The Argonautica: “Dear, dear Medea, why are you in tears?”

1/ The Argonautica has a clear structure: the first half (Books 1 and 2) is about Jason and the Argonauts’ voyage to Colchis for the golden fleece; the second half (Books 3 and 4) is about their time in Colchis, and about the love story between Jason and Medea (whom we have known from Euripides’s play). 

“They all strode from the hall, and Jason shone 

brilliantly in his grace and beauty, gorgeous 

above the others, and the maiden fixed 

her eyes, sidelong, on him, appraising him

obliquely from behind her veil. Her heart 

was smouldering in its distress. Her soul, 

like a pursuing dream, went fluttering

about his footsteps as he walked…” 

(Book 3) 

(translated by Aaron Poochigian) 

One interesting thing is that I knew the Aeneid was inspired by, and modelled after, the Iliad and the Odyssey, but now I’m pretty sure that it’s also influenced by another Greek epic poem—the Argonautica. There are a few similarities but the main one is that in the Aeneid, Venus makes Dido fall in love with Aeneas so that she helps him and his men in Carthage; in the Argonautica, Hera and Athena help Jason get the golden fleece from King Aeëtes by making Medea fall in love with him and betray her own father. 

(The manipulation in the Aeneid is much crueller and more callous however: Venus knows her son’s fate, knows he has to travel to Italy, knows it’s not going to lead to anything—why does she make Dido fall in love with him? The gods are cruel). 

“Now night was covering the earth in darkness, 

and sailors from their ships were studying 

the stars of Ursa Major and Orion. 

Travelers and watchmen turned their thoughts toward sleep, 

and deep, deep slumber was relieving even 

those mothers who had lately lost their children. 

No dogs were barking in the streets; no voices 

echoed; silence held the blackening gloom. 

Sweet sleep, however, never eased Medea—

No, worry and her love for Jason roused her.

[…] Her heart was fitful, restless in the way 

a sunbeam, when reflected off the water 

swirling out of a pail or pitcher, dances 

upon the walls—yes, that was how her heart 

was quivering…” 

(ibid.) 

When I wrote about the Aeneid a while back, I wrote that unlike Homer, Virgil didn’t really enter his characters’ minds; he didn’t depict Aeneas’s thoughts, didn’t depict any sense of conflict between duty and Dido, didn’t tell us his thoughts on marrying Lavinia (how does she compare to Creusa, or Dido?); but Virgil did depict Dido’s state of mind, her love, her heartbreak. Similarly in the Argonautica, Jason is bland and other characters are seen from the outside, but Apollonius Rhodius enters Medea’s mind and depicts her struggle between love for Jason and loyalty to her father. 

2/ I still think the Argonautica is a kind of anti-heroic epic. Jason doesn’t have the strength and power of Akhilleus, or the wit and craftiness of Odysseus—he’s almost a random dude forced to lead an expedition.   

“His hands were tingling, quivering with vim. 

Think of a warhorse eager for a fight, 

the way it neighs and stamps the ground, the way

it rears its neck and pricks its ears, exulting—

that’s how the son of Aeson looked, exulting 

in the excitement of his newfound strength.” 

(ibid.) 

Our hero only becomes a hero when strengthened by Medea’s witchcraft. 

3/ Like Virgil in the Aeneid, Apollonius depicts his characters, on the way home, encountering the same challenges faced by Odysseus: Calypso, Circe, Charybdis and Scylla, the Sirens, Helioz’s cattle, and so on. There’s some variation though: 

“… And so, 

without delay, and this time to the heroes,

the Sirens hurled lilylike contraltos

out of their mouths. The heroes would already 

have run aground if Orpheus of Thrace, 

son of Oeagrus, hadn’t taken up 

his lyre, set his fingers to the strings, 

and strummed the rhythm of a lively march 

so that their ears were buzzing with a rival 

and upbeat song. And so the lyre’s vibrations

overpowered all those virgin voices.”

(Book 4) 

That’s different. That I like. 

But if Odysseus has to choose between Charybdis and Scylla and make the difficult choice of sacrificing some of his own men, Jason doesn’t—Hera interferes and Thetis guides the Argo through the sea monsters—they have it easier! The Argonautica doesn’t quite explain—or at least I’m not sure—why Hera helps Jason. Odysseus does get help from Athena, but he also finds the way home and regains his kingdom thanks to his own intelligence, cunning, and archery skills, as well as his ability to trust the right people. What does Jason do? He doesn’t seem to have any of that, and also doesn’t do much to get help from Medea, who’s already smitten with him. 

We see the same contrast when they meet Alcinoös and his wife Arete. Odysseus has to impress them, charm them, tell them his story. What does Jason do? Nothing. It’s Medea who begs Arete for help, who then speaks to her husband. 

Apollonius may deliberately create an anti-heroic epic, placing “an average guy” in the centre (why?), but what we have is a main character who is not compelling. Perhaps the author intends to spread out the interest so that not only Jason but the other Argonauts also have a voice, but I don’t think the characters are really alive and distinct. 

4/ The enjoyment of the Argonautica lies mostly in two things: the adventures, with all the strange customs and creatures the Argo encounters (I actually wonder if a few things in the poem inspired Gulliver’s Travels), and the imagery. 

I like this, for example: 

“Hour after hour they lacked a course and drifted 

idly the whole day through. As when a serpent 

wriggles, hissing, on its crooked way

to slip from under a ferocious noon 

and squints all round, its slits aglint with flickers

like little streaks of fire, until it finds 

a crack and glides into a burrow—so

the Argo wandered for a long time seeking

a navigable outlet from the lake.” 

(ibid.) 

The Argonautica may not be on the same level as the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid, but it’s a fun narrative.

The Argonautica: “As when a bull/ that has been goaded by a gadfly bolts/ out of the meadows…”

First, some context. Also known as Jason and the Argonauts, this is an epic poem written by Apollonius Rhodius (or Apollonius of Rhodes) in the 3rd century BC and modelled after Homer. This is the same Jason from the Medea myth. 

1/ Argonautica is about Jason and the Argonauts travelling to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece. The Iliad has a famous Catalogue of Ships; the Argonautica begins with a 10-page catalogue of the crew. 

I didn’t know the myth, didn’t know Orpheus and Heracles (Herakles) were part of the crew! 

2/ Let’s look at the writing: 

“As soon 

as radiant Dawn with her resplendent gaze 

looked on the steep cliff face of Pelion, 

and day broke fair, and breezes stirred the sea

that dashed, in turn, upon the headlands, Tiphys 

awoke and roused the dozing crew and bade them 

hasten aboard and man the oars.” 

(Book 1) 

(translated by Aaron Poochigian) 

This reminds me of the image of the Dawn with rosy fingers in Homer.  

I can see other influence from the Iliad and the Odyssey: 

“As a lonely maiden

clings desperately to a gray-haired nurse, 

her last remaining friend, and weeps because 

she lives a heavy-life without protectors, 

only a stepmother who so assails her

with fickle insults and relentless scorn

that she cannot stop weeping, and her heart 

is bound and gagged by all this misery, 

and she cannot sob out the countless sorrows

that throb within her, so Alcimede

was weeping, weeping, and she couldn’t stop.” 

