Virgil's Aeneid is one of the fundamental works of antiquity that offers us a lens into the life and art of the ancient Romans in the era of 1 BC, the year in which the epic was written. A reading of the epic shows that Virgil's attitude towards fact and fiction is complex. He does not see the two as binary and opposite, but considers them linked in a dialectical relationship. I will show that this is remarkably manifest. The way the two are woven together comes across most clearly in Virgil's treatment of dreams and reality, earthly existence and the afterlife as well as history and fable, which each have the same de facto binary connotation and fiction. Through a discussion of dreams and their role in the epic, I will explore how the influence each has on the other supports this statement. This will be demonstrated by further considering how Virgil describes the dead and their interaction with the living, which is deeply intertwined with dreams and reality. I will then move on to discuss the historical basis of the epic and the way in which it dialogues with the fable, in the form of myth. All this will serve to show the way in which Virgil mixed reality and fiction. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Virgil blurs the line between dreams and reality by showing that events in dreams are closely connected to events in reality. There are three main examples of this in the epic. In Book II, Hector comes to Aeneas in a dream and tells him of the sack of Troy, warning him against fighting. When Aeneas wakes up, he runs to fight against the Greeks who are sacking his city. The information received in the dream was real – the Greeks are sacking Troy – and the hypothesis that the dreams belong to the world of fiction does not hold up. Aeneas uses dream information to inform his waking action. In Book IV, Aeneas is removed from his duty to establish the Roman people because of his relationship with Dido. Mercury, sent by Jupiter, appears to Aeneas in a dream to remind him of this duty. Awakening from this, Aeneas soon abandons Dido to return to his duty. It is what happens in Aeneas' dream that forces him to neglect Dido and continue with his charge. In book VI Aeneas descends into the underworld of Dis to meet his father in the Elysian Fields. Many interpretations of Virgil's Aeneid argue that this is a dream (McNeely, 1997). The ethereal nature of the entities Aeneas encounters as well as the process by which Aeneas makes his way to Dis both indicate that the journey is a dream. As soon as Aeneas leaves Elysium, he hastens to continue his journey to found Rome. Once again, the information that Aeneas receives through the dream directly influences his behavior in reality. We see that in all three cases the dreams have an immediate effect on Aeneas' actions. There is no clear distinction that separates the incidences of dreams from events in reality since dreams are often believed to have an impact on waking life, on the world of facts. Virgil is indicating that there is a darker relationship between the two where dreams inform the real world and Aeneas' actions in it. Likewise, Virgil indicates that dreams depend on reality. At the time Virgil wrote the Aeneid, there was a typology of dreams that classified them into five categories; the enigmatic, the prophetic, the oracular, the nightmare or dream of anguish and the dream of apparition or wish fulfillment (Calcidius, 1992). McNeely (1997) also considers the dream to be incubation. This is similar to prophetic dreaming but emphasizes that the dreamer follows certain practices to receive some sort of prophecy. McNeely argues that Virgil's dream of the underworldit is mainly an incubation dream with aspects of the anxiety dream and the oracular dream (McNeely, 1997). He claims that with the Sibyl Aeneas goes through several processes in order to communicate with his father through dreams. Try to incubate a certain dream. However, I believe the dream is actually driven by anxiety. As McNeely discusses, Aeneas confronts Palinurus, who dies after falling overboard on Aeneas' ship, without a proper burial and suffers at Dis because of this. Aeneas also meets Dido, whom he abandoned in Carthage, as he was told to do in Mercury's dream. He feels guilty for leaving her in his attempt to carry out the will of the gods. He also sees all the men who died in the Sack of Troy. Aeneas is clearly confronted with feelings of guilt that manifest themselves in a nightmare or a dream of anguish. Enea's reality intimately influenced his dream. It is clear that dreams also influence reality. The dream also has oracular aspects as Anchises tells Aeneas of Rome's lineage which inspires him to act with greater resolve when he awakens (McNeely, 1997). There appears to be a dialectical relationship between the two as Mercury's dream affects Aeneas's actions that lead to guilt, subsequently shaping his dreams. Virgil further highlights the blurring of lines between the two when he tells us that Aeneas leaves Elysium through the Ivory Gate. The Ivory door is said to be the door of false dreams or deception as opposed to the Horn door which represents truth. McNeely examines several purported reasons for this, concluding that the most convincing argument states that this is because “unclear images of the reality of his dream will remain in his memory” (McNeely, 1997, p. 122). The claim is that by asking Anchises to take Aeneas out of the Ivory Gate, Virgil suggests a sense of uncertainty; that Aeneas will wake up with a decision that arises from the dream without remembering the dream itself. I approach it with a