Imperial Virgil

The purpose of this paper is to use Hermann Broch’s great twentieth-century novel, The Death of Virgil (Steiner, 149; Lützeler, 1) in interpreting the Aeneid. Classicists are aware of the novel more through compendia of tradition or reception than for understanding Virgil’s work. Broch worked during upheavals on an imperial scale, as did Virgil. Broch’s Virgil questions his life’s work on both artistic and historical grounds. The novel’s difficult style creates perpetual suspension and contradiction, as does the epic.

The reasons why Calpurnius Siculus sets out to rival Virgil include his effort to gain imperial patronage. This rivalry has recently been examined in light of its consequences for the pastoral genre (Paschalis 2016; Karakasis 2017). This paper argues that Calpurnius sees Virgil not primarily as a generic predecessor but as the biographical Virgil who materially benefited as a poet of empire.

This paper aims to explore anew Stat. Silv. 4.2, a meaningful example of a well-debated topic: the relationship between the encomiastic poetry of Statius’ Silvae and Virgilian epic poem.

In this paper, I argue that Venus’s concern in the Aeneid for the survival of Ascanius’s line and the Trojan people arises not simply from her status as a concerned mother (Wlosok 1967, Austin 1971, Highet 1972), but principally from her drive for the honor that will accrue to her as mother of the imperial Roman descendants of the Trojans. Moreover, while scholars usually concentrate on the power struggle between Jupiter and Juno (e.g.

Virgil intends Aeneas to become the “Roman Hercules,” for he depicts a hero hounded by Juno’s wrath and repeatedly uses the word labor for each fresh trial the demi-god faces, the first instance being in line 10 (Galinsky 1972, p. 132). Galinsky argues that because Aeneas was the peculiar property of noble Roman families like the Julians, Augustus became a new Hercules by association, a clear nod by Virgil toward Augustus’ eventual deification (p. 138). The parallel drawn among Aeneas, Hercules, and Augustus is not, however, straightforward praise for Augustus.