Reading the Republican Forum: Virgil's Aeneid, the Dioscuri, and the Battle of Lake Regillus

Here, Rebeggiani offers a first exploration of the central area of the Forum Romanum in its relationship with Virgil's Aeneid. His aim is to go beyond simple interactions (the Aeneid showing glimpses of monuments, monuments being influenced by the Aeneki). He tries to show that a complex web of narratives connected to the central area of the Republican Forum is alluded to several times in the Aeneid, and that the allusion is conveyed by Virgil through reference to monuments in the Republican Forum recently restored by Augustus. This investigation will also lead him to ask some fundamental questions about the presence of narratives of republican history in the second half of the Aeneid, and he triers to locate Virgil's employment of these accounts in the wider context of Augustan culture.