Cavernous Spaces in Plato and Virgil
Abstract
In Plato's Republic, Socrates presents an epistemological and philosophical analogy where the process of becoming more attuned to the ideal Forms occurs in gradations, as steps, or as gradual shifts from darkness of the Cave to full daylight. Virgil, however, in the Aeneid, describes several caves and uses those topoi as places where characters gain knowledge. I examine how their cavernous rhetoric works, and how Virgil uses his caves as an answer to Plato's Cave, demonstrating this concept in an epic.References
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