The Aeneid Discussion Group

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Originally Posted by bluevictim

Sounds good. :)

One thing that is common with these "manly" women is that their "manliness" is something to be repulsed by, and in the case of Lysistrata, laughed at -- even Penthesileia and the Amazons serve more as a object for astonishment than for emulation. Like you, and, I imagine, many other readers, I feel that Virgil has made Dido quite admirable -- quite a contrast with the other ancient "manly" women. I wonder if these feelings are anachronistic; perhaps Virgil didn't intend for Dido to be as admirable as we are taking her. Your point that Roman women enjoy more freedom than their Greek counterparts is interesting, and maybe Virgil's audience would find a woman with male power admirable. On the other hand, Dido's story would probably remind them of Cleopatra, another woman with male power who caused harm by seducing a Roman (although I guess we're not at the "causing harm by seducing" part of the Dido story yet).

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Oh I had not thought of the parallel with Cleopatra. Yes, of course, she's partly based on Cleopatra. And Aeneas, unlike Marc Antony, actually rejects the African queen. Marc Antony was ridiculed in Rome for his absorption, for lack of a better word, with Cleopatra. And it was through a propaganda campaign by Octavian, who became Augustus and therefore Virgil's patron, who deefined Antony's relationship with Cleopatra to the Roman people. I would imagine it had already become legend by the writing of the Aeneid.

Interesting you refer to the Greek woman as "manly." Other than Homer, I'm not as up on classical greek literature. Is that how commentary refers to those women? One could not call Dido manly. ;)

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It makes sense that the woman Aeneas falls in love with should be a worthy woman, but it seems to me that it is kind of circular as an explanation for why Virgil made a sympathetic queen of Carthage. After all, the need to have Aeneas fall in love with Dido was created by Virgil in the first place. He could have come up with a scenario more like the model of Calypso ensnaring Odysseus against his will, for example. As far as I know the episode with Dido doesn't follow any well known legend in Virgil's time, so he wasn't under any pressure from tradition to have Aeneas fall in love with Dido.

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I think you hit it on the head when you brought up Cleopatra. I think Cleopatra is the model for Dido. Antony was defeated in 30 BC and The Aneid was written between 29 to 19 BC.

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Originally Posted by bluevictim

Sounds good. :)

One thing that is common with these "manly" women is that their "manliness" is something to be repulsed by, and in the case of Lysistrata, laughed at -- even Penthesileia and the Amazons serve more as a object for astonishment than for emulation. Like you, and, I imagine, many other readers, I feel that Virgil has made Dido quite admirable -- quite a contrast with the other ancient "manly" women.

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Originally Posted by bluevictim

On the other hand, Dido's story would probably remind them of Cleopatra

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Oh I had not thought of the parallel with Cleopatra. Yes, of course, she's partly based on Cleopatra.

Interesting you refer to the Greek woman as "manly." Other than Homer, I'm not as up on classical greek literature. Is that how commentary refers to those women? One could not call Dido manly. ;)

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This is interesting. I would think that the Roman views on gender and the news of Cleopatra affected the way they looked at Dido; and, it probably did change Virgil's characterization of the female temptation. Without knowing more about Roman history, though, I really can't add much.

Another part of Aeneus' relationship with Dido that we haven't talked about yet is the duplicity. Everyone is trying trick everyone else. Juno tries to pull Venus over to her side. Venus makes Dido fall in love with Aeneus. Dido tries to beguile Aeneus, and then Aeneus tries to slink away without being noticed. As an audience, I'm not really bothered by this because it fits with my idea of seduction: someone manipulating another by playing off their desires. That's what's going on in Book I and Book IV. But, once I think of this, then I have to decide how the character's are seducing the others. What desires are they playing off of? And, how are the characters affected by this manipulation?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Prior to meeting Dido, Aeneas comes across Dido's temple to Juno, where is spread in what I assume are reliefs a pictorial of the events of the Trojan War. Aeneas sees Achilles and Priam and Hector and even himself in various scenes. I find this interesting too. What's usually made of this is that the Trojan War has entered mythic history. What I find interesting is the pictorial representation. In the Illiad there is Achilles's shield that has a series of pictorial representations, but this sequence of reliefs (the pictorial history of a war or important event) seem much more a Roman art form rather than Greek. Perhaps someone can correct me there. This sort of representation would find it's most famous example in the pictorial representation of Trajan's victories over the Dacians, sculpted on Trajan's Arch of about a hundred years after Virgil.

