The Aeneid

Why did we read this text? I am failing to understand how the Aeneid fits in the broader scope of our course. Were we reading it as a contrasting text to the performed Homeric epic, and as Professor McClintock was saying in class, were we trying to consider it as a written poem (that would have been recited from time to time?) In what context did the Romans read the Aeneid? Did they read it in schools and have to memorize it? Were we reading it as a precursor to Francis Yates and trying to understand what poetic devices did for the memory and construction of abstract ideas? I want to avoid the banal answer of saying, yes, we read it because it's an integral part of liberal arts education. I found it rather difficult to extrapolate a sense of education based upon the several books we read. Were we speaking of education during Virgil's time or our own lifetime? Maybe our discussion questions were a little too open-ended.

I can read the text in the sense that I can appreciate it on its literary and historic merits; certainly, Virgil made an enormous contribution to poetic structure, the world of narrative ideas, our knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology, and also to Greek and Roman arts, ethics and military history. There are so many ways of approaching the Aeneid, yet for some reason I could neither engage with this text in the context of this class, nor in the context of my life! Maybe my attitude towards understanding this text speaks to how distanced I feel from war, even though we are currently still fighting one and "wars", whether real or rhetorically imposed, are going on all the time around us: the war on drugs, shadow wars, etc. It's interesting to think that wars in ancient Rome and pre-Roman times were not fought for an idea of "democratic freedom" but rather fought as a predestined activity fulfilling a desire for imperial expansion.

In my reading, I inclined to believe that Greco-Roman warriors thought that one good reason to conquer people was to enlighten them with "peace" and bring them out of psychological and philosophical darkness (the Allegory of the Cave comes to mind.) Virgil describes a Roman encounter with far-flung cultures at the end of Book VIII, and although the context is celebration, I find it rather depressing, and the procession described as somewhat funereal. Roman conquest spelt the end of some civilizations.

"But entering
the walls of Rome in triple triumph, Caesar
was dedicating his immortal gift
to the Italian gods: three hundred shrines
throughout the city. And the streets reechoed
with gladness, games, applause; in all the temples
were bands of matrons, and in all were altars;
and there, before these altars, slaughtered steer
were scattered on the ground. Caesar himself
is seated at bright Phoebus' snow-white porch,
and he reviews the spoils of nations and
he fastens them upon the proud doorposts.
The conquered nations march in long procession,
as varied in their armor and their dress
as in their languages. Here Mulciber
had modeled Nomad tribes and the Africans,
loose-robed; the Carians; the Leleges,
Geloni armed with arrows. And he showed
Euphrates, moving now with humbler waves;
the most remote of men, the Morini;
the Rhine with double horns, the untamed Dahae;
and river that resents its bridge, the Araxes."
(929-950)