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  • The Ambiguous Arms of Aeneas
    37-42.
    Views:
    198

    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

  • Phoenician Vengeance: Dido, Anna, and the Lore of the Numicus
    5–19.
    Views:
    112

    Scholarly attention has been paid to the depiction of the Carthaginian sisters Dido and Anna, particularly in Virgil’s fourth Aeneid. Close attention to the later portrayals of Anna in Ovid (Fasti 3) and Silius Italicus (Punica 8) reveals a portrayal of Dido’s sister as the unwitting agent of the fulfillment of the queen’s curse against Aeneas. The hitherto unappreciated connection between the festival of Anna Perenna and the date of the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar may be seen in light of Dido’s curse on Aeneas and the Julian gens descended from his son Iulus.

  • Homer's First Battle Supplication and the End of Virgil's Aeneid
    53-66
    Views:
    291

    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.

  • Aeneas at the Europa Hotel: Canon and Nostalgia in Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s Novel Grand Hotel Europa
    147–157.
    Views:
    72

    Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s novel Grand Hotel Europa (2018), through its explicit and structural references to the Aeneid, not only affirms the canonical status of Virgil’s poem but also raises fundamental questions about the significance of cultural traditions in general. The novel emphasises Aeneas’ status as profugus, connecting him to Europe’s refugee crisis during the 2010s. This essay examines the intertextual character of the novel and the concept of ‘nostalgia’, which proves to be central to its vision of European culture.

  • Saevus, Superbus - On the Use of Words by Horace and Virgil
    133–145.
    Views:
    50

    This paper deals with Horace’s and Virgil’s use of two terms, saevus and superbus. On the basis of statistical and connotation studies, the paper concludes that, compared to contemporary poets, the use of these terms is slightly more frequent in both authors, and that they often appear in texts in contexts that give rise to surprising meanings: in the Aeneid on the relationship between the figure of Iuno and Aeneas, and in Horace’s carmina in relation to the Augustan regime. The text argues for a pessimistic reading of both authors.

  • Fathers and Sons Catullan Echoes of Remembering and Forgetting in Vergil’s Aeneid
    247-258
    Views:
    229

    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
    Views:
    200

    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.

  • Et Latrator Anubis: Egypt and Egyptian Deities in the Aeneid
    101–118.
    Views:
    70

    Egypt and Egyptian deities play an important role in Virgil’s Aeneid, in which the epic poet celebrates the contemporary victory of Augustus over the forces of Cleopatra and her lover Antony. Close consideration of all the references to res Aegyptiacae in the poem reveals that Egyptian lore is important not only for the Virgilian hommage to Actium, but also for influencing the reader’s interpretation of the final scene in Book 12 between Aeneas and Turnus.

  • Waiting for the Sybil (Vergilius: Aeneis 6,14–41)
    43–53.
    Views:
    72

    The sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid stands out from the text because it is the crystallization of the structural and allusive procedures that organize the text. The narrative of the founding myth of the Temple of Apollo in Cumae and the description of the reliefs decorating the temple’s gate, with the figure of the mythical architect-inventor-sculptor Daedalus in the center (6,14–41), were placed at a highlighted position within the key sixth book: at the beginning. Aeneid philology interprets the temple scene of the sixth book mostly from the point of view of ekphrasis, more precisely in connection with the other ekphrases in the Aeneid. In my paper, I will not concentrate on the interpretation of Daedalus’ reliefs, but on the entirety of the Cumae scene. Specifically from the perspective of the roles, I shall examine the layers of meaning that can be formed in the textual space of Aeneid around Aeneas’ scrutiny of the image during the time of waiting and around the narrator’s description of the image.

  • The early reception of the inconsistency between the two Palinurus episodes in Virgil’s Aeneid
    21–42.
    Views:
    70

    The paper investigates how ancient commentators and Roman poets recognized and reacted to the inconsistency between the two Palinurus episodes in Virgil’s Aeneid (5,833-871 and 6,337-383). First, I discuss how Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus, in their notes on 6,348, remove the inconsistency (regarding divine intervention) by assuming a punctuation different from the one adopted by all modern editors; however, while doing so, they both give rise to another inconsistency between Aeneas’ question and Palinurus’ answer. Second, I examine a passage from Statius’ biography of his father (Silvae 5,3,124–132), where the poet alludes to the Virgilian story apparently according to the version we read in Aeneid 6, but also creatively reproduces some elements of the Virgilian inconsistency. The last text discussed is Ovid’s Remedia amoris, where the poet recalls his vision of Amor Lethaeus at the temple of Venus Erycina; here again, elements of the Virgilian inconsistency are reproduced.