EPIC: The Aeneid

Myths are traditional stories that have endured over a long time. Some of them have to do

with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of

great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others

are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great

deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them?

This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as a way of exploring the

nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also

pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own

myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the

deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though

we do not realize it? Or are they just entertaining stories that people like to tell over and

over? This course will investigate these questions through a variety of topics, including the

creation of the universe, the relationship between gods and mortals, human nature, religion,

the family, sex, love, madness, and death. COURSE SCHEDULE • Week 1: Introduction

Welcome to Greek and Roman Mythology! This first week we’ll introduce the class, paying

attention to how the course itself works. We’ll also begin to think about the topic at hand:

myth! How can we begin to define "myth"? How does myth work? What have ancient and

modern theorists, philosophers, and other thinkers had to say about myth? This week we’ll

also begin our foray into Homer’s world, with an eye to how we can best approach epic

poetry. Readings: No texts this week, but it would be a good idea to get started on next

week's reading to get ahead of the game. Video Lectures: 1.1-1.7 Quiz: Complete the quiz

by the end of the week. • Week 2: Becoming a Hero In week 2, we begin our intensive study

of myth through Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey. This core text not only gives us an

exciting story to appreciate on its own merits but also offers us a kind of laboratory where we

can investigate myth using different theoretical approaches. This week we focus on the
young Telemachus’ tour as he begins to come of age; we also accompany his father

Odysseus as he journeys homeward after the Trojan War. Along the way, we’ll examine

questions of heroism, relationships between gods and mortals, family dynamics, and the

Homeric values of hospitality and resourcefulness. Readings: Homer, Odyssey, books 1-8

Video Lectures: 2.1-2.10 Quiz: Complete the quiz by the end of the week. • Week 3:

Adventures Out and Back This week we’ll follow the exciting peregrinations of Odysseus,

"man of twists and turns," over sea and land. The hero’s journeys abroad and as he re-

enters his homeland are fraught with perils. This portion of the Odyssey features

unforgettable monsters and exotic witches; we also follow Odysseus into the Underworld,

where he meets shades of comrades and relatives. Here we encounter some of the best-

known stories to survive from all of ancient myth. Readings: Homer, Odyssey, books 9-16

Video Lectures: 3.1-3.10 Quiz: Complete the quiz by the end of the week. • Week 4: Identity

and Signs As he makes his way closer and closer to re-taking his place on Ithaca and with

his family, a disguised Odysseus must use all his resources to regain his kingdom. We’ll see

many examples of reunion as Odysseus carefully begins to reveal his identity to various

members of his household—his servants, his dog, his son, and finally, his wife Penelope—

while also scheming against those who have usurped his place. Readings: Homer, Odyssey,

books 17-24 Video Lectures: 4.1-4.8 Quiz: Complete the quiz by the end of the week. •

Week 5: Gods and Humans We will take a close look at the most authoritative story on the

origin of the cosmos from Greek antiquity: Hesiod’s Theogony. Hesiod was generally

considered the only poet who could rival Homer. The Theogony, or "birth of the gods," tells of

an older order of gods, before Zeus, who were driven by powerful passions—and strange

appetites! This poem presents the beginning of the world as a time of fierce struggle and

violence as the universe begins to take shape, and order, out of chaos. Readings: Hesiod,

Theogony *(the Works and Days is NOT required for the course)* Video Lectures: 5.1-5.9

Quiz: Complete the quiz by the end of the week. • Week 6: Ritual and Religion This week’s

readings give us a chance to look closely at Greek religion in its various guises. Myth, of
course, forms one important aspect of religion, but so does ritual. How ancient myths and

rituals interact teaches us a lot about both of these powerful cultural forms. We will read two

of the greatest hymns to Olympian deities that tell up-close-and-personal stories about the

gods while providing intricate descriptions of the rituals they like us humans to perform.

Readings: Homeric Hymn to Apollo; Homeric Hymn to Demeter (there are two hymns to

each that survive, only the LONGER Hymn to Apollo and the LONGER Hymn to Demeter are

required for the course) Video Lectures: 6.1-6.7 Quiz: Complete the quiz by the end of the

week. • Week 7: Justice What counts as a just action, and what counts as an unjust one?

Who gets to decide? These are trickier questions than some will have us think. This unit

looks at one of the most famously thorny issues of justice in all of the ancient world. In

Aeschylus’ Oresteia—the only surviving example of tragedy in its original trilogy form—we

hear the story of Agamemnon’s return home after the Trojan War. Unlike Odysseus’ eventual

joyful reunion with his wife and children, this hero is betrayed by those he considered closest

to him. This family's cycle of revenge, of which this story is but one episode, carries

questions of justice and competing loyalties well beyond Agamemnon’s immediate family,

eventually ending up on the Athenian Acropolis itself. Readings: Aeschylus, Agamemnon;

Aeschylus, Eumenides Video Lectures: 7.1-7.10 Quiz: Complete the quiz by the end of the

week. • Week 8: Unstable Selves This week we encounter two famous tragedies, both set at

Thebes, that center on questions of guilt and identity: Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Eurpides’

Bacchae. Oedipus is confident that he can escape the unthinkable fate that was foretold by

the Delphic oracle; we watch as he eventually realizes the horror of what he has done. With

Odysseus, we saw how a great hero can re-build his identity after struggles, while Oedipus

shows us how our identities can dissolve before our very eyes. The myth of Oedipus is one

of transgressions—intentional and unintentional—and about the limits of human knowledge.

In Euripides’ Bacchae, the identity of gods and mortals is under scrutiny. Here, Dionysus, the

god of wine and of tragedy, and also madness, appears as a character on stage. Through

the dissolution of Pentheus, we see the terrible consequences that can occur when a god’s
divinity is not properly acknowledged. Readings: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Euripides,

Bacchae Video Lectures: 8.1-8.9 Quiz: Complete the quiz by the end of the week. • Week 9:

The Roman Hero, Remade Moving ahead several centuries, we jump into a different part of

the Mediterranean to let the Romans give us their take on myth. Although many poets tried

to rewrite Homer for their own times, no one succeeded quite like Vergil. His epic poem, the

Aeneid, chronicles a powerful re-building of a culture that both identifies with and defines

itself against previously told myths. In contrast to the scarcity of information about Homer, we

know a great deal about Vergil’s life and historical context, allowing us insight into myth-

making in action. Readings: Vergil, Aeneid, books 1-5 Video Lectures: 9.1-9.10 Quiz:

Complete the quiz by the end of the week. • Week 10: Roman Myth and Ovid's

Metamorphoses Our consideration of Vergil’s tale closes with his trip to the underworld in

book 6. Next, we turn to a more playful Roman poet, Ovid, whose genius is apparent in

nearly every kind of register. Profound, witty, and satiric all at once, Ovid’s powerful re-

tellings of many ancient myths became the versions that are most familiar to us today.

Finally, through the lens of the Romans and others who "remythologize," we wrap up the

course with a retrospective look at myth. Readings: Vergil, Aeneid, book 6; Ovid,

Metamorphoses, books 3, 12, and 13. Video Lectures: 10.1-10.9. Quiz: Complete the quiz by

the end of the week. READINGS There are no required texts for the course, however,

Professor Struck will make reference to the following texts in the lecture: • Greek Tragedies,

Volume 1, David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, trans. (Chicago) • Greek Tragedies,

Volume 3, David Grene and Richmond Lattimore , trans. (Chicago) • Hesiod, Theogony and

Works and Days, M. L. West, trans. (Oxford) • Homeric Hymns, Sarah Ruden, trans.

(Hackett) • Homer, The Odyssey, Robert Fagles, trans. (Penguin) • Virgil, The Aeneid,

Robert Fitzgerald, trans. (Vintage) • Ovid, Metamorphoses, David Raeburn, trans. (Penguin)

These translations are a pleasure to work with, whereas many of the translations freely

available on the internet are not. If you do not want to purchase them, they should also be

available at many libraries. Again, these texts are not required, but they are helpful.
Lecture transcript

Let's get started now with Virgil's epic. We'll start the way we did with Homer, when we

looked at the first opening lines of his epic, we'll do a similar kind of close attention to the

opening lines of Virgil's story. Here they are printed out in Latin, and what I'm going to do is

go through the Latin text keyed to chunks of the translation that are taken from the Fitzgerald

translation, which is the recommended one for this class. The opening eleven lines give the

full panoply of what's about to happen. The first sentence talks about the whole thing in a,

condensed way, and the opening word, In Virgil's case words also talk about the whole

theme of the epic in a condensed way. Virgil is going to tell an epic that is about arma

uirumque. He's talking about arms and a man. Arma is a marshal word talking about arms in

a war context. No question about that. Uirum is the idea of a, of a human male. So Virgil's

giving us now an epic, by these first two words which is going to do not only the Odyssey, as

he tells us with uirum but also. What's going to do the Iliad. We made mention in the class

about how the Iliad begins with this war for, word for war rage and it talks about that sets the

tone for this as being an epic about war. Well, Virgil, in his way, is going to queue up for us

that he's going to do both these things. He's going to create for us, right before our very

eyes, an Iliad and an Odyssey. For this part of our class, we're just going to read books one

through six of the Aeneid. It's recommended that you read the rest as you like. We have to

trim down somewhere. It's a huge past. We need to focus on what we can focus on. So we're

going to be looking at the Odysseyan part of the story, the first six books. The more Iliadic

part is in the second six books. It doesn't break down quite so neatly, though. There's pieces

of the Odyssey style oh, or Odysseyan themes that carry on through the rest of the epic, and

there's also Iliadic things that show up early on. We'll flag these as, as needed. But mostly

we're going to focus on the Odyssey parts of the background. Now, look at the very

beginning of Aeneas or of Virgil's story here. Yes, Arms and the Man. And then we have this

Latin word, [foreign]. That's very distinctive environment means I, first person singular, am
doing the same. Virgil then carries forward a Homeric tradition of talking about a song that's

going to be coming out of his mouth, but rather than the way Homer does, saying muses,

use me as a voice, and sing. The story that I want to have sung, using me as a mouthpiece

Virgil tosses that aside. He now, as a first person singular human being, is going to sing a

tale for us, as the audience. We're no longer in a mystified, mythic realm, where we can talk

about muses using us as mouthpieces. Instead, Virgil's coming to us, saying I am a human

being, and I am gonig to be doing the singing about this past. We'll see that the muse comes

up in a bit, but Virgil wants to say in the very first line, he is the one doing the singing. From

the sea coast of Troy in early days, he came to Italy by destiny. To our Livinian western

shore, a fugitive. That term, [foreign], in Latin, by destiny, is an important one for us. The

idea of fate such as we've seen it up until now in the Greek materials, typically is very much

backward looking. There is something that happened in the past that's anchoring you to that

past. And from which you're not going to be able to escape, no matter how hard you try.