(ibid.) 

This is similar to the long, elaborate similes we find in Homer—known as Homeric similes. Like this one in the Iliad, for instance: 

“Comparable to the throes 

a writhing woman suffers in hard labor 

sent by the goddesses of Travail, Hera’s 

daughters, Twisters, mistresses of pangs, 

the anguish throbbed in Agamemnon now.”

(Book 11, translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

The Iliad especially is filled with comparisons between the armies and animals—I also see similar ones in the Argonautica. 

“As bees swarm from a rocky hive and buzz 

about the handsome lilies and the dewy

meadow itself rejoices as they flit 

from bloom to bloom collecting sweet fruition, 

so did the women press around the men 

and weep as they embraced them one last time…” 

(Book 1) 

This is a lovely image: 

“Orpheus meanwhile 

plucked his lyre and sang a lovely hymn 

to honor Artemis, the Sailors’ Savior, 

the Potent Father’s Daughter, since she guarded 

the cliffs beside them and the coast of Iolcus. 

Fish both big and small came leaping out of 

the sea to revel in the vessel’s wake. 

In just the way innumerable sheep, 

after a satisfying meal at pasture, 

treat the footsteps of their rustic guide 

back to the paddock, and he leads by playing 

shepherd music on a bright-pitched pipe, 

the shoal of fish accompanied the ship.” 

(ibid.) 

I enjoy the writing, enjoy Poochigian’s translation. 

Like Homer, Apollonius compares men to animals. Like Homer, he piles simile upon simile. 

“Imagine how, upon a winder’s day, 

gray wolves will suddenly descend, unmarked 

by herdsmen and precision-sniffing hounds, 

to terrorize a flock of countless sheep—

how, as the wolves glare back and forth deciding 

which one to pound on first and carry off, 

the sheep stand clumped together, tripping over 

each other—that’s the way the heroes sent 

grim panic through the proud Bebrycians. 

And as when beekeepers or herdsmen smoke

a giant hive concealed in a rock, 

the bees at first are crowded and confused, 

abuzz with rage, and then the sooty coils 

of vapor suffocate them, and they all 

dart from the rock and scatter far and wide, 

so the Bebrycians die not hold firm 

for long, but fled in all directions, bearing

news of Amycus’ demise.” 

(Book 2) 

The quote in the headline comes from Book 1, describing Heracles as he hears that disaster has befallen Hylas. 

3/ As Jason and the Argonauts go on a voyage, they have adventures and face dangers and temptations—I see Homer’s influence on the depictions of the Argonauts’ encounters with people and other creatures—I see Homer’s influence on Apollonius’s imagery and comparisons. Jason however is no Odysseus. 

“Jason was so dumbstruck and at a loss 

he uttered nothing one way or the other—

no, he just sat there gnawing at his heart, 

feeling the burden of catastrophe.” 

(Book 1)

Not much of a leader, is he? 

The Argonautica is filled with exciting and dangerous adventures—they stop at Lemnos, where the women have killed all the men; they encounter six-armed giants; they lose a member of the gang to a horny water nymph; they meet an arrogant king who challenges all visitors to a boxing match; they meet Phineus, a seer condemned by Zeus to be tormented by harpies; and so on—many things happen, and yet Jason barely takes the lead, or stands out. It's Heracles, not Jason, who resists temptation and urges the men to leave the women of Lemnos. It’s Peleus, not Jason, who speaks with resolution when “terror blanched their cheeks” after Argus’s warning. As the leader and as the main character, Jason is even more bland than Aeneas. But perhaps that’s the point, perhaps Apollonius is deliberately creating an anti-heroic epic.

On translation and anachronism

The other day, I tweeted about Tom Payne’s translation of The Art of Love: “Picked up this copy of “The Art of Love” but I had to quit after several pages. The translator used phrases like “girlfriend”, “safe sex”, “one-night stand”, etc. This is Ovid!” 

The tweet went semi-viral, attracting some obnoxious people who seem to think that nobody’s allowed to say a single word about a translation from Latin unless they know the language—a phenomenon that never occurred when I discussed translations of Russian, French, Japanese novels over the years—this strangely seems to only happen with Latin and ancient Greek. 

However, I also got many good comments from both people who agreed and disagreed with my complaint and knew Latin. And it led me to think more about this subject: how traditional or modern should a translation be? When is it too modern? When does it appear anachronistic? Because these things seem to be arbitrary, and most of the time, just come down to personal preference. 

When we want to read 19th century Russian novels, for example, we can go for a translation into 19th century English, as the Maudes and Constance Garnett were alive around the same time, or we can go for a modern translation. With Don Quixote, we can read Thomas Shelton if we want 17th century English (it’s also the version that Shakespeare read). But we do not have contemporary English translations—in the sense of “from the same period”—of Homer or Sophocles or Ovid—so all translations are modern—various levels of modernity. I can see the argument that a Victorian translation of Ovid is not any less anachronistic than a new translation—it may even impose Victorian sensibilities on the poems. I however do not buy the argument that because Ovid was modern for his time, he should be translated into today’s English, into the latest slang and colloquial terms (of course Ovid was contemporary to his contemporaries—what kind of argument is that?). However open and modern Ovid appears to us, he’s still a writer from ancient Rome and his works inevitably reflect the lifestyles and customs and values and beliefs of ancient Rome; it’s jarring to come across modern concepts in Ovid. Even if a word accurately conveys the meaning (which some people say “one-night stand” and “safe sex” here do), words don’t only have meanings—words also have connotations and associations—words have baggage. 

It might be arbitrary, and personal, that I prefer “Isn’t she exquisite?” (Aylmer and Louise Maude, revised by Amy Mandelker) to “She is gorgeous, isn’t she?” (Anthony Briggs) in War and Peace, but is it entirely arbitrary and personal when I say that “my ex” sticks out like a sore thumb in The Brothers Karamazov (Ignat Avsey)? Does it not take you out of the story when you read Don Quixote and come across “girlfriend”, “boyfriend”, or “a certain delicious je ne sais quoi” (Tom Lathrop)? Does it not make you stumble when you see “one-night stand” in a Roman poem? The entire translation may be in modern English, but some phrases stick out. Some phrases draw attention to themselves. 

Where we draw the line is the art of translation. Slang, I think, appears more obviously, distractingly anachronistic. 

Another thing to consider as well is that Homeric Greek or Shakespearean English for example wasn’t the way normal people talked. It’s one thing to modernise the language; why do some translators go for something colloquial and mundane when the original is highly literary? Is it not a fair point when readers—whether or not they know the original language—complain that Emily Wilson opts for phrases such as “a complicated man”, “tote bag”, “pep talk”, “playtime is over”, etc. in her translation of the Odyssey? Defenders of Emily Wilson have said “polytropos” means “complicated”, but “poly” means “many” and “tropos” means “turn”—surely Robert Fagles’s “the man of twists and turns” or Robert Fitzgerald’s “that man skilled in many ways of contending” is more interesting and evocative than Emily Wilson’s commonplace “a complicated man”? Those of us who do not know the original language and have to rely on translations may not be able to judge accuracy, but we can comment on other aspects of a translation: how it sounds in the target language, whether it’s good prose/ poetry, whether some choices appear anachronistic, whether we want to read it or switch to a different translation… And yet some people want to shut down the conversation, saying we’re not qualified to say anything if we don’t know the original. 

