Assignment Titled 'Read The Aeneid'

The Aeneid is an epic poem about the man whose descendants will found Rome. Aeneas, is portrayed as a warrior and leader to his people and, as his name represents, stayed duty-bound to his destiny to get to Italy to found Rome. Aeneas first exhibits many great qualities as a leader, he is probably not a perfect leader but he has the best leadership skills out of all the other characters in the Aeneid. In other words, Aeneas becomes the golden standard for leadership that Virgil portrays. Second, although Aeneas often seems to stray from his path or become disheartened, he remains duty-bound to his task and is readily able to rally his men and make allies. Even though Aeneas makes mistakes or loses heart, he still is able to perform the role of leader quite adequately throughout the Aeneid. Lastly, the point of all of this, what could be argued Virgil is trying to promote with his epic poem, is that being a leader means to be something bigger than one’s self. As Aeneas, and Augustus may also, find out is that leadership often involves many sacrifices and hardship. This means that the Aeneid conveys a message of sacrifice for the good of one’s country, that it is an honorable duty that must be performed no matter the circumstances or chance of success. Moving on, Aeneas demonstrates an excellent character of leadership throughout the Aeneid, even through flawed behavior does Aeneas showcase his leadership abilities, and all of this ties back to what it means to be a great

In the first three books of The Aeneid, Virgil portrays Aeneas as a brave, relentless man destined for greatness in a time of sheer dismay. He is empowered by the gods with the task of leading his Trojan refugees from their destroyed city to Italy, where he will find an empire that will out last the ages. Divine intervention aids Aeneas throughout his journeys and Virgil emphasizes his qualities in leadership, strength, courage, perseverance, and kindness. Facing many obstacles such as the storm that washed his fleet upon the shores of Carthage, or landing on the isle of the Cyclops, Aeneas is driven forward by the will of the Gods, forced from one place to the next in order to fulfill his unacknowledged destiny.

Throughout the Aeneid by Virgil, death is a reoccurring theme and each death has its own significance to the poem. The death of Creusa in book two shows that Aeneas will need a new wife and the death of Pallas in book ten foreshadows Turnus’s future. One of the most interesting deaths is that of Dido because the responsibility for Dido’s death falls on multiple characters: Anna, the goddesses, Venus, Juno and Rumor, and Dido herself.

Virgil’s Aeneid was written in a time of political and social transition in Rome, which influenced the epic poem in a political way. Aeneid was written only a couple years after the civil war where a lot of people had started to lose faith in the greatness of Rome. Virgil’s intensely political poem concentrates on the theme of Rome’s greatness and particularly with the reign of the new emperor Augustus Caesar as the re-founder of glorious Rome. Throughout the poem Virgil used prophecies to make connections between the founding of the settlement (later to be Rome) by Aeneas and Rome’s culminating point with Augustus, who, according to Virgil, descends from Aeneas. Virgil uses this poem as propaganda for the new emperor by creating a parallelism between Aeneas, destiny, and Augustus at the same time that it uses a hidden ironic critique of the new regime.

It could be argued that the story of Aeneas’ has a disjointed tone because this Roman ideal of duty is not sense patriotism but obligation. If Aeneas felt strongly about his duty to his fate and was constantly searching for his new home

The Aeneid is an epic poem written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC. This works tells of the Trojan hero Aeneas and his journey from Troy to Italy to settle a new city for his people. The first half of the book entails Aeneas making his way to Italy while the second half describes the battle between the Latins and the Trojans. Both of these endeavors require the hero of the story to have a motivated disposition. These motivations come in the form of depictions of Roman history. The two significant depictions are told to Aeneas from his father, Anchises, who has gained the gift of visions that tells about the future of Rome and the shield that Aeneas’s mother gives him along with other battle gear for the upcoming battles. The shield and Anchises’s visons are pivotal and irreplaceable parts of Virgil’s epic; they both function for the plot’s sake as well as for use as an immortalization of Roman folklore.

In The Aeneid the family is restored through the trial and error of Aeneas. Aeneas has an equilibrium with his wife, but the gentle balance is destroyed in her death. In Carthage, Aeneas attempts to rejoin the family through Dido, but ultimately fails due to fate. Finally, in Italy, Juno’s rage is sated and she allows Turnus to die, thereby giving Lavinia and Aeneas a family at peace. Throughout the narrative, the ultimate failure of the family is observable through Juno and Jove, as their quarrel risks the permanent separation of the masculine and feminine. Juno’s rage and Jove’s unwillingness to compromise creates chaos in the family. One main principle underlies the chaos and reunification of the family: fate, that which continually brings Aeneas through heart wrenching loss, only to bring greater reunification in Italy. Fate breaks the family apart, only to bring them together in a greater bond than ever. Aeneas continually submits himself to family and fate, thereby ensuring the reunification of the masculine and feminine, and guaranteeing the future of Rome. The submission to family and fate is the catalyst for the equilibrium between masculine and feminine forces.

