1. Introduction to Augustan Rome

First, the GREEK world we have (sort of) left BEHIND:

• This is not the world of Mycene and Bronze Age Greece
• This is not the world of Agamemnon and the Greek heroes
• This is not the world of Archaic Greece
• Nor is this the world of Classical Greece
• Not the world of the Parthenon (Athenian Acropolis)
• Not the world of the Erechtheion (Athenian Acropolis)
• Not the world of the serene, perfect, idealized Apollo (Apollo of Piombino)

THIS IS NO LONGER GREECE: THIS IS THE WORLD OF ROME

• Map of the Mediterranean as the Roman World
• Map of the Wanderings of Aeneas
• Rome has its own style:
• in Architecture: the Roman Colliseum, for example (from later: 80 AD)
• in Art: esp. in portraiture:
• patrician
• Pompey (a great Roman general of the 1st c. B.C.)
• puella (girl)
• matrona (woman)
• another matrona
• couple (tombstone)
• Note how realistic, unsentimental, these portraits are: a no-nonsense people
• Rome has a foundation myth that situates Rome as a hardy people, born from the rough, a Rome that built itself up from raw fields, a people with little who made themselves great by virtue of their own moral fiber, sense of right and tradition etc. (does this remind you of anything? yes, our Founding Fathers saw Rome as their spiritual ancestry: look at the architecture in Washington DC!)
• Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf
• But as Rome evolved, its essence became more and more military: we indeed think of the Roman empire, and the central images of Rome are often martial
• The Roman emperor Augustus: in military armor
• Triumphal Arch: to celebrate victories over the enemies as the empire grows (here is pictured the Arch of Trajan, from the second century A.D., much after the time of Augustus)
• Mars: note the Roman helmet, the savage controlling gesture to Venus: Rome was a culture where military rape plays a central part in the founding myth (!)
• This martial aspect of Rome was inordinately successful from a fairly early period, resulting in success against the other major power in the West, Carthage, in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., and a steadily growing empire. Carthago delenda est. Sacked and destroyed 146 B.C.
• But in the first century B.C., the growing power of the Roman Republic led to increasing factionalism, and the martial spirit turned in upon itself: the civil wars
• Sulla and Marius: the first set of civil wars
• Pompey and Julius Caesar: the second set of civil wars (first triumvirate) : Rubicon 49 B.C., death of Caesar 44 B.C.
• Octavian (later, taking the name Augustus) and Marc Antony: the third and final set of civil wars (second triumvirate) : Actium 31 B.C.
• Once the dust settled and the blood ceased to run, the winner was ... Octavian, nephew to Julius Caesar, a Caesar himself, and the first emperor of Rome (31 B.C. to 14 A.D.), who soon (27 B.C.) took the name Augustus
• Augustus as warrior
• Augustus as Pontifex Maximus (the chief priest of Rome)
• As peace and prosperity spread around Rome (of course military actions continue: but to add to the empire, not to fight in civil conflict), Augustus is increasingly seen as the inaugurator of a time of unusual peace and prosperity, the initiator of a Golden Age in Rome
• But -- what is fascinating -- is to see the ways in which architecture, art, civil programs, religious rites, everything that is, is deliberately directed by the regime towards helping to create this explicit sense of a Golden Age (see Paul Zanker, Power Images in the Age of Augustus)
• Julius Caesar: family name is Julius: linked to Aeneas' son Iulus (=Ascanius), thus Julius Caesar and his nephew and heir Octavian/Augustus are descended from Aeneas, thus also from Venus (!)
• Interesting in this mix is the figure of Vergil, and his poem, the Aeneid: how does it intersect with the political environment of the times?

Map of the Wanderings of Aeneas

2. Gods and Heroes: Roman Appropriations

• (Latin name :: Greek name)
• Jupiter ~ Zeus
• Juno ~ Hera
• Neptune ~ Poseidon
• Venus ~ Aphrodite (Aeneas is son of Venus and Anchises)
• Apollo ~ Apollo
• Diana ~ Artemis
• Mars ~ Ares
• Mercury ~ Hermes
• Minerva (=Pallas) ~ Athena (or Pallas Athena)
• Vulcan ~ Hephaestus
• Ulysses (Ulixes) ~ Odysseus
• Hercules ~ Heracles

3. Vergil as a man: Aeneid as self-conscious art, as a national epic

Dates: 70 B.C. - 19 B.C.

Aeneid : 11 years of work, 30-19 B.C.: at his death, still not quite finished: he asked that it be destroyed upon his death: fortunately, Augustus himself is said to have overridden the dictates of the will

Hugely influential: second only to the Bible in the history of Western Civilization: Middle Ages, Dante, Milton, Goethe etc. etc. look back not to Homer but to Vergil.

