To claim that the Aeneid
therefore acted as propaganda above all else, however, is a deeply flawed
allegation. To start with the most obvious issue with this suggestion, the
number of verses Virgil devotes to his propaganda material makes up a tiny
percentage of the entire text. Augustus may have, “wanted an epic poem with
himself as the hero”[1],
but the Aeneid is much more like an
epic poem with Augustus as a prominent footnote. More importantly, the poem’s
use was hardly restricted to propaganda at the time it was written; indeed, it
was a vital asset for Roman teachers and schools. In her book Vergil’s Aeneid and the Roman Self,
Yasmin Syed, professor of classics at the University of Berkley, writes,
“reciting the Aeneid was a central...
experience in a Roman boy’s education... [and] the existence of commentaries on
Vergil’s (sic.) poetry illustrate how important his works were at this stage of
Roman education”[2]; she goes on to point out
that, “[these commentaries] discuss issues of correct language usage, which was
among the most important goals of the grammarian’s instruction”[3].
Virgil’s Aeneid was clearly a vital
part of Roman rhetorical education, and while this might not preclude it from
being a piece of propaganda material, it certainly indicates that it acted as
something much more important in Roman culture. Interestingly, Quinn goes as
far as to suggest that the text’s literary merit actually does preclude it from being a piece of propaganda material,
highlighting that while, “the occasional status of the Aeneid [as a poem written to celebrate Augustus’s triumph in the
Battle of Actium] is an essential, fundamental aspect of the poem”[4],
it is, “fundamentally dishonest... to misunderstand the basis of the poem’s
artistic integrity. If we call the poem a propaganda poem, we must add that the
overtones of covert, surreptitious action which the word ‘propaganda’ invokes
are inappropriate”[5]. The book’s importance as
an educational tool, he suggests, is in the beauty of its language, “its
imagery, its sensitive, telling pathos... its magnificence as verbal poetry”[6],
not in its content at all. This very style of language would have made the text
important as something else to the Roman people: a piece of literary art. This
was a text that represented the ultimate in Roman linguistic talent and the
beauty of the Roman language, and told a fundamentally Roman story in a
beautiful and complex way. Its appreciation and widespread use as an
educational tool suggests that the Romans were a well-adjusted and
discriminating audience, and reflects their penchant for work with literary
merit. There were many poets, such as Varius Rufus, or other authors, such as
Julius Caesar himself, who provided the Roman education system with perfectly
acceptable pieces of propaganda material which educators could use to teach their
children about Rome’s fame and glory, but the Aeneid stood above these as being a far more sophisticated and
complex work. Clearly, the Aeneid’s use
extended far beyond the reach of simple propaganda.
[2] Y. Syed, Vergil's Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation
in Literary Discourse, Univesity of Michigan Press, Michigan, 2005, P. 14-15.
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