Where do you begin with a text so gargantuan?
How do you hook a teenage audience?
Below are four keys that I have used to unlock the text in the first few lessons. I know there are at least forty-four other approaches out there too, and so do please post your comments below: bring your wares to share!
1. The context
This is a way to place your class in the position of Virgil’s audience. It’s also ‘safe’ in that times, places and people are concrete enough for every pupil in the ability range to find their foothold. They also, in my experience, enjoy thinking about the tense relationship between The Arts and The Establishment- especially a totalitarian one. One interesting discussion point might be the role Stormzy has played in endorsing the Labour Party and sponsoring social mobility.
What activities have worked?
The Ides of March as a pivot point. This event many pupils will probably know, and you can use it to try and elicit what sort of political conditions made it possible, and how a newly dominant general might proceed in the aftermath. How might they deploy the talents of Rome’s top poet?
Massolit lectures, or the In Our Time episode on the Aeneid, might be ways to flesh out the class discussion. Mary Beard’s documentary Julius Caesar Revealed connects Caesar to the rise in populism today. For those with a bigger appetite, I recommend John Williams’ Augustus novel or even Ronald Syme’s The Augustan Revolution for those curious about what Augustus represented on the eve of World War II.
Bringing in the Aeneid, you could read and discuss the three visibly Augustan set-pieces in the poem- Jupiter’s Book 1 prophecy, the parade of heroes in Book 6 and the shield of Aeneas in Book 8. How does Augustus want to present his regime?
How does this literary evidence connect to the archaeological record: the Prima Porta statue (buy a model when next in Rome!) or the Ara Pacis or Augustus’ early coinage?
What about Ovid? You could read the apotheoses of Caesar and Augustus at the very end of Met 15 and set it against controversial points in the Ars Am or the Amores. Is there tension within the poet’s corpus here? How does Ovid compare to Virgil? Is any poetry- but especially love poetry- always going to undermine the strictures of an authoritarian?
For the really keen readers, you could suggest Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time which evokes brilliantly the dilemma and danger faced by the composer Shostakovich under successive Soviet regimes. It’s a wonderful read in its own right!
How would you go about bringing some of this into the classroom? Independent research tasks? Presentations? Discussion groups, considering various artefacts or extracts in a carousel? A diary entry the day after Virgil first met Augustus? A debate between Virgil and Ovid? A letter written by Maecenas to Virgil, talking up the new regime? Virgil’s last will and testament, giving the rationale for his wish to destroy the draft text?
2. The plot
Teenagers, like all of us, are suckers for a good story. It’s possible for a teacher to whip through the plot of the Aeneid in a couple of minutes, and then dutifully return to the prescribed book. I’ve certainly done that- but it’s always felt a bit of a shame.
So you could ask your Year 10 pupils to spend their first weekend of term reading the Penguin start to finish. You could- and some would.
But for the first few lessons at least, here are some other options:
| 1 Squall | 7 Home |
| 2 Fall | 8 Rome |
| 3 Coasts | 9 Spies |
| 4 Dames | 10 War |
| 5 Games | 11 More |
| 6 Ghosts | 12 Dies |
I can’t claim the credit for this mnemonic, but it’s certainly been wheeled out every year since I found it!
You could use this either for the basis of a storyboard, or you could get them doing some speculative pre-reading. What do you think’s going to happen? Steer them with mention of an Odyssean first half and an Iliadic second. Have them reflect on multiple-season TV shows: how does the writing team of e.g. Game of Thrones maintain their audience’s interest? You could of course, just plot these words on a map and annotate appropriately.
Teenagers also like being read to- it’s a kind of comforting recall of ‘carpet time’ in primary school- and so in the past I’ve begun by reading, as dramatically as possible, the prescribed book to them. You can then discuss what might have happened before, and where the story could go. A plot summary quiz is also opportune at this stage: here is one I built using Kahoot. Throwing in some false red-herrings (esp. ludicrous similes) can make it entertaining.
Another way to convey the drama of the Aeneid is to browse paintings, illustrations and sculpture which portray strong scenes. There’s a useful Pinterest board called ‘Teaching the Aeneid Art’, which you could draw upon to encourage inference, connection and awareness of the moods present.
How else do you give your pupils a sense of the whole, with or without reading the whole book in translation?
And which English translation do your pupils enjoy most?
