Founding Fathers: An Ethnic and Gendered Reading of
the Iliadic Aeneid

James R. Brannon (University of South Florida)

Yasmin Syed concludes her 2005 work Vergil’s Aeneid and the Roman Self with an invitation. She spent her previous chapters analyzing gender and ethnicity in the Aeneid by largely focusing on the female characters in the first half of the book. She acknowledges the second half of the epic’s need for a similar treatment, and welcomes the additional scholarship.

This challenge is accepted with a slight shift in focus. The second half of the epic, so filled with warfare, begs for an analysis of the male characters, particularly Aeneas. A detailed study of Aeneas, Turnus and the Italians finds a text full of implications about Roman manliness. This manliness, through the work of such scholars as Myles McDonnell, is recognized as more than the way Romans viewed the world; it’s equivalent to the greatness of Rome. Such an analysis offers shocking revelations, particularly about Aeneas.

Vergil does not offer a physical description of his hero, and relies on a myriad of adjectives to describe his character. These adjectives go far beyond the widely cited virtus and pietas, and are often unexpected and contradictory. Standing out most in the way Vergil describes Aeneas and the Trojans is their Eastern heritage and their loose dress, womanly bonnets and hair curled and perfumed. The scholarship of McDonnell and Craig Williams tells us that those, and many of Vergil’s other descriptions, are aspects of effeminate behavior. In the Roman conception, labeling a male as effeminate is well beyond an insult, it’s more an attack on societal function. That leads to a startling conclusion. Vergil, by repeatedly and aggressively labeling the Trojans as effeminate, has verbally castrated Aeneas and his men.

Through this, and the words of Jupiter, Vergil wipes the Trojans out of history. None of their traits will be assimilated into what will become Rome. The only one of their race who remains necessary is Aeneas. In stark contrast stand the Italians. Their races are numerous, and from their ships to their dress and beards, Vergil describes vast difference. It’s their traits and language that will go into the Roman race. This melting pot of peoples that would form Rome would have had particular meaning for Vergil. He was from Cisalpine Gaul, among a region dismissed as “Gaulish,” and also influenced by Greek thinking. Residents of the area had only recently gained citizenship when Vergil was born, and did not like being thought of as a province.

With those influences in mind, Vergil’s construction of his characters can be analyzed. A conclusion that emerges is that to which Syed ascribes: that becoming a Roman is inclusive and can be learned. But perhaps there is something more. The Trojan race is wiped away, and Aeneas, the supposed Augustan hero, remains. He can only succeed in his lofty destiny with the support of the multiplicity of Italians. But he must do something more. He must rein a streak of independent tendency, represented by Turnus. Turnus comes with his own adjectives, violent and compared often with animals, but at times behaving in a manner worthy of virtus and pietas. Aeneas, in the epic’s dramatic conclusion, stands above Turnus and penetrates him with his sword, marking the seminal event in the founding of Rome. Rome has not a father and a mother but two fathers. Each in their turn, one by behavior and ethnicity and another by ignoble death, forfeit their manliness, and Italian independence is subjected. Their offspring—the product of a war only about them—can only survive the parental weakness with the help of the Italians. The greatness, or better manliness, of Rome is only possible with the vast array of races supporting it. Without them, she is impotent.