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Two Implications of the Trojan Legend

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

It is a well-known fact that the Trojan legend provided Augustus, as it had provided Julius Caesar before him, with a means of claiming divine ancestry. Likewise the Roman people were made the descendants of a nation renowned for its former greatness and celebrated by Homer. While much attention is paid to these facts, certain implications of the legend, for which apologies were sometimes felt (especially by Virgil) to be necessary, tend to pass unnoticed. One of these is that if the gens Iulia was descended from Aeneas, it possessed in him an ancestor whose birth was admittedly divine, but whose feats of valour were decidedly overshadowed in the Iliad by those of Hector. The other implication which I wish to discuss here is that if the Romans were descendants of the Trojans, it was from a defeated nation that the conquerors of the Mediterranean world had arisen. Was the Trojan heritage, in fact, despite its obvious value as propaganda, something of which the Romans and the emperor himself could justifiably be proud?

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1955

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