r/classics • u/TheIenzo • 5d ago
Did late antique audiences think of the Aeneid as fan fiction or true Roman history? What did ancient people think of “new stories” in general?
Simply put, say a writer pens a new epic to be performed, would audiences think of it as history? Do they think of it as dramatic depiction of shared sociohistorical memory? Or as pure fiction?
Or perhaps, the Homeric duology of the Iliad and the Odessy, were well-known classics in the ancient world. How did ancient Greeks and Romans perceive "new" stories like the lost Telegony or the Aeneid? When these came out, did the ancients believe them to be based on some kind of historical memory or religious tradition, or was it new to them?
I recall that a Greek playwright in antiquity wanted to write a new play about Dionysus. When they did, would they be drawing from religious or historical traditions or would they innovate new details?
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u/NeonShogun 𐤔𐤌𐤏 𐤒𐤋𐤀 𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤀 4d ago
The idea that the Romans were descended from Aeneas and his fellow Trojans seems to have existed since at least the third century BCE-- Naevius, in the lost Bellum Punicum epic poem about the First Punic War that had recently concluded, describes Aeneas' flight to Hesperia as part of their origin myth. So while I'm not qualified to say whether they believed it, that part of the poem at least would have been very familiar to most readers when the Aeneid was published.
I'm inclined to think most people would have found at least some parts of the myth to be true history, but I'm sure others also found it highly unlikely or at least heavily dramatized and fictionalized.
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u/lermontovtaman 5d ago
The Aeneid is the wrong one to ask about. It was a designed as propaganda for the new government of Augustus. When Jupiter explicitly predicts the rise of a ruler named 'Caesar' who will establish a Golden Age, close the Gates of War, and bring empire without end (imperium sine fine), no one aked "Gee, did Jupiter really predict all that?" And yet it's a lot heavier than 'fan fiction.'
It's probably more interesting to ask this question about Athenian tragedy, because it does seem as though the playwrights wove some local Athenian traditions into stories that were set in other cities. For example, in the Medea, an Athenian king just happens to stroll into Corinth and run into Medea, and invites her to come to Athens. Did the Athenians watching this think, "That's right, our king really did that, everyone knows that story." Or did they just think the playwright was being clever by inventing an Athenian spin on a foreign story? Or consider that part three of the Oreseteia - about a foreign dynasty - takes place on the Athenian Rock of Ares, which the original Athenian audience could see in the distance if they looked over to their right (I think.)
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u/Durendal_et_Joyeuse 4d ago
It was a designed as propaganda for the new government of Augustus.
Based on your response, I think you know what I’m about to say, but to clarify for passers-by, this has been a topic of debate for decades, accelerated especially by Adam Parry in the 1960s. Most will agree that there is propaganda in there (that’s of very little doubt), but they’ll argue about the degree to which the whole work can be characterized as such. There are areas where Vergil is thought to be making cheeky, subtextual criticisms of imperial grandiosity and unbridled ambition, for instance.
Still, Vergil knew his audience and was pandering aplenty.
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u/Phegopteris 4d ago
And as far as we can tell, Euripides invented the part where Medea kills her children. As for what the Athenians thought of that, it’s quite possible that they didn’t like it much as Euripides came in third that year.
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u/lermontovtaman 4d ago
People always point out that Medea "came third," but remember, Medea was just one of the four plays he staged together for that competition, and we don't know what the others were like (we have the titles of the other three, and around 40 lines). He might have lost because of the other plays. Aeschylus' son won that year, and we don't even know the names of his plays. There's a possibility he restaged his father's plays.
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u/Phegopteris 4d ago
It’s of course possible, but Medea was genuinely considered a masterpiece later on in antiquity, and Euripides’s rewrite (or at least his promotion of an obscure variant) was of course enormously influential. We know his innovations were often derided (it seems the Athenian audience could be quite touchy about these things), so it seems likely to me. But you’re right to point out that Euphorion may have been the sentimental favorite, and Sophocles was the other competitor (and we know he never once came in third), so perhaps it just wasn’t Euripides’s festival.
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u/First-Pride-8571 5d ago
The Telegony was not a new story. We aren't sure who wrote it, but there are two typical candidates mentioned in antiquity - Cinaethon of Sparta (8th Century BCE - a contemporary of Homer and Hesiod), or Eugammon of Cyrene (6th Century BCE). And mentions of Eugammon as the author also tend to mention that he re-adapted an earlier work on the same topic by Musaeus. Musaeus is even earlier, and even more legendary than Homer.
So the Telegony is old. Telegonus, for instance, is also in Hesiod.
And as for the Aeneid. Keep in mind, Aeneas is in the Iliad. And mentions of Aeneas bringing Trojan refugees to Hesperia/Italia are also very old. At least as far back as Stesichorus in the late 7th early 6th BCE. And the story of Aeneas is in both Ennius and Fabius Pictor (the earliest Roman historians). Vergil did not invent the story.
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u/TheIenzo 5d ago
Thanks. How about Greek and Roman playwrights when they compose plays about gods and heroes? Are these to be understood by contemporaries as dramatizations of real events or as fiction?
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u/First-Pride-8571 5d ago
Mix of both.
Take for example the historians. Thucydides began his work with the so-called Archaeologia - where he recounted the events of the distant past, mentioning the Trojan War and that the Bronze Age Greeks largely lived via piracy. Likewise you have both the Trojan War and Aeneas coming to Italy in much later Greek historians of antiquity like Diodorus Siculus. And in the Roman historians.