Let’s have a discussion.  

My 10 favourite literary works

A list of the 10 literary works I think about, or revisit, most often: 

• The Iliad 
• The Odyssey 
• King Lear 
• Othello 
• Shakespeare’s Sonnets 
• Don Quixote 
• War and Peace
• Anna Karenina 
• Moby-Dick 
• Mansfield Park

This looks quite basic, does it? But the central figures of my personal canon do happen to be Homer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, so I can’t pretend they’re not, just to avoid being called pretentious. 

I refuse to choose between the Iliad and the Odyssey, the same way I refuse to choose between War and Peace and Anna Karenina. 

2 epic poems, 2 plays, 1 sonnet sequence, 5 novels (4 of which are over 700 pages). 2 in ancient Greek, 5 in the English language (4 English and 1 American), 1 in Spanish, 2 in Russian. 2 from the 8th century BC, 4 from the 17th century, 4 from the 19th century. All Western. 9 written by men.

If you have been reading my blog and/or my tweets, I’m sure I’ve been annoying enough about these works for any choices to be a surprise. Maybe the Sonnets, as I don’t blog about them, but I do revisit them often—there’s a Shakespeare sonnet for every mood (I went out yesterday and on the way home thought of Sonnet 34—guess what happened). The only surprises, I guess, are the exclusions of Greek tragedies (couldn’t pick one) and Chekhov’s stories (what do you do with short stories on such a list?)—a longer list of my personal canon would include Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, The Tale of Genji, all of Shakespeare, Molière, the (dirty) poems of Hồ Xuân Hương, Tom Jones, Hong lou meng (better known as Dream of the Red Chamber or Story of the Stone), Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens, John Keats, Madame Bovary, The Brothers Karamazov, the plays of Henrik Ibsen (especially The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm), the short stories of Akutagawa, the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, The Metamorphosis (Kafka), Invisible Man, Lolita, Pnin, the poems of Hàn Mặc Tử (especially Đau thương), etc. 

The only thing that bothers me, which is perhaps irrational, is that my literary tastes are strongly Western. I am Vietnamese, I can read well two languages (my Norwegian isn’t on the same level), I spent years promoting East Asian classics, but in the end, my favourite 18th century novel is still Tom Jones, not Hong lou meng; my favourite female writer is still Jane Austen, not Murasaki Shikibu; the central figures of my personal canon are still Homer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, not Nguyễn Du… Japanese cinema may be the one I know and love the best after English-language cinema, but in literature, my tastes are markedly Western. 

Does this mean I have lost my roots? Mất gốc? (The Vietnamese phrase carries much harsher overtones). 

I suppose the main thing is that I’m most fascinated by human nature and the human mind, and most interested in characters, which is probably also why I much prefer the Greeks to the Romans (you probably have noticed, with horror, the absence of Virgil and Ovid on my personal canon). Generally, Japanese writers—at least the ones I have read—don’t seem to explore the complexities and contradictions and irrationalities of people as we see in Western literature. Their characters are more opaque, even impressionistic; on the one hand, Japanese novels convey that sense of human mystery, the sense that we can never truly know another human being, which I like; but on the other hand, the characters also feel less alive, and don’t leave deep impressions on my mind like Akhilleus, Cleopatra, or Andrei Bolkonsky. The characters in Hong lou meng in comparison are alive, especially Shi Xiangyun (Sử Tương Vân) and Weng Xifeng (Vương Hy Phượng), but they don’t have the depth and complexity of Elektra, Hamlet, or Anna Karenina, and frankly I think Cao Xueqin takes a lot more pages to give life to a character (which Shakespeare can do in five words: “I was adored once too”). 

I’m also not much of a poetry person, despite liking the little I have read of Donne, Keats, Bùi Giáng, etc. I have The Oxford Book of English Verse, and lately have been slowly getting through The Oxford Book of Sonnets, trying to be less of a philistine, but unfortunately still have a strong taste for narratives and characters. My favourite poet (restricting to only those I can read in the original) is therefore a dramatic poet (and before you ask, I read Shakespeare’s sonnets as dramatic monologues, not autobiographical pieces). 

(If I were pretentious, as some people might call me, I would pretend to love poetry, but I acknowledge my failing).  

My tastes are also predominantly classic. When I first got into literature properly, I was mostly reading the 20th century, then slowly went further back, and further back. Over the years, those 20th century novels for some reason haven’t had a lasting impression, haven’t been part of my mental furniture—I barely remember much of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Toni Morrison. But it’s not just because I read them in my late teens and early 20s, not just because I read them before finding my favourite writers—since my discovery of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and others, I have read and enjoyed modern books only for them to have caused nothing but a few ripples in my mind—I haven’t found myself thinking about Muriel Spark, R. K. Narayan, or Soseki, for example. Even Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, which I read only last September and considered highly, has left no imprints. Shouldn’t they resonate more, being more recent? But they don’t, and I don’t know why. My favourite 20th century writer right now is possibly Primo Levi, but that’s non-fiction. 

It’s curious which works of literature speak to us and haunt our minds. 

Metamorphoses: “nothing retains its form”

Detail from the title page of Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished by G.S. London, 1626.

1/ It’s a good idea to read Ovid after having read the Greeks: Ovid sometimes skips over details, expecting one to know Greek/ Roman mythology and literature; he sometimes fills in the gaps. For example, Ovid’s story of the debate between Ajax and Odysseus about who deserves to get the arms of Achilles is interesting because I’m acquainted with Odysseus from Homer and have also read Aias (or Ajax) and Philoctetes by Sophocles—neither Homer nor Sophocles depicts that scene (in the surviving texts)—so in a sense, Ovid fills in that gap. He also gives us the perspective of one of Odysseus’s companions whom Circe turns into pigs, which we don’t get from Homer. 

Moreover, as he creates Metamorphoses after the Aeneid, he writes about both the Akhaians and the Trojans, moving from Achilles, Ajax, and Odysseus to Hecuba and Aeneas, though he glosses over the story of Dido (the best part of Virgil’s poem). Funnily enough, Polyphemus, the cyclops that Odysseus tricks and blinds (which leads to his 10 years of suffering), has his own story here: an unrequited love for a nymph called Galatea. 

2/ In Metamorphoses, there are a couple of characters who would now be considered trans. If we leave aside Tiresias, the seer who transforms from a man into a woman for several years then back into a man, we have two female characters who transform into men: Iphis, raised as a boy because of her father’s sexism, falls in love with a woman, wishes to become a man, and has her wish granted; Caenis gets raped, and asks to be transformed into a man, known as Caeneus. This might offend some of you, but one thing I find interesting is that these two characters match two types of trans men (women identifying as men) that I often come across (online and in real life): tomboy lesbians who think they should be men because they’re attracted to women and think they don’t fit into the idea of femininity; and woman who reject womanhood and identify as trans (or non-binary) after experiencing sexual abuse. 

