Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Book 7 begins the Iliadic portion of the Aeneid. The first lines of the second half of the epic show Aeneas offering funeral rites for his old nurse -- his piety is on display, and also I wonder if there isn't something symbolic here. He has just emerged from the world of the dead, and here he is putting both a symbol of his youth to rest and landing in Italy at last. Has Aeneas become a new man from his experiences of the first 6 books?

Aeneas arrives at the Tiber, and Vergil invokes a new muse, Erato, the muse of love poetry. An interesting choice, considering that he plans to sing of "savage warfare." He says that he is now starting a "higher story, a greater work for me."

There are three sections: the first describes Latium and the state of play in Latinus' kingdom. Latium is a peaceful, Saturnian realm, and when the Trojans land there they send peace offerings and ask for only a "harmless beach, a tiny home for our gods. Water and air cost nothing!" King Latinus welcomes them, and suspects that among the Trojans is his future son-in-law because it has been prophesied that his only daughter Lavinia will marry a foreigner.

Juno soon arrives to upset the Saturnian peace. She knows it is fated that Aeneas will marry Lavinia, but she will make sure the Trojans suffer and that Aeneas will be "another Paris, a funeral torch to burn a reborn Troy." Is there a way in which Aeneas is another Paris? Is this history repeating itself?

Juno calls in Allecto to infuriate Latinus' wife, Amata, and then Turnus. Why must the Fury afflict Turnus when he already has reason to be angry? He tells Allecto, "I don't need made-up panic...Men, who fight wars, will deal with war and peace." Unfortunately, he insults Allecto in the process and suffers her wrath as a consequence. Allecto goes further now and creates a pretext for war: she sets a stag dear to the King's chief herdsman, Tyrrhus, in the way of Iulus' hunting expedition. Iulus kills the stag, and Tyrrhus marshals his forces for war.

The last section mirrors the catalogue of ships in the Iliad; here the catalogue lists the armies and their leaders that will go to war.

Everyone was now possessed:
The omens, the decrees of fate meant nothing.
They avidly besieged Latinus' palace...
The old man had no power to defeat
Their blind plans -- heartless Juno set things going.

The Trojans landed in a peaceful land with peaceful intentions. What on earth happened?

Is this how wars begin?

Yeah, I definitely felt for both Latinus as well as Aeneas in this passage, as what seemed to be a good start on their arrival was stirred up by a third party just looking to create drama. While I'm not sure how much this mirrors how actual wars begin, it certainly mirrors a middle school playground.

Are we any closer to understanding the opening question of the Aeneid:

Muse, tell me why. What stung the queen of Heaven,
What insult to her power made her drive
This righteous hero through so much undoing
And suffering?

Or is this question even meaningful? Does it matter why the gods do what they do? I'm starting to wonder if this question is merely a Homeric echo, and the subsidiary question is more important: why do people respond the way they do? How do heroes remain "righteous through so much undoing and suffering?"

Thomas wrote: "Are we any closer to understanding the opening question of the Aeneid:"

Juno's anger at the Trojan people is summed up in Book I. lines 17 - 39
1. She was insulted by the Judgment of Paris.
2. Troy was founded by Dardanus, an illegitimate son of Jupiter. (mythology)
3. Trojan Prince Ganymede was abducted and favored by her husband over her.
4. She favors Carthage, feels Dido's pain over Aeneas, and knows Rome will make good on its pronouncement that Carthago delenda est, "Carthage must be destroyed."

But now Juno's anger seems to have shifted from the points above into sore loser mode with her realization that Aeneas has not only survived but is now seen thriving in Italy despite her best efforts to destroy him and the remaining Trojans.

[7.364]. . .When they were thrown out
Of their country, I persecuted the outcasts
All over the deep blue sea. All the powers
Of sea and sky have been used against them. . .

. . .[375] But I, Jove’s great consort, who have left nothing
Undared, have tried every trick and turn,
Am bested by Aeneas!. . .
Lombardo

Thomas wrote: "Is this how wars begin?"

