The World of the Dead in the Aeneid: a Place of Examples

Abstract

In this article we seek to clarify the spatiality of the underworld from the descriptions shown during the katabasis performed by Aeneas. Following the same line, the journey through the underworld is analyzed starting from the premise that the world of the dead pointed out by Virgilio is almost as diverse as the world of the living, because it reproduces very precisely its limits, its hierarchies and its different environments, which makes even more significant the descent, because it is a symbolic death through which the hero becomes dominant of the two worlds (living and dead), but in a didactic moralizing journey that presents a series of punishments to behaviors that were not compatible with the mores maiorum promulgated by Augustus.