 Now that we've covered the context for Virgil's Aeneid, we can talk about books one through six. Virgil didn't write the Aeneid from beginning to end. He wrote individual fragments and would revise them, correct them over time. He scouted a lot of the locations that he describes. In fact, the entrance to the underworld that he describes in book six was actually based on a place where there was a cave that went to an underground lake called Avernus that hadn't been very well explored at his time. So as far as he was concerned, it could be an entrance to the underworld and he actually appeared to have gone there. But as he was working on these, he did have the opportunity to read them directly for the emperor Augustus Caesar. He read books two, four, and six for Augustus. Augustus knew that he was continuing to work on them. But unfortunately, while Virgil was scouting some of the locations in Greece, potentially Actium and other places that Aeneas and his men occupy or pass by throughout the descriptions of their journey from Troy in books two and three, while he was scouting those locations, Virgil contracted a fever or some sort of illness and died and while he was dying, he instructed his friends, Various and Tuka, to burn the Aeneid, burn the text, the manuscripts that he'd written. He apparently didn't feel like it was finished enough to stand on its own and he didn't want it to sort of be half done. Well, it wasn't half done. It was mostly done and he had completed all 12 books that were apparently all he intended to write and he just had to finish the poetry. Keep in mind that it's written in epic verse and so the, you know, each line has to fill a certain pattern, a scantion, and we can tell there are a lot of lines that are left undone, they're left unfinished and there are some in idiosyncrasies, the same sort we've seen in other texts, typically texts that were redacted, you know, texts that were compiled from oral tradition. But in this we see, we're going to see that even a work by a single author before it's actually completed could have a lot of these redundancies, doublets, inconsistencies and this sort of thing. But apparently Virgil thought this was, it was just in a state of disarray that he didn't want anybody to read. Fortunately, the emperor himself, Augustus, seems to have stepped in and told Various and Tuka, don't destroy the manuscript. Seems to have had them complete it, not to add anything that wasn't already there, but just to fix some of the problems that they saw. If there was any like small additions that needed to be made. So thankfully Augustus stepped in, otherwise we would not have had it. But even now when you read through, you may have noticed a few things that didn't quite make sense. You'd read one description of one element in one book and then come to the same description of these events in another book. They didn't quite match up. One of these is the description of Paliniris. That's the pilot of Anias's ship, who in book five, and if you've got the Robert Fagel translation, this is pages 180 to 181. In book five, the very end of book five, we're told that Paliniris is wide awake at night. When everyone else on the deck is asleep, he's steering the boat. He's very good at this and he knows, even though the seas are calm, not to trust the weather, not to let his guard down. But this God of sleep comes to him and is continually trying to get him to doze off. When the God of sleep first tries to tell Paliniris, just relax. Just trust this gentle weather. It'll be fine. And Paliniris says, you know, you tell me to forget my sense of the sea, the placid face of the swells, the sleeping breakers. You tell me to put my trust in that, that monster. How could I leave Anias prey to the lying winds? And yet the God with a bow drenched in lethi's dew and drowsy with all the river sticks his numbing power, shakes it over the pilot's temple, is left and right, and fight as he does, his swimming eyes fall shut. Just an instant sleep stole in and left him limp. The God rearing over him hurled him into the churning surf and down he went. Headfirst, wrenching a piece of the rudder off and the tiller too, crying out to his shipmates time and again, no use, as the God himself weeding off into thin air. So clearly a God comes in and causes Paliniris to fall asleep just long enough to fall off the side of the boat. He grabs the rudder and instead of breaking his fall, instead of being able to hang on and stay on the boat, the rudder actually comes off with him. That's the version at the end of book five. We see Paliniris again in the underworld when Anias goes down to the underworld and sees him and asks him specifically, did some God drown you? And Paliniris says Captain, Nkisi's son, talking to Anias, Apollo's prophetic cauldron has not failed you. In other words, the prophecy that, you know, the gods would allow the rest of us to get to Italy was true. No God drowned me in open water. No the rudder I clung to holding us all on course might charge some powerful force ripped it away by chance and I dragged it down as I dropped headlong too. So he's holding on to the rudder and the rudder pulls him in rather than him falling off and trying to grab on to the rudder and we don't know what that powerful force is, but he says specifically it was not a God that did this. That seems to contradict the version in book five. Now, maybe he's lying. Maybe he just doesn't want to admit that he became drowsy and fell asleep. And that's why he fell over. We have to keep this in mind when a character's description of something doesn't match the