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That is indeed a wonderfully vivid visual passage. As you may know, a passage like that, in which a visual art object is described in detail in poetry, is sometimes referred to as ekphrastic, which is a term from the Greek meaning literally to speak out, but also more specifically to call out the name of an inanimate object. There are other passages of ekphrasis before Virgil, such as Achilles' sheild in the Iliad, which you point out, but as far as I can remember Virgil was the first to do this sort of description of the temple walls. This was a hugely imitated passage after Virgil, and the vivid ekphrastic or pictorial description of images on the walls of a temple or some similar structure became a standard feature in most of the major epics that followed the Virgilian tradition, just as ekphrasis of sheilds became standard features in most post Homeric epics (including the Aeneid in book 8). These two sites of ekphrasis also were usually adopted in later epics (see, for example, Tasso's Gerusalleme Liberata) just the way they appear in the Aeneid. The description of images on a wall usually precedes an encounter with a tempting woman, while the description of the sheild was associated with the point in the narrative when the hero is once more on track for his epic quest and looking ahead to the descendants of the great empire he expects to build. Fairly clearly a shield is the object appropriate to conquest and warfare, while the wall represents a building or structure, which signifies a temple, a home, or other settled domestic area where women have more potential to thrive or even dominate.

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Two things I find interesting there. One that a woman can have such leadership ability in an ancient text. It's interesting to note that Roman women, while they did not hold office or command an army, had much more freedom than their Greek counterparts. And Virgil doesn't feel uncomfortable creating a strong female character. Second and more important is the parallel histroy that she has with Aeneas. Both are fleeing their home lands, albeit for dfferent reasons, and where some injustice has occured to them. Both have lost a spouse and are probably around middle age. And both have voyaged out searching for a new homeland. Another interesting thing that we keep coming across is the walls of a city. It seems as if Virgil is obssessed with it. The walls of Carthage, the walls of Alba Longa, the walls of Rome. And of course the torn walls of Troy.

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Originally Posted by bluevictim

In this regard, it may be interesting to compare and (perhaps mostly) contrast Dido with Aeschylus' Clytemnestra and Euripides' Medea, two Greek "manly" women in serious literature, and Aristophanes' Lysistrata. In Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Clytemnestra is clearly in charge of Agamemnon's house, even though Aigisthos was around, and she is the one who kills Agamemnon. In Euripides' Medea, we find Medea making many of the claims on Jason typically reserved for men in terms of oaths-keeping and honor. In Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the women, led by Lysistrata, are sick of war and decide to go on sexual strike to get the men to end it (and they succeed). It's also interesting that the last picture described on the wall of the temple, just before Aeneas sees Dido, is Penthesileia and her Amazon warriors.

The romance between Aeneas and Dido is reminiscent of the romance between Jason and Medea in Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica. In that epic, Aphrodite (Venus) gets Eros (Cupid) to make Medea fall in love with Jason to help him with his heroic quest.

...One thing that is common with these "manly" women is that their "manliness" is something to be repulsed by, and in the case of Lysistrata, laughed at -- even Penthesileia and the Amazons serve more as a object for astonishment than for emulation. Like you, and, I imagine, many other readers, I feel that Virgil has made Dido quite admirable -- quite a contrast with the other ancient "manly" women. I wonder if these feelings are anachronistic; perhaps Virgil didn't intend for Dido to be as admirable as we are taking her. Your point that Roman women enjoy more freedom than their Greek counterparts is interesting, and maybe Virgil's audience would find a woman with male power admirable. On the other hand, Dido's story would probably remind them of Cleopatra, another woman with male power who caused harm by seducing a Roman (although I guess we're not at the "causing harm by seducing" part of the Dido story yet).

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Oh I had not thought of the parallel with Cleopatra. Yes, of course, she's partly based on Cleopatra. And Aeneas, unlike Marc Antony, actually rejects the African queen. Marc Antony was ridiculed in Rome for his absorption, for lack of a better word, with Cleopatra. And it was through a propaganda campaign by Octavian, who became Augustus and therefore Virgil's patron, who deefined Antony's relationship with Cleopatra to the Roman people. I would imagine it had already become legend by the writing of the Aeneid.

Interesting you refer to the Greek woman as "manly." Other than Homer, I'm not as up on classical greek literature. Is that how commentary refers to those women? One could not call Dido manly. ;)

I think you hit it on the head when you brought up Cleopatra. I think Cleopatra is the model for Dido. Antony was defeated in 30 BC and The Aneid was written between 29 to 19 BC.

