Which scholar argues that as we follow Aeneas on his tour of Rome, Virgil repeatedly invites us to juxtapose the past and the present?

• A. R. D. Williams
• B. Philip Hardie
• C. Denis Feeney
• D. Paul F. Burke

Answer: (B)

The central idea here is that Virgil stages a dialogue between past and present in Aeneas’s tour of Rome, inviting readers to compare what Rome once was with what it has become in the poet’s present. Philip Hardie is the scholar who argues this most clearly, focusing on how Virgil uses memory and the layering of historical time to make the city of Rome itself feel like a palimpsest. As Aeneas moves through the landscape, past episodes of Trojan and legendary history are brought into contact with contemporary Augustan Rome, shaping how readers understand Rome’s origins alongside its imperial reality. This juxtaposition isn’t just decorative; it asks readers to assess the relationship between mythic foundations and the power and identity Rome projects in Virgil’s own era.

Other scholars have made important contributions to Virgil, memory, and imperial ideology, but Hardie’s reading foregrounds the explicit, ongoing confrontation between past and present that the tour of Rome catalyzes.