Fathers and Sons in Virgil's Aeneid

About this book

"Why is it that no father in the Aeneid can help his son in his moment of need? In addressing himself to this question, the author isolates the essential theme of the Aeneid and shows the pattern of father-and-son relationships in the poem. The search for an answer to this question also leads to the other perennial Virgilian questions: "What is pietas?" "What is the Golden Bough?" "Is Aeneas a failed hero?" "Why did Virgil despair of his long poem?" Some of the answers come from an analysis of the hero's descent to the underworld in terms of Jungian archetypes. Still more come from a synthesis of Virgil's Homeric parallels and a formulation of the hero-myth itself, with a statement on the part women must play in the heroic paradigm.