VIRGIL'S AENEID: A COMMENTARY ON BOOKS ONE AND TWO
Note: references to the Iliad use the book and line numbers of the assigned translation (R. Lattimore) and correspond to the original Greek text; references to the Odyssey use Mandelbaum’s translation (The Odyssey of Homer.  A verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum.  Bantam: New York, 1991) and the book and line numbers of the original Greek text; references to the Aeneid use the book and line numbers of the assigned translation (A. Mandelbaum).

OPENING LINES: THE PROLOGUE OF THE AENEID

     The prologue of the Aeneid establishes Virgil’s relationship to Homer, provides the first sketch of Aeneas’ character, and begins to explore the links between the mythological past and Roman history.  First, Virgil makes several references to the Iliad and the Odyssey.  He makes clear the importance of the two poems as models for his work, but readers may also begin to see significant contrasts between the two poets.  In the first line, when Virgil says, “I sing of arms and of a man...,” he refers to the twin themes of the Iliad and the Odyssey.  The Iliad, of course, focuses on Achilleus’ anger within the context of the Trojan War: “arms”.  The Odyssey begins with Homer’s call to the Muse, “Muse, tell me of the man of many wiles, the man who wandered many paths of exile...”, and Virgil echoes its emphasis upon the “man”.
     Other elements should recall the Iliad and the Odyssey to an attentive reader.  The emphasis upon “savage Juno’s unforgetting anger” combines the theme of wrath from the Iliad with that of Poseidon’s persecution of Odysseus in the Odyssey; in addition, Virgil eventually relates Juno’s anger, in part, to her lingering hatred of the Trojans from the Judgment of Paris and the Trojan War (1.35-42).  Like Homer, Virgil calls upon the Muse (1.13), but he only does so after several lines.  Here, we see the difference between Homer’s place in an oral tradition and Virgil’s role as individual author of a written work.  Homer calls upon the Muses to tell the story itself, implicitly acknowledging his debt to a long tradition.  Virgil begins in his own voice, “I sing...”, but calls upon the Muse to help him explore the deeper philosophical question of why this good man, Aeneas, had to suffer so many trials.  With this, we see the first sketch of the new hero that Aeneas must become: a virtuous man who endures sacrifice and suffering for a higher purpose.

OPENING LINES: FROM MYTH TO HISTORY

     Virgil departs most decisively from Homer in his insistent emphasis on the historical consequences of the legends he relates.  Fate is certainly an important issue in the Homeric poems, but it rarely extends much beyond the lifetime of an individual or a single generation.  Here, however, Aeneas’ fate has not only “made him fugitive”, but it will lead to the foundation of a city.  That, in turn, will lead to a new people, “the Latin race”, and, eventually, the foundation of the cities of Alba and Rome (1.11-12).  In the second part of the prologue, Virgil elaborates on this historical vision.  He describes the North African city of Carthage as “Juno’s favorite”, and explains her hostility towards Aeneas, in part, by her knowledge that his descendants (the Romans) were fated to destroy Carthage (1.30-35).  In this context, her love for the Greeks also motivates her hatred for Aeneas; she looks back to their struggle with the Trojans, but, implicitly, she must also anticipate their conquest by the Romans.  The prologue concludes with the observation:
“It was so hard to found the race of Rome. (1.50)”
This sums up the link between Aeneas’ personal destiny and the future establishment of Rome and her empire, for it ties Aeneas’ own sufferings to the hardships that the Romans would later endure in the building of their empire.
     Virgil elaborates on this historical vision a little bit later in book one.  After Aeneas is shipwrecked because of Juno’s mischief-making, Venus - Aeneas’ divine mother - complains to her father, Jupiter (1.320-53).  In reply, Jupiter promises her that Aeneas’ future and that of his descendants, the Roman people, is secure.  This scene could be compared with the appeal of Achilleus’ mother, Thetis, to Zeus in the first book of the Iliad, but the broad historical scope of Jupiter’s reply distinguishes it from anything in Homer.  He lays out a panoramic vision of Roman history.  Aeneas will “wage tremendous war in Italy and crush ferocious nations and establish a way of life and walls for his own people” (1.367-69).  After three years, he will be succeeded by his son, Ascanius who will rule for thirty years and  “remove his kingdom from Lavinium and, powerful, build Alba Longa’s walls” (1.370-79).  For three hundred years, his descendants will rule from Alba, until the events that led to the founding of the city of Rome.
