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Centennial Review
Colorado Christian University
8787 W. Alameda Ave.
Lakewood, CO 80226

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Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute Publisher, William L. Armstrong
Centennial Review Volume 2, Number 4 • May 2010 Editor, John Andrews
May 2010

CIVILIZATION AND SAVAGERY: Publius Vergilius Maro was born in 70 B.C. By 29 B.C.,
when he completed his second poem, the Georgics, called
VIRGIL FOR TODAY by John Dryden, “the best poem by the best poet,” Virgil
By Michael Poliakoff had wealth, stature, and even the ear of Caesar. The final
decade of Virgil’s life was devoted to the Aeneid, which he
Editor’s Note: Higher education today is ever less high. Our composed at the average rate of two lines per day, leaving it
institute stands against that trend. In shaping contemporary unfinished when he died in 19 B.C. Ever the perfectionist,
citizens, we honor the ancient landmarks. This month’s
Virgil begged that the manuscript be burned. Augustus,
Centennial Review is not light reading. But Poliakoff ’s insights
fortunately, interceded and this monument of civilization
will repay you well. Aeneas speaks powerfully to our times.
Civilization and Savagery: became the treasure of lands and peoples beyond the
Virgil For Today farthest imagination of Rome.
By Michael Poliakoff The invitation this essay offers
is to travel an arduous path. It Impacting Constantine, Augustine, Dante
Aeneas is the most perfect of
men. Yet he fails in the end. Who will have sublimity, since we will Virgil’s works were instant classics. There are more
then can succeed? If we listen to be looking at a masterwork of manuscripts of his writings than of any other classical
Virgil, we grow. the ancient world, the Aeneid, author, and several are expensive, sumptuous copies, a sign
written by Virgil in what of his great popularity. It was a school text St. Augustine
Tennyson called “the stateliest recalls how in his youth he was required to know about
measure ever moulded by the the wanderings of Aeneas but did not take note of his
lips of man.” But the journey own (moral) wanderings. Virgil weighed heavily upon him,
of the appropriate methods
will indeed be arduous, because as it did upon all educated Romans of his day. He wept
of warfare cannot, under the Centennial Institute and 710 KNUS Present this ancient text will make us travel inside the human soul for Dido, the lost love of the Aeneid’s hero, when, he tells
relentless pressure of human
WESTERN CONSERVATIVE SUMMIT 2010 and face some very hard questions about good and evil, us, he should have wept for his own distance from God
reality, always uphold them.”
Friday, July 9 – Sunday, July 11 civilization and savagery, theirs and ours. (Confessions I.13-17). Like Augustine, the poet Dante draws
Admonished and chastened, C.S. Lewis saw in Virgil’s epic poem a turning point in insight into the human heart and soul from Virgil, and it is
Marriott South, Lone Tree, Colorado
if we listen to Virgil, we grow. civilization and a rite of passage for the reader: no accident that Dante makes Virgil his guide through his
In the Georgics, Virgil warned Inferno and Purgatory.
