roman&myth&as&...
TRANSCRIPT
Roman Myth as Poetry
Trojan Ancestors -‐ Aeneid 2 and 3
Chris Mackie
Aeneas escaping from Troy carrying his father Anchises,1st c AD ,from Pompeii: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Terracotta_Aeneas_MAN_Naples_110338.jpg
The wanderings of Aeneas Books 2 and 3
Chris Mackie
Aeneid 2: The content
• 1-‐249 The ruse of the Wooden Horse • 250-‐559: Emergence of the Greeks from the Horse; fighKng in the city; the death of Priam
• 560-‐804: Aeneas’s return to his house to his wife Creusa and father Anchises. He thinks about killing Helen on the way, but decides not to do so when his mother Venus intervenes.
Chris Mackie
Aeneid 2: The context
• It is a personal reminiscence from a Trojan perspecKve. Paradoxically it is a genocide narraKve in (Greek) Homer, but not in Vergil
• Aeneas is an omniscient narrator • The hero as tale teller. Don’t forget the context
in which the story is being narrated • Told at Carthage to Dido. To some degree the
story is ‘audience-‐driven’. Dido and Aeneas have a common suffering in their background.
Chris Mackie
The Fall of Troy
• Vergil is the best surviving source for the story (although cf. Quintus of Smyrna 3rd. Century AD.)
• There were much earlier Greek epic poems dealing with the subject
• One of these was actually called the Iliou Persis (‘DestrucKon of Troy’). In the 5th century BC Sophocles wrote a play called the Laocoon
• Vergil had access to ancient narraKves about the fall of Troy that we do not have today
. Chris Mackie
The Fall of Troy
Some of the core elements in the story of the fall of Troy in the Greek myths are: • Achilles defeats Hector with the spear (Iliad) • Paris kills Achilles with his bow and arrow • The Greek archer Philoctetes then kills Paris in a bow-‐
contest • Odysseus dreams up the idea of the wooden horse, which
the Greeks then use to their advantage. The walls of Troy were built by gods, especially Poseidon, hence they cannot be broken down by mortals.
• NoKce the way that the Trojans are defeated by all different types of weapons-‐spear, the bow and arrow, and by cunning intelligence
Chris Mackie
The Basic NarraKve of the Wooden Horse (esp. in Homer and Vergil)
• Odysseus devises the plan to build the wooden horse. The plan also involves the Greek pretence of returning home.
• Epeius builds the horse with Athena's help. • In the Odyssey the Trojans drag in the horse and then consider three opKons; first, to break it up; second, to throw it from the heights; and third, to let it stand as an offering to the gods (8.504ff.).
Chris Mackie
The Wooden Horse (esp. in Homer and Vergil)
• In Vergil's Aeneid the Greek figure of Sinon tells the Trojans a long, untruthful story about why the Greeks have gone away and lec the large wooden horse outside the gates (2.57ff.).
• Laocoon, priest of Neptune, and his sons are killed by a sea-‐monster prior to the dragging in of the horse (2.199ff.). Laocoon had resisted bringing in the horse in the debate held by the Trojans (2.31ff.).
• The horse is then dragged by the Trojans into the city (2.234ff.).
Chris Mackie
The Wooden Horse (esp. in Homer and Vergil)
• In the middle of the night the Greeks creep out from inside the horse.
• They unite with their comrades, and sack and burn the city.
• The story is probably the most renowned mythical narraKve from anKquity. But what does it mean?
• Is it a mythologised siege engine? Or does it represent some other ‘actual’ siege tacKc?
Chris Mackie
Aeneid 2: Cunning intelligence • Slippery Sinon • Me6s (trickery, cunning
intelligence) v. bia (strength, force, defence).
• Odysseus (=Ulysses, Ulixes) as trickster. Wine, sleep and fire (cf. Polyphemus)
• Priam’s hospitality to Sinon brings disaster on his people. Kind acts in the Aeneid don’t always bring beneficial consequences.
Chris Mackie
Sinon stands before Priam and the walls of Troy. Codex Romanus (Cod.Vat.lat 3867), folio 101r - 5th century CE
http://l.yimg.com/g/images/spaceout.gif
The Wooden Horse Why a horse? • Troy is a ‘horsy’ place • First sack of Troy:
Heracles sacks the city acer Laomedon breaks his promise to give horses
• Horses associated with Neptune (Poseidon), who builds and destroys the walls of Troy
Chris Mackie
Roman mural from Pompeii, 1st century AD.-The Trojan Horse outside Troy. http://media.kunst-fuer-alle.de/img/41/m/41_00204338~trojan-horse---rom-mural-paint---c1st-ad.jpg
Aeneid 2: Wooden Horse
• Note the emphasis given to the deadly ‘womb’ of the horse (2.52, 242ff.) and the blindness and deafness of the Trojans.
• The horse has an innocuous exterior and a deadly interior just like Cupid with Dido in Book 1.657ff.
Chris Mackie
The Greeks
• Ulixes/Ulysses/Odysseus seems to represent the basic nature of the Greeks. His characterisKc cunning has become an insidious, treacherous quality in the Aeneid.