     Here, Jupiter alludes to the foundation legend of Rome, the story of the two brothers, Romulus and Remus:
...until a royal priestess, Ilia,
with child by Mars, has brought to birth twin sons.
And then, rejoicing in the tawny hide
of his nursemaid, the she-wolf, Romulus
shall take the rulership and build the walls
of Mars’ own city.  Romulus shall call
that people ‘Romans,’ after his own name.” (1.382-88)
In the version of the Roman historian, Livy, who was a contemporary of Virgil, king Numitor of Alba Longa was deposed by his younger brother, Amulius.  To safeguard his rule, Amulius murdered Numitor’s sons and made his daughter, Rhea Silvia (=Ilia), become a Vestal Virgin.  In historical times, the Vestal Virgins were the only female priesthood in Rome, and the six virgins - usually chosen from senatorial families - served Vesta, the goddess of the hearth fire, for a period of thirty years.  Rhea became pregnant and gave birth to twin boys; she claimed to have been raped by Mars, the god of war.  The twins were ordered thrown in the Tiber, but the basket drifted ashore and the twins were found by a she-wolf which nursed them.  They were discovered by the royal herdsman, Faustulus, and he and his wife raised them.  As they grew up, their royal character showed.  When their step-father suspected their true identity, he told them their story, and they rose up against Amulius and killed him.  Their grandfather, Numitor, was restored to power, and Romulus and Remus founded a new city: Rome.  Different stories explain Romulus’ killing of his brother, Remus, but, however it happened, Romulus became sole ruler of the new city.  The story underscores the violent origins of Rome: its founders were children of the god of war, born as a result of a rape, nursed by a she-wolf, and, eventually, one brother killed the other.
     Jupiter concludes the prophecy by looking ahead to Virgil’s own time and the rule of Augustus (referred to by the family name, Julius, that he received when he was adopted by Julius Caesar, 1.405).  He prophesies that the descendants of the Trojans (“the house born of Assaracus” 1.398) will rule over the Greeks (“both Phthia and illustrious Mycenae and...defeated Argos” 1.399-400), and he predicts the extent of Augustus’ empire and his fame.  Most importantly, he ends with a vision of what Rome’s empire will finally achieve:
“...With
battle forgotten, savage generations shall
grow generous.  And aged Faith and Vesta,
together with the brothers, Romulus
and Remus, shall make laws.  The gruesome gates
of war, with tightly welded iron plates,
shall be shut fast.  Within, unholy Rage
shall sit on his ferocious weapons, bound
behind his back by a hundred knots of brass;
he shall groan horribly with bloody lips.” (1.408-17)
In other words, conquest is a means to an end: peace and the rule of law.  Eventually, violence will be tamed, and Roman rule will bring peace and civilization to the conquered.  Whether this hopeful prophecy will - or can - be fulfilled is a question that Virgil explores in the Aeneid.

VIRGIL’S USE OF HOMER IN BOOKS ONE AND TWO OF THE AENEID
AENEAS' FIRST APPEARANCE: A WEB OF ALLUSION

     Virgil uses the first appearance of Aeneas in the poem as a way of highlighting his creative adaptation of Homer’s poems.  Juno has persuaded Aeolus, the god of the winds, to stir up a storm at sea in the hopes of drowning Aeneas and his men.  Our first view of Aeneas is in the midst of this storm:
“At once Aeneas’ limbs fall slack with chill.
He groans and stretches both hands to the stars.
He calls aloud: ‘O, three and four times blessed
were those who died before their fathers’ eyes
beneath the walls of Troy.  Strongest of all
the Danaans, o Diomedes, why
did your right hand not spill my lifeblood, why
did I not fall upon the Ilian fields,
there where ferocious Hector lies, pierced by
Achilles’ javelin, where the enormous
Sarpedon now is still, and Simois
has seized and sweeps beneath its waves so many
helmets and shields and bodies of the brave!’” (1.131-43)
The scene is modelled upon one in the Odyssey in which Odysseus, facing a storm at sea, wishes that he had died with glory at Troy on the day when he fought to defend the body of Achilleus:
“‘...Three and four times more blessed were all the Greeks
who died in the vast land of Troy to please
the sons of Atreus.  Would that I had met
a death like theirs, had shared their destiny
upon the day when crowds of Trojans cast
bronze shafts at me, while battling round the body
of Peleus’ slaughtered son.  I would have gained
funeral rites; I would have earned much fame
from the Achaeans.  Now instead I find
myself a prey: I face a squalid death.’” (5.306-312)
Of course, the sentiments are also reminiscent of those of Achilleus himself in the Iliad when he faces the possibility of an inglorious death in the Xanthos river.  It is surely no coincidence that Achilleus’ battle with the rivers of Troy (Xanthos and Simois) is the last of several scenes from the Iliad that Aeneas invokes as he wishes that he might have died at Troy.  He refers to his own combat with Diomedes (Iliad 5.166-318) and to the deaths of Sarpedon and Hector.  Thus, in one short speech, Virgil manages to identify his hero with both Odysseus and Achilleus, and to cite four different episodes from the Iliad as well.  This is a good example of the dense texture of allusions to the Iliad and the Odyssey that Virgil will weave throughout his poem.