narrators. Maybe it's just the character, but it does seem it doesn't seem like there's a reason for this. It doesn't seem consistent with Paliniris's sort of honest and forthright character. Even more conspicuous is the characterization of Helen. Every author who writes about the Trojan War has to deal with how to portray Helen. Was she at fault for the war? Was she complicit in her abduction? How should Menelaus regard her? How should the Greeks regard her? How should Priam and the Trojans regard her? Well, Virgil has to deal with that as well, and he seems to have been inconsistent at whatever time he wrote this passage in book two, line 703 to 727, or if you have the Fagal's translation, it's 94 to 95, versus the characterization he gives in book six when her second husband, or third husband, after Paris. After Paris is killed, she's wed by the Trojans to Deophobus, and Deophobus's ghost is in the underworld, and he speaks directly to Aeneas and tells him, here's what happens, but these are completely irreconcilable accounts. One is narrated by Aeneas, one is narrated by Deophobus, but we, there's no reason for us to assume that Aeneas would lie, or that Deophobus would lie, or even if Deophobus did lie, shouldn't Aeneas have known that, if Aeneas actually saw Helen while he was making his way out of Troy. He says in book two, when he's describing his escape from Troy to Daito, I was the one man left, and I saw her clean to Vesta's threshold, hiding in silence, tucked away, Helen of Argos. Glare of the fires lit my view as I looked down, scanning the city left and right, there she was, terrified of the Trojans' hate, now that Troy was overpowered, terrified of the Greeks' revenge, her deserted husband's rage, that universal fury accursed to Troy and her native land, and here she lurked, skulking, a thing of loathing, cowering at the altar, Helen, and so he wants to kill her, he says, you know, my rage flared out, I wanted to pay Helen back crime for crime, so he is very, he condemns Helen, Virgil in both accounts condemns Helen, acts as if the whole war was her fault, doesn't seem to give any blame to Paris, but in this description, even though it's still her fault, she is afraid of the Greeks, and she's not running out to the Greeks, she's hiding from the Greeks, she's afraid of them, and the revenge her husband might take. But then in book six, the account that comes from Diaphobus, what he describes, and he clearly has the scars, his ghost has the scars from being mangled when he was being killed, and he says that, you know, this is my fate at the hands of the Spartan whore, describing Helen. Look at the souvenir she left me, in other words, the scars that his ghost still carries, and how we spent that last night lost in diluted joys, you know, remember we must all too well. Well, first of all, this presumes that she wanted to marry Diaphobus. Now, remember whether or not she was complicit in going with Paris when he first took her from Menelaus, from Sparta, took her to Troy. We read in the Iliad that she did not like Paris, she wanted Menelaus to win, to defeat Paris, and she clearly wanted to be back with the Greeks, but in this case, it seems that Diaphobus is describing her as if she just wanted to marry another Trojan, and she was completely happy to be given, to be passed from one Trojan to another. And he goes on, when that fatal horse mounted over the steep walls, it weighed belly teeming with infantry and arms, she led the Frigian women around the city, feigning this orgiastic rites of Bacchus dancing, shrieking, but in their midst she shook her monstrous torch, a flare from the city heights, a signal to the Greeks. So in other words, the Trojan horses there in the middle of Troy, they believe the Greeks are gone, but the Greeks are actually in the horse, the other ships are waiting to come back around and attack during the night, but the Trojans think that they've won, and Helen seems to be in on the the strategy. She seems to know that the Greeks are in the Trojan horse, although we're not told how she could have known that. And if she knew that, why didn't other Trojans know that? She was in the city of Troy, who's been passing her information? But somehow she knows, and she carries her torch around the Trojan horse, sending some sort of signal to the Greeks inside. And while the Iphibus is laying bone-weary in anguish, buried deep in sleep, a peaceful sweet, like the peace of death itself, all the while that matchless wife of mine is removing all my weapons from the house, even slipping my trusty sword from under my pillow, she calls Menelaus in and flings the doors wide open, hoping no doubt by this grand gift to him, her lover, to wipe this lake clean, or for former wicked ways. Why drag things out? They burst into the bedroom Ulysses, that rouser of outrage, right beside them, Aeolus' crafty air, and he goes on to sort of curse this treachery that he sees. But this account of Helen is very different than the account that Anias himself describes. So we could, in our imagination, reconcile these two. Maybe she went through this phase where she wasn't sure what to do, but it's clear that even before the the Greeks have come out of the horse, she knows they're there and she's helping. And once they do come out, that she's directly cooperating. She's leading them to kill the Iphibus. It would be very hard to reconcile these two things. Maybe somewhere between these, you know, orgiastic rights and carrying the torch and knowing the Greeks were in the horse. Somewhere after that, she's now afraid of the Greeks and afraid of the Trojans, and then