Il ritratto del re Anco in Virgilio (Aen. 6, 815 s.): bilancio interpretativo e ipotesi di lettura

This essay deals with the Vergilian commentators’ interpretations of Verg. Aen. 6. 815 f. In the famous parade of heroes of the future Rome of Aeneid 6, Anchises describes Ancus Marcius as iactantior and nimium gaudens popularibus auris. This portrait of the fourth king of Rome diverges from both the reports of ancient historians (Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus) and the literary character, cited by latin poets (Ennius, Lucretius, Horace) as an exemplum of probity, destined, like all men, to a fate of mortality. In the long history of the exegesis of the Aeneid commentators and scholars have oscillated between the hypothesis of the poet's ‘inaccuracy’ and that of the minority historiographical tradition. The words of Anchises actually translate Virgil's point of view, the author's judgmental look at Rome's past and present. Ancus iactantior could then adumbrate a ‘figural’ portrait of Julius Caesar, who, boasting the genealogy of his gens, had indicated the vocation to the hegemonic role of the Marcii-Giulii.