Aeneid: summary of the twelve books of Virgil’s poem. Characteristics, structure and synthesis.
Aeneid: summary and structure
The Aeneid Virgil composed the Aeneid between 30 and 19 BC, the year of his death in which he had decided to undertake a journey to Greece to visit the places he had narrated in his work, but which he had been unable to do due to an illness that struck him in Brindisi before his departure.
He had expressed the desire that the poem be burned because he had not been able to revise it, and he did not want anything of his to be published that was not perfect. We can note the lack of revision because the work contains incomplete verses, especially in the third book, which in all are fifty-eight. In the third book of the Georgics Virgil had already announced the composition of the poem that was to exalt the greatness of Augustus and Rome , and, at first he intended to compose a poem of a historical nature.
This was difficult for him due to the lack of examples and because he would have to deal with contemporary history, so he decided to compose a traditional epic poem based on the Homeric poems, inserting historical events in the form of prophecies into a mythological framework. Virgil starts, in his composition, from the myth of Aeneas , whom the Romans considered their progenitor and in particular the Gens Iulia considered themselves direct descendants of Iulus or Ascanius, son of Aeneas .
The structure
The Aeneid is a traditional epic poem in twelve books, and can be divided into two sections that follow the Homeric poems. From book I to book VI it refers to the Odyssey where the theme of adventure is present; from book VII to book XII it refers to the Iliad where the theme of war is present. The introductory part also refers to the Odyssey because it puts the reader in medias res (inside the story). The storytelling technique is also the same as that of the Odyssey (hero who arrives in a foreign land after various adventures and tells his adventures at court.
- Book I : Prologue ; Arrival of Aeneas in Carthage
- Book II: interruption of the story to resume previous events (Flash Back) through a story, once finished the story resumes where it was left off.
- Book III/IV/V : tale of Aeneas ‘ adventures to Queen Dido. Detail of Book IV: we find the negative conception of love which is the same as in the Bucolics and Georgics (suicide of Queen Dido whose love for Aeneas is not reciprocated). Dido’s death is taken as a harbinger of hatred between Rome and Carthage and of the Punic Wars.
- Book VI : the book that most celebrates the greatness of Rome together with Book VIII, the central point of the story; one of the most important books of the work because it contains Aeneas’ journey to the afterlife, in which Aeneas is informed of the gods’ plan, namely that he had to complete the mission of founding Rome (this was communicated to him by his father).
- Book VII : description of Aeneas’ journey to Evander who had founded a kingdom in Latium. In the description of the places there is a connection with the second book of the Georgics when Virgil praises Italy.
- Book VIII : description of Aeneas’ shield where scenes from Roman history and the story of the battle of Actium are depicted (exaltation of Augustus, victor over Antony)
- Books IX and XII: episodes taken as models by Tasso and Ariosto in the composition of their works on the theme of friendship.
Themes of the Aeneid
A common aspect among the characters of the Aeneid is resignation ; they all resign themselves to the fate wanted by the gods, they are not masters of their own actions and sacrifice their efforts for the good of the community.
The only character who is an exception is Dido, who, with her death, goes against the will of the gods (a theme present in the fourth book of the Georgics: whoever disobeys the divinity has a tragic end. At the center of everything is religion). Aeneas with all his characteristics is the symbol of the ideal Roman citizen :
- possesses religious piety;
- he holds the value of family sacred (so much so that on the anniversary of his father’s death he goes to the place where the latter had passed to a new life and organizes great celebrations in his honor);
- he held sacred all the moral values (e.g. the fatherland) that were the basis of Roman tradition.
