|
|
 |
|
English
223
Greek and Roman Literature
Wendy Furman-Adams
The Aeneid: An Outline |
|
|
|
|
|
|
I. The Aeneid in Context
Other Epics:
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Babylonian, c. 1000 B.C.E.)
Exodus (c. 800 B.C.E.)
Homer--The Iliad and Odyssey (c. 850-750 B.C.E.)
Virgil--The Aeneid (19 B.C.E.)
The Ramayana (India, 1st century B.C.E.)
Beowulf (c. 750 C.E.)
Song of Roland (France, c. 1100)
Dante--Commedia (Italy, c. 1320)
Spenser--The Faerie Queene (1595)
Milton--Paradise Lost (1668)
Pope--The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad (1714;
1728)
Joyce--Ulysses (1922)
Distinctive Qualities of the Epic:
1. Above all, epic poetry is heroic and has an
imposing hero--e.g. Achilles; Odysseus; Aeneas;
Adam, Eve, and Christ; Leopold Bloom (?).
2. Epic poetry has a vast canvas, significant
(often tragic and perhaps paradoxical) action.
(The Odyssey ends comically, but with a
tremendous sense of suffering and loss along the
way; the Aeneid ends with a tragic death that
makes coming glory possible.)
3. Epic poetry tells of great deeds--above all
battles and journeys (often a journey to the
underworld--Hades or Hell--from which the hero
returns alive)--e.g. Odyssey, Aeneid, Commedia,
Paradise Lost.
4. Epic poetry generally includes "supernatural
machinery" [i.e. forces]--e.g. Athena and
Poseidon in the Odyssey, Juno and Venus (et al.)
in the Aeneid; "God," Satan, and the angels in
Paradise Lost.
5. Epic poetry features a special, elevated,
dignified style, removed from everyday speech--e.g.
epithets used for heroes, epic similes,
refrains.
6. Epic traditionally employs blank verse--the
dignified hexameter line used by Homer and
Virgil rendered into iambic pentameter in
English.
7. Epic (unlike drama) has an active narrator
(or "epic voice") constantly shaping our
response to the action.
All these qualities are found in both Homer and
Virgil and to some extent in their successors.
Homer and Virgil also share the same structure
(24 - 12 books), as well as a great hero,
serious action, battles and journeys,
supernatural machinery, etc., but their focus is
very different.
The Uniqueness of the Aeneid:
The Aeneid, like the Odyssey, about "one great
man" ("I sing of arms and of a man"), but also,
and above all, it is an epic of identity--about
a great nation: its purpose (telos), its complex
origin, its mystery, its cost.
Books I-VI (Aeneas's odyssey): Aeneas gradually
develops a sense of his fate (culminating in his
visit to father Anchises in the underworld), as
"a man who is both a father and a son."
Books VII-XII (Aeneas's "Iliad"): Trojans
and Latins work out that fate at enormous cost to
everyone. Theme: "It was so hard to found the
race of Rome" (which, from Virgil's perspective,
is almost to say "the race of humankind").
Both halves of the epic are built around a
tragedy: Dido's, then Turnus's. Both are decent,
appealing, "good" characters; both are out of
step with the inexorable march of Rome's fate to
be founded.
Aeneas is not necessarily a "better" person. His
great virtue is his "piety"--his faith, his
being in tune with Fate's fate for Rome. (In
this sense he resembles Moses--the great Hebrew
epic hero--more than he does Odysseus.)
Homer sings the ancient cultural memory of
Mycenaean civilization from at least 400 years
after the "fact." He re-members a time before
law; an age of ritual and splendor; an age of
family ties and of titanic individuals.
Virgil writes in the very midst of the Roman
Golden (Augustan) Age. He looks back so as to
examine the present and to shape the future
(e.g. Book VI, pp. 158-59; 160 - 61)--a national
(and international) future.
He embraces Rome, but is never a simple-minded
patriot. He sees war as hell. He sees good guys
on both sides (and good in the bad guys, bad in
the good guys). Death is never less than a
tragic loss.