that all things collapse to ruin
Theme: “Right Turn, Right Now” No man who has once read it with full perception remains
an adolescent. … Virgil, with no intention of allegory, has By the Middle Ages, Virgil has become a character larger
and are swept away: humanity Conferees: Leaders in Business, Government,
Politics, Education, Faith, and Media, described once and for all the very quality of most human life than life. In spelling his name with an “i,” even though the
rows against a hostile tide, and from Fifteen States, California to Kansas
as it is experienced by anyone who has not yet risen to holiness Romans spelled it with an “e,” we follow medieval legend,
with the relaxation of effort is
Invited Speakers Include: or sunk to animality. …You cannot be young twice. The where the poet becomes a necromancer with a magic wand
swept headlong away (I. 199-
Aeneas, wounded by an arrow, with
explicitly religious subject for any future epic has been dictated (virga in Latin). People used Virgil’s works for divination,
his son and the goddess Venus 203). In the world of war and Michele Bachmann Tom Coburn
by Virgil; it is the only further development left. and the early church had its own special legends of Virgil’s
(Fresco from Pompeii, A.D. 79) empire, the temptations are Congresswoman Senator
influence and power. His fourth Eclogue, telling of the birth
yet greater, the consequences more dire. As C.S. Lewis told General Jerry Boykin Arthur Brooks Virgil’s work is a classic that continues to speak to hearts
us, Virgil bids us to take up the burden of our conscience U.S. Army (Retired) American Enterprise Institute and minds far removed in time, place, culture, and language

and our responsibility. Yearn as we might for childhood, Brit Hume Foster Friess from its author. Its message is as urgent today as it was Michael Poliakoff is policy director for the American Council of Trustees and
in the time of Augustus Caesar. It challenges all of us, as Alumni in Washington, D.C. He holds degrees from Oxford and the University
Virgil summons us to moral maturity and to the challenge of Fox News Philanthropist & Businessman
of Michigan. He has taught classics at Wellesley College, Hillsdale College,
civilization. ■ Michael Barone James Dobson
Lewis observed, to come into full maturity. Georgetown University, and George Washington University. He was formerly vice
Washington Examiner Broadcaster In this essay, we look first at the impact of Virgil’s work in president for academic affairs at the University of Colorado, deputy education
The Aeneid: A Beginning Bibliography secretary in Pennsylvania, and a program director at the National Endowment
 Jasper Griffin, Virgil (Oxford, 1986). Dick Morris Dennis Prager preceding centuries. It has a central position in our cultural for the Humanities.
 C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford, 1954).
Fox News Salem Radio literacy. We will also examine the context of the Aeneid’s Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhance
 R.O.A.M. Lyne, Further Voices in Vergil’s Aeneid (Oxford, 1987). For information, reservations, and sponsorship opportunities, creation: what it meant to live during the Roman Civil War public understanding of the most important issues facing our state and nation.

 Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939). e-mail Centennial@ccu.edu or call 303.963.3424 and the reign of Augustus. Then we return to the yet more By proclaiming Truth, we aim to foster faith, family, and freedom, teach citizen-
ship, and renew the spirit of 1776.
urgent question of why his work should matter to us.
Centennial Review, May 2010 ▪ 4
 of a child during the consulship of Pollio in 40 B.C., who
will usher in a new Golden Age, was read by some as a pagan
prophecy of the birth of the Messiah, a matter that drew
the interest of the emperor Constantine. In an anonymous
medieval hymn, St. Paul mourns at Virgil’s tomb.
Returning to Virgil’s life
The Roman Republic and times, we would
was gone and liberty expect that the Aeneid
would be an intensely
was dead.
patriotic celebration of
Rome and Augustus Caesar, whose triumph brought peace
to Rome after decades of civil violence. The epic can and
has been read that way. The ancient commentator Donatus
stated that Virgil’s task was to show Aeneas as the worthy
ancestor of Augustus. He contended that the Aeneid was
written in the emperor’s honor.
And why should it be otherwise? As a child, Virgil had
experienced a conspiracy under Catiline to overthrow Rome,
had seen a citizen army cross the Rubicon to make war
against Rome itself, had lost his farm in land confiscations,
had seen Italy’s roads dangerous with highwaymen. Then
came the Augustan Peace and a First Citizen who legislated
to restore the old virtues of Rome: military discipline,
marriage, child-rearing.
But it was not that simple, and Virgil’s mind was not simple.
Octavian, on his way to power and his place in history as
Augustus Caesar, was known for his ruthlessness. With his
colleagues in the Triumvirate, he had published proscription
lists, rewarding anyone who brought the heads of their
political enemies, among them Cicero himself.
The Roman Republic was gone and liberty was dead.
Augustus would exile the poet Ovid for offending him.
Under the next emperor, Tiberius, informers would cause
the suicide and burn the books of a historian merely for
praising the long-dead Brutus and Cassius.
Mirror of Ambiguities
The hero of Virgil’s Aeneid is as complex as Virgil’s era, a
mirror of the ambiguities of human experience. Observe
the end of the story: The hero Aeneas, ancestor of Augustus,
has proposed a truce with Turnus, leader of the native forces
waging war against Aeneas as a foreign usurper. Dominion
and the hand of Lavinia, the woman that both men have
sought, will be determined by their single combat.
