Resumo

HERRERA VALENCIANO, Minor. The descensus ad inferos in the Aeneid: symbolic death of Aeneas and legitimation of Augustus. Comunicación [online]. 2018, vol.27, n.1, pp.4-18. ISSN 1659-3820.  http://dx.doi.org/10.18845/rc.v27i1-18.3882.

The descensus ad inferos in the Aeneid: symbolic death of Aeneas an legitimation of Augustus

This work analyzes Aeneas’s descendus ad inferos in book VI of the Aeneid, from two perspectives: On the one hand, it deals with the hero’s confrontation with his mortal condition-overcome thanks to the promise of a majestic godlike gens, that will perpetuate his lineage. On the other hand, it analyzes Augustus’s legitimation of political power in the same descensus ad inferos, extending to the consecration of the Princeps, since the promise of an apotheosis for the hero Aeneas and his descendants is implicit in the plot of the Aeneid and confers the lineage of the rulers to whom the Emperor Augustus belongs a divine and ancestral legitimacy.

This is the case of his divine ancestors, Aeneas and Romulus, who are awarded a space within the Olympic deities, thus putting an end to the bitter battle against death and possibility oblivion. As such, Aeneas’s symbolic death when entering the underworld and emerging from it is as central to the development of the action as it is for the Emperor’s true apotheotic aspirations.

Palavras-chave : Literature; history; ancient religion; mythology; death; rite.

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