LIT 231/LIT 230
Prof. G. Steinberg

Response Paper:  Aeneid, Books X and XII

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

1. What do we learn about Virgil’s values from Pallas in Books X and XII?  What motivates Pallas?  Is he sympathetic as a character?  How are we to judge Aeneas’s behavior with respect to Pallas in Book XII?  Why create the character of Pallas at all?  How does his character help Virgil to illustrate and reinforce the values of Rome?
2. What do you think of Turnus?  Is he a worthy adversary for Aeneas?  Are we meant to dislike and condemn him?  Is he sympathetic at all?  If so, when and why?  What motivates him?  What are his values?  Are his values fundamentally different from those of Aeneas?  If so, how?  If not, what do you make of the fact that his values aren’t fundamentally different?  In the end, what makes Turnus the villain and Aeneas the hero of the Aeneid?  Is Turnus in fact the villain and Aeneas the hero?
3. What do you make of the ending of the poem?  Does Aeneas display Augustan virtues?  Why or why not?  Why does Virgil make Aeneas behave as he does?  What values is Virgil endorsing?