The causes of Aeneas' war are completely trivial, contrived, and considering the current events of this week, deserve high praise for their accuracy.

Thomas wrote: ".Does it matter why the gods do what they do? ..."

It does matter what the gods do because it has an impact on humans. But trying to find some kind of logical, rational, or humane justification for their actions is an exercise in futility.

Greek mythology is littered with examples of Greek gods behaving irrationally, cruelly, out of spite and a need for vengeance. They are mean-spirited, power-hungry, vindictive, indifferent to human suffering, and all together nasty. They feud with one another and that feuding takes the form of using humans as their pawns to fight out their battles.

The only message we learn from history seems to be we don't learn from history.

Thomas wrote: "Are we any closer to understanding the opening question of the Aeneid:

Muse, tell me why. What stung the queen of Heaven,
What insult to her power made her drive
This righteous hero through so mu..."

I think so far, in the Aeneid, this question is still unanswered. There is no clear reason or even an observable cause of this god's actions.

The subsidiary question is still a good one - why do people respond the way they do, and likewise, it seems to be a similar answer. Often times it's very unpredictable, and devoid of a clearly logical or even observable reason. From the story so far in the Aeneid, the behavior of humans and the gods are hardly distinguishable.

Juno's anger stems from the Golden Apple, which Paris did not give her in the beauty contest. Instead, he voted the most beautiful to be, I think, Venus, but I'll have to look that up to be sure.
The question arising from that is why Paris was given the task of judging the most beautiful goddess. (Does this dress make me look fat?) Paris in the original "No Win" situation.

Let me mention here a novel which was very popular a long time ago. Everyone in "the know" was reading John Fowles's The Magus. It tells a story with a "meta" level involving the Greek gods. I have not read it lately, but it was great fun.

If Juno's anger stems simply from the Judgement of Paris, why is it even a question? Perhaps there is a question behind the question, so it isn't merely rhetorical. I keep thinking of that amazing image in Book 2 where Aeneas is about to kill Helen and Venus intervenes. She asks Aeneas the same question that Virgil asks about Juno:

"My child, what pain could bring on such wild anger?" 2.594

The answer to this question is obvious, as is the answer to Virgil's question. But the answer doesn't resolve the problem behind the question. The question is actually more revealing than the answer. In that Book 2 scene Venus tells Aeneas to put his anger aside and think of his family -- Anchises, Ascanius, and Creusa are in danger. If he doesn't put aside his anger they will perish while he's busy executing Helen. His anger is blinding him.

In Book 7, Juno calls in Allecto the Fury to blind Turnus with anger and Turnus insults her. She inflames him with anger in response. "Peace is profaned." And she goes to the Trojans and does the same with her stag trick. All this reminds me a bit of Aeschylus and the Furies in the Oresteia trilogy. The question raised there is similar: how are we to stop the cycle of vengeance?

Thomas wrote: "How do heroes remain "righteous through so much undoing and suffering?"

I found it moving as King Latinus struggles with this very question. He knows it will be a disaster, but he seems powerless to stop the war even in his own kingdom. He gives up the "reins of state" rather than condoning the war, but it stops nothing. He refuses to open the two symbolic gates of war, but then Juno just blows them open herself.

This is such a terrible pain of the human condition, I think, and it's something everyone experiences at some point . . . where larger events occur that we forsee the consquences of but are powerless to stop. I feel so strongly for King Latinus.

And yet, I can feel how easily it is to be captured up in things that are really comparatively trivial compared to the wholesale destruction they unleash. If I were Tyrrhus or Silvia seeing that poor tamed stag killed, I would burn with anger over it too! But is it really worth the loss of his own son Almo and so many others?

They are all swept up in emotions that destroy their ability to see clearly. Here, Allecto personifies that wild and terrible passion that can infect the heart, but human beings are perfectly capable of such pettiness on their own.

