In the Footsteps of Aeneas. Humanist Appropriations of the Virgilian Walk through Rome in Aeneid 8

Abstract

In book 8 of Virgil’s Aeneid, Evander,

the Arcadian King of Pallanteum, receives Aeneas as his guest and shows him

around the site where the future city of Rome will rise. In the Renaissance,

numerous humanist poets imitated Virgil by including walks through Rome in their Latin epics. This article examines a selection of six of these humanist Virgilian walks in an integrated and comparative way in order to analyze how a variety of wishes concerning literary imitation, antiquarian scholarship, political legitimization and patronage are catered for by one pretext.These Virgilian Walks offer an intriguing insight into the complex process by which the humanist poets appropriated the multiple dimensions of the passage from the Aeneid. In addition, the walks show how the site of Rome became a prominent battleground during the Renaissance for a debate over scholarly, moral and political idea(l)s.