This book explores how Virgil in his Aeneid incorporates the ancient Stoics' thinking about how humans can exercise moral responsibility and how this can affect providential world fate. The third-century BC philosopher Chrysippus of Soli located this freedom in the way we can assent to courses of action, and Graham Zanker innovatively demonstrates how Virgil appropriates this concept in the way that Jupiter and Aeneas can assent to the world fate in which they have discovered they must play a part, or Juno and Dido can withhold their assent to it. Indeed, Virgil even offers the model to no-one less than Augustus: the emperor is invited to give his assent to ruling what was believed to be his 'world-wide' empire justly. The book is accessible to both students and professional scholars of the Aeneid, with all Greek and Latin translated into idiomatic English.

Argues that Stoic thought on human responsibility and world fate plays a key role in the Aeneid's characterisation and morality.

About the Author
GRAHAM ZANKER is Professor Emeritus in the Classics Department at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and Affiliate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Adelaide. His publications include Realism in Alexandrian Poetry: A Literature and Its Audience (1987), The Heart of Achilles: Characterization and Personal Ethics in the Iliad (1994), Modes of Viewing in Hellenistic Poetry and Art (2004) and Herodas: Mimiambs (2009).


Book Information
ISBN 9781009319874
Author Graham Zanker
Format Hardback
Page Count 300
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 550g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 158mm * 22mm