Virgil at Odds
While on the surface the Aeneid could be seen as a Roman epic meant to glorify Rome and rival those of the ancient Greeks, the author was engaged in a struggle. Virgil had to satisfy the cultural demands of his work, the political demands of his time, and his own personal demands as an artist. In tackling his problem, Virgil is revealed to be slightly reluctant of embracing fully the still young regime of Octavian but still proud of Rome and his ancestry, and concerned with the moral issues of civil war. When considering the style with which Virgil composed the Aeneid, it is important to look at the time in which he lived and exactly what was going on around him when it was written. Virgil was born in 70 BC and died in 19 BC. This places him in the very beginning of what was to be a long and relatively stable existence of the Roman Empire. Further, it was during the poet's lifetime that Rome made citizens of all Italians, allowing a huge community to share in Rome's growing heritage. People who formerly may have felt like outcasts under the oppression of Rome could now call Rome their own. This included Virgil because he came from a provincial Italian town far outside Rome. W.A. Camps cites that while Virgil was s
In acknowledging Augustus to be progeny of Aeneas, Virgil is again able to extol the emperor while skirting unashamed eminence. As was a budding tradition at the time, the emperors of post-Republic Rome were to be deified and worshipped as a god. Virgil stops short of this, but tells of a link in ancestry to the son of a God. The poet then prompts Anchises to sing more praise of Augustus, perhaps to overshadow the neglect to deify Augustus straightly. "The truth is, even Alcides2 Never traversed so much of the earth." (679-680). He does not blatantly model his hero after the emperor however, and leaves nothing in the writing acknowledging this, it must be inferred. This takes the weight of his moral problem off of the author's shoulders and places the problem of solving it onto those of the reader. Camps, W.A. An Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid. London England: Oxford University Press, 1969. Virgil tends to be oblique in his reverence to Augustus, but it is rather unrealistic to expect the poet to have written such a work and completely leave out direct homage to the man bringing peace to the empire (not to mention supporting the poet quite generously). Aeneas is before his father in the underworld when a clear prophecy honoring Augustus is relayed to him. Anchises declares "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" (665-669). Virgil is symbolically honoring the Julio-Claudian line as it was called, or the descendants of Iulius.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2205
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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