Rome: (1) a grand and glorious ideal--"the
ramparts of high Rome" (p. 1); (2) imperfect
gods and human beings bringing that ideal into
reality, through sorrow, doubt, and loss--"It
was so hard to found the race of Rome" (p.2).
Virgil looks back to Homer; strains forward to
Hebrews 11, the Pollio, and to Paradise Lost;
and will be reborn, in Medieval literature, as
Dante's guide from the Inferno to the shores of
Paradise.
II. The Aeneid itself
Book I: in medias res: the Trojans' arrival in
Carthage.
1. Invocation and statement of theme (1-2, ll.
1 - 50).
2. Juno requests Aeolus to whip up a sudden
storm (4).
3. Aeneas appears and speaks (ll. 131 - 43);
Neptune calms the storm; and Aeneas, his men,
and their seven surviving ships (on p. 15, we
learn that all are actually safe) find a
"harbor" and sustenance in Dido's kingdom.
4. Aeneas's brave address to his men, full of
his sense of destiny (8, ll. 276 - 89) vs. his
private doubts and grief (ll. 290 - 311).
5. The Olympian council (pp. 9 - 11). Note the
dramatic irony: we get to listen in on this
eternal perspective; but Aeneas is stuck in the
finite perspective of history and time (the
perspective within which we all are forced to
choose and to act).
6. Dido becomes the "ignorant" tool of destiny
(11, ll. 418 - 430).
7. Venus appears to Aeneas disguised as a
maiden--ironically enough, c.f. Homer's
Helen--and tells him of Dido's tragic and
triumphant history (13 - 14).
8. The rising city of Carthage--and Juno's
temple, which (ut pictura poesis) tells the
story of the fall of Troy (16 - 18). Notice
especially l. 659.
9. Enter Dido (ll. 698 - 717). Notice how
positively her "coming kingdom" is described (as
is her palace and her hospitality on p. 23).
10. Her welcome of the Trojans ("Teucrians");
Aeneas's appearance/apotheosis; her offer of
help, shelter, and citizenship to all (22 - 23).
Notice her motive (ll. 880 - 82).
11. An allegory of love (23 - 26); by the end of
the book, gods, nature, music, wine, and time
all in conspiracy to bring about a love affair
that looks ideal in all respects. There's just
one problem: it is not approved by Fate. Notice
a banquet scene that, like those in Homer,
remembers a lost and beautiful world; notice the
singer's song of the cycles of life; Dido
slipping inexorably into her fate, Aeneas shaky
in his own--tempted to settle outside Italy (the
Roman equivalent, I would suggest, of the Hebrew
Promised Land, the Christian New Jerusalem).
Book II: Aeneas's story, part I--the fall of
Troy.
Notice that this is also the story of the fall
of Troy within Aeneas--and of the rise of the
dream of Italy. It is also a sad story told at a
banquet, which parallels Odysseus's tale at
Alkinoos's court--
but sadder in that the story is told this time
from the Trojan perspective. Moreover, it is
this time not just the sad tale of individuals,
but a tale with an eschatological, teleological
dimension: the unfolding destiny of a people.
After the initial treachery, five stages (like a
five-act tragedy) complete the drama of Aeneas's
death as Trojan hero, rebirth as founder of
Rome.
Prologue to the tale--famous lines (29, ll.
4 - 17).
Introduction: The treachery of the Greeks
(29 - 38).
a. Failure to win after ten years leads to the
ruse of the Trojan horse (29 - 30).
b. Lacoön's wise doubt (source of the saying:
"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts").
Notice how Odysseus/Ulysses's famous "guile"
takes on a different moral cast here!
c. The treachery of Sinon the Greek and the
tragic "mercy" of the Trojans
(31 - 36, l. 280).
d. The horrible omen that becomes a famous
statue--Lacoön and his baby sons
strangled and devoured by sea-snakes (36 - 37).
Think about why.
e. The horse led in over the shrieking protests
of the princess and prophetess Cassandra
(37). Notice the images of pregnancy, of rape,
of warnings heard but not heeded. Notice how the
account works on levels other than the literal,
as a kind of allegory of a people's role in
their own destruction, as the heavens and human
actions conspire against them (ll. 346 - 350).