(lines 474-480)
"Amata tossed and turned with womanly
Anxiety and anger. Now the goddess
Plucked one of the snakes, her gloomy tresses,
And tossed it at the woman, sent it down
Her bosom to her midriff and her heart,
So that by this black reptile driven wild
She might disrupt her whole house."

When I read of Allecto infecting queen Amata with her poisionous snake, I can think of this literally, as the fury Allecto dominating her with a foreign passion. But in a different kind of story, this same sort of poison could easily rise up out of the dark currents of her own heart, with the snake as a metaphor for her possession by it.

What you say about history is so depressing Tamara, but it has truth to it.

Susanna wrote: "Are you implying that the reasons for Aeneas' war are a pretext? If so, is there a human reason for the war behind the pretext? Or is it just about Juno being angry?"

I think the cause of Trojan War is summed up in two lines that are ultimately responsible here as well:

5. The Easterners trace to stories of Troy the reason of their first enmity towards the Greeks;
6. But in truth the seeds of conflict lay in the growth of Eastern power,

Grayling, A. C.. The Good Book: A Humanist Bible (p. 172). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Any cause for war originating from gods is obviously contrived, and even Juno's reasons in her persecution of Troy, Aeneas, and now this war, are trivial slights especially to a god.

The human reasons given here, the killing of the stag escalating to war, is also trivial, and sounds more like an excuse for more probable truth of the struggle for power. In this case, there is no reason to expect any additional motivation is needed beyond the local power struggle and xenophobic rejection of the Trojan survivor-settlers now vying for that power. Anything beyond that is just the pile-on of excuses to justify the war, albeit very poetic excuses :)

Juno's ego was hurt and she holds a grudge against Paris which extends to all of the Trojans. Achilles' ego was hurt by Agamemnon and he sulks, grows angry, and then turns his anger against the enemy. There isn't much difference between these two. Both are centered on honor. The gods demand sacrifices as a sign of respect, and human warriors demand honor for victory in battle.

Aeneas is in a different position though. Aeneas starts out in a low place, defeated, even wishing he were dead. But he overcomes this for the sake of the future, for his destiny. He relinquishes his hatred of Helen when he is reminded of his family, and he knows he has a place to go. He's more like Odysseus than Achilles in that sense. He's more human, whereas Achilles is more god-like.

The cause of Aeneas' war is similar to the Trojan War -- Turnus was slighted, just as Juno and Achilles were -- but Aeneas is fighting for a different reason. It will be interesting to see if Aeneas handles war, and the suffering of war, differently than Achilles does.

Tamara wrote: "Greek mythology is littered with examples of Greek gods behaving irrationally, cruelly, out of spite and a need for vengeance. They are mean-spirited, power-hungry, vindictive, indifferent to human suffering, and all together nasty. They feud with one another and that feuding takes the form of using humans as their pawns to fight out their battles...."

In a word, the Greek Gods are human.

Emil wrote: "In a word, the Greek Gods are human..."

I agree. I would add they are not just run-of-the mill humans. They are humans with tremendous power to wreak havoc and destruction on the rest of us.

Tamara wrote: "I agree. I would add they are not just run-of-the mill humans. They are humans with tremendous power to wreak havoc and destruction on the rest..."

I like that Tamara. It makes me think of these lines by An Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard, where Thomas Gray ponders the terrible losses but also the unexpected benefits of simple folk who lived and died humbly with no worldly power or influence:

"Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,"

With the gods, the opposite is true. Almost nothing confines what they can do!

Had a random thought about the passage where they eat their tables. In Fitzgerald's translation:

They made a feast,
Putting out on the grass hard wheaten cakes
As platters for their meal -- moved to do this
By Jupiter himself. These banquet boards
Of Ceres they heaped up with country fruits.
Now, as it happened, when all else was eaten,
Their neediness drove them to try their teeth
On Ceres' platters. Boldly with hand and jaw
They broke the crusted disks of prophecy,
Making short work of all the quartered loaves.

Is this the invention of pizza?

Maybe! White sauce only though. They would have to wait about 16 centuries for tomatoes.