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Gender Roles In Aeneas

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In portraying any society that was in opposition to Rome, Roman authors characterized their enemies as direct opposites— for instance, male: female. Secondly, females represent the naturally weaker and inferior sex, subject to emotional instability and sudden action, which is clearly represented in Dido’s deteriorated mental state of mind when Aeneas leaves Carthage for Rome. And as a result of those two characteristics, these women serve as a threat to Roman society because they challenge the norms and standard gender roles, often by having direct arguments with men. Furthermore, it seems that the goal of Vergil was to describe a creation story while also focusing on portraying the message of not giving women power, while the goal of Ovid’s

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