Epic Philosophy: What Did Virgil Believe?

There was no greater poet in the Roman world than Virgil, and for many readers there has been no more beautiful work of verbal art than his epic, the Aeneid. This poem not only shaped the next half-millennium of Latin literature but guided the western literary tradition through the Middle Ages. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Milton’s Paradise Lost are simply unimaginable without it. It is, as T. S. Eliot concluded, “the classic of all Europe”.

Yet what did its author actually believe about the world? What philosophy inspired his art? Rumoured to be an Epicurean, and then a Stoic, Virgil’s inner thoughts are notoriously hard to chart; indeed, for many Christians Virgil was taken as a prophet of the Faith he did not live to see. Dante, for one, did not hesitate to choose Virgil as his sacred guide through the infernal terrors of Hell.

After completing the Aeneid, Virgil hoped to devote the rest of his life to philosophy, but sudden death deprived him of that pleasure. This lecture, which will be open and accessible to all comers, will piece together what we can know of this great poet’s intellectual journey and philosophical outlook. Sic itur ad astra.

To learn more about Dr Butterfield, please visit his bio here or read about his reasons for recently leaving his tenured position at the University of Cambridge to join Ralston College here.

For more about Ralston College, please visit our website: www.ralston.ac.

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