#20468 - Aeneid Book 12 Introduction Context - Book 12 of Virgil's Aeneid

The Aeneid

Introduction

• Troy was in the north-west tip of Asia Minor

• 753BC city of Rome was founded

• Still resonates bc it’s a great poem

• ‘Story of a human being who knew defeat and dispossession, love and the loss of love, whose life was ruled by his sense of duty to his gods, his people and his family’

• Humans behaving as humans still do e.g. Andromache’s grief when she meets someone the same age as her son would have been (3.305)

• Not yet out of date

• 70BC Virgil was born

• 44BC Julius Caesar was assassinated

• 42BC Brutus and Cassius (assassinators) were defeated, Virgil had his estates confiscated but won patronage of Maecenas

• 37BC Virgil published Eclogues

• 29BC Virgil finished the Georgics after Battle of Actium

• 19BC he died before finishing the Aeneid

• Augustus had promised peace, order, prosperity and moral regeneration, the promise of a Golden Age

• Aeneid is praise, not flattery, by telling the story of Augustus’ ancestor and by direct allusions to the emperor in prophecies

• A search for vision of peace for Rome

Book 12 Summary

• Aeneas and Latinus make a treaty that whoever wins the duel between A and Turnus will marry Lavinia, and if A is defeated the Trojans will withdraw peacefully

• Juno causes Turnus’ divine sister Juturna to violate the treaty

• Aeneas is wounded by an arrow shot by an unknown, but healed by Venus

• Turnus is rescued by Juturna

• When Aeneas attacks the city of Latinus, Turnus returns to the field

• Jupiter and Juno are reconciled

• Aeneas wounds and kills Turnus as he begs for mercy

• ‘Let the Trojan and Rutulian armies be at peace. His blood, or mine, shall decide this war’ (78-9) – Turnus

• Contrast between wildness of Turnus and maturity of Aeneas as he reassures his allies and comforts his son

• Contrast also drawn at ratification of the treaty – Aeneas follows the golden rule by addressing Jupiter immediately (only after the Sun, as a compliment to Latinus, the god’s grandson) – Latinus instead addresses Jupiter last – piety

• Again when Aeneas in battle following violation of treaty tries to control his allies, but Turnus immediately uses Aeneas being wounded to his advantage – Aeneas’ sense of justice

• Some readers find Aeneas cold and unsympathetic – doesn’t take his helmet off to kiss his son after Venus heals his wound

• Would have easily caught Turnus if Juturna hadn’t taken his chariot to kill stragglers

• Virgil did not romanticise war – showed Turnus and Aeneas driven by hatred and revenge

• Single combat to end the war has failed, Aeneas leads his men to attack Latinus’ undefended city – Virgil credits this idea to Aeneas’ mother to protect his character

• This works and Turnus confronts Aeneas, begging for mercy

• Aeneas wavers until he sees Turnus’ belt which was plundered from the dead body of Pallas’, a boy given into his charge, and stabs him

• Revealed at the end that Juno shot Aeneas with the arrow

• She states she will...