Turnus

About the lecture

In this module, we think about the presentation of Turnus in Book 12 of the Aeneid, focusing in particular on: (i) the extent to which Turnus is presented as a worthy opponent for Aeneas; (ii) the fact that Turnus is not presented in any straightforward way as a villain; (iii) the significance of the fact that the very first word of Book 12 is 'Turnus'; (iv) the importance of the opening scene of Book 12 in which Turnus resists the pleas of his mother and father and takes responsibility for his own actions; (v) the simile at lines 4-9, in which Turnus is compared to a wounded lion, especially its connection with a similar simile in Book 20 of the Iliad, and the fact that the lion in the simile is wounded by a 'bandit' or 'robber' (Latin: latronis); (vi) the question of whether we are to see Turnus as a second Achilles or a second Hector – or a bit of both; (vii) the importance of Turnus' sister Juturna in emphasising Turnus' status as a proto-Roman; and (viii) the extent to which Turnus is a devotus.

About the lecturer

Llewelyn Morgan is a Classicist, a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. The focus of most of his research is Roman literature and culture, and he is the author of the well-received study of Roman poetic form, Musa Pedestris: Metre and Meaning in Roman Verse (Oxford, 2010).

But he also has a longstanding fascination for Afghanistan, contemporary and historical, which he traces to his discovery, at an impressionable age, of a Russian samovar inscribed “Candahar 1881”. He has made several visits to Afghanistan in recent years, and his most recent book, The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Profile Books and Harvard University Press, 2012), traces the history of these remarkable monuments from their Buddhist origins 1,400 years ago, through their celebrity in Islamic wonder literature and European travel writing, up until their destruction in 2001.

Morgan is a regular public speaker, on many aspects of Classics and Afghanistan, appears occasionally on BBC Radio 4, and writes slightly less occasionally for the Times Literary Supplement.