A different kind of epic: epic to be sure: heroic world, gods actively intervening, large scale, similes, etc. But: very few formulas, more importantly denseness of texture: Vergil was a man, Homer scarcely more than a legend: Vergil grew up in a fully literate, indeed intellectually sophisticated society, Homer in a rough chieftain society with little or no writing; by Vergil's time Homer was still admired of course, but epic was not much written: Vergil re-invigorated the form by constructing a national epic, thus one of meaning for his society (and interestingly, for many other societies!), weaving a dense texture of poetry with much allusion both back to Homer (and others), to the political situation of his day, and to broader reflections on politics, philosophy, character, and humanity. A resurrection of the Hero from the almost absurd to the sublime.

How does Vergil do this?

4. Gods: Disorder and Order: an example of the careful structure of events in the Aeneid

An initial frame: movement in opening scenes from Juno (1.13-18: symbol of divine wrath and Disorder, irrationality of divine forces) : Aeolus (unleashes disorder of wind, Juno's instrument, challenges the natural divine order by intruding on Neptune's realm) : Neptune (calms sea and wind: note how he controls his anger first: note the striking first simile-- political! [lines 209ff]) : Jupiter (embodiment of Order: not just stronger than other gods, but serene: calm, confident, an imposing paternal figure of quiet authority: no unseemly wrangling with his wife here! : he seems now firmly to control fate, and confidently predicts the future of Rome, in which note esp. the chaining of Furor impius by Augustus, who is immediately established as analogue to Jupiter)

(Viktor Poeschl) "the first unit of the Aeneid is framed by the appearances of two major divinities. The composition is expression of a fact...: Human action is embedded in divine action, not only as an artistic means but also as a statement of fact. To understand this is to hold one of the keys to the secret of classical composition. Besides being subject to the autonomous law of beauty, the form is founded on the subject itself, which through its organization in clear antitheses appears in its very essence. 'Formal perfection is just another aspect of mental penetration.' (Curtius)"

Myth and history interlock with a sense of divine world order, & become the symbol of a cosmic law of destiny revealed in the existence of the world of man. Three levels to the "reality" of the poem: (1) Cosmos, sphere of divine order; (2) Myth, the heroic world of poetic persons and destiny; (3) History, the world of historical and political phenomena.

#3 seems strange at first, but is part of what infuses the poem with its depth of meaning: politics and history lie closely under the surface of the poem, and bubble up constantly, so as to make clear the links between the world of here and now and that of the heroic world of yesteryear.

5. Aeneas, book 1, and Homer's Odyssey: symbolism and intertextuality

Proem: "Anger sing, goddess, the anger which possessed Peleus' son Achilles" (Iliad). "The man describe to me, Muse, the versatile person who wandered far" (Odyssey). Homer begins with a noun introducing the main subject. Aeneid: "arms and a man I sing": a combination of Iliad and Odyssey.

Many Odyssean echoes, both parallel and contrasting. E.g. "long enduring" hero, leaves Troy (destroyed or victorious), wanders the sea with comrades, shipwrecked, encounter with pretty lady in a far-off place to the West, etc. But Od. seeks wife and home; Aeneas seeks to found a new nation (seeks a new wife and home, vaguely prophecied to him).

More specific Odyssean echoes. The hunting scenes as an example of symbolism and intertextual density.

• lines 251ff. (1) pius Aeneas (2) hero (3) but deer are sacred to Artemis/Diana (cf. Iphigeneia tale!) and reading further...
• lines 444ff. (1) Venus as huntress (!), like Artemis/Diana; (2) "girls of Tyre" are huntresses (like...), and Dido is their queen; (3) Queen Dido as victim, as loyal wife [Sychaeus, Pygmalion].
• lines 700ff. Entrance of Queen Dido: (1) Artemis, cf. Nausicaa; (2) surrounded by a "company of youths": cf. Penelope & suitors
• arrows, love arrows, idea of the victim: note how the intertextual suggestions make this all extremely complicated, both emotionally and intellectually

The symbolic theme arising from the deer-hunting becomes problematic, even ironic. Brings back food for his men: pius Aeneas. But by so doing makes the first of what will become a series of violent, destructive acts against the new territory. The symbolism is explicitly linked to Dido, with a strange and uncomfortably conflicting set of associations: and Dido, note, will be first "taken" (sexually) by Aeneas during a hunt, and we will increasingly see Dido as the quarry, and the wounded victim. So from the first act in Carthage: (1) ambivalence: Aeneas cannot advance his own cause and that of his men without a destructive act; and (2) --quintessentially Vergilian-- so also is war and human society generally: often necessary for order, stability, an act of violence and destruction that yields an order: duty to gods and country often means a violent act.

So why does Juno so angrily oppose Aeneas when he seems to represent something unqualifiedly good (pietas: duty to gods, family, country)? Aeneas' destiny --as Rome's-- is complex: a tension between the good, creative forces behind Aeneas' pietas, and the destructive acts to which he seems forced by that same pietas.