she once again gets her courage up and calls to Menelaus. But that would take a lot more explanation. There seems to be, this seems to be a doublet, the same story told twice, but with differences that let us know these were not quite reconciled. Perhaps Virgil had one idea at one point and then another idea at another point and he forgot to take out one or to edit one to fit the other. But for the most part, the narrative is relatively consistent, consistent within itself and consistent as a continuation of the story of the Trojan War as Homer and other authors from the epic cycle depicted it. Keep in mind that Virgil probably had access to these other elements of the epic cycle. Remember that the Iliad does not describe the Trojan horse or the use of the Trojan horse or even the death of the Achilles. These things come from the Iliad Micra or the Little Iliad as well as the Ilioparesis, the fall of Troy, and Virgil makes reference to multiple elements that were in these two smaller epics, smaller parts of the epic cycle. In particular, well, the Trojan horse as well, we get the most complete version that still remains of any literature that we still have available. That comes from Aeneas's description in book two of the Aeneid. This very likely drew from material from the Ilioparesis, but he also makes references to other things such as the Amazon Queen that Achilles kills and we learned from another character that he was in love with her. Reference is made to her and other things that we know were described in the Iliad Micra and the Ilioparesis, but we don't have those texts themselves. But it seems clear that Virgil had either these texts or versions of them that were close enough, that contained more information than we now have available. And as I mentioned, Virgil died while scouting these locations. So not only was he trying to be as faithful as possible, that might be the wrong word. He was making use of these texts and clearly couldn't just diverge from what was known because these texts were very well known. This was despite the fact that seven hundred years have passed since Homer's time. The stories of the Trojan War are still probably the best known of any type of literature available to the Romans at that time. And he's trying to faithfully integrate those into his ideology of the Roman Empire. By choosing Aeneas as the hero of his epic, Virgil sort of committed himself to integrating this story of the founding of Rome, or the founding of the Roman people, with a body of literature and legend, oral tradition that was already there, already well in place. So he wanted to show faithfulness to the text. He wanted to show faithfulness to the geography by scouting these sites. But in choosing Aeneas, he wasn't making a random choice. He wasn't just picking some character that had no traditions, no story around him and just completely fabricating it. In the part of the early of the Eurid, book five, there is a face-off on the battlefield between Diomedes when he is in the midst of his his chaos, his earning glory on the battlefield with Athena helping him just slaughter all the Trojans around him and even defeat the God Mars, or Ares, on the battlefield. It's at this point that Diomedes almost kills Aeneas, and that's the point at which Aphrodite, the Greek name for Venus, who is the mother of Aeneas, she tries to intervene. She tries to protect Aeneas from being killed by Diomedes, and Diomedes directly strikes her, cuts her hand, and then she flees the battlefield, goes back to Olympus, and Apollo actually picks up Aeneas. You know, the language describes Aphrodite is actually dropping her son, Aeneas, she was trying to rescue him, and leaving him to be picked up by Apollo and rescued. But either way, in book five, Aeneas is rescued from Diomedes. And again, in book 20 of the Iliad, we have the God Poseidon, who is the Roman Neptune, or the Greek name for the Roman Neptune, rescues him on the battlefield when it's Achilles this time that's about to kill him. Now, this could potentially also be a doublet. There could be various traditions about Aeneas being rescued by some God on the battlefield, and now it just so happens we have two two versions show up at different points in the Iliad. But in book 20 of the Iliad, we're told the son of Pelius would have had Aeneas's life, so Achilles would have killed Aeneas. His sword so near about to strike if Poseidon, the Earthshaker, had not been watching. He spoke to the gods quickly saying, now I fear for the brave Aeneas, who will descend to the halls of Hades, slain by that son of Pelius, simply for listening foolishly to the far strikers words to Apollo. Apollo would not save him, from destruction. Why should an innocent man who always makes fine offerings to us rulers of the heavens suffer harm because of another's quarrel? Let us rescue him and avoid Zeus's anger, where Achilles to kill him. For Aeneas is destined to live on, so that Dardanus's race itself might survive. In other words, Dardanus is the ancestor of all the Trojans, and Aeneas is destined. There is Poseidon knows this fate that Aeneas has to found another place, another people, somewhere else, so that the Trojans can go on. And he says, the son of Cronus, Zeus, has come to hate Prime's line, and mighty Aeneas will be the Trojan king as his descendants in time to come. It was Oxide Queen Hera who answered him, who replied to Poseidon, Earthshaker, you must choose whether to rescue him or let him die, brave though he is at the hands of Achilles, Pelius' son. Palsithena and I have always sworn before you all never to save the Trojans from