Off the Coast of Carthage (original) (raw)
The Aeneas–Dido Episode as an Attack on Aeneas' Mission and Rome
Greece and Rome, 1980
Since antiquity the Aeneas—Dido episode has generally been recognized as the most powerful and memorable part of the Aeneid. During the past several decades there has been a considerable amount of argument as to whether it shows Aeneas' mission in a favourable or unfavourable light. Yet this problem has not been studied systematically. It is the purpose of this article to demonstrate systematically that Vergil deliberately protrays Aeneas' mission as brutal and destructive.
What is Aeneas' state of mind on leaving Troy? An essay on Aeneid II 1
It could so easily have been so different. In a version of the story of Aeneas given by a nearcontemporary of Virgil, while the Greeks were taking the lower town Aeneas fled to the citadel, which was fortified, where there were the Trojan holy things, treasure and the best of the army. They repulsed the Greeks and rescued more people from the town than were taken prisoner. Aeneas then sent the women and children on to Mount Ida, escorted by part of the army, while he with the rest of it fought off the Greeks. When the Greeks succeeded in breaking through to the citadel he marched away to Mount Ida in good order, taking with him his father, his wife and his children (plural) as well as the best of the treasure. They held this position and then successfully negotiated with the Greeks to surrender the land in return for safe passage. This is the account which the historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus thought most probable. 2 In other accounts, Aeneas left the city before its fall, warned by the death of Laocoön, or was spared by the Greeks. Virgil chose a totally different approach. At the end of Aeneid II, Aeneas is at the nadir of his fortunes. He has lost his role as warrior, seen his city and his home destroyed, seen his king murdered and lost his wife. He has found himself thrust into the position of leader of a group of Trojan refugees, a role for which his previous experience has not prepared him. All he has is his father, who represents wisdom and experience, and his young son, who is his hope for the future. The episodes of this part of the book show him resorting to his role as a warrior, finding it useless, indeed counterproductive, and then being motivated entirely by others, by portents of one kind or another. What I want to explore in this essay is why Virgil chose to represent Aeneas in this way and how he charts Aeneas' withdrawal and future course. 1 This paper, written in 2021, is a sequel to an earlier one on the first part of Aeneid II, titled 'Could the fall of Troy have been prevented?' However, to make this essay readable separately, I have repeated some material from the earlier one. 2 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, I. 46-7. Dionysius says this comes from the Troika of Hellanicus (fifth century B. C.), which survives only in fragments. 3 There are useful summaries of the earlier accounts by Robin Hard, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology, 473-6, and Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth, 646-0, and fuller discussions by Richard Heinze, Virgil's Epic Technique, 3-14, Austin (see Bibliography) and especially W. F. Jackson Knight, Vergil's Troy, 75-102. I have used these as pointers to such primary sources and analogues as survive. Full bibliographical details of all works consulted are at the end.
VARIVM ET MVTABILE SEMPER FEMINA: DIVINE WARNINGS AND HASTY DEPARTURES IN ODYSSEY 15 AND AENEID 4
Classical Quarterly, 2023
In his second appearance to Aeneas in Aeneid 4 Mercury drives the hero to flee Carthage with a false allegation that Dido is planning an attack, capping his warning with an infamous sententia about the mutability of female emotion. Building on a previous suggestion that Mercury's first speech to Aeneas is modelled on Athena's admonishment of Telemachus at the opening of Odyssey 15, this article proposes that Mercury's second speech as well is modelled on Athena's warning, in which the goddess uses misdirection about Penelope's intentions and a misogynistic gnōmē about the changeability of women's affections to spur Telemachus' departure from Sparta. After setting out how Virgil divides his imitation of Athena's speech verbally and thematically between Mercury's two speeches, the discussion turns to why both Athena and Mercury adopt these deceptive tactics. The speeches are shown to be culminations of the poets' similar approaches to creating doubt and foreboding around the queens' famed capacities for using δόλος. Common features in the ensuing hasty departures of Telemachus and Aeneas further confirm Virgil's use of Odyssey 15 in devising Aeneas' escape from Carthage.
