Which genre does the aeneid belong to

The Aeneid is written in dactylic hexameters, the same meter as the Iliad and the Odyssey. The meter is based upon a combination of long and short syllables. Unlike those poems, the Aeneid was written to be read rather than recited or sung to an audience.

But most people in antiquity read out loud even when they were alone. And performances of selected parts of the Aeneid certainly did take place. Virgil left behind two other major works, the Eclogues and the Georgics.

The Eclogues are ten short poems in dactylic hexameter. They belong to the genre of pastoral poetry: the poems are imagined as being composed or performed by herdsmen and other rustic characters, and they are much concerned with the natural world of plants, trees, flocks and so on.

However, the Eclogues also have political themes. The Georgics is a longer poem, four books of dactylic hexameters in the genre of didactic instructional verse, as practised by Hesiod in the Works and Days. The Georgics purports to be a book of advice for farmers; but it too has major mythological and political components.

There was more distance between Virgil and Augustus than that term would suggest. However, Virgil did enjoy the patronage of Maecenas a close associate of Augustus and may have depended upon it for his livelihood.

The extent to which the Aeneid promotes or subverts the political program of Augustus is debated. The Aeneid is an intensely Roman poem. A Roman poet was most himself, most Roman, precisely when he was imitating a Greek poet, as if he were then most aware of his own individuality.

Virgil did not 'start' with Homer but with his own Augustan 'symbol-complex' and his own subjective style. He did not so much 'copy' Homer as fit Homeric motifs into a radically un-Homeric scheme that he had elaborated without reference to either Homer or the epic genre or indeed any sort of narrative plot or story. Study Guide. By Virgil. Previous Next. Genre Epic Poetry The Aeneid is an epic because is a long poem recounting the actions of men, gods, and heroes.

What's Up With the Ending? Virgil and many of his Roman compatriots were deeply and permanently influenced by this school's methods. One of the most important poets of this period was Apollonius of Rhodes, who composed the Argonautica , an epic in four books that concerns the quest for the Golden Fleece. A comparison of the romance of Jason and Medea in the Argonautica to that of Aeneas and Dido in the Aeneid , and the treatment of the gods in both poems clearly indicate Virgil's debt to Apollonius.

Like most Romans, Virgil was subject to the sway of Greek culture and Greek philosophy. For example, Plato, whose imaginative speculations concern the nature of the soul and its fate after death, influenced the Aeneid 's Book VI, in which Aeneas visits his father in the underworld. Nonetheless, Virgil wrote in the Latin language and was the product of a Roman environment. His education, like that of all well-off Romans, was predominantly Greek, but Rome had its own long and fruitful literary history, which he was also familiar with.

Among Roman writers, Virgil learned most from Ennius, an epic poet of the second century B. Each of these Roman writers was himself under the influence of Greek literary models, just as Virgil was.

Discovering the many sources from which Virgil drew ideas in no way lessens the magnitude of his achievement. A student of his predecessors but never a mere imitator, he reshaped, unified, and gave new meaning to his borrowings. His genius is shown by the beauty and originality of the Aeneid , which has become the literary justification and explanation of the Roman Empire to the entire world. Previous Virgil Biography.

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My Preferences My Reading List. Aeneid Virgil. Critical Essays Literary Predecessors of the Aeneid Although Virgil lived and wrote two thousand years ago, he was the heir to a literary and cultural tradition that was many centuries older. Adam Bede has been added to your Reading List!