WOMEN, WAR, AND PATRIARCHAL AUTHORITY IN GRECO-ROMAN EPIC: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ILIAD AND THE AENEID
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63878/qrjs1344Keywords:
The Iliad, The Aeneid, women, war, patriarchy, gender, narrative authority, classical epic, feminist literary criticism.Abstract
The Aeneid by Virgil and The Iliad by Homer are analysed in a qualitative, interpretive and comparative manner, with a focus on the representation of femininity, conflict and patriarchy. The study takes the two epics as a literary system in which gender, violence, authority, and the power of the narrative become mutually "constitutive. The study takes the two epics as a literary system in which gender, violence, authority, and the power of the narrative become mutually "constitutive", and the provided research document is followed. The analysis indicates that in both poems, women have been sidelined as subjects, but not as subjects not, as the analysis will further suggest, are women not central to the meaning of war as they suffer and speak, as they are mothers and wives and have political roles, as the effects of the violence on women is a social discourse. In The Iliad Briseis discovers the relationship between captive women and the status of man, Andromache and Hecuba speak of heroic fighting in terms of widowhood, bereavement and familial destruction. However their view is mainly reactive instead of institutional influencing. While in The Aeneid women are more politically and symbolically present, they also have their agency curtailed by the fates and destinies of men, perpetuation of the line and direction of the Empire. Dido, Creusa, Lavinia, sovereignty becomes driven towards tragedy, the wife is sacrificed to the future of the founder and the bride is a dynastic sign, silent most of the time. The comparison then points to a continuity of the Greek and Roman epic, that is, the public declaration of war by men, even though it may be suffered by women and offer much of the emotional and ethical substance of the epic. In tandem with this, Virgil's work, which is more clearly political, reworks Homeric patterns with gendered power as the logic of empire. Based on the study, it can be concluded that the two poems are not only a reflection of the patriarchal societies, they tell them in a gendered way.