1. The loss of Trojan military might (38 - 42).
a. The mutilated Hector appears in a dream and
tells Aeneas that Troy is fallen (38 - 39).
b. Palace of Deiphobus (Helen's second Trojan
husband) fallen (ll. 421 - 24).
c. Aeneas rouses his soldiers to die fighting.
Note especially the summary of
slaughter (41, ll. 488 - 98).
d. The rape of Cassandra in the sight of her
fiance; his death in a futile attempt to
defend her (42 - 43).
e. Aeneas's summary (ll. 579 - 88).
2. The loss of a domestic and political ideal;
of innocence and virtue; of rule of law and
respect for ritual: the fall of Priam's palace
(43 - 47). Notice throughout the images of rape,
of the feminine and the private (as well as the
civilized masculine) being violently breached by
the phallic, snake-like Pyrrhus (ll. 626 - 79).
Rape, desecration, cruelty, and murder become
one in the killing of Priam and his son Polites.
Notice that Aeneas says at the end of this
account that for the first time he was
"astounded" (ll. 751 - 52). War has leaped from
the realm of the "military" to the domestic
scene (as it does, horribly, to the shock even
of soldiers in almost every war). What wonder if
Aeneas suddenly remembers his own home and wife?
3. The loss of meaning and a sense of justice
(48 - 50)--embodied in Aeneas's encounter with
Helen. Yet here, too, is a warning of the
dangers of eros.
4. The loss of the city itself, as Troy burns to
the ground (50, ll. 843 - 55).
5. Final and fundamental loss: home and wife,
but in that loss the beginning of a new people
and a new calling by Destiny (53 - 55).
a. Old Anchises's despair and refusal to flee
(50 - 51).
b. Creusa's plea--and the sudden omens of flame
in Ascanius's hair and a shooting
star in the heavens (51 - 52).
c. The father agrees to "follow" the son as
companion, and the family flees (ut pictura
poesis)
into Bernini's famous statue (ll.
953 - 84).
d. The loss of Creusa to destiny (53 - 55). Notice
the sense of no ordinary cause but rather of
supernatural intervention in which the couple
has no choice except dignified acquiescence.
(Philosophy students: think about stoic views on
fate.)
e. Aeneas rejoins the "crowd of sorrow" as their
leader, and "lifting up [his] father,"
"makes for the mountains."
Book III: Aeneas's story, part II--The Virgilian
Odyssey--seeking the city destined by fate to be
home.
Notice here eight stages in a seven-year
journey--each taking Aeneas and his people
further from Troy, but never any closer to
Italy. It is a journey of further losses, ending
with the death of Anchises.
Introduction: the departure from Troy, where the
"guiltless race" has been overturned by the
guile of the guilty (Paris, Helen, Achilles),
but perhaps more profoundly by the will of the
gods.
Notice throughout the pattern of quitting shores
and harbors.
1. Thrace--and the story of Polydorus (57 - 59).
Note the ironic detail: "a land that had long
been a friend to us."
a. terrible omen (later borrowed by Dante for
his wood of the suicides in Inferno, XIII).
b. terrible motive--treachery (59).
c. first loss of harbor--moral and psychological
as well as physical (ll. 94 - 95).
2. Delos--and the shrine of Apollo, which leads
to the exiles' first false move (59 - 61).
a. Aeneas's prayer (60) and the oracle's cryptic
message (ll. 128 - 30).
b. setting sail for Crete ("the shores of
Cnossus").
3. Crete and the founding of Pergamum--literally,
"new Troy" (61 - 63).
a. the people "happy in that name"; a sense of
arrival (p. 61).
b. rising of the city suddenly interrupted by
plague; Aeneas's household gods come to
him in sleep to correct the interpretation of
the oracle (62).
c. set sail again (ll. 251 - 53)--only to meet
with a storm at sea (note the refrain, in ll.
255 - 56,
to be repeated several times in the
epic) and three days wandering in "sightless
darkness."
