Which scholar argues that the poem invites readers to juxtapose the past and present as Aeneas tours Rome?

• A. R. D. Williams
• B. Ellen O'Gorman
• C. Philip Hardie
• D. Paul F. Burke

Answer: (C)

The passage is about how Virgil’s Aeneid uses the journey of Aeneas through Rome to make readers compare Rome’s legendary past with its present, showing how memory and monumental space shape political meaning. Philip Hardie is the scholar who argues this specific reading: the poem invites readers to see the founding myths of Rome mirrored in the city’s monuments and institutions as Aeneas tours the capital, weaving together ancestral heroism with Augustan-era power. This creates a dialog between past and present that helps frame Rome’s identity for the reader. The other scholars have important insights about Virgil, but this particular pairing of Aeneas’s itinerary with a direct past–present juxtaposition is most closely associated with Hardie.