Preliminary: let's recall where we are:

Book 1: Aeneas encounters a storm and is cast ashore at Carthage.

Book 2: The hero tells Dido of his escape from Troy.

Book 3: The wanderings of Aeneas: Harpies, meeting with Helenus. Death of Anchises.

Book 4: Dido's passion for Aeneas. At Jupiter's command, Aeneas departs. Dido kills herself.

Book 5: Aeneas reaches Sicily. Funeral games for Anchises.

Book 6: Aeneas with the Sibyl at Cumae. He meets Anchises in the Underworld.

Book 7: Aeneas lands in Latium. Latinus promises Lavinia. Juno and Allecto stir up war. Catalogue of Italian heroes.

Book 8: Aeneas secures the help of Evander and the Etruscans. Story of Hercules and Cacus. Armor from Vulcan.

Book 9: Turnus attacks the Trojan camp. Nisus and Euryalus. The camp is hard pressed.

1. Structure of the Aeneid

Note that for the Aeneid (unlike the Iliad or Odyssey), the book divisions are original to the poem: that is, the poet (not a later editor) decided where to put the breaks in the action defined by the "books". The poem can be analyzed in many different ways. The most popular:

1. Dichotomy:

• Odyssey = 1-6
• Iliad = 7-12

2. Triads:

• Tragedy of Dido (framing the wanderings of Aeneas): 1-4
• Roman orgins and early history: 5-8
• Tragedy of Turnus: 9-12
• [The problem with this schema is the central triad, which doesn't much feel like a coherent unit: and in any case, there is a strong break between books 6 and 7 which this scheme ignores]

3. Alternation:

• Odyssean, more expansive books: 1,3,5,7,9,11
• Iliadic, more grave, intense books: 2,4,6,8,10,12
• [This schema does work very well, for me at least, though I think we do notice a general alternation between books of high excitement, followed by more subdued books (e.g. the sequence from 2,3,4,5,6, where 2,4,6 are very gripping tales, and 3,5 less so).]

4. Centered (Ring Composition!)

• 7 Landing at Rome
• 6,8 Roman books
• 5,9 Episodic
• 4,10 Tragedies of Dido and Pallas
• 3,11 Episodic
• 2,12 Triumph of Rome, destruction of Troy
• [But here it seems more honest to say that some books have strong links to one another, in a roughly inverse fashion: 1,7 have strongly links too, for instance, and in a certain sense also 1,12.]

2. Internal comparisons within the Aeneid

a. Some internal comparisons: Note how Vergil builds up parallels AND contrasts

1. Landing in Latium (book 7) :: landing in Carthage (book 1)

• flourishing city, alive with activity
• ambassadors press towards a central temple which is the place where the ruler handles political affairs
• Ilioneus is the Trojan spokesman
• Receiving king offers more than Trojans ask for: specifically, offer a wife (!)
• Note the invocation to ERATO, a Muse associated with LOVE POETRY, though this is, clearly, the beginning of the books on the theme of war (the "Iliadic" part of the Aeneid) - p. 164
• Juno intervenes with irrational destructiveness: storm in book 1, Allecto in book 7: note the images of nakes, fire, storm: in book 1 a storm compared to warfare, in book 7 warfare compared to a storm
• [Latinus as descendant of Saturn, Latins as a "race of Saturn needing no laws and no restraint for righteousness; they hold themselves in check by their own will and by the customs of their ancient gods." -p. 169f, 7.268ff: cf. "Daughter of Saturn = Juno. From "golden age" of peace to the "new age" of warfare.]
• But note the inversion of events: in book 1, storm is followed by peaceful meeting with Dido; in book 7, peaceful meeting with Latinus is followed by the "storm" of Allecto; also, in book 1, Neptune calms storm like a statesman quieting a mob, but in Book 7, Galaesus is killed trying to make peace between the Italian mob and the newly-landed Trojans (p. 180).

b. Allecto: snakes, fire, blood, Bacchante revisited!

• Allecto: p.174ff (3 stages: 1. Amata, 2. Turnus, 3. rural Italians)
• Snakes: Laocoon (irrational, implacable fury of the gods against Troy); Pyrrhus (irrational, implacable, impius fury of the Greeks against Troy, an image perhaps even of sexual violation): themes of deception and violation
• Bacchante: Dido, p. 91
• If Aeneas thought that by leaving Carthage he left behind the irrationality and madness assoc. with women, he's mistaken
• Historical note: woman, madness, war fury, snakes: links in strongly with Cleopatra: the story of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian's defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, 31 BC: the center of Aeneas' shield, pp. 212ff
• What kind of war is described here? Note the complicated relationships: on one side are Aeneas and Evander and the Etruscans; on the other, the Rutulians (Turnus) and the Latins (Latinus). But Latinus is Aeneas' friend, sort of, and has offered his daughter's hand (Lavinia) to Aeneas; moreover, Aeneas WILL marry her, and found Lavinium, which will eventually lead to the founding of Rome.

c. So, once again, why does Vergil invoke the Muse of LOVE POETRY to start off the second half of the Aeneid?

d. More images of Disorder: Hercules and Cacus (Book 8, pp. 197f.): this paradigm begins to suggest Aeneas' role: that of the necessary enforcer of order, and to hint at the ambiguity with which war is viewed in this epic: not simple heroism, to be sure!

3. More external comparisons: Aeneid and Iliad: INTERTEXTUALITY

i. Nisus and Euryalus, Book 9

• Sets itself clearly against Book 10 in the Iliad (the Dolon episode: Diomedes and Odysseus)
• What is different between the two tales? Why? What sort of paradigm does this tale set up? Why might that be an important paradigm (note how much emphasis the story receives)?

ii. If we think of the "Iliad pattern", it becomes clear that Aeneas has not been acting like ANY of Homer's heroes

a. A "second Paris" ?

• Juno, p. 173 (425ff)
• Amata, p. 175 top (481ff)
• Turnus, p. 219 bottom, 220 top (181ff)

but Aeneas has never met the princess, much less married her! nor is the princess already married, or even so sexually provocative, as Helen-- no violation of Zeus Xenios (Jupiter, that is!) here: no adultery, no seduction: the erotic has been fully consumed in his two "wives": Creusa and Dido.

this serves to remind us of Aeneas' perfidy (if it is that!) with regard to Dido, but also slowly to suggest that perhaps this charge by Dido is equally overblown: that Aeneas is in fact dutiful, the pious one, in a way that Paris was not

b. Hector? or Achilles?

Turnus is first announced (in book 6) as a "new Achilles", as we expect given that Aeneas is a TROJAN hero; but with the attempt to burn the ships, the storming of the wall, etc. Turner seems to play more the role of Hector: but at book 9, line 990 (p. 239), Turnus at the height of his "Aristeia" claims to be the "new Achilles"

But withdrawal from the action and, esp., the arms given by Vulcan/Hephaestus, suggest Achilles, as well as the association of Turnus with Hector: this is a surprise since

• (1) Aeneas is Trojan and
• (2) Hector is the one associated in the Iliad with pietas

Why then Aeneas as Achilles? Will the real "new Achilles" please stand up? Isn't it because there is great ambivalence of association with this great warrior, and with the "new Achilles" we met in Book 2 (Pyrrhus, Achilles' son! the one who murders Polites, Priams' son, in front of his father!)

I think it begins to push towards the fundamental question of what war is all about, why we MUST have heroes, and towards our understanding of Aeneas as a RELUCTANT hero, but one who WILL do his duty when called upon in full heroic fashion.