Vergil’s Aeneid VIII and the Shield of Aeneas: recurrent topics and cyclic structures
Horatio C. R. Vella
Studia Humaniora Tartuensia, vol. 5 (2004)
Abstract
Book VIII of the Aeneid can be said to be the turning point in Aeneas’ fulfilment of his mission indicated to him in Troy. In it Vergil formed two separate artistic structural patterns making up the length of the whole book while, at the same time, elaborating on the significance of the most symbolic object mentioned in the whole of the Aeneid, the Shield of Aeneas. This ecphrasis is characterized by literary embellishments, which compare well with those found in Homer’s and Hesiod’s poems. Both sections of this book are interrelated, since Hercules, in the site of the future Rome, foreshadows Aeneas, who then receives and lifts the shield representing, at its boss, Augustus’ victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. The book ends as it starts, the preparations being underway for the war against Mezentius.
In the Aeneid, Vergil’s subject matter is mythological, at least it appears to be. This mythological setting frequently refers indirectly to the author’s contemporaneous history, by means of allegory; at times even directly through symbolism, visions, prophecies and descriptions, including ecphrases. In writing his Aeneid, Vergil kept in mind some techniques he had previously employed in both his BucolicsBook of Bucolics, the Ten Eclogues Translated into English Verse: Framed by Cues for Reading Aloud and Clues for Threading Texts and Themes and his Georgics . These techniques included not only allegory, but also structure. The use of allegory employed in the various poems that form the Bucolics was sustained through that of the bees in Georgics IV, and here in the Aeneid.
Horatio C. R. Vella
Studia Humaniora Tartuensia, vol. 5 (2004)
Abstract
Book VIII of the Aeneid can be said to be the turning point in Aeneas’ fulfilment of his mission indicated to him in Troy. In it Vergil formed two separate artistic structural patterns making up the length of the whole book while, at the same time, elaborating on the significance of the most symbolic object mentioned in the whole of the Aeneid, the Shield of Aeneas. This ecphrasis is characterized by literary embellishments, which compare well with those found in Homer’s and Hesiod’s poems. Both sections of this book are interrelated, since Hercules, in the site of the future Rome, foreshadows Aeneas, who then receives and lifts the shield representing, at its boss, Augustus’ victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. The book ends as it starts, the preparations being underway for the war against Mezentius.
In the Aeneid
, Vergil’s subject matter is mythological, at least it appears to be. This mythological setting frequently refers indirectly to the author’s contemporaneous history, by means of allegory; at times even directly through symbolism, visions, prophecies and descriptions, including ecphrases. In writing his Aeneid, Vergil kept in mind some techniques he had previously employed in both his BucolicsBook of Bucolics, the Ten Eclogues Translated into English Verse: Framed by Cues for Reading Aloud and Clues for Threading Texts and Themes
and his Georgics 
. These techniques included not only allegory, but also structure. The use of allegory employed in the various poems that form the Bucolics was sustained through that of the bees in Georgics IV, and here in the Aeneid.
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