evil, not even when all Troy burns consumed by blazing fire, like fire those warlike sons of Achilles will light within. On hearing this Poseidon, the Earthshaker, plunged through the midst of the battle and the hail of spears toward the space where Aeneas and Achilles fought. In a moment he veiled Achilles' eyes enmissed, plucked the ash spear, shot with bronze from brave Aeneas's pierce shield, and set it down at Achilles' feet, then lifted Aeneas and swung him into the air, high over the ranks of warriors and lines of chariots, so that with the power of the God's hand he came to earth on the far edge of the field. Then Poseidon, the Earthshaker at his side, spoke to him with winged words and said, when Achilles meets his fate, when he is dead, then fight courageously at the front, for no other Greek can kill you. So in other words, once both Hector and Achilles are dead, then Aeneas will not have the same sort of match on the battlefield. Two important things to notice, remember that in the Aeneid, in Book 2, when Aeneas is describing his flight from Troy, he wants to stay and fight the Greeks, but it's only when his mother Venus shows him the gods at work destroying the walls of Troy, that he sees that the gods themselves. It's not just the Greeks that are destroying the city, but the gods including Poseidon or Neptune. Neptune is actually with his trident shaking down the walls, destroying the walls. Remember that when I described the background of the Iliad, that around 1250 BCE, the city of Ilium in the Troad, the model for the city of Troy, was destroyed not by an invasion, but by an earthquake. A few decades later would be destroyed by an invasion. That's when we have the arrowheads and the ashes from fires, but this, at one point at least, walls of the actual historical city of Troy were destroyed by earthquake and Poseidon, Neptune, is not only the god of the sea, he's also described as the earth shaker. So this interaction between Poseidon interacting on the battlefield by throwing up this mist, you know, could be some sort of narrativized memory of that. And, secondly, the most important part for Virgil here is this prophecy. For Aeneas is destined to live on so that Dardanis's wraiths itself might survive. There were several accounts of Aeneas going somewhere to the west in the Mediterranean and founding a new city and these aren't always Rome or even the people who will eventually become the Romans. There is a city very close to Troy called Aeneidae, or in your book, Aeneas. That city was named after Aeneas, it was described as being the city that he founded, but clearly if you're Virgil, you don't want that to be the only one. You want Aeneas to keep moving, make his way to Rome. He then found the city on the island of Crete called Pergamum, and this could be confusing because Pergamum was actually already a city at the time of the Trojan War, but also at Virgil's time, and you can still see the ruins of it today, that is not on Crete. It's actually in Asia Minor, in modern-day Turkey, and you can visit the Roman remains there. There was an entire Roman city. In fact, that was one of the first places in the eastern Mediterranean that willfully came under the Roman Empire's control. Aeneas comes to Crete, which had been an empire even before the actual Trojan War. The Minoan Empire had been established there at the capital of the city of Gnosis. But according to Virgil, Aeneas comes to Crete, founds a second city, this one named after a Trojan city, but again, this is not where he's supposed to remain. They find that out when there's a plague. So he can't stay at Aeneidae because that's when he comes across the tree that he tries to uproot and he finds that there's a Trojan who's been killed with spears and his body is still underneath this tree and these spears grew into this tree, but he tells him you cannot stay here. You cannot settle here. This is not the empire you're supposed to found. He goes to Crete and then there's a plague and they have to get an oracle to explain what's going on. And again, the oracle says this is not the empire you're supposed to found. You need to keep moving west. And this becomes a common theme. So this is one of those situations that works well for the author's goal. And he's able to deal with the elements of the story that he has to account for. He has to incorporate. He can't just dismiss. He can't just forget, but he wants to change. He doesn't want Aeneas to stop as the stop with the founding of Aeneidae. He doesn't want him to stop with the founding of this Pergamum on Crete. He needs to keep him moving and this actually becomes one of the themes of the entire epic, or at least the first six books. Aeneas has to pursue this fate. He can't do the easy thing. He can't do the convenient thing. Or, you know, not that founding a city would be easy or convenient. But he has to keep moving in order to... He's bound by this fate and he is duty bound. He is... I'll describe in a minute. This is his Piatos. But this has to be established by the time he gets to Carthage. Because when he gets to Carthage, this is the ultimate temptation. He could just stay there and become king of Carthage by marrying Daito. But we've already established that the gods want him to keep moving until he gets to Lachum, Latium, where the Latins live. That's where eventually Rome is going to be founded. So by choosing this character that already existed, existed in the Iliad, existed in oral tradition as the founder who came from Troy and founded some other city, Virgil is picking up a lot of authorial responsibility. Things he has to