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THE A EN El D
carminum ins tar; and much later one of the characters in Macrobius' Saturnalia
(5.2.13) speaks of the Aeneid as a 'mirrored reflection of Homer'.
All of this is true: the Aeneid is indeed a full-scale aemulatio of Homer, and
in it Virgil uses again for his own purposes many aspects of the structure of the
Homeric poems, their conventions (such as the similes, or the double action in
Olympus and on earth), their episodes (like the catalogue, the visit to the
underworld, the funeral games, the single combat), their characters (Aeneas and
Turnus have strong relationship with Hector and Achilles, Pallas is like
Patroclus, Palinurus like Elpenor), their very phraseology. 1 It has often been
remarked that the first half of the Aeneid is Virgil's Odyssey, describing the
wanderings of the hero, and the second half his Iliad, describing the battles; it is
astonishing to find from a close investigation how very similar in structure and
episode the first book of the Aeneid is to Odyssey 5—8; or how densely the last
scenes of Aeneid 12 echo the events of Iliad 22.
But it is not only these similarities of epic structure and phraseology which
constantly challenge comparison with Homer; the story itself is contemporary
with, or a continuation of, the stories of Homer. Aeneas is an important
character in the Iliad, the most important Trojan warrior after Hector, a man
renowned for his religious observances as well as for his prowess in war. "When
he leaves Troy his voyage is contemporary (within a few months) with that of
Odysseus, and several times in the Aeneid (for example with Achaemenides in
Book 3, the Sirens in Book 5, Circe in Book 7) Aeneas is following in the footsteps
of Odysseus very shortly afterwards. Virgil uses this Homeric time-scale
to point the differences between Homer's heroes and his: Odysseus is one of the
last heroes of the heroic world, attempting to re-establish his way of life in
Ithaca as he knew it before the Trojan war; but Aeneas is the first hero of a new
world, a proto-Roman world.
Similarly Aeneas' attitude towards battle can be contrasted with the Homeric
attitude. In many ways his opponent Turnus has been built up as a new Achilles,
and Aeneas — the new Hector — must confront his opponent as Hector had to
confront Achilles. Yet he must confront him differently: he must show the
valour and vigour of a Homeric warrior, but also the mercy and justice of a
Roman ruler of empire. He does not wholly succeed, as all readers of the
Aeneid know well; but it is by means of the Homeric comparison that Virgil
tries to define the position and behaviour of the new hero, destined for an age no
longer 'heroic'. More will be said later on this subject.
Virgil was deeply versed in post-Homeric classical Greek literature, and was
especially influenced by Greek tragedy (see Macrobius, Sat. 5.i8f.). There are
individual echoes of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and in
particular Aeneid 2 shows marked signs of the influence of Euripides' Troades
1
For a very full discussion of Virgil's use of Homer see Knauer (1964).
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