The Apostolic Epic
The Aeneid & the Acts of the Apostles
by Patrick Henry Reardon
In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke has left the Christian Church what deserves to be called an epic—a lengthy account, based on the motif of a journey—of the early movement of the gospel from Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jews, to Rome, the capital city of the greatest empire of antiquity. That movement from Jerusalem to Rome, embodied especially in the travels of St. Paul, symbolized for Luke that internationalizing of the gospel inherent in his version of the Great Mandate that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47).
In speaking of the Acts of the Apostles as an epic, I mean to suggest that its structure and composition convey the great narrative élan, the heroic, stately, and high historical tone associated with other accounts commonly called epics; the works of Homer come to mind, for instance (to say nothing of the Pentateuch!). More especially, however, I am disposed to liken the Acts of the Apostles to the Aeneid of Vergil, a likening, I submit, curiously justified by particular resemblances between the two works.
Indeed, these resemblances are rather striking. For example, both Acts and the Aeneid begin in cities doomed to destruction by fire. In the case of Troy, of course, the burning of the city has already taken place, though Vergil narrates the event only through a subsequent recounting in Book 2. In the case of Jerusalem, the city’s overthrow still lies in the future, but it has already been foretold by Jesus himself (Luke 21:20–24). Jerusalem’s doom is already sealed. In addition, both Acts and the Aeneid end in the same place, Rome. Furthermore, in neither book is Rome simply the place where the story ends. It is, rather, each story’s intended destination, the true rerum finis, toward which all the narrative is directed. In both accounts, moreover, that destination is reached by a very circuitous sea voyage involving endless delays and even a shipwreck. These several similarities between Acts and the Aeneid would amply justify, I submit, an effort to study the two works together as an exercise in comparative literature.
My endeavor in the present study, nonetheless, is more modest. I propose, rather, simply to analyze the Acts of the Apostles under the aspect of the story’s intended destination—namely, Rome, with all that Rome stood for as a symbol of universal human concern in the world of Luke’s day. The bringing of the gospel to Rome meant, for Luke, the placing of the gospel at the politically defining center of universal human concern. By way of necessary setting, my analysis of Acts will be preceded by brief comments on the Aeneid itself and on the general role of geographical symbolism in Lukan theology.
The Aeneid & Rome
In the ancient stories of the Trojan War, Aeneas the Dardanian was a relatively minor character. From Homer, Hesiod, and Hyginus, we know something of his origins (fathered by the mortal Anchises and born of the goddess Aphrodite) and a bit of his part in the nine-year conflict that culminated in the fall of Troy. After that, however, the Greeks had no clear focus on the career of Aeneas. The older accounts varied with respect to his end, some saying he died at Pellene in Thrace, others at Orchomenus in Arcadia. In any case, the post-Troy days of Aeneas, unlike those of Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, and other characters in that famous adventure, inspired no abiding theme for Greek theater or poetry. He had fought, after all, on the losing side.
This Greek uncertainty about the latter days of Aeneas invited the later speculation of the Latins, whose most famous account thereof comes to us in Vergil’s Aeneid. According to this story, Aeneas and his companions escaped during the burning of Troy and, after a lengthy voyage around the Mediterranean, finally landed on the western coast of the Italian peninsula, founding the city of Lavinium. They were the forebears, that is to say, of Rome.
When Vergil died at Brindisi in Calabria on September 22, 19 B.C., his Aeneid was not yet ready for publication, and he had left instructions with his literary executors to burn the manuscript in the event of his death. At the intervention of the Emperor Augustus, however, this did not happen. Convinced that Vergil’s great epic version of the Trojan origin of the Roman people would inspire them to a heroic sense of their destiny, Augustus ordered the work to be published.
There is every reason to believe that the Aeneid, which became a standard text in the teaching of Latin grammar and literature, served the intention of Augustus very well, prompting the Romans to assume the burden of political greatness that history had placed into their hands. Because of the literary and political importance of the Aeneid during the century following its publication, no carefully educated, internationally cultured man in the Roman Empire would have been unfamiliar with the Roman story of that ancient Trojan. Even those unable to read Latin would know Vergil’s account second-hand, as part of the officially endorsed mythology of the Empire.
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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