LIT 231
Prof. G. Steinberg

Response Paper:  Aeneid, Books III-IV

Book IV of the Aeneid is probably the most famous part of the whole poem.  In it, the poem reaches a climactic moment.  Focus a lot of your attention on Book IV, but don't neglect Book III.

Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper:

1. What impression do you get of Ulysses (the Roman spelling of Odysseus) in Book III?  Aeneas goes to many of the same places that Odysseus/Ulysses went in the Odyssey (e.g., the island of Polyphemus and the dangerous strait between Scylla and Charybdis).  How does Virgil want us to think of Ulysses?  How does Aeneas compare to him?
2. How does Aeneas fare as a leader in Book III?  Is he a good leader?  Why or why not?  How does he go about making decisions?  How do his decisions affect his people?  How do his people affect his decisions?
3. What do you think of Aeneas in Book IV?  Is he a tragic figure, forced against his will by the gods to be great?  Is he a cad, who abandons Dido without cause or decency?  Is he a glory-monger who dumps Dido out of a self-seeking sense of the glory of Rome and the state?  Is he a good leader, who puts aside his own personal interests and needs for the sake of his people (even generations as yet unborn)?
4. What do you think of Dido?  Is she a strong woman brought down by passion, a sympathetic victim, a shameless hussy, a tragic pawn, a crazed stalker, a loose cannon, a pathetic loser?  How might she fit or not fit the expectations and ideals of womanhood of the ancient Romans?
5. What do you think of Juno and Venus in Book IV?  How do their behavior and motives affect the events of the story?  What kind of world does Virgil assume (or create) for his characters?  Is it a just world?

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