3. The writer
If you leaf through old commentaries and Loeb editions of the Aeneid, one feature often strikes me: how scholars breezily reconstruct the biographical persona of Virgil. He generally comes across as tall, stooped, ‘raw-boned and rustic’ according to Donatus, and also showing symptoms of tuberculosis.
Trying to debunk who the man was and what made him tick can be quite a fun speculation game- however ultimately futile. It also raises some important context points, and can help pupils understand a) the process of writing a highly allusive, literary epic and b) the ongoing process by which we- and the Romans- identify ‘a masterpiece’ and construct the artist behind it.
This is what Aelius Donatus, a 4th century AD rhetorician, wrote about the poet at work:
21. Soon after, he commenced work on the Aeneid: a complex theme of diverse moods, the equivalent, as it were, of both Homeric poems; well-acquainted, moreover, with names and objects Greek, as well as Latin; and (in this he took the greatest pains) which would encompass the origin of the city of Rome and of Augustus. 22. It is handed down that, while he was composing the Georgics, he usually dictated a great number of verses which he had thought out in the morning, and would, in revising them throughout the day, reduce them to a very small number, saying that he brought his poem into being in a fashion not unlike the bear’s, that in fact he fashioned it by licking. 23. As for the Aeneid, he first drafted it in prose and divided it into twelve books, deciding to construct it bit by bit, so that he could do each part as it seized his fancy, taking up nothing in order.
25. …The Georgics he finished in seven years, and the Aeneid in eleven.
(tr. David Wilson-Okamura (1996; rev. 2005, 2008)
- You could go on to consider how quickly the Aeneid became a classic:
30. Even when scarcely begun, the reputation of the Aeneid was such that Sextus Propertius [Carmina 2.34.65] did not hesitate to prophesy thus:
cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Grai!
nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade.
Give way, Roman authors; give way, Greeks:
Something greater than the Iliad is born, I know not what.
31. Indeed, Augustus (for, as it happened, he was away on an expedition in Cantabria) jokingly entreated him in his letters, with threats as well as prayers, “that you send me” (to employ his own words) “your first sketch of the Aeneid, or the first colon, it does not matter which.” 32. Much later, when he had refined his subject-matter, he finally recited three whole books for Augustus: the second, fourth, and sixth–this last out of his well-known affection for Octavia, who (being present at the recitation) is said to have fainted at the lines about her son, “…You shall be Marcellus” [Aen. 6.884].
Suetonius in his De Poetis (33) remarks:
He gave readings also to various others, but never before a large company, selecting for the most part passages about which he was in doubt, in order to get the benefit of criticism.
Servius the 4th century AD grammarian says:
‘Virgil’s purpose is to imitate Homer and praise Augustus by means of his ancestors’
Recovering the ‘real Virgil’ is impossible, but it can help pupils build a connection to their set text.
There is also a related endeavour, recovering the ‘voice’ of the poet- or indeed the competing voices- within the poem. Maria Wyke in Twelve Voices does a fantastic job of animating Virgil as projected through his works. I always issue the Virgil chapter to my GCSE class.
What other introductory, accessible articles do you recommend?
I know people swear by the Virgil chapter in Conte’s Latin Literature: A History, and I have found Classical Literature: An Introduction by Croally and Hyde excellent for literary and historical context. The Aeneid by R.D. Williams is my go-to monograph on the poem.
4. The genre
Begin with modern usage of ‘epic’: what does it denote?
Where do you go from there?
a) What culture do you consume today which could be categorised as epic?
It is estimated that the average player takes 62.5 hours to complete the computer game Red Dead Redemption 2.
What, other than length, makes it epic? Characterisation? Plot arc? Mood? Particular conventions?
b) The Aeneid’s epic predecessors
This is an accessible but serious exercise: spot the difference, effectively.
In what ways does the proem of the Aeneid (ll.1-11) imitate those of the Iliad (ll.1-12) and the Odyssey (ll.1-10)?
Think about the following:
- Who is mentioned (human and divine, heroes and followers)?
- How are they described?
- What places are named?
- Is there a subject matter identified?
- What events are mentioned?
- Are reasons given for those events?
- What role does the Muse play?
- Is there reference to fate or destiny?
These ideas needn’t reach a resolution yet- they can be established as concerns for the poem to explore. Similarly, a short preliminary essay (500-1000 words) on ‘What does the poem emphasise in the first 300 lines?’ is a good way to flush out characters and problems which will figure in the poem later.
So there you are: four ways to introduce the Aeneid. What has worked for you?