That said, I shouldn’t let contemporary politics ruin Metamorphoses. This is mythology, and we have some cool scenes of Caeneus fighting rapey centaurs.

3/ In most cases, Ovid “reduces” the characters we have encountered in the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid—naturally, because of length—but he expands on the character of Circe: jilted by Glaucus because he loves Scylla, she turns Scylla into a sea monster; rejected by Picus because he loves Anens, she transforms him into a bird. Circe in the Odyssey is to be pitied. Here she is more powerful. Here she is vengeful and malicious. 

But then she’s not that different from the Greek/ Roman gods, is she? Metamorphoses is mainly about the lust of men and the jealousy of women. 

I like this image of Anens: 

“Tiber was last to see her; tired and worn, 

With grief and journeying; she laid her head 

By his long riverside, and there, in tears, 

Breathed weak faint words in cadences of woe, 

As dying swans may sing their funeral hymns; 

Until at last, her fragile frame dissolved

In misery, she wasted all away

And slowly vanished into empty air.” 

(Book 14) 

(translated by A. D. Melville) 

4/ In Metamorphoses, the transformations are generally of the gods putting on disguises, or human beings getting turned into things, bodies of water, trees, animals, the other sex, or gods. The oddest transformation is when the Trojan ships are transformed into sea nymphs. 

“… And one wind’s strength 

The fostering Mother called in aid to break 

The hempen hawsers of the Trojan fleet, 

And on their beam ends drove the ships to sea

And sank them. Timbers softened and the wood 

Was changed to flesh; the curved prows turned to heads,

The oars to toes and swimming legs; the sides 

Remained as sides; the heel that underlay 

The centre of the ship became a spine. 

The rigging soft sleek hair, the yards were arms, 

The colour sea-blue still; and in the waves

They used to fear they play their girlish games, 

Nymphs of the sea, born on the granite hills, 

Now natives of the soft sea-deeps, untouched 

By memories of their birthplace…” 

(ibid.)

This is weird. This is unlike any other metamorphosis in the poem. 

5/ In Book 15 (the final book), Ovid has a section called “The Doctrines of Pythagoras”, which is perhaps the finest part of the poem. 

“… In all creation 

Nothing endures, all is in endless flux, 

Each wandering shape a pilgrim passing by. 

And time itself glides on in ceaseless flow, 

A rolling stream—and streams can never stay, 

Nor lightfoot hours. As wave is driven by wave 

And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead, 

So time flies on and follows, flies and follows, 

Always, for ever new. What was before

Is left behind, what never was is now: 

And every passing moment is renewed.” 

You can see why Ovid is fascinated by transformations. You can see why Metamorphoses speaks to Shakespeare. 14 books are about mythology and legend, and the final book is about life, about change as the nature of life: seasons come and go, people age and die, nations rise and fall, animals transform their shapes, and out of corpses, new forms of life are born. 

6/ Now that I’ve finished reading Metamorphoses, I’m going to say I still prefer the Greeks to the Romans, though perhaps in the case of Ovid (and Virgil), much is lost in translation. As I wrote before, because Ovid moves from one myth to another, there’s no sense of forward movement and it’s sometimes frustrating. But I did love some parts of the book, it’s a brilliant collection of stories, and it’s good to read Ovid, to know one of the important ancient writers, and to see his influence on Shakespeare—not only obvious references as one finds in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Twelfth Night, but Shakespeare’s fascination with metamorphosis in general—every single Shakespeare play has some sort of disguise, acting, or transformation. 

I’m going to have to read How the Classics Made Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate. 

Metamorphoses: “He dropped like an ox/ Slaughtered in sacrifice”

1/ I don’t know if classical literature is more violent—graphic—than modern literature, but Metamorphoses is full of violent images. 

“… And, in his madness hunting her, tracked down

His wife and snatched Learchus from her arms, 

His little laughing son with hands outstretched, 

And wildly smashed the baby’s head against 

A granite block…” 

(Book 4)

(translated by A. D. Melville) 

Jeez. That’s from the myth of Athamas and Ino.

The myth of Perseus, who kills a monster and rescues Andromeda from the rocks and has to fight a bunch of men who want Andromeda and the kingdom, is reminiscent of the killings in the Iliad or the Odyssey. Full of vivid, horrible details. 

“Even so the weapon found a mark and struck 

Rhoetus full on the forehead. Down he fell 

And, as the iron was dragged out of his skull, 

His heels drummed on the ground and his red blood

Spattered the banquet board…” 

(Book 5) 

More graphic: 

“… this time, as he bent

The spring crescent, Perseus seized a brand

That smoked upon the altar there, and struck 

The lad and smashed his face to shattered bones.” 

(ibid.) 

The quote in the headline comes from the same scene. 

However, Ovid is not Seneca. Ovid may depict extreme violence, like Homer and Sophocles do, but Seneca seems to have a perverse delight in gore. When Ovid tells the myth of Niobe, who mocks the gods and has to see all her 7 sons and 7 daughters killed, he describes the killings quickly—some of the sons die from a single arrow, the deaths of the sisters are more or less grouped together—one can guess that Seneca would expand and add more horrific details. For instance, when Seneca retells the myth of Oedipus (creating a play much inferior to Sophocles’s version), he adds a scene of a ritual sacrifice, with gory visions:  

“MANTO Father, what is this?

Instead of gently quivering as they should,

They make my whole hand shake; there is fresh blood

Proceeding from the veins. The heart is shrunken,

Withered, and hardly to be seen; the veins

Are livid; part of the lungs is missing,

The liver putrid, oozing with black gall.

And here – always an omen boding ill

For monarchy – two heads of swollen flesh

In equal masses rise, each mass cut off

And covered with a fine transparent membrane,

As if refusing to conceal its secret.

On the ill-omened side the flesh is thick

And firm, with seven veins, whose backward course

Is stopped by an obstruction in their way.

The natural order of the parts is changed,

The organs all awry and out of place.

On the right side there is no breathing lung

Alive with blood, no heart upon the left;

I find no folds of fat gently enclosing

The inner organs; womb and genitals

Are twisted and deformed. And what is this –

This hard protuberance in the belly? Monstrous!

A foetus in a virgin heifer’s womb,

And out of place – a swelling in the body

Where none should be. It moves its limbs and whimpers

Twitching convulsively its feeble frame.

The flesh is blackened with the livid gore.…

And now the grossly mutilated beasts

Are trying to move; a gaping trunk rears up

As if to attack the servers with its horns.…

The entrails seem to run out of my hands.

That sound you hear is not the bellowing

Of cattle, not the cry of frightened beasts;

It is the fire that roars upon the altars,

The hearth itself that quakes.” 

(translated by E. F. Watling) 

I’m giving you the whole speech so you can see how gross it is, but the sacrifice scene is longer. 

The main difference between Ovid and Seneca is vision: despite the violence, despite the rapes, despite the brutal acts, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses I find a lightness of touch and a kind of transcendence that I don’t see in Seneca’s plays. 

