"Virgil and the "Odyssey

Bibliographic Data

ID4773308
AuthorsR D Williams (corresponding author)
Year1963
Volume17
Issue4
Pages266
Publication date1963-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhoenix (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1086379
OpenAlexW2333464067
LanguageEN
Citations received30

THE SUETONIUS-DONATUS LIFE of Virgil refers to the Aeneid as quasi amborum Homeri carminum instar, sort of equivalent of both Homer's poems, and the relationship of the second half of the Aeneid to the Iliad and of the first half to the Odyssey has often been pointed out and discussed. The object of this paper is to define the nature and extent of Virgil's use of the Odyssey and to try to account for it. I shall be concerned with details and individual passages only as part of the total picture.' The first half of the Aeneid corresponds with the first half of the Odyssey in that both are concerned with long voyages, and the centre of each poem marks the end of the hero's wanderings. But after that there is no further similarity: Odysseus returned to his family and expelled the suitors from his home; Aeneas came to a strange land, and had to fight full-scale battles against the Italians. It was as a wanderer that Aeneas seemed to Virgil something like Odysseus; after his wanderings were over he was in a situation which made him more like an Iliad-figure. What parts then of Aeneid 1-6 are Odyssean? Book 1 very much so, as we shall see; Book 2, the siege of Troy, not at all; Book 3, the wanderings, Odyssean in some parts but not in most; Book 4 not at all-in Book 1 Dido reminds us a little of Nausicaa, but never in 4; Book 5 (the games) is Homeric, but from Iliad 23, not from the slighter description of games in Odyssey 8. There is just a brief mention of the Sirens at the end of the book. Book 6 is Odyssean in its setting, corresponding with the Nekyia of Od. 11 in motivation and some incidents, but the differences are of course far more striking and the essence of the book (especially as revealed in the speech of Anchises) is very much post-Homeric. Books 1 and 3 then are the Odyssean books, and I take Book 3 first because it is first chronologically, being the flash-back account by Aeneas of the events which befell him before the start of the narrative in Book 1

Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical and Literary Analyses · History

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