Bucket List Books: Virgil's Aeneid

In an earlier column I argued that Homer and his epics were important for the Christian to read because Greek mythology provides historical context for Christianity. Well, it’s time to recommend another epic.

If anything, Virgil’s Aeneid is almost more contextually important than Homer, not because people reference him more, but because, chronologically, it was of more immediate and direct influence. Before you dive in, note that it’s straight up Roman propaganda. The book was written to give the Caesar line more validity. The main character in the epic, Aeneas, is supposed to be a direct ancestor of Augustus Caesar.

Though written hundreds of years later, the book is supposed to pick up where the Iliad leaves off, and is essentially chronologically simultaneous to the Odyssey. But this time we’ve swapped sides. Our hero, Aeneas, is fleeing the now fallen Troy. His quest is to continue his family line in a new world, and it is that quest that would eventually give birth to the great empire of Rome.

Like any work of Greek or Roman origin, the characters don’t act according to Judeo-Christian values (of course, Rome oppressed the Jews, and Christianity hadn’t even started yet), but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any values at all. Honor and shame and the desire for glory drive the story. Understanding the Roman values system gives huge context for the environment where Peter and Paul end up spreading the gospel. And it’s just a fascinating story.

But almost more than the story, the person of Virgil himself is important. Though not a Christian, he was held in high regard by many of the early church fathers for his writing. Oddly enough, some even considered his “Fourth Eclogue” an unwitting prophesy preparing the Roman and Greek world for the coming Messiah. Maybe he just got his hands on Isaiah and was captured by the imagery. But again, it’s a fascinating read to understand the world Christ was born into.

In the Divine Comedy, Virgil is Dante’s guide through Hell and Purgatory. As a wise and pious pagan, he was supposed to be the best prepared to explain to the confused Dante what everything means. The early church grew out of the ground of the Roman period, and the Christian literary tradition often employs techniques and imagery from the Greek and Roman writers. If you are planning on digging deep into Christian classics, the Aeneid is good preparation for understanding.