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Originally Posted by Quark

This is interesting. I would think that the Roman views on gender and the news of Cleopatra affected the way they looked at Dido; and, it probably did change Virgil's characterization of the female temptation. Without knowing more about Roman history, though, I really can't add much.

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Blue brings up some good possible sources for strong female characters in the Greek tragedies, and I think especially the Jason-Medea relationship in the Argonautica seems a likely source for at least part of the Dido-Aeneas story. The clearest source of inspiration, however, is, as Blue suggests, Cleopatra. There can be little doubt that Virgil is alluding to what were then relatively recent events with the Dido story. That's probably one good reason for the choice of Carthage as Dido's home as well, since this would reinforce that this is a cautionary tale about the dangers of women from North Africa. Later, in book eight, Virgil explicitly brings up Antony's defeat at Actium, making it clear that he regarded Cleopatra as an unfortunate Dido-like distraction from the work of the Roman Empire. The two stories were also closely linked for centuries in both the critical reception of the Aeneid and the literature that followed it. For example, since we were just talking about ekphrasis, there's a lovely example of the conflation between the two in book 16 of Tasso's Gerusalleme Liberata in which there's a vivid description of images of Anthony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium depicted on walls reminiscent of the temple in Dido's Carthage.

What I think is fascinating about Virgil's portrait of Dido, however, is what everyone has been commenting on in this thread. That is that she is such a very attractive and sympathetic character. She is beautiful, intelligent, powerful in her own right, and clearly truly in love with Aeneas. One could argue that this attractive portrait is aimed at making her a real temptation to both Aeneas and the reader. It must be realistically difficult to give her up in order to get across the importance and gravity of resisting the temptation to stay with her in order to pursue his goals. I think that this is true to a certain extent, but I also think that Virgil is a great enough poet and story teller that he, on some level, is seeing this story from Dido's perspective as a woman, even as he clearly wants to get the point across that Aeneas has no business dilly dallying around Carthage. There's something of a Shakespearean depth to Dido's character that makes her not simply a symbolic temptress from the quest, but a real seeming person.

Thank you Petrarch, especially for "ekphrasis." I had not heard that rhetorical term. I will look it up. I wish there had been a class in rhetorical terms. Yes, we get some as we go through english classes, but it's not structured or organized around it. As much as I rail against the modern education system :p I do prefer it over that of the midle ages, but the middle ages were onto something when they taught rhetoric.

Yes I agree that Dido is incredibly three dimensional for an ancient female character. I can't think of any other, not even Penelope, who is as complex. I do think that Virgil is trying to balance a number of things: a representative for Carthage, a mirror companion to Aeneas, a fictionalized Cleopatra, and a love interest that almost prevents Aeneas from his mission. A wonderful character.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Interesting you refer to the Greek woman as "manly." Other than Homer, I'm not as up on classical greek literature. Is that how commentary refers to those women? One could not call Dido manly. ;)

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No, I didn't mean anything technical by "manly"; all I mean by a "manly" woman is one who takes on some of the behaviors and roles traditionally reserved for males. So, Clytemnestra is "manly" for ruling Agamemnon's house just as Dido can be said to be "manly" for being in charge of Carthage. It's probably a bad word choice, so I put it in quotes. :)

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Originally Posted by Quark

Another part of Aeneus' relationship with Dido that we haven't talked about yet is the duplicity. Everyone is trying trick everyone else. Juno tries to pull Venus over to her side. Venus makes Dido fall in love with Aeneus. Dido tries to beguile Aeneus, and then Aeneus tries to slink away without being noticed. As an audience, I'm not really bothered by this because it fits with my idea of seduction: someone manipulating another by playing off their desires. That's what's going on in Book I and Book IV. But, once I think of this, then I have to decide how the character's are seducing the others. What desires are they playing off of? And, how are the characters affected by this manipulation?

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It's interesting that you point out that Aeneas is guilty of duplicitousness. My impression of Aeneas is usually that he is fairly guileless, and even a bit naive. His plan of slipping away always seemed to me to be more an attempt at being tactful (but he failed, unlike Odysseus with Calypso) than an attempt to manipulate Dido.


As an unrelated thought, I find that there is a certain undertone foreboding evil in Book 1, before the tragic developments in Book 4. While most of the book parallels Odysseus' arrival among the Phaeacians, who help him on his journey, the description of the harbor, where there is no need for mooring or anchoring, recalls the harbor of the Cyclops in the Odyssey, and Dido's series of questions upon meeting him also faintly resembles Polyphemus' series of questions when he first saw Odysseus in his cave (Odyssey, Book 9). Of course the episode with the Cyclops turned out to be a disaster. Virgil also tells us that Venus is wary of Dido's "uncertain house and two-tongued Tyrians" (maybe reflecting the hostility between Rome and Carthage). And, as everyone else has said, there is the association with Cleopatra. So, even though things are going well for the Trojans on the surface and Aeneas himself is oblivious to the danger, Virgil has provided subtle hints that all is not well.

