Aeneid

17 hrs. 32 min.

Poetry

Language Russian

Author Virgil

Narrator Yury Zaborovsky

Description

Virgil was the most famous poet of the Augustan age. Born in 70 BCE near Mantua, he received his first education in Cremona; at sixteen he received the toga of adulthood. This celebration coincided with the year of Lucretius’s death, so contemporaries viewed the budding poet as the direct successor to the singer of De rerum natura. Further education Virgil received in Milan, Naples, and Rome, where he studied Greek literature and philosophy. Despite his interest in Epicureanism and his deep reverence for Lucretius, Virgil did not join the Epicurean school; he was drawn to Plato and the Stoics.

The “Aeneid” is Virgil’s unfinished patriotic epic, consisting of 12 books, written between 29 and 19 BCE. After Virgil’s death, the “Aeneid” was published by his friends Varius and Plotius without any changes, but with some сокращения.
In the structure of the “Aeneid” there is a pronounced desire to create a Roman parallel to Homer’s poems. Most of the “Aeneid’s” motifs Virgil found already in earlier treatments of the tale of Aeneas, but the choice and arrangement belong to Virgil himself and are subordinated to his poetic design. Not only in the overall structure, but also in many specific narrative details and in stylistic treatment (similes, metaphors, epithets, etc.) one can detect Virgil’s wish to “compete” with Homer.
The differences become even sharper. Virgil is alien to “epic calm” and loving elaboration of details. The “Aeneid” is a chain of narratives full of dramatic momentum: tightly concentrated, pathetically tense; the links in this chain are connected by skilful transitions and by a common goal-directedness that creates the unity of the poem.
Its driving force is the will of Fate, which leads Aeneas to found a new realm in Latin soil, and then Aeneas’s descendants to rule the world. The “Aeneid” is filled with oracles, prophetic dreams, miracles, and signs that guide every action of Aeneas and foretell the future greatness of the Roman people and the deeds of its leaders up to Augustus himself.
Virgil avoids mass scenes, usually highlighting a few figures whose inner experiences create the dramatic movement. The drama is intensified by stylistic handling: Virgil knows how, through masterful selection and arrangement of words, to give worn-out formulas from everyday speech greater expressiveness and emotional coloring.