![]() Oral epic was intended primarily to provide diversion and entertainment to its audience, although it also embodied much of the history and folk-wisdom of the culture in which it was created. Most important, the purposes of oral and literary epics are greatly distinct, a difference that has a profound effect on the epics's contents and the ways in which their stories develop. A comparison of the Aeneid and the Iliad, for example, shows that literary epic is more didactic it subordinates its human characters and their affairs to its philosophical and moral themes. All epic poetry has a serious theme narrated on a grand scale and intended to heighten the understanding of human nature and the meaning of life, but in a literary epic, the ideological content is more important than the human story itself. Unlike the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are oral epics, the Aeneid is a literary epic, composed in writing and intended to be read by an audience of literate people who live in a settled, civilized society. Furthermore, through prophecies, Virgil indicates in many ways that the imperial period is destined to be a new golden age for Rome: Only now, during the Augustan Age, can all of the Roman people's noblest aspirations and hopes be fulfilled.īy writing the Aeneid, Virgil hoped to extol the virtues of Augustus in a literary fashion that would last forever. This unity implies that the glories of one form of government are the glories of the other, an argument that weakened the belief that the empire under Augustus was a new and foreign political entity. ![]() His epic poem enumerates the most worthwhile features of both republican and imperial Rome and treats the two together as if they were a single, intertwined whole. In the Aeneid, Virgil evaluates the new conditions under which Romans live. While peace was restored, many of the old liberties that Romans had become accustomed to were abandoned, a situation that caused serious problems and occupied the minds of many responsible citizens, including Virgil. ![]() Unfortunately, this return to order was brought about through the establishment of an imperial form of government. With the restoration of peace and order, and with the government taking an active interest in many different phases of economic and social life, Rome regained its prosperity and happiness. Finally, under Augustus, the state was unified once again. Aeneas embodies the most important Roman personal qualities and attributes, particularly the Roman sense of duty and responsibility that Virgil thought of as having built the Rome he loved.ĭuring the century prior to Augustus's rule, the Roman republic was ravaged by a constant series of civil wars, which caused large human and financial losses. The Aeneid is designed to exalt this new, ordered society and to glorify its virtues and finest features by their personification in Aeneas, an epic hero who is meant to represent the archetypal Roman. He saw a golden age of human life emerging during Augustus's reign, a golden age brought about by the gods. ![]() ![]() Virgil has a spiritualized, idealistic, and aspiring conception of Rome, which he views as majestic and sacred, ordained by destiny to rule the world. Less concerned with the life and adventures of Aeneas than with the part he played in founding the Roman state, the Aeneid is a national epic, a glorification and exaltation of Rome and its people. ![]()
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