In the first book for the reading today, Book 4, I found a common theme: passion versus duty. The internal conflict Aeneas is facing is best illustrated and compacted on page 88, "Aeneas, Jupiter's message / Still ringing in his ears, held his eyes steady / And struggled to suppress the love in his heart. / He finally made this brief reply: / 'My Queen, / ... / And to order my priorities as I see fit, / The welfare of Troy would be my first concern, /And the remnants of my own beloved people" Here, Aeneas is verbalizing what he sees as his duty given to him by fate and Jupiter. He has to suppress his love for Dido because he cannot fulfill both his destiny and be in love with her. Furthermore, he was only able to fall in love with Dido when he abandoned his duties and mission to establish a new homeland for his people. Today's colloquium is about constructing the roman hero so if we look to The Aeneid for this, the roman hero thus far seems to have a duality in their identity. They are sometimes a person and sometimes a hero. When they are a person they succumb to human feelings such as love and grief as Aeneas does in his relationship with Dido, when they are a hero they put their duty to their people first and work for the greater good, sacrificing love and other human experiences for honor and glory. Book four essentially explores what this metamorphosis from human to hero might look like.
When reading this book, I saw it as both a contrast between hero and human, but at the same time Virgil describing what the ideal roman citizen should be. In addition to providing justification to Augustus and his position, in this being a creation story, he can show citizens that their way of life is not just how things have been done, but is something that makes them better people. The loyalty and order and sense of duty often associated with Romans is seen here as heroic, and this could be Virgil's attempt to ground another aspect of Roman culture in the story he is creating.
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