--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> Also, Vergil was himself from Tuscany. Who knows what he heard
there?
For the awareness of the Aenes legend among the Etruscans, see Prof.
J.N. Bremmer's paper "The Aeneas-legend from Homer to Virgil" at
http://theol.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/BremmerJN/1987/117/aeneas.pdf
(see esp. pp. 18-9)
According to Bremmer, "No reliable indications, literary, religious,
inscriptional, or artistic, therefore exist for the Romans' own
interest in Aeneas before, indeed, 300 BC. Stories of a Trojan
founder we have seen are likely to be external creations, and the
growth of a legend of Aeneas in the city of Rome remains at best an
hypothetical by-product of the period of Etruscan domination" (p. 18).
Regards,
Francesco