Carthage in Virgil's Aeneid : staging the enemy under Augustus / Elena Giusti.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Giusti, Elena, author.

Series:

Cambridge classical studies.

Cambridge classical studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Virgil. Aeneis.

Virgil.

Epic poetry, Latin--History and criticism.

Epic poetry, Latin.

Carthage (Extinct city)--In literature.

Carthage (Extinct city).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 334 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Founded upon more than a century of civil bloodshed, the first imperial regime of ancient Rome, the Principate of Caesar Augustus, looked at Rome's distant and glorious past in order to justify and promote its existence under the disguise of a restoration of the old Republic. In doing so, it used and revisited the history and myth of Rome's major success against external enemies: the wars against Carthage. This book explores the ideological use of Carthage in the most authoritative of the Augustan literary texts, the Aeneid of Virgil. It analyses the ideological portrait of Carthaginians from the middle Republic and the truth-twisting involved in writing about the Punic Wars under the Principate. It also investigates the mirroring between Carthage and Rome in a poem whose primary concern was rather the traumatic memory of Civil War and the subsequent subversion of Rome's Republican institutions through the establishment of Augustus' Principate.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Introduction: Tractatio, Re-tractatio, Revisionist History; 1. Carthaginian Constructions, since the Middle Republic; 2. Polarity and Analogy in Virgil's Carthage; 3. Virgil's Revisionist Epic and Livy's Revisionist History; 4. Virgil's Punic/Civil Wars as Unspeakable; Conclusion: All the Perfumes of Arabia.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 16 Mar 2018).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-108-26608-8

1-108-24196-4

1-108-27154-5