But Turnus’ troops treacherously break the truce and
wound Aeneas, and Turnus returns to random slaughter
until cornered by Aeneas. At this crucial moment, Aeneas
wounds his enemy and brings him to his knees, pleading for
his life:
Centennial Review, May 2010 ▪ 2
“Use the portion given to you: I deserve my fate. I have no
complaint. But if any thought of a grieving parent can touch
you still (and such you had in Anchises, the author of your line),
pity Daunus, my aged father. Return me to my kin–or even as
a corpse drained of life, if you prefer. You have conquered, and
my people see me in defeat, my hands stretched out, begging.
Lavinia is yours, your wife. Do not press further in hatred.”
What should the hero do? The action pauses:
He stood ferocious in all of his weaponry, eyes darting–and
stayed his hand. And now more and more as he hesitated
Turnus words began to move him.
Aeneas has grounds for revenge. Turnus killed in battle
Aeneas’ young friend Pallas and wears the spoils he stripped
from the brave youth. Turnus is a truce breaker; he drives
a chariot with the heads of his slain enemies dangling from
its rails. Should not Aeneas clear this monster from the land
destined to be Rome?
‘Spare the Defeated,’ Anchises Urged
Aeneas is not, however, supposed to act like the raging
Achilles from Homer’s Iliad, aptly described by C. S. Lewis
as “little more than a passionate boy.” When Aeneas met the
ghost of his father Anchises—the father whom he carried
out of the burning wrack of Troy as the old man clutched
in his arms the household gods—the paternal admonition
for Aeneas’ burden and Rome’s destiny was clear:
“You, Roman, remember to rule the nations under your
dominion, for these will be your arts, and impress morality upon
the peace: to spare the defeated and to disarm the arrogant.” (6.
851-853)
Note that Anchises does not address Aeneas by his name, or
as “son,” but as “Roman”: Virgil makes him speak for time
to come. Aeneas’ great heir, moreover, Augustus, proudly
(though not truthfully) inscribed on the monument of his
achievements:
I often waged war, civil and foreign, by land and sea, throughout
the world, and as victor I spared all citizens who asked for
mercy. I preferred to preserve, rather than eliminate, foreign
nations whenever I could safely pardon them. (Res Gestae
Divi Augusti 3).
CENTENNIAL REVIEW is published monthly by the Centennial Institute at Colorado
Christian University. Designer, Danielle Hull. Illustrator, Benjamin Hummel.
Subscriptions free upon request. Write to: Centennial Institute, 8787 W.
Alameda Ave., Lakewood, CO 80226. Call 800.44.FAITH. Or visit us online at
www.CentennialCCU.org.
Join the Centennial Institute today. As a Centennial donor, you can help us
restore America’s moral core and prepare tomorrow’s leaders. Your gift is tax-
deductible. Please use the envelope provided.
Colorado Christian University seeks to impact the culture in support of traditional
family values, sanctity of life, compassion for the poor, a biblical view of human
nature, limited government, personal freedom, free markets, natural law, original
intent of the Constitution, and Western civilization.
We left Aeneas, staying his hand from slaughter. Maybe the
ending should be:
And the Roman hero, with the gaze of friendship, stretched out
his hand to the Rutulian and lifted him up, reassuring him in
his supplication and rejoicing to bestow peace upon Latium.
But I wrote those silly lines, not Virgil: Worse than their
clumsy versification is the violence they do to the subtle
thinking of the poet.
What really happens is that Aeneas sees that Turnus is
wearing the spoils he stripped from Pallas. Furiis accensus et
ira terribilis, “on fire with fury and terrible in his rage,” he
shouts that Pallas is exacting punishment from Turnus and
plunges his sword into Turnus’ heart. With a groan Turnus
dies and the epic abruptly ends.
The end of the Aeneid has troubled readers since antiquity.
An anonymous biographer in the 4th century asserted that
Virgil intended an epic of not twelve, but 24 books. Maffeo
Vegio in the 1400s actually wrote a thirteenth book of the
Aeneid. These absurdities help illustrate that Virgil has given
us a profoundly disturbing ending. And, just as Virgil was
Dante’s guide through Hell and Purgatory, so he is going to
make us look into our hearts.
