Search

In the Aeneid, Ancient Rome’s seminal epic poem and Vergil’s greatest work, a queen falls in love and later commits suicide. This queen’s name is Dido, and her story contains some of Vergil’s best poetry, but it has also long been a source of interpretive debate by translators. This paper seeks to illuminate how popular, modern, English translations of the Aeneid have depicted this dynamic, tragic character. These translations (i.e. Ruben, Fitzgerald, Lewis, and others) are the ones read in classrooms and disseminated to the wider public. This paper will attempt to understand them by examining how a translator’s personality and philosophy affect their decisions about the translation’s fidelity, cadence, and expressiveness. It is a comprehensive outline of Dido’s journey through the modern age and how that journey may change as more translators come to the fore who have their own distinct, diverse stories. The Aeneid lives through its translators; it grows as the translators do, and it falters too when they do. Dido is the perfect case study for that.

Dido's gifts to the shipwrecked Trojans in book 1 of the Aeneid resemble suitors' gifts (ἕδνα) recorded in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Reading Dido against a Hesiodic rather than Homeric model casts her as a suitor of Aeneas, which in turn lends further coloring to the composition of Aeneas's reciprocating gifts of a palla ("dress"), uelamen ("veil"), corona ("crown"), and jewelry, gifts associated in Greek tragedy with the bridal trousseau (φερναί). The (imperfect) recasting of Dido and Aeneas as suitor and bride, respectively, only becomes legible when better attention is paid to the gendered dynamics of exchange and modes of female communication within the Aeneid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vergil's Aeneid contains more allusions to Augustus' wife than scholars have previously recognized; because Livia was connected with both the Drusi and Claudii, Vergil's references to those gentes and their ancestors allude to her (among other people). Vergil pays special attention to the Claudii, the gens of which Livia was a member, into which she had married, and to which her sons also belonged. These allusions fit both with Vergil's treatment of contemporary women and Livia's public presentation at the time. Like all references and allusions to Augustus' marriage, however, these can be read in a positive or negative light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates William Strachey's use of Vergilian epic in his forthright, firsthand account of the Jamestown colony in 1610. By relying on the Aeneid as a classical colonial predecessor, Strachey justifies the difficulties occurring in the colony as a necessary component of colonial success, reflected by Aeneas's suffering prior to his divinely foretold foundation of Rome. In particular, Strachey utilizes the Aeneid 's split travel-foundation structure, its use of the Muse as a figure conferring divine authority, and its procolonial ideologies presented in the foundations of both Rome and Carthage. In doing so, Strachey both critiques the governance of Jamestown before the arrival of Lord de la Warre in 1610 and figures de la Warre's arrival as a moment of rebirth for the colony. Strachey's creation of the colony's rebirth allows him to highlight the assured successes of Jamestown while further urging his audience to participate in the colonial project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the rhetorical frameworks of exhortation and illustrative exemplum, Horace's second and sixth Roman Odes offer compressed, contrasting images of a young person's education and transformation, presenting these as stories about a puer and a virgo , respectively, in a lyric mode that does not narrate. In the first of these stories (Carm. 3.2.1–12), Horace slyly usurps characters from Vergil's unfinished Aeneid , alluding to some of its distinctive narrative techniques, but also draws on the similes and plot structure of its Iliadic model. The second of Horace's stories (Carm. 3.6.21–32) plays off his first, as he converts the adulta virgo who figures in Carm. 3.2 into her antitype. This story has as its intertext an obscene Hellenistic epigram by Automedon. Horace makes both intertextual and metatextual use of his models, while his indirect references, through Homer, to Vergil's intended design for his emerging Aeneid may be considered under the new heading of extratextual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we begin with a brief survey of the presence of the mysteries in Greek and Latin epic poetry, before giving an overview of the mysteries in Vergil and attempting to identify the function of the references to mystery religion in Aeneid 6. Throughout, we consider the modality of how the poets allude to the mysteries in ways that allow mystery cults to take on a life of their own in imaginative literary representations, arriving at the conclusion that it is only by means of closer collaboration between literary critics and historians of religion that progress will be made in this complex field of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I originally translated Book II of Vergil’s Aeneid for my advanced placement Latin course in high school; two years later, I returned to the translation of the Aeneid for Professor Carrie Mowbray’s Latin course, which focused on an in-depth, thorough examination of the Aeneid (more specifically, Books I-VI) in both Latin and English. This excerpt taken from Book II has remained a favorite of mine for years, as the vivid imagery and language utilized allow readers to envision the most detailed of scenes. Vergil’s personification of the Trojan Horse is the prime reason this excerpt has always appealed to me. Of course, Laocoon’s famous line, “quidquid id est, timeo Danaos dona ferentis,” is oft-cited throughout ancient literature, on account of its structure and importance to the Aeneid’s plot. My translation aims to highlight the vivacity of Vergil’s poetry, in order to allow the readers to conjure up uniquely graphic and evocative scenes.

