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 Rape of Lucrece—I have now read everything in the Shakespearean canon

1/ Published in 1594 (apparently written during a plague), The Rape of Lucrece was around the same time as Henry VI Part 1 (if we assume, as many scholars do, that it’s written after Part 2 and Part 3), Richard III, and The Comedy of Errors. Early Shakespeare. 

I can’t help wondering what a narrative poem, or epic poem, by Late Shakespeare would have been like.

One thing that fascinates me, now that I’ve read the Phaedra plays by Euripides and Racine, is that Shakespeare depicts sexual assault a few times (rape in The Rape of Lucrece and Titus Andronicus, attempted rape in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Tempest, sexual coercion in Measure for Measure); he depicts women getting falsely accused of cheating a few times (Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale); he even depicts women sexually assaulting men a few times (Venus and Adonis, All’s Well that Ends Well and arguably Measure for Measure—the bed trick); but he doesn’t seem to have much interest in the subject of women making false rape allegations. If only! A Phaedra play written by Shakespeare would have been fascinating. 

2/ I don’t have a lot to say about The Rape of Lucrece, so I’m just gonna poke at it from different angles.

The word “black” appears a lot through the poem: “so black a deed”, “blackest sin”, “black payment”, “black lust”, “Night’s black bosom”, etc. Contrasted with that is white—the colour of chastity and innocence. 

“When at Collatium this false lord arrived,

Well was he welcomed by the Roman dame,

Within whose face beauty and virtue strived

Which of them both should underprop her fame.

When virtue bragged, beauty would blush for shame;

    When beauty boasted blushes, in despite

    Virtue would stain that o’er with silver white.

But beauty, in that white intituled

From Venus’ doves, doth challenge that fair field.

Then virtue claims from beauty beauty’s red,

Which virtue gave the golden age to gild

Their silver cheeks, and called it then their shield;

    Teaching them thus to use it in the fight,

    When shame assailed, the red should fence the white.

This heraldry in Lucrece’ face was seen,

Argued by beauty’s red and virtue’s white.

Of either’s colour was the other queen,

Proving from world’s minority their right.

Yet their ambition makes them still to fight;

    The sovereignty of either being so great,

    That oft they interchange each other’s seat.”

The odd thing—odd to me—is the coupling of the colours white and red throughout the poem. 

“O how her fear did make her colour rise!

    First red as roses that on lawn we lay,

    Then white as lawn, the roses took away.” 

Again, white and red together: 

“Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin.” 

Again: 

“… But she with vehement prayers urgeth still

    Under what colour he commits this ill.

Thus he replies: ‘The colour in thy face,

That even for anger makes the lily pale,

And the red rose blush at her own disgrace,

Shall plead for me and tell my loving tale.

Under that colour am I come to scale

    Thy never-conquered fort; the fault is thine,

    For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine…’” 

 

3/ The poem is thick with comparisons to animals and birds, which we see in Homer, in Ovid, in other poets, so I’d like to draw attention instead to other metaphors and similes that I find more interesting. 

“Far from the purpose of his coming thither,

He makes excuses for his being there.

No cloudy show of stormy blust’ring weather

Doth yet in his fair welkin once appear,

Till sable Night, mother of dread and fear,

    Upon the world dim darkness doth display,

    And in her vaulty prison stows the day.”

I like this: 

“… And extreme fear can neither fight nor fly,

    But coward-like with trembling terror die.”

Lots of interesting lines in the poem: 

“Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.” 

This is Lucrece after the rape: 

“‘.. O hateful, vaporous, and foggy night,

Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,

Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,

Make war against proportioned course of time;

Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb

    His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,

    Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.

‘With rotten damps ravish the morning air;

Let their exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick

The life of purity, the supreme fair,

Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick.

And let thy misty vapours march so thick,

    That in their smoky ranks his smothered light

    May set at noon and make perpetual night…’” 

All these metaphors are brilliant. The problem with Shakespeare’s depiction of Lucrece’s mind after the rape is that for some time he seems to get carried away by rhetoric, by metaphor, by language—Lucrece rails at Night, at Opportunity, at Time—that many stanzas are devoid of emotional depth and feel hollow, compared to numerous tragic passages in his plays. It gets better in the passages where Lucrece decides to kill herself: 

“My honour I’ll bequeath unto the knife

That wounds my body so dishonoured.

’Tis honour to deprive dishonoured life;

The one will live, the other being dead.

So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred,

    For in my death I murder shameful scorn;

    My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.”

