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OCR AS and a Level Latin Set Text Guide Virgil

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OCR AS and a Level Latin Set Text Guide Virgil Qualification Accredited Oxford Cambridge and RSA AS and A LEVEL Set Text Guide LATIN H443 For first teaching in 2016 Virgil Aeneid 8 Version 1 www.ocr.org.uk/languages Set Text Guide AS and A Level Latin CONTENTS General Introduction 3 Further reading and resources 17 Virgil 3 For teachers 17 The Aeneid 3 For students 17 Epic 4 Bloomsbury Academic 18 Talking Points 5 Context 6 Civil War 6 Introduction The Age of Augustus 6 Founding - and re-founding Rome 7 Talking points 8 The Text 9 Aeneid 8: Evander and the future site of Rome 9 Aeneid 8: Hercules in Aeneid 9 Stylistic features 10 Glossary of Key Terms 11 Talking points 12 Activities and student tasks 13 Student task sheet: Poetry in Translation 14 Student task sheet: Augustan Rome 15 Student task sheet: Aeneid 8 Reconfigured 16 2 © OCR 2016 Set Text Guide AS and A Level Latin GENERAL INTRODUCTION Virgil His final work, the Aeneid, was quite possibly commissioned by Augustus himself, with work beginning on it in 29 BC, within a few years of Augustus’ victory at the Publius Virgilius Maro , known in English as Virgil (or Vergil) was celebrated as a literary battle of Actium in 31 BC. colossus in his own lifetime, and has maintained a position at the apex of the classical literary canon ever since. He was born near Mantua, northern Italy (what was then He died in 19 BC in Brindisi, on the Italian coast, on the way back from a visit to Cisalpine Gaul), in 70 BC, and lived through a period of great social and political Greece. On his death-bed he left instructions – fortunately never obeyed – that the upheaval in the Roman world. unedited, though largely complete, manuscript of the Aeneid be destroyed. Instead, according to Augustus’ wishes, the poem was published almost immediately, to great He was given the best of a Roman education, including literature, rhetoric, astronomy acclaim and to Virgil’s lasting fame. and medicine, and then turned to the study of philosophy, before devoting his career to poetry. He was known as a reserved, shy man, and was given the nickname The Aeneid ‘Parthenias’ (maiden) because of this retiring, almost aloof, nature. Introduction The Aeneid is a grand epic in twelve books, telling the story of Aeneas, a Trojan prince, All three of his surviving works who has fled from the burning ruins of his homeland, and whose descendants will are written in the metre known eventually found Rome. He takes with him the household gods of his homeland, as dactylic hexametre. The first of and the divine assurance that he is to found a new Troy in Italy. The story tells both these, the Eclogues, was probably of Aeneas’ wanderings before he reaches Italy, and the armed conflict he engages in published in the late 30s BC, in the when he arrives, in his attempt to fulfil the prophecy . wake of the disruption to rural life caused by Octavian (later Augustus) rewarding his soldiers with land expropriated in northern Italy. The poems in this collection are pastoral, set against an idyllic rural background. The success of this collection brought him attention and the patronage of the fabulously wealthy Maecenas, who encouraged him in his next work, the didactic poetry of the Georgics, which is ostensibly about how to run a farm, but also deals with a number of literary and political topics. Virgil (70-19 B.C.). Woodcut from an edition of Scene from Virgil’s Aeneid: the Cumaean Sibyl leads Aeneas through the underworld to the Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ published at Venice, Italy, in 1532 Golden Bough enabling Aeneas to cross the river Styx 3 © OCR 2016 Set Text Guide AS and A Level Latin The epic owes a great deal to Homeric models: the first six books are (like the Odyssey) Virgil (and his audience!) was aware of this tradition, and like Apollonius before him, about the wanderings of the hero, as he is persecuted by a divine enemy. In Aeneas’ he not only imitates Homer, but also updates and even competes with him. Aeneas case, this is Juno, who both fears the prophecy that Rome will one day destroy her himself appears several times in the Iliad, and so the Aeneid is not only in form and favoured city, Carthage, and is always the traditional enemy of the Trojans. The final six style following in Homer’s footsteps, but is also a continuation of his narrative -- but books, echoing the Iliad, focus on warfare and battle between the Trojans and their from the Trojan, rather than the Greek, perspective. Virgil’s audience did not see this Italian allies, and the Rutulians, with their champion, Aeneas’ antagonist, Turnus. as slavish imitation of lack of originality, but as daring and clever literary play: in the same way, James Joyce’s Ulysses or