A2 Unit CC10 F390 - Virgil and the world of the hero
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A2 Unit CC10 F390 - Virgil and the world of the hero
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1. The Aeneid's attitude to war is inconsistent: Virgil seems to praise and admire unrestrained slaughter, even while appearing (elsewhere) to advocate a quite different judgement.'...
A2 Unit CC10 F390 - Virgil and the world of the hero
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'The Aeneid's attitude to war is inconsistent: Virgil seems to praise and admire
unrestrained slaughter, even while appearing (elsewhere) to advocate a quite
different judgement.' To what extent do you agree? (30 marks)
In the Aeneid, Virgil portrays war as a necessity to bring peace and civilization to society for
the sake of his patron, Augustus, who had just fought a civil war with Mark Anthony in
31 BC. Similar to Homer’s Iliad, there are times when he glorifies war to evoke a sense of
patriotism through the exhibition of aristeia (excellence); but he does not let the audience
forget the tragedies of war, and how it can bring the worst out of some characters, such as
Aeneas.
From the start of Aeneas’ journey, we can tell that Virgil promotes restraint over
unrestrained slaughter. In Book 2, when he retells the Trojan war, Aeneas admits he was
driven to frenzy due to a glimpse of Helen who was the primal cause of his country's ruin
and inspired him with the thought of revenge. Venus intervenes and urges him to not kill
Helen, telling him it will not bring him any good. From the beginning, we can already see
Virgil condemning furor and slaughter for revenge instead of for a better outcome: peace.
This sharply contrasts the Homeric idea of war being a breeding ground for eternal glory,
where heroes such as Achilles go to win kleos out of anger and revenge. The Aeneid offers a
new approach to warfare through Aeneas; he is reluctant to fight a war and does so only out
of a sense of duty to the gods and his people. In Book 4, when Aeneas is in Carthage with
Queen Dido, Mercury reminds him that "The King of the Gods commands for you to shoulder
the task since you owe him Italy's realm, the land of Rome". Moved by this sense of duty,
Aeneas understands that his fighting is "driven by duty" and not by personal gain, thus
reinforcing that war is only necessary for the bigger picture.
The two opposing attitudes to war in the Aeneid’ are personified in the characters of Aeneas
and Turnus. Aeneas symbolises the traditional Roman ideal of virtue and piety which
Augustus reinforced during the time Virgil was writing. By endowing Aeneas with traditional
Roman qualities, a Roman audience would have identified Aeneas as a man of wholesome
character to be admired. In Book 11, Virgil stresses the protagonist’s views on unnecessary
violence when Latin envoys are sent to Aeneas to beg for a truce so they may collect their
dead soldiers to which Aeneas replies “I wish for those that were killed to have left this
battle alive and I wish not to have come here, if the fates had not given me this place and
this home. Nor do I wage war with this race.” Here we can see clearly that Aeneas was
reluctantly forced into this war, not necessarily by the Latins but rather by the fates so that
Rome could rise. Thus, Virgil reinforces the idea that war is necessary but only for the
greater outcome. Virgil further suggests that an intense desire for combat is unhealthy and
not particularly admirable by portraying Turnus, the enemy, as the embodiment of such a
characteristic. After being manipulated by Allecto, Virgil states that the “love of the sword
raged within him and the wicked madness of war”. The audience is provided with a clear
right and wrong with the right being the reluctance for battle which Aeneas displays and the
wrong being the thirst for blood which Turnus displays. Aeneas serves as the paradigm for
the Roman view of war, which is a temporary state bringing about peace and civilization.
, Another point to make about Virgil’s portrayal of war is the way in which people’s characters
change when they are taken away by “furor”. In the Aeneid, furor is found when emotions
or other violent forces are allowed to run uncontrolled. The main antagonists of this poem
are all subject to Juno, the personification of anger and unrestrained slaughter, who infects
Dido, Amata, Allecto and Turnus and ends up causing war in different ways. When Turnus is
affected by Allecto the fury, he becomes “bloody minded” and “wild” like an animal and
seems like the Roman counterpart to Achilles. For example, in Book 9, after gaining entrance
to the Trojan camp, he passionately slaughters his enemies without mercy. Moreover, Virgil
uses an even stronger word, violentia, four times to describe Turnus’ actions and state of
mind and the depravity and corruptness of his character. All the similes used for Turnus in
the Aeneid characterise him as wild and uncivilised, and most portray him as insanely
raging. This is most clearly illustrated in Book 12, where Virgil likens Turnus to Mars, relating
him to the frenzied war god at his very worst: bloody, noisy, barbaric and terrifying,
embodying the violent furor which stands opposed to peace and civilization. Furthermore, he
appears to have no sense of what is morally acceptable when he flaunts the deaths of Nisus
and Euryalus by marching with their heads stuck atop spears. We see Turnus at his worst
when he defames the sanctity of death by stepping on Pallas’ body after killing him and acts
dishonourably by removing the sword belt from the dead man’s body. Virgil sends the
message that war fuels hubris when he writes “This was the spoil in which Turnus now
exalted and he gloried in the taking of it” By portraying Turnus negatively, Virgil emphasises
the fact that recklessness and unrestrained slaughter should not be acceptable. These
actions carried out by Turnus would have been unacceptable to a contemporary Roman
audience, and they would have expected him to be killed or to have some sort of
punishment. Virgil contrasts the deaths of the young warriors Pallas and Lausus at the
hands of Turnus and Aeneas respectively to highlight when it is just to murder. Tellingly,
Turnus proclaims: “I alone attack Pallas, Pallas is owed to me alone; I should want his own
father to be present as a spectator”. This shows that Turnus intends on attacking Pallas
beforehand and only wishes to kill him to cause Evander grief and make him suffer. On the
other hand, Aeneas fights Lausus because the latter confronts him. Unlike Turnus, he does
not strip Lausus of his armour, and takes pity on him as he sees him dying and does not do
it out of bloodlust and a wish to cause suffering.
However, Turnus is not the only character who becomes engulfed in war and unrestrained.
Furor and violentia are often said to be characteristic of Aeneas' opponents, especially
Turnus, but no character in the Aeneid displays as much furor as Aeneas himself when he
avenges Pallas' death in Book 10. He reacts with unparalleled brutality, slaughtering Turnus'
army, ignoring pleas for mercy, gloating over his victims and even suggesting a human
sacrifice to honour Pallas, something notoriously taboo in Roman society. We see the
degeneracy of Aeneas’ piety with the killing of Magus, as he begs for mercy and says, “The
victory of the Trojans does not depend on me, nor will one's life make such a big difference.'
This argument underscores how irrational and gratuitous the killing of Magus is. Thus,
despite being the main hero of the epic, the intense detail with which Virgil addresses the
savagery of Aeneas suggests he intended a Roman audience to criticize his hero for seeking
revenge on those who were not responsible for Pallas' death, but also highlighting how war
brings out the worst in people.
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