4. Strophades (Ionian island) and battle with
the harpies--horrible feminine monsters/
allegorical figures of chaotic and inappropriate
and chaotic guilt and dread (64 - 66).
a. harpies described (64).
b. Celano's dire prophecy of famine (65, ll.
329 - 336). But look at Book VII, 166-
67, ll. 135 - 65).
c. Shunning Ithaca, they sail on to Actium (66).
5. Actium (where Antony and Cleopatra will be
defeated by Octavian--a.k.a. Caesar Augustus--in
31 B.C.)--where one full year completes its
cycle and the people hold their first Trojan
games in exile.
6. Chaonia--and the new, sterile Troy ruled by
Helenus (a surviving prince of Troy) and
Andromache (Hector's widow, then the cast-off
slave-mistress of Pyrrhus). A profoundly elegiac
passage (66 - 73).
a. Aeneas's encounter with Andromache and her
story (66 - 67, l. 420 ff.). Notice her
question: does Ascanius give any thought to his
poor dead mother (as this poor living mother
grieves forever for her murdered son and
husband)? Remember that this is the
same Pyrrhus we met murdering her father-in-law
at the altar, who then ditches her to go to the
wedding (with Helen's "rose-lipped" daughter") Telemachus attends in the
Odyssey.
b. the sad and "dried up" city described (68);
and the entrance of Helenus.
c. Helenus's prophecy (69 - 70): the circling
years, the long and pathless way, Scylla
and Charybdis, the visit to the Cumaean sibyl
(and her "scattered leaves" of prophecy)--
but also the sign of the white sow (70, ll.
504 - 15), fulfilled at last in Book VIII, p. 194.
d. Their sad parting and gifts (73). Notice the
irony of Aeneas's wish for their new little
Troy--just as he is about to sow the seeds of
the destruction of Carthage.
7. Travels to Sicily (74 - 78)--accounting for
seven years!
a. Italy sighted--glorious poignant passage
(74); Mt. Etna erupts, casting them off-
shore toward Charybdis.
b. They land on the Cyclops's island, where
Achaemenides joins the party and tells the story
of
the Cyclops and Odysseus's men (76 - 77).
Notice that even the stray Greek is
welcomed; Rome fated to be a people made up of
all peoples.
c. Notice the sailors' sight of Polyphemus (ll.
849 - 861)--both terrible and pathetic, typical
of Virgil's complex view.
8. Island of Plemyrium, off Sicily: Anchises
dies in sight of the promised land he will never
enter.
(In Book V, Aeneas calls says he was "saved from
Troy in vain.") Notice Aeneas (poignantly) calls
this loss his "last trial."
Book IV: The tragedy of Dido.
The classic tragic clash of love and duty--with
enormous political significance to Romans of the
1st century B.C.E. (Dido as Cleopatra; Aeneas as
the anti-Antony). Rome not fated to be a vassal
state--of Carthage or of Egypt.
The value system here not exactly puritanical,
but one which places high value on order,
stability, and due ceremony--above all on the
good of the whole society as opposed to the
desires of the individual. Dido is a queen;
Aeneas is destined father of a new nation.
But neither does Virgil side with Rumor (p. 87)
or with King Ibarus (p. 87)--or see things as
cold-heartedly as Mercury (100, ll. 786 - 87). He
sees all sides and gives us all sides; but
Jupiter's view is final (88, ll. 299 - 302; 89, l.
317). Even Dido sees her love as "a fault" (81).
1. Situation introduced (81, ll. 1 - 6). Notice
the tight web of destiny and volition in Dido's
response to Aeneas.
2. Fatal (and so very human) conversation
between Dido and Anna (81 - 83).
3. Dark side of a ruler's passion: "towers rise
no more" (84).
4. Juno and Venus plot against Destiny--and thus
against the lovers (84 - 85). Notice Venus's
duplicity and disingenuousness (especially ll.
145 - 48).
5. The consummation (85 - 87, l. 228). Notice the
images of primal disturbance and chaos, as
opposed to the order celebrated in Catullus's
epithalamion.
6. Aeneas settling in at Carthage (89, ll.
346 - 51). Notice his outfit.
