Virgil’s Aeneid

49 BCE: Civil War CaesarPompey

Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 5 ANTONY (about the death of Brutus, ‘the liberator’) This was the noblest Roman of them all: All the conspirators save only he Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; He only, in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle, and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world 'This was a man !' 42 BCE Phillippi Octavian and Antony and Lepidus vs. Brutus and Cassius

Eclogues (c BCE) M. Tityrus, you recline under the shade of the spreading beech tree... I Meliboeus leave my native land as a fugitive Ti. Meliboeus, a god made this leisure for me... M. An impious soldier will possess these well tended fallow fields

Eclogues (c BCE) M. Tityrus, you recline under the shade of the spreading beech tree... I Meliboeus leave my native land as a fugitive Ti. Meliboeus, a god made this leisure for me... M. An impious soldier will possess these well tended fallow fields ‘he turned to the Eclogues especially in order to sing the praises of Asinius Pollio, Alfenus Varus and Cornelius Gallus, because at the time of the assignment of the lands beyond the Po, which were divided among the veterans by order of the triumvirs after the victory at Philippi [42 BCE], these men saved him from ruin.’ Suetonius, Life of Virgil

Actium 31 BCE Octavian vs.Antony and Cleopatra

Georgics (37-29 BCE)

then [after Eclogues, ie during the 30s] he wrote the Georgics in honor of Maecenas, because he had rendered him aid when the poet was still but little known, against the violence of one of the veterans, from whom Virgil narrowly escaped death in a quarrel about his farm. Suetonius, Life of Virgil

From Octavian to Augustus – 27 BCE

Aeneid BCE (left unfinished at Virgil’s death)

Virgil vs. Homer

Aeneas’ resistance to the Homeric past Prologue: who’s angry now? Storm: remembering Diomedes Encounter with Venus: …have we met? Dido’s temple: picturing the Iliad Aeneas’ dream of Hector Revelation of the divine machinery of the war

Wanderings of Aeneas

Prologue: who’s angry now?

Palazzo Pio, Rome Juno bribes Aeolus to release the winds

Storm: remembering Diomedes Aen ff. Diomedes, why could I not go down when you had wounded me, and lose my life on Ilium’s battlefield?

Diomedes at Troy

Storm: remembering Diomedes Iliad ff. (Fagles p ) -Aeneas vs. Diomedes -Diomedes vs. Aphrodite Iliad ff (Fagles p ) --Aeneas vs. Achilles --Poseidon to the rescue ‘he is destined to survive... the race of Dardanus will not perish’

Storm: Neptune to the rescue

Octavian as Neptune

Claude Lorraine 1672 Arriving at Carthage

Encountering Venus: Have we met? Pietro di Cortona 1631

Anchises meets Aphrodite (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 650 BCE) I greet you lady, whatever god you may be … Artemis? Leto perhaps? Or the golden Aphrodite? Thetis, lofty of birth? Or even the grey-eyed Athena? Could you be one of the Graces … or maybe a nymph ….? Aeneas meets Venus (Aen ff) How shall I address you, girl? Your look’s not mortal, neither has your accent a mortal ring. goddess beyond doubt! Apollo’s sister? One of the family of nymphs?

But Venus chose to hear no more complaints…

The Vatican Virgil, Lat (4 th -5 th c CE)Italian copy of a Virgil manuscript, c. 1520

meeting Dido

Picturing the Iliad

Remembering Troy over dinner in Carthage

Aeneas’ dream of Hector

Frédéric Henri Schopin 1829

Revelation of divine machinery

Iliad 5 (p. 168) Athena to Diomedes: Look, I’ve lifted the mist from off your eyes that’s blurred them up to now – so you can tell a god from a man on sight So now if a god comes up to test your mettle, you must not fight the immortal powers head on all but one of the deathless gods, that is – if Aphrodite daughter of Zeus slips into battle, she’s the one to stab with your sharp bronze spear!

Revelation of divine machinery

Ascanius/Iulus The Vatican Virgil, Lat. 3225

Ascanius/Iulus

Fall of Troy

Wanderings of Aeneas

Works of Virgil Eclogues

Works of Virgil

At Delos