Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Vergil's Aeneid is an etiology, a story explaining how something came into being. It is specifically a ktisis, a story of how a nation arose. Its narrative aims at a Roman nation distinct from other nations, particularly from the Trojans with whom it originated, the Greeks whom the Trojans had fought and whom the Romans were to conquer, the Carthaginians who threaten Roman ascendancy, and the Italian peoples among whom Rome arose. Yet as an etiology, and especially as one whose fulfillment is not part of the narrative, the Aeneid must speak of Rome proleptically, as a future entity. One effect of this narrative condition is that Rome typically comes into the poem at second or third hand in speeches by its characters, and is subject to the vicissitudes of those discourses. Of the great prophetic tableaux of the poem, the “pageant of heroes” in book 6 is couched within Anchises’ tendentious, sharply purposed exposition, and the elaborate designs worked onto the golden shield of Aeneas in book 8 represent Vulcan's interpretation of the events of Roman history, which he has learned from vates — “seers” or “inspired poets” (8.626). Even when the narration itself takes responsibility for speaking about Rome there tends to be a distancing, as when the city is first described (1.19–22): progeniem sed enim Troiano a sanguine duci audierat, Tyrias olim quae verteret arces; hinc populum ... log in or subscribe to read full text