The Hercules and Cacus episode in Book VIII highlights the problematic nature of Aeneas’ exploits throughout the Aeneid. Through the violence of Hercules, Vergil makes the reader question whether a story like the founding of Rome and its eventual imperial expansion can be as cut and dry as the story of a rugged hero slaughtering someone whose name literally means “evil one” might superficially seem. Calling into question Aeneas’ morality and his justification for settling in Italy in turn casts doubt on Augustus’ own means of attaining power.The Hercules and Cacus episode is fundamental to our understanding of the Aeneid as a whole inasmuch as it brings up the question of right. The question of the rightful owner of Geryon’s cattle finds its parallel in Aeneas and Turnus’ dispute over betrothal to Lavinia, as well as in Augustus’ contested claim to rule Rome. The Italy of Hercules’ day, in which violence determines right, must be compared with the universal empire Augustus will eventually establish. This paper explores to what extent the Hercules and Cacus episode can influence our understanding of Aeneas and Augustus and how Vergil might be reacting to the political climate of his day through his poetry.N.B. I give citations in Latin throughout the paper, with my own English translations in the footnotes.

Venus and Vulcan, Venus and Aeneas, Pallas and Aeneas, Aeneas and Evander, Evander and Pallas: all of these pairs are seen embracing one another in Aeneid 8. Alongside these emotive scenes of embrace, the book is peppered with embrace-related vocabulary, imagery, and metaphor, often in surprising contexts. This article weaves together these embraces in Aeneid 8 in relation to the thematics of the book as a whole. It is proposed that, when read together, the embraces in Aeneid 8 tell a story about the possibilities of knowledge in relation to the senses. Vision is the supreme sense-modality of truth in epic, as embodied in the shield of Aeneas; and yet, in book 8, embrace emerges as a way of knowing that runs counter to optical discourses of knowledge. This leads to an exploratory reconsideration of hermeneutic principles in light of Aeneas' much-puzzled-over response to the shield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second part of the study analyses selected scenes from several poems in the Codex Salmasianus: the anonymous De alea (Anth. Lat. 8 Riese2), the tragedy Medea attributed to Hosidius Geta (Anth. Lat. 17 Riese2), and the fragmentary De opera pistoria, formerly entitled De panificio (Anth. Lat. 7 Riese2). The first two contain passages with a strong intertextual connection to the fifth book of Vergil,s Aeneid, which also intensely employ the concepts of performance and gaze. The analyses of the two poems confirm the conclusions of the first part of the study. Encouraged by connotations to Aeneid V, the same concepts in the third poem support thenew interpretation of the poem recently coined by Maria Teresa Galii and Luca Paretti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written on the various aspects of casus belli in Aeneid 7, but the setting of the episode (in which Ascanius shoots a stag with great horns) remains unclear. This paper proposes a new reading of this crucial juncture by situating it on the river Tiber and contextualizing the fluvial setting within the wider structure of books 7-9. The role of the Tiber is significant because the Italian landscape is a major theme in the second half of the epic and the Tiber features in several key episodes, e.g. Tiberinus appears to Aeneas and directs him to the site of Rome. The history of the river is tied up with the larger history of early Latium. The river shares many affinities with the stag in terms of legal status, visual representation, and mythic significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explanation and justification of the conventions and methods adopted in the Harvard Edition of the Servian commentaries on Vergil, as they are being applied in the author's in-progress volume covering commentary on Aeneid 9-12.This paper was part of a panel sponsored by the Committee on Publications of the American Philological Association (later renamed Society for Classical Studies) at the Annual Meeting, January 5, 2004, in San Francisco. Of the other papers in the panel, that of Cynthia Damon and the response to all papers by Robert Kaster have been added here as supplemental files in January 2018, while the paper of James Zetzel is to be made available at his academia.edu site.

