Which scholar argues that the Aeneid's power to impose meaning upon history mirrors Augustus' power?

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

Answer: (D)

The main idea here is that Vergil’s epic uses its narrative to shape how history is understood, so that the past is read in a way that supports and legitimizes the Augustan regime. Paul F. Burke argues that the Aeneid functions as a political instrument: it constructs a teleology of Roman history that culminates in the Augustan era, effectively mirroring Augustus’s power to direct interpretation and to authorize the present through a sanctioned, divine-backed lineage. By tracing Aeneas’s mission and piety to the Pax Romana and the Augustan settlement, Burke shows how the poet aligns myth, destiny, and state ideology so that history itself appears orderly and purposeful under imperial rule. This makes the poem not just a story of Rome’s origins, but a crafted narrative that teaches readers to read the past through the lens of Augustan power. While other scholars discuss similar themes of empire and poetry, Burke is the one who foregrounds the direct parallel between the poet’s control over meaning and the ruler’s real authority to shape historical memory.