= Paper =
By the time when Vergil wrote the Aeneid, the number and identification of the Olympian Gods had long been determined. The Gods were twelve in number, collectively known as “dodekatheoi”, and their names, in Latin, were: Apollo, Ceres, Diana, Iuno, Iuppiter, Mars, Mercurius, Minerva, Neptunus, Venus, Vesta and Vulcanus. Yet it may be safely assumed that no order or, as it were, logical sequence, was ever imposed for the group as a whole, so that any artist or writer in Antiquity remained free to represent or describe them in the order of his choice. This article focuses on the question of the Twelve Olympians in the Aeneid. It puts forward a method whose purpose is to examine whether each book of the poem may be said to be dominated by one particular Olympian god. This investigation comes as a complement of previous studies already published about the literary architecture of the Aeneid.