Book IV of the Aeneid can stand alone as Vergil's highest literary achievement, but centered in the epic, it provides a base for the entire work. The book describes Aeneas's trip through the underworld, where after passing through the depths of hell, he reaches his father Anchises in the land of Elysium. Elysium is where the "Soul[s] to which Fate owes Another flesh" lie (115). Here Anchises delivers the prophecy of Rome to Aeneis. He is shown the great souls that will one day occupy the bodies of Rome's leaders. Before the prophecy of Rome is delivered, Aeneis's journey through the underworld provides a definite ranking of souls according to their past lives on Earth. The Aeneid does not

The Aeneid, written around 20 BC is widely considered to be virgil’s greatest work. The Aeneid is a epic poem, following the adventures of the great Aeneas, as well as the central role he played in the founding of the Roman State. The character of Aeneas had been a known legend long before the Aeneid was composed, having been a character in the Iliad. Virgil took the myth of Aeneas and tied him together with the founding of the Roman State.

The Aeneid is an epic poem originally written in Latin by Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil). Virgil’s background is rather extraorginary. He was born about 70 B.C in the village of Andes, which is just outside of modern day Mantua. He got his education in the Northern Italian cities of Milan and Cremona. He eventually made his way to Rome where he was quickly immersed in learning the theory of Roman law. Virgil had planned to end up a legal advisor as his dad wished, however after giving law a try, he decided to study philosophy instead.

The proem of the Virgil’s Aeneid consists of two parts, the first seven lines gives an introduction to the story to hook the Roman reader and the last lines gives Virgil’s invocation to the muses.

People go through stages in life; birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. During those stages, everyone has a moment where they were at their happiest. Along with that moment of extreme happiness follows the moment of the “low.” The low happens when someone is at their worst. This could be a death in one’s family, a bad break up, or one loses their job. In The Aeneid “Book IV”, Dido falls deeply in love with Aeneas and she goes through stages of intense passion of love and hate. Virgil uses Dido’s intense relationship with Aeneas to show that passion leads to extreme highs and lows.

In Book IX, when Aeneas is in Pallanteum, his heart and leadership controls the warriors under his command. Even in his absence, he is respected. Aeneas never allows his emotions to cloud his sense of duty. He realizes that as leader of his people, he must fight Turnus so he can provide his people with a new city that they can call their own. They wanted a new city filled with perfect crops and good soil. They had a picture perfect idea of this land and all citizens were helping try and gain it. In this book, Aeneas talks the first

Virgil’s allusions to Roman history and epic works such as the Iliad and the Odyssey allow for various connections and parallels to be drawn between the past, present, and future--especially the various heroes belonging to their respective time period. In book VIII of the Aeneid, three saviors within different time periods are established: Hercules, the past savior of Pallanteum; Aeneas, the present savior of the Trojan legacy and its people; and Augustus, the future savior of Rome. Hercules kills Cacus and brings peace to Pallanteum; Aeneas kills Turnus and through following his fate is primarily responsible for the founding of Rome; Augustus defeats Marc Antony and Cleopatra, providing Rome with 200 years of peace. Within the context of the Aeneid, Aeneas is the present manifestation of the three saviors.

This passage occurs just after Aeneas and the other Trojans land on the shores of Carthage. Aeneas is standing in a temple to Juno, which the Carthaginians are building, and he is speaking to Achates, one of his companions. The Aeneid’s narrative is derived from the events of the Iliad, namely the Trojan War; it attempts to provide a background for the founding of what would become Rome, after Troy was invaded and destroyed by the Argives. Therefore, a major theme addressed in the work is the course of history, and how Aeneas’s actions in particular, which are notably “driven by fate,” are preserved throughout time. (1.2) His past is essentially inescapable - with the Trojan War, of which he is a veteran, depicted in artistic images decorating the walls of a temple - and he is clearly somewhat traumatized from this. However, it represents the idea of creative destruction and the unending cycle of change that is implicit in life - meaning that something must be destroyed, meaning Aeneas’s homeland of Troy and his former life, in order for something else - Rome - to be created. This is likely what Aeneas means when he states that “merit will have its true reward” - while he must undergo intense suffering due to the “burdens of mortality”, if he is pious and faithful to his destiny, he will be rewarded with a positive legacy, becoming a legendary figure.