Comparing Livy's Early History Of Rome And Aeneid

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While both Livy’s Early History of Rome and Virgil’s Aeneid address traditional
Roman values, particularly those of pietas, military valor, and control of destructive passion, the two works approach these themes with differing degrees of subtlety and complexity. For Livy, the distinction between moral and immoral behavior is straightforward; his account of the attempted rape of Verginia and its aftermath clearly presents examples of virtue and vice. He is interested in a rather simplistic tension between good and evil, order and disorder. Virgil’s entire poem, on the other hand, is concerned with inner conflicts and ethical dilemmas of near unresolvable complexity. In the following discussion, specific episodes from the two works will reveal