After Birger Munk Olsen's great and precious work about the manuscripts of classical auctores from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the bulk of the glosses on the classics from the age of the so-called 'twelfth-century Renaissance' remains unpublished and lacking proper surveys, thus deserving attention. A small but intriguing piece of this enormous puzzle can be seen in the different paths followed through the centuries by the glosses on Aen. 1.94, which includes the first words of Eneas in the poem: "O terque quaterque beati." From the twelfth century onwards these words began to receive an allegorical interpretation, tied to the numbers 3 and 4, which is probably connected with the gloss of Guillaume de Conches on Macrobius' quotation of the Virgilian verse itself (Comm. 1.6.44). Only in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did awareness about different roots of the Virgilian numbers begin (e.g. Hom. Od. 5.306).

The fifth book of Vergil's Aeneid plays a crucial role in the composition of the entire poem. It provides a certain repose in the turbulent story while directing readers' attention towards Aeneas himself, as he fully assumes the role of the leader and "father" to his people. Later reception of the Aeneid focused mainly on other, more dramatic, parts of the story (e.g. Books IV and VI). Late-antique cento poetry, however, contains several passages that find ample inspiration in Book V, and make references to this book central to their meaning. Based on an analysis of one of the poems, namely Hippodamia (Anth. Lat. 11 Riese2), the first part of this study proposes a hypothesis that all these passages are linked by two crucial motifs - gaze and performance - which could be the central connotation associated with the book among late-antique readers. The following two parts of the study aim to confirm the hypothesis using other centos (the Anthologia Latina, the Cento Probae, and Ausonius's Cento Nuptialis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Rónai - Revista de Estudos Classicos e Tradutorios is the property of Ronai - Revista de Estudos Classicos e Tradutorios and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ágora: Estudos Clássicos em Debate is the property of Agora: Estudos Classicos em Debate and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper intends to investigate to what extent the attention of the ancient commentators to the antiquarian and theological erudition of Virgil can provide an accessus useful to penetrate some fundamental strands of meaning of the Virgilian poem. The analysis deals mostly with the scholia of Servius and Servius Danielis concerning the Penates of Troy. Starting with the exegesis of the expression Penatibus et magnis dis (Aen. 3.12 and 8.679), we discuss the various antiquarian interpretations witnessed in the stratified Virgilian exegesis, in relation to the relevance of the 'theme of greatness' in the overall design of the Aeneid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of ANAFORA is the property of Anafora and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Nisus and Euryalus episode in the ninth book of Vergil’s Aeneid and Kevin Powers’ 2012 novel The Yellow Birds on a soldier’s experiences in the year 2004 during the American War in Iraq are both constructed around a very similar story pattern of two friends who go to war together and are faced with bloodlust, cruelty, death, mutilation, and the duties of friendship, as well as the grief and silencing of a bereft mother. While the narrative and commemorative background of the two texts is very different – including the sense of an anchoring in tradition, the role of memory, even the existence of a coherent plotline itself – both the Augustan epic and the modern novel employ strikingly similar techniques and sensory imagery in their bid to convey the fundamental experience of warfare and of “what it felt like” as vividly as possible.

Copyright of Cuadernos de Filología Clásica: Estudios Latinos is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Aeneid holds a special place among the many stories built around the mythical origins of Rome, because of its influence on the literary and cultural life in the Augustan period and during the later reigns. But did the Virgilian epic had an influence on the iconography of heroic figures of the founders? We can provide some answers considering this corpus on a diachronic perspective and by evaluating the possible influence – or the absence of influence – of the texts about the Primordia Vrbis in general, and of the Aeneid especially, on figural representations.

