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)
<>BACK TO
VIRGIL'S AENEID: AN INTRODUCTION
CLASS NOTES, OCTOBER 24/25 (book 1)
CLASS NOTES, OCTOBER 30/31 (books 2-3)
SCHEDULE OF READINGS (Monday/Wednesday)
SCHEDULE OF READINGS (Tuesday night)
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