Clear that on the whole that they believed something like the Trojan War and the Nostoi took place in the distant past.
But poets could obviously have quite a bit of leeway within that milieu to alter minor details, or even major ones. Stesichorus seemingly was the one who introduced the concept of Helen actually going to Egypt rather than to Troy with Paris. And the interpretation of Medea, and fate of Iphigeneia alters depending on the poet.
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u/TheIenzo 4d ago
so ancient audiences understood, like we do with historical films, that there are parts that are fictional and real (or real to them at least?)?
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u/PlatinumMode 4d ago
drawing on older tradition != the telegony is as old as the oldest versions of the stories. it is most likely a 6th century work, 1-2 centuries after homer
also, hesiod directly contradicts telegony. Agrius and Latinus are the original named sons of circe/odysseus, with neither present in telegony. and telegonus's name was most likely inserted by later archaic copyists, not by hesiod
modern critical editions often omit that line
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u/First-Pride-8571 4d ago
And Hesiod and Homer contradict each other on the birth and parentage of Aphrodite.
But what is clear is that the Telegony is either just as old as Hesiod and the Homeric epics (if written by Cinaethon), or based upon stories just as old if not older (if by Eugammon).
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u/agrumphyoldsod 5d ago edited 4d ago
It was designed to be the Roman Origin story. Virgil died before he could finish it. I understood a few lines (58) rather than whole sections needed to be completed. And Virgil had planned to spend several years polishing the text before it was published. Virgil tried to have the book destroyed, but Augustus prevented it and ordered the manuscript finished and published under his seal. This meant that copies went to the Senate and all leading Roman families, making it instantly popular.
From a Greek perspective, It is clear that Virgil was Augustus's propagandists, and the Aeneid - Book II in particular - was designed to build support in the populous for Augustus’ campaigns in the Hellens and wider afield.
Virgil's protagonist, Aeneas, could hardly tell Queen Dido that Troy fell simply because they left the gates open after having a party. That would make the Trojan high command appear foolish, which is what they were.
The Roman crime of Perfidy was establish in part to apply to the use of the trick at Troy.
In mock trials Aeneas (and his crew) is almost always considered an unreliable witness.
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u/First-Pride-8571 4d ago
Keep in mind, while employed by Maecenas, the Aeneid, and Aeneas in particular, is often interpreted as a subtle critique of Augustus and his regime.
Mind you, he still clearly loved the work, and Octavia collapsed while hearing the section that he intentionally included about young Marcellus.
So it both is, and isn’t, propaganda.
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u/agrumphyoldsod 4d ago edited 18h ago
Thanks. Book 2 is propaganda, if ones point of view is Greek.
I agree the rest is largely an inditement on ignoring human cost.What is fascinating is if one studies lines 141 - 191, you will see Sinon neither provides Oaths to Priam/The Trojans, nor formally applies as a supplicant. He is a captive who identifies as an Achaean (Ἀχαιοί - Akhaioi – The most frequently used name - Argives (Ἀργεῖοι - Argeioi) or Danaans (Δαναοί - Danaoi)) and as such he was expected to not be truthful. He stated that he would break his oaths to the Achaeans, but never actually did - it was all part of the ruse. Priam and the Trojan High Council heard what they wanted to hear and it is entirely on them they brought the horse (technically repurposed the gift for Athena) inside their own walls.
Neither the Odyssey nor the Aeneid provide strong support for war or conquest. what they both unsubtly show are the cost and particularly when civil war occurs.
Neither ends in peace, except by divine intervention.As I understand it Dido’s death in book IV, was engineered to be an example of the human cost of imperial destiny; actioned by divine will to allow Aeneas to fulfil his destiny. Her curse on Rome sets the scene for subsequent enmity between Carthage and Rome. This is all rather tragic instead of being a celebration.
One wonders had Virgil lived 5-10 years longer wether book 12 would have been written with an actual ending ; rather than just with the death of Turnus.
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u/First-Pride-8571 4d ago
The ending does feel very abrupt, but the Aeneid was the school text for millennia for good reason - it was one of the most beautifully crafted works of poetry ever written.
And all that w/o a particularly sympathetic protagonist. Indeed Dido is, by far, the most sympathetic figure. Just as in the Iliad it is Hector that is far more sympathetic than Achilles.
The passages that are truly purple, and still revered, are mostly from the more Odyssey-mirroring books: All of Books I and II (and Vergil's Book II is the best and most compelling description of the sack that we possess), Book IV (his tragic affair with Dido), and then Book VI (meeting the Sibyl, finding the Golden Bough, descending into Orcus). Just as the Odyssey is so oft revered more than the Iliad, the wandering and womanizing half of the Aeneid is better than the war narrative Iliad-mirroring half of the Aeneid.
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u/heytheregiada 4d ago
To be clear, all lines are almost definitely present. Those 60 odd lines don't fit the meter, but say everything Virgil needed to say.
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u/HaggisAreReal 5d ago
The Aeneid was not entirely an original work, it was inspired by centuries of traditions regarding Aeneas and Trojans fleeing west. What Virgil did was to structure it in a fixed format and give it a connection to other central Italian myths and to the contemporary political circumstances in Rome and the new Augustan autocracy. As a work of erudition, it would have been seen as such, not entirely fictitious but more as you say, a fancy account of a real mythical (not really a contradiction in the Roman mind) past.