VIRGIL'S USE OF THE HOMERIC SIMILE
     When the god, Neptune, intervenes to calm the waters, Virgil takes another opportunity to display his clever use of Homer’s poetry.  First of all, it is a curious inversion of the role of the god of the sea; in the Odyssey, it was Poseidon, the god of the sea, who persecuted Odysseus with storms to avenge his blinding of his son, Polyphemus, the giant Cyclops.  More important, this scene introduces the first extended simile in the Aeneid.  Describing Neptune, Virgil writes:
“...He stills the sea
and glides along the waters on light wheels.
And just as, often, when a crowd of people
is rocked by a rebellion, and the rabble
rage in their minds, and firebrands and stones
fly fast - for fury finds its weapons - if,
by chance, they see a man remarkable
for righteousness and service, they are silent
and stand attentively; and he controls
their passion by his words and cools their spirits:
so all the clamor of the sea subsided
after the Father, gazing on the waters
and riding under cloudless skies, had guided
his horses, let his willing chariot run.” (1.207-20)
The simile is immediately recognizable as an example of the characteristic Homeric simile, a long, extended comparison.  There are also important differences.  Many Homeric similes compare people and their actions with storms, wild beasts and other figures from the natural world.  What is unusual here is that the storm takes place within Virgil’s narrative, and, in the simile, Virgil compares it with an event in human society: the calming of an urban riot.  This inverts the traditional relationship of man and nature in the Homeric poems.
     The difference in the form of the simile calls attention to more profound differences between the two poets.  The image of the urban riot is a characteristically Roman one, sadly familiar to Roman audiences of the first century B.C. as an example of the civil strife that had rocked the city; it signals Virgil’s broader effort to relate his story to Roman history and contemporary events.  The figure of the righteous man who calms the passions of the crowd - like the god who calms the waters - reflects Virgil’s deep concern with the control of the passions and the taming of violence, whether in the individual hero, in the Roman community, or in the natural world.  In short, Virgil uses a literary device - the extended simile - that is familiar from Homer, but, by using it in a dramatically different way, he calls attention to more profound differences in the themes and concerns of his work.  Not long after this, Virgil compares the men of Carthage building their city with the activity of bees (1.601-19).  While this might seem more like Homer’s typical comparisons of people to animals, Virgil’s view of nature here contrasts with the savagery found in so many Homeric similes.  Here, the bees work together as social animals, giving an image of an ordered community, like the Stoic image of the body politic.  True, one will find numerous examples of similes in the Aeneid that are quite close to those in Homer, but Virgil uses his first examples to mark the differences between his concerns and those of Homer.
VIRGIL'S EKPHRASIS: THE TEMPLE OF JUNO AT CARTHAGE
     When Aeneas reaches Carthage, he sees representations of scenes from the Trojan War on the Temple of Juno.  Again, Virgil borrows a Homeric technique, the ekphrasis (a vivid description in words of a work of art), to describe the scenes that Aeneas sees.  Not only does Virgil use a technique that will remind readers of Homer’s description of the Shield of Achilleus, but some of the scenes on the Temple refer back to events in the Iliad and others take the story beyond Homer’s account.  Right from the start, he signals that these are not just scenes of Troy, but, specifically, scenes from the Iliad, when he says:
“He sees the wars of Troy set out in order:
the battles famous now through all the world,
the sons of Atreus and of Priam, and
Achilles, savage enemy to both.” (1.647-50)
The reference to Achilleus, as a “savage enemy” of Priam and the sons of Atreus is a clear allusion to his wrath in the Iliad and his quarrel with Agamemnon.  Among the scenes from the Iliad that Virgil describes are the killing of king Rhesus by Diomedes during a night expedition (Iliad 10.469-514), the Trojan women’s vain appeal to Athene (Iliad 6.263-311), Achilleus’ driving the body of Hektor around the walls of Troy (Iliad 22.395-404), and Priam’s appeal for the return of Hektor’s corpse (Iliad 24.485-506).  He also adds stories that were known from other poems in the epic cycle that have not survived (Lattimore discusses these on pp. 24-28 of his introduction to the Iliad).  These include the coming of the Ethiopian king, Memnon, and the Amazon queen, Penthesilea, to aid the Trojans in the final year of the war.
