How Journey to the Center of the Earth drew on The Aeneid
A documented line of influence: Jules Verne demonstrably engaged Virgil’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Aeneid
Virgil · 19 BCE
Ancient RomeThe influenced
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Jules Verne · 1864
The Age of the NovelRelevance
6/10
On Journey to the Center of the Earth’s page
- The ancient template behind the modern adventure — Verne consciously stages his descent on Aeneas's journey to the underworld
- The novel stitches Virgil straight into the text, quoting the Aeneid in Latin and naming the hero's passage among the dead
- Read it first and the trip to the planet's core reveals itself as a katabasis — the mythic descent dressed in nineteenth-century science
On The Aeneid’s page
- Virgil's descent to the dead becomes Verne's descent into the planet — the katabasis goes underground
- Journey to the Center of the Earth quotes the Aeneid on the page in Latin, "Et quacumque viam dederit fortuna sequamur," and invokes Virgil's hero entering the underworld
- Verne's explorers go down where Aeneas went down — the oldest journey-below in the canon, reborn as Victorian adventure