Hero

 Paper on the following questions: 1) What sort of a hero is Aeneas? Do you find in him any inadequacies which set him apart from, and perhaps make him compare unfavorably to, a full-blown Homeric hero? Consider especially how Aeneas portrays himself as the central character in his narrative of the fall of Troy, Book II. 2) If Aeneas does fall short of true heroic stature, how could you account for that? Is it Aeneas himself who is a lesser man than the Homeric heroes, or is it something about the world of the Aeneid? For this one, you might look at the episode in which Aeneas fails to prevent the murder of Priam, then fails to carry out his plan to slaughter Helen. 3) Who’s the better hero? Odysseus, Aeneas, or Achilles? Link to reading: http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.html