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

What I think is fascinating about Virgil's portrait of Dido, however, is what everyone has been commenting on in this thread. That is that she is such a very attractive and sympathetic character. She is beautiful, intelligent, powerful in her own right, and clearly truly in love with Aeneas. One could argue that this attractive portrait is aimed at making her a real temptation to both Aeneas and the reader. It must be realistically difficult to give her up in order to get across the importance and gravity of resisting the temptation to stay with her in order to pursue his goals. I think that this is true to a certain extent, but I also think that Virgil is a great enough poet and story teller that he, on some level, is seeing this story from Dido's perspective as a woman, even as he clearly wants to get the point across that Aeneas has no business dilly dallying around Carthage. There's something of a Shakespearean depth to Dido's character that makes her not simply a symbolic temptress from the quest, but a real seeming person.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Yes I agree that Dido is incredibly three dimensional for an ancient female character. I can't think of any other, not even Penelope, who is as complex. I do think that Virgil is trying to balance a number of things: a representative for Carthage, a mirror companion to Aeneas, a fictionalized Cleopatra, and a love interest that almost prevents Aeneas from his mission. A wonderful character.

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Dido is a sympathetic character. I really do feel for her after Book IV. In fact, most of that Book is dedicated to her mini-tragedy (mini in terms of number of pages, not pathos). Yet, I feel sympathetic towards Dido less because of characterization and more because of the positions Virgil puts her in. Really, I don't know that much about Dido. She appears attractive, and she must be a good leader. Other than that, I can't speculate much. The tragic aspect of her story doesn't appear to stem from these qualities. It comes more from her victimhood which Virgil portrays so well. Her husband has been murdered, Aeneus is leaving her, and now she has to deal with the unfriendly tribes around her. As Aeneus is sailing away from Carthage, the last picture of Dido we get is of this thrice-victim who suffers misfortune in her past, present, and future. I think this makes her more sympathetic than the actual personal traits which are scarcely given. What we do know of her character is actually geared to make her more attractive to Aeneus than it is to the reader. She seems to be the feminine version of Aeneus. Both suffered tragic losses in their past and then resolved to heroically found their own kingdoms. They are both conveyed as smart, charismatic leaders. And, they are both neglecting their duties in their affair. These qualities make them a good match, and the reader--on some level--must want them to get together; but, I don't know how much depth any of this gives Dido.

BkII:1-15 The Trojan Horse: Laocoön’s Warning


They were all silent, and turned their faces towards him intently.

Then from his high couch our forefather Aeneas began:

‘O queen, you command me to renew unspeakable grief,

how the Greeks destroyed the riches of Troy,

and the sorrowful kingdom, miseries I saw myself,

and in which I played a great part. What Myrmidon,

or Dolopian, or warrior of fierce Ulysses, could keep

from tears in telling such a story? Now the dew-filled night

is dropping from the sky, and the setting stars urge sleep.

But if you have such desire to learn of our misfortunes,

and briefly hear of Troy’s last agonies, though my mind

shudders at the memory, and recoils in sorrow, I’ll begin.

‘After many years have slipped by, the leaders of the Greeks,

opposed by the Fates, and damaged by the war,

build a horse of mountainous size, through Pallas’s divine art,

and weave planks of fir over its ribs:

.................................................. .................................................. ....And the Latin text...CONTICUERE omnes intentique ora tenebant. / Inde toro pater Aeneas sic orsus ab alto: / "Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolerem, / Trojanas ut opes et lamentabile regnum / eruerint Danae, queque ipse miserrima vidi / et quorum pars magna fui. / Quis talea fando / Myrmidonum Dolopumve aut duri miles Ulixi / temperet a lacrimis? Et jam nox umida caelo / praecipitat suadentque cadentia sidera somnos. / Sed si tantus amor casus cagnoscere nostros / et breviter Trojae supremum audire laborem, / quamquam animus meminisse horret luctuque refugit incipiam. "................................................. ..........................................These first lines describe how at Dido's request, Aeneas starts to describe the fall of Troy even though it brings back all the sorrow of these memories. A few Latin lines later, Aeneas gives credit to Pallas (Minerva), godess of wisdom and the arts, for the idea and design of the Trojan Horse. This godess, like all Roman gods, had it's inception in a real person or ancestor who's talent and skill was so great that she became a godess in later generations. This transference from some ancestor of special skills to a god like Minerva is true of the other Deities and demi-gods; the exception being the most powerfull god...Zeus, the Greek god and his equal in the Roman god Jupiter. One of the purposes of Augustus and Virgil in creating the Aeneid, was to spark a revival of faith and with it unquestioning reliance on the infallable wisdom of the gods and their helpful interference in human struggles.

