Published almost immediately after the poet’s death in 19 BCE, Virgil’s Aeneid was rapidly recognized as the supreme expression of the social, moral, and religious principles upon which the Roman state was founded and justified its divinely sanctioned world empire.

For centuries the Aeneid was studied and declamed throughout the Roman empire by every freeborn Roman schoolboy, and even by barbarian provincials hoping for promotion to high military ranks within the Roman army. As a schoolboy in North Africa, even St. Augustine fell tearfully in love with the ill-fated Queen Dido of Carthage before he leapt as a Christian later in life into the embrace of God with similar passion! But the founding of Rome by the Trojan hero Aeneas was not accomplished without immense personal loss, fratricidal bloodshed, and profound moral compromise.

Our reading and discussion of the Aeneid will focus on the underlying ambiguities and contradictions that undermine the epic story of Rome’s foundation in tones decidedly darker and more troubling than superficially triumphant.

This course will combine lecture with class discussions.