Simile Structure in Homeric Epic and Vergil’s Aeneid

Abstract

This chapter explores the roles that structure plays in the similes in Vergil's Aeneid from both a cognitive and an aesthetic perspective. First, it describes the forms of similes in Homeric poetry and compares these to the Aeneid, concentrating especially on the marked differences in how the end of a simile is treated and on linking these features to the compositional and performance contexts of Homeric epic and the Aeneid. The chapter examines two pairs of similes as case studies of the aesthetic possibilities that the varied structures of Aeneid similes open up for both the poet and the audience. The two similes in the expedition and death of Nisus and Euryalus in Book 9 both lack an explicit end point. Two similes describing Turnus in Books 9-12 have the same form as a Homeric simile most commonly does, even though that form is comparatively rare in the Aeneid. Keywords: Aeneid; Homeric epic; simile structure; Vergil