Laetitiae Bacchus Dator? - The Virgilian Wine God

Abstract

The wine god Bacchus is cited often in the works of Virgil, not least in his epic Aeneid. Detailed examination of the references to Bacchus in Virgil’s works reveals a carefully arranged, coherent progression of images. Virgil utilizes Bacchus as a key divine figure in his poetic commentary on the history of the nascent Augustan regime, not least with respect to its vanquishing of the disgraced triumvir Antony and his foreign consort Cleopatra. The ambivalent depiction of the epic hero Aeneas reflects in part the problems inherent to the depiction of the eastern, Trojan elements of the Roman identity, elements that took on particularly acute significance during the last of the civil wars.

Keywords

• Virgil
• Bacchus
• Dionysus
• Aeneas
• Antony
• Cleopatra