2/ However, Ovid’s version of the myth of Bacchus and Pentheus, because much shorter, is not as nightmarish and disturbing as The Bacchae by Euripides. I can’t claim to understand The Bacchae, having read it once, but it is a discomforting, haunting play and I can see why it’s said to be Euripides’s greatest play. 

3/ Now that I’m reading Ovid, I’m starting to think there’s something to the theory—is it Jonathan Bate’s?—that Shakespeare swaps the locations in The Winter’s Tale, erroneously giving Bohemia a coast, in order to reinforce the association of Perdita with Proserpina, who is taken by force from Sicily. 

“… Here Proserpine  

Was playing in a glade and picking flowers, 

Pansies and lilies, with a child’s delight, 

Filling her basket and her lap to gather

More than the other girls, when, in a trice, 

Dis saw her, loved her, carried her away…” 

(Book 5)

The scene of Perdita with the flowers evokes the image of Prosperina—she even directly names her. And her happy scene, as in Ovid, is interrupted by the violence of a man. 

The rape of Proserpina, painting by Nicolas Mignard. 

Now look at these lines in Metamorphoses: 

“Behold, the daughter I have sought so long 

Is found…” 

(ibid.) 

Do they not make you think of The Winter’s Tale? 

4/ Metamorphoses is a vast, colourful poem, but there are a few recurring themes: the lust of the male gods (especially Jove, the Roman equivalent of Zeus), the jealousy of Juno (Hera), the hubris of human beings, and the capriciousness of the gods. 

The myth of Arachne is one of my favourites in Ovid. 

PS: I’m currently in the US, on a work trip. 

Metamorphoses: “Of bodies changed to other forms I tell”

 1/ First, I’m going to note that I picked up and looked at 6 different translations of Metamorphoses: Mary M. Innes translates it into prose, which I do not want; the versions by David Raeburn and Stanley Lombardo are clear but prosaic and tedious; Allen Mandelbaum takes a more poetic approach, his translation sounds good but is apparently quite loose; the Arthur Golding translation sounds very good and would be something I’d like to read, as it apparently inspired my boy Shakespeare, but it’s not very faithful and too twisty for the first read of the poem; so I decided on A. D. Melville, who seemed to strike a better balance between beauty and fidelity. 

One thing I’ve noticed doing some research on translations is that there doesn’t seem to be any strong consensus on good translations of Ovid. When people talk about Homer, Robert Fagles has a huge following; Robert Fitzgerald, the one I read, is also popular, especially for the Odyssey; Richmond Lattimore is often recommended for the Iliad; Peter Green from recent years is often recommended by classicists for accuracy; Emily Wilson is controversial, etc. I don’t see that kind of consensus about Metamorphoses—who is popular? As far as I know, there’s not even much noise about Stephanie McCarter even though she, like Emily Wilson, adds the female/ feminist perspective and criticises the bias of male translators. 

I’d say though that in a standard London bookshop, I almost always spot multiple translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey (usually Fagles, Emily Wilson, Green, E. V. Rieu, sometimes Fitzgerald, Lattimore) but Metamorphoses is usually only available in the Raeburn translation, which I do not at all like—I had to go to the Waterstones at Torrington Place to consider multiple options. 

2/ The thing about reading classics, especially something as influential as Metamorphoses, is that you get to encounter old friends. Book 1 for example has the story of Io, desired by Jove (Jupiter) and turned into a cow—I have met her in the play Prometheus Bound.

Ovid has a lightness of touch that makes him very different from Virgil, but sometimes there’s a very moving passage, such as this one about Io: 

“She browsed on leaves of trees and bitter weeds, 

And for her bed, poor thing, lay on the ground, 

Not always grassy, and drank the muddy streams;

And when, to plead with Argus, she would try 

To stretch her arms, she had no arms to stretch. 

Would she complain, a moo came from her throat, 

A startling sound—her own voice frightened her. 

She reached her father’s river and the banks 

Where often she had played and, in the water, 

Mirrored she saw her muzzle and her horns, 

And fled in terror from the self she saw.” 

(Book 1) 

(translated by A. D. Melville) 

Book 3 for example has many figures I know: Semele, Bacchus, Tiresias, Pentheus from Homer and the Athenian plays; Cadmus, Narcissus, and Echo from popular culture. 

I picked up Metamorphoses expecting much of it to be about beautiful women being chased by gods and turned into trees or animals, but it’s a much vaster, richer work, containing over 250 myths, moving seamlessly from one story to another. Each myth has some kind of transformation (the myth of Callisto in Book 2 even has three different transformations). It’s not hard to see why so many writers and artists love Metamorphoses—in the case of Shakespeare, it clearly appeals to the Shakespeare of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. I can’t help wondering though, if Shakespeare’s fascination with transformation—each play has some kind of disguise or acting or metamorphosis—is because of his experience as an actor, or due to inspiration from Metamorphoses. 

3/ At some point I’m going to read Jonathan Bate’s How the Classics Made Shakespeare, but right now I can see traces of Metamorphoses in Twelfth Night. 

“ORSINO […] How dost thou like this tune?

VIOLA It gives a very echo to the seat

Where love is throned.” 

(Act 2 scene 4) 

That is clearly a reference to Echo, who has unrequited love for Narcissus; and the figure of Narcissus can be seen in Orsino (and Olivia). 

“VIOLA Make me a willow cabin at your gate

And call upon my soul within the house,

Write loyal cantons of contemnèd love

And sing them loud even in the dead of night,

Hallow your name to the reverberate hills

And make the babbling gossip of the air

Cry out “Olivia!” O, you should not rest

Between the elements of air and earth

But you should pity me.” 

(Act 1 scene 5, Twelfth Night) 

This passage—one of the most beautiful passages in all of Shakespeare—seems to echo Ovid’s story of Echo. 

There are also multiple metamorphoses in Twelfth Night: Viola disguises herself as a man and names herself Cesario; Malvolio transforms himself, when he believes he’s the object of Olivia’s affection; Feste wears various disguises when he joins in the prank on Malvolio; Viola’s twin Sebastian appears and gets mistaken as Cesario, and in a sense becomes Cesario at the wedding. 

4/ I don’t need to mention that the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe becomes the play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and inspires Romeo and Juliet, which is well-known, but now that I’ve read it, I wonder if the death of Antony in Antony and Cleopatra also traces back to Ovid’s poem. 

“At Thisbe’s name he raised his dying eyes

And looked at her, and closed his eyes again.” 

(Book 4) 

Shakespeare expands the scene, but like Pyramus, Antony also kills himself because he thinks Cleopatra is dead, and realises before dying that she is still alive.

Painting of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus by Scarsellino. 

5/ One of my favourite stories in Metamorphoses is the myth of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis. Did you know that the word “hermaphrodite” came from Hermes + Aphrodite? I didn’t. I like the juxtaposition of the myth of the Sun and Leucothoe, and the myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, and it’s such a strange, fascinating myth. If I’m not mistaken, it may have been Ovid’s invention, different from other myths of Hermaphroditus.

