• this is an epic purposefully infused with historical knowledge: at any given present moment in the work, the past, present, and future (well, at least up to the time of Augustus) are always present in any readers' minds, from the first readers to us.
• The future is brought to Aeneas' mind constantly by the many prophecies, curses, and memories presented, as well as by the situations of the "present" time in the narrative.
• Quite different from Homer, where there is no "future" that is known, other than that referred to by prophecies or by the poet who says "but that prayer went unanswered" or the like.
• the future is constantly invoked: three main prophecies of Rome-to-be: all three involve a parent and child and deception
  
• 1.254-96: Jupiter talking to Venus: Juno is deceived by Mercury
  
• 6.756-892: Anchises talking to Aeneas: but he sends Aeneas back through the "gate of dreams"
  
• the prophecy ends with fight of Julius Caesar and Pompey
  
• 8.626-728: Vulcan makes a shield for Aeneas: but Aeneas doesn't understand the scenes on it at all
  
• ends with Augustus Caesar's victory at Actium
  
• ECPHRASIS: the description of a physical object (usually its decoration): remember Achilles' new shield.
• there are also many smaller prophecies of Rome-to-be, and yet ...
  
• The whole epic is caught in a way out of time and place: it is NOT Troy and NOT Rome, and it is between the distant legendary past and the present glory of Augustus' Rome.
  
• this is the building of the "imaginarium" and unity of a nation/imperial identity: Virgil forges many pre-existing stories, figures, and events into one continuous narrative that all builds toward the great Roman Empire, the good ruler of the known world, at least on a rosy reading of the epic.
• the dark underbelly of so much power and how it is gained and who has lost is also present

• does Aeneas develop over the course of the epic? this has been called a spiritual quest as much as a physical quest: what do you think?
  

• A few literary observations about Aeneid and Homer:
• similes are fewer, but arguably richer (more varied, a bit longer, less formulaic), than in Homeric epics.
• probably a result of being a written, not an oral epic
  
• descriptions are generally more developed than in Homeric epics:
  
• there were no fixed formulae, just Virgil's poetic pen.
  
• "Aristeia" is different, but reminiscent of Iliad
• often there is no arming scene
  
• but it always has a catalog of those killed
• those killed get a brief description that often shows their humanity, who they were outside of battle
  
• it ends with a description of the surrounding battle: random people killing other random people, some indication that the battle was much larger than these individual killings.
  
• rage/anger is a theme: plays on "rage of Achilles": in particular note the rage of Aeneas after the death of Pallas at Turnus' hands.
• Aeneas' "Aristeia" in 10.510-605 is of questionable virtue: he captures 8 warriors to sacrifice them (cf. Achilles' capturing warriors to sacrifice at Patroclus' funeral): he kills a priest; he refuses to grant mercy; denies burial; taunts victims: he is reminiscent of Neoptolemus in book 2, who slaughters Priam's son right in front of Priam, etc.
• But that should/would/could suggest and invoke divine wrath and deserved punishment!
  
• Aeneas' rage is mostly negatively judged by readers: should it be?
  
• Is it depicted as a flaw, a moral failing?
• Can rage/anger be good?
  
• Perhaps more like tragic characters than Homeric.
  
• allusions are often more literary than mythological: Virgil seems to have a particular text in mind, or a piece of history, not just a myth that is 'out there':
  
• all the references to places from the Odyssey, for instance, are surely references to Odyssey specifically, not plucked from the whole tradition of the Trojan War and just happening to overlap with Odyssey.
• Homer had no previous literature to allude to? or did he? Doesn't he allude to other epics when he has people sing? and other genres? But we don't have them and so can't verify any of that. And they were oral/formulaic, whereas Virgil is emphatically literate.
  
• epithets exist, but are more moral than the traits of Homeric epics: pius Aeneas is the star example here. They are not used as part of oral technique, although they are surely compositionally handy to fill out a line.
  