Hey, I'm sorry if I haven't been back for over a week. I was very preoccupied.

Let me post some thoughts on Book II, my favorite of the books. And really I think one of the most original of the Aenied. Yes, Odysseus in the Odyssey goes through a first person narration of his adventures. But Aeneas's first person narration of the fall of troy far surpasses anything in the The Odyssey in terms of specificity and subjective first person. We feel Aeneas's emotions every step of the way. We know his thoughts as he comments on the events, we know his decision making processes, we know his angers and horrors and fears. Virgil places us in Aeneas's shoes more so than any writer before and not after until the modern novel. Here's an example. Aeneas has just witness the murder of Priam by Achilles's son. We get first his thoughts on the context of the event, and then the fear of his own father's fate, and then his emotions flame as he sees Helen, the cause of al this war and fall of his homeland.

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"Such was the fate of Priam, his death, his lot on earth,
with Troy blazing before his eyes, her ramparts down,
the monarch who once had ruled in all his glory
the many lands of Asia, Asia's many tribes.
A powerful trunk is lying on the shore.
The head wrenched from his shoulders.
A corpse without a name.

"Then, for the first time

the full horror came home to me at last. I froze.
The thought of my own dear father filled my mind
when I saw the old king gasping out his life
with the raw wound--both men were the same age--
and the thought of my Creusa, alone, abandoned,
out house plundered, our little Iulus' fate.
I look back--what forces still stood by me?
None. Totally spent in war, they'd all deserted,
down from the roofs they'd flung themselves to earth
or hurled their broken bodies in the flames.

"So

at just that moment I was the one man left
and then I saw her, clinging to Vesta's threshold,
hiding in silence, tucked away--Helen of Argos.
Glare of the fires lit my view as I ooked down,
scanning the city left and right, and there she was...
terrified of the Trojans' hate, now Troy was overpowered,
terrified of the Greeks' revenge, her deserted husband's rage--
that universal Fury, a curse to Troy and her native land
and here she lurked, skulking, a thing of loathing
cowering at the altar: Helen. Out it flared,
the fire inside my soul, my rage ablaze to revenge
our fallen country--pay Helen back, crime for crime.
(l. 692-714)

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Here's another element of Book II that is interesting. This is the Book with the Trojan Horse, and as the Trojans ponder what to do with the Horse and what it means, the Greeks actually plant a person, Sinon, from their ranks to decieve them into thinking the Greeks have left and that the Horse is only an icon for the God Neptune. Look at how Virgil, through Aeneas, characterizes the Greeks:

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Now hear the treachery of the Greeks and learn
from a single crime the nature of the beast...
(l. 85-6)

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"Now, of course,
we burn to question him, urge him to explain--
blind to how false the cunning Greeks could be.
All atremble, he carries on with his tale,
lying from the cocles of his heart
(l. 133-7)

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"He brke off. Sinon, adept at decent,
with all his Greek cunninglifted his hands...
(l. 152-3)

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And there are other places as well where the Greeks are characterized as deceivers. Now of course the element of the Trojan Horse, a trick, requires Virgil to go down this path for purposes of the story. But it goes beyond that. This is an epic of Roman identity and given Virgil is working in the Homeric tradition, the contrast with Greek identity is important and deliberate. Characterizing the Greeks as decievers is not an accident of the story. As much as Romans may have been impressed with Greek culture the remark that some make that Romans idolized Greeks is generally wrong. The romans thought the Greeks superior in the arts, but they actually had low opinions of them when it came to character, honor, and fortitude, as well as soldiering and government. The quotes are actually Roman attitudes that carried through deep in their cuture. This too carres historical weight. When Mark Antony seemingly rejects Roman identity for that of the Hellenistic east, the Romans easily turned against him, looking at him in much the same attitude.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

This is an epic of Roman identity and given Virgil is working in the Homeric tradition, the contrast with Greek identity is important and deliberate.

