Earl R. Merrill: For Nearly 2,000 Years, The Aeneid Was Europe’s Most Influential Work Of Literature. Why’s It So Uncomfortable Now?

Thursday, October 11, 2018

For Nearly 2,000 Years, The Aeneid Was Europe’s Most Influential Work Of Literature. Why’s It So Uncomfortable Now?

Daniel Mendelsohn: “While our forebears looked confidently to the text of the Aeneid for answers, today it raises troubling questions. … Two thousand years after its appearance, we still can’t decide if [Virgil’s] masterpiece is a regressive celebration of power as a means of political domination or a craftily coded critique of imperial ideology — a work that still has something useful to tell us.”