Homeric influence

• Virgil rewrites and emulates Homeric epic for his Roman audience
• it looks both to a Trojan past and a Roman future
• it has a comparable hero and subject matter
• it uses the literary devices of Homer's epics, and it written in dactylic hexameters
• all 3 epics have a hero
• when we study Aeneas, we shall see how changed he is from the Homeric model, and what that tells us about the sort of hero relevant to Rome under Augustus
• Virgil uses epithets, repeated phrases, parallel scenes and characters, and similes, all the same as Homer
• the epithets used in the Aeneid are limited, and employed for the full force of their meaning, not for general colour or metrical purposes
• Aeneas is good/devoted, and Dido is unfortunate or unhappy
• Homer had only the oral tradition of other epics and folk-myths to drawn on
• Virgil had the benefit of over 500 years of literature, and the influence of many writers is evident
• among others, the Greek Callimachus for technical composition of the verse and intellectual sophistication; Catullus for technical skill in expressing emotions; the Greek Plato and Roman Lucretius for their philosophy; and Cicero for the rhetoric of the law courts
• about 1/2 of Homer's epics are in the form of speeches, an opportunity for the bard not only to get into character as he delivers the speech, but to act out the story.
• the bard had to entertain the audience
• the recitation of the epic was a performance to be sung to musical accompaniment
• Virgil's poem would be recited
• A Roman would not contemplate the silent reading of a poem
• the reading could be done by anyone with a copy of the text, at any time
• there was no need for the devices that are in Homer as an aid to memory
• Homer's dramatisation gave way to a more contemplative element in the Aeneid
• there is more psychological depth to the characters
• there are pauses in action where Virgil shares what is going on in the minds of his creations
• the major difference is perhaps the purpose
• Homer was telling stories of a timeless heroic world conjured up from legend
• Virgil moves from fantasy to the real world, with appearances in book 6 of real Roman statesmen, and in book 8 of the city of Rome with the Tiber