What Kind of Hero?
The end of the Aeneid, moreover, is only the most startling
reversal of expectation about the hero. We should have
been prepared for it by Book 10, where Aeneas, fresh from
the grief of Pallas’ death, slays two suppliants who fall at his
knees, and takes captives to be used as human sacrifices at
Pallas’ funeral. What kind of hero did Virgil give us?
Aeneas is the most perfect of men. He introduces himself,
without irony, “I am Aeneas, the pious.” C.S. Lewis captures
the character of Aeneas with a few bold strokes. Quoting
Virgil, “the mind remains unshaken while the vain tears fall,”
Lewis observes that Aeneas “is compelled to see something
more important than happiness.”
Lewis notes vocation in Virgil, and with it, duty. Aeneas
loves Dido, but when divinity reminds him of duty, there is
no hesitation. When he meets her ghost in the underworld,
after she takes her own life, there is no comfort Aeneas can
give or take. He can only resume his duty.
Burden of Conscience
Yet Aeneas fails in the end. At the beginning of the Aeneid
(1.294-96), Jupiter, king of the Roman gods, envisioned
a Roman world where the personification of rage, Furor
Impius, is bound and chained. But Aeneas now slays his foe
“kindled with furor.” He does not execute Turnus as a danger
to the rational, ordered world Rome must build: He kills
him in angry revenge. Roman Stoicism had doctrine about
appropriate wartime behavior. Cicero wrote that fighting
for personal gratification, rather than for public safety, is
Vo ic e s o f C C U
DUSTING OFF THE CLASSICS
By Megan DeVore
“Let the clever ones learn Latin as an
honor and Greek as a treat.” Winston
Churchill’s words fall out of cadence
with today’s apathy toward the ancient
world. We are told the past is dead and
gone or relegated to the ivory tower,
along with its irrelevant languages.
I beg to differ—and a recent surge in
Classical studies suggests I’m not alone. Classics stu-
dents enjoy innumerable practical benefits: Familiarity
with Latin or Greek produces an erudite vocabulary
(increasing job prospects), enhances performance on
standardized exams, and increases comprehension of
modern languages. Knowledge of ancient history en-
ables recognition of allusions in contemporary literature,
political systems, military affairs, and phrases such as “a
Sisyphean task.”
At Colorado Christian University, however, the above
litany does not suffice. We do not teach the Classics
merely to produce students with skill in trivia or lucrative
jobs. We do so out of the conviction that humans live
inextricably in the dimension of time. We are marked by
our past and move in a present which once was the fu-
ture. Amnesia on the communal, institutional, or national
level is devastating. If we are ignorant of our history
—or, worse, twist history to suit present purposes—we
set upon dangerous, egomaniacal paths into a nebulous
future.
Additionally, as a professor of Greco-Roman history and
early Christian theology, I consistently emphasize that
our Judeo-Christian faith exists today where it began mil-
lennia ago: in historical context. An understanding of the
Classical world brings a lively depth of insight into our
Scriptures, theologies, practices, and future directions.
The ancient world is part of us—isn’t this thrilling? No
wonder, then, at Churchill’s words: Learning the Classics
truly is an honor and a treat. ■
Megan DeVore has taught in the School of
Theology at Colorado Christian University since Centennial
2006. She holds an M.A. in Classics from the
University of Colorado and is completing her Ph.D.
Institute
in theology at the University of Wales, U.K.
Colorado Christian University
repugnant to humanity (On Duties 1.62). For Cicero, even
in the heat of mortal combat, anger has no place (Tusculans
4.43). Utopian, surely, but this was the paradigm Aeneas
was expected to exemplify.
Oxford scholar Oliver Lyne, one of the most inspired
readers of Virgil, wrote: “If Aeneas, the son of a goddess,
the hero of the epic, cannot ‘succeed,’ then perhaps no
one can. With great realism Vergil shows how an Aeneas,
who is genuinely in sympathy with Stoic imperial ideas
Centennial Review, May 2010 ▪ 3
 of a child during the consulship of Pollio in 40 B.C., who
will usher in a new Golden Age, was read by some as a pagan
prophecy of the birth of the Messiah, a matter that drew
the interest of the emperor Constantine. In an anonymous
medieval hymn, St. Paul mourns at Virgil’s tomb.
