The Aeneid (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

It’s been 25 years since I first read “The Aeneid”. Back then, it was part of my core college curriculum. Even then, it was exhausting my interest levels in the Western standard canon. For the same reasons now, I can’t really get behind it. “The Aeneid” is equal parts a Roman “Manifest Destiny” propaganda piece by Virgil; while also being a love story to an idea of Rome that obscures the reality. As taught to me, the impetus for “The Aeneid’s” creation was at the behest of a call for a magnum opus that would glorify Rome. Virgil’s response is to create a Homer-inspired homage to Rome’s founding that picks up from the very end of Homer’s great “Iliad.” Virgil doesn’t even pretend to be something different or original in his effort. Giving the whole work an air of “Manufactured Destiny,” or a sequel no one needed. To achieve this, Virgil leans heavily into the trope that Rome’s founding and glory is the will of the Gods. Which tests you constantly as to whether there is any true concept of individual agency for achieving one’s own desires. If everything is fated, what is the meaning and worth of life? A question I struggled with the first time I read this and which plagues me still. Additionally, Virgil is a bit lazy in laying out the journey Aeneas takes towards his ultimate reward. Aeneas is both the beneficiary of Odysseus’s woes and follows much of the same path. Only highlighting the disdain for the Greek spoilers of Troy’s fame and history. Virgil also lays into the foundation for the enmity between Carthage and Rome. To be fair, it is well written if you read the Robert Fagles translation. I tried two other similar translations, and they were terrible in comparison. The flow and the pacing read well. Too many names are mentioned to keep the whole thing tight and cohesive, but it tracks in general. Looked at from a lens of the time Virgil wrote in, it was perhaps fitting and digestible. Including the generally blameful and interfering portrayal of women. Even goddesses are not spared an accusatory line throughout the story. Held against the discerning eye of a contemporary reader, “The Aeneid” just doesn’t hold up. It is especially ominous when we reflect on nationalism versus patriotism. Works like this lend themselves to nationalist fervor. Perhaps Virgil was trying to warn us by being so exaggerated in his prose. Maybe even the readers in his time would have sniffed out the obvious self-aggrandizing nature of the work. It would be interesting to hold “The Aeneid” up against modern works by Ayn Rand and others who similarly talk of manifest destiny. In that comparison, we may find that the echo chambers have gotten more rigid and don’t allow for the objective reflection that would highlight the faults in the pieces.