This article examines a case study in Silius Italicus’ Punica using two distinct but complementary approaches to Flavian epic intertextuality: a methodological move to expand and further incorporate computational tools within philology, and a literary theoretical move to combine intertextuality and thematic interpretation. The case study focuses on the debates in the Carthaginian senate described in Punica 2 and 11, both of which Silius adapts from similar scenes in Livy while also drawing on Vergil’s Aeneid. Part 1 of the essay introduces a new tool for finding a range of inexact verbal parallels based on a bioinformatics technique known as sequence alignment. After comparing the method with two other computational tools, Diogenes and Tesserae, we assess our tool’s ability to detect intertexts in the Punica already noted in traditional scholarship. We then analyse a series of computationally identified parallels that have not been commented on previously and find that all three tools can reveal morphologically and syntactically similar phrases of apparent literary interest. Part 2 focuses on a feature of Silius’ triangulation of Livy and Vergil, the characterisation of the Carthaginian senator Hanno. Through allusions to Vergil’s Drances, Silius turns Hanno from a shrewd judge of Roman character and strength, as he appears in Livy, into a far more ambivalent, Quisling-like figure. Moreover, the effect of blending the two sources is to make more porous the distinctions between nationalities and other categories that structure the reader’s response to Hanno and to the Punica as a whole. In concluding, we suggest that the context in which these literary interactions take place - diplomacy and debate - itself figures the kind of negotiation taking place at a textual level between the various works and their worldviews. The conclusion unifies the methodological and theoretical parts of the essay under the rubric of “triangulation”, in part by drawing on the application of the term in the philosophy of Donald Davidson.

Eneida de Virgilio construye un pasado legendario que le permite al romano comprender la composición multicultural de su propia sociedad, la pertenencia étnica de los diferentes grupos y su ascendencia y participación en la vida pública romana. A través de vectores etnográficos positivos y negativos se configura una memoria histórica que combina el pasado conocido con elementos legendarios. Virgilio determina el lugar de las etnias itálicas en el proceso histórico de conformación de Italia bajo el dominio de Roma y las reconoce en su presente; aquí subyace una mirada retrospectiva y un acto de memoria sobre el Bellum Sociale.Vergil's Aeneid built a legendary past that allows the Roman understanding of the multicultural composition of their own society, the ethnicity of the different groups and their ancestry and participation in public life in Rome. Through ethnographic positive and negative vectors set up a historical memory that combines the known past with legendary elements. Vergil determines the place of ethnic emphasis in the historical process of formation of Italy under Roman rule and recognized in the present, here lies a retrospect and an act of memory on the Bellum Sociale.

This study discusses the figure of the artist in classical ekphrases, in particular the pluperfects of verbs of making of the type έτέτνχτo, ήσχητO, έχεχóσμητo, έτετεíχıστo, caelaverat, fecerat, stru×erat which evoke that artist. After setting up a framework of the various other ways in which the artist can be represented in ekphrases, I zoom in on the pluperfects and show how they are used differently in Greek and Latin ekphrases: in Greek the mediopassive pluperfect describes a finished object while at the same time acknowledging the act of making and hence the maker; in Latin the active pluperfect occurs in analepses which evoke the act of making by a maker as an event of the past. I end with the remarkable use of the pluperfect by Vergil in the shield of Aeneas in Aeneid 8. He uniquely combines the Greek epic tradition of the refrain of verbs of making with the Latin analeptic force of the tense, in order to keep reminding the narratees of the maker of the shield, Vulcan, and his prophetic powers and of the earlier, crucial scene of the divine smith forging the shield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is very likely that Vergil in Aeneid 8.727 refers to the Batavians, either on their own or as the leading tribe in the region This conclusion may be drawn from the poet's use of the word bicornis in line 727 and the manner in which he places the words Rhenus bicornis within the context of lines 722-728. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a humorous reading of the passage 1,305-410 of the Aeneid, in which Venus meets her son Aeneas. The inquiry is based on the incongruity theory of humour established by John Morreall, who indicates three possible reactions whilst discovering a contrast in things: 1) the evocation of negative emotions, 2) a feeling of puzzlement, and 3) the experience of amusement, which, accordingly, forms the basis of humour. The first part of the paper scrutinizes the inconsistencies within the original divine character of Venus and her disguise as a maiden huntress, whereas the second part focuses on the discrepancies in the behaviour of Aeneas towards his mother in disguise. After an analysis of Morreall's three possible reactions to the incongruities of the scene discussed, the paper concludes with arguments in favour of the passage's comic interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the influence of the Aeneid on the ninth poem of Prudentius' Peristephanon. In the poem, Prudentius is on his way to Rome when he discovers the tomb of St. Cassian, and an account of the saint's passion follows. The framing narrative employs some of the conventions of pilgrimage literature, while the poem as a whole contains allusions to Vergil's Aeneid, and I argue that through these allusions Prudentius models his journey to Rome on the travels of Aeneas. This can be seen as part of Prudentius' larger project to map Christian sites of interest onto the Roman empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the Greco-Roman theories of the relationship between fact and fiction in poetic texts remained quite widespread in the medieval commentary tradition. The unpublished accessus to the Aeneid by Zono de' Magnalis (early 14th cent.) presents an unusual variant of this theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at some key examples of the symbolic use of the sea and of sea-voyaging as images for epic poetry, for original poetic enterprise and for the progress of the plot within a poem. Beginning from the emblematic use of this symbolism in Hellenistic poetics, it traces the treatment in Catullus 64 of the journey of the Argo as the primal voyage of both human culture and Greco-Roman literature, suggests some further allusions to voyage-symbolism to add to those already known in Virgil's Georgics, and examines the analogy between the progress of the Trojans' voyage and of the epic plot in Virgil's Aeneid. It concludes by looking at two odes of Horace, one of which is a test case for the limits of epic-ocean symbolism.

