Aeneid

Spoiler alert, if you are a virgin to the Aeneid, all shall be cleared with the fantastic Aeneid Rap

If you thought that the universe of great epics ended with the Greeks you are so very wrong. The Roman world dominated Europe in the days of our lord Jesus Christ. Its 400 years of ruling declined steadily with the sacking of the city. But don´t fool yourself, the Romans were not the Greeks, they simply were a civilization that basically acquired all their power by force. The Aeneid is the Roman Odyssey, a great epic that tells the tale of a wise hero in look for a promised land. Let´s talk about it.

Troy is the starting point of the plot. Virgil, our author, decides to make it the origin because it will eventually link the Roman world with the Greek. The Romans envied the Greeks for their intellect and wanted to have a past similar to them. By choosing Troy as the starting point, these two worlds collide.

After all, it is not an epic entirely composed by humans. Just like the Odyssey, gods played a particular role in aiding or trying to destroy a certain character. This is just another way to use Greek infleunce in a text. Also, by doing this, Virgil secured the divine connection between gods and men. In spite of that, the Romans were never really known for their beliefs.

The Aeneid contains another version of the Trojan horse scene. In this one, we are given the Trojan´s point of view. The scene is very well crafted by Virgil: he makes almost all Trojan nobles like the horse, but the only one to see the treachery is the priest, Laocoon. He says that they should not trust a Greek and above all their gifts, the Greeks were a proud civilization that very seldomly gave prizes, so he thought that very probably it was just a tactic to destroy them. He was right

But what does Aeneas search in the Acheronte? I think that he is looking for his destiny. Aeneas was a man that did not have a determined purpose in life and so Virgil gives him that; the divine command that he will have to create an empire and dominate above all other. This quest for identity through Greek means underlines the theory that the Romans were a faceless culture.

In his adventure to conquere the Latium, Aeneas must defeat the warrior Turnus. This is another reference from the Greek world, because from deduction we can infer that Turnus is just the Roman version of Achilles; a fierce and bold warrior that apparently is invincible but had a weak point and human flaw.

Just like Medea, Camilla is the feminist warrior that appears in the Aeneid. She never gives up in her journey to be independent and she also takes a huge place in the war. Camilla represents that woman that appart from independent, can cause big problems to men.

Virgil was entrusted to do this epic by the authorities of the government when he lived. It is a fantastic creation because the author fantastically justified the expansion and creation of the Roman empire through the means of an epic that could generate a patriot feeling. The Aeneid is a socio-political work whose mission is to convince the Roman that he is divine, that he has an origin, and that it is also okay for him to rule above all.

Concept Map