A Plea for Aeneas

Extract

In this paper I want to challenge a view of the Aeneid which I believe to be widespread, and indeed to have had the support of distinguished scholars. I could summarize it like this: The Aeneid has, of course, many great passages; indeed, over whole books, it reaches the heights of epic poetry—Bk. ii, The Fall of Troy; Bk. iv, Aeneas and Dido; Bk. vi, The Underworld; Bk. viii, Aeneas at the Site of Rome; Bk. xii, Aeneas and Turnus. But, on the whole, it is inferior in interest to the Iliad or the Odyssey; and the chief cause of this is the unsatisfactory nature of its hero. Aeneas, in short, ‘will not do’. Now it is no part of my purpose to try to set Virgil against Homer: that is a rash undertaking, and one against which we have a salutary warning. ‘It is easier’, we are told, ‘to take a cub from its she-bear than to take a single line from Homer.’ If that is so, what of the dangers of trying to take two whole poems? Instead, I wish to join issue on the character of Aeneas, while agreeing so far with his critics, that he is indeed vital to the whole poem—if you cannot understand and sympathize with Aeneas, you cannot understand the Aeneid. Virgil himself makes that clear in the first twenty lines, in which he strikes all the notes which are to be sustained throughout the poem.