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• Homer's First Battle Supplication and the End of Virgil's Aeneid

  53-66

  Lee Fratantuono

  Views:

  172

  One of the less appreciated literary influences on the Virgilian depiction of Aeneas' decision to slay Turnus at the end of the Aeneid is the first battle supplication scene in Homer's Iliad, the encounter of Adrestus with Menelaus and Agamemnon. Close consideration of Virgil's response to the Homeric scene sheds light on the poet's concerns in his presentation of the choice his Trojan hero Aeneas confronts in light of Turnus' appeal. Acrostics at the end of the Aeneid invite further reflection.

• The Ambiguous Arms of Aeneas

  37-42.

  Lee Fratantuono

  Views:

  150

  Virgil subtly connects the scene of Dido’s discussion with her sister Anna about the new Trojan arrival Aeneas, and the later first arrival of the Trojans in Latium. By a careful corre-spondence between the two passages, Virgil portends the dark amatory rationale behind the sub-sequent outbreak of war in Italy

• Fathers and Sons Catullan Echoes of Remembering and Forgetting in Vergil’s Aeneid

  247-258

  Péter Somfai

  Views:

  131

  In Vergil’s Aeneid the problematics of remembering and forgetting emerge as an issue of essential importance: the Trojans – somewhat paradoxically – have to bring about both of them in order to be able to found a new native land in Italy. The matter in question emphatically occurs in two speeches of fathers given to their sons in the epic: in that of the shade of Anchises given to Aeneas in Book 5 and in that of Aeneas given to Ascanius in Book 12. These passages both recall the speech of Aegeus to Theseus in Catullus 64, in which the father aims to ‘program’ his son’s mind to remember his instructions. It will be of fundamental importance to observe the way the Catullan text presenting the failure of this kind of ‘mnemotechnical’ remembering encodes forgetting into the Vergilian passages mentioned above, by means of intertextual connections.

• Hoc nemus ... habitat deus (Verg. Aen. 8, 351-352). : Presence des dieux dans la campagne virgilienne: qui sont les di agrestes?

  73–82

  Charles Guittard

  Views:

  70

  In the pastoral landscapes of the Geogics (particularly in this poem’s opening invocation), in the Eclogues, and in some descriptions of the Aeneid, for example when Aeneas visits the site of Rome with Evander (Verg., A. VIII 306-368), gods are present in nature, in the wild space, in the fields ; and the Roman feels the presence of undefined divinities. The pastoral and agricultural themes include many gods of the countryside and of agricultural life; Virgil calls them agrestum praesentia numina (G. I 10). This paper will focus on such divinities as Faunus, Pan and Silvanus. Links have been established between these divinities by way of interpretatio, especially between Faunus and the Greek god Pan. Faunus is present in the religious calendar of Rome (Lupercalia); the worship of Silvanus is also well attested in the Roman world. The concept of di agrestes, well attested in Virgil’s works, helps us to define a special category of gods, living in a special area, between civilization and wild space. Some of these divinities combine human and animal features.