The Roman Republic Returning to Virgil’s life
and times, we would
was gone and liberty expect that the Aeneid
would be an intensely
was dead. patriotic celebration of
Rome and Augustus Caesar, whose triumph brought peace
to Rome after decades of civil violence. The epic can and
has been read that way. The ancient commentator Donatus
stated that Virgil’s task was to show Aeneas as the worthy
ancestor of Augustus. He contended that the Aeneid was
written in the emperor’s honor.
And why should it be otherwise? As a child, Virgil had
experienced a conspiracy under Catiline to overthrow Rome,
had seen a citizen army cross the Rubicon to make war
against Rome itself, had lost his farm in land confiscations,
had seen Italy’s roads dangerous with highwaymen. Then
came the Augustan Peace and a First Citizen who legislated
to restore the old virtues of Rome: military discipline,
marriage, child-rearing.
But it was not that simple, and Virgil’s mind was not simple.
Octavian, on his way to power and his place in history as
Augustus Caesar, was known for his ruthlessness. With his
colleagues in the Triumvirate, he had published proscription
lists, rewarding anyone who brought the heads of their
political enemies, among them Cicero himself.
The Roman Republic was gone and liberty was dead.
Augustus would exile the poet Ovid for offending him.
Under the next emperor, Tiberius, informers would cause
the suicide and burn the books of a historian merely for
praising the long-dead Brutus and Cassius.
Mirror of Ambiguities
The hero of Virgil’s Aeneid is as complex as Virgil’s era, a
mirror of the ambiguities of human experience. Observe
the end of the story: The hero Aeneas, ancestor of Augustus,
has proposed a truce with Turnus, leader of the native forces
waging war against Aeneas as a foreign usurper. Dominion
and the hand of Lavinia, the woman that both men have
sought, will be determined by their single combat.
But Turnus’ troops treacherously break the truce and
wound Aeneas, and Turnus returns to random slaughter
until cornered by Aeneas. At this crucial moment, Aeneas
wounds his enemy and brings him to his knees, pleading for
his life:
Centennial Review, May 2010 ▪ 2
“Use the portion given to you: I deserve my fate. I have no
complaint. But if any thought of a grieving parent can touch
you still (and such you had in Anchises, the author of your line),
pity Daunus, my aged father. Return me to my kin–or even as
a corpse drained of life, if you prefer. You have conquered, and
my people see me in defeat, my hands stretched out, begging.
Lavinia is yours, your wife. Do not press further in hatred.”
What should the hero do? The action pauses:
He stood ferocious in all of his weaponry, eyes darting–and
stayed his hand. And now more and more as he hesitated
Turnus words began to move him.
Aeneas has grounds for revenge. Turnus killed in battle
Aeneas’ young friend Pallas and wears the spoils he stripped
from the brave youth. Turnus is a truce breaker; he drives
a chariot with the heads of his slain enemies dangling from
its rails. Should not Aeneas clear this monster from the land
destined to be Rome?
‘Spare the Defeated,’ Anchises Urged
Aeneas is not, however, supposed to act like the raging
Achilles from Homer’s Iliad, aptly described by C. S. Lewis
as “little more than a passionate boy.” When Aeneas met the
ghost of his father Anchises—the father whom he carried
out of the burning wrack of Troy as the old man clutched
in his arms the household gods—the paternal admonition
for Aeneas’ burden and Rome’s destiny was clear:
“You, Roman, remember to rule the nations under your
dominion, for these will be your arts, and impress morality upon
the peace: to spare the defeated and to disarm the arrogant.” (6.
851-853)
Note that Anchises does not address Aeneas by his name, or
as “son,” but as “Roman”: Virgil makes him speak for time
to come. Aeneas’ great heir, moreover, Augustus, proudly
(though not truthfully) inscribed on the monument of his
achievements:
I often waged war, civil and foreign, by land and sea, throughout
the world, and as victor I spared all citizens who asked for
mercy. I preferred to preserve, rather than eliminate, foreign
nations whenever I could safely pardon them. (Res Gestae
Divi Augusti 3).
