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The Aeneid <<uh-nee-id>>, a la Shmoop. Without TV, the Internet, printed books, or

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handheld video games, there was a whole lot of verbal storytelling going on in ancient

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Rome.

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[1]You could even say these recitations were epic…

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…especially when talking about Virgil’s Aeneid.

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Here’s the opening line of the Aeneid:

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I sing of arms and of a man.

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So which is it? What exactly is the Aeneid about? Arms, or a man?

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First, let's make one thing clear. We're not talking about arms… we're talking about

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arms.

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Like… more weapons than we can count.

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So you could definitely argue that the Aeneid is about arms.

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After all, this is a bloody story of war. In that way, it takes after Homer's Iliad.

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For comparison, the opening line of Homer's Iliad is:

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Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' <<peel-ee-us>>[2] son Achilles.

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The anger in this case being, you guessed it… war.

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Blood. Guts. Dismemberment. All the juiciest details of conflict.

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But Virgil wasn’t inspired by the Iliad alone.

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Ever heard of the Odyssey?

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Just as the Odyssey was about Odysseus… The Aeneid is about Aeneas <<uh-NEE-iss>>.

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A man.

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In case you’ve misplaced your copy of the Odyssey, we’ll remind you of its first line,

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too:

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Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven.

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That’s right… the man.

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The Aeneid follows in these footsteps and tells the story of a dude on a quest who ends

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up in some seriously sticky situations. But maybe the first line is deceiving. Is

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it possible that the Aeneid is about neither arms nor a particular man?

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It might just be about the whims of the gods and the founding of Rome.

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And those gods are fickle. [3]

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They’re just as likely to turn you into a sheep as they are to bless you with a bountiful

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harvest.

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You don’t ever want to be on their bad side.

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Is the Aeneid about arms?

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Is it about a man?

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Is it just an origin story about the chosen city of the gods?[4]

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Or is it all of the above? Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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[1]This is utterly and completely not true. The epic was not sung. It was recited.

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The only reason that the epic starts with "I sing" is because he was copying Homer.

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There was really no singing in Rome. [2]This is wrong. It's PEEL-ee-us

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[3]I mean…it really is about all of them…so, the question posed at the end doesn't really

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have a lot of substance. [4]This is really only part of the story.

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Because Aeneas is the son of a goddess, and Augustus, the first emperor, is supposedly

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descended from the goddess and is therefore divine. So, although you could say that the

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gods are fickle, the gods are actually pretty authoritative. And the whole point is that

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the founding of Rome was divinely determined—it was fate—and so the city is basically the

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chosen city of the gods.

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