This essay attempts to develop some ideas about national identity as envisioned in the "Aeneid", with two foci: the lack of clarity concerning Aeneas' own nationality, and the inaccuracies in the descriptions of the foreigners portrayed on Aeneas' Vulcanian shield. I aim to undermine the notion that Vergil's own generation and Augustus' regime should be assumed to be the "climax," "culmination," or "fulfillment" of the historical process as the "Aeneid" imagines it, and to present reasons for thinking that Vergil's audience (...) was being invited, instead, to imagine a very long-range future-to expand for themselves the scope of the poem and meet its challenge. I discuss the possibility that Vergil himself was not born either Roman or technically Italian and mention also the probable high proportion of his original audience born without the Roman franchise and admitted to it in the 80s or in 49. I argue that the extended historical range-finder through which the poem requires its readers to view themselves and their inheritors is designed to impose upon them the task of seeking a version of mos that can be made universal, and the task also of regarding present opponents as destined future fellow-Romans. (shrink)

The account of the death of Palinurus at the end of Aen. 5 raises to a higher level of importance a figure who has previously seemed very much a minor character in the Aeneid. This is achieved partly by the narrative brilliance of Virgil's account of his destruction by Somnus, and partly also by the atmosphere of solemn mystery which surrounds his fate. This solemn note is first struck in the passage which directly prepares the way for Palinurus' death. At (...) Aen. 5.779 Venus, anxious that Juno's wrath may still prevent the safe arrival of Aeneas in Italy, appeals for help to Neptune. He reassures her. Aeneas will arrive safely. There is, however, one condition: unus erit tantum amissum quem gurgite quaeres; unum pro multis dabitur caput. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of Aeneas' visit to the "parva Troia" in Epirus , centered on the theme of "substitutes" and "doubles," and beginning with Andromache, the heroine of this encounter. With Helenus as a substitute for her deceased husband, Hector, Andromache is involved in a sort of levirate marriage. Moreover, she reacts to Aeneas and his companions as if they too were "substitutes," living persons who immediately evoke images of the dead, "doubles" for her lost loved ones . (...) This makes Andromache perfectly at home in "parva Troia", which is itself a "double," a "substitute" for the city destroyed by the Greeks. Except that, like all "doubles," "parva Troia" is an insubstantial illusion, the effigy of something that no longer exists. This city and its landscape can only be "seen," not actually "inhabited." These Trojan exiles are thus victims of a syndrome very similar to "nostalgia" . Helenus and his companions are "too faithful" to their vanished city; their destiny, like that of the dead, has been hopelessly fulfilled. Aeneas, however, is not allowed to become a prisoner of the past. Against his will, he must be "unfaithful" to his former city: he will not rebuild Troy. The companions of Helenus and Andromache suffer from an "excess of identity" . Aeneas, on the other hand, submits to the almost total loss of his own identity: except for the Penates, a highly significant, sacred part of the lost patria, which will contribute to the formation of his identity in a way similar to Helenus and Andromache's own nostalgic cult of the image of Troy. (shrink)