The City

So my name is Llewelyn Morgan and I'm going to talk to you about some things,

interesting things in Virgil's The Aeneid. And I thought the one place where

I'd start was talk to you about The City in The Aeneid. Because if you think

about it, the poem begins talking about cities, very, very interested in cities.

In fact, in the first of the 10 lines or so in the poem we hear about one city that

Aeneas left Troy and another city that he's going to found. The poem spends a lot

of time in other cities as well. And one of the strangest things about the

start of the poem is that when we sort of thought that we're going to start in Troy

and head off to Rome and Aeneas is going to found one city having left another city

that's been destroyed, actually, we spend lots and lots time in a

third city, in a completely different city, in the city of Carthage.

But again, it's Virgil being very interested in cities.

And Aeneas is very interested in cities that's another way of putting

it, isn't it? That Aeneas goes to Carthage, and what is it that he

likes about Carthage? He likes Dido quite a lot,

of course, in Carthage. But what he also likes is the fact that

Dido is building a city, that's what he sees when he

turns up there. When he's walking over the hill and first sees Carthage,

is this busy set of people doing what he desperately wants to do,

which is build a city. And in fact here, when he sort of started

his affair with Dido and he's got to settle down in Carthage,

when the god Mercury comes down to tell him to get on his way,

on the instructions of Jupiter, you know, "you've forgotten what

you're really about. You need to get to Italy and found the city

you're destined to found." What is it that Aeneas is doing?

He's there, you know, being a kind of Carthage

brickie, isn't he? He's building the city of Carthage. He's in his element doing

exactly what he wants to do. Well, okay, so that's in Book 1 and Book 4.

We see cities elsewhere as well, don't we? In fact cities are a kind of a

very regular feature of this poem. In Book 2 we hear all about the

destruction of the city that Aeneas began in, the destruction of the city of Troy.

And then in Book 3 we hear, amongst other things,

about all the attempts that Aeneas makes to find a new city to make up for the loss

of Troy. So the city he tries to found in Thrace and another one he tries to found

in Crete and another city that he finds in Buthrotum that he's isn't tempted to

settle at, but it's sort of a model for what Rome might be. So that's in the

first half of the poem where Aeneas is traumatised by the destruction of his

home city, Troy. He's getting suggestions from...he's getting advice from

various quarters, supernatural directions

that he's got to found another city, the city in Hesperia

in Italy, the city that will be Rome eventually. And sort of takes out this

anxiety that he has by trying to found cities all over the place, and even sort

of falling in love with a Carthagean queen, you know, completely unacceptable

thing to do. Essentially, I think because she's building a city

as I say, she no doubt has many other charming aspects to her,

but the most important thing is that she's building a city and that's what really

flicks the switch for Aeneas. Now, in the second half of the poem

it's different, obviously. He's got to Italy, he's got to the

vicinity of the territory where he's going to found Rome. So the way that the

city works in the second half of the poem is rather different,

but it remains this completely sort of central preoccupation,

both of Aeneas and of the poem. So we visit Latinus's city in Book 7 of

The Aeneid, and there's this very long description of it, which in many ways

makes it look like a kind of early form of Rome.

Although, interestingly, Latinus's city is never actually named,

it's never given a name as if it doesn't really have a right to exist somehow.

In Book 8, Aeneas visits the actual site of Rome before Rome has been

founded, and there's a kind of very interesting section of poetry there.

Interesting to think about how Roman readers would view this description of

their city before the city had been founded, a rather peculiar experience

they'd of had. And Virgil plays on that sharing various

parts of the city before it was a city and when it was a pasture for cattle instead,

which must have been quite disorienting and interestingly. It's another way in

which The City is used in the second half of the poem by Virgil.

And it introduces Homer the great model of poetry for Virgil in The Aeneid and

The Iliad specifically. Because what happens in the second half of

the poem is that the Latins and the Trojans settled down into a fairly sort of

stable situation in terms of warfare. The Trojans have a camp and the Latins are

based in their city and ultimately are besieged in their city.

Now, what Virgil is set up there is a situation that's very,

very comparable to the situation in The Iliad where the Achaeans are in a camp,

the Greeks are in a camp, and the Trojans are in a city.

So to that extent it's a quite a positive indication for the Trojans because the

Trojans are in the same position in The Aeneid that the Achaeans,

the Greeks are in The Iliad. The people that occupy the camp in this kind

of tradition win eventually. They take the city and they're victorious.

So the implication is that the Trojans are ultimately going to capture the city of

the Latins, whatever name it really has and be victorious. But there are other

things happening here as well. The Trojan camp is described in

interesting ways by the poet, Virgil.

In particular, he's very clever in describing the camp,

sometimes by the word that you'd expect a camp to be described as, Castra,

a good plural word "Camp," but also by another word entirely.

