Which "Aeneid" in Whose Nineties?

I suppose that I ought to feel well-prepared to speak about the future of studies on the Aeneid, having just read and reviewed two new books dealing with the theme of prophecy in that poem. In reality, though, I feel utterly unable to make comfortable predictions about where our epic voyages will take us-particularly as one of the books I alluded to, Professor O'Hara's, sees prophecy in the Aeneid as not only misleading, but usually fatal. I will speak, therefore, in not a vatic but a protreptic mode, focusing less on what I think will happen in Aeneid research, than on what I would like to see happen. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Classics This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/108 WHICH AENEID IN WHOSE NINETIES? I suppose that I ought to feel well-prepared to speak about the future of studies on the Aeneid, having just read and reviewed two new books dealing with the theme of prophecy in that poem.1 In reality, though, I feel utterly unable to make comfortable predictions about where our epic voyages will take us-particularly as one of the books I alluded to, Professor O'Hara's, sees prophecy in the Aeneid as not only misleading, but usually fatal. I will speak, therefore, in not a vatic but a protreptic mode, focusing less on what I think will happen in Aeneid research, than on what I would like to see happen. Recent years, of course, have seen many notable contributions to the ongoing discourse that surrounds the Aeneid.2 Some of these show signs of altering significantly the frame of reference within which most of us operate. I take this frame of reference to be more or less that of the so-called Harvard school as modified by Johnson,3 to wit, a tendency to dwell on the darkness that pervades the epic at the expense of its triumphal, panegyric qualities. Important work in this vein continues and no doubt will continue to be done; but I think most will agree that among the most significant studies of the Aeneid to appear in recent years is one that implicitly challenges the usual assumptions of Vergil's more "pessimistic" readers. I refer to Philip Hardie's study of the cosmic allegory in the Aeneid.4 Hardie of course emphasizes the triumphal and panegyric aspects of the epic in a way that has not been reconciled with what I have called the prevailing critical attitude; and he is not alone in doing so. Francis Cairns has weighed in with a study of the poem from the perspective of ancient kingship theory, finding Vergil critical of bad kings such as Dido, Turnus, and Mezentius, but approving of the apprentice king Aeneas and, by extension, of the emperor Augustus.5 Similarly, Karl Galinsky has contributed an important article considering the anger of Aeneas from the perspective of lEJisabeth Henry, The Vigour of Prophecy. A Study of Virgil's Aeneid (Carbondale and Edwardsville 1989); James J. O'Hara, Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's Aeneid (Princeton 1990). See Bryn Mawr Classical Review 1 (1990) 62-68. 2These remarks are not intended as a comprehensive survey of recent scholarship on the Aeneid. If I single out a few works in particular, I do so only for illustrative purposes, and mean no disresriect to the many other valuable contributions that space prevents me from mentioning. For the term, see W. R. Johnson, Darkness Visible. A Study of Vergil's Aeneid (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London 1976) 11, 156-7 n. 10. Johnson's own reading performed the crucial service of moderating the tendency towards extremism in critical pessimism while maintaining a clear emphasis on Vergil's tragic Weltanschauung. 4V,rgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and lmperium (Oxford 1986). Sv,rgil's Augustan Epic (Cambridge 1989).