Think about how it worked in Oedipus. Fate is constantly trapping us in some, awfulness of

the past. Instead, in Virgil, we're going to see a different idea of fate that gets pulled out. It's

much more closely linked to the idea of destiny, in the English term. It's a forward looking

concept that talks about no matter what you do, the future is laid out and by destiny. You're

going to get to that future point. Virgil's story, through Aeneas, is very much a story drawn

along by large, arc tectonic forces of the universe, that are pushing it forward, forward,

forward. The destiny that's going to bring Virgil to his home base, and bring Aeneas along to

his home base is what's going to propel us. He's going to move from the sea coast of Troy in

early days, so we're talking about some very early time, this Trojan war. He's moving from

the sea coast of Troy, over to Italy to the Lavinian western shore, and we Romans know he's

talking about us. Vergil is, has our character on his way to found a city. That we know. He's

buffeted cruelly on land as on the sea by blows from powers of the air, behind them baleful

Juno, in her sleepless rage. Now, Juno is going to appear in this epic as a very strong force

that is pushing against fate. Fate is going to be drawing us forward into the future that is
Rome and the glory that's coming, Juno is going to be a force that pulls backward. At Virgil's

epic, is one, sure it's very much driven by this forward-looking destiny, but it's anything but

some simple. Rosy, we're on rails to a bright future kind of destiny. It's a destiny that's going

to be achieved, but it's going to be achieved with great pain and suffering. Virgil does not

whitewash this at all. The founding of Rome is a complex thing. It involves, the, the

overrunning of lots of people. Individuals are going to get steam torn up in the, in the

machinaries of history. And all of it is going to lead towards something, but in the, on the way

there we're going to look at lots of vectors that are pushing it backward. Juno is the, M is the

emblem of these backward pushing vectors. She is constantly retarding the progress that

Aneas might like to make. Aneas will have friends pushing him forward, and he will also Juno

constantly pushing back. And cool losses were his lot in war till he could found a city and

bring home his gods to Latium, land of the Latin race, the Alban lords and the high walls of

Rome. Now, the future toward which Aeneas is being pulled, is one that will lead him to build

something. He's going to build a city, found it, get it started, build walls, he's going to make

order out of something chaotic there will be lots of confusion along the way. There'll be

things that get mixed up. But the end state here as a nicely ordered, well drawn city, that's

put together with a careful plan. That orders that has laws that organize people. The, the, the

enemy here is disorder and, confusion. And the friend, to our victory here is going to be,

clarity and conciseness. We're going to show forth the clear straight lines of what it is to be.

Roman the walls of Rome. We're going to see Aeneas consistently trying to build those

things. Building of walls is something he has anchored to in his own heroic expression. Now

our muse shows up. Tell me the causes now, o muse. Here Aeneas, Virgil is building in a

reference to this mythic, epic past of Homer. He's not just overtaking and saying, I'm the one

singing the song. He's talking about being inspired by a muse surely and the muse is a part

of it. But not the first line, interestingly, Right? It gets moved down a little bit in the order of

events. How galled in her pride, and how sore at heart, and from her old wound the queen of

gods compelled him, a man apart, devoted to his mission, to undergo so many perilous days,
and enter on so many trials. Now Aeneas is a character that we're going to get to know quite

well. He's being pushed around by this old wound that the queen of the gods has, as she's

as she's pushing him around. But he himself is a man apart and devoted to his mission. The

Latin here that the Fitzgerald is using to translate, insignum pie, pietae, pietaerium a man

marked by his pietas. We're going to spend a lot of time talking about what pietas is. There is

a English equivalent in the term piety, that's. Important. But this idea of devotion, utterly

devoted to his mission is what is being brought out rightfully in Fitzgerald's translation. We've

got a hero whose now motivated by something closer to duty. Then we have with, very

different kinds of heroes, in our Greek past. A Roman hero is going to be motivated,

especially and anchored by duty. He's going to in pursuing this great good of, of Romanness

he's going to suffer. Terrible things he's going to go through, that same kind of a way that

Odysseus did, well, Aeneas kind of suffered as well. Then query at the end of this opening

lines. As Virgil is wondering to himself. My gosh. Juno. And just how awfully, outraged, she

is. And how much outrage she brings to bear on Aeneas. Can anger black as this prey on

the minds of heaven? How is it that the divinities become so, warped in their anger, and visit

such nasty things on our hero? Yes, indeed, Juno is going to have some awful things that

come Aeneas' way. He'll stand up to them, he's got some time left He's just going to take him

some time, though to find his feet and work his way through the challenges that are coming

his way. We're going to look at them in the coming six books, as we read it very carefully

starting off with some discussion about Book one and then moving quickly into the count,

account of the Trojan War that Virgil gives us in book two.

We'll pay some attention to how Virgil himself thought about myth in the class. This is

another one of those questions that if we tried to ask it of Homer or of the Trojanians, we

wouldn't get much in the way of an answer. We'd be pretty much stuck on what they thought

myth was all about. When we turn to Virgil though, we have actual good evidence for certain

kinds of ways he understood myth to work. We know for example, that Virgil has a linkage
this large tradition of interpretation of Homer. He's a scholar. Or a poet. Yes he's very much

an artist poet of the first order, but eh, he's at the same time, a extremely learned person,

that is not just familiar with the traditions that he's writing and re-writing, he's also familiar

with the traditions of commentary on Homer, and that gives him a rich context in which, to

remake the traditions that are coming his way, and gives us a window on to what Virgil

himself was up to as a creator of myth. We can say for sure that Virgil has a strong

rationalizing impulse to him. We'll see that when we get to strange, wondrous, mystical kinds

of events, Virgil will typically provide us with a redundant kind of causation for those strange

or mystical events. So for example, the falling in love scene, we'll see at the close of Book

one where Venus decides to weaken Dido by making her fall desperately in love with, with

Aeneas the point where the arts of love are actually used for terrible things. Well, that

happens in myth, doesn't it? While that hardly a soft and squishy gentle kind of, force. It's

something that can undo a person. Well, it definitely happens to Dido. Venus then comes in

and has Dido fall desperately in love with Aeneus. But in order to do so, she uses her son

Amor who also will be known, later as, Cupid. And, and, and specifically as Virgil tells the

story what Venus does is reshape her young son, Amor into the shape of the actual. A young

infant son of Vir of Aeneas Ascanius. So now you've got this picture that Virgil's painting for

you that talks about on the one hand a goddess in a, A, powerful act of divine intervention

making a woman fall in love with a man. But on the other hand, he does it through a

surrogate that takes the shape of a young infant. Now I don't know that this is absolutely

true. I won't call this a universal law. But let's go ahead and label something that I've

observed in my in my lifetime called the puppy effect. If someone would like a person

someone else to have an amorous attraction to them, having a puppy on your lap is not a

bad thing. It means that, you can exhibit to the person yeah, the puppy automatically melts a

person's heart and makes the person think, oh wow, this is so cute and we want to come

over and pet it. Then also, if that person who has the puppy on, on, on, on his or her lap,

actually takes care of the little thing, well chances are maybe the person might be a good
person to have around in you know, longer term relationship. So puppies are useful ways of

getting people's attention and expressing to them in some sense that, you yourself might be

kind of having your act together enough to care for something else so you might be a worthy

mate for that person. Well, the way Virgil tells the story having Aeschaeneus be the, the

object that makes Ido turn from just admiring the abstract, this figure of Aeneas, to falling

passionately, deeply in love with him is kind of interesting. There's a psychologizing of the

whole event that I think Virgil is engaged in, having Dido in an example of this puppy effect,

seeing this young infant and thinking, well. Wow. This person just might be okay, and having

that be the vehicle by which passionate love falls upon her is a sense of, I think, Virgil giving

us a redundant set of causations for an otherwise rather grandiose kind of the divine

intervention. We'll see later on in the story some mention in book three of Aeneas's

household gods. They're someone that are going to show up in the story over and over

again, in fact. He has a dream about them telling him that it's important that he should leave

Crete, now that there's a plague, and he should go off and try to found his city somewhere

else. Aeneas is thinking about Crete as a possible place to begin his new city, to get started

on things, and then these household gods come and tell him to go away. Now, the, the

appearance of the gods to a person, that's pretty exciting mythic kinds of stuff, but look what