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If the Greeks are characterized as wily deceivers, how do you think the Romans differ? I mean within The Aeneid. Obviously, the usual answer is that the Romans are more impassive and value things like honesty and strength, but I'm wondering how the story itself portrays the difference.

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Originally Posted by Quark

If the Greeks are characterized as wily deceivers, how do you think the Romans differ? I mean within The Aeneid. Obviously, the usual answer is that the Romans are more impassive and value things like honesty and strength, but I'm wondering how the story itself portrays the difference.

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Virgil characterizes the Romans as Aeneas, dutiful, straight forward, and willing to sacrifice for the greater good.

Book II is so rich, I think I'll make one more post on it. Another quality of Book II is the misty, almost metaphysical state of the action. One can't seem to know how Aeneas seems to be able to see all that he does. One moment he's watching the Greeks file out of the Trojan Horse, the next he's fighting, next he's disguised as part of the Greeks, next he's watching Priam get slain, next he's escaping with his family. I never get the feel of the movement, though as I look closely, there is enough time for Aeneas to float across all these scenes.

Another reason for the metaphysical feel is that three non humans visit Aeneas through the Book: two ghosts, Hector and his wife Creusa, and one diety, his mother Venus. All three really do the same thing, implore him to escape.

Here is Hector's passage:

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"This was the hour when rest, that gift of the gods
most haeven-sent, first comes to beleagurred mortals,
creeping over us now...when there, look,
I dreamed I saw Prince Hector before my eyes,
my comrade haggard with sorrow, streaming tears,
just as he once was, when dragged behind the chariot,
black with blood and grime, thongs piercing his swollen feet--
what a harrowing sight! What a far cry from the old Hector
home from battle, decked in Achilles' arms--his trophies--
or fresh from pitching Trojan fire at the greek ships.
His beard matted now, his hair clotted with blood,
bearing the wonds, so many wounds he suffered
fighting round his native city walls...
I dreamed I addressed him first, in tears myself
I forced my voice from the depths of all my grief:
'Oh light of Trojans--last best hope of Troy!
What's held ou back so long? How long we've waited,
Hector, for you to come, and now from what far shores?
How glad we are to see you, we battle weary men,
after so many deaths, your people dead and gone,
after your citizens, your city felt such pain.
But what outrage has mutilated your face
so clear and cloudless once? Why these wounds?'

"Wasting no words, no time on empty questions,
heaving a deep groan from his heart he calls out:
'Escape, son of the goddess, tear yourself from the flames!
The enemy holds our walls. Troy is toppling from her heights.
You have paid your debt to our King and native land.
If one strong arm could have saved Troy, my arm
would have saved the city. Now, into your hands
she entrusts her holy things, her household gods.
Take them with you as comrades in your fortunes.
Seek a city for them, once you have roved the seas,
erect great walls at last to house the gods of Troy!
(l. 339-372)

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Remember, Aeneas will be fleeing his homeland, a potentially dishonorable act, but what better sanction than to have Hector, the noblest of all, approve his escape. And notice Aeneas will be taking the holy things. I had not realized how religious this work is until this read. And the same thing too, when his mother, Venus, tells him to escape, the sanction of the gods to fulfill a different important fate. And then too Creusa, gives him her blessing to go on. Aeneas will be having an affair with Dido, and remarrying a girl from the Italian land to start a new people. A blessing from the wife absolves him of any potential dishonor to his marriage vows.

I love Book II. :)

Oh, I hadn't realized that discussion of Book II had started off. I had been checking for awhile to see if people were posting, but I guess I've been distracted lately. Anyway, I agree with you, Virg., that book two is a good one. Virgil did refine the flashback form of the Odyssey to great effect here as you point out. There's one point you've made a few times both here and in relation to book one that I would be interested in having you clarify a bit:

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We feel Aeneas's emotions every step of the way. We know his thoughts as he comments on the events, we know his decision making processes, we know his angers and horrors and fears. Virgil places us in Aeneas's shoes more so than any writer before and not after until the modern novel. Here's an example. Aeneas has just witness the murder of Priam by Achilles's son.

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I'm not quite sure about this repeated claim that Virgil does things that weren't repeated until the modern novel. Not that I don't think you're right that there are features of the Aeneid that are present later in the novel, but that I don't quite buy the claim that these features went missing for centuries until Defoe and Richardson started writing or something. Certainly telling parts of the story from a main character's emotional point of view is something that you see in Renaissance drama, Milton's Paradise Lost, etc. Aeneas is a remarkably central hero, but I'd be interested in knowing what specifically you think is unique in the Aeneid until the advent of the novel?

