Aeneid Scholarship

• What did Tarrant say about Virgil's relationship with Augustus?

  He states that Augustus often wrote to Virgil asking about the book's progress and would sometimes ask Virgil to read certain parts of the book to him. He states that Augustus "overrules Virgil's dying impulse to have the text burned."
• What was RJ Tarrant's view on the Aeneid as a whole?

  "The Aeneid can be seen as reflecting the great political events of the time"
• How did Adam Parry believe the Aeneid would have been received by its contemporary audience?

  As a great work of Augustan propaganda
• What mood does Parry believe to be present throughout the Aeneid?

  A sense of frustration and loss, such as when Aeneas loses Creusa, Palinurus, Anchises, Dido etc
• What did Philip Hardie say about Aeneas himself?

  "Rather than being strongly driven by an internal desire or ambition, he is forced into a mission by circumstances beyond his control."
• What does Lyne criticise Virgil for?

  "It is Aeneas's relationships that Virgil appears to neglect"
• What does Parry say about Aeneas's character?

  "Aeneas never asserts himself like Odysseus."
• What does Williams say about Aeneas as a leader?

  "We must not judge Aeneas adversely because we think he ought to be like Achilles."
• How did Gransden describe Aeneas?

  "A complex character, pius but also a great soldier, perhaps Troy's greatest after Hector"
• How does Griffin describe the abrupt ending of the Aeneid?

  "The effect, haunting, complex and in harmony with the rest of the poem, is deliberate."
• What does David Ross say about the Aeneid?

  "The Aeneid is not a poem about religion, yet Fate and the gods are everywhere throughout the poem, seeming to always be in control."
• How does RD Williams describe the scene with Aeneas's descendants in the Underworld?

  "The most powerful patriotic message in the whole poem"
• Why did Richard Jenkyns believe Virgil wasn't a misogynist?

  He believed Virgil enlarged Dido's tragedy to focus on the woman's point of view
• What does Susanna Morton Braund believe about the Aeneid?

  "The Aeneid can also be read as the story about the wrath of Juno."
• Which book did Simon Swain believe took the most inspiration from Homer?

  Book 6
• What does Damien Nelis say about Book 4?

  It should be read "as an independent work"
• How does Ian Du Quesnay describe Dido?

  "A victim of circumstances and the gods"
• How does Bruce Gibson state that Aeneas shows his piety?

  "Carrying his father on his shoulders away from Troy"
• How does Bob Cowan state that Virgil made his book better than the Iliad?

  In the Iliad, Achilles chases Hector three times around the walls of Troy, but in the Aeneid, Aeneas chases Turnus ten times around the walls of the Latin kingdom
• How does Eleanor Powers state that Virgil praised Augustus in the Aeneid?

  By constantly talking about the future glory of Rome in the story of its past, and that future glory must include Augustus
• How much money did Andrew Laird believe Augustus paid Virgil to write the Aeneid?

  10 million sesterces
• How did Stephen Harrison believe Aeneas showed his piety?

  By doing all he could to help at Troy
• How does RD Williams describe Aeneas?

  "Irresolute, backward looking, filled with guilt and remorse for the tragic events for which he feels he has been largely responsible
• How does Bob Cowan describe Aeneas?

  "A template for what a good Roman is expected to be"
• What does Collen Reilly say about women in the Aeneid?

  "Virgil portrays women who step out of traditional gender roles as doomed to fail"
• How does David Ross describe Aeneas?

  "A wooden puppet lacking in genuine human emotion"
• How does Emma Buckley describe Aeneas when he kills Turnus?

  "Overcome with mad passion"