Virgil's Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence

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Summary: Essays as Lively as the Aeneid
Review: Virgil's Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence by Michael C.J. Putnam (Can't Amazon maintain the paragraphing and formatting I give this review? It looks terrible the way your program jams my careful prose into one long paragraph.) It is fairly certain that Latin scholars urged Professor Putnam to collect his essays into an anthology so future students and scholars could have ready access to his indispensable work. I will never be a scholar, but I am a lifelong student, and am immensely glad for Putnam's contribution to my understanding of the Aeneid. With the exception of one essay written for this volume, all essays in Virgil's Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence (1995) were published in various journals between 1970 and 1992. It would take hours just to prowl library aisles to find the indexed journals and cart them to photocopy machines. Yes, some details in individual essays are repetitive, but even the redundancies are useful: No one who reads these pages will ever forget Anchises, father of Aeneas, from the depths of Hades, urging his Romanus son to spare the suppliant, war down the proud. That moment, writes Putnam, is the ethical center of the poem, a center that comes terrifyingly apart in the closing line when Aeneas forgets (if he ever heard) all that his father tried to teach him. He brings his sword down on the defeated, wounded Turnus, who has raised his arm as suppliant, clearly visible to all who observe. Yes, readers can understand the human emotion involved: Aeneas hesitates, then sees the belt worn by Pallas, son of Evander, youthful ally for whom he had a deep if ambiguous personal affection. But this was a moment of profound possibility for a much larger good, witnessed by other defeated Latins on whom Aeneas would now call to build a new nation. How eagerly could they now serve this invader Aeneas who so mercilessly slaughtered their leader? And how carefully the poet had to craft this unfolding war, to suggest to his own Emperor Augustus that Roman leaders had deeply failed the empire by indulging so many avoidable civil wars, most often for some petty personal motive. Putnam helps me see subtleties I could never have imagined despite multiple readings of the Aeneid, and despite decades of meditating Greek and Roman myths. His discussion of the Daedalus myth as outlined in Book 6 is stunning, a revelation of meaning where I had read carelessly, thinking the poet was just dallying to display his learning. Oh, no; in the Aeneid every word truly counts. And in Putnam's essays too; he supports each conclusion with precise details, as trifles in ponds ever expanding. The teacher from Providence and Brown University often includes just how many times a certain word appears-not only in the Aeneid, but in the Georgics and Eclogues too-and carefully illustrates just how this word circles back to give ever-increasing light. My deepest reasons for valuing the Aeneid reside in Book 3.706-9, wherein I finally found full acceptance of the fatherly burden: an acceptance that transcends memories deemed good, or less than good. Regardless, Putnam's work helps me see beyond the personal to the supranational. "Power corrupts, poetry cleanses," John F. Kennedy said in his tribute to Robert Frost. Beyond doubt, knowledge of the Aeneid can still guide world leaders through the furies of our own times. Keith Fahey PO Box 16462 Encino, California 91416 818-996-5298 [e-mail]