On Odissea (1968), an 8-part adaptation of the Odyssey

 

Over Christmas, my family and I watched Odissea, an Italian-language adaptation of the Odyssey in 8 episodes—not a Christmas series, I know—but what can be more Christmassy than returning home and reuniting with your family? 

According to Wikipedia, this is the most faithful version. It’s also my favourite adaptation so far, unlikely to get surpassed. Now some of you might think, is it going to be the most epic, spectacular version you’ve seen of Homer’s poem? The answer is no. But it is made by people who respect the text, and have a deep understanding of it. 

If we have to narrow down to the three main things that the Odyssey is about, I would say: the intelligence of Odysseus and his development as a character, the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope, and the education of Telemakhos. Odissea gets all three right. Most adaptations, because of time, tend to ignore the last one, but it is important in the Odyssey—why does Athena make Telemakhos travel if he learns no news of Odysseus and the trip doesn’t advance the plot?—it’s for his education, for him to learn about the father he has never known, and see how things work in a happy kingdom not torn apart by greedy suitors and disloyal servants. He also learns to be independent, away from his mother, away from home. Renaud Verley conveys well the helpless anger of Telemakhos at the beginning, and the confidence towards the end as Telemakhos fights the suitors next to his father. 

The development of Odysseus is also good, largely thanks to the performance of Bekim Fehmiu. At the beginning, he doesn’t express much on his face, making me afraid that he looks the part but isn’t quite right for the role, but this is a cautious Odysseus, a weary Odysseus, wanting nothing but to go home after 10 years of wandering and suffering. We see a different Odysseus in the flashbacks—more animated—especially in the episode of the Cyclops: a cunning Odysseus, a proud and impetuous Odysseus, causing his own downfall and the loss of his men. We see that cunning look again when he’s back in Ithake, as he watches his household and observes the enemies and calculates his moves. 

I also like Irene Papas (a Greek actress) as Penelope. Odissea makes more explicit Penelope’s recognition of Odysseus under disguise, and her test of him at the end—I slightly prefer the subtlety of Homer—but Irene Papas is so good in these scenes that it doesn’t matter. I especially like her anger as she comes to meet Odysseus after the killing of the suitors—this is something I have not considered—she has waited for 20 years, she has stayed true, but Odysseus saw her with distrust and hid from her his identity?

Among the supporting characters, I think the best cast are Constantin Nepo as Antinous and Karl-Otto Alberty as Eurymakhos. My only complaint, if anything, is that I don’t particularly like Scilla Gabel as Helen, and I wish they had done something to make Kalypso (Kyra Bester) look a bit “less human”, being a nymph, but this is trivial.  

I suspect that Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the Odyssey is going to be similar to Bondarchuk’s adaption of War and Peace—spectacular and technically impressive, but hollow—and even worse, as it’s historically inaccurate. Odissea is similar to the 1972 War and Peace or the 1977 Anna Karenina—not the best production values perhaps, but an excellent adaptation. 

Odissea is available on Youtube (if you don’t mind the subtitles being imperfect). 

On Ulysses (1954), an Italian adaptation of the Odyssey

Filmmakers all have to make changes when adapting a literary work, which sometimes works very well, but in the case of Ulysses (1954), pretty much every single change makes the narrative worse. 

One big change is that they reduce the role of the gods. But instead of pushing it to the extreme, as in The Return (2024), removing the gods altogether and stripping the Odyssey of all mythology, Ulysses makes a half-arsed attempt: Circe (Kirke) is still there, combined with Calypso; Ulysses (Odysseus) still speaks to the dead; we still see the Cyclops; but we don’t see Athena and we don’t see Polyphemus cursing Ulysses and his men and calling for their destruction. The very thing that causes the 10 years of wandering and all the lives lost is cut; the curse instead comes from Cassandra during the war, when Ulysses destroys a statue of Poseidon. 

Another change is that Ulysses in the film is no longer a storyteller: the flashbacks are him recalling past events—regaining his memory—rather than telling King Alcinous about his adventures; and we don’t see him making up stories upon his return to Ithaca (Ithake). 

But the biggest and worst change is the way they handle the last few chapters of Homer’s poem: even if you don’t agree with my interpretation that Penelope long suspects the identity of the beggar, does a kind of double talk with him so as to keep the secret from her spying servants, and comes up with the test of the bow as a convenient way of placing a weapon in his hands, you would probably still find it disappointing that in the film, the idea of the bow comes from Ulysses—in his disguise as a beggar—rather than Penelope herself. Why is Homer’s Odysseus so desperate to return home, to reunite with Penelope? Why does he reject the power of Kirke and the promise of immortality from Kalypso and the youth of Nausicaa? Because Odysseus and Penelope are a perfect match, because they’re both intelligent and full of tricks—their like-mindedness is an important point in the Odyssey—the Penelope in the film has the loyalty and constancy of Homer’s character, but not her cleverness (except the weaving trick). The film cannot explain why he longs for her, especially when they have Penelope and Circe played by the same actress (Silvana Mangano).

Another important point is that in the Odyssey, Odysseus and Penelope test each other—Odysseus has to test her because of the warning from Agamemnon, but she also has to test him—all that is removed from the film. We don’t even see Ulysses quietly go around and observe who remains loyal and who has betrayed him in his household. 

The film seems to focus on the fun scenes, and in a way, it is fun. Kirk Douglas is a more energetic and charming Odysseus/ Ulysses than Ralph Fiennes—not because Ralph Fiennes lacks charm, but because he plays Odysseus as a weary man, haunted by war—the bow scene is especially fun. Another positive thing I can say is that, compared to the grey and drab look of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, the costumes here are more interesting, more colourful and imaginative.  

Oh well. I don’t expect Nolan’s film to be any better. 

Anyway. 

The Aeneid: “I sail for Italy not of my own free will”

 Aeneas Defeating Turnus by Luca Giordano.

1/ At some point in the poem, after a lot of fighting, Aeneas says to the people there:  

“What unmerited misfortune, Latins, 

Could have embroiled you in so sad a war 

That now you turn your backs on us, your friends? 

[…] 

Never should I have come here had not Fate 

Allotted me this land for settlement, 

Nor do I war upon your people…” 

(Book 11) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald)

There is a much stronger sense of humans being bound by fate in the Aeneid than in Homer’s epics: in the Odyssey, Odysseus is cursed to wander for years and to finally return home without his men, and he gets help from Athena and Penelope, but he also uses his own strength and intelligence to return home and reclaim his place; in the Iliad, Akhilleus is told to have two possible destinies, and seals his fate the moment he returns to battle after Patroklos’s death; the entire Aeneid is about Aeneas being bound by fate and following the path that has been drawn for him. 

The two characters who fight against fate and therefore become more interesting are Turnus (who loves Lavinia) and Juno (the Romans’ Hera). 

The quote from the headline comes from Book 4—Aeneas says that to Dido. 

2/ There are many great passages through the poem. This one, for instance: 

“The two assailants were like fires begun

On two sides of a dry wood, making laurel 

Thickets crackle, or like snow-fed streams

That foam and roar seaward down mountain-sides

And leave, each one, a watercourse laid waste.

