The Power of Love and Its Many Forms Anonymous College

The Aeneid by the Roman author Virgil is an epic poem that tells the tale of the Trojan prince Aeneas’ journey to Italy and the eventual founding of Rome following the events of the Trojan War. This epic is often compared with two well-known predecessors, The Iliad and The Odyssey (works commonly associated with the Greek author Homer), based on both stylistic and thematic similarities, but there are distinct differences between the two authors’ works, too. As Robert Fitzgerald points out in the “Postscript” for his translation of The Aeneid, “[Virgil] re-created a Homeric hero in the Homeric age, he also deliberately echoed Homer in many details of narrative, in many conventions and features of style. But his purpose was totally un-Homeric and drastically original: to enfold in the mythical action of The Aeneid foreshadowings and direct foretellings of Roman history, more than a thousand years of it between Aeneas and his own time.” It is through this “un-Homeric” narrative that Virgil is able to weave the theme of love into this tale, thus displaying his uniqueness as an author.

Love takes on many forms, ranging from romantic love to platonic, familial love and even bloodlust, which can be interpreted as the love of war and...