Provenance Of

The influences behind The Last Days of Disco

31 works across 28 centuries, back to Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Psalms) and Iliad.

  1. Cover of Aeneid

    c. 19 BCE

    Aeneid

    Virgil

    Augustan. Augustan Rome. Written in Latin.

    Epic of the Trojan Aeneas's wanderings and his founding of the Roman line.

    What it handed down

    To Paradise Lost (1667)

    Structural model, well documented.

    Milton built his poem on the Virgilian model, with an opening in medias res, a council of devils, a retrospective narrative of war and a revealed future. The first edition had ten books, revised to Virgil's twelve in 1674.

    To Essays (Essais) (1580)

    Direct source, well documented.

    Virgil is among the poets Montaigne quotes most often, and in 'On Some Verses of Virgil' he takes the love of Venus and Vulcan from Aeneid Book 8 as a starting point for an essay on sexuality.

    To The Divine Comedy (c. 1308-1320)

    Direct source, well documented.

    Virgil is Dante's guide through Hell and Purgatory, and Inferno's journey is modeled on Aeneas's descent in Aeneid Book 6. Dante calls Virgil 'my master and my author'.

    To Confessions (c. 397-400)

    Direct source, well documented.

    Augustine recalls weeping over Dido's death in the Aeneid as a schoolboy while indifferent to his own spiritual death. His journey from Carthage to Rome inverts Aeneas's route.

    To Satyricon (c. 60 CE)

    Direct source, probable.

    The poet Eumolpus recites a verse Capture of Troy that reworks the fall of Troy from Aeneid Book 2. Petronius uses Virgilian epic as a target for parody throughout.

    To Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE)

    Direct source, well documented.

    Books 13 and 14 of the Metamorphoses retell Aeneas's journey in a compressed, ironic form, answering Virgil's epic directly. Ovid also borrows Virgil's hexameter epic manner and turns it toward wit and transformation.

    Where it came from

    Find “Aeneid” on Amazon

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Preview card: the tree of influence behind The Last Days of Disco