The Great National Myth

A pedagogic component to art

Will help keep your nation quite smart

Make citizens compliant

Just a bit self-reliant

And from your domain they’ll not part

This is the second time I’ve read the Aenied for a class, and so I have a little bit of background in it. While it co-opts the style of Homer’s writing, its agenda is somewhat different. If we suppose that Homer’s purpose (in part) was to use the Iliad and the Odyssey as ways of passing on a cultural encyclopedia to the Greeks, to teach them their own cultural identity—Homer’s ideal of what the Greeks should be, the Aenied is the deliberate act of Virgil to push patron Augustus Caesar’s political agenda for Rome.

In the Aenied, Virgil has created a cultural myth of shared identity, drawing on common stories and shared religious concepts to offer legitimacy to a set of values and a past that all Romans can take pride in. These values are expressed through story in a variety of ways. When Aeneas sees those being punished in the underworld, their crimes are more than just myths—they are warnings for Roman citizens against undesirable behavior. Likewise, in a circular fashion, Virgil increases Augustus Caesar’s legitimacy as a ruler by gifting him with this divine (and seemingly pre-ordained) heritage.

Ultimately, Virgil and Augustus Caesar both saw the dazzling potential of utilizing an epic poem as a means of civic education and they seized upon that opportunity to create the Rome that they wanted to see. In writing this blog, I was discussing these concepts with Amy and trying to articulate what other circumstances where people have created a work of art or narrative piece with the explicit agenda of defining a national identity or unifying a people into a shared identity group. The only things we could think of are religious texts, most particularly the Torah. I would be curious to see what other people think of when they think of these kinds of works.