Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro

Takes up the tale of Aeneas near the point where Homer's Illiad had left him. Urged by the gods to fulfill hsi destiny, Aeneas leads the dispossessed survivors of Troy through countless trials and adventures, and visits they underworld before his final defeat of the indigenous Italian tribes, led by Turnus, enables him to establish a new kingdom in central Italy.

The Aeneid

Tija

The Aeneid presents a heroic view of the life of man in all its splendour and anguish, but it is also full of just observation of the details of individual behaviour. It is not yet out of date.

Virgil knows better than to propose solutions to problems that can never be solved. 

It is almost as though Virgil had not the heart to let the villain die a villain. 

He showed them the face of hope and kept his misery deep in his heart.

I have given them an empire that will know no end. 

He was like a snake which has fed on poisonous herbs and hidden all winter in the cold earth, but now it emerges into the light, casts its slough and is renewed. 

The Aeneid quotes

Join the club