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Aeneid
Aeneas was a Trojan prince, a warrior and a hero in The Aeneid, which best captured his story and mission. After the fall of Troy, the gods asked Aeneas to flee from Troy. He was to gather some of...
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The Odyssey
A Proömium is, in essence, a preface. From the Greek, it literally means "before the song". From ancient times, it has been used as an introductory chapter, or prologue. The ancient writer Homer...
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Aeneid
There are several different, and somewhat incompatible, mythic traditions describing the founding of Rome. It should be noted that none of this is considered historical; these different foundation...
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Aeneid
Virgil's Aeneid is very much an epic of exile. It is written in dactylic hexameter, the traditional epic meter of Greek and Latin, and echoes the form and incidents of the Homeric epics, in a way...
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Aeneid
Initially, Aeneas is simply a stranger whom Dido welcomes to her city of Carthage, but they end up becoming lovers. Their story ends tragically, however, as Aeneas leaves and Dido commits suicide...
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Aeneid
In Book VI, the journey to the underworld provides much in way of meaning and purpose for Aeneas. It is a reflection of what Dante would in his work in terms of being immersed in the midst of a...
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Aeneid
One of the most important aspects of Aeneas's heroism, is, perhaps surprisingly, his compassion. This is definitely a parallel between Aeneas and Christ. Consider, for example, his compassion for...
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Aeneid
In Book 4 of the Aeneid, Dido confesses to her sister Anna about her feelings for Aeneas, feelings so strong that she feels tempted to break the personal vow she made to remain faithful to even...
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Aeneid
This quote is from the second book of the Aeneid, when Lacoon, a priest, warns the Trojans not to accept the giant wooden horse that has apparently been left by the Greeks. Another translation is...
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Aeneid
Laocoon's words speak to the condition of paranoia that existed between the Trojans and the Greeks. With the presence of the horse at Troy's gates, its citizens wonder how they should approach the...
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Aeneid
The most important woman to consder in The Aeneid is of course Dido, who suffers terribly because of her love for Aeneas and the way that their union in thwarted by the gods. It is hard not to feel...
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Aeneid
The biggest societal value and belief that is explored in this text is that of piety, or what it means to live a life in obedience to the gods and their will for you. This piety is displayed first...
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Aeneid
Aeneas is an epic hero in this text in the way that it is he who is chosen to found the empire of Rome and to lead the remnants of a once-great civilisation towards a new birth, from Troy to Rome....
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Aeneid
Achilles was the hero of Homer's Iliad. The entire epic is focused on the "wrath of Achilles", or the period when Achilles withdrew from the fighting because he was angry that Agamemnon took his...
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Aeneid
Achilles, the son of mortal Peleus and the goddess Thetis, is the focal point of Homer's Iliad. The name of Aeneas, the son of mortal Anchises and the goddess Venus, can be found in the title of...
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Aeneid
Achilles is the focal point of Homer's Iliad, written in Greek in the latter half of the eighth century B.C.E. Seven centuries later, Virgil, writing in Latin, composed the Aeneid, whose...
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Aeneid
Aeneas is a character who is defined by piety, and indeed, is referred to as "pious Aeneas" at various points in the text. In both the Aeneid and the Iliad, characters are often defined by one...
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Aeneid
There are of course two responses to this question. Firstly, it is perfectly possible to argue that Aeneas is presented as the prototype of the ideal Roman ruler, because of the epic nature of this...
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Aeneid
Here are some of the more important terms from the Latin text of Virgil's Aeneid. furor is a Latin word that denotes rage and madness. In Virgil's world, furor is an emotion that philosophers like...
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Aeneid
Aeneas, particularly in the 2nd half of the epic poem, becames pietas (or piety) personified. He has been commissioned by Jupiter to found a new Troy as it lay in ruins after 10 years of warfare...
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Aeneid
The answer to this question can be found in Book 12. As Aeneas and his forces prepare for battle, he makes a treaty with Latinus and his people, clearly stating that they will fight together and...
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Aeneid
This is a great question. As you note, there are many images in Virgil's Aeneid. Let me name a few ways in which these images are used. First, fire is a common imagery in the work. For example, in...
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Aeneid
This is a great question. There are many deeds that Aeneas has done and obstacles that he has overcome to be the hero of the epic poem. In light of this, let me name a few of them. First, in the...
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Aeneid
This is a great question. I would say that the Aeneid by Vergil (alternate spelling Virgil), does an amazing job when it comes to fulfilling its objective in providing the Romans with a national...
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Aeneid
When Aeneas docks in Carthage, he meets Dido and falls in love with her. The text infers that Dido feels like she and Aeneas are married, though they are not husband and wife. This shows the level...
