Discuss the treatment of prophecy and the future in Virgil

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Katie Pollard

Discuss the treatment of prophecy and the future in Virgil

The complex narrative of the Aeneid does not simply demonstrate an attempt on Virgil’s part to become a Roman Homer. It is a stunning retelling of Roman legend, but it stands in the context of the Roman present and future. The internal plot and characters are driven by fate and the bickering gods, but represent to Virgil a far more important and realistic picture, that of Augustus and the Roman Empire, the Roman way of life and Roman morals.

The eponymous hero of the Aeneid is at once a very human character in his own right and one totally at the mercy of the gods and fate, robbed of the privilege to make his own decisions and a servant of the future. For the audience of Virgil’s epic, Aeneas’ existence enabled their own, and the entire purpose of the poem is proleptic. As Venus says in Book 1, Aeneas is a man ‘cunctus ob Italiam terrarium clauditur orbis’(1, 233): the rest of the world is closed to him for the sake of Italy. Kenneth Quinn describes this hero as an ‘instrument of fate, commanded by prophecy, but uncomprehending’ (152). Aeneas’ mission, as far as Western civilization is concerned, was enormous. It is the stuff of legend and fairytale, but in the context of the poem and contemporaneous Rome, that his task was fulfilled was imperative. But Aeneas himself would never see the final outcome of his successes, and it is his obedience to duty (pieta) and Stoical way of thinking that makes him a very Roman hero. Clifford Herschel Moore articulates the idea that

‘…legendary epic foreshadows Virgil’s own age and the hero Aeneas is the prototype of the actual hero of Actium – this founder of the Roman race, obedient to the call of duty, unbroken by toil and disaster, the victor over violence and lawless force, yet human withal, is the ancestor of the new founder of the reign of peace and law, the emperor Augustus.’ (35)

 

It is very important that prophecy and an abundance of miracles are there to show Aeneas the way towards this communal destiny, and to maintain his motivation as a leader of an exiled people desperate to settle.

Aeneas is, as Quinn says, ‘uncomprehending’, and the omens, physical manifestations of the will of the gods, are designed to alert him to the importance of his fate. In Book 2, he submits at first to the ‘heroic impulse’ (Quinn 1): ‘It came to me/ That meeting death was beautiful in arms’ (2, 317) It takes Hector’s words in a dream, the flames around Ascanius’ head, the shooting star across Mount Ida and finally Creusa’s words after her death to persuade Aeneas that he must take up the responsibility of founding a new Troy. Omens are needed to ensure that prophecy is fulfilled, and so each time that Aeneas and his miserabile vulgus alight on a foreign shore, they are deterred from establishing themselves by a new sign: In Book 3 it is in Thrace that they encounter the particularly horrible bleeding tree, the grave of Polydorus, who met an untimely death and never received a correct burial procedure. Forced to comply with the prophecy they move on, believing that the information they are subsequently given by Apollo points them to Crete. They are filled with hope: Aeneas can

                                                …barely wait

                        To build [their] hoped-for city walls, to be

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                        Called Pergamum, [he] said. [He] urged the people,

                        Who loved the name, to love their new-found hearths

                        And raise a citadel above the town.’

                                                (Fitzgerald Aeneid Book 3, lines 184-88)

This is a perfect illustration of quite how much Aeneas is at the mercy of the prophecy; his own desires, and indeed decisions, are undermined by the ensuing omen of deadly plague which he is forced to heed, moving on once again. It is vital for Rome that these omens are obeyed, or their future would not have happened. A more concrete, albeit sinister, prophecy is given to Aeneas ...

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