With no less devastating power these two, 

Aeneas and Turnus, cut their way through battle.”

(Book 12) 

I like that. At some point, I would have to check out other translations, but I’m fond of Robert Fitzgerald. 

3/ I’ve now finished reading the Aeneid, after over 2 weeks.

I like my friend Himadri’s idea about the parallels between Aeneas and Hamlet: both men have to ignore their own feelings and inclinations, to fulfil some obligations—Aeneas is to lead his people to Italy and set up a new kingdom and Hamlet is to avenge the death of his father. 

The problem with the Aeneid, however, is that Virgil doesn’t really depict the struggle. I would even say that the characters in the Aeneid don’t have much of an inner life, except Dido and maybe Turnus. I’m not judging Virgil against Shakespeare—I’m comparing him to Homer. In the Iliad, we can see Akhillleus’s wrath; we can see him develop and change; we see him refuse to fight but get drawn back into it after death of his close friend, and become a ruthless killing machine, rejecting his own humanity; but in the end, he regains his humanity as he meets Priam and thinks of his own father. In the Odyssey, Odysseus might not change as much, but he’s multifaceted and self-contradictory; he’s intelligent, resourceful, a great actor and storyteller, but also proud, dishonest, sometimes reckless and ruthless. In the Iliad, we can see Akhilleus grapple with his own mortality. In the Odyssey, we can see Odysseus calculate the steps to get home safely and watch everybody and regain his kingdom. Compared to them, I don’t think Aeneas has much of an inner life, by which I mean that we see him act but don’t see him think. 

When Virgil writes about the love story between Aeneas and Dido, he focuses almost entirely on Dido, not showing Aeneas’s struggle between his own feelings and his duty. Book 6 is the only time we come a bit closer to Aeneas, as he travels to the Underworld and comes across the ghost of Dido, and only now realises that she has died. Later on, Virgil doesn’t depict his thoughts either—I don’t even know how Aeneas feels about marrying Lavinia. How does she compare to Dido? Or his dead wife Creusa? We don’t know. 

We don’t see Lavinia either—we are told in some brief moments that she’s unhappy about having (inadvertently) caused so much suffering—but how does she feel about Turnus? Or Aeneas? No idea. 

Considering his reputation, I don’t doubt that Virgil’s a great poet—I just can’t tell as I read the Aeneid in translation—I can only judge it as a narrative. What I see is that the characters don’t have much of an inner life, generally speaking, and Aeneas is a rather bland character—he doesn’t have much of a personality. And if we look at the two characters who try to fight against fate, Juno is almost entirely defined by her anger, her hatred of the Trojans; Turnus is more interesting, he may be largely defined by anger and pride, but we do see his disappointment, frustration, doubt, and so on. 

I would say that the most vividly drawn character in the Aeneid is Dido—the story of her and Aeneas is one of the saddest, most haunting stories in all of literature. There are quite a few moments throughout the Aeneid, but the best parts, in my opinion, are Book 4 (the story of Aeneas and Dido) and Book 6 (the Underworld), followed by Book 2 (the sack of Troy) and Book 9 (Nisus and Euryalus). 

The Aeneid: “their bows went under like a school of dolphins”

Nisus and Euryalus by Jean-Baptiste Roman.

1/ As I have heard from other people, the Aeneid has two halves: the first half is modelled after the Odyssey, as Aeneas flees from Troy and wanders for seven years searching for a new home (breaking a woman’s heart on the way); the second half is modelled after the Iliad, as Aeneas follows orders from the gods and sets up a new kingdom in Italy and has wars with local people.

As Aeneas settles in Latium, King Latinus happily accepts him because of oracles that he should marry his daughter Lavinia to a stranger/ foreigner. But Juno (the Roman equivalent of Hera) is not happy—that Troy has been destroyed is not enough, that the Trojans have wandered for seven years without a home is not enough—she hates them—she causes discord between Latinus and his wife Amata, then wakes up resentment and anger in Turnus, the main suitor of Lavinia. 

“With this she hurled a torch and planted it 

Below the man’s chest, smoking with hellish light. 

Enormous terror woke him, a cold sweat 

Broke out all over him and soaked his body 

Then driven wild, shouting for arms, for arms 

He ransacked house and chamber. Lust of steel 

Raged in him, brute insanity of war, 

And wrath above all, as when fiery sticks 

Are piled with a loud crackling by the side 

Of a caldron boiling, and the water heaves 

And seethes inside the vessel, steaming up 

With foam, and bubbling higher, till the surface 

Holds no more, and vapor mounts to heaven.

So, then, in violation of the peace, 

He told the captains of his troops to march 

On King Latinus…” 

(Book 7) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

I bet Shakespeare loved that passage. 

2/ In my blog posts about Homer, I pointed out that there were a lot more epic similes (Homeric similes) in the Iliad than in the Odyssey. In the Aeneid, there are also more epic similes in the Iliad half than in the Odyssey half. 

“[…] And they all thronged, 

Outshouting one another, round the palace. 

Latinus, though, like a seacliff stood fast, 

Like a seacliff that when the great sea comes

To shatter on it, and the waves like hounds

Give tongue on every side, holds grandly on, 

Though reefs and foaming rocks thunder offshore

And seaweed flung against it streams away.” 

(ibid.) 

Like Homer, Virgil compares the fighters to animals: 

“Now Turnus furiously this way and that 

Rode round the walls and looked for a way in 

Where there was none. As a wolf on the prowl 

Round a full sheepfold howls at crevices

Enduring wind and rain at dead of night, 

While nestled safe under the ewes the lambs 

Keep up their bleating; he, beside himself, 

Tormented by accumulated hunger, 

Jaws athirst for blood, in all his fury

Cannot reach them, rend them…” 

(Book 9) 

Here Turnus is compared to a bird (hawk or eagle, I guess), and then a wolf again: 

“And taking hold 

Of the man hanging there he tore him down 

With a big chunk of wall—as when the bird 

Who bears Jove’s bolt takes wing, lugging a hare 

Or snowy swan aloft in crooked talons, 

Or when Mars’ wolf steals from the fold a lamb 

Whose mother, bleating, seeks it…” 

(ibid.) 

Euryalus, a young Trojan, is compared to a lion, which is one of the most common images in the Iliad.  

“… Think of an unfed lion

Havocking crowded sheepfolds, being driven 

Mad by hunger: how with his jaws he rends 

And mauls the soft flock dumb with fear, and growls 

And feeds with bloody maw.” 

(ibid.) 

You get the idea. The quote in the headline also comes from Book 9. 

Pity that I can only read the Aeneid in translation—it’s probably so good to read in Latin. 

3/ Another thing Virgil has learnt from Homer is that he tries to add life to the warriors—their deaths are not just abstract losses. In Book 9, for example, he gets us to spend time with Nisus and Euryalus, to know them and see their friendship. When they die:  

“The attackers’ heads, indeed—a ghastly sight—

They fixed on spears, and lifted, and bore out 

In taunting parade: Euryalus and Nisus.”