Sate Sanguine Divum: A Brief Note on the Sibyl’s Hesiodic Rebuke of Aeneas
2016
As Virgil’s Aeneas ends his speech of appeal for pity to the Sibyl Deiphobe, he remarks that he is, after all, of the race of Jove the highest: 6.123 ... et mi genus ab Iove summo. The reference is principally to the maternal descent of Aeneas from Jupiter through Venus (and secondarily the more distant Jovian lineage from Anchises); the point of the closing detail is that Aeneas deserves no less a boon than Theseus and Hercules before him. In Homer, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione; after the goddess saves her son Aeneas from certain death, she is soon thereafter wounded by Diomedes – and she runs to her mother Dione for solace (Iliad 5.370 ff.). Not surprisingly, in his address to the Sibyl Aeneas emphasizes his divine lineage from Jupiter, a descent that was closest on his mother’s side of the family; despite the fact that a major emphasis of the Trojan hero’s speech is on his father Anchises and how he wishes to visit the shade of his mortal sire, the closing verses o...
The Journey of Aeneas through the Waste Land
mcluhansnewsciences.com
Marshall McLuhan, Eric Havelock, T. S. Eliot, Virgil, Hugh Kenner, Ezra Pound, Eliot, Epyllion, Havelock, Joyce, Katabasis, Original complexity, Time and times, Water
Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis, 2017
Virgil subtly connects the scene of Dido’s discussion with her sister Anna about the new Trojan arrival Aeneas, and the later first arrival of the Trojans in Latium. By a careful corre-spondence between the two passages, Virgil portends the dark amatory rationale behind the sub-sequent outbreak of war in Italy
Imaginary Identity: Aeneas' Search for a Home in Aeneid 3
2006
This thesis examines Aeneas changing sense of cultural identity in Book 3 of the Aeneid. Although he begins his journey as a Trojan intending to re-found Troy, Aeneas must give up his identity and his desire to recreate Troy so that he can eventually found Rome. This thesis will take a literary psychoanalytic approach to the topic of Aeneas' shifting sense of cultural identity, by applying the theories of Freud and Lacan to scenes in Book 3 where Aeneas is forced to confront the loss of Troy. In the first chapter, I will explain my critical methodology and lay the theoretical foundation for my analysis of Book 3. This chapter will introduce Freud's theory of repetition compulsion as it applies to Aeneas repeated attempts to re-found Troy in Book 3. Aeneas' Trojan identity is constructed by his desire to rebuild Troy, thereby rescuing the city and mastering the past. Since all his Trojan cities fail, Aeneas ceases from trying to re-establish Troy. By no longer trying to rescue Troy, Aeneas forfeits his Trojan identity, thus excluding him from other Trojans who still intend to recreate Troy. Aeneas exclusion makes him an Other as defined by Lacanian and post-colonial theory, which considers the "Other" to be defined by a point of reference that is opposite or outside of the "Self." This work is a departure from prior psychoanalytic readings of the Aeneid because it treats Aeneas as an excluded person who is the Other, rather than treating him as the Self. The second chapter of this thesis will examine both how in Book 3 Aeneas compulsively repeats the past as well as how he is made aware of his Otherness. Aeneas' initial attempts to re-found Troy or Troy-like settlements are his way of rescuing his fallen city. After the Penates order Aeneas to sail to Italy, Aeneas becomes disassociated from the recent Trojan past, thus breaking his cycle of repetition compulsion. His disassociation from the fall of Troy separates Aeneas from other Trojans, particularly Helenus and Andromache. Aeneas encounter with these two Trojans in Buthrotum, which is an exact replica of Troy, forces him to recognize his own Otherness as well as the futility of rebuilding Troy. The third chapter will examine how Aeneas reconstructs his identity in terms of Dardanus story as it is presented within the Aeneid. Vergil highlights corresponding details in the stories of Aeneas and Dardanus. By identifying himself with Dardanus, Aeneas creates a new identity and legitimacy for his arrival in Italy. This new identity is one that is based upon his kinship with a legendary ancestor, rather than immediate culture. Through his descent, Aeneas will link Greeks, Trojans, and Italians into a single, interrelated community that is perceived in the collective imagination of the entire group.