Which scholar argues that the epic engages with Augustan Rome and the use of authority to calm faction?

Which scholar argues that the epic engages with Augustan Rome and the use of authority to calm faction?

• A. Gransden
• B. Ellen Olliensis
• C. Bob Cowan
• D. Paul Burke

Answer: (C)

The epic is read as a vehicle for presenting Augustan Rome through the lens of authority that binds competing factions to a single, ordered political vision. Bob Cowan argues this by showing how Vergil crafts leadership and the city’s legitimacy as resting on auctoritas—the authoritative voice of the state and its divine sanction—so that civil strife is reimagined as a disturbance that legitimate rule can quell. The narrative repeatedly ties Aeneas’s pietas and obedience to the gods with the stability of the future Roman state, and it foregrounds a sense that Rome’s peace and greatness come from a ruler whose authority is both divinely sanctioned and politically necessary. This framing aligns the epic with Augustan ideals, portraying the settlement after factional violence as a triumph of orderly authority over chaos. Other scholars tend to approach the poem from different angles—historical context of Augustan politics in Virgil more broadly, or alternative readings of rhetoric and tradition—without focusing as directly on the link between Augustan authority and the pacification of faction as Cowan does.

The epic is read as a vehicle for presenting Augustan Rome through the lens of authority that binds competing factions to a single, ordered political vision. Bob Cowan argues this by showing how Vergil crafts leadership and the city’s legitimacy as resting on auctoritas—the authoritative voice of the state and its divine sanction—so that civil strife is reimagined as a disturbance that legitimate rule can quell. The narrative repeatedly ties Aeneas’s pietas and obedience to the gods with the stability of the future Roman state, and it foregrounds a sense that Rome’s peace and greatness come from a ruler whose authority is both divinely sanctioned and politically necessary. This framing aligns the epic with Augustan ideals, portraying the settlement after factional violence as a triumph of orderly authority over chaos.

Other scholars tend to approach the poem from different angles—historical context of Augustan politics in Virgil more broadly, or alternative readings of rhetoric and tradition—without focusing as directly on the link between Augustan authority and the pacification of faction as Cowan does.