Articles About Virgil

Eidolon Classics Journal

A curated list of articles about the Roman author Virgil. Eidolon is a journal that seeks to make the classics political and personal, feminist and fun.

Refugees by Fate, Founders by Choice

George Saad on the parallels between Roman and American foundation myths:

Americans should be able to understand Aeneas’ conflict quite well, as it is one we intimately share. American history is dominated by the tension between these same two voices, between the voice of the disrespected underdog and the voice of the system, between the voice of revolutionary dissent and the voice of global hegemony.

Crossing Cultures as a First-Generation Classicist

Nandini Pandey on how watching the movie Coco prompted her to consider her choice to become a classicist:

Yet all the time, I was drifting imperceptibly farther from my birth family in the way I think, the words I use, the stories I tell. Was classics a deep dive into someone else’s past at the expense of my own, an abnegation of the dual citizenship I’d hoped to hold?

Rome’s “Empire Without End” and the “Endless” U.S. War on Terror

Nandini Pandey on the limitless military freedoms of Rome and the modern US:

What is the Authorization for the Use of Military Force if not a modern-day fetial spear, propelled by righteous rage in the name of self-defense, hurled before the gods of public opinion and international judgment? While the Romans were careful to name their enemies, though, Congress gave their authorizing consensus to any actions the president might deem appropriate against any parties he could connect with 9/11. This bestowed the commander-in-chief, then and now, with maius imperium unbounded in time and space, invisible and unaccountable to all but himself.

The Power of the Poet

Charlotte Skolasky, the winner of Eidolon’s essay contest for high school students, on why she would resurrect Virgil to advise today’s leaders:

Virgil not only teaches us how to be leaders, but his moments of hope, struggle, and care remind us how to be human. His tremendous understanding of humanity is why I believe that Virgil would be an invaluable advisor to us today.

Altar of Facts

Elena Giusti on the intersections of her research on Augustan propaganda and life under the tyranny of Berlusconi:

My understanding of Augustan poetry is grounded in my experience as an Italian millennial. But before I confess my sins, I’d like to point out that whatever influenced my views of Augustan literature does not prevent “post-truth poetics” from being a viable lens through which we can read Virgil’s Aeneid. Fama (“rumor,” “tradition,” “fame”) is at the core of the love story between Aeneas and Dido. A creeping beast made of innumerable ears and flickering tongues, getting stronger and bolder as it swiftly passes by, feeding indiscriminately off truth and lies alike.

Virgil in Westworld

Nandini Pandey on parallels between the Aeneid and HBO’s Westworld:

This is the image that punches me in the gut every time Westworld cuts to a recurring scene: the darkened storeroom of deactivated hosts, their bodies repaired and memories wiped clean of the damage they incurred over their earthly “narratives.” These androids’ waxen pallor and full-frontal nude pose, simultaneously heroic, clinical, and natural-historical, recalls not only Virgil’s parade of heroes but also the Roman funerary traditions and architectural monuments that informed it. In keeping with the metaliterary impulse of epic reboots,Westworld’s Underworld serves as a ‘window reference’ through which the show measures itself against predecessors like Virgil.

Elena Ferrante’s Virgil

Stephanie McCarter on Ferrante’s use of the Aeneid in her Neopolitan Novels:

Ferrante upends the long tradition of male-focused epic by populating the center of her magnum opus with women and courting them as readers. Even the book covers of the U.S. editions present unapologetic images of femininity that recall books marketed to women. Some have regarded these covers as incompatible with Ferrante’s literary (i.e. “masculine”) aspirations, but her fiction defiantly refuses to dress itself up for the reading male eye.

Legendary! The Aeneid’s Tapestry of Lies

Ayelet Haimson Lushkov on parallels between Barney Stinson (of the television show How I Met Your Mother) and Aeneas:

These superficial characteristics, however, fail to explain why the figure of Barney Stinson really appeals to us, especially in conjunction with Aeneas. What intrigues me in both characters — and what makes a comparison of more than passing critical interest — is their common role as masterful storytellers, and the female audience of their stories.

How Epic is Star Wars?

Rachel Lesser on the epicness (epicity? Epictasticness?) of Star Wars:

In its gender dynamics and patriarchal ideology, the original Star Wars trilogy is rather like the Homeric epics, especially the Odyssey. As Lillian Doherty has argued, the Odyssey features female characters (such as Penelope) with powerful subjectivities, but their agency is channeled towards the service and welfare of the male hero, Odysseus. Both the ancient and modern epics seduce female audiences with apparently strong and independent female characters who disappoint on careful inspection. Penelope and Leia are both ultimately non-threatening to male audiences.

Burn This Book

Donna Zuckerberg on Harper Lee, Virgil, and unfinished drafts:

Readers have always had an undeniable fascination with texts that authors didn’t consider quite finished. We feel a voyeuristic thrill knowing we’re going against the author’s wishes by reading something they didn’t want to be read. The relationship between writer and reader is typically an orderly one, mediated by the text itself. But when the writer asks that a book be burned, its subsequent publication creates an unregulated and anarchic world of interpretive possibility.

Aeneas in Palestine

Michael Fontaine on the advantages of reading the Aeneid against the ongoing violence in the Middle East:

Juno sees the Trojan remnant not as individual humans perhaps worthy of compassion but as representatives of an evil collective. She hates the whole cunning race. Replace Phrygians, Sigeum’s, and Troy with Jews, Europe’s, and Auschwitz and Juno starts to sound like an embittered S.S.-man witnessing the birth of Israel rising from the ashes of the Holocaust, three years after Germany’s defeat.

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