Virgil's done with it. He casts it in the form of a dream, so we now have Aeneas imagining

something to happen which gives us another kind of psychological way of understanding

what happens, and then also the pestilence that gets visited upon the group means they're

going to have to leave Crete anyway. So they're moving away from Crete and abandoning

that, that place is a potential site for a future Rome is determined by the pestilence yes, in a

physiological kind of way. It's also determined by a dream, which could be looked at as a

psychological reality or maybe as a divine visitation. It's also cast, in Virgil, as a. Pure and

simple divine vi, divine visitation. All of these are present there. There's a redundant set of

causes that's given for the action, some more mystical than others in a typical kind of

Virgilian move. The connections, also, of the gods and what they mean, are, are slightly
changed in Virgil's story. When we hear about Jupiter he's going to be at quite a grand

remove from most of the events that happen in the story. This is a little bit different from

Zeus, who gets his hands dirty and goes ahead and threatens people and sends

messengers and all the kind of actual action that we see Zeus engaging in. Jupiter's much

more removed, and grand, and farther out. There's an association that Virgil's building on

here, of the highest god Jupiter, with the highest levels of the cosmos. The. The Romans

would have known this by a Greek term, iphare. The very highest reaches of the cosmos are

the places that Jupiter is associated with and that's where he stays. He mostly doesn't come

down. We're not going to see the kinds of rough and tumble examples of Jupiter being

involved in the action that Homer went ahead and did. Another interesting example of this is

this figure, Hera. Sorry, Juno. We're going to get to know Juno pretty well through the story,

and Virgil has a particular spin on her. Remember how he talks about her at the very

beginning, talking about how Aeneas is buffeted by blows from the air, directed by Juno at

him. Fair enough, fine, and as we're reading it, he sort of weaves this all together, makes

perfect sense, but we'll see that when Juno becomes involved in events down below the

earth, she typically is going to get involved as a storm goddess. Blow winds at Aeneas blow

awful storms at him he'll be pressed around by actual physical storms that are now directed

by Juno. Okay fine, we know Gods getting involved in this but the trick is, in the Greek

materials, Hera is not a storm Goddess. She doesn't show up, setting storm to people.

Poseidon surely does. Zeus can do it but it's not normally Hera's way of doing things. Since

when does the queen of the gods, a storm goddess? Well, Virgil is working from a tradition

that draws on Greek scholarly work, and in fact on a long and deep allegorical reading of the

goddess Hera. As being associated with weather. The Greek term for Hera, there I have

written up on the board next to the English term Hera there in Greek characters, has an eta,

a rho and an alpha. Eta is a long E and the H that shows up in English is taken care of in

Greek by that little squiggly mark up above the, sorry, that little squiggly mark there up above

the eta, hah. Hera is her name, there in Greek. Well, the Greeks notice soon enough that this
was actually an anagram for the straightforward Greek word for air. Air is the dense air of our

atmosphere around us. And they said it themselves, well Hera's letters, actually if you

unscramble them, are make her associated with our understanding of the air. So from early

on Greek allegorists read Hera as an allegorical symbol of the air. Now they also thought,

according to the science of the day, that the air was responsible for the weather. And if it got

heated up, or got moist, or all those things that it we had crashes of thunder, we had winds,

we had hot winds, cold winds, we had all the meteorological phenomena, including storms

and blowing, were, were built into this lower atmosphere of air. So, when. Virgil is carefully

talking about Juno as a storm god. What he's doing is working from a long and deep

allegorical tradition that have for many centuries associated Hera with the air. Now, does

Homer do this? Well, mostly not. Homer's interpreters do and Virgil is working from this

tradition. From the traditional scholarship around Homer's intrepreters. We'll see in Virgil's

pantheon that not only do we have a grand and separate and very far away Olympian

divinities, especially in the case of Jupiter we're also going to have these figures, the

household gods. These are going to be effigies actual statues, that are the local gods of

particular families. A very Roman custom, not a Greek one at all. These are going to be very

important for Virgil's story and they're a kind of concretization of abstract divine forces in the

form of specific effigies that people can direct their acts of worship toward. Another kind of

indication from Virgil that he's dealing in. We guess abstractions what those abstractions are

going to be made concrete. We'll notice also that in furthering of this rationalizing spirit, we're

going to have actual real place names built into our story. Virgil's story is entirely mappable.

It's mappable on specific locations in the Mediterranean. When we look at Homer's Odyssey

we didn't propose any mapping there, because in fact all mappings of the Odyssey are the

creations of the map makers. Homer doesn't give us any settled atlas that lots of people that

spend cottage industries of time disagreeing over which mapping should go where and

whether the Scylla and Charybdis is in one place of the Mediterranean and the Pillars of

Hercules is somewhere else but mostly Odysseus's, Homer's treatment of this area is as a
land of mythic. Fantasy, its, strange and wonderful places but you can't really find them in

any specific way on maps. Totally different with Virgil. Every place he's going to talk about is

specifically mappable on to real geography, that you and I as classical Romans know we're

going to get to know. We know these places we may have grown up, we may have visited

them. Virgil's now mapping this on to real historical. Places. Now we're going to see some

other treatments that we'll spend time looking at, Virgil. Where he will give rationalizing his

rationalizing impulse will take over. And at each of these points, we'll, we'll link it back, to this

new sense of myth in history that Virgil's working with. He is working in a historical time with

great learning around him. And he's not going to ignore that in building his own myth. And

yet, Virgil is able, even within this very learned time, historically and scientifically, with great

records everywhere. Virgil still is going to be able to construct myth. It's much trickier to do it

with. In History, I think you'll agree Virgil succeeds, eh, with. Great, effect.

Book 1

We're going to turn now to some of the details in Book one. I want to focus on a couple of

scenes there, to get us used to reading Virgil's poetry. We're going to see obvious examples,

that of parallels between the stories that Virgil tells, and the story that we see in Homer's

Odyssey. Just to point out a couple of these. There are wanderings, of course. Aeneas is

moving around the Mediterranean, in a way that parallels Odysseus', nostos, his journey

home. Aeneas is on his way to found a home, though, he's trying to find a place where a

home doesn't exist and create one, whereas Odysseus is trying to get back to a home that

already pre-exists. Odysseus is trying to fight to regain his kingdom. Aeneas will have to fight

mightily in order to gain a kingdom, one he didn't own before. Odysseus is harried by

Poseidon. Aeneas is going to be harried also but in this case, by Juno. Odysseus is going to

be protected and looked out after by Athena. In Aeneas' case, he'll be looked out, looked
after and protected by his mother, Venus. There'll be lots of others for you to find. Keep in

mind, though, with every parallel that you find, there's going to be some Virgilian twist. The

parallels are not ever 100%. One of the great scholars of this whole material, a man named

Niko Knauer who was here at University of Pennsylvania for many years. Wrote literally the

book on looking at these parallels and talks about how even down to little pieces of

sentences and vocabulary choices Virgil, is making references to Homeric backgrounds and

each time he does he's tweaking it just a little bit. There's never any lock step repetition that

happens; borrowings but always changes and those changes are always interesting to have

a look at. I thought an example of this would be worth our spending a little time looking at.

Let's go to a famous scene in Book One where Odysseus has washed up onshore of

Carthage and is trying to figure out what's happening in what he's seeing in front of him. And

over the top of a hill. Well, he a, a beautiful site comes into his eyes for him and a

companion, that are looking down and what hap, what's happening in Carthage. Meanwhile,

the two men pressed on, where the pathway lead. Soon climbing a long a ridge that gave a

view down over the city and facing towers. And he has found where lately hut's had been

marvelous building, gateways, cabled ways and dinner wagons. There the Terriens were

hard at work lane courses for walls. Rolling up stones to build the Citadel while others picked

up building sites and ploughed a boundary furrow. Laws were being enacted. Magic,

Straignts of a secret Senate chosen. Here, men were dredging harbors, there they laid the

deep foundation of the theater and quarried massive pillars to enhance the future stage. As

bees in early summer and sunlight, in the flowering fields hummed at their work and bring

along the young full-grown to bee hood. As they cram cones with honey bringing all the cells

with nectar or take newcomer's plunder or like troops alerted drive away the lazy drones and

labor thrives and sweet time sends the honey. Aeneas said how fortunate these are whose

city walls are rising here and now. So what we've got in this scene is something that we've

seen in Homer. Multiple times that this idea of the approach to an unknown. Village. The,

landing on an unknown shore and making an approach to a village. Aeneas had just done
that so on the one hand we can say, sure. But there also seems to be a parallel here with

Odysseus landing on Scyrea. Right? There's a grand citadel that he's looking at; it's quite

marvelous and amazing to him. So there's parallels there that are quite obvious. But look a

little bit more closely and we can locate a couple of really important differences. Remember

when Odysseus is standing there at the threshold in Scyrea how amazed he is by the wealth.

He sees this beautiful of shiny things, gold and silver and lapis, blue things. The gorgeous

stones around him, the materials, the fine craftsmanship and workmanship. He's amazed by

the careful craft, the extreme wealth that he sees in front of him. These are the things that he

admires. What does Virgil have Aeneas admire? Aeneas admires the orderliness of this

whole thing. They're, the building of the walls is, to him, amazing. They're working like bees

together in perfect unison and harmony. They're bringing good things to store, they're

organizing things, they have a, a senate set up and laws set up. Each of these templates,

Virgil's looking at different aspects of the ordering of a society, architecturally, in a civic way,

according to legal structures, according to political structures. It, Aeneas is having a hug

wash of admiration, not just for wealth. For example a wash of admiration for a carefully

constructed society that's going to work well. This is a classic way that Virgil, yes, draws on

Homeric precedents. But always turns them in some kind of interesting way, to add to his

own story and the story that he tells. It's helping us to mark the ways in which Aeneas is

quite different from Odysseus. There are some ways in which they are the same. But this

marks for us, early on, one theme that we're going to see repeated over and over again.

