1. THE AENEID by Virgil (70BCE-19BCE)
Nov. 1, 2017
Dr. Ekin Tuşalp Atiyas

2. Wars and a man I sing/Arms and the man I sing
“Arma virumque canō”
Wars and a man I sing/Arms and the man I sing

3. Roman Empire From Respublica to Empire
Founded in the 8th century BCE
Monarchy until 509 BCE
Republic between 509 BCE-27 BCE
Punic Wars BCE
Julius Caesar (100 BC-44 BC)
43 BCE The Triumvirate (2nd)- Octavian, Marc Anthony and Lepidus
Octavian in the West
31 BCE The Battle of Actium
27 BCE Octavian becomes Augustus
The beginning of the Principate era 27 BCE-284CE

4. Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus (27BC-14AD)

5. Aeneas
A Trojan
Son of Aphrodites
(Venus) and Anchises

6. The Travels of Aeneas

7. Creusa to Aeneas:
“A long exile is your fate… the vast plains of the sea are yours to plow until you reach Hesperian land, where Lydian Tiber flows with its smooth march through rich and loamy fields, a land of hardy people. There great joy and a kingdom are yours to claim, a queen to make your wife”

8. Aeneas to his mother Aphrodites (Venus)
“Goddess, if I’d retrace our story to its start, if you had time to hear the sage of our ordeals, before I finished the Evening Star would close the gates of Olympus, put the day to sleep… From old Troy we come- Troy it’s called, perhaps you have heard the name- sailing over the world’s seas until by chance, some whim of the winds, some tempest drove us onto Libyan shores. I am Aeneas, duty-bound. I carry aboard my ships the gods of house and home we seized from enemy hands. My fame goes past the skies. I seek my homeland- Italy”

9. Romulus and Remus

10. Virgil’s previous works
The Eclogues
The Georgis

11. The Greeks Achilles Odyssseus/ Ulysses Agamemnon Patroclus Nestor Calchas (seer) Pyrrhus The Trojans Hector Priam and Hecuba Andromache Paris Aeneas Laocoon Coroebus Cassandra The Gods Zeus—Jupiter Hera-Juno Pallas Athena-Minerva Poseidon-Neptune Aphrodite-Venus

12. Juno vs. The Trojans
The Trojans vs. The Latins
Aeneas vs. Turnus
Aeneas and Dido – The Carthaginian Queen

13. Augustus (r. 27 BC-14 AD)

15. I. Origins

16. “...And all because of Italy.
Venus to Jupiter:
“...And all because of Italy.
Surely from them the Romans would arise one day
as the years roll on, and leaders would as well,
descended from Teucer’s blood brought back to life,
to rule all lands and seas with boundless power-
you promised!”

17. a long, costly battle in Italy, crush defiant tribes
Jupiter to Venus:
“… Aeneas will wage
a long, costly battle in Italy, crush defiant tribes
and build high city walls for his people there
and found the rule of law. Only three summers
will see him govern Latium, three winters pass
in barracks after the Latins have been broken.
But his son Ascanius, now that he gains the name
of Iulus-Ilus he was, while Ilium ruled on high-
will fill out with his own reign thirty sovereign years
a giant cycle of months revolving round and round,
transferring his rule from its old Lavinian home
to raise up Alba Longa’s mighty ramparts.”

18. …There, in turn, for a full three hundred years
the dynasty of Hector will hold sway will Ilia,
a royal priestess great with the brood of Mars,
will bear the god twin sons. Then one Romulus,
reveling in the tawny pelt of a wolf that nursed him,
will inherit the line and build the walls of Mars
and after his own name, call his people Romans.
On them I set no limits, space or time:
I have granted them power, empire without end.”

19. Ara Pacis Augustae c. 9 BCE

21. II. Pietas “insignem pietate virum”

22. Hector speaking to Aeneas: “Escape, son of the goddess, tear yourself from the flames! The enemy holds your walls. Troy is toppling from her heights. You have paid your debt to our king and native land. If one strong arm could have saved Troy, my strong arm would have saved the city.”

23. The Aeneid as imperial propaganda?
The pessimistic reading of the Aeneid

24. Aeneas came to halt and wept, and “Oh, Achates,”
he cried, “is there anywhere, any place on earth
not filled with our ordeals? There’s Priam, look!
Even here, merit will have its true reward…
even here, the world is a world of tears
and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.
Dismiss your fears. Trust me, this fame of ours
will offer us some haven”.

26. The Farnese Atlas
"Mighty Atlas who holds aloft on his shoulders the heavenly firmament Atlas who props the starry sky."

27. “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Walter Benjamin from Theses on the Philosophy of History, 1940.
Why did Virgil pick Aeneas as the hero of his epic?
In what ways Aeneas is different from/similar to the heroes of the Homeric epics?
Why was the memory of the Trojan war so foundational for Roman imperial ideology? Why do you think the Romans picked the Trojans as their ancestors but not Achilles and the “Greeks”?