Derek Walcott’s Omeros are modern takes on the Written when Augustus was at the height of his power as the undisputed emperor ancient tradition of the epic, which update, challenge and play with the originals for of Rome, however, it is more than just mythic history; it is also a celebration of Rome the contemporary world. and its empire. Three major sections (in books 1, 6 and 8) purport to represent visions of the future which show the Rome of Augustus as the culmination of the divine plan for Aeneas. Aeneas himself is specifically named as the ancestor of Julius Caesar, and Introduction Augustus, several times throughout the epic, linking Rome’s greatness with the divine lineage of the Julian gens. Epic Although the Aeneid is the great Roman epic, its literary background is profoundly Greek. Horace, a near-contemporary of Virgil, famously claimed ‘Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit’ (Greece, captured, conquered her savage victor): that is, although Rome by the first century BC was the unchallenged military leader of the world, the Romans looked up to the culture of Greece and copied Greek styles and models. An elite Roman education necessarily included learning to read Greek literature, the most important of which were the epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. These lengthy poems, of 24 books each, tell the story of the final year of the Trojan War, and the homecoming of the Greek hero Odysseus afterwards. These two original epic poems were composed in an era of oral poetry, and deal with the great deeds of heroes of a past age, helped or hindered by self-interested divine forces. Later Greek epics, although primarily literary rather than oral works, continue the traditions of Homeric poetry; of particular importance is the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (third century BC) which tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Apollonius deliberately copies elements of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but he also makes clear that he is updating and even improving Homer. 2nd century Roman mosaic border 4 © OCR 2016 Set Text Guide AS and A Level Latin Talking Points Talking Point Explanation and Teacher Notes This is a question which usually arises naturally from the students themselves when studying Virgil -- his close Where does the boundary between plagiarism and reliance on Homeric models at points, combined with a sixth form diet of stiff talks about academic honesty and artistic inspiration lie? Is Virgil just a plagiarising the dangers of plagiarism usually spark some more-or-less serious questions about Virgil’s integrity. This is a good Homer? opportunity to introduce some key terms which help students to think about these issues -- imitation, allusion, and intertextuality (see the key terms section). Introduction This is a good open-ended question for class discussion, with any variety of answers possible. The primary function of this discussion is to get students to think seriously about what kind of hero Aeneas is, and how the expectations If the Aeneid were being composed as a film in the of epic map onto and differ from modern action films, spy films, adventure films, comic-book worlds or whatever modern world, to what genre would it belong? other genres students try to connect to the Aeneid. The importance of the discussion also lies in understanding generic expectations – that as soon as you place a work in a recognisable genre, the audience has a set of expectations which can be fulfilled or subverted. 5 © OCR 2016 Set Text Guide AS and A Level Latin CONTEXT Civil War The Age of Augustus When Virgil was 21, in 49 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river in the north After the battle of Actium, Octavian became the undisputed master of the Roman of Italy with one of his battle-hardened legions. After a period in which Roman world. As the emperor Augustus, the name he took in 27 BC after the defeat of politics had been dominated by the alliance of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus (the Mark Antony, he claimed to be returning Rome to its traditional principles (morally, First Triumvirate), relations between Pompey and Caesar had broken down, and the socially, and politically) whilst in effect bringing about an autocracy referred to as the Context crossing of this small river signalled the beginning of civil war. Principate. Despite the death of Caesar in 44 BC, and several seemingly decisive victories for one Depending on your viewpoint, Augustus was either the saviour of Rome and the side or the other, the Roman world was consumed by civil conflict until Octavian’s bringer of peace after decades of almost continuous civil strife, or a totalitarian decisive victory over his erstwhile ally, Mark Antony, at the battle of Actium in 31 BC.
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