chapter 23 lecture two of two the legend of aeneas ©2012 pearson education inc
TRANSCRIPT
The Legend of Aeneas
• Augustus sponsored the arts to solidify his new age and to make it appear to be a continuation of the old Republic
• Sponsored poets and historians– Livy– Vergil
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Vergil and the Aeneid
• To rival the Homeric epics• Tells the story of the founding of the Roman
people in Italy after the Trojan war• Aeneas
– Son of Anchises and Aphrodite– His story begins in the Iliad– Saved by Poseidon
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Fig. 23.7Aeneas escapes with Anchises and Ascanius/Iulus.
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Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples; University of Wisconsin–MadisonPhoto Archive
Vergil and the Aeneid
• Aeneas’s adventures along the way• Son Iulus
– Augustus’s clan, the Julians, claimed ancestry to Aeneas through Iulus
• Aeneas founded Alba Long– Romulus and Remus would found Rome later– Aeneas, the paterfamilias of all of Rome
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Epic of National Rebirth
• Structure of the Aeneid– First half like the wanderings of the Odyssey– Second half like the war epic of the Iliad
• But the Aeneid painstakingly written; the Homeric epics more fluid and improvised – Aeneid is purposeful propaganda for a national
cause– Characters have a deeper internal life
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Epic of National Rebirth
• The old numina couldn’t express the new conditions
• The Aeneid based on the Stoic philosophy of universal destiny and a guiding intelligence in the cosmos– The Stoic logos– The new order of Rome is fated, and Roman
imperial rule is divine will
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Epic of National Rebirth
• Aeneas’s adventures have a purpose, to prepare him to the be pater of the new nation
• Some can be included in the new nation, others must be left behind or eliminated
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Aeneas, Augustus, Mussolini
• The ara pacis Augustae, discovered and displayed by Mussolini, got caught up in fascist Italy's myth about itself.
• As Augustus renewed Rome, so Mussolini fancied himself doing the same for modern Italy.
• Mussolini had planned for the construction of a bronze statue of himself as Hercules, but the project was never realized.
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Fig. 23aScene from the ara pacis Augustae
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Photo Dagli Orti from Kobal Collection, New York