CENTENNIAL REVIEW is published monthly by the Centennial Institute at Colorado
Christian University. Designer, Danielle Hull. Illustrator, Benjamin Hummel.
Subscriptions free upon request. Write to: Centennial Institute, 8787 W.
Alameda Ave., Lakewood, CO 80226. Call 800.44.FAITH. Or visit us online at
www.CentennialCCU.org.
Join the Centennial Institute today. As a Centennial donor, you can help us
restore America’s moral core and prepare tomorrow’s leaders. Your gift is tax-
deductible. Please use the envelope provided.
Colorado Christian University seeks to impact the culture in support of traditional
family values, sanctity of life, compassion for the poor, a biblical view of human
nature, limited government, personal freedom, free markets, natural law, original
intent of the Constitution, and Western civilization.
We left Aeneas, staying his hand from slaughter. Maybe the
ending should be:
And the Roman hero, with the gaze of friendship, stretched out
his hand to the Rutulian and lifted him up, reassuring him in
his supplication and rejoicing to bestow peace upon Latium.
But I wrote those silly lines, not Virgil: Worse than their
clumsy versification is the violence they do to the subtle
thinking of the poet.
What really happens is that Aeneas sees that Turnus is
wearing the spoils he stripped from Pallas. Furiis accensus et
ira terribilis, “on fire with fury and terrible in his rage,” he
shouts that Pallas is exacting punishment from Turnus and
plunges his sword into Turnus’ heart. With a groan Turnus
dies and the epic abruptly ends.
The end of the Aeneid has troubled readers since antiquity.
An anonymous biographer in the 4th century asserted that
Virgil intended an epic of not twelve, but 24 books. Maffeo
Vegio in the 1400s actually wrote a thirteenth book of the
Aeneid. These absurdities help illustrate that Virgil has given
us a profoundly disturbing ending. And, just as Virgil was
Dante’s guide through Hell and Purgatory, so he is going to
make us look into our hearts.
What Kind of Hero?
The end of the Aeneid, moreover, is only the most startling
reversal of expectation about the hero. We should have
been prepared for it by Book 10, where Aeneas, fresh from
the grief of Pallas’ death, slays two suppliants who fall at his
knees, and takes captives to be used as human sacrifices at
Pallas’ funeral. What kind of hero did Virgil give us?
Aeneas is the most perfect of men. He introduces himself,
without irony, “I am Aeneas, the pious.” C.S. Lewis captures
the character of Aeneas with a few bold strokes. Quoting
Virgil, “the mind remains unshaken while the vain tears fall,”
Lewis observes that Aeneas “is compelled to see something
more important than happiness.”
Lewis notes vocation in Virgil, and with it, duty. Aeneas
loves Dido, but when divinity reminds him of duty, there is
no hesitation. When he meets her ghost in the underworld,
after she takes her own life, there is no comfort Aeneas can
give or take. He can only resume his duty.
Burden of Conscience
Yet Aeneas fails in the end. At the beginning of the Aeneid
(1.294-96), Jupiter, king of the Roman gods, envisioned
a Roman world where the personification of rage, Furor
Impius, is bound and chained. But Aeneas now slays his foe
“kindled with furor.” He does not execute Turnus as a danger
to the rational, ordered world Rome must build: He kills
him in angry revenge. Roman Stoicism had doctrine about
appropriate wartime behavior. Cicero wrote that fighting
for personal gratification, rather than for public safety, is
Vo ic e s o f C C U
DUSTING OFF THE CLASSICS
By Megan DeVore
“Let the clever ones learn Latin as an
honor and Greek as a treat.” Winston
Churchill’s words fall out of cadence
with today’s apathy toward the ancient
world. We are told the past is dead and
gone or relegated to the ivory tower,
along with its irrelevant languages.