account for. He can't just presume you don't know anything about these other versions of the story. He is picking up this character that we know is the son of Venus or Aphrodite. He's most famously remembered as carrying his father on his shoulders out of the burning city of Troy. There are representations of this in art on paintings on vases and coins and this sort of thing, centuries before Virgil's time. So we know Aeneas was already known for this act of heroism and of duty to his father that he wouldn't leave his father behind. He picked him up and carried him out on his shoulders and his father is carrying the family gods, the Pinates. These household gods are these local family gods that are not any of the big gods like Zeus, Jupiter or Aphrodite, Venus or Minerva, Athena. They're not the the major sort of gods of the whole world. They're these gods that are deeply connected to this family line. And so he has to rescue, he can't leave these behind, he has to rescue these Pinates. These household gods are the the statues of them. So this image of Aeneas carrying his father and his father carrying the Pinates was already established. It was already the symbol of this noble act, even at the destruction of Troy. And that passage I read from the Iliad also established Juno's contempt for the Trojans, all the Trojans. She doesn't seem to have anything particular against Aeneas at this point in the Iliad, but clearly she will have a grudge against Aeneas in Virgil's Aeneid. And also the figure of Daito. Aeneas, Virgil did not invent the character of Daito. There was already a story about this woman who came from Tyre in Phoenicia and had to escape her brother and in escaping her brother founded this new colony on North Africa and had to do it by, there's the legend that she made a deal with the African king Irobus that she would take over the amount of land that she could cover with an oxide and she cuts this oxide into really thin strips to where she can mark out an area big enough for a city. And the city actually becomes very prosperous, but when faced with the requirement of marrying Irobus, she actually kills herself. She puts together this sacrificial pyre and as she's sacrificing these animal sacrifices, she actually kills herself with a sword and then falls on the pyre. But and connecting her with Aeneas is something that is original to Virgil, that Virgil was the first apparently to do that. And not only does Virgil inherit these story elements, he also adapts some of the narrative style and narrative choices that Homer has already established and been praised for by past literary commentators including Aristotle. Remember that the Iliad starts in the middle of things and not chronologically in the middle. It's actually very close to the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year war. So too, the Odyssey begins very close to the end of Odysseus's wanderings, but he stops it in book nine and begins to describe what has happened chronologically in the past. In the story past we have a coming one-quarter of the way through the narrative. That narrative structure you probably noticed also happens obviously in the Aeneid, where book one establishes Aeneas's landing on the shore of Carthage and he's making his way to Daito's palace. But then in books two and three, he stops to catch us up. He's telling his story to Daito, but in the narrative he's actually catching up the readers of Virgil's Aeneid with what has happened, what wanderings he's been through up to that point. And you probably notice, especially if you've read the books nine through twelve of the Odyssey, a lot of familiar characters. We again have the reference to Scylla and Charybdis. We have Aeneas landing at the location of Polyphemus and not only that, but he lands near the home of Polyphemus after Polyphemus has been blinded and one of the Greeks, one of Odysseus's or Ulysses's sailors has been left behind. And even though he realizes that the Trojans are his old enemies, he'd rather they kill him than that he be killed by Polyphemus. So Aeneas is literally following in Odysseus's or Ulysses' footsteps. But even before that, even before book two, you probably notice some familiar story elements added in book one. In book one of the Aeneid, notice Aeneas is driven on to this far and shore. He meets a goddess that's disguised as a young girl on the coast who then gives him instructions. He travels to this court while he's wrapped in this shroud of mist. So that no one can see him. And when he's revealed, when that mist is taken away, he introduces himself to the queen. He's made to look like a god. His mother Aeneas makes him look like a god. And he's welcome to this royal court. He sees a depiction of the story of the Trojan War. In his case, he sees a mural depicting the battles on the Trojan War and seeing that makes him cry. He says, even at this other end of the world, our sorrows are known. And then he goes on to give his own narrative within the narrative, in which his ships are lost in the storm, after his household gods appear in a dream. The Trojans try to settle at one place and another than another. His men kill the cattle of the harpies. Just as in the Odyssey, Odysseys' men kill the cattle of the sun. He ends up with Pythemus and the Cyclops. After he tells his story, he is tempted to remain and to be married to this queen and to stay at this place and to be a king. These same elements we saw Odysseys confronted with in books 5 through 8 of the Odyssey. Odysseys washed up on the shore of the Phaeacians. He meets Athena in disguise and when he makes his way