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1. The Aeneid's attitude to war is inconsistent: Virgil seems to praise and admire unrestrained slaughter, even while appearing (elsewhere) to advocate a quite different judgement.'...
'The Aeneid's attitude to war is inconsistent: Virgil seems to praise and admire
unrestrained slaughter, even while appearing (elsewhere) to advocate a quite
different judgement.' To what extent do you agree? (30 marks)
In the Aeneid, Virgil portrays war as a necessity to bring peace and civilization to society for
the sake of his patron, Augustus, who had just fought a civil war with Mark Anthony in
31 BC. Similar to Homer’s Iliad, there are times when he glorifies war to evoke a sense of
patriotism through the exhibition of aristeia (excellence); but he does not let the audience
forget the tragedies of war, and how it can bring the worst out of some characters, such as
Aeneas.
From the start of Aeneas’ journey, we can tell that Virgil promotes restraint over
unrestrained slaughter. In Book 2, when he retells the Trojan war, Aeneas admits he was
driven to frenzy due to a glimpse of Helen who was the primal cause of his country's ruin
and inspired him with the thought of revenge. Venus intervenes and urges him to not kill
Helen, telling him it will not bring him any good. From the beginning, we can already see
Virgil condemning furor and slaughter for revenge instead of for a better outcome: peace.
This sharply contrasts the Homeric idea of war being a breeding ground for eternal glory,
where heroes such as Achilles go to win kleos out of anger and revenge. The Aeneid offers a
new approach to warfare through Aeneas; he is reluctant to fight a war and does so only out
of a sense of duty to the gods and his people. In Book 4, when Aeneas is in Carthage with
Queen Dido, Mercury reminds him that "The King of the Gods commands for you to shoulder
the task since you owe him Italy's realm, the land of Rome". Moved by this sense of duty,
Aeneas understands that his fighting is "driven by duty" and not by personal gain, thus
reinforcing that war is only necessary for the bigger picture.
The two opposing attitudes to war in the Aeneid’ are personified in the characters of Aeneas
and Turnus. Aeneas symbolises the traditional Roman ideal of virtue and piety which
Augustus reinforced during the time Virgil was writing. By endowing Aeneas with traditional
Roman qualities, a Roman audience would have identified Aeneas as a man of wholesome
character to be admired. In Book 11, Virgil stresses the protagonist’s views on unnecessary
violence when Latin envoys are sent to Aeneas to beg for a truce so they may collect their
dead soldiers to which Aeneas replies “I wish for those that were killed to have left this
battle alive and I wish not to have come here, if the fates had not given me this place and
this home. Nor do I wage war with this race.” Here we can see clearly that Aeneas was
reluctantly forced into this war, not necessarily by the Latins but rather by the fates so that
Rome could rise. Thus, Virgil reinforces the idea that war is necessary but only for the
greater outcome. Virgil further suggests that an intense desire for combat is unhealthy and
not particularly admirable by portraying Turnus, the enemy, as the embodiment of such a
characteristic. After being manipulated by Allecto, Virgil states that the “love of the sword
raged within him and the wicked madness of war”. The audience is provided with a clear
right and wrong with the right being the reluctance for battle which Aeneas displays and the
wrong being the thirst for blood which Turnus displays. Aeneas serves as the paradigm for
the Roman view of war, which is a temporary state bringing about peace and civilization.
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