>Hey all.. >i'm new here... i'm an 18 yr old high school student currently taking >Latin. >I've been interested in Ancient Rome and Greece for most of my life... >I'm currently studying book 6 of the Aeneid in Latin... i know the >guidelines for the list >prohibits popping in and just asking for information, but i don't plan on >doing that. >The project is due a long while from now, and i *do* plan on doing 90% of >this research myself, but would enjoy discussing some aspects of it. >One question I do have... when Vergil wrote the Aeneid, did he mean it as >a work of fiction, or at this time did the general populace of Rome >believe in this story, like the Odyssey or Iliad? >thanks! >ren > >----------------------------------------------------------------------- >To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. >Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message >"unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You >can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
With no-one around to interview, it's hard to say what Virgil "meant" and hard to say what his contemporaries believed, but I think it would be fair to say that you could have found the same range of opinions on these myths as you could find today: some believed absolutely in their truth, some believed absolutely in their fictionality, and some were in between. A further complicating factor is the variability of myth in antiquity and the poet's responsibility to create new versions of myth, as Virgil did again and again in the Aeneid (most people knew that most myths were represented in a variety of versions): hence they might see Virgil's version as a creative response to myths in which they might or might not believe. James Lawrence Peter Butrica Department of Classics Memorial University St. John's, Newfoundland A1C 5S7 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
