Virgil's time is in the first century 
BCE. His dates are 70 to 19 in the first 
century before the common era. he lives through very interesting times, 
tumultuous is not even enough of an accurate word to describe it. 
The Roman Empire that we see here is now emerging into historical time. 
It is this massive massive conglomeration of many different nations, many different 
groups that Rome has brought under its sway. 
And the Romans are rightfully amazed at their own powers. 
Now, they're top dog in Mediterranean. Others had been, but no one had quite 
done it as well as the Romans did. and now, they're going to have this 
position as the centerpiece of this giant empire. 
And what does it mean now to, to be here, to be in this position? 
it means a couple of different things. Number one, you've got a militaristic 
side to your cultural background. Romans are obviously just, justly proud 
of their military capability. It also means that though, 
in the, if you've lived through the previous century, along with Virgil that 
you're a fratricidal group. you've seen lots of awful civil wars as 
those who were in positions of power turn their their sights on each other brought 
nasty awful wars of Romans against Romans. 
Trying to figure who's going to be the maximum leader of this new imperial 
structure. you've seen a dissolution of a past way 
of being. The Roman Republic is now gone. 
and that's a frightening new world. Where do we exists and where do we fit in 
all this, we Romans? seems like really important hunks of what 
it is to be Roman are now all up for grabs. 
And it's very difficult for people to figure out what, what comes next. 
Along comes a figure named Augustus. Augustus rules Rome as the first emperor 
proclaiming himself to be carrying forward old traditions but what he's 
really doing is entirely remaking things. realizes now in this kind of great tumult 
that Rome needs a new sense of itself. he also has great respect for the 
importance of the arts. He nurtures and supports poets, Virgil 
among them. Coming after this time of great tumult, 
Augustus realizes and puts his finger on, the need to have a new sense of what it 
is to be Roman. Virgil shares that view and says that, 
yes indeed, we do need to have a sense of what it is to be Roman. 
and undertakes the project of building this through this mythic form of epic 
poetry on Homeric and other precedents. and trying to give in this form some 
strong sense of what this identity's going to be. And it's true, the project 
that Virgil has in his poetic form works in tandem with the political project that 
Augustus has of building a new sense of what Rome is all about. 
Now, there are many histories to Rome. Lots of different ways of looking back 
into the past to figure out where Rome came from and what it's all about. 
Aeneas is someone that we've met before. We see him in Homer's epics. 
he shows up in the Iliad as an important Trojan hero. 
He's not the most important by any means, but he's an important Trojan hero. 
and the, in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, we have some connection with 
Aeneas. Actually, he shows up there. 
He's born when Zeus is fed up with Aphrodite's mischievousness and making 
gods fall in love with mortals. and he makes it happen to Aphrodite. 
Now, it, the, the background that we have in this early past in the Homeric story 
of the Iliad and then in the Homeric Hymns is of a character who's not exactly 
warmly embraced. Aphrodite's a little embarrassed now. 
She falls in love with a mortal person, Anchises, and two of them now produce 
Aeneas who has immortal blood but is kind of a revenge against Aphrodite for having 
her weaken all those immortals by making them fall in love with mortals. 
Well, the same thing's now happens to her. 
So, Aeneas then is born of a goddess. He has divine blood in him. 
That doesn't make him alone among the ancient ancient mortal heroes, but it 
surely makes him pretty grand. that background early Romans start to 
hang onto back to at least the third century BCE. 
They start talking about Aeneas as being a founder of Rome, a founding figure of 
this city. There are also other well-known stories 
of, of Rome's past as so you all will recognize the famous 
statue of Romulus and Remus from Capitoline Hill in ancient Rome. 
Romulus and Remus were understood to be founders of the city of Rome back in the 
8th century BCE. that legend has a rich collection of, of 
tales around it. The Romans believe that that's the case. 
They, they understand their city to come from this pair of twins. 
There's a little bit of a problem with this vector in their history though, 
because as you all will know, Rome is founded when Romulus kills Remus. 
we've got brothers literally killing each other, so Rome was founded on an act of 
fratricide. It would be like people looking back to 
your own national consciousness and national identity and talking about 
founding figures of the nation killing each other and then the nation begins. 
that's a little bit of a complicated history especially given Rome's recent 
past at the time Virgil's writing. And so, that's not the one he really 
latches onto, instead this figure Aeneas returns for 
him. Then, there are names in the past Rome's 
that, that show up behind Rome. a first settlement of Levinium shows up 
in the legends that surrounds Rome. Also the city Alba Longa, an important 
ancient settlement that sends a colony out to found Rome. 
we hear of Latium, an ancient civilization. 
These are all terms that are kind of reverberating around. 
and before Virgil didn't have quite solidified authoritative narrative that 
strung them all together. Well, Virgil does that. 
remember what we talked about with Hesiod lining up all the different possibilities 
of divine relationships with one another through genealogical chart, he makes 
sense out of this past history. Well, Virgil's doing the same thing. 
