Philosophical Enrichment: Akrasia in Vergil
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Donncha O’Rourke
Abstract
Again and again across his career, Vergil focusses on individuals who act against their better judgement (the condition known as akrasia or ‘weakness of will’): Gallus concedes to amor, Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, Dido sets aside the memory of her husband and the interests of her people, Aeneas ignores Turnus’ entreaties. This chapter examines how such passages as these are enriched and complicated through Vergil’s engagement with ancient philosophical discussion of agency and moral responsibility. At stake in Vergilian akrasia are the ethics also of civil war, a context suggested by, inter alia, the triangulation of the final lines of the Aeneid with the myth of the Danaids (who, with one exception, slaughtered their bridegrooms on their wedding night) and Augustus’ Temple of Palatine Apollo (where the Danaids’ crime and/or punishment was represented). In this way akrasia provides a ‘hermeneutic of access’ to Virgil’s works and their ideological preoccupations.
Abstract
Again and again across his career, Vergil focusses on individuals who act against their better judgement (the condition known as akrasia or ‘weakness of will’): Gallus concedes to amor, Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, Dido sets aside the memory of her husband and the interests of her people, Aeneas ignores Turnus’ entreaties. This chapter examines how such passages as these are enriched and complicated through Vergil’s engagement with ancient philosophical discussion of agency and moral responsibility. At stake in Vergilian akrasia are the ethics also of civil war, a context suggested by, inter alia, the triangulation of the final lines of the Aeneid with the myth of the Danaids (who, with one exception, slaughtered their bridegrooms on their wedding night) and Augustus’ Temple of Palatine Apollo (where the Danaids’ crime and/or punishment was represented). In this way akrasia provides a ‘hermeneutic of access’ to Virgil’s works and their ideological preoccupations.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
- Stephen Harrison’s Major Publications (June 2025) 13
- L. Manlius Torquatus’ in Sullam 27
- Catullus in the Ancient Greek Novels (with a Focus on Chariton) 43
- A Queer Catullus for the 2010s and 2020s? 75
- Swearing like a Philosopher on Trial: Catullus, Epicurus, and Beards in Apuleius’ Apologia 113
- Apuleius and the Greek Novel: Generic Infringement 135
- Philosophical Enrichment: Akrasia in Vergil 167
- Pallas, Son of Hercules 191
- Vergil in Ethiopia? Nello Martinelli’s Amba Alagia 207
- How the Winds Blow: Inherited Anemologies in Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica 235
- The Gnat’s Descent: Intertextuality and Poetic Memory in the Pseudo-Vergilian Culex 261
- Vergilian Roleplay in The Rape of the Lock 283
- Back to the Future: (Spatio)temporal Enrichment in Horace’s Odes 3.3 and 3.27 307
- List of Contributors 327
- Index Rerum et Nominum
- Index Locorum
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
- Stephen Harrison’s Major Publications (June 2025) 13
- L. Manlius Torquatus’ in Sullam 27
- Catullus in the Ancient Greek Novels (with a Focus on Chariton) 43
- A Queer Catullus for the 2010s and 2020s? 75
- Swearing like a Philosopher on Trial: Catullus, Epicurus, and Beards in Apuleius’ Apologia 113
- Apuleius and the Greek Novel: Generic Infringement 135
- Philosophical Enrichment: Akrasia in Vergil 167
- Pallas, Son of Hercules 191
- Vergil in Ethiopia? Nello Martinelli’s Amba Alagia 207
- How the Winds Blow: Inherited Anemologies in Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica 235
- The Gnat’s Descent: Intertextuality and Poetic Memory in the Pseudo-Vergilian Culex 261
- Vergilian Roleplay in The Rape of the Lock 283
- Back to the Future: (Spatio)temporal Enrichment in Horace’s Odes 3.3 and 3.27 307
- List of Contributors 327
- Index Rerum et Nominum
- Index Locorum
