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Virgil's Hostile Sources

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Recommended: Augustus commissioned the aeneid

Discuss some of the issues entrained when relying on hostile evidence for the reconstruction of historical events Include in your essay specific analysis of problematic sources. Relying on hostile evidence to recreate Marcus Antonius’ life from his youth until the Battle of Actium entrains several issues.. These sources are all hostile towards Antony therefore one must treat them with caution, not least because of the inherent bias present in their writing which is a key issue for reconstructing Antony’s life. When looking to hostile sources one must take into account the context, the type of source and how the author has shaped material for their own personal or political gain. Due to the limited word count, this essay will only look at …show more content…

Virgil was born in the year 44 BC, the year of Julius Caesar’s assassination. The 19 year old grand-nephew/adopted son Augustus was Caesar's heir and eventually he defeated Cleo and Antony at Actium in 31 bc. The Aeneid is in part a search for the moral regeneration for Rome, one can see that Virgil feels that a key player in this endeavour is Augustus. After a century of civil war, this victory promises a return of order, prosperity and peace to Rome. Virgil acknowledges the promise of a ‘Golden Age’, which at the time was not foolish to believe. In this Euphoria Virgil took to writing patriotic poems such as the Aeneid. Through this Latin epic Mark Antony is associated with violence of civil war through Octavian being depicted as a ‘bringer of peace’. Virgil died in 19 BC and had intended for his incomplete epic to be burned. However this action was countermanded by Augustus thus it is clear Virgil wrote in favour of his patron, ruler of Rome and is hostile towards Antony due to …show more content…

While the Aeneid does not flatter Augustus explicitly, it does praise him in two ways; firstly, it tells the story of Augustus’ great ancestry, the first founder of Rome in such a way that resembles Augustus himself, its third founder. THis is clear in Book six in which Virgil sends his hero to the Underworld. Virgil creates a kind of reverse funeral which peaks in a eulogy of the Julian family and an obituary of Augustus’ son-in law, nephew and heir-designate, young Marcellus. Not only this but nine-tenths of the heroes represented in the parade are members of Augustus’ Julian family. (xxii) While the epic is set in a heroic past, the politics are relevant to Virgil’s own era, not unlike platonic myths, Virgil creates an analogy between falsehoods and truth. Secondly, Virgil alludes to Augustus in prophecies and visions, take for example the Great Shield of Aeneas at the finale of book 8. This shield depicts the history of Roman wars, for the purposes of this essay, most notably the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, it depicts Augustus as a saviour of Rome and suggests that like Hercules, he will become a god. His family ties are again recognised through the Julian star above his head. In this poem, 54 lines are dedicated to Augustus’ success,

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These mythical individuals show characteristics that are both valued and those that could be seen as inferior. In Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline, Catiline, the antagonist of his own story, is described as having some of these characteristics and how he displays them changes others perspective on him. With each of these characteristics that a Roman would have seen as positive were painted in a negative light because Sallust tells the audience instances where Catiline used these gifts in harmful ways. In contrast Aeneas, in Virgil’s Aeneid, is described and assigned what are thought of as the same Roman attributes, but these are held a positive approach compared to Sallust’s description of Catiline. The first example of this can be seen in the fifth section Sallust tells the audience of Catiline’s noble upbringing and is described as intelligent, ambitious, and as a brilliant solider.

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And he displayed not a few sparks of kindness and natural intelligence.” Caesar and the people greatly trusted Octavius and found him to be an intellectual young man with whom to converse. In

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The first stage in the formation of exempla according to Roller is the performance of an action in the presence of others, yet Augustus’ good deeds in the Res Gestae blatantly fall outside of this criterion. Rather than allow the public to directly view his actions, Augustus decided for himself which sections of his history he would reveal to Romans. Augustus’ selective whitewashing of the accomplishments that he chose to display in the Res Gestae represents the first step in his exploitation of exemplarity to exercise his concealed authority. In order to translate these deeds into exempla, Roller sets forth that the public must judge an action either good or bad in terms of a shared set of values (Roller, 216). Again, Augustus’ writing of the Res Gestae breaks from the application of this framework.

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When the poet Virgil wrote the national epic The Aeneid between 29 and 19 BC, all written works and conduits for creative expression were monitored by Roman ruler Augustus Caesar – a real-life contention between passion and control. Throughout the excerpt on pages 139 and 140 of Fagle’s translation (which covers themes such as fate, the gods, and divine intervention, and piety), Virgil explores the underlying theme of conflict between desire and duty, emotion, and reason. Exploring irony, the comparison of Dido and Aeneas’ traits, and pietas being a decision, Virgil shows Aeneas to be a flawed, enigmatic epic Roman hero who personifies the human conflict – passion versus control – of the Aeneid and the Roman empire itself. To begin with, it’s

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Critical historians such as Tacitus and Dio – and Suetonius, if he may be included in that category – provide evidence to today’s historians that the picture may not have been so rosy. In his record of Augustus’ funeral, Tacitus writes of the debate concerning the merits of empire and of a single ruler; those opposed said that Augustus had stolen the consulship from the Senate, killed off citizens and redistributed their lands (Ann. 1.10). Ultimately it is these Roman writers, coming a century after Augustus, who are responsible for setting in motion our task of retrieving Augustus’ true nature. The purpose of this paper is not to re-tell the story of Augustus and the power of his images (to use Zanker’s now classic phrase), although some review and, possibly, new angles come in the arguments below. Instead, its ultimate objective is to visit a later period in Rome’s history – the early second century CE – and to examine how the Romans of that time viewed Augustus’ policy and public image.

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In the Bible and Virgil’s The Aeneid, the pursuit of honor and glory is complex, and it does not come without serious consequences and hardships. However, while Jesus and Aeneas both strive to achieve a certain goal due to divine intervention and both overcome certain adversities, their underlying motives and their ultimate outcomes are starkly different. Although it would appear that neither Jesus nor Aeneas would be motivated by personal fame or glory—as they were sent on godly missions, this is not the case in The Aeneid. Jesus acts completely selflessly as he teaches others about the Kingdom of God and how to live their lives, whereas Aeneas is working to win greatness for his ancestors as he was sent by the gods to settle and create an

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Virgil’s passionate and poetic fabrication of Aeneas and Dido’s somewhat brief and ill-fated romantic entanglement appears to coincide well with the hostility and abhorrence that existed between Rome and Carthage of the third and second centuries BC, in the Punic Wars. Furthermore, Virgil seems to have had an alternate purpose for telling this painful love story as he humanizes Aeneas by giving him some serious characterflaws. In doing so he shows Aeneas as a representation of Roman qualities. Virgil especially achieves this in the narrative of the fall of Troy; therefore portraying the same fears and trepidations as his fellow countrymen. And yet, Virgil has Aeneas appearing impassive and even merciless with his capacity to literally turn

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