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Greek Mythology
The Adventures of Aeneas
Historical Background
Political Violence:
---The civil war that pitted Julius Caesar
against the Roman Senate
---The collapse of the Roman republic
Order Restored:
---The emergence, under Augustus, of
Rome’s far-flung empire: Rome’s civilizing
and peace-making mission
Features
• No given material
• Created by a single poet: Virgil
• With a concrete political motivation: to
exalt the empire
• Consciously imitating Homer
• Combination of The Iliad & The Odyssey
• Using the past to assess the present
A Question to Explore
• If The Aenead is the duplication of Homer,
could it be seen as a masterpiece?
Roman Name of the Olympian
Gods
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Zeus
Hera
Hades
Poseidon
Artemis
Aphrodite
Hermes
Ares
Hephastus
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Jupiter （木星）
Juno
Pluto （冥王星）
Neptune （海王星）
Diana
Venus （金星）
Mercury （水星）
Mars （火星）
Vulcan
After Reading
A question to explore
• What differences can you find between
The Aenead and Homer’s two epics?
• How do you take these differences?
Strengths or weaknesses?
Clues to the Question
• Why does Virgil underscores the conflict
between Dido and Aeneas when they
parted? What kind of impression does
Aeneas give you in this episode?
• Our editor says Virgil transcends Homer in
elevating the heroic character what
elements can you find?
Similarities with Homer: Overall
• The Iliad: the battles
• The Odyssey: the adventures on the sea
Similarities/ Connections with
Homer: Episodes
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The land of the Cyclops
Descent into the underworld
A new set of armor from goddess mother
Kills in rage to avenge a dead friend
(The affair with a strong woman character)
Similarities/ Connections with
Homer: Episodes
• The speech of Aeneas’s wife to him
• Won’t deal with holy things with
bloodstained hands
Using the past to assess the
present
• Aeneas, like Augustus, must show strong
leadership to a people traumatized by
years of violence.
• Is Dido a foreshadowing of Cleopatra?
Using the past to assess the
present: Ambiguities
• Is Aeneas a foreign invader, pushing the
boundaries of his empire into new lands—
As Augustus did?
• Or are these battles between different
Italian peoples more like a civil war?
Difference from Homer 2
• The prototype of the ideal Roman ruler:
---devotion to duty; seriousness of purpose
---the suppression of many aspects of the
personality: self-denial--betraying the
passion of his life
Difference from Homer 1
• Not for individual objective (cf. Achilles &
Odysseus)
---Mission: to found a city
---continuation of both race and culture
---fights not for himself but for future
Difference from Homer 2
• More introspective and prone to
ambivalent feelings:
---inner conflicts:
duty vs. the longings of the heart
Difference from Homer 3
• Questioning the values of the Homeric
warrior code:
---Unlike Achilles, who fights for his personal
honor, Aeneas must be a consensus builder,
a team player
Difference from Homer 4: the
value of pietas (duty)
• The prototype of the ideal Roman ruler:
---devotion to duty:
a) to gods
b) to one’s country,
c) leaders, community,
d) family, (especially father and son)
Ambivalence: Virgil’s reflection
on the Roman value?
• Why does the poem end not with Aeneas’s
triumph but with the death of his enemy
Turnus, and why is killing the last action
that this hero takes in the poem
•  We are left to wonder whether
moderation or violence will be the truly
defining quality of the future Roman
Empire.