the poetical description of the urbs and the convention of the founding heroes in Aeneid book 8: hercules, Evander and aeneas

Abstract

In this paper we analyze an excerpt from Book VIII of the Aeneid in which the Trojan hero visits the site of the future Rome, where he is welcomed by Evander, the Greek, founder of Palanteum, when the arcades celebrated the passage of Hercules through Lazio. From the banks of the Tiber to the Palatine Hill, Evander leads the Trojan guest through spaces that were familiar to the public of the epopee. Based on the hermeneutical historical procedure, we problematize the poet’s choices in compiling a number of foundational narratives that put forward, in turn, an aetiology of the monuments and religious spaces of the urbs: Ara Maxima, Lupercal, Porta Carmentalis, Capitoline Hill. Different from travel narratives, the poetic construction of Rome in book 8 assembles aspects of a variety of temporalities of the same city. In order to understand the topographical references of Aeneid, our study encompasses, in addition to the hermeneutic and exegetical analysis of the Latin text, sources contemporary to Virgil, such as the works of Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as well as data provided by archeology.