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Who Is Virgil A Hero Or A Traitor

Decent Essays

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were the accounts of history that glorify Roman Empire. Virgil crafts a very carefully worded and cautiously selected version of Roman history, that glorifies Rome and its deeds, atrocities and achievements alike. The catalogue of events, functions as a version of history or propaganda that supports and reveres the Roman Empire. The retelling starts with humble beginnings, “... licked her wolf pups into shape with a mother’s tongue” (Virgil 1062). It then follows with the beginnings of Rome as a city, then as a republic and finally as a fierce empire. Virgil traces an idyllic history of Rome, that glosses over any details that do not bring glory to the empire, and in doing so creates a propagandic version of events. …show more content…

“He forged the homes of hell, the high Gates of Death and the torments of the doomed, with you, Catiline, dangling from a beetling crag,” (Virgil 1063). Catiline, a traitor to Rome, tried to overthrow the Roman Republic in the first century B.C.E., and for his actions against Rome, he is sent to one of the worst parts of hell, and is depicted as dangling from a ledge above the Furies open mouths, which could imply the torture of actually being eaten alive, or simply waiting for the Furies to deliver a punishment or torture. Either way, it is definitively not a desired fate. Conversely, Cato, a defender of the Roman Republic, who opposed to Julius Caesar, is heiled as a virtuous man, and sent to the ‘heaven’ of the Roman afterlife. Cato is said to be, “set apart, the virtuous souls, with Cato giving laws” (Virgil 1063). The dichotomy of the story of Cato and Catiline, illustrates a clear political message; those who support Rome are rewarded and those who oppose Rome are

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