He often describes the Trojan camp as an urbs, as a city, and I just wanted to

dwell on that a little bit. It's a very subtle thing but it's a very,

very evocative as well. Because on the one hand,

if you call the place where the Trojans have settled themselves in Italy on their

arrival an urbs, then it makes that camp into a kind of proto-Rome,

the first foundation of Aeneas in Italy, the ancestor of the city that these people

are sitting in as they read this poem. Now, of course, that camp is

under threat constantly. So imagine how calling it an urbs,

making it sound like an early version of Rome contributes to the readers' feelings

about that threat. You know, when Turnus gets inside and threatens to

overcome the place in Book 9, for example, you're emotionally bound to

this city, and I admit to this where I've done it myself, you're emotionally bound

to this foundation, to this camp because Virgil has made us think of it as a city.

But think of it another way as well because Homer is still hovering in

the background here. Homer in Homer's setup,

the city is the vulnerable thing. The city is the thing that's going

to be destroyed. It's the camp that's going to be successful.

So whenever Virgil refers to the camps as an urbs, he makes it Rome but he also

makes it vulnerable at the same time. He makes it sound like the thing that's

going to be destroyed. And it's just by that deployment of a

simple word "urbs" that he manages to provoke all those associations.

So we've seen Aeneas sort of trying to establish his city sort of anyway he

possibly can in the Mediterranean. We've seen how it is when he gets to Italy

where sort of interesting things happen in association with the real city of Rome.

The real city of Rome is really kind of tangible in the second half of the poem.

That's one of the things that Virgil is playing with, the extent to which these

foundations of Aeneas are the city of Rome or are like the city of Rome.

Or the extent to which, you know, the city of Rome that Aeneas

visits in Book 8 is the city of Rome because it's on the side of the

city of Rome, or is completely unlike it. There's one further kind of theme that I

want to follow here though in relation to cities, and it's the idea which seems

very, very strong in The Aeneid, that you don't get to found your new city

unless you destroy another city, a city that stands in rivalry to it

or precedes it. So I've been talking about The Aeneid as a poem that's very

interested in cities but a poem has also very interest in founding cities.

Well, The Aeneid is also a poem that's very interesting in destroying

cities as well. One whole book, Book 2, is given over to describing the

agonising destruction of the city of Troy. But the end of Book 4 as well,

the end of the Dido book, also reminds us if we need reminding,

that the city that she founded has a time limit on it. It will be destroyed as well

and her death is kind of an anticipation, made in anticipation by Virgil,

of the destruction of her city much, much later in history.

I've also mentioned the city of the Latins which is a kind of

peculiarly anonymous city. We don't know where it is.

It doesn't have a name. And the implication is that that is going to

cease to exist as well. So in the process of founding Rome,

lots of other cities will be destroyed. Now, just to sort of bring that home,

I'm going to read a little bit from Book 12 of The Aeneid, at the very,

very end of the poem. It's actually a really striking moment

where Aeneas get his men together for a kind of a final attack,

a final push in this war against the Latins. And it turns out that it's a final

push against the city. So, Virgil says, "calling the leaders of

the Trojans together, Mnestheus, Sergestus and brave

Serestus, he took up position on some rising ground and the whole of the Trojan

legion joined them there in close formation without laying down their

shields or spears. Aeneas addressed them standing in the middle of the high mound

of earth. There must be no delay in carrying out my commands. Jupiter is on

our side. No man must go to work half- heartedly, because my plan is new to him.

The city is the cause of this war. It is the very kingdom of Latinus,

and if they do no this day agree to submit to the yoke, to accept defeat and obey,

I shall root it out and level its smoking roots to the ground.

Am I to wait until Turnus thinks fit to stand up to me in battle and consents to

meet the man who has already defeated him? O my fellow citizens,

this city is the head and heart of this wicked war. Bring your torches now and we

shall claim our treaty with fire" So I've read there until about line 575

of the last book of The Aeneid, the last book of The Aeneid.

What we were told at the beginning of The Aeneid was that it would be about a

character who leaves Troy and founds Rome. That's the kind of implications at the

beginning of the poem. Now, there are ways in which his killing of

Turnus at the very end of Book 12 is kind of like a foundation but it's very,

very metaphorical if so. Much more prominent in Book 12,

it seems to me, is this emphasis on destroying the city of the Latins.

And I'd just to leave you contemplating how peculiar it is for the hero of this

epic Aeneas to offer us the kind of game plan for the campaign which will the war

of the second half of The Aeneid, how strange it is for him to say that it's

all about the destruction of a city, the levelling of a city to the ground.

Isn't that the opposite of what Aeneas was supposed to be about?