7. Mercury's attack and Aeneas's painful inner
division (90).
8. The lovers' quarrel (91 - 100). Notice
especially Dido's speech (91 - 92)--normally the
low ebb of readers' patience with Aeneas; but
notice also Aeneas's response (ll. 449 - 92).
Imagine if Dido could possibly listen; contrast
his rational (stoic) pain with hers, refusing to
be touched by reason (94, ll. 533 - 45). Notice,
finally, the epic voice's own compassionate
comment (95, ll. 561 - 66), and contrast it with
Mercury's heartless and sexist one (100, ll.
786 - 87).
9. Aeneas sets sail "rejoicing" (ll. 796 - 98)--in
what sense?
10. Juno, in her anger, turns a lovers' quarrel
into the Punic Wars (102 - 103)--lending her human
agency to what is already fated: another tragic
event in history, which is still 1,000 years in
the future (201 B.C.E.).
11. Her death --"a death . . . not merited or
fated,/ but miserable and before her time"
(103 - 104).
12. Epilogue: Book VI, 147 - 48.
Book V: The return to Sicily and the burning of
the ships.
1. The anniversary of Anchises's death--and the
change the circling years have brought to
Ascanius (ll. 102 - 103).
2. The memorial games in exile--a Pindaresque
memorial of a memorial (109 - 124). Notice all the
names only mentioned here, and to that extent
(only) immortalized. And remember "others came,
whose fame is now in darkness" (115, l. 399).
a. boat race
b. foot race--and the special friendship of
Nisus and Euryalus (115 - 16). Virgil's
first readers would know what you must flip
ahead to find out. Read Book IX, ll. 374-
667 and see how this elegiac passage foreshadows
that elegiac end.
c. boxing
d. archery
e. boys' maneuvers (122 - 24)--and Ascanius
entering into the glory of early manhood,
as a memorial of lost Troy becomes the
foundation of the Roman games.
3. Iris incited the women to burn the ships
(124 - 26). "Here fortune shifted"--right in the
midst of hopeful signs. Notice how Virgil uses
psychological allegory here to express the
women's inward state.
4. The too-late repentance; Aeneas's
intercession for the people; and the plan: to
leave four ship-loads of volunteers behind
(126 - 28).
5. The grief of parting to two different
fates--one pastoral, one heroic (129).
6. The mysterious drowning of the pilot
Palinurus (130 - 32). The strange sense of a
scapegoat offered for the many; also a perfect
miniature parable of the interaction of fate and
free-will; and a synecdoche of the difficulty of
every task in which almost perfect attentiveness
is not enough.
Book VI: the visit to the underworld and the end
of the "Virgilian odyssey."
Here the sibyl's prophecy foretells a tragic
route to an ultimately comic end: the foundation
of Virgil's and Augustus' Rome. The same paradox
also embodied in Aeneas's identity: "one who is
both a father and a son" (p. 137); a man with a
stake both in a lost past and in a glorious (but
horrifically, and from a human perspective an
absurdly, hard-won) future.
1. Aeneas arrives at Cumae (just south of
Naples)--entrance to the underworld, where he
sees, but is not distracted by, the temple of Daedalus.
2. The sibyl's prophecy--including a "new
Achilles" (136); Aeneas's quest: to visit the
underworld.
3. The sign of the golden bough and the funeral
of Misenus (138 - 40)--working together as an
allegory of pulling more than natural life out
of death and suffering.
4. Aeneas's journey through the underworld
(141-62). Notice how it is different from
Homer's.
a. guardians of the gate--allegorical and new
with Virgil (142).
b. Acheron and Charon; the taken and the
left--and Aeneas's sad encounter with the
shade of Palinurus (144-45).
c. crossing the Styx with the power of the bough
(146). Dante will borrow the
detail of Aeneas's weight in the boat.
d. nine circles of Hades (147). Dante's Hell
will also have nine circles.
e. the Fields of Mourning (cf. Homer)--and Dido
(147 - 48).
f. Aeneas meets Deiphobus, who tells of Helen's
final treachery (149 - 50).
g. two roads (middle p. 150): Tartarus to the
left, Elysium to the right.
