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The Smile of Aeneas
- Transactions of the American Philological Association
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 144, Number 1, Spring 2014
- pp. 71-96
- 10.1353/apa.2014.0005
- Article
- Additional Information
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The only smile of Aeneas occurs in Aeneid 5. The smile identifies Aeneas with Jupiter and is one indication that he briefly occupies a position analogous to the king of the gods in administering the funeral games for Anchises. But this identification merely sets the stage for the games’ broader examination of how Aeneas differs from Jupiter in the distribution of honors to his men. In its playful conjuring of a world governed by smiling Aeneas, the episode of the games imagines an alternative to the world in which the hero must ordinarily live, which is governed by immutable Fate.