rather than use Aeneas indirectly as a positive parallel to Augustus

as in other parts of the poem,

Virgil outright praises the emperor in Book 6, referring to Augustus

as a harbinger for the glory of Rome and new levels of prosperity.

Allegory

The poem abounds with smaller and greater allegories.

Two of the debated allegorical sections pertain to the exit from the underworld

and to Pallas's belt.

There are two gates of Sleep, one said to be of horn,

whereby the true shades pass with ease,

the other all white ivory agleam without a flaw,

and yet false dreams are sent through this one by the ghost to the upper world.

Anchises now, his last instructions given,

took son and Sibyl

and let them go by the Ivory Gate.

—Book VI, lines 893–899, Fitzgerald trans. (emphasis added)

  Aeneas' leaving the underworld through the gate of false dreams

has been variously interpreted:

One suggestion is that the passage simply refers to the time of day

at which Aeneas returned to the world of the living;

another is that it implies that all of Aeneas' actions in the remainder of the poem

are somehow "false".

In an extension of the latter interpretation,

it has been suggested that Virgil is conveying that the history of the world

since the foundation of Rome is but a lie.

Other scholars claim that Virgil is establishing that the theological implications

of the preceding scene (an apparent system of reincarnation)

are not to be taken as literal.

The second section in question is

Then to his glance appeared the accurst swordbelt surmounting Turnus' shoulder,

shining with its familiar studs—the strap Young Pallas wore

when Turnus wounded him and left him dead upon the field;

now Turnus bore that enemy token on his shoulder—enemy still.

For when the sight came home to him,

Aeneas raged at the relic of his anguish worn by this man as trophy.

Blazing up and terrible in his anger,

he called out:

"You in your plunder,

torn from one of mine,

shall I be robbed of you?

This wound will come from Pallas:

Pallas makes this offering,

and from your criminal blood exacts his due."

He sank his blade in fury in Turnus' chest …

—Book XII, lines 1281–1295, Fitzgerald trans. (emphasis added)

  This section has been interpreted to mean

that for the entire passage of the poem,

Aeneas who symbolizes pietas (reason) in a moment becomes furor (fury),

thus destroying what is essentially the primary theme of the poem itself.

Many have argued over these two sections.

Some claim that Virgil meant to change them before he died,

while others find that the location of the two passages,

at the very end of the so-called Volume I (Books 1–6, the Odyssey),

and Volume II (Books 7–12, the Iliad),

and their short length, which contrasts with the lengthy nature of the poem,

are evidence that Virgil placed them purposefully there.

Influence

Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia,^[40] by Jean-Joseph Taillasson, 1787, an early neoclassical painting (National Gallery, London)

  The Aeneid is a cornerstone of the Western canon,

and early (at least by the 2nd century AD) became one of the essential elements

of a Latin education, usually required to be memorized.

 Even after the decline of the Roman Empire, it

"remained central to a Latin education".^[43] In Latin-Christian culture,

the Aeneid was one of the canonical texts, subjected to commentary

as a philological and educational study,

 with the most complete commentary having been written

by the 4th-century grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus.

 It was widely held to be the pinnacle of Latin literature,

much in the same way that the Iliad was seen to be supreme in Greek literature.

The strong influence of the Aeneid has been identified in the development

of European vernacular literatures—some English works that show its influence

being Beowulf, Layamon's Brut (through the source text Historia Regum Britanniae),

The Faerie Queene, and Milton's Paradise Lost.

Italian poet Dante Alighieri was himself profoundly influenced by the Aeneid,

so much so that his magnum opus The Divine Comedy,

itself widely considered central to the western canon,

was written in a style similar to the Aeneid and featured the author Virgil

as a major character - the guide of Dante through the realms of the Inferno

and Purgatorio.

The importance of Latin education itself was paramount in Western culture:

"from 1600 to 1900, the Latin school was at the center of European education,

wherever it was found"; within that Latin school,

Virgil was taught at the advanced level and, in 19th-century England,

special editions of Virgil were awarded to students who distinguished themselves.

  In the United States,

Virgil and specifically the Aeneid were taught in the fourth year of a Latin sequence,

at least until the 1960s; the current (2011)

 Advanced Placement curriculum in Latin continues to assign a central position

to the poem:

"The AP Latin:

Virgil Exam is designed to test the student's ability to read, translate, understand, analyze,

and interpret the lines of the Aeneid that appear on the course syllabus in Latin."

Many phrases from this poem entered the Latin language,

much as passages from Shakespeare

and Alexander Pope have entered the English language.

One example is from Aeneas' reaction to a painting of the sack of Troy:

Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt—

"These are the tears of things, and our mortality cuts to the heart"

(Aeneid I, 462).

The influence is also visible in very modern work:

Brian Friel's Translations (a play written in the 1980s, set in 19th century Ireland),

makes references to the classics throughout and ends with a passage from the Aeneid:

Urbs antiqua fuit—there was an ancient city which,

'tis said, Juno loved above all the lands.

And it was the goddess's aim and cherished hope that here should be the capital

of all nations—should the fates perchance allow that.

Yet in truth she discovered that a race was springing from Trojan blood

to overthrow some day these Tyrian towers—a people late regem belloque superbum—

kings of broad realms and proud in war who would come forth for Libya's downfall.

The Aeneid was the basis for the 1962 Italian film The Avenger.

In the musical Spring Awakening,

based on the play of the same title by Frank Wedekind,

schoolboys study the Latin text, and the first verse of Book 1

is incorporated into the number "All That's Known".

Parodies and travesties[edit]

• A number of parodies and travesties of the Aeneid have been made.

 One of the earliest was written in Italian by Giovanni Batista Lalli in 1635,

titled L'Eneide travestita del Signor Gio.

• A French parody by Paul Scarron became famous in France in the mid-17th century, and spread rapidly through Europe, accompanying the growing French influence. Its influence was especially strong in Russia.
• Charles Cotton's work Scarronides included a travestied Aeneid.
• In 1796, the Russian poet N. P. Osipov published travesties of several portions of the Aeneid.
• From the late 18th to the early 19th centuries, many Slavic language folk parodies of the story were made. One of these, Енеїда (Eneyida), was written in 1798 by Ivan Kotlyarevsky. It is considered to be the first literary work written in a language close to modern Ukrainian. His epic poem was adapted into an animated feature film of the same name, in 1991, by Ukranimafilm.