VIRGIL'S USE OF THE EMBEDDED NARRATIVE: THE STORY WITHIN A STORY...
     When Aeneas begins to tell his own story at Dido’s banquet, Virgil imitates one of the most dramatic scenes in the Odyssey when Odysseus (=Ulysses in Latin) tells the story of his wanderings.  In the Odyssey, Odysseus has been shipwrecked in the land of the Phaeacians, and he is being entertained at their court.  He has not revealed his identity, but, at the feast, he praises the bard, Demodocus, and asks him to sing the story of the Trojan horse.  Odysseus is so moved to hear his own story that he begins to weep.  His host, king Alcinous, is troubled by this, and tells the bard to end the song.  With this, he asks Odysseus to identify himself and he asks whether he was weeping for a relative who was lost at Troy.  Virgil refers precisely to this scene when Aeneas begins his tale of the Trojan horse and the sack of Troy by saying that it would make even the harshest of the Greeks weep:
“What Myrmidon or what Dolopian,
what soldier even of the harsh Ulysses,
could keep from tears in telling such a story?” (2.9-11)
He expects his audience to remember how Odysseus was moved to tears by the story of the Trojan Horse and led to tell his own story...as Aeneas will do in the Aeneid.
     Just as in his use of the Homeric simile and the ekphrasis, Virgil does more than imitate Homer when he has Aeneas tell a story within a story (an embedded narrative).  No sooner has Aeneas begun his story than he tells how the Trojans found the Greek spy Sinon...and Sinon told them two stories.  Next thing you know, we have Sinon’s story within Aeneas’ story within Virgil’s narrative.  What’s more, Sinon’s story is a particularly complex one and, like some of the tales Odysseus tells in the course of the Odyssey, it is a lie.  Actually, Sinon tells two stories.  First, he explains why he’s still there by telling a false story of Ulysses’ hostility towards him.  He claims to have been a friend of Palamedes, a warrior who was condemned with the help of Ulysses on a false charge of treason.  As a result, Sinon says he was fingered by Ulysses and Calchas to be a human sacrifice to appease the winds on their return.  With this story, he subtly suggests that the Greeks have, in fact, left, and, in passing, he refers to the Trojan horse.  Once he has gained the Trojans’ confidence, he tells his second false story, that of the horse.  He claims that it was an offering to Minerva in compensation for the PALLADIUM , an image which Diomedes and Ulysses had tried to steal from her temple in Troy.  The stories are long and complex, and full of allusions to other events.  Both are false, the first is interrupted and alludes to the horse - the subject of the second story, and the two tales are told in reverse chronological order with Sinon’s escape from sacrifice preceding the story of the making of the horse.  In short, Virgil shows that he appreciates the complexity of Homer’s use of the embedded narrative, and that he can not only imitate it, but surpass it.
THE DEATH OF PRIAM: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO POEMS
     The simile, ekphrasis and embedded narrative are some of the devices that Virgil imitates to compete with Homer’s artistry.  These are not just wordgames.  Virgil uses our knowledge of Homer to enrich his story.  He characterizes Aeneas instantly in the opening scene by relying on his audience’s familiarity with Odysseus and Achilleus and their drive for glory.  He uses his first simile to highlight some of the different concerns of his own poem.  One of the best examples in the first books of the Aeneid of how Virgil uses Homer to intensify the impact of his own story comes in the dramatic scene in which Priam is killed by Achilleus’ son, Pyrrhus (2.607-761).
     Aeneas begins by describing a back entrance to Priam’s palace where Andromache used to bring her young son, Astyanax, to visit his grandfather, Priam.  The reference to Andromache and Astyanax, of course, could well remind readers of the Hektor’s poignant farewell to his wife and son in book six of the Iliad.  More generally, Virgil uses this tender image of the family visit to shift the scene from the horrors of the war and the savage confrontation that is about to take place.  It is a technique that Homer used effectively.  When Hektor panicked and ran from Achilleus in the Iliad, Homer described the hot and cold springs outside Troy, and he mentioned “the washing-hollows of stone, and magnificent, where the wives of the Trojans and their lovely daughters washed the clothes to shining, in the old days when there was peace, before the coming of the sons of the Achaians” (Iliad 22.153-56).  That nostalgic flashback to a time of carefree peace underscored the harsh brutality of the combat of Hektor and Achilleus, taking place before the eyes of Hektor’s parents.
