Dos Romas futuras: Troya y Roma en Eneida 8 y Farsalia 9

Abstract

Memory was a central concept in the collective configuration of ancient Rome. Roman civilization has constructed various forms of memory that has been working in the cultural configuration of the West for more than twenty centuries. The creation of a lieu de mémoire implies the abolition or the semantic displacement of the memories linked to that particular place. Augustus had the difficult task of appearing as the apparent continuation of an exhausted political system, when he actually represented a new conception of power that had learned to appear in ways far more comprehensible and easier to assimilate to the Roman people, as taught by Julius Caesar’s murder.
Virgil embarks, in Aeneid 8, in a complex literary operation where he resignifies not only the spaces of Rome but also their origins. The Virgilian vision juxtaposes ideological and cultural operations in which the perpetuating power of the Word gives new meanings to the spaces of Rome, creating a Roma aeterna whose past supports not the ancient splendour of the city but the city’s future glory. This glory sine fine is rebuked by Lucan’s account of Caesar’s walk over the ruins of Troy in Book 9.950-999, where the city’s ruinous state represents an admonitory mnemotopo of Rome final destiny.