Whereas Odysseus is constantly trying to traverse boundaries and jump over walls. Aeneas

is trying to find boundaries and secure them. And make sure that there is stability and order

in the world. We'll see this difference between the two of them over and over again in the

stories that we see. Also in book one, I wanted to pay some attention to a scene that

happens with us, a poet called Iopas. You'll remember that in the Odyssey we looked, paid

careful attention to scenes that featured Homer's treatment of Demoticus. Remember,

Demoticus was a bard, and Homer's treatment of Demoticus gave us a window into what
Homer thought poetry was all about. Well, in that way we can also turn to the Song of Iopas

that shows up toward the end of Book One and it's, look to it, for, as a way into

understanding what Virgil understands poetry to be. Virgil is of course aware of the

Demodocun background that he's drawing from and he's aware of the tradition that existed

even in antiquity, not just in our class, that looked to Demodocus as a way into Virgil's,

Homer's ideas on poetry. And now Virgil's going to present his own story of a, of a poet as a

way as self consciously into his own idea of what poetry is all about and look what he

presents. And Lord Iopas with flowing hair, whom giant Atlas taught, made the room echo to

his golden lyre. He sang the strained moon and toiling sun, the origin of mankind and the

beasts, of rain and fire. The rainy Hyades, Arcturus, the great bear and little bear. The

reason winter suns are in such haste to dip in ocean, or what holds the nights endless in

winter. Tyrians, at this, redoubled their applause. The Trojans followed. So what's Virgil

telling us that poetry is all about? I-, in Virgil's accounting, it seems to be pretty much like.

The story of the whole universe. We've got a large cosmological understanding of the

importance of poetry. Poetry talks about things like the shape of the universe. It talks about

the elements of rain and fire. It talks about the constellations of Arcturus and the Great Bear.

It talks about why winter suns depart early from the daytime. All of these things are going to

be in the background of what poetry is all about. Virgil, I think here, is giving us an invitation

to say, when you look to my poetry. You should imagine me as a poet, trying to tell you a

story of the entire cosmos. Virgil has larger ambitions, if possible, I think it is. Larger

ambitions for poetry, I think, even than Homer did. For Virgil, it would be possible to use

poetry to convey structures of the cosmos. It's something, sure, that Homer touched on, in as

we have talked about. Generators of interpreters after Homer, especially those of the

allegorical school, understand that his poetry does give a window of these large, huge

cosmological questions. But. Virgil here I think is self consciously telling us, I'm going to. You

could purposefully create a poem that can be read by every a lens you could imagine. It will

be as rich as you possibly can make it out to be. In a way it reminds me a little bit of what
happens in modern poetry, for example, with figures like James Joyce. James Joyce is

constantly giving us a nudge to say, go ahead and read into this because you're going to find

tremendous amounts of deep meaning here. I think Virgil's doing the same thing with this

opening his of Book one. Read. Hard. Read carefully and you'll find grand truths in my story.

Homer's leading us down that path. Or, Virgil's leading us down that path. From here, we'll

turn to book two, and have a look at Virgil's representation. Really, the, most authoritative

representation from all of antiquity, about the Trojan Horse and the events surrounding the

end of the Battle of.

Book 2

In book two, parallel to what happens in the Odyssey, Aeneas takes over the story and now

begins to narrate for his Carthaginian hosts, his own past and what's happened to him. This

of course goes right to the Trojan War. The Trojan War has, has ended and Virgil has our

hero Aeneas talk about what has happened in his relatively recent past, this awful thing that

has just gone on the fall of his beloved city. Virgil gives us a customary twist right away. No,

the story doesn't just sit with Aeneas, as he keeps telling and telling what happened the story

gets turned over early on to this figure Sinon. Sinon is a Greek whom the Trojans meet near

the end of their undoing. It seems that the Greeks have all left, so they go outside Virgil or

Aeneas with them. And they run across this vagabond Greek who claims to have been

abandoned by his Greek countrymen and as they come and talk to him, they see next to him

this giant wooden horse. At this point we say, you know, who's this Greek? We can't trust

him. What this thing? We can't trust this. Sinon tells such a beautiful lie and a well

constructed lie that the Trojans buy it. They un, they think that he's telling them the truth.

What he tells them is that they, there's this evil crafty Odysseus, Ulysses and he has

abandoned Sinon. Sinon has been pushed away now so he's now ready to betray the

Greeks and give away their secret. The Greeks have built this horse because they

understood from Athena that she was very angry with them for stealing the Palladium.
They're now, as a substitute, they have constructed this beautiful horse on the hopes that the

horse will never be brought into Troy because if it is brought into Troy, then Troy would never

be able to be conquered. The Trojan are listening to this they, has an air of truth about it,

Sinon is a very good liar and seem to be interested in it. Now there's this other person,

Laocoon, who says, no, no, no, Don't believe any of this. It's a terrible lie. Well, up out of the

sea come serpents that come and bite him famously depicted in many art, art, art forms from

our past. The serpents come up and bite Sinon, Oh sorry, bite Laocoon and he instantly dies.

Now, When that happens, the Trojans take this as a divine sign, reasonable enough for them

to do so, that Laocoon in objecting to this is all wrong, and that now the Trojans have a

redoubled urgency of bringing this horse inside their city. What happens when they do, we all

know, focusing on sign on for a second, it's interesting to look what happens, well in the,

odyssey, think about the number of times Odysseus lies, and the number of times Homer

seems to admire him for doing it, also we get in the case of, Athena a kind of egging him on

to lie. She's delighted when he lies. The gods like it. Humans like it when he does. Everyone

is entertained by Odysseus's lies. Well here we have yeah, more lies coming from a Greek.

You can imagine the Romans thinking about these Greeks as being great liars. But in this

case, there's nothing charming about it at all. It means the undoing of the people that Virgil's

story cares most about. So lies are definitely associated with the Greeks but they're not at all

something that we smile about and like. They're terrible, terrible things. At this point now we

get the definitive version of what happens at the end of the Trojan War, yes in deed written

1200 years after the fact in Virgil's account. This is the definitive version of what happens at

the close of the Trojan War, including the Trojan Horse and the other things. The Greeks

come out the horse in the middle of the night, after there has been great drinking and revelry,

the Trojans are not ready for war and the Greeks run riot. When they do they annihilate the

city, this is a terrible, terrible, Terrible thing. Virgil, narrates it with great detail. And also with,

great concern, on the part of Aeneas. What's happening to his countrymen, what's

happening to his family, what's happening to his city. Aeneas is going through all of this. Part
of what's being built into the story, such as, Virgil lavishes it, to us through Aeneas's eyes is

a sense that Aeneas has this hero figure. And a hero who's actually going to be founded on

a core sense of duty and following through. The first thing he's going to have to do in order to

get our story started is to abandon Troy. He's not going to go down with the ship. We're

going to find that that's a strange thing in Virgil. Mostly what happens is that Aeneas is able

to get his men through. People that have all their other men disappear from their own on

missions where they are in charge, that's a problem. The great Roman generals are

supposed to go down with the ship. So Riddle's got to start a story based on an

abandonment of Troy through this figure of Aeneas, whose main core skill is his piatas, his

duty, his ability to follow things through. But there are, of course, plenty of good reasons, for,

Virgil or for Aeneas, to abandon what's happening. There are, figures that come down and

tell him to. We have divine Gods that come. Ghosts that come and tell him. Other human

beings. His wife herself, in the end, comes and begs, Aeneas to leave. So there's lots of

reasonable, premises built into the story as to why Ineas has to leave, of course he does.

There's a wonderful one that I just wanted to point to, in the case of Venus and Fitzgerald is

in lines 780 to 825, 780 to 825 and it brings home a very specific kind of Virgilian twist how to

present scenes of disaster like this. There is an eerie proof. To Aeneas that all is lost. You'll

recall in this part of the epic Venus actually lifts the veil of reality and allows Aeneas to peer

back behind the superficial surface of things to see what's actually happening in the

underlying structure of things, The structure of the cosmos such as we hear Yopof singing

about. When she peels that back, what does Aeneas see? He witnesses the gods

themselves in these shadowy forms, hulk, in these hulk-like forms, Dismantling the walls of

Troy. Now, That's a terrifying thing to see. To see human beings do it with grand weaponry

and huge formations, that in itself is just awful to imagine, but to imagine the hidden forces

the cosmos actually dismantling the walls of Troy deeply sinister. For Homer there is anger

and there is rage. For Virgil there's a kind of existential menace, the whole universe seems

to be kind of operating with behind the scenes forces that sometimes could have deeply
sinister ends to them. Virgil's world is build on a sense that there may be depths of sinister

forces operative in a world that otherwise we as humans might be ignorant of it's depths. So,

we get to see the Troy engulfed in flames, in this broad sense. And then we get to see Virgil,

send Aeneas out. Virgil brings his father with him, on his shoulders, and his household gods.