I beg to differ—and a recent surge in
Classical studies suggests I’m not alone. Classics stu-
dents enjoy innumerable practical benefits: Familiarity
with Latin or Greek produces an erudite vocabulary
(increasing job prospects), enhances performance on
standardized exams, and increases comprehension of
modern languages. Knowledge of ancient history en-
ables recognition of allusions in contemporary literature,
political systems, military affairs, and phrases such as “a
Sisyphean task.”
At Colorado Christian University, however, the above
litany does not suffice. We do not teach the Classics
merely to produce students with skill in trivia or lucrative
jobs. We do so out of the conviction that humans live
inextricably in the dimension of time. We are marked by
our past and move in a present which once was the fu-
ture. Amnesia on the communal, institutional, or national
level is devastating. If we are ignorant of our history
—or, worse, twist history to suit present purposes—we
set upon dangerous, egomaniacal paths into a nebulous
future.
Additionally, as a professor of Greco-Roman history and
early Christian theology, I consistently emphasize that
our Judeo-Christian faith exists today where it began mil-
lennia ago: in historical context. An understanding of the
Classical world brings a lively depth of insight into our
Scriptures, theologies, practices, and future directions.
The ancient world is part of us—isn’t this thrilling? No
wonder, then, at Churchill’s words: Learning the Classics
truly is an honor and a treat. ■
Megan DeVore has taught in the School of
Theology at Colorado Christian University since Centennial
2006. She holds an M.A. in Classics from the
University of Colorado and is completing her Ph.D.
Institute
in theology at the University of Wales, U.K.
Colorado Christian University
repugnant to humanity (On Duties 1.62). For Cicero, even
in the heat of mortal combat, anger has no place (Tusculans
4.43). Utopian, surely, but this was the paradigm Aeneas
was expected to exemplify.
Oxford scholar Oliver Lyne, one of the most inspired
readers of Virgil, wrote: “If Aeneas, the son of a goddess,
the hero of the epic, cannot ‘succeed,’ then perhaps no
one can. With great realism Vergil shows how an Aeneas,
who is genuinely in sympathy with Stoic imperial ideas
Centennial Review, May 2010 ▪ 3
 Centennial Institute

Centennial Review
Colorado Christian University
8787 W. Alameda Ave.
Lakewood, CO 80226

Return Service Requested

Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute Publisher, William L. Armstrong
Centennial Review Volume 2, Number 4 • May 2010 Editor, John Andrews
May 2010

CIVILIZATION AND SAVAGERY: Publius Vergilius Maro was born in 70 B.C. By 29 B.C.,
when he completed his second poem, the Georgics, called
VIRGIL FOR TODAY by John Dryden, “the best poem by the best poet,” Virgil
By Michael Poliakoff had wealth, stature, and even the ear of Caesar. The final
decade of Virgil’s life was devoted to the Aeneid, which he
Editor’s Note: Higher education today is ever less high. Our composed at the average rate of two lines per day, leaving it
institute stands against that trend. In shaping contemporary unfinished when he died in 19 B.C. Ever the perfectionist,
citizens, we honor the ancient landmarks. This month’s
Virgil begged that the manuscript be burned. Augustus,
Centennial Review is not light reading. But Poliakoff ’s insights
fortunately, interceded and this monument of civilization
will repay you well. Aeneas speaks powerfully to our times.
Civilization and Savagery: became the treasure of lands and peoples beyond the
Virgil For Today farthest imagination of Rome.
By Michael Poliakoff The invitation this essay offers
is to travel an arduous path. It Impacting Constantine, Augustine, Dante
Aeneas is the most perfect of
men. Yet he fails in the end. Who will have sublimity, since we will Virgil’s works were instant classics. There are more
then can succeed? If we listen to be looking at a masterwork of manuscripts of his writings than of any other classical
Virgil, we grow. the ancient world, the Aeneid, author, and several are expensive, sumptuous copies, a sign
written by Virgil in what of his great popularity. It was a school text St. Augustine
Tennyson called “the stateliest recalls how in his youth he was required to know about
measure ever moulded by the the wanderings of Aeneas but did not take note of his
lips of man.” But the journey own (moral) wanderings. Virgil weighed heavily upon him,
of the appropriate methods
will indeed be arduous, because as it did upon all educated Romans of his day. He wept
of warfare cannot, under the Centennial Institute and 710 KNUS Present this ancient text will make us travel inside the human soul for Dido, the lost love of the Aeneid’s hero, when, he tells
relentless pressure of human
WESTERN CONSERVATIVE SUMMIT 2010 and face some very hard questions about good and evil, us, he should have wept for his own distance from God
reality, always uphold them.”
