RCS Term 2 Lecture 1 Refounding Rome Virgils
- Slides: 11
RCS Term 2, Lecture 1 Refounding Rome: Virgil’s Aeneid
Aeneas’ journey
• The Aeneid is a ‘colossal exercise in definition’ Philip Hardie, The Epic Successors of Virgil, Cambridge 1993, p 1
Didactic epos? ‘Homer has educated Greece – we should take him and study him for the administration and cultivation of human affairs, and we should regulate all our own lives by this poet. ’ Plato, Republic 10. 606 e
A poem of transformation/inversion • • Losers � winners East � West (Greek) Homer � (Roman) Virgil; Female/oriental � masculine/western Past � future Chthonic chaos � Olympian order/ratio Darkness � light
Virgil’s Homer Arma virumque cano Arms (cf. Iliad) and a man (cf. Odyssey) I sing Aeneid 1 -6: the new Odyssey Aeneid 7 -12: the new Iliad
Aeneid 12. 945 -52: ille, oculis postquam saevi monimenta doloris 945 exuviasque hausit, furiis accensus et ira terribilis: 'tune hinc spoliis indute meorum eripiare mihi? Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit. ’ hoc dicens ferrum adverso sub pectore condit � 950 fervidus; ast illi solvuntur frigore membra vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras. Aeneas, as soon as his eyes drank in that trophy, that memorial of cruel grief, ablaze with fury and terrible in his wrath: “Clad in the spoils of one of mine, are you to be snatched away from my hands? Pallas it is, Pallas who sacrifices you with his stroke, and takes retribution from your guilty blood!” So saying, in burning rage he buries his sword full in Turnus’ breast. His limbs grew slack and chill and with a moan his life fled resentfully to the Shades below.
dum conderet urbem…
Mistaken foundations
Buthrotum (Epirus)
The temple of Juno: insight and blindness