Fate and the Hero in Virgil's Aeneid: Stoic World Fate and Human Responsibility

This book explores how Virgil, in his Aeneid, incorporates the ancient Stoics’ thinking about how humans can exercise moral responsibility and how this can affect providential World Fate. The third-century B.C. philosopher Chrysippus of Soli located this freedom in the way we can assent to courses of action, and Graham Zanker innovatively demonstrates how Virgil appropriates this concept in the way that Jupiter and Aeneas can assent to the World Fate in which they have discovered they must play a part, or Juno and Dido can withhold their assent to it. Indeed, Virgil even offers the model to no one less than Augustus: the emperor is invited to give his assent to ruling justly what was believed to be his ‘worldwide’ empire. The book is accessible to both students and professional scholars of the Aeneid, with all Greek and Latin translated into idiomatic English.