Roman culture apparently did not produce utopian literature in the strict sense. Even in the political and moral crisis of the period of civil wars, authors like Livy primarily focused on the Roman past to redress the catastrophic present. But around 40 B. C. Vergil and Horace can be seen adapting Greek utopian motifs to reflect upon the plight of the Roman people and their imminent future. Whereas Horace seems to look for a imaginative 'Isle of the Blessed' in sharp contrast to actual Roman politics, Vergil innovatively sketches a renewed Golden Age to take place precisely in Italy. But unlike Greek utopian writers he does not claim to offer a structural alternative to the present state of affairs. In the 'Aeneid', Augustus is said to bring back an implicitly utopian reign of justice and peace. This is not a simple piece of propaganda, but a sophisticated yardstick to assess the new political system that came to life by brute force and uncanny mastery of Roman politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vergil's Aeneid built a legendary past that allows the Roman understanding of the multicultural composition of their own society, the ethnicity of the different groups and their ancestry and participation in public life in Rome. Through ethnographic positive and negative vectors set up a historical memory that combines the known past with legendary elements. Vergil determines the place of ethnic emphasis in the historical process of formation of Italy under Roman rule and recognized in the present, here lies a retrospect and an act of memory on the Bellum Sociale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Book six of Virgil's Aeneid concludes with the reunion scene of Anchises and Aeneas which leads to the revelation of the gens that Aeneas will father in Italy (... Romanam condere gentem, Aen. 1.33). In the scheme of a pompa, which includes elements of a pompa triumphalis, Anchises describes the victorious course of the Romans in history from their mythical origins down to the time of Augustus. However, the triumphant spirit of the parade is tempered by the greeting scene between Anchises and Aeneas that precedes the prophetic speech of Anchises, and the funus of Marcellus at the end of the procession of Roman leaders. These scenes connect the pageant with funeral iconography and the idea -- Etruscan in origin -- of the journey of the dead to the afterlife. Specifically, the posture of Anchises palmas utrasque tetendit (Aen. 6.685) and Aeneas' request da iungere dextram (Aen. 6.697) reminded Virgil's contemporary audience of funerary reliefs which depicted greeting postures between ancestor and deceased descendant. On the other hand, the vision of the young Marcellus (Aen. 6.878) as invincible imperator on foot or on his horse (880-881) called up representations of the general triumphator alone or as part of a pompa triumphalis or funebris on triumphant and sepulchral monuments of Rome. In the following pages I will suggest that the interweaving of triumphant and funerary imagery conjures up for the contemporary audience an image which is at once a pompa triumphalis of Rome and a procession of imagines maiorum that accompany the funus of the young Marcellus, the adopted son of Octavian. In other words, Virgil has concealed in the triumphant procession of Roman leaders the image of funus triumphale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]