• think of who portrays whom: in book IV, for instance, we see Aeneas mostly thru Dido's eyes. Earlier, we hear about the fall of Troy from Aeneas. In the later books, Aeneas is the leader and we don't hear as much about his interior thoughts.
• darkness and night abound:
  
• words of darkness, gloom, night, etc. abound: almost like those video games that seem to be entirely set in a gloomy place
  
• the most important, extensive instance is the night-time raid of Nisus and Euryalus,
  
• but also the destruction of Troy.
• magic occurs more than in Iliad, also more than Odyssey (but remember Circe and the underworld)
• is there any 'fantasy'? Odysseus' fantastic travels are what I would call 'fantasy'
  
• images/phantoms/ghosts:
  
• deception in abundance: in the language of the poem, words for these things are common.
• gods:
• Venus cares about Rome's future glory: does she care about Aeneas in particular?
• Juno is consumed with rage about the past.
• Jupiter is political power and/or fate: only ever shows emotion of a human sort once (about Sarpedon: remember Iliad where Zeus wants to rescue Sarpedon but does not)
• Fate is just how things happened, not an obviously developed intellectual concept.
• but between Homer and Virgil lies a lot of thinking that developed careful theories about fate and determinism and something like what we might call 'free will' or at least the idea that the future is not (yet) fixed.
  
• the poem is not overtly concerned with right and wrong, philosophy, or history per se: it is a poet's poem, full of allusion and influence.
• invisible to this class is the influence of a great deal of literature, in particular another Greek epic, Apollonius' Argonautica, or the Hellenistic poets in general, or the most recent crop of Roman poets, but they are all very important for fully understanding what Virgil has created. We can't cover everything, but those of you who have read more widely are rightly seeing influence: also, you've all got a few more decades to live and read.
  
• A main theme is HOPE for a new world, and CONFIRMATION of that world (which the audience knows came to be), a new Roman world in which peace reigns: Virgil wrote at a time when the war between "great men" (think Caesar, Pompey, Marius, Sulla, Antony, Augustus) was at an end: it sure seemed as if Augustus had won and it would last (and it did for a few hundred years). But Augustus' developed program for Rome was yet to be when Virgil died.
  
• And yet, many think that Virgil wove in 'darker voices,' voices critical of and sceptical of the Roman new world order. Does that 'subtext' ever dominate? or even really undermine the main theme to the point of hollowing it out? Or is it more a matter of whether a reader has gone thru the Civil War, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or other conflicts: now we might think of Ukraine or Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. and Israel, etc.? from other readers' points of view, wholly different conflicts could be salient (Sudan, Myanmar, Rwanda, or the Hundred Years War, or the Crusades, or the fall of Constantinople, etc.).
  
• Or is it just a matter of depicting all these things like combat and war and politics and international relations and including the negative so it seems 'honest,' 'true,' etc. (which is a literary technique/effect probably more than it is about 'truth' or 'reality' or 'honesty').
  
• What might US Americans have thought of the Aeneid in light of the Civil War and reconstruction and that horrifying film Birth of a Nation? I bet you can do some research to find some of their reactions and reflections. Classics simply was the humanities at universities in the time leading up to the Civil War and even after, Many people wrote about such things.
  
• We have a president who wants to break the mold of limited terms and is breaking so many things to change our nation and our world, and given that so many have done similar things (Alexander, Napoleon, Lenin, Mao, Amilcar Cabral, and so very many others).
  
• How does all that affect your reading?
  
• Stories and history are lenses thru which the present and recent past is interpreted and the future is cast.

• Aeneas' world is one of loss, even as he gains a legacy: as the epic goes on, Aeneas loses Creusa, Dido, Anchises, Gaieta (his nurse), and others.
  
• He can DO very little: he is driven by his fate
• he clearly honors/loves Anchises,
  
• he only ever talks to his son Ascanius in book 12 (435f) and then only to assert that heroism is hollow.

• Is fate problematized in Aeneid or simply used as a narrative-driving cpd?