Virgil’s Aeneid, Books I-VI: Greek Civilization and Roman Empire

I. The Family Escutcheon

1. Titles, Nobles, and Ancestors
2. The Desire for a Past
3. Myth
4. Propaganda

II. From Greece to Rome

1. Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) and the Hellenistic Age (336-220 BCE)
2. The Roman Conquest of the World (220-167 BCE)
3. The Roman Republic (c.220-44 BCE)
4. The Age of the Caesars
5. Julius Caesar (c. 100-44 BCE)
6. Octavian, later Caesar Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE)
7. Literary Life in Augustan Rome

III. Publius Vergilius Maro, Virgil, 70-19 BCE

1. Life
2. Shorter Poetry
1. Eclogues
2. Georgics
3. The Aeneid

IV. The Aeneid: Epic as Tragedy

1. The Comic World View
2. The Tragic World View
3. The Roman View of Greece
4. History and Consciousness

V. Book I: The Invocation

                        “Of arms and the man I sing”

   Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram;
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem,
inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum,
Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae

Dryden’s translation:

   Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.

VI. Book I: The Forces at Work

1. Piety
2. Pius Aeneas
3. Obedience to Authority
4. Fury
5. Wrath in the Iliad
6. Battle Rage
7. Fate

VII. Book II: The End of the Trojan War

1. The Trojan Horse
2. The Sacking of the City
3. The Escape from Troy

Then come, dear father. Arms around my neck:

I’ll take you on my shoulders, no great weight.

Whatever happens, both will face one danger,

Find one safety.

VIII: Book III: Shadows of Troy and Danger at Sea

1. Mixed Signs
2. Chaonia: A Miniature Troy
3. Helenus
4. Andromache
5. Retracing Odysseus’ Journey