This book explores Virgil's poetic and mythical transformation of Roman imperialist ideology. The Romans saw an analogy between the ordered workings of the natural universe and the proper functioning of their own expanding empire; between orbis and urbs. In combining this cosmic imperialism with the military and panegyrical themes proper to epic, Virgil draws on a number of traditions: the notion that the ideal poet is a cosmologer; the use of allegory to extract natural-philosophical truths from mythology and poetry (especially Homer); the poetic use of hyperbole and the 'universal expression'. Virgil's imagination is dominated by the cosmological poem of Lucretius; the Aeneid, like the De Rerum Natura, is a poem about the universe and how man should live in it, but Virgil's constant inversion of Lucretian values makes of him an anti-Lucretius. Recent criticism has tended to stress the pessimistic and private sides of the Aeneid; but any easy conclusion that the poet was at heart anti-Augustan is precluded by the depth and detail with which he develops the imperialist themes discussed in this book.
Reviews
'This is a bold and original book, which serious students of Latin literature ... will do well to read with close attention. The achievement of producing a genuinely original and important work on Virgil today is very considerable.' Times Literary Supplement
'The object of this important, learned, scrupulously argued book is to create a major shift in the contemporary reader's sense of the Aeneid ... this must be one of the handful of books on the Aeneid ... which are genuinely capable of altering our reading of the text.' Classical Review



Book Information
ISBN 9780198146919
Author Philip R. Hardie
Format Paperback
Page Count 416
Imprint Clarendon Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 25mm