Evening course: Introduction to Virgil’s Aeneid

The Aeneid is a monumental work written in the late first century BC about the Trojan hero Aeneas. After his city is razed in the Trojan War, Aeneas leads a pack of refugees west and founds the Roman race; his descendant Romulus founds Rome. We will read Virgil’s masterpiece in translation, and you will gain a good knowledge of both one of the most influential classical works and a pivotal period of human history – the Augustan Period in which Virgil wrote. The Aeneid straddles the line between fan-fiction and literary one-upmanship: Aeneas was a minor character in Homer’s Iliad whom Virgil makes the central character of the Aeneid and, similar to the Odyssey, goes on a journey to find a home. We will also discuss Roman cultural attitudes, the Aeneid’s place as a piece of propaganda, and the mythology involved in the story.