aeneid modern scholarship

feminist Critique- the poem has a patriarchal core where women are regularly sacrificed to the greater mission

Dido must die so that Aeneas can leave Carthage Bk4

Creusa must die so that Aeneas can marry Lavinia later on Bk2

The women are left behind in Bk5 so that the Trojans can start new lives when they reach Italy

Camps- Aeneas is a puppet, controlled mechanically by forces outside himself

Bk4-He is forced to leave Carthage by Jupiter and Mercury, even though it was clear that he wanted to stay as the first time Mercury came down he was wearing clothes Dido gave him

Jenkyns- Dido is a sympathetic figure

Bk1- Venus and Juno force Dido to go against her vow to never marry again by using Cupid to make Dido fall in love with Aeneas, leading her to neglect Carthage and fall out of favour with her people

Mac Gorain- Dido is one of many collateral victims of Rome’s rise

Bk5- Palinurus is killed by Venus and Neptune so that the Trojans could reach the Laurentine Thybris

Bk2- Laocoon and his children are killed by the gods for trying to stop the Trojans

Bk2- Creusa must die so that Aeneas can marry Lavinia

Hall- Aeneas is a pious hero

Hardie- Aeneas is bland because of the plot

Mackie- Aeneas’ general concern to facilitate his fate is the cornerstone of his pietas

Williams- before Book 6, Aeneas is weak and uncertain but after seeing the future, he is strengthened and resolved to be successful in his mission

Jenkyns- Creusa is the ideal Roman matron

Hall- all the powerful women in the Aeneid die

Griffin- Aeneas is a reflection of Augustus

Hardie- Dido is a depicted as a dangerous woman- similar to the real life threat of Cleopatra

Gransden- Juno embodies the dreaded spirit of civil strife

Williams- it is clear that the major intention of the Aeneid was to glorify Rome and Augustus

Gransden- Jupiter is a more dignified version Homer’s Zeus

Gransden- most of the plot of the Aeneid is generated by Juno

Williams- Aeneas fights because he must only to fulfil his duty

Quinn- the urge to kill is part of being a Homeric hero, but Virgil shows the unpleasantness of this urge when Aeneas goes on a rampage in Bk10 fuelled by furor

Toll- the Aeneid is a poem of national identity

Toll- Virgil wanted to provide for his own nation a poetic prehistory as antique and deep-rooted as the one Homer provided for Greece and the Greeks

Grebe- Virgil’s epic is a piece of propaganda that reinforces the divine foundation of the emperor’s auctoritas

Sowerby- the relationship between father and son is the closest in the poem

Oliensis- Virgil associates the feminine with unruly passion, the masculine with reasoned mastery. In the poem this tends to mean that women make trouble and men restore order

Oliensis- the uncomplicatedly virtuous women of the epic, Creusa and Lavinia prove their virtue precisely by submitting to the masculine plot of history. Creusa accepts her relegation to the past and Lavinia doesn’t resist her exploitation for the future of Rome

West- describes the wars between the Greeks and Trojans, the war between the Trojans and Italians and the subsequent founding of Rome is a victory with a price

E.g the death of Pallas in Bk10

Ard- Dido is a woman of extremes