     When queen Hecuba (=Hekabe in Greek) scolds Priam for arming for battle, one recalls, again, the tragic scenes at the end of the Iliad when, first, Hecuba urged Hektor to seek safety within the walls (Iliad 22.79-89), and, then, she tried to discourage Priam from going to Achilleus’ tent to ask for the return of Hektor’s corpse (Iliad 24.200-16).  She persuades Priam to take refuge at the altar, but the scene is interrupted by Pyrrhus’ pursuit of Polites, one of Priam’s sons.  Like Hektor in the Iliad, he is killed before his parents’ eyes (2.707-16).  Priam reacts angrily:
“...Though in the fist of death,
at this, Priam does not spare voice or wrath:
‘If there is any goodness in the heavens
to oversee such acts, for this offense
and outrage may you find your fitting thanks
and proper payment from the gods, for you
have made me see the murder of my son,
defiled a father’s face with death.  Achilles -
you lie to call him father - never dealt
with Priam so - and I, his enemy;
for he had shame before the claims and trust
that are a suppliant’s.  He handed back
for burial the bloodless corpse of Hector
and sent me off in safety to my kingdom.’” (2.716-29)
To Pyrrhus, Priam evokes the memory of his father, Achilleus, and his respectful treatment of Priam when he came to ransom Hektor’s body.  To the audience, Priam’s speech and his confrontation with Achilleus’ son evokes that moving scene at the end of the Iliad.  There, Priam had appealed to Achilleus in the name of his father, Peleus, and he contrasted his own plight with that of Peleus who, he thought, would eventually see his son again.  Of course, the appeal was more effective than Priam could have known: Achilleus knew he was then fated to die at Troy, and he could imagine Peleus grieving for him, just as Priam was grieving for Hektor.
     In the Aeneid, circumstances have changed and the results of Priam’s appeal are tragically different.  Pyrrhus, it seems, has not read the Iliad, and, for him, the memory of his father is the memory of a lost father he hardly knew, taken from him by his death at Troy.  It only enrages him, and, in a way, he does “remember” his father, by showing the anger that was so characteristic of him.  His consciousness of his father’s death is apparent when he refers to Achilleus’ shade and sarcastically tells Priam to bring him a message, the news of his son that, in the Odyssey, the shade of Achilleus had sought from Odysseus.  The callous, cold-blooded killing of Priam would be a brutal scene in any circumstances, but Virgil’s allusions to the Iliad make it even more inhumane, because we remember the death of Hektor and the grief of his parents, and we contrast the killing of Priam with the moving scene when Priam and Achilleus had grieved together.  Finally, there is another audience for the scene: Aeneas himself.  For him, the killing of Priam does have the effect of reminding him of his own aged father, Anchises, and this is what leads him finally to abandon the struggle and look after his own family’s safety.

THE CHARACTER OF AENEAS: A ROMAN HERO IN THE MAKING

     Only the savage slaying of Priam finally prompts Aeneas to seek out his family and escape from the burning city, as he had been told to do.  Throughout the Aeneid, Aeneas is sketched as a hero in the making, a reluctant hero who is sometimes slow to realize his destiny, and a man who must overcome obstacles within his own nature to achieve a higher purpose he cannot fully understand.  It is significant that Virgil first introduces Aeneas in the scene at sea in which the references to Homer suggest a comparison with Achilleus and Odysseus.  Aeneas is cast as a Homeric hero, nostalgic for a glorious death and, most importantly, looking back to the past.  Even when he imagines the future, he can only do so in terms of the past.  When he encourages his men after the shipwreck, he tells them, “Through so many crises and calamities we make for Latium, where fates have promised a peaceful settlement.  It is decreed that there the realm of Troy will rise again.” (1.284-88).
     Time and again, Aeneas laments the losses in his past.  He weeps when he sees the stories of the Trojan War on the Temple of Juno (1.651), but Virgil reminds us of the emptiness of these images - and of the past, by commenting:
“With many tears and sighs he feeds his soul on what is nothing but a picture.” (1.659)
As he begins his tale, he says it will renew old grief (2.4-17).  When he tells the story of Laocoon, he wishes things would have turned out differently so that “Troy, you would be standing yet and you, high fort of Priam, you would still survive.”