• Ulixes succeeds through trickery when individual brute force (Achilles) fails. It is a victory of treachery over tradiKonal ideas of courage
Chris Mackie
Aeneid 2: Laocoön’s Fate • Priest of Neptune • On the wrong side of
Jupiter • Reads ‘the signs’ correctly
but is brutally killed • This causes the Trojans to
‘misread the signs’
Chris Mackie Hagesandros, Athenedoros, and Polydoros, Laocoön and his sons, Marble, copy after an Hellenistic original from early 1st C BCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg
Aeneid 2: The Gods and Fate • Troy’s Kme has come. The life of a city is like that of a
human • Q. Where are the gods on the Trojan side (Apollo et al.)? A.
They have abandoned the city to its fate. • Jupiter is essenKally the voice and the enforcer of fate. He
is shown destroying the walls with the other divine supporters of the Greeks at 2.617-‐8.
• Being on the wrong side of Jupiter, whether you are trying to or not, is not the place to be in the Aeneid.
Chris Mackie
Aeneid 2: Fate and the Individual 268-‐623
The appearance of Hector The ‘heroic impulse’ of Aeneas. Furor and fire.
• The death of Priam. Pyrrhus and noKons of generaKonal change (esp. 535ff.)
• Helen, Aeneas and Venus (571ff.) • The gods destroying the city
walls (589ff.)
Chris Mackie
Jules Joseph Lefebvre, The death of Priam (1861). http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8y9kiOLKC1rqqedro1_r1_1280.jpg
The Death of Priam
• When Priam casKgates Pyrrhus/Neoptolemus with not being the equal of his father, who respected the suppliant’s rights (535ff.), the poem is referring you directly to Iliad 24
• NoKce the way that the Aeneid is portraying the noKon that Achilles represents an age of noble heroism that has now passed. Power now resides with ‘new men’ (people like Ulysses, Neoptolemus/Pyrrhus, Sinon et al).
Chris Mackie
Aeneid 2: The AcquisiKon of Pietas (624-‐end of book.)
• Aeneas, pietas, and his family (including his linle son Anchises / Iulus)
• Aeneas, pietas and religious objects
• Aeneas, pietas and fate
Chris Mackie
Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius by Gian Lorenzo Bernini(1618-1619) http://artgalleryabc.com/images/stories/B/
BERNINI/bernini_aeneas.jpg
Pius Aeneas What is pietas in the Aeneid? I suggest: • The scrupulous performance of religious ritual etc. (a bit like
‘pious’ in our sense). • Looking acer one’s own people’s needs, ie. leading them in
a pastoral kind of way. • Performing acKons in accordance with the direcKon and will
of fate (Jupiter).
On this basis Aeneas is not pius for most of the book
Chris Mackie
Fire as the CremaKon of Troy • Emphasis on the fact that Troy is destroyed by fire (2.310ff) • As with the heroes in the Greek sources, it is as if the city is now
being cremated as its life has come to an end • The Aeneid is really a kind of death and rebirth story. It is a
foundaKon myth (Rome) that follows a destrucKon myth (Troy), thus the idea is that a new city emerges from the ashes of Troy (cf. the phoenix bird!).
• Note the fiery warrior frenzy of Aeneas and the Trojans as they defend their city. This is his ‘heroic impulse’, his natural response is to pick up arms and plunge into banle.
Chris Mackie
Creusa, Carthage, and Rome
• Creusa as a vicKm of fate • The speech of Creusa provides an important link to Book 3 where Aeneas goes in search of Thybris (Tiber), Hesperia (Italy)
• Reference to a royal wife (783) presumably is meant (in Dido’s mind) to signal Dido herself, although it turns out to be Lavinia. This is a typical ambiguity in the supernatural appearances and oracles in the first books of the poem
Chris Mackie
Pius Aeneas Aeneas’s final taking up of his mission by leaving the city with his people (705ff.), and the sacra and Penates, reveals the classic image of the pius hero. He is off to found Rome! (well, kind of).
Chris Mackie
Aeneas escaping from Troy carrying his father Anchises,1st c AD ,from Pompeii: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Terracotta_Aeneas_MAN_Naples_110338.jpg
Aeneid 3: 10 stages of the journey
1. Thrace (Polydorus) 2. Cyclades (Delos) 3. Crete (Teucer) 4. Delos (Apollo) 5. Strophades (Celaeno)
6. Ionian Islands (Ithaca) 7. AcKum 8. Epirus (cf. Pyrrhus) 9. Italy and Sicily 10. Carthage
Some important aspects of Aeneid Book 3
• Aeneas as city founder (new Dardanus) and returner (a kind of Homeric nostos)
• Geography/aeKology (cf. Apollonius) • Inclusion of historical material (Pyrrhus) • Augustan elements (AcKum) • Aeneas’s main task is to unravel the mysteries of prophecy, not to confront monsters (like Odysseus)
• Death of father (paterfamilias)
Chris Mackie