The Aeneid begins with the quote, "Arms and a man I sing, the first from Troy, a fated exile to Lavinian shores In Italy. On land and sea, divine will-- And Juno's unforgetting rage-- harassed him...There his Latin race rose." This quote gives the reader an idea of what this story will be about: an epic journey of a man, Aeneas, searching for a new home after his, Troy, has been decimated by the Trojan wars. This quote also indicates to the reader that this is a piece that is meant to be performed, not just read silently. It shows that the gods will play an important role in this story, as Aeneas and his fugitives are being battered due to Juno's anger. As this is a Roman epic, Juno is the Roman version of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, who helped the Greeks throughout the Trojan war in the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is also believed that this is all happening due to fate, which today is not a typical viewpoint, because people like to think that they are in charge of their own destinies, and able to work toward anything. There are many different techniques for starting a piece of literature, but this one makes sense because it gives the reader an idea of what they will be hearing with a dramatic flair to keep them interested. Most importantly, it indicates the overall purpose of the story, portraying the beginning of Rome's glory.
I think that Augustus is trying to further justify his rule to his own people. By encouraging Virgil to write the Aeneid, Augustus is trying to give Rome some credence and cultural background; he does this to give himself credence as well, because if you give the people a reason to have faith in Rome you also give them a reason to believe in its ruler as well. So in this way, Augustus is self-promoting his dictatorship of Rome by honoring Rome with its own fables such as Greece did with the Iliad, Odyssey and other myths.
ReplyDeleteThe beginning of Virgil's epic includes a version of the invocation to the Muse that was traditional in the Greek epics. I believe is Virgil's, and by extension, Augustus's grounding of the new story in those that have existed for a longer amount of time and provides credibility. This first book then also changes track slightly, from the Greek epics as it questions the Muse in a way, about Juno's anger, rather than just invoking them to help with the creation of the story. I believe because this work is functioning as a creation story in a way, there is need for the story to be grounded in other stories, such as how Aeneas was a character in the Iliad. This provides even more credibility to the story, allowing it to function as a creation story of the city of Rome and the Roman empire.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how the gods played such a fundamental role in the mortal world of ancient Greek literature, while not even 300 years later the Epicureans believed that the gods were too busy to waste time on meddling with worldly affairs. It is made obvious that the gods were present in the everyday lives of and therefore had an unimaginable amount of influence on the Greeks by how Virgil's mention of "divine will" in the first few lines of the Aeneid, which were meant to outline the entire epic. From that point on there is a mention of divine intervention on almost every other page throughout the first three books of the piece. When compared to the fairly logical Epicurean belief that one should not fear the gods or death, because the gods do not influence our lives, the godly governance over the lives of mortals in the Aeneid seems sensationalized and unreasonable.
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