back, he's covered in a shroud of mist so that no one can see him. Athena is sort of keeping him hidden, but then when that mist is taken away, he looks like a god. He doesn't look like this vagrant that just washed up on the shore. He then narrates his own accounts of his journeys, in which his ships are lost in the storm, started by Athena, and his men are tempted to settle in the land of the Lotus Eaters, and he has the interaction with Pythemus, the Cyclops. He sails between Scylla and Charybdis. His men kill the cattle of the sun god Helios. After he tells his story, Alcinois, the father of Nelsica, the king of the Phaeacians, notes that his daughter is ready to be married and Odysseys would be a great Phaeacian. He would be great for him to marry Nelsica and be Phaeacian royalty at that point. So Odysseys is tempted to remain there on the island of the Phaeacians, but he wants to get home. He has to sort of force himself and tell his host I appreciate this author offer, but I really have to go home to Ithaca. Similarly, Aeneas is being tempted to stop in Carthage to settle down, but he knows he is duty bound to go on and found this new people. So for all of this similarity, the similarity has a point, and we don't want to fall into the easy generalization, oversimplification, and say that Virgil is just copying Homer, that he's just retelling Homer, because he's not. He's going to tell a very different, it's going to be a very different narrative, even the elements that involve the same story. So if we were just to say that Virgil copied Homer, we'd overlook 90% of the epic. The elite in the Odyssey, as they've been handed down, or as they had been handed down to Virgil's time, are significant enough elements of the cultural context that Virgil can't simply overlook them. He has to pay homage to Homer before he can build on Homer and what Homer is written. This is different than we may be used to in the modern Hollywood writing practices, modern movies. Screenwriters usually presume the majority of their audience is completely ignorant of whatever they're adapting, the elite or the Odyssey or any other work of literature that the screenwriters are pillaging for this content. These Hollywood adaptations are almost never actually adaptations. They just start with a blank slate and try to start from scratch with nothing more than a few familiar names. But Virgil can't do that. He knows that his audience knows these stories. He has to pay his debt to Homer. He has to make his debt to Homer explicit. He has to pay homage to Homer and to the other authors of the epic cycle, and to the oral tradition that's there. And only then can he begin to add to the uniquely Roman elements, narrative elements of this pre-existing story. Once we use these parallels between the Odyssey and the Iliad and the Aeneid to show that he has paid homage to Homer, then we see what he has built on top of that framework. Those similarities are just the scaffolding that allow Virgil to build this very uniquely Roman epic. The first and most obvious and most consistent theme that is a departure from the Homeric epics is this theme of Piatas. Piatas is this Latin word that's frequently used to describe Aeneas. And in your reading, in the Fagal's translation, it's usually, you'll see the words Aeneas duty bound, or duty bound Aeneas, or Aeneas heedful of his duty or something to this effect. And that's translation of this very common adjective Pius. It's usually Pius Aeneas. Aeneas who has Piatas. Now Piatas is the origin of our word piety. If you're pious, that means you are devoted to God or devoted to religious and spiritual concerns. But that's not exactly what Piatas originally meant. There was Piatas which was devotion to the gods or showing proper respect to the gods. But there was also part of Piatas was respect to your parents, to your children, to your relatives, to your country, to benefactors, people who have helped you in the past. This is a sense of duty or dutifulness, a loyalty patriotism, a loyalty to family and patriotism. It's the sort of thing we in America typically describe as, you know, God family country, this list of duties in a particular order. This was Piatas. This was to whom you owed what and in what order you owed them. And part connected to that was a sense of justice, a sense of gentleness or kindness or compassion. But these things were not considered different things. They were all part of the same virtue, this virtue of Piatas. And the image that comes down to us and actually came down to Virgil, this image of Aeneas carrying his father and Caesis on his shoulders while Caesis carried the family gods, the Panates. And at the same time leading his son Ascanius by the hand, this was the image of Piatas. His duty is first to his father, second to his son, and his father is the holder of the family's traditions, literally the holder of the Panates, these gods of the family tradition, of the family heritage. And of course the next generation has to walk on his own two feet, but he's being led by the example of his father. And this is why we have this description of this event in Book Two of the Aeneid. You may be wondering if you have the paperback version of the Penguin Classics, the Robert Fagel translation. You may see that Creusa is actually walking in front of Aeneas while he's carrying in Caesis and leading Ascanius. That is because, as I already mentioned, Virgil added the fact that Creusa gets left behind in Troy, because he has the goal, he needs to get rid of her in order to have Aeneas marry a Latin princess and become the founder of the Latin