© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press 2005; all rights reserved
Aeneas and Agathocles in the Exclusion Crisis
University of California, Los Angeles
The anonymous The Conspiracy of Aeneas & Antenor against the State of Troy (1682) and Thomas Hoy's Agathocles the Sicilian Usurper (1683) are linked by their being written in imitation of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel and their drawing upon classical rather than biblical history and legend. They also offer fully developed narratives and use their sources to play an English plot against a Trojan or Sicilian one. In doing so, they raise interpretative problems for their readers, including those who annotated copies of the poems when they first appeared. The poems were published during the Exclusion Crisis and within six months of each other, but only The Conspiracy of Aeneas & Antenor directly addresses current issues and events. Hoy uses the life of Agathocles to represent the career of Cromwell and to warn his contemporaries that they are risking another Cromwellian usurpation by their practices. He writes as a Tory, celebrating patriarchal monarchy and the restoration of Charles II, whereas the author of The Conspiracy of Aeneas & Antenor is ambivalent and inclining to Whig. He is, however, hostile to popery and, in contrast to Hoy, flippantly dismissive of Charles II's court.