5. the torments of the guilty (151 - 53)--e.g.. Ixion, Sisyphus, Tantalus.
6. the rewards of Elysium (153 - 55).
7. Aeneas encounters Anchises (155; note
especially lines 900 - 910, 919 - 927), who
prophesies the coming greatness of Rome as Cosmopolis, the world city (summary 160-61, ll.
1129 - 37); but the final image the elegiac one of
Augustus' dead nephew Marcellus (ll. 1149 - end),
a reminder of the sadness (and from a human
perspective the inexplicable wastefulness) of
history, as of all things on earth.
8. The final departure from Caieta's harbor--an
womb-image suggesting both loss and rebirth.
End of Part I: "I sing of arms and of a man: his
fate/ had made him fugitive; he was the first/
to journey from the coasts of Troy as far/ as
Italy and the Lavinian shores" (I, ll. 1 - 4).
Beginning of Part II: "And many sufferings were
his in war--/ until he brought a city into
being/ and carried in his gods to Latium;/ from
this [suffering] have come the Latin race, the
lords/ of Alba, and the ramparts of high Rome"
(I, ll. 8 - 12).
Summary of whole: "It was so hard to found the
race of Rome" (I, l. 50).
Book VII: the beginning of the "Virgilian
Iliad."
1. Loss of peace in Latinus' pastoral (almost
"golden age") kingdom comes from a loss of
"inward check" (see 169, l. 270)--symbolized but
not really explained by the fury Allecto.
(Philosophy students, note: as in the soul, so
in the polis.)
2. What happens, without anyone's wanting it to
happen, is that Peace is inexplicably,
irrationally slain (by our own Ascanius, in
fact). Once that happens, there's no need for
supernatural explanations: war has its own
"logic" and own progression:
a. Forces all converge (181).
b. Pious king (and reason) defeated by mob
(182).
c. Plowshares become swords.
d. Companies of the doomed (14 on the Latin
side) begin to march--last image the elegiac one
of the beautiful, doomed Camilla, even though
she isn't on "our" side.
3. Key point: Book VII an allegory of the
operations of war itself.
Book VIII: Aeneas' journey up the Tiber to
Pallantium (future site of the center of Rome).
1. Evander's simple kingdom an embodiment of the
great Roman virtues: dignitas, gravitas, pietas,
simplicitas (202 - top of 203, ll. 470 - 84).
2. Evander's leave-taking from his beloved son
(note his prayer, 209, ll. 745 - 60--and what
actually occurs, 280-281, ll. 198 - 208).
3. Vulcan's labor and Aeneas's shield as
allegory of his (and our) participation in
history (214,
ll. 951 - 55).
Book IX: Meanwhile . . .
1. The battle begins with the Trojans besieged
(contrast to Book XI, where Latium becomes the
besieged city). What do you think Virgil is
suggesting with these parallels and reversals?
2. Now (232, ll. 696 - 703) it is Calliope called
upon to remember and inspire--no longer Erato
(c.f. 164, l. 45).
3. Note Turnus' piety--and his reading of fate
(215 - 216; p. 219, ll. 174 - 81) balancing
Aeneas's.
4. Nisus and Euryalis, the boy hero-martyrs
(221 - 29). Remember the account of their footrace
in Book V (115 - 16)--and note the parallel here.
a. Great Roman mother (224).
b. Courageous to a fault.
c. Absolute loyalty and a tendency to hubris
which seems to be more mourned (see 229) than
judged, but suffering caused also not denied.
(See 229, l. 598 ff.)
d. Note, too, how mother's mourning gives way to
renewed conflict (230 - 31, ll. 628 - 67; 668 - 69). A pattern seen again and again throughout these
books: feminine feeling repeatedly
sacrificed to
masculine glory. Where is Virgil's own viewpoint
in all this?
(Not simple.)
5. Ascanius' first human "kill" (234 - 36). Note
the ambiguities: Numanus a new bridegroom;
shouts things "both worthy and unworthy to be
spoken" (l. 795).