people of Rome. But it was clear that in some of the older artistic representations that Creusa is actually part of the family of Piotas. She is someone to whom Aeneas is also responsible for, although she does tend to be walking on her own. He's carrying his father, leading his son by the hand, but Creusa is just sort of there trying to keep up. In this focus on duty, on obedience, to a certain world order, an unshakable world order, a world order that has to be upheld no matter what, even if the whole city is being destroyed around you, bears some resemblance to this psychology of authoritarianism that I mentioned before when I discussed Hesiod. There is this belief in this universal world order that is governed by fate. You can't change your fate and yet somehow you're supposed to do something to go along with it. There is a very strict hierarchy with Zeus at the top and Juno can out overrule Jupiter, Hera can out overrule Zeus, but she can influence those below her on this hierarchy. And wherever you are on that hierarchy, you owe obedience to those above you, but then you can demand obedience from those that are below you. Other characteristics of authoritarianism tend to be loyalty to the tribe, to the group that you're a part of above all other things. And we see that Aeneas is definitely obedient to Troy. He's not going to save his father and son at the expense of leaving his countrymen behind. He wants to continue to go back into the city and fight Greeks as long as he possibly can until Venus shows him that the gods have ruled that Troy is going to fall. And so part of his pietas is obeying that decision, recognizing that the gods have decided Troy is going to fall so there's nothing he can do. He cannot oppose the will of the gods. There's also these other elements like the militarism, the sort of who you are is determined by who you're willing to kill or what you're willing to risk in direct violent conflict. Also there's heavy sexism and we saw this very explicit in Hesiod where Hesiod just goes off on a rant about how women are a curse that was sent to humanity as a punishment from the gods. We don't see that level of sexism obviously in Virgil. He's very sympathetic toward Dido. He describes her always as infelix Dido, as tragic Dido, as if what's happening is not her fault. But notice there are no female characters who show pietas or who are able to show it in the face of passions. All the female characters in Virgil are still more subject to their own individual passions than are the men. And that includes Venus. Venus is though she's the mother of Anias, she's acting not necessarily out of this larger grander noble piety but acting out of a mother's love for her son. So not exactly the same sort of level of pietas. So the women are not portrayed negatively the way they were in Hesiod but not portrayed as positive as the men are either. And I contrasted Hesiod's authoritarianism with Escalus's philosophical inquiry. And I'm noted that the opposite of authoritarianism is not anti-authoritarianism because that tends to be just a rejection of the particular authority. Someone who wants to be the authority and have that system, that hierarchy stay in place, they just want to be a higher part of that hierarchy. That's not the same thing. But philosophical inquiry is when you open up for discussion, for analysis, examination, critical examination of this hierarchy and of the assumptions of what makes a group a group and whether or not you owe loyalty to them or to someone else or everything is open to question and that's something that authoritarians do not like. But we'll see that both of these two types of psychologies are coming together in Virgil because both of these two psychologies are coming together in Rome at this time or rather there's this constant back and forth between sort of philosophical inquiry which is connected to artistic inquiry which is connected to the sort of egalitarian view of the world where the Romans feel like see themselves as their protectors of peace and of justice in other countries beyond their own and then that will be replaced by this imperial, imperious authoritarianism where the emperor is supreme in Rome and he can use his authority to have things his way within Rome and then the Romans can then exert authority over all of their colonies and so there's this great gigantic, the whole earth is a giant hierarchy in which everyone has their place and they're not supposed to question that. So there's a back and forth with this and this is especially prominent throughout Roman history. I mentioned specifically the fact that it was when Julius Caesar began to act as, well he actually was a dictator although that term meant something different at that time that just meant he was the speaker. Terms like dictator and emperor and prince which comes from the word princips which is the first meaning the first citizen. These are terms taken by either Julius Caesar or Augustus Caesar because they did not want to use words like the word for king, Rex or Regis because the Romans had this long history of up until 509 BCE Rome was a monarchy and the last monarchs were the Tarkins. There was a king named Tarkinus Superbus which means Tarkinus the arrogant, the abusive and because of the things that he did he provoked such anger in his subjects that he was assassinated. He was also assassinated by a guy named Brutus or with the backing of a guy named Brutus just like later Julius Caesar would be but from 509 BCE to the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE and if we carry that up to the accession of Octavian to the