     His attachment to the past is emphasized by his reluctance to follow the advice he receives to leave Troy.  When Hektor’s ghost appears to him in a dream, the message is clear and simple:
“‘Ah, goddess-born, take flight...and snatch
yourself out of these flames.  The enemy
has gained the walls; Troy falls from her high peak.
Our home, our Priam - these have had their due:
could Pergamus be saved by any prowess,
then my hand would have served.  But Troy entrusts
her holy things and household gods to you;
take them away as comrades of your fortunes,
seek out for them the great walls that at last,
once you have crossed the sea, you will establish.” (2.395-404)
Even without this speech, the gruesome image of Hektor should have been enough to drive home the point that Troy’s time was up.  Telling the story, Aeneas remembers that it was not the triumphant Hektor who had stripped Achilleus’ armor from Patroklos or set fire to the Greek ships (2.379-81).  This was Hektor “as once he was, dismembered by the dragging chariot, black with bloodied dust; his swollen feet were pierced with thongs.” (2.375-77).  In short, this was the defeated Hektor, and, in the Iliad, Hektor’s death was repeatedly linked with the fall of Troy.      
     Despite this dream - or nightmare, Aeneas awakens only to seize his weapons and prepare to fight:
                            “...Rage
and anger drive my mind.  My only thought:
how fine a thing it is to die in arms.” (2.431-33)
Even the timely appearance of the priest, Panthus, fails to remind Aeneas of Hektor’s message, though Panthus comes along carrying the very images of the gods which Hektor’s ghost had told him to take away.  In addition, Panthus’ words are clear enough:
“‘It has come - the final day
and Troy’s inevitable time.  We Trojans
were; Troy has been; gone is the giant glory
of Teucrians...’” (2.442-45)
Nonetheless, Aeneas, driven by fury, rushes into battle.
     Of course, Virgil can hardly have Aeneas simply cut and run.  It is in the heroic tradition for him to make his stand, but Virgil does emphasize that Aeneas is slow to understand his mission, and that he is blocked by his emotions - fury and rage - from accepting his duty.  After the killing of Priam, Aeneas runs across Helen and almost kills her in a fit of anger (2.774-92).  His mother, Venus, intervenes to protect Helen, and, in an eerie scene, she takes the veils from his eyes, so that he can literally see the gods destroying Troy (2.812-42).  Only now does he begin to realize that it is Troy’s fate to be destroyed...and his fate to escape.
     Book two of the Aeneid ends on a gloomy note - Aeneas and his family have lost their city, and, now, Aeneas loses his wife, Creusa, as well.  They were separated during their flight from the burning city, and Aeneas searches for her, only to meet her ghost.  Creusa’s ghost prophesies “a kingdom and a royal bride” (2.1057) for Aeneas in “Hesperia, where Lydian Tiber flows” (2.1054).  In a pathetic scene, modelled upon Odysseus’ effort to embrace the shade of his mother in the Odyssey, Virgil writes:
“‘When she was done with words - I weeping and
wanting to say so many things - she left
and vanished in transparent air.  Three times
I tried to throw my arms around her neck;
three times the Shade I grasped in vain escaped
my hands - like fleet winds, most like a winged dream.” (2.1065-70)
Aeneas describes the Trojan refugees who assembled with him as “a crowd of sorrow” (2.1075), and, at the end of book two, he lifts his father and heads for the mountains.  In a way, the unforgettable image of Aeneas carrying his father represents him bearing the burden of his past, and of the mission that lies ahead.
     It is a costly mission for Aeneas: he has lost his city and his wife, and, by the end of a long journey full of frustrated attempts to found a new city, he will lose his father as well.  Significantly, when Aeneas concludes his story (3.915-27) with the sad account of the death of his father, Virgil now describes the hero as “father Aeneas” (3.929), a sign of his new role, and his new future.  Aeneas, however, refers to his father’s death as “my last trial” and “the term of my long journeying” (3.925-26).  He is still unaware of how much suffering and sacrifice lie ahead.  As Virgil said earlier,
“It was so hard to found the race of Rome.” (1.50)
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CLASS NOTES, OCTOBER 24/25 (book 1)
CLASS NOTES, OCTOBER 30/31 (books 2-3)
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