Is Aeneas an unreliable narrator when he tells the story of the Fall of Troy?
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Course
The Aeneid by Virgil
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University Of Oxford
Book
The Aeneid
This essay covers Book 2 of the Aeneid, discussing the ways in which he is unreliable in telling the story of the Fall of Troy and how he got to Carthage.
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The Aeneid by Virgil
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Lucy Martin
Aeneid Essay
‘Is Aeneas a reliable storyteller?’
In Books 2 and 3 of the Aeneid, Aeneas recounts his journey from when Troy fell to how he
ended up in Carthage. Given that this tale is told through the mouth of Aeneas himself, and not
Virgil, it is hard for the reader not to question how reliable and truthful this account is.
In Book 2, whilst Aeneas was sleeping and just before he enters the fighting to try and save
Troy, he dreams of Hector, saying that:
in somnis, ecce, ante oculos maetissimus Hector
uisus adesse mihi largosque effundere fletus,
raptatus bigis ut quondam, aterque cruento
puluere perque pedes traiectus lora tumentis.
ei mihi, qualis erat, quantum mutatus ab illo
Hectore qui redit exuuias indutus Achilli
uel Danaum Phrygios iaculatus puppibus ignis!
squalentem barbam et concretos sanguine crinis
uulneraque illa gerens, quae circum plurima muros
accepit patrios. – lines 270-280
“when Hector suddenly appeared before my eyes in my sleep, full of sorrow and streaming with
tears. He looked as he did when he had been dragged behind the chariot, black with dust and caked
with blood, his feet swollen where they had been pierced for the leather thongs. What a sight he
was! How changed from the Hector who had thrown Trojan fire on the ships of the Greeks or come
back clad in the spoils of Achilles. His beard was filthy, his hair matted with blood, and he had on his
body all the wounds he had received around the walls of his native city.” Due to all the techniques
Aeneas uses in this passage, his account of this apparition coming to him and its appearance feels
like it could be poetic exaggeration; a hyperbolic method of storytelling to make it sound more
interesting and keep his listeners engaged and captivated. If we think back to the death of Patroclus
and how Patroclus came to Achilles in a dream, telling him to bury his body and remember the
emotion that evoked in the sadness of that scene and the beauty of it this scene does not seem
quite as spectacular. We must note the general difference in relationship between Hector and
Aeneas: Achilles and Patroclus were set up throughout the story to be the closest of friends,
whereas to Hector, Aeneas was a subject – a good fighter and an asset to the Trojans, but not so
much a friend as simply a comrade-in-arms. Their relationship was depicted as much more
professional. In this passage in particular, Aeneas, in line 271, decides to delay ‘fletus’, ‘weeping’
until the end of the line, to put more emphasis on the idea of lamentation and thus as a way of
trying to create pathos and sympathy for the character of Hector, and so creating pathos for the
Trojans as a whole (since the death of Hector often symbolizes the downfall of Troy as a whole)
Aeneas = unreliable due to exaggeration and hyperbolic story-telling technique. This is then followed
in the next line by the word ‘raptatus’, ‘dragged violently off’, which includes within it harsh
consonant sounds, thus working to reflect the cruelty of the act of Achilles defiling Hector’s corpse
and so, in highlighting and villianising the actions of Achilles, Aeneas is clearly attempting to create
even more pathos for Hector and the Trojans. Once again Aeneas excessively adds to the creation of
pathos for Hector and the Trojans by the alliteration of ‘p’ in ‘puluere perque pedes’, whose harsh
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