Journal: Aeneid, Manipulation & Mortals

I had a literature class. We had to journal what we were reading:

The Aeneid begins with Aeneas and Achates arrival at Carthage, a town that is progressing before their eyes, building into a fine city. Aeneas is impressed with what he sees before him; everything being built to last a long time. Aeneas reminisces with Achates and weeps, remembering what they have already been through: Hector being dragged around Troy’s walls by Achilles, the amazon queen Penthesilea also killed by Achilles, and battle. Aeneas and Achates see their former shipmates who were lost from their sight in a storm, which makes them very happy, but remembering their cloudy mantle they repress their excitement to observe from the side some more. The former shipmates approach Queen Dido and tell her that they lost King Aeneas at sea on the way to Italy, and they believe he is dead. Queen Dido offers the men safety, and offers to send out her men to look for Aeneas. At this point, Aeneas and Achates break from the cloud of disguise, which was given them by Venus, Aeneas’ mother. All throughout the Aeneid, we see the manipulations of the gods in the characters’ lives.

Upon meeting, Aeneas compliments Queen Dido’s beauty and impresses her with his speech. She also wants to impress Aeneas and calls for a feast with much preparation. Before and during the feast, Juno and Venus both intervene and help the queen along in her feelings for Aeneas, and she starts to fall in love with him. Queen Dido is viewed as madly in love, wandering the city, thinking only of Aeneas: caressing the place where he sat, roaming places they had visited together. The queen lapses on her responsibilities to the city and its people, and the city falls to latency.

Meanwhile, Mercury seeks out Aeneas, and asks him if it is his duty to build Carthage or is his duty to his gods. Mercury tells Aeneas that he has to leave, secretly, to journey to Dis (Hades). Aeneas prepares to leave, and Dido is furious. In their discussion, Aeneas speaks as though their relationship is over. Dido tries to keep Aeneas there, but he is duty-bound to Jupiter and leaves regardless of anything Dido might say or do. After Aeneas leaves, Queen Dido tricks her sister who she has prepare a pyre to burn Aeneas’ things in attempt to bring him back to her by using ‘magic powers.’ In reality, it is Queen Dido’s own funeral pyre – she commits suicide. In Dis (Hades), Aeneas sees Dido, who rejects him even after he explains that it was not his will but the gods’ will that drove him away from her. Even in death, she spurns him, and returns to her first husband for comfort and love together in eternity.

All along we see Aeneas and Dido getting shoved one way or another by the machinations of the scheming gods and goddesses. In the end, Dido dies in a tragic manner by killing herself. When Aeneas sees her, he pleads with her to forgive him as he did not think or know that his leaving would affect her so. In the end, neither Aeneas nor Dido know that the reason Dido’s love for Aeneas burned so bright and so deep was because it was influenced by Juno and Venus' manipulative ways.

Journal: The Odyssey

I had a literature class. We had to journal what we were reading:

Many themes circulate throughout Homer’s epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. We see gods and goddesses cast judgment upon mortals, while holding themselves unaccountable for similar transpirings. We see honor, bravery, vengeance, and grudges held for many years; heroes made from fair dealings and honorable ways of living. However, one of the main ideas threaded throughout both epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, is the treatment of the traveler and the hospitality received from peoples formerly unknown to them.

In The Odyssey it is through our hero, Odysseus, and the treatment he receives while on his 20-year wander that we see some of the ways and manners of the people at that time. Starting with Odysseus’ stay with the immortal sea nymph Kalypso, who upon finding Odysseus on her shore proceeds to care for him as in the manner of a god; bathing him, feeding, him, caring for him, everything short of sending him home. Once it is decided that home is where Odysseus is bound, however, Kalypso provides Odysseus with all the tools, victuals, and clothing to make the journey in as much comfort as possible. Other incidents involve the goddess Athena, who never appears to mortals in her own countenance, but takes on different guises to travel into various towns. In each of these towns, the people treat her as a ‘friend,’ feed her, provide a fire to warm her, provide whatever she may require, and upon her departure offer a gift as well. That is how the customs were in those days; treat everyone as you would a friend for you may never tell when an immortal may be ‘testing’ you, and grave things befell those who spurned a god or goddess.

The incident that singularly stands out in The Odyssey is on Odysseus’ final leg home he is found upon an unknown shore, and ‘happens’ to meet the princess (with a little help from Goddess Athena) who feeds, bathes, and clothes Odysseus before helping him back to her mansion to consult with her father and mother, the king and queen. After the advice from Princess Nausikaa and Goddess Athena, Odysseus enters the banquet hall and sits down “amid the ashes” of the hearth. This action is explained by “the suppliant who sits there is, so to speak, on consecrated ground and cannot be forcibly removed.”[1] After hearing Odysseus’ plea, the king and queen invite Odysseus to join their feast that evening, have him spend the night in their home, have another feast in his honor in the morning, pentathlon games – all without ever knowing Odysseus’ name! This is a fine example of how strangers were treated in those times.

[1] Homer. "The Odyssey." The Norton Anthology Expanded Ed. Mack et al. New York: Norton, 1995. Footnote 3, p.289