Troya y la fundación de Roma en la poesí­a de Horacio

Abstract

We start from the foundational myths of Rome by Romulus and Remus in Horace and from the Aeneas’ lineage in Virgil analyzing the initial guilts that defines the respective successors: the death of Remus and the Laomedon’s deception to Poseidon and Apollo, builders of the city walls of Troy. Horace and Virgil think these faults in the origins are imbricated as maledictions that generate the civil war.
We analyze the consequences of these arrangements in both poets into a diagram of guilt-punishment-expiation as a conducting thread that runs through their entire work drawing a vision of the Roman history with their resemblances and differences.
In Horace the itinerary begins in the Epode VII with the notion of primigenial guilt that passes from generation to generation and generates a civil war whitout end. In the same collection the Epode XVI shows an utopic exit of the civic storms: the escape of better men to the Fortunate Islands, including the author.
Passing to the Odes the arrangement become more complex; thus the ode I, 2 offers a vertical level to the question of the origin of the war: the initial crime, an offense to the divinity, deserves a punishment, needs an expiation and an expiator; this must be a hero of double nature, whose activity is limited to politic field: to finish the civil war and to pacify the Roman world, this is also what happens in the ode IV, 15 with the verbs in past tense.
H. passes from Romulus to August, Trojan descendant from Anchises and Venus, joining his project to the Virgilian arrangement. How does this happens? In ode III, 3 with a speech by Juno that admits the Romulus’ apotheosis under certain conditions: the no reconstruction of Troy and the no return of the exiles to their native city. This speech is the hinge with which H. assembles both lineages and the acceptance and adoption of Trojan past.
Simultaneously in Aeneid XII, 791-842, V. also shows in a different context (the fight between Aeneas and Turnus) and in a dialog with the father of the gods, also the Juno’s conditions to reconcile with the Romans; neither H. nor V. put in Juno’s mouth the same reasons, therefore both speeches seem to complement each other with their different mythical and historical motivations.