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Aeneid
This is an interesting question because the Romans don't seem to have viewed religion as a matter of spirituality, like many Americans do today. For the ancient Romans--and many other ancient...
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Aeneid
One thing students need to realize is that being the hero of a literary and being a hero in the usual American sense of the word are not the same thing. Like Gilgamesh, Achilles, and Odysseus,...
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Aeneid
Both Medea in Euripides’s play Medea and Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid are women abandoned by heroes. In both cases, the women helped the heroes and were repaid by being abandoned. Medea killed her...
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Aeneid
One of the most interesting features of Virgil's Aeneid is the poet's ability to incorporate philosophical thought into his epic. Two of the most prominent philosophical schools at the time Virgil...
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Aeneid
Like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil begins the Aeneid with his story in medias res ("in the middle of things"). Homer's Iliad depicts actions in the tenth and final year of the war; his Odyssey...
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Aeneid
This is a difficult question because we know very little for certain about the history of the period in which Homer was writing and we know very little about Homer. The Trojan War, if it was an...
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Aeneid
Virgil's Aeneid deals with the fate of Aeneas after the fall of Troy. Book 1 is a key place to look to determine the relationship between fate (Latin fatum) and the gods. In Aeneid 1, Venus, after...
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Aeneid
In the third book of Vergil's Aeneid, Aeneas has landed in the land of Chaonia, which is in northwestern Greece. There, he discovers Andromache, the former wife of Trojan Hector, and her new...
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Aeneid
Virgil`s Aeneid, like the Odyssey and much of Greek tragedy, is concerned with the aftermath of the Trojan War. It is the story of Aeneas, who is son of Anchises, a cousin of the Trojan King Priam,...
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Aeneid
This is a good question, especially in view of the Roman hatred for Carthage. For example, the archenemy of Rome in the Republic was Hannibal the great Carthaginian general. This fact must have...
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Aeneid
In contrast to the Homeric epics, Vergil's Aeneid has a specific nationalistic purpose. The Homeric epics were written at a time when Greece was not a unified nation, but rather a collection of...
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Aeneid
On face value, Aeneas' departure is the reason why Dido goes mad and ends up killing herself. It is his insensitivity and his failure to understand their connection and relationship after...
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Aeneid
This question refers to Book 1 of Vergil's Aeneid. Aeneas, after the fall of Troy at the hands of the Greeks, has made his way across the sea and finds himself and his companions shipwrecked in...
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Aeneid
After the fall of Troy, Aeneas, his father, and a handful of survivors sail away in the hope of establishing a new city. Eventually, the hatred of the goddess Juno for the Trojans leads to a...
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Aeneid
The conclusion of the Virgil's Aeneid is one of the most controversial passages in Western Literature. Some scholars would argue that Virgil was not finished with the epic and that he would have...
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Aeneid
In contrast to epic heroes like Achilles and Odysseus, Aeneas' journey has a different sort of aim. In Homer's Iliad, Achilles' aim was to achieve immortal glory for himself by killing lots of...
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Aeneid
It depends on which translation you have, but several translations offer at least two of the three reasons: 1) The city of Carthage. As Virgil explains in Book 1, Juno loved the city "beyond all...
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Aeneid
The relationship between Aeneas and Dido is a complicated one, especially because it was set in motion by the goddess Venus, who wanted to ensure her son Aeneas' glorious future. Thus, when Aeneas...
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Aeneid
In Book 6 of Virgil's Aeneid, the hero travels to the underworld to meet with his father, Anchises. When Aeneas finally encounters his father, his father shows him some of the future leaders of the...
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Aeneid
I like this question because my students have tended not to like the Aeneid. I'm not sure why, because I really like the poem. Of course, it's much better in Latin than in English, because Virgil...
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Aeneid
One reason Virgil doesn't call Ulysses, the Latin version of the Greek name Odysseus, a hero is because Ulysses is the Greek king of Ithaca, part of the Danaan people and part of the armies that...
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Aeneid
The first thing to keep in mind is that the two epics are written from two opposing points of view: the victorious Greeks (for Homer) and the defeated Trojans (Virgil) who are destined to become...
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Aeneid
One important way is that Virgil deliberately imitates Homer. It has often been stated that the first six books of the Aeneid are Virgil's Odyssey and the last six books are Virgil's Iliad. The...
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Aeneid
If you decided to look hard, you could find all of these in the Aeneid. One of the most obvious is the epic hero, in this case Aeneas. He doesn't fit some of the classical definitions of the...
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Aeneid
If these are the only two choices you have, then the first one is clearly the external conflict. When the Trojans fight the Greeks, it is an external conflict. When the Greeks are hiding in the...