/lit/ - Literature

His Eclogues and Georgics were superior. In all likelihood, the Aeneid was written as a sort of propaganda campaign for the Augustan regime. The Eclogues and Georgics are political, but not politically motivated exactly. Eclogue 4 in particular seems to be a poetic gift of prophecy rather than mere polemic.

>>22119510
>shakespeare
We don't do African-American "literature" here, nigger
>>22119537
An epic poem? As propaganda? When 5% of the population could read basic sentences and 1% actual literary texts? Sure

>>22119510
Which translation? I was also disappointed but I think that’s in part because I was reading Cranch

>>22119543
In that time, poetry was not only appreciated by the elites, but also recited and performed in front of the masses. Moreover, poetry had particular cultural articulation and steering aspects for the Greeks or Romans since the Iliad was written. Plato discussed the effect of the Iliad on the Greek youth. What Virgil sought to do with the Iliad was probably write a new Iliad that would be to Roman imperial culture what the Iliad was for Greek culture, almost like publishing a new translation of the Bible.

The one part Virgil wrecked homer with was the descent into the underworld

>>22119510
>Off to read Dante now
No one cares you narcissistic faggot.

>>22119510
The John Dryden translation is blowing me away. I'm amazed how many rhymes a translation can have and still a maintain a lively plot (although it can drag at times). I haven't read anything similar in Homer or Dante translations that rhyme this well.

>>22119543
Yeah, most people couldn't read, they also couldn't vote. That 1% were the ones who it was essential to propagandize to, the people making political decisions.

>>22119855
Alexander Pope's Iliad and Odyssey translations are in Heroic verse.

>>22119571
Wasn’t this ancientromanpoetnigger actually paid to do what you are espousing he did?

>>22120254
The Aeneid was done on a commission from the Augustan government, but that alone doesn’t make clear what his intentions with it were. The Eclogues and Georgics were almost certainly not commissioned by Augustus. In fact, they’re somewhat critical of Augustus.

>>22120264
> that alone doesn’t make clear what his intentions with it were.
Sure, but reading it does

>>22120264
Yeah one of the guys who worked at my gym had to learn Latin and translate a chapter of it as part of his Honours degree. Told me he thought it better than The Iliad and The Odyssey all bias aside. I should prolly get round to reading it I suppose.

>>22119510
Aeneis breaking down in tears after seing his father vision and lamenting not being able to hold him one last time was pure kino and mogs everything from both the Iliad and Odysee

My brother is a classicist and prefers Virgil to Homer, despite generally preferring the culture and society of the Greeks to that of the Romans. He thinks Virgil is more refined and polemically articulate whereas Homer suffers from its orality. I haven't read either save for the Aeneid translation I had to do in high school Latin class so I'm not qualified to speak on them.

>>22121231
Your brother is literally me desu

>>22119510
I recently read Aeneid and came to same conclusions
>>22119804
Virgil's underworld was great, and much better than that of Homer's but we can all agree that Dante beats them both on all accounts—the Supreme Poet.
>>22119815
seethe
>>22121231
your brother is a pseud
>>22120224
Pope's Iliad is fantastic

>>22121231
Virgil is almost more remarkable simply because he was a Roman. He personally is so unremarkable as a man, a guy who basically spent his whole life living in a small farming community and who probably didn’t “publish” his first poems until his early thirties, and yet he wrote what are arguably the only Roman poems that rival the sort of things we appreciate before the Romans and after them. Roman poetry otherwise is fairly underwhelming.

>>22120275
It doesn’t though. For all we know, it could’ve been commissioned merely as an artistic gesture. There’s no obvious reason to understand it as partially propaganda.

>>22119510
It's pretty fuckin good if you can read Latin desu

>>22119510
make sure to visit the dante reading thread >>22110780