Instituted imaginary, instituing imaginary and identity:

aspects of the cultural transition in Virgil’s Aeneid

Abstract

Starting from the assumption that the Aeneid is a work that evokes a historical moment in which a process of cultural transition took place, this article analyzes the way Virgil defines the instituted and instituting imaginaries of Roman society (in books VI and VIII), in order to understand how the poet defines the imaginary of the new political-cultural order in the historical process.
Thus, we analyze the worldview of the instituted and instituting imaginaries in book VI, arguing that the organization of the historical matter forms an uninterrupted universe and conveys a unified view of History, in which the Augustan project, far from being leveraged in a critical response to institutional symbolism, appears as a re-creation of the previous symbolic edifice. The analysis of the Italic wars (Book VIII) gives continuity to the expression of the imaginary of Pax Romana and offers new elements for the conceptualization of the Other in the Aeneid. The mission given to the Empire (6. 851-853) by Anchises obtains a qualitative amplification with the Etruscan integration in the coalition since this integration implies the recognition that the native peoples also have aspirations to justice, redefining the concept of Other and endowing the role of Aeneas in these wars with an axiological value.
Finally, it is discussed whether Turnus’ death obliterates the construction of the imaginary of the Pax defined in books VI and VIII, arguing that Aeneas’ decision, rather than questioning this construction, expresses the tensions that typically occur in moments of frontier, marked by the oscillation between the commitment to the historical past of the established society and the adhesion to the project of a society that is intended to be instituted.