Father, coming with him can here would be a nice representation of Virgil's, sorry, of

Aeneus's past and tradition. He's carrying that forward as a burden to bring that forward with

him. And, he's also guiding his son by the hand, the future in other words, He's guiding

forward into the next stage of things. Destiny is bringing him forward via his son whereas

tradition in the past comes with him, as his father is up on his shoulders. Is he then going to

breezily march into some new found future with his father and his son? Well, not at all.

Virgil's world is a world that is characterized by darkness. It's characterized by shifting

surfaces. Be careful as you're reading. It's a strange world to enter in to. Homer, I think, is

quite brightly lit, most of the time. We get to see what's happening. Finding all the

connections between the things we can obviously see is, is part of the challenge. For Virgil,

there's a difficulty in just getting at what the even what basically is happening. There'll be a

surface level, there'll always be other levels perating at the same time. That's happening for

Virgil and it's happening for us as we read the story, It's also happening for Aeneas. He's not

going to be in full command of all the things that are happening around him. He's being

pulled along by this grand destiny toward a future that he is on his way to, to meet but there'll

be lots of pain, struggles and suffering along the way so watch for these hidden forces.

Book 3

With Aeneas having got himself out of Troy he now starts on his wandering adventures. We

obviously know this well from Odysseus' tales of Book nine through, in Books nine through

twelve of the Odyssey. Oh, Homer sorry, Virgil's are quite different. And for us to focus on
those differences is really pays off great dividends. First of all, as we said when we were

talking about the rationalizing impulse that Virgil brings to his myths these stories are all

mappable. These are specifically located on real geographical places that we can point to.

Let's start off with this place, Troy. We know exactly where that is. The legendary place of it

helped guide where we should have looked. So there was a location on a map back then

about what Troy was all about. The first place they go and stop after their escape from the

burning of Troy is this place called Thrace. Thrace up in northern part of the area of the, the

great extent of Greece it's well known for being a little bit wild and strange in Greek custom

and the first adventure that they have leads them to rather spooky scene at Thrace which is

right near Troy. Aeneas locates the body of Polydorus. You'll recall, or you'll recall from

reading, that the suggestion is talked about, about where Polydorus comes from. He was

Priam's son who was entrusted to the King of Thrace during the Trojan War with a hefty

ransom. Well, after Troy fell the king just decided go ahead and take the ransom and kill the

kid. So poor Polydorus is there under awful circumstances buried in the ground. And he

starts spouting up oracles. Oracles that come from the dead, so called necromancy are

things that are well known, but very, understood to be very spooky in Ancient Rome. It's not

a normal way of getting oracles. When they hear this, that it's time for them to move on, this

is not a good place to get their city started Aeneas and the boys hop on the ship and off they

go. The next place they go is Delos. Now Delos is well known as a famous place for Apollo's

oracle. It's not, though, quite as Greek invented in Greekness as Delphi is. Let me just clarify

that. Delphi has a very rich tradition. Delos has one too. Both of them are anchored in the

Greek past. Delphi's, though, is more central. Delos is by no means peripheral but I don't

think that Virgil could have quite had his hero go find out the truth of what he needed to find

at Delphi. That would have been too Greek too connected with what we know the Greeks to

have expected. So instead we go to Delos. Again, a very well famous, a very famous and

well-respected Greek place and, an oracular shrine. But not the main one of Apollo which in

long tradition turns out to be Delphi. We know Delos of course from our Homeric hymn to.
Apollo, so the oracle there tells them they should seek where the Trojans first came from.

The idea is that there is some early ancestral land out there where Troy needs to be

reestablished. Now the story that Delos tells, makes this new home that Aeneas is seeking

actually. And earlier home, a primer home. It just so happen in the story such as Virgil tells it.

Actually, it's not just that the Romans come from the Trojans, actually, yeah the Romans

come from the Trojans. But the Trojans originally came from the Romans. Virgil's giving us a

story in which the ancestral home of Troy is actually Rome. So it has the, the, the roll of

being, originary the actual, originary spot of this whole race. So when Dylos says, go find

your, background, he saying to, Virgil's saying. Through that message then what happening

here is a refounding of an originary kingdom Rome is. From Delos they head off to thinking

that they're looking for an ancient place that could have been the background of Troy. They

head off to Crete. Makes sense. Crete was well known, as we've mentioned, mythologically

as a very ancient place and if we're looking for some ancestral home, it may well have been

there. So they go and they start and they get started their building. They're building their

walls. Notice how many times we're going to see, during this book of fits and starts in book

three we're going to see Aeneas and his. Mates, getting started building a city. They'll build

walls, they'll lay out plans. And then something bad happens. So at Crete, they're getting

started on the building of the city and there's a pestilence that appears. A awful plague that

visits the men. They fall down sick. And then the household gods appear to him in a dream,

as we mentioned earlier on, talking about the rationalizing spirit in Virgil. These gods tell him

it's time for you not to be here, but somewhere else. You've got to move on. It's actually in

Italy. Go there. So at this point now, Virgil and his mates know what to do and off they head.

They have a stop at the island of the harpies, in the Strophades showing up here on the

western edge of, of Greece. These harpies are nasty well-known beasts. They show up in

some famous freezes and other artistic representations. They're things with wings that come

down and just spoil your food. Those who have try to have a picnic near flocks of pigeons

might have some people to relate. A little bit to what this kind of experience was like. So it
was, they were unable to get any nourishment. They also hear a nasty oracle there from the

mean Harpy Celaeno that they won't found Rome until they eat their tables. They're going to

be apparently so hungry that they eat their tables. This prophecy is fulfilled in book seven

when they realize that their bread platters that they're using to hold their food up is actually

what the Harpy was referring to. They then go right past Ithaca. This shows up on page 75 in

your translation. Not much mention of it, right. Hello to Odysseus but we're not going to

spend a lot. I'm worrying about you, it's almost like a kinda like a kiss off to, To Ithaca where

he's not going to spend a lot of time talking about it. We then go to Chaonia in Northern

Greece on the Adriatic side to this town that's there and we hear the story of Andromache,

who was Hector's wife, abducted by a Greek man named Pyrrhus, a son of Achilles, after the

Trojan War and taken back to this land of Chanoia. Then Pyrrhus dies and Helenus, who is a

son of Priam and another one of Pyrrhus's captains, inherits the kingdom. Now we have a

kind of new Troy that's been found here Chanoia by. Great Trojan aristocrats, Helenus

together with Andromache, Hector's wife, and this would seem like it would be a good place

to found Troy. But it turns out no, it isn't. We can't have a new Troy here. Aeneas, you've got

to move onto another place. A famous prophecy then comes out. Helenus is well know for

his prophetic acumen in the Trojan materials. He then tells them that they have to go talk to

the Sibyl. He gives them a further clarification of the prophecy. Yes, it's going to be Italy but

in order to find what to do, they have to go find the Sibyl and she will give them specific

directions on where to go. That's going to require, yes, indeed, a trip to the underworld,

something we'll see in book six. They then make their way aross the, the sea between,

Greece and Italy and over to, the, over to the land of Aetna where they see this belching

volcano, and they hear discussion of the Cyclops. Now on their way there notice what they

don't do is go through the Scylla and Charybdis. It's possible that they could have gone

through this little narrow isthmus between the tall Italy and the island Sicily but they avoid it.

This is Virgil, I think, telling us that Aeneas is a different kind of captain. Remember what

Scylla and Charybdis forced Odysseus into. Well, he's going to have to choose one or the
other. If he chooses Charybdis he could lose all his men so he's just going to sacrifice some

of his men and go past Scylla and have them be eaten. Well, Aeneas finds another way.

Rather than try to go through there let's go round the outside of Sicily. That outside path

there around the southern edge moving his way westward in that way. So he avoids

altogether the tough choice that Odysseus found himself with, and it is the wisdom here and

respect for all of his peers, all of his, all of the men in his crew that I think Virgil is making a

strong point of pointing out to us. So we get to this land of Aetna, and on that land we meet

the Cyclops. We hear about him and the way we get into the Cyclops's tale is, again,

interestingly from this figure Achemenides. Achemenides is someone who was abandoned

by Odysseus. On page 87 to 89 we hear his story, and he talks about how my shipmates left

me here. So we're going to get. Odysseus' famous example of him being a grand hero and

defeating the Cyclops we're going to get a window on what that's all about via one of the

men that Odysseus abandoned. So what we're learning about Odysseus so far from the

episode that we saw with Cynon the abandoned man here, the sort of brush off to Ithaca is

that Odysseus is a conniving liar and he's someone who doesn't get all his men home safe.

So the different values that are emerging in this story are contrasted specifically with the kind

of values were, we were used to seeing Placed front and center in Homer's story. A different

kind of hero here. We're going to focus on that in a coming lecture but notice what's

happening with the legend of Odysseus. He has been recast now in something that is fair

enough but a different kind of casting. He's a nasty liar and someone you can't trust. The, the

Romans are not going to embrace that figure at all. So after we hear the tale of the Cyclops,

we make our way around Sicily avoiding again, so and Charybdis, We've could have gone

there right after our right after our meeting on Aetna with, with Achaemenids But instead, we

go around and we get to Drepanum. From there, we know that, the father and Kysis passes

away. Sad thing for Aeneas, but a kind of necessary thing. The past now needs to be

inhabited and carried forward by, by Aeneas. It's no longer going to be up to his father. Other

to carry traditional it's now passed down to the next generation. There are some that have
looked at this set of journey that, that goes one and talk about yes, there is a. Definitely an

Odyssean character to them, and quality to them. But there's also, not only Odysseus's

journey is being. Captured here but also some of Telemachus' journey is being capture here.