That’s moving. But then Shakespeare gets bogged down in rhetorical digressions again when Lucrece looks at a painting of Troy—clearly inspired by the scene in the Aeneid—and compares herself to Troy and Tarquin to the brutal, treacherous Greeks (especially Sinon). It’s over-long, it’s mannered, it delays the climax. 

I like this passage though: 

“‘… Why should the private pleasure of some one

Become the public plague of many moe?

Let sin, alone committed, light alone

Upon his head that hath transgressed so;

Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe.

    For one’s offence why should so many fall,

    To plague a private sin in general?” 

But I shouldn’t be so negative. Colin Burrow’s introduction to The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems offers a thought-provoking analysis of The Rape of Lucrece, particularly the idea about reading (Tarquin reading/ interpreting the signs, Lucrece “reading” the painting, Lucrece imagining that strangers can read the guilt on her face, and so on) and the extent of Lucrece’s guilt (as Tarquin gives her a simulacrum of choice—either yield her body to him, or get raped, killed, placed next to the dead body of a slave, and forever defamed). The poem raises interesting questions about rape, choice, consent, and about Lucrece’s feeling of guilt and sense of inner taint. It’s also interesting because Lucrece is a victim of rape, but in choosing to name her rapist and then kill herself, she shapes the way her story will be told. 

4/ Having finished The Rape of Lucrece means I have now read everything in the Shakespearean canon. It was a good idea to save it—I understood the references to the Trojan War, and the allusions to the Aeneid. 

If I am to rank Shakespeare’s works, at the top would be most of the plays (the tragedies, then the Roman plays, then the history plays, then the comedies and romances), then the sonnets, then the narrative poems. The Rape of Lucrece I don’t like as much as Venus and Adonis—a lighter, sexier poem—but it’s definitely more sophisticated than Shakespeare’s early plays and the collaborations at the end of his career. 

PS: Please spare some thoughts and prayers, as we in the UK are experiencing an infernal heatwave. No air con and it’s especially bad in my room as I live in a literal little white attic. I’m getting baptised in hell-fire. I’m seeing demons. 

Dido, Queen of Carthage by Christopher Marlowe

1/ Now this sounds more like Marlowe, though it’s an early play. 

There are some interesting phrases: “map of weather-beaten woe”, “drenched limbs”, “unweaponed thoughts”, “furrowed wealth”, “quenchless fire”, “nimble winds”, “watery billows”, etc.  

2/ Why did I decide to read Dido, Queen of Carthage when it’s not a major play by Marlowe? It’s because the story of Aeneas and Dido is my favourite part—the best part—of the Aeneid. 

However, Marlowe’s version is quite different. First of all, he complicates the plot. In the Aeneid, Dido falls in love with Aeneas, despite herself, but Aeneas has to leave for Italy because of fate, because of his sense of duty. Marlowe has to complicate the plot because his play, though short, is much longer than Virgil’s chapter, so Dido has a suitor named Iarbas and he sees Aeneas as being in his way. This of course is borrowed from the plot about Aeneas, Lavinia, and Turnus from the second half of the Aeneid. 

More importantly, Marlowe changes the characters and his play is not quite moving. Venus for example interferes even more: she transforms Cupid into Ascanius, Aeneas’s son, so as to manipulate Dido into falling in love with Aeneas—basically all the scenes between Dido and “the boy” are mere deception and manipulation. The moving scene between Dido and Anna in Virgil becomes something rather crass in Marlowe: Anna encourages Dido’s feelings for Aeneas because she herself is in love with Dido’s suitor Iarbas. 

Even Marlowe’s Dido is different: 

“AENEAS Wherefore would Dido have Aeneas stay? 

DIDO To war against my bordering enemies. 

Aneas, think not Dido is in love; 

For if that any man could conquer me, 

I had been wedded ere Aeneas came. 

See where the pictures of my suitors hang; 

And are not these as fair as fair may be?

[Showing pictures.]” 

(Act 3 scene 1) 

Ridiculous.

“ANNA What if the citizens repine thereat? 

DIDO Those that dislike what Dido gives in charge, 

Command my guard to slay for their offence. 

Shall vulgar peasants storm at what I do? 

The ground is mine that gives them sustenance,

The air wherein they breathe, the water, fire, 

All that they have, their lands, their goods, their lives; 

And I, the goddess of all these, command

Aeneas ride as Carthaginian king.” 

(Act 4 scene 4) 

Dido comes across as extremely unpleasant. Hear how she talks to a servant: 

“DIDO O cursèd hag and false disassembling wretch

That slayest me with thy harsh and hellish tale! 

Thou for some pretty gift hast let him go, 

And I am thus deluded of my boy. 

