Study Questions & Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. How negatively
does Aeneas’s abandonment of Dido reflect on his character?
2. To what
extent is the Aeneid a political poem? Is it propaganda?
3. What is
the relationship in the Aeneid between an individual’s merit and
the degree to which his or her personality is interesting? How might
our estimation differ from Virgil’s?
Suggested Essay Topics
1. What is the role of dreams
in the Aeneid?
2. How do you explain the surprise
alterations of character
and abrupt ending of Book XII? How does Book XII fit in with the
rest of the Aeneid, with respect to both characters and
plot?
3. Is the plot of the Aeneid driven
more by the gods or by human characters? Does Aeneas, by himself,
have the will to make it to Italy, or is it necessary for him to
be prodded along the way?
4. Why do you think Virgil starts
the story in the middle and then spends two chapters on Aeneas’s
retrospective? What does he achieve with such a structure?
5. How do Aeneas’s piety and
sense of duty change as the
poem unfolds?
6. How does the behavior of the
gods reflect on
human qualities?
7. How are the various Italian
peoples (Latins, Arcadians, Volscians) depicted, in relation to
the Trojans and to each other?
