[ Home ] [ Up ]

Everything you need to know about the Aeneid can be found here.  This is essentially the same as the sheet that you were given in class.  This is a review sheet and a guide for our reading.

The Aeneid

The Aeneid is an epic poem written by the Latin poet Vergil (70-19 BC). An epic poem explains the history of a group of people or a culture through a hero. The main hero in the Aeneid is Aeneas, a Trojan who escaped from Troy during its destruction by the Greeks. An epic usually starts in media res or in the middle of things. It uses a flashback or telling of a story to explain how the character got to where he is. It then is told as the action happens.

The main theme of the Aeneid is Juno’s never ending hatred of Aeneas. The reason for this is that Aeneas is destined to get to Italy, and his descendants will found Rome. The Romans will one day destroy Carthage which is Juno’s favorite city. She thinks that if she can stop Aeneas from getting to Italy, Carthage will never be destroyed. However, your fate is unstoppable. Aeneas absolutely must get to Italy. He doesn’t have a choice and neither does Juno.

Some other things that are strange about epic poems are the use of transferred epithets. This means that certain descriptions are used repeatedly to describe things. Aeneas is dutiful or pious Aeneas. His best friend is always faithful Achates. Other descriptions will be discussed as we read.

Latin poetry did not use rhymes. It used meter. The Aeneid was written using dactylic hexameter. This means that each line of the Aeneid has six feet made up of either dactyls (-uu) or spondees (--). There are certain rules that govern long or short marks, and the process of determining the rhythm of a line is called scansion. We have practiced doing this with the first 10 or so lines of the Aeneid. This is the web address of a page that will help you if you have trouble with this – http://suberic.net/~marc/scansion.html

You have been given a sheet with some questions to think about and answer regarding the Aeneid. They are thought questions, and similar questions will be used on an upcoming test. Make sure that you can answer these questions. They are important to make sure that you understand what we are reading. The questions come from a web site called  http://www.hsc.edu/class/vegil.html .

Here is an outline for Book I that I found from a website (http://www.unbsj.ca/arts/classics/courses/clas1302/aenout.html )

The names in the Aeneid are used interchangeably from time to time. I found a chart with the names of the major characters, the other names for the people in the books, and other useful information at http://www.southwestern.edu/academic/classical.languages/myth/myth1127.html  This is very useful. The most useful part is the names of the groups that appear in the Aeneid.

The main characters are as follows (in alphabetic order)

There is a lot of information out there about the Aeneid.  Go to your favorite search engine and see what you can find.  Here are some places that I found helpful: