Juno's Aeneid: A Battle for Heroic Identity

Description

A major new interpretation of Vergil's epic poem as a struggle between two incompatible versions of the Homeric hero This compelling book offers an entirely new way of understanding the Aeneid. Many scholars regard Vergil's poem as an attempt to combine Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey into a single epic. Joseph Farrell challenges this view, revealing how the Aeneid stages an epic contest to determine which kind of story it will tell―and what kind of hero Aeneas will be. Farrell shows how this contest is provoked by the transgressive goddess Juno, who challenges Vergil for the soul of his hero and poem. Her goal is to transform the poem into an Iliad of continuous Trojan persecution instead of an Odyssey of successful homecoming. Farrell discusses how ancient critics considered the flexible Odysseus the model of a good leader but censured the hero of the Iliad, the intransigent Achilles, as a bad one. He describes how the battle over which kind of leader Aeneas will prove to be continues throughout the poem, and explores how this struggle reflects in very different ways on the ethical legitimacy of Rome’s emperor, Caesar Augustus. By reframing the Aeneid in this way, Farrell demonstrates how the purpose of the poem is to confront the reader with an urgent decision between incompatible possibilities and provoke uncertainty about whether the poem is a celebration of Augustus or a melancholy reflection on the discontents of a troubled age. Cover Contents Acknowledgments A Note to the Reader Introduction Why Juno? Form, Content, Context Homer’s Aeneid The Systematic Intertext The Dynamic Intertext The Dialogic Intertext The Ethical Aeneid Ancient Perspectives Modern Perspectives Coming Attractions 1. Arms and a Man Where to Begin? Enter Juno In Medias Res Displaced Persons Aeolus Neptune Aeneas What Is at Stake? Horace on Iliadic and Odyssean Ethics Horace on Ethical Citizenship Reflections on Juno’s Aeneid in the Light of Horace’s Homer Intertextual Chronology Enigmas of Arrival Intertextual Africa Phorcys’ Harbor on the Island of Ithaca Deer Hunting on the Island of Aeaea Disguise and Recognition on the Island of Ithaca Intertextual Dido Unintended Consequences Going Forward 2. Third Ways None of the Above? Failure Is Always an Option: The Aeneid and the Epic Cycle The Narrator’s Ambition Juno and Memory The Narrator’s Anxiety Aeneas’ “Misfortunes” Cyclic Ethics A Second Argo: The Aeneid and Apollonius Odyssey and Argosy The Aeneid as Argosy Juno’s Argonautic Diversion Iliad and Argonautica So Many Labors: The Aeneid as Heracleid Grappling with Heracles Difference and Essence A Hesiodic Heracles A Heraclean Aeneid Weddings, Funerals, and Madness: Dramatic Plots in the Aeneid Setting the Scene The Tragedies of Dido and Aeneas Heraclean Tragedy in the Aeneid Historical Intertexts in Roman Epics History and Historiography Homer and Historiography Myth and History in Livius’ Odyssey Myth and History in Naevius’ The Punic War Some Conclusions 3. Reading Aeneas A New Kind of Hero? Aeneas, a Heroic Reader Books 1–4, Good Kings and Bad “The Sack of Troy” “Wanderings” Aeneas and Dido Books 5–8, Aeneas’ Heroic Education Sicily Cumae Latium Pallanteum Books 9–12, Becoming Achilles A Leadership Vacuum More Contested Identities The Reader’s Sympathies Resolutions and Rewards How to Read the Aeneid Appendix: mene in- and mênin Works Cited Index of Passages Cited General Index