Taking lots of different tales and weaving them together with Aeneas now as 
the most important one. Now, wherever it came from though, it was 
clear among those who were living at the time that Rome was the undisputed power 
in the ancient Mediterranean. Augustus sat as founder of a massive and 
massively successful empire. Virgil's going to now try to take up this 
project. Constructing a good past for what this 
empire is all about. And that's, for him, going to mean a turn 
to antiquity a turn to bury himself inside of this legend around Aeneus and 
look to a Trojan background to what it means to be Roman. 
Now, what do the Romans get by having Trojan-ness in their background? 
Well, they surely get a sense of antiquity that's built into them. 
No question about that. The Trojans are very old, they've been 
around for a long time. this great past now gets to be the 
lineage of the city of Rome. Now, historically, is it accurate to say 
that such a linkage exist? That's probably not true, it's probably 
not the case. The Romans thought it was even before 
Virgil, but it's probably not true that we're going to find some biological 
linkage between ancient Trojans and the Roman side. 
instead what we have is a an affiliation a kind of chosen affiliation, that Virgil 
develops and works into this sense of background of what what Greek-ness is, or 
what Roman-ness is going to be all about. So, they get an anchor in the great past 
by linking to Romans. They also get something else. 
They get a position that is not swallowed up by the Greeks. The Romans don't want 
to claim that they come from the Greeks, that's not palatable kind of linkage for 
them to make. So, there's no legend that talks about 
biological background, some founding figure in the Greek material that would 
lead up to them. and instead interestingly, they chose 
their their background to lead back to Greeks sworn enemies, these Trojans. And 
the Trojans are after all, somewhat admirable, of course. They're, they're 
great people to, under to, to look at. We learn about these great figures. 
Hector, and Mias, and all the others. On the other hand, they're losers. 
Aren't they? sorry, it's a harsh way to say that. 
[LAUGH] But, the Trojans don't win the Trojan War. 
So, are the Romans now affiliating themselves with a culture that is shown 
itself in history to be someone that is not able to win a grand victory against 
the Greeks? Well, not quite. 
Virgil's going to talk about a story that, sure, talks 
about an early loss. but Roman's position, 
Rome's position now, in the time of Virgil's writings, undisputed. 
No question about them having any pesky Greeks around to bother them anymore. 
the Romans had crushed them in the century before Virgil. 
So, there's confidence that shows militarily with respect to Greece. 
But there's an ongoing sense among the Romans of a cultural anxiety with respect 
to Greek greatness. A famous 
line from this a great Roman poet, Horace, in one of his epistles. 
talks about, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, 
which means, Greece after it was captured, captured the ferocious victor. 
So, after the Romans clobber the Greeks militarily, the Romans fall for lots of 
Greek culture. They get excited by it and there's a lot of interest in Greekness 
from the Roman side of things. Well, that cultural anxiety I think is 
getting worked out by making a connection with a grand past that Homer talks about 
but affiliating with the other side, the non-Greek side. And, in fact, sworn 
enemies of the Greeks this is perfectly fine for the Romans and make, 
makes them, I think, feel perfectly comfortable. 
the sense of Roman and Greek connection could maybe be mapped onto a contemporary 
situation. As an American I know, at least I observe 
among some of my countrymen that there's a great admiration for things that happen 
in older cultures where we admire what happens in European nations. 
We admire the, the history and background that shows up in our friends across the 
pond. those from England in particular. 
and we admire that but at the same time, feel a bit culturally anxious about it. 
These people over there are from those older cultures, they seem to be more 
sophisticated than we Americans are. And, on occasion, there'll be some 
resentment that bubbles up from folks that are just not quite ready to say, 
yes, they're culturally superior to us. But there's a kind of chip on the 
shoulder that shows up sometimes. in the same way I think Romans showed a 
little bit of that. Now, neither of these, I think, has much 
basis in reality, this is just people's fantasies and not so much something that 
a person could argue for. but I just would notice that such a thing 
happens not only in contemporary America but it's also going to happen in ancient 
Rome on occasion as well. now the background that we're going to 
see, the historical background, there are links to these families, Trojan families, 
that Roman families are trying to draw. I told you from the third century BCE and 
forward, the Romans drew links to Aeneas and talked about him as a founder of 
Rome. That started a kind of cottage industry 
for Roman aristocrats to find Trojan linkages for themselves. 
In that same way that well my people, sometimes, contemporary Americans, will 
try to find coats of arms in their family background or linkages to grand, usually 
European aristocrats of centuries past. that same kind of impulse was showing in 
Rome to find and calibrate these connections with this ancient Trojan 
blanket ancient Trojan past that they found themselves linked to. 
Now, all of this is the stew, the cultural stew, into which Virgil is 
entering when he tells a story. A definitive story that, yes, indeed you 
Romans did come from those Trojans. And, in fact, this figure of Aeneas is 
going to go from being one among many Trojans to being a major Trojan. 
And not only that, he's going to be founder of our whole national identity. 
You and me as classical Romans now are, going to watch Virgil use Aeneas to 
produce a sense of who we are.