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The Aeneid scholar quotes - Coggle Diagram
The Aeneid scholar quotes
Heroic world - Aeneas
"Virgil is unhappy in his hero, compared to Achilles he is a shadow of a man" - Page
"Aeneas is too often a puppet" - Duff
"[Aeneas is a] group hero" - Williams
"Homeric heroes are great individuals but Aeneas has to be the social man" - Williams
"Rome...founded by the heroic endeavours of its men and divine aid" - Williams
"Aeneas is known for his piety" - Griffin
a good leader because he doesn't hunt for personal satisfaction (until the end in killing Turnus), unlike Turnus.
He doesn't aim 'to achieve personal satisfaction by surpassing the others in excellence, but to use his qualities in order to achieve their successes' and 'we must not judge Aeneas adversely because we think he ought to be like Achilles'. - Williams
'Rather than being strongly driven by an internal desire or ambition, he is forced into a mission by circumstances beyond his control' - Hardie
'Virgil seems curiously disinclined to show Aeneas' responding or relating to others, but is this Virgil's neglect or are we to sense a further voice saying something unobvious?" - Lyne
He avoids conflict, but is a fearsome presence on the battlefield when he fights.' He's often seen 'turning many things over in his mind' or 'drawing a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart', the Sibyl tells him off for gazing too long in the Underworld. 'He tends to react rather than take the initiative'. - Knights
'he does not stride magnificently through life, on contrary he's under constant emotional and intellectual pressure and only with extreme difficulty and often against all the odds does he succeed in keeping on going' - Williams
"Virgil is defining the nature/behaviour of hero in an age no longer heroic, not to produce a second-hand Achilles or Odysseus but to investigate qualities required in complex civilisation in which straight forward individualism of an Achilles would not be useful" - Williams
The social, cultural and religious context
Women and men
"[Camilla is a] strange mixture of beauty and of an idyllic pastoral world and the heroic world of violence cruelty" -Williams
Dido - "'Virgil builds up a picture of a totally admirable and enviable queen" - Williams
Dido - 'Like in Greek tragedy, reader is astonished and horrified at total disintegration of what once had been a strong, noble and virtuous character' - Williams
"The poem makes efforts to marginalize women. The characters most central to the story are young men of fighting ages. Dido and Camille only have a role to play in the poem when they act like men. The women who act like Roman women (eg. Lavinia) are barely in the poem." - Morgan
"In Tyre, Dido had found fulfilment in the traditional role of ancient women, subordinate to power of her husband, Sychaeus. Now she has to carve out her own power surrounded by hostile people." - Hardie
Dido - The most strongly drawn of all Virgil's characters.
An innocent victim of the Roman destiny.
She and Aeneas seem intended to be complimentary reflections of each other. - Sowerby
"All of the powerful women in the Aeneid die except Lavinia who doesn't speak!" - Hall
Pietas and furor
'Aeneas' general concern to facilitate fate is the cornerstone of his piety'. - Mackie
"Killing Turnus was an act of pietas, as Aeneas had a duty towards Pallas and Evander." - Gransdon
"Aeneas does not have to do his duty. He actively practises pietas and accepts his divine mission rather than is forced into it." - Pattie
"Aeneas is remarkable for the possession of the social and cooperative virtues rather than Homeric competitive values. He commands our respect for pietas, his sense of responsibility to family, country, gods." - Quesnay
"The Aeneid argues for peace, not violence. Virgil created a counterpoint to the warlike legends of Romulus, as Aeneas wants peace and has pietas." - Gransdon
"Virgil presents furor as the chief failing of humans, and the disasters in the poem are largely due to violent and unreasoning element in human nature." - Williams
"Aeneas loses in the end, because he succumbs to furor rather than embracing clementia." - Williams
Family
"The relationship between father and son is the closest bond in the poem." - Sowerby
Heroic World
Supernatural
"they [the gods] have 'sublime frivolity'" - Reinhardt
'the poem's supernatural machinery looks beyond the incident with which the narrative ends, the death of Turnus, to the events and personalities of the poet's own time and even beyond ('an empire without limits of space or time' - Kennedy
Juno - 'major part', 'strikingly portrayed', 'formidable, relentless, brilliantly rhetorical in expressing her anger or her guile but above all symbolic of opposition to the Trojans' - Williams
Jupiter - 'He has given the Romans rule without end 'imperium sine fine dedi) and he stresses two aspects of their destiny. The first is by means of conquest to establish universal peace. The second is to establish law' - Williams
"Virgil's gods are less present than Homer's/ Fewer big scenes and less incidental, arbitrary references." - Quinn
"Both halves of the Aeneid begin with a soliloquy by Juno where she reflects angrily on her humiliation. Her reconciliation to the Roman destiny is the true resolution of the poem." - Gransdon
"Juno embodies the spirit of civil strife. This would be particularly horrific to Romans." - Gransdon
"-The gods are deeply intertwined in the Aeneid. We attribute things that the gods have decided to human actions. It's all scripted by the gods and we recognise that Dido and Aeneas are being manipulated." - Morgan
"He [Aeneas] is passive towards the will of the gods, and all his vital instincts and passions are subdued in the service of the ideals." - Sowerby
"Aeneas survives not because of his own will and enterprise, but because he is the chosen instrument of divine will" - Sowerby
Historical and political background
"Virgil was too much of a spokesman of the state"- Graves
"[admired Virgil for his] positive moral message of Rome" - Eliot
"Augustus wanted an epic poem with himself as the hero." - Quinn
"Aeneas' war in Latinum is a reflection of Augustus' civil war - where not all the conduct is perfect, but the end result is right." - Quinn
"The Aeneid is not about Augustus at all, and he is really a peripheral figure. Virgil puts Augustus in the poem not to blindly praise him, but to make a connection with Aeneas and Augustus (modern Rome)." - Jenkyns
"Virgil does not seem reluctant to raise difficult... political issues in his poetry" - Morwood
"..underlines the struggle and achievement of Rome itself, now at peace under Augustus" - Badcock
"Trying to depict a character whom Romans of his day could model themselves" - Quinn