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Book II is so rich, I think I'll make one more post on it. Another quality of Book II is the misty, almost metaphysical state of the action. One can't seem to know how Aeneas seems to be able to see all that he does. One moment he's watching the Greeks file out of the Trojan Horse, the next he's fighting, next he's disguised as part of the Greeks, next he's watching Priam get slain, next he's escaping with his family. I never get the feel of the movement, though as I look closely, there is enough time for Aeneas to float across all these scenes.

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I know, I'm always keenly aware in Book II of how absurdly active he seems to be. I get exhausted just reading about it. :lol: I think Virgil's being very clever here though by using an effect much like a film editor who does numerous cuts to changing scene to give the sense of confusion and action for a battle sequence. Hey, maybe Virgil gave the movie directors that idea.:p

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Another quality of Book II is the misty, almost metaphysical state of the action. One can't seem to know how Aeneas seems to be able to see all that he does. One moment he's watching the Greeks file out of the Trojan Horse, the next he's fighting, next he's disguised as part of the Greeks, next he's watching Priam get slain, next he's escaping with his family. I never get the feel of the movement, though as I look closely, there is enough time for Aeneas to float across all these scenes.

Another reason for the metaphysical feel is that three non humans visit Aeneas through the Book: two ghosts, Hector and his wife Creusa, and one diety, his mother Venus. All three really do the same thing, implore him to escape.

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

I think Virgil's being very clever here though by using an effect much like a film editor who does numerous cuts to changing scene to give the sense of confusion and action for a battle sequence. Hey, maybe Virgil gave the movie directors that idea.:p

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I think we're just supposed to believe that Aeneas has amazingly acute senses. He's able to hear the battle at the gates from his father's house, see Priam's death from the roof of the palace, and he notices Cassandra being taken away while he's busy being shot at with arrows. It's rather improbable, but I guess it's necessary if the story is to have the kind of scope it does. Metaphysical, though? No, it's just Virgil stretching it a bit.

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

I know, I'm always keenly aware in Book II of how absurdly active he seems to be. I get exhausted just reading about it. :lol:

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That's the funny thing, actually. While he is absurdly active at times, he's also absurdly passive at others. Through all the chaos he stops and talks to people and gods, and he just stares from the roof for a surprising long time, watching the city burn and Priam get killed. This goes on for almost two-hundred lines until Venus finally gets him to leave. There are two Aeneases in Book II. One is the omniscient observer who is the motionless cataloger of Troy's destruction, and the other is the Rome-founding, epic Aeneas who has save whatever he can from Troy. The later one can be exhaustingly kinetic. Although, I think I'm more exhausted by the unrelenting depiction of death and ruin. This all culminates in the figure of Pyrrus the Greek who is "furentem caede / going mad with murder". He kills Priam in a particularly gruesome fashion, too. Priam is literally slipping in his son's blood as he's stabbed to death. These kind of scenes are what wore me down when I was reading.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Remember, Aeneas will be fleeing his homeland, a potentially dishonorable act, but what better sanction than to have Hector, the noblest of all, approve his escape. And notice Aeneas will be taking the holy things. I had not realized how religious this work is until this read. And the same thing too, when his mother, Venus, tells him to escape, the sanction of the gods to fulfill a different important fate. And then too Creusa, gives him her blessing to go on. Aeneas will be having an affair with Dido, and remarrying a girl from the Italian land to start a new people. A blessing from the wife absolves him of any potential dishonor to his marriage vows.

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Aeneas does cover his bases before leaving.

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

I'm not quite sure about this repeated claim that Virgil does things that weren't repeated until the modern novel. Not that I don't think you're right that there are features of the Aeneid that are present later in the novel, but that I don't quite buy the claim that these features went missing for centuries until Defoe and Richardson started writing or something. Certainly telling parts of the story from a main character's emotional point of view is something that you see in Renaissance drama, Milton's Paradise Lost, etc. Aeneas is a remarkably central hero, but I'd be interested in knowing what specifically you think is unique in the Aeneid until the advent of the novel?

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I don't exactly follow Vigil (Lit Net Virgil) either, but I thought that it was less of a statement about the Aeneid than it was an attempt to get people into the discussion. It's probably more exciting if we're talking about the most emotional first-person perspective than just another of several very good emotional first-person perspectives. I know I did a lot of similar exaggeration when I was starting a thread on Chekhov short stories. You can see some of it here:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=17728

Too some degree, you probably do have to make some far-fetched claims just to get conversation going--even if it means having them thrown in your face two seconds after you say them.

