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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 4 page essay that discusses why Virgil pictures Aeneas as possessing human flaws. Aeneas, hero of Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid, is, in many ways, the epitome the ancient Roman conceptualization of virtue. He accepts the will of the gods that he should be the founder of Rome. He displays compassion for the suffering of others, heroism in battle, and piety towards religion. In fact, Aeneas is so perfect that he would be totally boring except for the fact that Virgil's characterization tempers this perfection with a basic human flaw, which is Aeneas' tendency to act on emotional impulses that conflict with his destiny. This feature is particularly evident in regards to Aeneas' courtship and love affair with Dido, the Queen of Carthage. No additional sources cited.
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4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khaeflaw.rtf
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gods that he should be the founder of Rome. He displays compassion for the suffering of others, heroism in battle, and piety towards religion. In fact, Aeneas is so perfect
that he would be totally boring except for the fact that Virgils characterization tempers this perfection with a basic human flaw, which is Aeneas tendency to act on emotional impulses
that conflict with his destiny. This feature is particularly evident in regards to Aeneas courtship and love affair with Dido, the Queen of Carthage. When the reader first meets
Dido, she is pictured as a strong, confident leader, who has resolved not to marry again, but to preserve the memory of her dead husband, Sychaeus. To ensure that Dido
welcomes the wayfaring Trojans led by Aeneas, the goddess Venus, Aeneas mother, causes Dido to be struck by Cupids arrow and fall madly in love with Aeneas, who helps this
process along by courting Dido. Virgil records that Aeneas ...had begun to make Sychaeus fade From Didos memory bit by bit, and tried To waken with new love,
a living love, Her long settled mind and dormant heart (lines 982-985 p. 29). As these lines suggest, Dido was properly placing her civic duty ahead of her
personal life concerns until the arrival of the Trojan hero. Aeneas was emotionally smitten with Dido and he gave into these impulses rather than keep the urgency of his mission
in the forefront of his mind and actions. Portraying this conflict accomplishes several literary purposes for Virgil. First of all, it paints Aeneas as being prone to the same
impulses as any man and takes him out of the realm of perfection. Readers can identify with someone who gets carried away by love and momentarily forgets the call of
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