(ibid.) 

It’s an awful image—we feel the sorrows of Trojans: 

“They stood in sorrow, moved by those grim heads 

Impaled and dripping gore—heads too well known 

To their unhappy fellows…” 

(ibid.) 

Virgil also adds a scene of Euryalus’s mother wailing as she sees her son brutally killed, beheaded, and unburied. It’s heart-rending. 

However, generally speaking, I still think Homer is better: in the Iliad, every death matters, every one that dies is an individual. All the fighting and killing in the Iliad were gruelling and tough to read after a while, but Homer got me to care about the characters, especially the Trojans, and got me to like Hektor and take an interest in Akhilleus—Virgil doesn’t really have me interested in the characters and their war. 

I’m going to refrain from commenting on Aeneas till I’ve finished reading the whole poem.

The Aeneid: “She prayed for death/ Being heartsick at the mere sight of heaven”

 

Painting by Nathaniel Dance-Holland. 

1/ After fleeing Troy, Aeneas and his people wander for some time and stop in Carthage. In Books 2-3, he tells his story to Queen Dido of the Phoenicians. 

“The queen, for her part, all that evening ached 

With longing that her heart’s blood fed, a wound 

Or inward fire eating her away.

The manhood of the man, his pride of birth, 

Came home to her time and again; his looks, 

His words remained with her to haunt her mind, 

And desire for him gave her no rest.” 

(Book 4) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

What does that remind me of?

“She loved me for the dangers I had passed,

And I loved her that she did pity them.” 

(Othello, Act 1 scene 3)

Dido confides in Anna: 

“‘[…] I shall say it: since that time

Sychaeus, my poor husband, met his fate, 

And blood my brother shed stained our hearth gods, 

This man alone has wrought upon me so 

And moved my soul to yield. I recognize 

The signs of the old flame, of old desire. 

But O chaste life, before I break your laws, 

I pray that Earth may open it, gape for me 

Down to its depth, or the omnipotent 

With one stroke blast me to the shades, pale shades 

Of Erebus and the deep world of night! 

That man who took me to himself in youth 

Has taken all my love, may that man keep it, 

Hold it forever with him in the tomb.’” 

(ibid.) 

Poor Dido. Why do we fall in love? To love is to make ourselves vulnerable to grief and heartache. She yields, she hopes, she opens up herself to Aeneas, only to have her heart broken as Aeneas follows his fate and leaves her for Italy. 

In this chapter, Aeneas still feels like a blank—one wishes Virgil depicted more of Aeneas’s struggle between his feelings for Dido and his sense of duty, as he sets out for Italy to found a new kingdom for the Trojans so that “Priam’s great hall should stand again”—but Virgil focuses on Dido and his depiction of her passion and heartbreak is deeply moving. 

“… At that sight, what were your emotions, Dido? 

[…] Unconscionable Love, 

To what extremes will you not drive our hearts! 

She now felt driven to weep again, again 

To move him, if she could, by supplication, 

Humbling her pride before her love—to leave 

Nothing untried, not to die needlessly.” 

(ibid.) 

One can’t help thinking though that Venus is cruel—she knows the fate for Aeneas, she knows his mission—why does she make Dido fall in love with him? (Don’t say the Greek/ Roman gods represent impulses, or forces beyond our control—I know, but in the world of these poems, they are characters). 

2/ Whereas Homer often mentions time (the Trojan War lasts 10 years; Odysseus takes 10 years to go home, of which one year is with Kirke/ Circe and seven years is with Kalypso), Virgil does not. He might even be a bit blurry on time and geography (but then the Aeneid wasn’t quite finished when he died). 

Apparently people disagree about how long Aeneas stays in Carthage. In the first five chapters (confusingly called books), there are four references to time. In Book 5, after leaving Carthage and landing again in Sicily, Aeneas organises some competitions to mark the one-year anniversary of his father’s death, meaning that there’s a gap of one year between Anchises’s death in Sicily and the second time Aeneas passes through Sicily on the way to Italy. In Book 1, Dido asks Aeneas to tell his story, saying “now the seventh summer brings you here”, which marks the beginning of their love affair; but in Book 5, during the funeral games, Iris appears in disguise and says to the Trojans “We’ve seen/ The seventh summer since the fall of Troy.” 

Does this mean that Aeneas only passes a couple of months in Carthage—let’s ignore the distance between it and Sicily—or does it mean that Virgil makes a mistake, Aeneas is meant to arrive in Carthage in the sixth summer of his wanderings, and he stays there for almost a year?

Personally I’d like to think that there’s no mistake and Aeneas stays in Carthage for only a month or two: there’s no indication that Aeneas leaves Sicily immediately after his father’s death, and his time with Dido sounds like summer. But this passage adds to the confusion: 

“Now in no time at all 

Through all the African cities Rumor goes—

Nimble as quicksilver among evils. […]

In those days Rumor took an evil joy 

At filling countrysides with whispers, whispers, 

Gossip of what was done, and never done:

How this Aeneas landed, Trojan born,

How Dido in her beauty graced his company, 

Then how they reveled all the winter long

Unmindful of the realm, prisoners of lust.” 

(Book 4) 

Unless we dismiss Rumour altogether, this sounds like Aeneas stays in Carthage for about a year. 

3/ In Book 6, Aeneas goes to the Underworld, which is obviously modelled after Book 11 of the Odyssey. Compared to Homer however, Virgil describes in greater detail the path to, and the look of, the Underworld.  

“The path goes on from that place to the waves 

Of Tartarus’s Acheron. Thick with mud, 

A whirlpool out of a vast abyss 

Boils up and belches all the silt it carries 

Into Cocytus. Here the ferryman, 

A figure of fright, keeper of waters and streams, 

Is Charon, foul and terrible, his beard 

Grown wild and hoar, his staring eyes all flame, 

His sordid cloak hung from a shoulder knot…”

(Book 6) 

It is a horrifying place. 

“Now voices crying loud were heard at once—

The souls of infants wailing. At the door 

Of the sweet life they were to have no part in, 

Torn from the breast, a black day took them off 

And drowned them all in bitter death…” 

(ibid.) 

It is more visual, and detailed. 

In both poems, the protagonists travel to the Underworld and meet the dead people they know. In the Odyssey, there are four great moments: Odysseus meets Agamemnon, who tells the story of his murder (which becomes the basis for the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides); he meets Akhilleus (Achilles), who dies with glory but now says he would rather live an ordinary life than “lord it over all the exhausted dead”; he meets Aias (Ajax), who hated him in life and continues to hate him in death, refusing his gesture of conciliation; and he also meets his mother, who he hasn’t realised is dead, and tries to hug her in vain. The last three moments are extremely moving. Homer gets us to think about the people who have been in our lives: those we love and those we hate, those we may have been like and those we hope not to be like.

The Underworld scene in the Aeneid has one great moment, but it is deeply moving as we have been with them from the beginning: Aeneas meets the spirit of Dido, not having realised that she’s dead, and she doesn’t speak to him. 

No wonder some people think Book 6 is the most moving one in the Aeneid.