6. Turnus's rampage within the Trojan gates and
his miraculous (but unwelcome) escape. Note the
detail of the poet's death (240, ll. 1033 - 37).
Book X: Battle from a Dual Perspective
1. Council in Heaven (243 - 47): how concluded?
(247). To what extent can fate by "thwarted"; to
what extent not?
2. Aeneas's return to Latium with eight
companies to Turnus's fourteen (252), but with
the sign (c.f. Ascanius and Lavinia) of a
flaming helmet (ll. 377 - 85).
3. Pallas as a hero in battle (255 - 57); but
paralleled to young Lausus (258, ll. 603 - 609).
What is the significance of the parallel?
4. Pallas's death and the beginning of Turnus's
end.
a. Prayer to Hercules and Hercules's grief
(258 - 259, ll. 637 - 57).
b. Turnus's taking of the trophy--and the epic
voice's comment (260, 690-92).
5. Typical battle scene (267): Acron having left
an "uncompleted wedding."
6. Summary of carnage (268, ll. 1038 - 46).
7. The death of Lausus and Mezentius (270 - 73).
a. Note elegiac tone (e.g. p. 269, ll. 1087 - 91).
b. What are we to make of this bad man's good
end?
Book XI: Truce, funerals, council, more war, and
the death of Camilla.
1. Aeneas's private grief for Pallas, juxtaposed
to his public duties and public stance (275 - 76).
Note parallel to similar tension in Book I (8,
ll. 276 - 91).
2. The return of Pallas's body (280 - 81); note
how Evander's grief parallels Mezentius's. Why
does Virgil give us these parallels?
3. The truce for burial of the dead (281 - 82,
esp. ll. 240 - 47; 266 - 85).
4. Council at Latinus's court (285 - 89). Notice Latinus's speech (285), Drancus's and Turnus's.
What do you make of the fact that Drancus is
right for the wrong reasons and that Turnus is
wrong but so clearly the better man? Note his
heroic conclusion (ll. 589 - 91).
5. Aeneas marching (289); Latium now the
besieged city, with Lavinia (290, l. 635) cast
as its guiltless Helen.
6. Camilla's victories and ultimate death
(292 - 304): the beginning of the end for Latium.
(Again notice tone--e.g. 292 - 94, Diana's grief.)
Book XII: Ultimate comedy (Virgil hopes)
completely encased in tragedy. (And Virgil's
hopes for an eternal cosmopolis to be dashed in
476 C.E.--with the sack of Rome by Germanic
invaders.)
This is Turnus's book, as IV is Dido's.
1. Turnus at last agrees to resolution by
hand-to-hand combat (305). Note the irony that
this could have occurred at the outset.
a. Note Latinus's sensible response (306, ll.
50 - 54).
b. And Turnus's love of Lavinia (307, ll.
95 - 96).
c. Their mutual reliance on fate (309, l. 150)
and worship of the same gods (l. 161).
d. Conditions of the duel set forth (311, ll.
246 - 63).
2. Jaturna stirs up war with the false bird sign
(313), breaking the truce (314); Aeneas's
response (315).
3. At last Aeneas joins the battle (321), and
poet reflects aloud on the seeming absurdity
(read ll. 673 -680).
4. Further absurdities of war: the death of a
pacifist and a poor man (322, ll. 696 - 703).
5. Aeneas decides to storm the city (323).
6. Suicide of Amata; city as tragic victim
(parallels both the Fall of Troy in Book II and
the welcome and fall of Dido). In all three
cases, Virgil represents history as rape.
7. Turnus's acceptance of his fate (326 - 27) and
self-offering (esp. ll. 855 - 63).
8. "Chance and courage mingle into one" (328).
9. Final view of the gods (330 - 32)--and the
resolution of the conflict (ll. 1085 - 1119).
Also, of course, the mythical explanation of a
people's identity.
10. The death of Turnus, second Aeneas (335 - 36).
What do we make of this ending?
a. No one is innocent.
b. No one is demonized.
c. All found Rome--Latin Rome.
Finally, Virgil expresses a teleological view of
history--but one with a large gap left for
chance, waste, absurdity, suffering, and loss.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
