Is the Aeneid the Roman version of Homer?

Answer 1

The Aeneid is, and isn't, a Roman equivalent of Homer.

Before the Aeneid the Roman national poem was probably Ennius' The Annals. Most of the Annals has not survived, but what we have of it makes it seem more like a Saga (a loosely structured poem glorifying warlike virtues) than a true epic (epics have a more structured storyline, and usually a more developed set of ethics).

Vergil probably wanted Rome to have a proper national epic. Vergil's near contemporary Propertius wrote nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade ("I think we may be seeing the birth of something larger than the Iliad"). But at the same time Vergil realised that the Roman epic would need to be less realistic than Homer's poems are. Homer's poems were written at a time when war was still natural and accepted by the Greek city-states; to some extent Homer can get away with glorifying war. By Vergil's time war had become industrialised, and it was a nasty, murderous business (no matter how necessary it might sometimes have seemed).

Homer could show the good side to war (though he shows the bad side just as clearly). Vergil could only show war as a sometimes inevitable evil.

Vergil follows Homer to the extent that he makes the first half of the Aeneid a voyage (like The Odyssey) and the second half a landwar (like the Iliad). But unlike Homer - who wrote realistically for his time - Vergil chooses a tale from long ago and far away.

To draw a contemporary parallel: Homer's Iliad was somewhat like a film about a recent war (say Jarhead), Vergil's Aeneid would be more like a historical war film (Beguiled perhaps).

There are many points of similiarity between Vergil and Homer - but just as many differences.