Aeneid some structural observations:

• Structure of Aeneid
  
• Clearly indebted to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
• 1st half parallels Odyssey: quest for a home. 
• While Odysseus seeks to re-establish a previous normalcy, Aeneas seeks to establish a new normalcy.
  
• 2nd half parallels Iliad: a poem of war.
• While Aeneas lost the war in Troy, he will win (spoiler) in Italy.
• Also divides three ways
• 1-4: queen Dido and the story of the fall of Troy: setting is Carthage
  
• 5-8: arrival in Italy, visit to underworld, details of destiny
• 9-12 war and victory
• 2,4,6,8,10,12 are emotionally peaky, while 1,3,5,7,9,11 are emotionally more quiet.
• 1 (storm), 3 (wanderings), 5 (begins and ends at sea) are at sea: 2 (fall of Troy), 4 (deception of Dido), 6 (arrival in Italy: underworld) are on land
  


• 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: although 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.
  
• 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 our minds, and brought to Aeneas' mind constantly by the many prophecies, the many memories, and 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 ..
• 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: 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.
• 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? Think about it as you read.
  

• A few literary observations:
• similes are fewer, but arguably richer (more varied, longer, less formulaic), than in Homeric epics.
  
• 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": 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.
• Aeneas' rage is mostly negatively judged: should it be? Is it depicted as a flaw, a moral failing?
  
• Perhaps more like tragedy characters than Homeric.
  
• allusions are often more literary than mythological: Virgil seems to have a text in mind, or a piece of history, not just a myth: 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 that might exist. 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. Early on, we hear more 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: the most important, extensive instance is the night-time raid of Nisus and Euryalus. Think also of the destruction of Troy.
• images/phantoms/deception abounds: 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 a developed intellectual concept.
• 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 the 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.
  
• 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: Augustus had won. 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 undermine the main theme to the point of hollowing it out? Or is it more a matter of whether a reader has gone thru WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, of Ukraine? or, from other readers' points of view, wholly different conflicts could be salient.