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- Title
REPLACING ROMULUS: DISTANCE FROM AND DEPENDENCE ON LIVY IN VERGIL'S AENEAS.
- Authors
Hall, Louis Remy Inglis
- Abstract
The dialogue between Vergil's Aeneid and the first pentad of Livy's history can be partially understood through the conflict between Romulus and Aeneas, both within each individual text and in relation to one another. Vergil's attempt to replace Romulus as the most significant Roman founder with Aeneas (emblematic of the greater attempt to replace the pentad with the Aeneid as Rome's chief foundational text) requires the poet to distance himself from the historian and also to depend on ideas and associations found in Livy's work. Livy presents a disconnected and insignificant Aeneas, and bestows great foundational significance onto the Augustan figure of Romulus. Vergil appears to invert this dynamic through his protagonist Aeneas, in whom many Augustan associations are visible, and through a Romulus who is subordinated using many of the techniques that in Livy's text subordinated Aeneas instead. Vergil's Aeneas also uses Livy's Romulus as a model, particularly at the conclusion of the Aeneid, transferring Romulus's fratricidal deed into his own narrative, coloring our readings of the pentad while signaling Vergil's dependence on the earlier work. This model of distance and dependence helps us understand the understudied intertextual relationship between two key Augustan works.
- Subjects
LIVY, ca. 59 B.C.-17; VIRGIL, 70 B.C.-19 B.C.; ASSOCIATION of ideas; AENEID; HISTORIANS; ABSTRACT expressionism
- Publication
Vergilius, 2023, Vol 69, p37
- ISSN
0506-7294
- Publication type
Article