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Originally Posted by Quark

I don't exactly follow Vigil (Lit Net Virgil) either, but I thought that it was less of a statement about the Aeneid than it was an attempt to get people into the discussion. It's probably more exciting if we're talking about the most emotional first-person perspective than just another of several very good emotional first-person perspectives. I know I did a lot of similar exaggeration when I was starting a thread on Chekhov short stories. You can see some of it here:

Too some degree, you probably do have to make some far-fetched claims just to get conversation going--even if it means having them thrown in your face two seconds after you say them.

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No, no. I wasn't being just provocative. Although i was wondering if anyone was paying attention. I'll explain.

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We feel Aeneas's emotions every step of the way. We know his thoughts as he comments on the events, we know his decision making processes, we know his angers and horrors and fears. Virgil places us in Aeneas's shoes more so than any writer before and not after until the modern novel. Here's an example. Aeneas has just witness the murder of Priam by Achilles's son.

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

I'm not quite sure about this repeated claim that Virgil does things that weren't repeated until the modern novel. Not that I don't think you're right that there are features of the Aeneid that are present later in the novel, but that I don't quite buy the claim that these features went missing for centuries until Defoe and Richardson started writing or something. Certainly telling parts of the story from a main character's emotional point of view is something that you see in Renaissance drama, Milton's Paradise Lost, etc. Aeneas is a remarkably central hero, but I'd be interested in knowing what specifically you think is unique in the Aeneid until the advent of the novel?

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Perhaps it's just me reading it this way, but I don't think there is a character who is as three dimensional as Aeneas. Here look at how many emotions are brought out in such a short passage:

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"Then, for the first time
the full horror came home to me at last. I froze.
The thought of my own dear father filled my mind
when I saw the old king gasping out his life
with the raw wound--both men were the same age--
and the thought of my Creusa, alone, abandoned,
out house plundered, our little Iulus' fate.
I look back--what forces still stood by me?
None. Totally spent in war, they'd all deserted,
down from the roofs they'd flung themselves to earth
or hurled their broken bodies in the flames.

"So
at just that moment I was the one man left
and then I saw her, clinging to Vesta's threshold,
hiding in silence, tucked away--Helen of Argos.
Glare of the fires lit my view as I ooked down,
scanning the city left and right, and there she was...
terrified of the Trojans' hate, now Troy was overpowered,
terrified of the Greeks' revenge, her deserted husband's rage--
that universal Fury, a curse to Troy and her native land
and here she lurked, skulking, a thing of loathing
cowering at the altar: Helen. Out it flared,
the fire inside my soul, my rage ablaze to revenge
our fallen country--pay Helen back, crime for crime.
(l. 692-714)

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Even in Book I notice these contrasting speeches by Aeneas. The first is right in the midst of the storm:

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"Three, four times blest, my comrades
lucky to die beneath the soaring walls of Troy--
before their parents eyes! If only I had down
under your right hand--Diomedes, strongest greek afield--
and poured out my life on the battlegrounds of Troy!
(l. 113-117)

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That is the private side of Aeneas. Now shortly after he speaks to his crew, and the public side comes out:

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"My comrades, hardly strangers to pain before now,
we all have weathered worse. Some god will grant us
an end t this as well...
Call up your courage again. Dismiss your grief and fear.
A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this.
(l. 233-239)

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The very thing he experienced internally (despair, grief) he has to hide to lead to mollify the crew.

And his relationship with Dido is very three dimensional, and even at the end in the last book, when Turnus pleads for his life, and the noble and just thing to do was to spare him, Aeneas, who has been noble and just throughout, acts emtionally, even against the ideals expressed by his father in the underworld (I'll get to them when we reach that book) to spare the merciful (or something like that) and kills Turnus.

What I'm saying is that i don't recall such a three dimensional character until the modern novel, perhaps Don Quixote. No character in The Illiad is that three dimensional. Oddyseus in The Oddessy perhaps but I don't recall the subtlty of evolving emotion with Oddyseus. Certainy not Beowulf or any of the renaissance legends that I recall. Petrarch, if you know of one, please mention it, but I don't think any of the Romances or Arthurian legends I've read reach that kind of characterization. Now I haven't read Apuleus' The Golden ***, or any of the other ancient novels (yes there were novels in classical Greece and Rome) so I can't assess. But from what i have read, I think Aeneas is the most complex character from ancient times to the novel. Oh, with perhaps (I just thought of this) the possible exception of Shakespeare's Hamlet.