Vergil’s Aeneid

Fate is an important aspect of Virgil's programmatic characterization of Aeneas, who is described as "fato profugus" before he is introduced by name (Aen. 1. 2). This is the first of Virgil's many references to fate in connection with individual characters. On epitaphs and in the Aeneid the fates are limiting forces, cutting short human desire and potential.

Virgil is a poet, not a lexicographer. This means he is more interested in the manipulation of language than in its precise meaning. This is certainly true of the poet’s use of the technical language of divination. As Nicholas Horsfall has argued, technical religious terminology constitutes a remarkably rich source of language in the Aeneid, but the poet’s use is more impressionistic than fastidious (Horsfall 1991: 149–150). This impressionism allows the poet to exploit the connotations of these terms for literary effect.

The boxing match between Dares and Entellus in Aeneid V invites readers to recall similar duels in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Apollonius’ Argonautica, and Theocritus’ Idyll XXII (McGowan, Poliakoff, Sens, Stégen). On the other glove, David Traill demonstrates convincingly how Vergil’s simile of Dares’ attack at 5.439-42 echoes Polybius’ description of Hamilcar’s siege of Eryx (56.1-57.2). Traill is understandably reluctant to posit Polybian influence on Vergil, for it is hard to imagine the poet slogging through Polybius.

Just as Virgil’s orientalizing Carthage displays more than one Persian feature, both Atossa queen of the Persians and Medea as ancestor of the Persians stand as significant models for Dido. This paper investigates Carthage’s and Dido’s Persian features, arguing that they point to a degree of continuity between the ideology of the Punic Wars and the Greek ‘invention’ of the barbarian Other.

Critics have long recognized that causae are a problem in the Aeneid. Motivations for even the most fundamental plot points are often obscured to the point of near incoherence, so as to complicate or thwart retrospective interpretation. Why does Juno harass Aeneas – what, in other words, is the motivating impetus for the whole poem? The answers that the poem gives, as commentators since Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus have pointed out, are notoriously dissatisfying.