Away with her to prison presently! 

[Enter ATTENDANTS.]

Traitoress too keen and cursed sorceress!” 

(Act 5 scene 1) 

Virgil’s Dido is nothing like this!

I’m not saying that a writer cannot make changes when adapting or retelling a literary work, but Marlowe’s play has none of the heartfelt passion and tenderness of the Aeneid—it doesn’t touch one’s heart—the ending doesn’t feel particularly tragic. 

The gap between Dido, Queen of Carthage and Edward II is startling. 

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. 

The Aeneid: “Tell me the causes now, O Muse”

Attributed to Lucca Batoni Pompeo.

1/ One of the surprising things about the Aeneid is how similar, how well it fits in with Homer’s epics: even though it’s written centuries later, in a different language, and the gods have Roman names, it’s essentially the same world; Virgil also writes about the Trojan War and its aftermath, just from the other perspective; there are also sacrifices and gods and ghosts; Virgil uses epic similes, as in the Iliad; he includes a story-within-the-story, as in the Odyssey; the Aeneid begins with an invocation of the Muse, like Homer’s epic poems; I’ve also read that the first half of the Aeneid is modelled after the Odyssey and the second half, after the Iliad. 

(No wonder the three books are sometimes grouped together—there’s a Robert Fagles box set composed of three books, for instance, and in translation they feel like a trilogy). 

When I google the Aeneid, I see many people talk about it as some kind of propaganda about the founding of Rome, but I’m more interested in the aspect of the Aeneid as a spin-off from Homer’s epic poems: Virgil takes Aeneas from the Iliad and the Trojan horse from the Odyssey and tells the story from the other side. And because it’s the other side, the Odyssey is about homecoming and the Aeneid is about becoming an exile and creating a new home. 

I can see that Virgil sets out to imitate—and rival—Homer. 

“With this she left me weeping, 

Wishing that I could say so many things, 

And faded on the tenuous air. Three times 

I tried to put my arms around her neck, 

Three times enfolded nothing, as the wraith

Slipped through my fingers, bodiless as wind, 

Or like a flitting dream.” 

(Book 2) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

That moving scene between Aeneas and the ghost of his wife Creusa is reminiscent of Odysseus trying three times to hug the ghost of his mother in the Odyssey. 

2/ There are some interesting images in the poem. 

“Here men were dredging harbors, there they laid 

The deep foundation of a theatre, 

And quarried massive pillars to enhance 

The future stage—as bees in early summer 

In sunlight in the flowering fields 

Hum at their work, and bring along the young 

Full-grown to beehood; as they cram their combs 

With honey, brimming all the cells with nectar, 

Or take newcomers’ plunder, or like troops 

Alerted, drive away the lazy drones, 

And labor thrives and sweet rhyme scents the honey.” 

(Book 1) 

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a Homeric simile. 

3/ The poem begins with Aeneas and some Trojans becoming exiles and reaching Carthage. Books 2-3 are Aeneas recounting his story (like Odysseus telling his adventures in Books 9-12 of the Odyssey). The sack of Troy is a particularly great scene, with many touching moments: Aeneas and others continuing to fight amidst the burning city; old Priam taking up weapons only to see another son of his brutally killed before his eyes; Aeneas carrying his aging father out of chaos and fire, then realising that his wife is no longer with them; Aeneas discovering that she’s dead, and trying in vain to embrace her one more time; and so on. It is such a great chapter.   

4/ Virgil repeats stories or images from Homer’s poems: the body of Hector being dragged around Troy walls; the Trojan horse; Scylla (or Skylle) and Charybdis; Polyphemus and the other Cyclops; etc. 

One of the fascinating things about Homer’s poems is that (unless I misremember) no story or incident in the Iliad is repeated in the Odyssey: when Odysseus, or someone that Telemakhos (Telemachus) meets, talks about himself or about the Trojan War, it’s a new story. If the Odyssey was not written by the author of the Iliad, it was written by someone who knew the Iliad very well and made sure not to have any overlapping scenes or stories. 

When Virgil evokes something from Homer, it’s not just a reference or a repetition—he changes the perspective, or does something interesting with it: the ruse of the Trojan horse and the destruction of Troy are now seen from the perspective of Trojans; Polyphemus is seen after he has been blinded by Odysseus (Ulysses) and his men; Aeneas and his crew go the long way, avoiding Scylla and Charybdis; etc. 

It is fascinating to examine the Aeneid as a spin-off. 

PS: I’m reading the Aeneid as a way to keep from killing myself, which may or may not work—I guess we’ll see.