The Road Map

Abstract

This chapter studies the underworld journey of Virgil, Aeneid 6. It examines a series of possible models for afterlife space in Aen. 6. In particular it looks at the underworld journey of Aen. 6 in the light of ancient geographical traditions. We learn that a point-by-point idiom of representing space was much more widespread than you might imagine in antiquity. It’s found across many different genres, involving real and imagined space: geography, poetry, and art. The author argues that idioms of spatial expression are constant across representations of imagined and real space and across image and text. It is possible for Virgil to use the components of a “real” geography to construct his imaginary world. The afterlife is modeled on our concept of the “real” world, but in turn the “reality” we model it on is in large part a construct of the human artistic imagination, of our propenstiy for simplification and schematization. Like a map, the afterlife landscape allows us to simplify and schematize our environment, because it imposes no limits: it is imaginary. The afterlife landscape, in Virgil and elsewhere, acts as a fulcrum between real and imaginary space. There is no strict dichotomy between real and imagined space; instead there is a continuity between the “imagined” space of Virgil’s underworld, and the space of geographical accounts; between the world of the soul and the “real” world.