A major new interpretation of Vergil's epic poem as a struggle between two incompatible versions of the Homeric hero
This compelling book offers an entirely new way of understanding the Aeneid. Many scholars regard Vergil's poem as an attempt to combine Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey into a single epic. Joseph Farrell challenges this view, revealing how the Aeneid stages an epic contest to determine which kind of story it will tell―and what kind of hero Aeneas will be.
Farrell shows how this contest is provoked by the transgressive goddess Juno, who challenges Vergil for the soul of his hero and poem. Her goal is to transform the poem into an Iliad of continuous Trojan persecution instead of an Odyssey of successful homecoming. Farrell discusses how ancient critics considered the flexible Odysseus the model of a good leader but censured the hero of the Iliad, the intransigent Achilles, as a bad one. He describes how the battle over which kind of leader Aeneas will prove to be continues throughout the poem, and explores how this struggle reflects in very different ways on the ethical legitimacy of Rome’s emperor, Caesar Augustus.
By reframing the Aeneid in this way, Farrell demonstrates how the purpose of the poem is to confront the reader with an urgent decision between incompatible possibilities and provoke uncertainty about whether the poem is a celebration of Augustus or a melancholy reflection on the discontents of a troubled age.
Author(s): Joseph Farrell
Series: Martin Classical Lectures, 1
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 384
City: Princeton
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note to the Reader
Introduction
Why Juno?
Form, Content, Context
Homer’s Aeneid
The Systematic Intertext
The Dynamic Intertext
The Dialogic Intertext
The Ethical Aeneid
Ancient Perspectives
Modern Perspectives
Coming Attractions
1. Arms and a Man
Where to Begin?
Enter Juno
In Medias Res
Displaced Persons
Aeolus
Neptune
Aeneas
What Is at Stake?
Horace on Iliadic and Odyssean Ethics
Horace on Ethical Citizenship
Reflections on Juno’s Aeneid in the Light of Horace’s Homer
Intertextual Chronology
Enigmas of Arrival
Intertextual Africa
Phorcys’ Harbor on the Island of Ithaca
Deer Hunting on the Island of Aeaea
Disguise and Recognition on the Island of Ithaca
Intertextual Dido
Unintended Consequences
Going Forward
2. Third Ways
None of the Above?
Failure Is Always an Option: The Aeneid and the Epic Cycle
The Narrator’s Ambition
Juno and Memory
The Narrator’s Anxiety
Aeneas’ “Misfortunes”
Cyclic Ethics
A Second Argo: The Aeneid and Apollonius
Odyssey and Argosy
The Aeneid as Argosy
Juno’s Argonautic Diversion
Iliad and Argonautica
So Many Labors: The Aeneid as Heracleid
Grappling with Heracles
Difference and Essence
A Hesiodic Heracles
A Heraclean Aeneid
Weddings, Funerals, and Madness: Dramatic Plots in the Aeneid
Setting the Scene
The Tragedies of Dido and Aeneas
Heraclean Tragedy in the Aeneid
Historical Intertexts in Roman Epics
History and Historiography
Homer and Historiography
Myth and History in Livius’ Odyssey
Myth and History in Naevius’ The Punic War
Some Conclusions
3. Reading Aeneas
A New Kind of Hero?
Aeneas, a Heroic Reader
Books 1–4, Good Kings and Bad
“The Sack of Troy”
“Wanderings”
Aeneas and Dido
Books 5–8, Aeneas’ Heroic Education
Sicily
Cumae
Latium
Pallanteum
Books 9–12, Becoming Achilles
A Leadership Vacuum
More Contested Identities
The Reader’s Sympathies
Resolutions and Rewards
How to Read the Aeneid
Appendix: mene in- and mênin
Works Cited
Index of Passages Cited
General Index
