A major new interpretation of Vergil's epic poem as a struggle between
two incompatible versions of the Homeric hero
This compelling book offers an entirely new way of understanding the
Aeneid. Many scholars regard Vergil's poem as an attempt to combine
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into a single epic. Joseph Farrell
challenges this view, revealing how the Aeneid stages an epic contest
to determine which kind of story it will tell--and what kind of hero
Aeneas will be.
Farrell shows how this contest is provoked by the transgressive goddess
Juno, who challenges Vergil for the soul of his hero and poem. Her goal
is to transform the poem into an Iliad of continuous Trojan persecution
instead of an Odyssey of successful homecoming. Farrell discusses how
ancient critics considered the flexible Odysseus the model of a good
leader but censured the hero of the Iliad, the intransigent Achilles,
as a bad one. He describes how the battle over which kind of leader
Aeneas will prove to be continues throughout the poem, and explores how
this struggle reflects in very different ways on the ethical legitimacy
of Rome's emperor, Caesar Augustus.
By reframing the Aeneid in this way, Farrell demonstrates how the
purpose of the poem is to confront the reader with an urgent decision
between incompatible possibilities and provoke uncertainty about whether
the poem is a celebration of Augustus or a melancholy reflection on the
discontents of a troubled age.