Aeneas is referred to as a young man by the Trojans as he runs into them. Some of them

school him and bring him along, especially Helenus and Andromache. He's being raised and

nurtured in the adventures he has, in some ways parallel to the way Telemachus is in books

one through four of the Odyssey. Now that's not to say that Telemachus is the only parallel.

Odysseus is there too but it's a way of seeing how Aeneas, or Virgil always takes elements

from Homer and puts a different spin on. And twist them just a little bit, and, and comes up

with something entirely new in his way of treating them. So after we buried or after we've left

the father of Drepanum. We are on our way now to Carthage we're going to pick back up

with the story where Virgil start had Aeneas take it over at the close of Book one. We're

going to learn about some events that happen there in Carthage focusing on what happens

with. Dido, especially. Before we do, let's talk a little bit more about what we've learned about

this new Roman hero this figure of Aeneas.

Book 4

Before we turn to book four and Dido and her story, I thought we'd take a step back from

books one through three and look at two specific themes that have emerged here that are

interesting contrasts with the material that we've seen before and a nice window into what

happens, with the Roman, version of ancient myth. We've already talked about both of these,

but I wanted to take some time to focus in on them. I'm going to talk about Pietas as a

central hero for, central value for what a hero ought to be, and I wanna talk about the

concept of teleology as a driving force behind, a historical thrust. The, idea of pietas shows

up as a definitive marker of what Aeneas is all about. We've translated this as dutiful, I think
that's as good a single English word as we're going to find, but it's much more than just being

simply dutiful. Pietas has an etymological with an English word piety, and yes, indeed, it

means showing due reverence to the gods, pietas does. But it means, in addition to this

sense of dutifulness and showing piety, it means all the things that a Roman would want to

see in a Roman man. It is. A sense of follow through, commitment to getting something done

a sense of appeal to the broader responsibilities of a person who takes on a leadership role,

who needs to make sure everybody is brought along, no one is over looked. Pietas talks

about doing the difficult correct thing as opposed to the easy quick out thing, carrying

through with your promises, being honorable, all of these things are built into the idea of

pietas. It's impossible to be a great Roman without exhibiting this and aspiring to it. Now, this

is a very different central virtue than what we saw with Odysseus. Remember, for him it was

polytropos. Odysseus is able to get out of any jam that he gets, he finds himself getting into.

Through whatever strength, whatever guile he has to use, he'll get himself out of trouble. A

Roman might look at that. Kind of cultural valuation, say, well what did he do getting into

trouble in the first place? He shouldn't have been so swashbuckling and telling lies and being

all sneaky like that. The Romans, in fact, don't hold up an idea of being polytropos, any

Roman equivalent, as some of centerpiece of what they want their hero to be. Instead, the

new centerpiece of what a hero's going to be all about is this notion of being dutiful. So or,

sorry, Aeneas shows this in his, relationship with the divinities. He's got a relationship with

his own god, the Penates, that allows him to exhibit his pietas. He shows it in his relationship

with his subordinates. He shows duty to them. And honor, he's honorable to them. He tries to

bring them along. He also shows it when he is constantly subordinating his own individual

desires to the larger needs of the society. This is also built in to the idea of pietas, which

says that your own individual interest is only one small piece of the world where a larger

corporate social interest is much more important. The similies of bees and ants things that

we've already seen in Homeric times become flavored with a new a newly admirable quality

in Virgil's text. They are, markers of this sense of group dynamic and an ability to work
together in groups, to get great things done. Romans are wonderful at that and they're rightly

proud of their ability to do such things. When Aeneas is engaged in his making of

boundaries, and building of walls, this is further an act of pietas. It is a dutifulness he's

carrying through, building things out in his marking out of a city by. Using his plow he is

engaging in this following through of what is expected of him. Now, a contrast with Odysseus

could not be greater on this score. If Aneas is the great maker of boundaries, Odysseus is

the great crosser of them. He is constantly trying to find a way to skip over whatever

boundary or wall is in his way whereas, Aneas probably would find such a thing child's play.

Much more interesting for him is a sense of duty of building a wall, of making some order out

of an otherwise utterly chaotic world. It's, it's. Tempting, although it might just be a

suggestion. But it's tempting to map these two central cultural values onto political and social

dynamics of the times and cultures out of which they emerge. The thing about the Greeks,

well, they were in a stage of exploration. There was lots of settlement happening during the

time that Homer was writing his epic, all the way through into the Athenian classical period

that we focused on in the tragedies. Greeks were sending out colonies all over the place.

And this idea of exploration and expansion moving into new uncharted territories and running

into strange things there would've. Spoken in a, in a profound way at a cultural moment

when built on exploration, and finding new spots. Many of them, either uninhabited or only

partially, very partially inhabited. And, and then, by contrast a person might be tempted to

map the idea of pietas and dutifulness in subordinating your own individual desires to larger

group needs to a culture that was now all of a sudden in control of and worried about

maintaining a vast empire. The Romans are at a time, a cultural time, when Virgil writes his

epic and. Puts pietas at the very center of what it is to be Roman. A time of preservation. The

expansion of the Roman empire had reached its peak, and the idea now was to enforce, put

up boundaries that could be enforceable and talk about laws that would not be crossed. It's

not a time of fleeing to far flung places. It's instead a time to shore up things that have been

made and to enforce boundaries. Now, I wouldn't want those to become stereotypes of what
it is to be Greek and what it is to become Roman. But, as I say, there's a temptation, I think,

to read those cultural values onto particular social and political climate of the time. Now

another, theme that I wanted to make sure that we got to, in addition to PA tosses is the idea

of teleology, teleology. Now we've mentioned this in the past in the sense of a destiny. The

history that's moving towards some predetermined end. Teleology is another way of talking

about this. Telos in Greek is a completion an end point, an end or fulfillment telos. The

teleology is the idea that history is moving towards some specific end point. This idea

seemed to be entirely absent in Homer. The idea that all of history was moving toward some

grand end point, not really there. Definitely present in Virgil's Aeneid. A, a strong. Long

sense of teleology that presses this through. I wanted to bring up in this, moment another

universal law in the course. Remember, these are suggested universal laws, for discussion.

Universal law number eight. People at the top of the power structure and people at the

bottom of the power structure tend to embrace the idea that history is moving toward some

predetermined end point. People at the top of the power structure and at the bottom of the

power structure tend to embrace the idea of teleology. Now, why is that? Well, people who

have already won, the, all the games that the society, puts out to measure value, in a

society, like to think, well. Of course I won. I, history is bringing me to being on top of the,

the, the heap, and on top of the world. Everything works for a purpose. I one time saw a

interview with one of our great contemporary deities. The pop singer, Madonna, and she was

asked, oh great Madonna, is, is there, is there a point? Does everything happen for a

purpose or is everything random? Well, guess what, Madonna thinks everything happens for

a purpose. All of history is made to bring her, to the point of grand influence and power and

wealth that she has. Those at the top of the power structure like to hear this theme. It

endorses their own position in society, with giant wheels of machinery of the universal

mechanisms that have brought them there. Those at the bottom of the power structure

actually embrace this idea, but for quite a different reason. If you are getting ground up by

the machineries that seem to be operating around you, you are likely. To think that it wasn't
your fault, and that instead there's some, all of these larger purposes that are acting in the

historical times, but they just don't happen to include you. So it exonerates you from the

sense of having to feel like whatever position you're in is one that you somehow deserve. It

gives a larger meaningful structure in the world and you just happen to be on the outs of it,

but it's, it's operating. So the, the temptation I think, for folks on both ends of a power

structure is there to embrace the ideal of teleology. Those in the middle. Who have

aspirational goals of moving up social and cultural ladders, don't like this idea, that history

moves toward a predetermined end. It's more interesting to those at either end of the

spectrum of political and social influence on power. Now whatever the worth of that universal

law. Let's dig into teleology and Virgil's context a little bit more. Look at all the ways in which

destiny pulls Aeneas forward. We've already taken a look when we went over the events in

books two and three, especially in three, at the. Mums of false starts where Aenaes thinks,

okay here's a place I can build my city. You see that in Thrace, Dylos, Crete, the land of

Caeonia, Dydos' Carthage in Sicily, all of these places, there's an aspiration, oh good, here,

find one, we can get started. But no, driving on, we're pressed on, some divine sign, some

message, some prophecy, comes along and says, no, it's not here, it's later. Put off your

impulse to try to build a settlement here. So we've been pulled toward an end point that is

not something that is just under the control of Aeneas' troops or Aeneas himself let alone

Aeneas himself but it is in the larger building in of the cosmos he is going to bring them

toward this end point in Italy almost despite themselves. I mean, at a certain point Aeneas

has just had enough. He seems to be almost fed up. Now he keeps pressing on but it's at

great personal suffering and great personal cost. So these tales center on this. Forward

pulling fate expressed by these oracular pronouncements. Now we also get fate read out to

us. We get a destiny laid out for us at specifically important moments of oracular

pronouncement by figures in the epic. Jupiter in Book One famously, has his speech where

he talks about, no. This is what's going to happen. All of these things will unfold for Aeneas

that are going to lead to the founding of Rome. Creusa, the ghost of Creusa, in book two
shows up when she says, Aeneas you must go ahead and found Rome. Don't worry, I'm

dead. Abandon me. And here is what's going to happen? She lays out for Aeneas all the

things that he's going to have to do. It's the beginnings of, or the, the, the marker of that this

point in history is only a point leading toward others. The teleology here comes through. The

Delian Oracle, we hear on Dylos so book three. It's time for you to move forward and here's

the place you're going to go. We hear a little indication of this from the harpy Celaeno, you're

going to found your city after you eat your tables. It turns out to be the bread platters in Book

seven, which we're not going to read. Then from Helenus we have more of a marker of.

