The Aeneid: Political Propaganda or Subversive Criticism?

by Isabella Ingram

Virgil

It is difficult to read The Aeneid without suspicion. A Latin poem intended to emulate the Homeric epics of the Greeks, Virgil’s work describes the foundation of Rome by Aeneas, son of a goddess, and (supposed) ancestor of Augustus – the emperor of Rome at the time when Virgil was writing. As if this were not propagandistic enough, the narrative of The Aeneid is frequently interspersed with prophecies which predict and praise the future rule of Augustus. Notably, one of these visions of the future is given by the king of the gods himself, Jupiter, in which Augustus is prophesied to “bound his empire…at the limits of the world, and his fame by the stars”, establishing “an empire without end”. Evidently Jupiter’s vision did not extend beyond 476 CE, when the Roman Empire finally fell apart.

It is easy, therefore, to dismiss Virgil’s work as political propaganda, intended to gain favour with the emperor. Among those who have done so is W. H. Auden, who, in his poem “Secondary Epic”, suggested that Virgil had prostituted his muse by using his artistic talent to serve a political purpose:

Behind your verse so masterfully made

We hear the weeping of a muse betrayed.

There is an alternative argument, however. It is possible to suggest, as Emma Lezberg does in her article, “Politics and the Pen: A Subversive Reading of The Aeneid”, that Virgil’s poem is actually secretly critical of the regime it pretends to praise. For criticism to masquerade as propaganda is certainly, in Lezberg’s words, “a masterpiece”, but for many the theory is a suspect attempt to wash The Aeneid clean of its political sycophancy.

Nevertheless, there is interesting evidence. In book six, for example, Aeneas descends into the underworld to meet his deceased father, Anchises. Whilst there, Anchises identifies the future Romans – spirits waiting to be born – among whom are Romulus, twin brother of Remus, and Julius Caesar. Eventually, of course, Anchises comes to Augustus: “the man who will bring back the golden years…and extend Rome’s empire…beyond the stars”. On the surface, therefore, this appears to be yet another of Virgil’s propagandistic prophesies. Interestingly, however, when Aeneas prepares to leave the underworld and return to the land of the living, Virgil writes that he exits “through the Gate of Ivory”. As Virgil himself points out, the Gate of Horn – which Aeneas does not take – is for “true shades”, whilst the Gate of Ivory is the gate of “false dreams”: “…through it the powers of the underworld send false dreams up towards the heavens”.

It is a strange part of the story – unnecessary to the narrative – which Virgil does not elaborate on any further. The conclusion that some have come to is that the Gate of Ivory serves, effectively, to undo all the praise that Virgil has just lavished on the ‘unborn’ Roman heroes. It suggests that their successes, and those of the Roman Empire, are illusionary, or “false dreams”.

Of course, there are alternative explanations. Perhaps Aeneas could not exit through the Gate of Horn, which is for “true shades”, simply because he is not a “true shade”; that is, he is not really dead – he is a living mortal in the underworld. Other interpretations suggest that, by passing out through the gate of “false dreams”, Virgil is simply saying that Aeneas dreamt his experience in the underworld. We can never really know.

Another argument in favour of the theory that The Aeneid is a subversive attack on the Augustan regime cites the end of the epic as evidence. In this, Aeneas brutally kills Turnus, his native Italian adversary who resists the foundation of Rome. One might expect, if The Aeneid truly is propaganda, for Virgil to conclude with yet another comment on the future glory of Rome, or – at least – some description of the foundation of the city. Instead, the concluding line is bloody: “The limbs of Turnus were dissolved in cold and his life left him with a groan, fleeing in anger down to the shades”. This is particularly surprising when we consider how frequently peace is prophesied throughout the poem; both Jupiter and Anchises state that after the bloody conflict in Italy, when Aeneas is victorious, there will be harmony. Why end, then, with an image of violence and war?

Of course, Virgil died before the poem was completed; however, it seems likely that he still intended for the epic to conclude with this image. As Robin Sowerby states, “It is not generally believed…that he would have added more to the narrative or changed the ending, if he had lived longer”, adding that the poem was only unfinished in the sense that it “may be said to lack the final artistic touch of the perfectionist….his final hand of revision”. Virgil was indeed a “perfectionist”; it took him ten years to write his Georgics. It is also said that, when it came to composing The Aeneid, he wrote only a few lines in the morning and devoted the remainder of the day to revising them.

It is impossible to know for sure the true political message that Virgil is attempting to make in his poem. For me, however, the strangest part of the epic, which serves to support the view that The Aeneid is something other than propaganda, is the character of Aeneas himself. Melancholic, unwilling and dispassionate: why would Virgil portray the legendary ancestor of his emperor in this way? Nowhere in the poem is Aeneas enthusiastic about Rome or his destiny. Virgil frequently reinforces his protagonist’s misery at his situation; in Carthage, Aeneas tells the Carthaginian queen - with whom he stays, arguably, to delay his fate - that it is “not by my own will that I search for Italy”. When Anchises, in the underworld, shows him the spirits awaiting a new earthly life, Aeneas wonders what could possibly impel them to the light of the earth. In Italy, Aeneas remains “heart sick at the sadness of war” right up to the moment where all his sadness and frustration sends him into a wild war frenzy, leading him to commit the vivid murder on which the poem concludes. Perhaps this, in spite all of the seemingly propagandistic elements of The Aeneid, serves to demonstrate Virgil’s true views regarding the supposed glory of Rome.