Is the Aeneid a pro- or anti-Augustan poem?

Hello.

I'm Sharon Marshall.

I'm a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter,

in the Department of Classics and Ancient History,

and this is a short series of videos on Virgil's Aeneid.

So in the first lecture, we're going

to have a think about one of the big, critical debates

on Virgil's Aeneid, and that is the question

of is The Aeneid a pro or anti-Augustine poem?

So on the surface, it's really easy

to see why Virgil's Aeneid is often considered

a work of Augustan propaganda.

So in the first place, we have the fact

that Virgil is a client poet.

He is writing for his patron Maecenas, who

is Augustus' right-hand man.

We've also got the fact that Augustus himself claims descent

from Aeneas, but it's not just a story of Rome's foundation.

Clearly, it's more than that.

In lots of ways, The Aeneid takes us right up

to Virgil's own day.

So I'm thinking of two particular episodes here.

So the first one, being the Parade of Heroes,

in Aeneid VI, in the underworld, where

Aeneas descends to the underworld

and has outlined for him Rome's future greatness,

including the Emperor Augustus.

But I'm also thinking of [INAUDIBLE] and the shield

of Aeneas, where we have, around the edges of the shield, scenes

from Rome's history and, in the center of the shield, scenes

from the Battle of Actium and Augustus' triumph for Actium

and later his triumphant and return to Rome.

So at the same time, there are a number

of episodes that might be considered

to be rifts in the ideological fabric of the poem,

and I'm thinking really specifically

here of both the losses that are incurred

along the way but also some of those episodes

which might cause us to question the ideology that's

outlined by the poem.

So in particular, pius Aeneas' rage-filled killing of Turnus,

towards the end of the poem, and thinking

about what does that mean when he's had outlined for him,

in the underworld, by his father Anchises,

the idea that he should show clementia,

that he should show mercy.

So I want to focus really specifically

on Book 6 of the Aeneid, on the underworld,

and there are several reasons for this.

The first is that this is a book that

tends to elicit quite extreme pro and anti-Augustan readings

of the text.

It's also clearly a turning point

in The Aeneid in lots of ways.

So it's the moment at which Aeneas supposedly

leaves his old furor behind, his rage, and starts

to follow the ideals of mercy and so on that Anchises

has outlined for him.

So it's meant to be a turning point.

And it clearly bridges those halves of The Aeneid.

We've got the first half, the kind of

Odyssian half with the wanderings,

and the second, more Iliadic half of The Aeneid.

So I think it is a really crucial point in the text.

And in that book, in Aeneid VI, when

Aeneas descends to the underworld,

he revisits his past in reverse order.

So first of all, he comes across the shade of Palinurus,

his helmsman who has been lost at sea,

and that reminds us of the voyage to Italy.

Secondly, he comes across the shade of Dido,

and that, of course, reminds us of his stay in Carthage.

And thirdly, he comes across the shade of Delphobus,

which reminds us of Troy.

So he meets those figures from the past, and they remind him

and us of the human cost of founding Rome.

So one of the key questions I want us to think about

is what impact does that have on Aeneas, seeing those

figures in the underworld, and then seeing his father?

And how does that shape then what happens

in the second half of the poem?

So I want to start with a pro-Augustine reading of what

happens in Aeneid VI, and this is a reading that

was proposed by Brooks Otis.

And Otis argued that he thinks that Aeneas enters

the underworld still very much immersed in his past

and not looking to the future.

He's still driven at that point by his PA task

towards his father Anchises.

But Otis notes that, once the shades of Dido and Delphobus

turn away from Aeneas in the underworld,

he thinks at that point, Aeneas realizes

that the past is nothing.

And that he looks to the future, and that he

embraces the destiny that lies ahead of him.

So he sees this as a real turning

point, the point at which Aeneas turns his back on his furor

and embraces the ideals that Anchises has outlined for him,

including this ideal of clementa, of mercy.

So Anthony Boyle is a scholar who

gives us a very different reading of this passage.

So he gives us a much more anti-Augustine,

pessimistic reading of Aeneid VI.

So Boyle sees Aeneas' descent to the underworld as, effectively,

not having much of an impact on him at all,

that he doesn't free himself from the furor of his past

at that point.

So Boyle argues that the sibyl, in fact,

is forced to constantly distract Aeneas,

while he's in the underworld, so that he doesn't linger

for too long on the suffering and the loss

and the devastation that he sees there.

So she's constantly hurrying him along to avoid that.

And Boyle argues that, as a result of this, once Aeneas

comes out of the underworld, he hasn't really learned anything

from that experience.

And that actually, in Books 7 to 12,

he is just destined then to effectively re-enact

the horrors of the Trojan War in the wars in Italy.

And Boyle makes the point that Aeneas leaves the underworld

through the gates of ivory, the gates of false dreams.

And Boyle interprets this as the idea

that this signifies that the ideal of empire

that Anchises has outlined for Aeneid is a false hope.

It's a hope that will never be realized,

and it's a hope that won't be realized by Aeneas,

but also then, by extension, by Augustus either.

So whereas Otis sees the Aeneid as a celebration

of the Augustine hero and the hope

that Augustus brought to Rome, it's very clear

that Boyle sees it more as a condemnation of the cost

of empire and more about the inevitability of human failure

to live up to ideals.

So we tend to call those very pro-Augustine, optimistic

readings of The Aeneid the European school,

and those anti-Augustine, pessimistic readings

of The Aeneid, the Harvard school.

So we tend to divide them in that way.

And there's a scholar called Adam Parry

who is often associated with the Harvard school.

So by the Harvard school, we mean a group of academics,

predominantly at Harvard University,

in the 1950s to 1970s, who were proposing

these quite pessimistic anti-Augustine readings

of The Aeneid.

But Adam Parry is an interesting figure in that group,

because his article, in 1963, argued

not for a terribly pessimistic reading of The Aeneid

but for the idea of two voices within Virgil's Aeneid.

So one voice, a public voice of celebration,

but also a simultaneous private voice of lament,

a voice that lingers on the cost of founding Rome.

And importantly,

Adam Parry said that for him, those two voices could coexist,

and he gave them equal weight.

He placed equal weight on them.

So in some ways, that is clearly still a pessimistic reading,

but it's one that doesn't insist on reading

Virgil as a subversive poet.

It's one that doesn't insist that we should see him

as attempting to undermine Augustine ideology.

So when it comes to my view of Aeneid VI,

I think I would, at the very least,

agree with Parry, that we can't read

Aeneid VI as a straightforward celebration of empire.

And I would draw attention not to the figures

at the beginning of Book 6, whom Aeneas encounters,

but the parade of heroes at the end.

And that catalog of heroes ends on a note

of tragedy, not a note of triumph,

with the figure of the young Marcellus.

So Marcellus was the nephew of Augustus,

and he died only four or five years

before Virgil wrote The Aeneid.

And so ending on this description

of the funeral of Marcellus ends this parade

of heroes on a very solemn note.

And Marcellus stands as just one of many examples

in The Aeneid of what we call mortes immaturae,

premature death, young men and women

who are cut off in their prime.

So rather than ending with the future greatness of Rome,

Virgil ends that catalog with the greatness

that might have been.

So I think it's useful then to move away from those polarizing

readings of The Aeneid, where we have

the very extreme pro and anti-Augustine readings

and to think of it more as a sliding scale,

with those extreme readings at either end.

But lots of other readings like Parry's,

that we could plot at various points

along that sliding scale.

And some of those readings allow for polyphony.

They allow for the proliferation of voices within the text,

and they allow for seemingly contradictory positions

to coexist.