Teleological statement coming out in a prophetic way. We're going to see also that each of

these currents of fate that's pulling us forward through events is pushes through, and

sometimes runs over people that happen to be in the way. The best example of that is

something we're going to turn to next where we see Dido. Her story is emblematic of a lot of

smaller stories we've seen, of people who as the machinaries of fate and destiny are

pressing themselves forward are going to get ground up in the gears. And if Virgil was writing

some simple propagandistic epic where all of Rome was, you know, a peachy happy place to

be, he would not have included all of these details, that talk about how. Awful the suffering is

of the people that have to sacrifice in order to make. Rome actually work in order to reach

this predetermined endpoint, and Dido gives us a really interesting way to focus on what

that's going to be.

In book four, we get a chance to get close in to the character of Dido. We learn about her in

detail, we see a rich, psychological portrait of her, her interaction with Aeneas, her interaction

with her sister Ana, the, complexity of Dido's character makes her quite a strong figure. In

fact, I think she's probably the most complex character of these opening books more so than

even Aeneas. She is sympathetic. We get to know a lot about her we've seen her already

being a pretty good person. She welcomes in Aeneas and his men, she shows them

hospitality, and the way that we know from. In the ancient Mediterranean, it's a good thing to
do. She's building a city, something Aeneas can admire she seems to be doing everything

right. In Book one, we show through no fault of her own, the Goddess Venus sneaks up on

her and gets her to fall in love with, with Aeneas, through the intervention of Amour, her son.

So, she's sort of portrayed in that, in that sense as, as not fully in control, but we can

understand how she is overcome by divine intervention. But she is a, a, a someone who's.

Tale is not gonna lead to happiness and friendliness. In fact, quite the opposite. This

sympathetic character, Virgil spent a lot of time watching get ground up by the machinery

that's leading toward the founding of Rome. We were talking last time about how all these

teleological currents are married, wedded to ideas that are pushing backward along the way.

It's not a simple movement to the future there's great suffering to be paid on the way and

Dido gives us a, a way of focusing in on one specific scene of this book four is the richest

portrayal of what, she goes through. Starts off as we see a hunt, happen. Aeneas and Dido

and their, their, parties, head out for a hunt into the wilderness. And low and behold, wouldn't

you know it. A storm. Breaks and Aeneas and Dido find themselves taking shelter in the

cave. The two of them, they're have an interlude that an Virgil describes in really interesting

language. So let's have a look at what the passage is, Now to the self same cave came Dido

and the captain of the Trojans. Primal Earth herself and Nuptial Juno opened the ritual.

Torches of lightning blazed. High heaven became witness to the marriage. And nymphs cried

out wild hymns from a mountaintop. That day was the first cause of death and first of sorrow.

Dido had no further qualms as to impressions given and set abroad and thought no longer of

a secret love but called it marriage. Thus, after that name, she hid her fault. Now, what's

Virgil given us in this, passage? Notice what, what we have. We have, to the self-same cave

came Dido and the captain of the Trojans, primal earth herself and nuptial Juno opened the

ritual. To invoke earth and Juno here is to invoke the two goddesses that have. A great deal

to do with marriage ceremonies. So we're talking about a specific kind of marriage that's

being, the episode here is being cast as an actual bona fide marriage, with the two of them,

keeping an eye out for it. Virgil calls it a ritual. We've got torches of lightning blazing.
Marriage ceremonies are marked by torches. To talk about oh, torches is, is already to

invoke a very strongly ritual context of marriage. And we've got lightening flashing around the

cave that's taking the role of these torches. High heaven became witness to the marriage.

There's Virgil telling us that what's happening in the cave is an actual marriage. The nymphs

cry out wild hymns from the mountaintop. Well, that's also supposed to go on during a

marriage, with nymphs moving around and wild songs that get sung. Then Virgil takes a turn.

Look what happens in his description of the event. That day was the first cause of death, and

first of sorrow, Dido had no further qualms as to impressions given and set abroad. She's

thought no longer of a secret love, but called it marriage, thus under that name she hid her

fault. The first half of the passage seems pretty clearly that. Virgil is telling us, yeah, there

was a marriage that happened in that cave. The second half of the passage is Virgil telling

us, no, it wasn't a marriage. Now, which Virgil do we believe? It's actually quite hard to

decide. Did what happened in the cave count as a marriage, or did it not? Now, Roman legal

precedents on such, matters are not totally clear. It's not absolutely transparent what was

supposed to have happened there. In fact, it's quite murky what happened there. Does

Aeneas owe some affiliation and allegiance now to Dido? Well, it's. Tough to say. Dido

surely thinks he does and he in the end thinks that he doesn't. Aeneas comes right, or

Mercury comes right along and says to Aeneas, you've got to go, run away. Time for you to

get out of here. Aeneas is ready to sneak away, shows up on pages 105 and 106 and when

he's caught he seems almost a little bit guilty on 490 to 500 in the Fitzgerald translation.

He's, when he's caught he quickly blames fate: I don't want to leave but I had to leave. It's

this. Destiny that's pulling me forward. There's nothing I can do to escape it. Dido will have

none of this she is absolutely over the top, angry with Aeneas and his, the murkiness around

the presentation of the episode such as Virgil includes, makes the clarity of her anger I think

in the story even more fathomable. We see the one person here that seems to know what

happened. It's not Aeneas. It doesn't really seem to be Virgil. The one person that seems to

know what happened is Dido. And the strength of her reaction is really something to be.
Taken away. We see this, a wonderful mural behind me from, a frieze from, a mural from

Pompeii that depicts, depicts stages in the lives of women. A wonderfully rich, setting for us

to have our conversation. Dido and Aeneas having their marriage, it's not exactly clear

what's supposed to have happened there. When Aeneas is caught he gives this, quick

saying, so please no more of these appeals that set us both afire. I sail for Italy not of my

own free will. Aeneas is going to have to move forward because destiny is pulling him there.

The speaking of a, The, the, the, as the story unfolds between Anna and Dido and the

nastiness that they start to feel towards Aeneas page 113 we have a suggestion of a magical

rite of burning Aeneas' stuff, things that come from Aeneas. Love magic is a very common

thing in antiquity, and this would have been understood through that lens. Magic was not

something you would've been proud of doing, it was something you would have done if you

felt in desperate need for it and that, that, that. Dido was reaching to this direction, seems

understandable. Page 114 we start to call on underworld divinities Iarbas, Chaos, the

Chasm, Hecate, Diana. These are gods and goddess that you reach out to when really need

help. Remember these are iconic divinities from older order of things, that are also

associated with magic, that Dido was appealing to. Then again, quite, its quite an

understandable state that you find yourself in, in, in great, in great distress. Now, when I read

this scene of Dido I always have a different feelings toward it from year to year. It's as though

when I'm reading Homer I can feel like, okay. I put one extra brick in the edifice of my

knowledge of Homer each time I read it I learn a little something here and I learn a little

something there and I kind of build a wall up of knowledge as time goes by. When I read

Virgil I feel like, reading these important scenes, every time I read it the whole wall moves.

And I think this case of Dido is one of those especially rich ones where it's really hard to

make a final statement on how we're supposed to read this episode of Dido. Let me just give

you a couple of examples of different strong feelings I've had strong interpretations I've had

of this of this scene. And, none of these do I think is the absolute be all and end all. Let just

present several different readings. First of all, the sympathetic one, The one I've been
presenting pretty much so far were really brought through her version of events here. We

see, feel sorry for her, I think. This makes her tale and instance of these back currents that

Virgil spends time on. So rather than just focusing on the destiny that's leading us forward,

we see all the suffering that has to be made to make it things happen. In a good way. It

makes us, I think, quite sympathetic with Dido and feel her pain in a way, and watch, a, be,

the awfulness that comes her direction, get paid out in, things that she doesn't quite seem to

deserve. But, then part of me wants to jump in and say, wait a minute there are a couple of

other possible readings we can do here, how about for example a functionalist reading. What

if we examined here, what kind of social values are being underwritten, Are being legitimized

by the telling of the tale? Well, we've got a pretty clear example here of the overriding virtue

of Pietas being made to be shown triumphant in this situation. Even if Aeneas would have

wanted to stay with Dido he couldn't. Pietas' duty requires that he go forward and even

though it's at great cost this Pietas is the central anchoring virtue of this culture and therefore

it must be fulfilled. So, Functionalism, A functionalist reading here would underscore that the

value being legitimized is Pietas. Irrespective of the cost, we still have to do it. Furthermore,

and in support of this reading, remember at the very beginning, Dido shows herself as

someone who is very clearly exhibiting a traditional virtue of Xenia. She's welcoming, she's

welcoming, Aeneas and his crew, giving them a home. Offering to marry him. You can marry

our queen. Well, marry me. You can have a kingdom. All these things are being exhibited

through Dido's reactions toward, Toward, toward Aeneas. Well what Aeneas does in the end

is say, Xenia is all well and good and that might have made sense in the home maritime, but

it's Pietas now that's the central virtue, and we have to anchor that. So in this functionalist

duel Pietas wins out over Xenia. I think a really interesting way of looking at how this thing

might be working here. Another way of thinking about this puts it in a richer historical context

understanding what's happening during Virgil's own time. Aeneas here shows a master