Friday, July 9 – Sunday, July 11 civilization and savagery, theirs and ours. (Confessions I.13-17). Like Augustine, the poet Dante draws
Admonished and chastened, C.S. Lewis saw in Virgil’s epic poem a turning point in insight into the human heart and soul from Virgil, and it is
Marriott South, Lone Tree, Colorado
if we listen to Virgil, we grow. civilization and a rite of passage for the reader: no accident that Dante makes Virgil his guide through his
In the Georgics, Virgil warned Inferno and Purgatory.
that all things collapse to ruin
Theme: “Right Turn, Right Now” No man who has once read it with full perception remains
an adolescent. … Virgil, with no intention of allegory, has By the Middle Ages, Virgil has become a character larger
and are swept away: humanity Conferees: Leaders in Business, Government,
Politics, Education, Faith, and Media, described once and for all the very quality of most human life than life. In spelling his name with an “i,” even though the
rows against a hostile tide, and from Fifteen States, California to Kansas
as it is experienced by anyone who has not yet risen to holiness Romans spelled it with an “e,” we follow medieval legend,
with the relaxation of effort is
Invited Speakers Include: or sunk to animality. …You cannot be young twice. The where the poet becomes a necromancer with a magic wand
swept headlong away (I. 199-
Aeneas, wounded by an arrow, with
explicitly religious subject for any future epic has been dictated (virga in Latin). People used Virgil’s works for divination,
his son and the goddess Venus 203). In the world of war and Michele Bachmann Tom Coburn
by Virgil; it is the only further development left. and the early church had its own special legends of Virgil’s
(Fresco from Pompeii, A.D. 79) empire, the temptations are Congresswoman Senator
influence and power. His fourth Eclogue, telling of the birth
yet greater, the consequences more dire. As C.S. Lewis told General Jerry Boykin Arthur Brooks Virgil’s work is a classic that continues to speak to hearts
us, Virgil bids us to take up the burden of our conscience U.S. Army (Retired) American Enterprise Institute and minds far removed in time, place, culture, and language

and our responsibility. Yearn as we might for childhood, Brit Hume Foster Friess from its author. Its message is as urgent today as it was Michael Poliakoff is policy director for the American Council of Trustees and
in the time of Augustus Caesar. It challenges all of us, as Alumni in Washington, D.C. He holds degrees from Oxford and the University
Virgil summons us to moral maturity and to the challenge of Fox News Philanthropist & Businessman
of Michigan. He has taught classics at Wellesley College, Hillsdale College,
civilization. ■ Michael Barone James Dobson
Lewis observed, to come into full maturity. Georgetown University, and George Washington University. He was formerly vice
Washington Examiner Broadcaster In this essay, we look first at the impact of Virgil’s work in president for academic affairs at the University of Colorado, deputy education
The Aeneid: A Beginning Bibliography secretary in Pennsylvania, and a program director at the National Endowment
 Jasper Griffin, Virgil (Oxford, 1986). Dick Morris Dennis Prager preceding centuries. It has a central position in our cultural for the Humanities.
 C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford, 1954).
Fox News Salem Radio literacy. We will also examine the context of the Aeneid’s Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhance
 R.O.A.M. Lyne, Further Voices in Vergil’s Aeneid (Oxford, 1987). For information, reservations, and sponsorship opportunities, creation: what it meant to live during the Roman Civil War public understanding of the most important issues facing our state and nation.

 Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939). e-mail Centennial@ccu.edu or call 303.963.3424 and the reign of Augustus. Then we return to the yet more By proclaiming Truth, we aim to foster faith, family, and freedom, teach citizen-
ship, and renew the spirit of 1776.
urgent question of why his work should matter to us.
Centennial Review, May 2010 ▪ 4