geschke/english iv the aeneid book ii the aeneid book ii how they took the city by virgil 70-19 b.c

Geschke/English IV The Aeneid Book II

The AeneidBook II

How They Took the City

By

Virgil

70-19 B.C.


Virgil


Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Virgil Reading Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia,

and Livia.


Painting by Federico Barocci


The Journey of Aeneas


National Epic

• Defines a nation and its people

• The Aeneid is the national epic of Rome


What is a Roman?

• Patriotic

• Compassionate

• Honorable

• Honest

• Inclusive


Virgil’s Use of Rhetoric

• Purpose

• To counter the fact that Greeks defeated the Trojans



• Use of Trickery by the Greeks

– Trojan Horse

• “Knowing their strength broken in warfare,

turned back by the fates…”(18-

19)

– Greeks cannot win a fair fight



• Influence of the Gods– “If the god’s will had not been sinister,

If our own minds had not been crazed, He would have made us foul that Argive den With bloody steel, and Troy would stand today--

O citadel of Priam, towering still!”

(74-78)• It is Troy’s fate to fall, not a failure of the

Trojans



• Sinon– Played on qualities/virtues of the Trojans



• Sinon– “…Be instructed now

In Greek deceptive arts: one barefaced deed

Can tell you of them all.”

(89-91)



• Use of stereotype

• Dualistic approach to a national epic– Positive stereotype (Trojans)– Negative stereotype (Greeks)– Defines what a Roman is and at the same

time defines what a Greek is

geschke/english iv the aeneid book ii the aeneid book ii how they took the city by virgil 70-19 b.c

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