slightly different perspective that is based on the same uncertainty. In fact, Aeneas wakes up able to remember what happened in the dream, but is not sure whether it is real or not - doubtful about its factual basis and the reliability of the information in waking life; actually. The fact that Anchises is the one leading Aeneas out of the door rather than him leaving of his own volition does not take anything away from this. As mentioned above, the dream is in a sense partly a product of Aeneas's psychological state. As such, Anchises is a reflection of Aeneas' psyche and emotional state. Thus, it is still plausible that the Ivory Gate symbolizes Aeneas's uncertainty regarding the dream and his duty to found Rome (uncertainty can also be read in Aeneas's wavering commitment to his duty when he was in Carthage. Uncertain of his duties, turns pleasure with Dido). The reader is aware of the tangibility of Dis's dream, but for Aeneas it is much less clear, and Virgil tries to convey this uncertainty. It may have simply been a device for Virgil to emphasize Aeneas' piety - another central aspect of the epic - by showing that Aeneas conformed to the will of the gods despite his uncertainty. Many argue that Virgil's goal in composing the Aeneid was to affirm the genealogy of Rome (O'Meara, 1988). The question of the Ivory Gate challenged this concept as it suggested that the dream was false, thus undermining Virgil's project. However, it has been shown above that in reality the use of the Ivory Door does not do so as the reader is still led to believe in the immutable truth of Anchises' exposition of Roman ancestry. Once again Virgil shows that the boundaries between dream and reality are indeterminate – this time showing how Aeneas himselfstruggles with this distinction. Accordingly, Virgil deals with the ideas of earthly existence and the afterlife and in doing so intertwines these two concepts. Despite their death, the characters of the Aeneid continue to play fundamental roles in the epic. Hector, dead, goes to Aeneas to warn him of the sack of Troy. Anchises, Aeneas' father, is dead, but he is essential in encouraging Aeneas to fervently continue his duty to found Rome. Aeneas meets both Dido and Palinurus when he is in Dis, causing him great emotional distress. Aeneas also confronts his dead wife, Creusa, who "soothes [his] anguish" after his death by telling him that it is useless to "indulge in such mad grief" and that he has yet to find "kingship and royal kingship." wife" (Virgil, Book II, 76-77, 83). Virgil clearly indicates that the division between earthly existence – the existence of Aeneas – and the existence of the afterlife – the existence of Hector, Anchises and Dido – is not so divided. Indeed, those who have died and now dwell in the afterlife have important effects on the world of the living. However, the dead are still somewhat separated from the living. «In the Aeneid there is more than one [cosmos]: it is clear that the souls in the seses beatae of Aeneid 6 inhabit their own cosmos, with their own celestial bodies outside of time» (Mittal, 2011). The dead are part of a different realm but are still able to interact meaningfully with the living. They are not rooted in the corporeal issues of time and space, but are still concerned with the issues of life. Death in the Aeneid is not terminal: it signifies a transition to the afterlife which is simply a different realm. Virgil makes it impossible to say that the afterlife and earthly existence are completely separate. The impact one has on the other, the way one flows into the other, shows the mixed vision Virgil had of concepts. The afterlife and earthly existence are deeply linked to dreams and as such reflect the same disorientation between the two. It is in a dream that the dead Hector comes to Aeneas. Aeneas is also in a dream when he meets his father Anchises in the underworld, as well as the meeting with Palinuro and Dido. Because the line between what is dream and what is reality is blurred, it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish between those who are dead and those who are alive. Instead of such distinct categories, in the epic the dead take on a life of their own. Virgil skillfully mixed earthly existence, reality, dreams and the afterlife in such a way that it is not possible to observe them in isolation from each other. Likewise, Virgil blends the concepts of history and fable by using both to achieve the same result. purpose – to legitimize Roman genealogy. “Augustus wanted Virgil to tell a story that would grandly mythologize the founding of Rome” (Vandiver, 2008, p. 65). Simply telling the story of Rome would not have achieved this goal: it would have been a simple telling of the story and not a story. To 'mythologize' Rome and do it 'grandiosely', Virgil needed to add elements of fable. This not only gives new meaning to the story, but also draws the audience in and allows for further engagement with the story that has been woven into the fairy tale. Virgil used “myth as a vehicle of expression” (Mittal, 2011, p. 1). I argue that the use of myth represents, in the Aeneid, what we call fable. There is no shortage of mythological examples in the Aeneid. When Lacoon throws a spear at the Greek horse in Book II, we witness a mythical event: "See, a pair of serpents with enormous coils, winding over the sea from Tenedos through the still depths (I shudder to tell it), and going side by side side by side towards the shore: their fronts rise on the tide, their blood-red crests surpass the waves, the rest of their bodies slide behind into the ocean and their.