Promoting Morality in the Aeneid and Metamorphoses Essay -- Comparison

Promoting Morality in the Aeneid and Metamorphoses    Just as the authors of the Bible use an evocative, almost mythological vehicle to convey covenants and laws that set the moral tone for Hebrew and Christian societies, Latin poets Virgil and Ovid employ a similarly supernatural method to foster their own societal and moral goals in Roman society. Where Virgil's Aeneid depicts Aeneas as the ideal, duty-bound Roman patriarch absent from the conflicted Rome of Virgil's youth, Ovid's Metamorphoses lacks the patriotic undertones of Virgil's epic. Instead, Ovid's lighthearted Metamorphoses depicts several mythical stories - some not unlike the etiological justifications found in the early Hebrew scriptures - which chronicle the transitory nature of life and its effect on society. When Augustus defeated Marc Antony at Actium and began the first acts in his rule of what would be one of history's most powerful empires, he sought to restore the morality and patriotism characteristic of pre-civil-war Rome. The stolid Roman patriarch, thought lost in the melee of civil strife, became the center of Augustus' propaganda and legislative campaign to once again bring honor and morality to his empire. It is from Virgil's unfinished epic The Aeneid that this exemplary citizen arises, one who is not only a fierce warrior but foregoes personal happiness for the welfare of his country as well. Virgil's unfinished epic - almost discarded by its author until Augustus intervened - not only serves to smooth over the violence and slaughter of the past civil wars by attributing them to the course of fate but also uses this strife as a tool to carve Aeneas as an ideal patriarchal figure. All these images on Vulcan's shield His mother's gif... ...y. 6 Oct. 1999 Gillis, Daniel. Eros and Death in the Aeneid. L'ERMA, di BRETDCHNEIDER, ROMA, 1983. Henry, Elisabeth.   The Vigour of Prophecy, A Study of Virgil's Aeneid. Bristol Classical Press, Great Britain, 1989. Lyne, R.O.A.M. Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987. Mandelbaum, Allen, trans. The Metamorphoses of Ovid. By Ovid. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & company, 1993. Poschl, Viktor. The Art of Vergil, Image and Symbol in the Aeneid. Trans. Gerda Seligson, Greenwood Press, Connecticut 1986. Silvestris, Bernardus. Commentary on the First Six Books of Virgil's Aeneid. Translated by Schreiber and Maresca. University of Nebraska Press. London, 1979. Quinn, Kenneth. Vergil's Aeneid, A Critical Description. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. 1968.