11 Selections from Vergil That are Vital to Understanding The Aeneid

Important 10-line blocks of text in dactylic hexameter that you can memorize to impress coworkers and woo attractive people.

I decided to use this week to prepare some materials for a hypothetical class on the Aeneid at a high school level. When writing syllabi, I feel that it is important to separate goals into week-, month-, and semester-long chunks to set my expectations for students accordingly. One of the lessons I would want to pass on to students is the value of rote memorization: we have previously discussed its importance in the language classroom, but a short explanation of my reasoning is that the vocabulary learned in that way would stick well with the student. At the beginning of the semester, I would explain to students that one of my expectations was a 10-15 line recitation of any part of the poem in Latin. For those who cannot be left responsible with so many options, I would solidify their selections somewhere before the last month of classes. By this point students will have an understanding of the meter and should be about to finish the 12th book, leaving some time to play around with other Vergilian poems. In my experience, similar expectations have taken a week of concentration, so this should serve as enough of a buffer. To prepare for the worst-case scenario, I wanted to set aside 30 different beginning lines in the off chance that no student in an unusually large class would be prepared. It would be poor form to do so without a justification for these choices, so I wrote a few little blurbs about why each of these chunks has value. Because some of my reasoning for each of these selections is repetitive, I have culled the list down to my favorite ten. Keen readers may notice an overlap between my selections and the guidelines for the AP exam: depending on the needs of the school, this can be used for an AP Latin course, an elective literature course, or anything in between. I would attempt to steer students in the former category towards lines that fall within that framework, but frankly any selection in Dryden’s translation for the latter would serve as well. 

My primary source for these notes is Servius’ commentary on the Aeneid, everything else is from memory or is cited where needed.

1.1-11
The introduction of the poem: a plot summary plus the invocation of the muse. Every Latin student ought to have this memorized, but that is a path one must choose for themselves. There’s plenty of allusion to Homer here: his πολύτροπος is Vergil’s iactatus, his νόστος is Vergil’s profugus, and his κλέος is Vergil’s insignis.¹ Not only does this state his intentions to the reader to tell the story of the journey of Aeneas, but it further solidifies itself as the heir apparent to the ancient masters.

1.12-22
From this selection, we begin to understand the author’s intent for this poem. while the previous 10 lines speak to critics and the literary folk, Vergil follows with an explanation for the layman. In order to celebrate Rome’s greatest conflict, the tensions between both cities had to be fully understood. Though prior poets (specifically Ennius) put the events of the Punic wars to verse, a full retelling of the founding of Rome did not exist in Latin.
The Phoenician word for “new city” is Qart-ḥadašt² and Vergil calls Carthage an “urbs antiqua,” an “old city.” Some scholars view this as a coincidence, others view the connection as intentional.

1.265-279
We have covered the aspects of the Aeneid that are for the lower classes and the higher classes, and now we have arrived at the true raison d’etre. Some few miserable souls hand-wave away this masterpiece as no more than a work of propaganda. (It is undeniable that it is propaganda, but has the task of legitimizing an empire ever been executed so beautifully?) Lines 267-68 connect Julius Caesar’s family line to the son of a demigod, which helped to legitimize Augustus’ claims of divine right to rule. This prophecy is a bit more subtle about the etymology of the gens Julius coming from Iulus, but later in book 6 Anchises name-drops both Julius and Augustus Caesar.