Roman dominating a loved one, Carthage, who wishes to be with Rome but is eventually

destroyed by Rome. This would map onto a history of the Carthaginian Wars that the
Romans would have known well. Carthage was, of all the cities in the Mediterranean, the

one that most powerfully stood between them and total domination of. Mediterranean. The

Carthaginians, in real historical periods that the Romans knew well, for over a hundred years

did awful battle and war with the Romans. In fact, the Romans remembered the Carthaginian

conflict, and their ultimate victory there, as the great ex, exhibition of Roman power and

Roman strength. It showed pietas, duty, fulfillment of your duty to the, the greatest degree

possible. It was the great exhibition of Roman-ness as they conquered the Carthaginians no

matter how awful the suffering was. They eh, won out over the Carthaginians. Now with that

historical background of the Carthaginian and Punic Wars let's go back and have a look at

what's happening here. Now we have Carthage who's feminized. We've got hyper-masculine

Rome, who wins out over Carthage. Carthage wants nothing more than just to be loved by

Rome, but instead Rome destroys her. So, as a contemporary Romanite, it's kind of, wow-

wow element to this. As you see the carthogen once again gets crushed. Looking at another

historical component here, let's walk this back, just a little bit, and, tie it in, on something,

that, a piece of contemporary history, that Virgil would have known very well. Our hero,

Aeneas, shuns the clutches of a North African sex goddess, thereby besting Odysseus,

right? He does not fall for the wiles of that we see Odysseus falling for with these various

kinds of exciting women on strange far away places. He gets away. He also escapes faults

that would have been on the front of the minds of Romans during. Virgil's time. What

happened in Egypt when a great general named Anthony fell in love with a North African sex

goddess, Cleopatra. Oh my goodness, Awful things happened and it ripped all of Rome

apart. So if we're trying to imagine, a sympathetic reading of Dido, we have to run that past

what is clearly, obviously going to be a very un-sympathetic reading of a figure like

Cleopatra, coursing around in the contemporary historical accounts. So, of course Aeneas

leaves behind Dino. He can't fall victim, no matter how sincere his love is, or her love is, he

can't fall victim to that. If he did, he would be no better, than the people that had caused such

awful civil war in recent history in Roman memory. So all of these things I think are layers
that are built into this story. As I say, I'm not sure which one I would endorse in the end.

Virgil, I don't think, does that for us. He's not trying to tale, tell some simple tale that has tidy

lessons to be drawn. Instead he's always presenting very complex tales. Now I don't want

that to be an invitation for all of us to say, oh yeah. Whatever interpretation of Virgil you want

to give is okay. Que sera, sera. I'm okay, you're okay. Your interpretation's fine. Yours is fine

too. Let's not do that. Instead let's say in order to understand all the. Complexities, The

different shades of grey in Virgil's text, We have to double our efforts to read it very closely

and work very hard and have intense conversations back and forth about what's happening.

I'm really interested to see what you all are going to make of this story, in further discussion

that we have. I think there's a tremendous amount, still to be talked about. I've only just

barely scratched the surface.

Book 5

Leaving behind Book four of the Aeneid, and all that nasty business with Dido we take quite

a turn in the, in the events of our story in Book five. We have our hero, Aeneas, moving from

the northern coast of Africa, and Carthage, And this background that he sees in Dido, and

her civilization. And the, the, the dangers of maybe getting implicated in there, and his

escape from there. We now. Are going to move on to the future, literally. We're moving on to

Rome and what's going to happen next. Sicily provides a kind of perfect medial space in

between those two locations, Northern Africa and Italy. It's in the middle in terms of

geography. It's right there. It's also an island, so it's somewhat separate from the rest of the

world. It also recalls, interestingly, the, another island that we know from our mythic

background of Scheria where Odysseus had a engagement in a similar kind ofactivity that

we see most characteristic in Book five, That is the games in honor of in the case, in honor of

Anchises. These athletic games that Virgil positions in his epic right at this point, have really
interesting connections with the athletic games that show up, especially in Book eight in the

Odyssey, and allow us to make some interesting kinds of connections. The differences are

as profound and interesting as the similarities, but, there are ways in which these things are

have bear some comparison. Remember, in Odysseus's case, he is finding a way to

reintegrate himself back into society. He has been isolated and alone for a long time in the

story. He has been far away on the island of, Ogygia, and trying to find his way back to his

own home, the island of Scheria gives him a, a medial position in which he can rest,

rejuvenate, recover his strength, and move forward. It also give him a way to, in a, in a final

sense, recover the fullness of his identity and recall in Book five through, through seven, he's

starting to recover that sense of who he is. He gets back some of his strength and it, it starts

to show wits about him and then he recovers that and, and displays that physical strength

through these funeral games. This is a, another piece in him piecing himself back together

such that in Books nine through twelve, he can take over as, as captain of the, of the poem

and carry forward in the narrative and move things forward for us there. Now, for Aeneas, the

medial position is very much similar. He's moving from a state of having been in, in a state of

wandering and not quite sure where he's going into a state of much strong surety. As he

moves to the coast of, of Italy via Sicily, he's going to enter in, into a new part of the epic.

We're going to close a look at Book six, which is him going into the underworld of further

detour. But this spot in Boom five is a transition time as he's moving to Italy. And in Book

seven and four, Over the part that we're not reading for this for this part of the course

Aeneas' action takes place as it's a militaristic conquest of territory, very definite, definite task

that takes courage and strength but it is have more definitive perimeters around it. Up till

now, it's been a lot of wandering and moving around, and unclarity, incertainty, uncertainty

as Aeneas tries to find his way. So, the games are a transitionws into a time when Aeneas is

now going to become a, a more powerful figure in his own right. Now, there are structural ties

in this book to the rest of the story, they're quite interesting to note. There are ominous fires

that bookend both sides of the games. Remember, Dido's funeral pyre? Just before we get
on to the games, we can see that far off the coast. And then, after the games, we have the

fires of the ships that are being burned. That, the Trojan women set them under Juno's

encouragement, and, and we see those fires. They closed the games. Both of these have

ominous, portentious kinds of meanings to them. There's a storm that we see at the

beginning that drives the fleet to Sicily. And another storm at the end puts out the flames on

the burning ships. We have this figure Palinurus. He shows up at the beginning of the book

as the ship gets through the storm to Sicily. He's the steersman that gets it carefully through

that treacherous path. And then, Palinurus appears at the end of the story as he falls off the

ship. We're going to meet him. Who knew that there was a dead colleague that fell off of our

ship. We're going to find out in the underworld interestingly another harkening back into

interesting theme in Odyssey. We're going to meet up with Palinurus again, at least, we'll

hear about them again. Now, the games that get worked out in Book five show us lots of

pieces of Aeneas' character coming to the form. There are in the games a boat race, a foot

race, boxing, archery, and the equestrian maneuver of the Lusus Troiae. These are different

than what we see in the Greek games. There's some similarities but also some distinctive

Romanesque that's built into these. We see people in the games who are constantly cutting

corners. They're making mistakes, they're being greedy they're not living up to their to their

potential, They're whining. Those who are engaged in the games are doing all kinds of things

that require correcting. Well, as these events show themselves, who's the correcter and chief

who shows up? It's Aeneas. He starts to step into his role now, as a strong commander with,

a, a, strong hand on the tiller of his ship guiding his people through, difficult conflicts. As was

the case when we look back at the Odyssey we see important pieces of Odysseus' character

being put on display there well, here, we see Aeneas growing into important pieces of his

character, that are going to be central for him as he moves forward. He gives a chance to

display a, a, a new kind of prowess that he has. In that sense, there's a parallelism with

Telemachus, as much as there is with Odysseus as well. His father is now gone, sadly but

with that figure out of the way, And he is now, is, is his own, steps into his own as being a
prominent and powerful person at the height of his of his of his own capabilities in Book five.

We see him settle disputes, he's very good at this as people engage in the games, there are

conflicts that arise. Aeneas finds ways to settle disputes. He has judgement and fairness that

he brings to bear. He has good offices that he's earned through surviving these awful toils

and bringing his people through all this nasty stuff that they've been through. And now, he

puts them to use in finding ways for people to move forward, even through conflict and to

settle disputes. He's, he's steps right into the center of that and takes over in order to help

make things work out right for society. One of the markers I think of taking responsibility is

another way of saying solving other people's problems and Aeneas is stepping right up and

doing that kind of thing in through, throughout this book. There's after he intervenes and

solves things, we see lots of goodwill that shows up, there are prizes all around and Aeneas

is very generous, he puts them all, all over, he makes people feel good about themselves

and in each of these situations the epithet that gets put out more and more frequently with

Aeneas. In this book, and then forward from here in the epic, is Father Aeneas. He starts to

be referred to in these games as Father Aeneas, More so than any other book in the, in the

epic. In fact Book five is where he shows this epithet of himself and shows himself having

earned it. Aeneas is now making a transition from this time of wandering and difficulty such

as we see in the, the, the journeys and all the turmoil, turmoil that came with those from

Carthage and forward, And now making a turn to Italy. That he does this via Sicily, on a final

historical note, is important. We have talked already about the Carthaginians and the

important role that they played in Roman history. Sicily was a critical piece of the whole

Carthaginian struggle. The struggle against the role of Carthage. So, the connection there

would have been deeply engraved in Roman minds of Sicily as a pathway between Carthage

and Rome. And now, being backtracked by Aeneas himself, as he is bringing from Carthage

this, determination to found a new city that will eventually make Dido's funeral pyre go far

away and distant and eventually flicker out as Rome comes to dominate the Mediterranean.