role of emperor we've got about 500 years of the Roman Republic which is especially hostile to the very notion of a king of somebody who takes individual power and exercises arbitrary power over the people without being a servant of the people and without the senate expressing the will of the people. So Rome was frequently described and you'll see even to this day if you go to the city of Rome you'll see manhole covers and other public works that have the letters SPQR on them and that stood for Sinatus Populusche Romanos and that meant literally the senate and the people of Rome. So the senate and the people were reminders that this was a republic not a monarchy. So by the time Julius Caesar basically carries out a military coup against the senate by leading his legions across the Rubicon into Rome he named himself dictator because that word didn't have the negative connotations it has now it just meant that he was the speaker you dictate or take dictation that is you speak but the implication he was king in all but name and that's what Brutus and Cassius and the other conspirators were afraid of but his assassination clearly didn't stop that authoritarianism from taking over Rome and taking over the larger empire but even when Augustus made himself the first emperor he takes on this title of emperor in other words I'm going to preside over the rest of the empire not necessarily the senate and the people of Rome although of course he did he just didn't want to make that too obvious he described himself as prinkips or prince this is where we get the word prince as the first citizen not somebody who is has this arbitrary power over other people although of course he did in in action if not in name. So to understand Piatas we're talking about a type of authoritarianism that is going to become the rule now that Augustus has become emperor and Virgil is clearly accepting this adapting it even praising it but he can't bring himself to acknowledge that in such a blunt way as Hesiod did or as Kratos power the the embodiment of power did in Estus' play Prometheus bound where he says no one is free but Zeus he can't bring himself to say just obey the powerful because they'll hurt you if you don't he is living in this civilization that prizes individual autonomy that prizes civic responsibility from everyone including those with the most power so how is Virgil going to accommodate this imperial hierarchy that he's a part of especially when he's reading these books directly to the emperor himself he's reading these to Augustus Caesar he has to make this obedience to authority of virtue but at the same time not call it just obedience to authority so this becomes a type of philosophical authoritarianism authoritarianism that sets rules out it tries to follow a social contract where we at least agree to these virtues that these virtues make you a better citizen than the alternative and that alternative is something that Virgil directly portrays in the Greek account remember that term matis that I discussed in discussing the Odyssey in the Odyssey Odysseus lies a lot and that is a good thing that's how he gets away with it and we as the audience in Homer's time would see that and say oh that was clever that was crafty Odysseus that was Odysseus Palometis who's able to weave these strategies together who's able to navigate this web of problems and come up with clever solutions rather than using brute force to try to hammer his way through a difficult situation this virtue in Homer becomes the primary vice or one of the two primary vices in Virgil's depiction of Aeneas's journeys so for all those similarities between Aeneas's journey and Odysseus's journey Aeneas is literally following Ulysses Odysseus in Ulysses footsteps but he by contrast by setting up that parallel we see a definite contrast between the way Virgil sees Odysseus or Ulysses and his virtue of matis versus how he sees Aeneas and the virtue of Piatas so one example is when Aeneas shows up on the island of the Cyclops he sees one of Odysseus's men who has been left behind and that indicates to us that Odysseus failed his duty to his own men he failed to be sure that he had all of his men on the ship he left a man behind and that was a failure of Piatas although it was Odysseus being true to himself and Odysseus is consistently described by the narrator and by characters throughout the Aeneas as heartless Ulysses or iron-hearted Ulysses or deceptive deceitful Ulysses all these variations on what had been a virtue in Homer is now a vice in Virgil and the ultimate manifestation of this is the Trojan Horse just as the Trojan Horse was you know this thing that it made Odysseus cry when he heard Demoticus seeing about the Trojan Horse that's when he says you know I am Odysseus my claos has reached the heavens because that story of the Trojan Horse was his reminder that he was Odysseus Palometis you know a multifaceted weaver of strategies Odysseus now that same action the the strategy of the Trojan Horse in Virgil is the ultimate deception and it shows the difference between the honest Trojans and the deceitful Greeks so on pages 77 through 81 this is in book two of the Aeneid we had this Greek named Sinon pretends to be this escaped captive of the Greeks he admits that yes I was a Greek but the Greeks wanted to sacrifice me to the gods and not just any of the Greeks but specifically Ulysses Odysseus he wants the Trojans to know that he and Odysseus are absolute enemies that way he can sort of set him up self up as someone who's more honest than those deceitful Greeks because they all know Odysseus Ulysses is as clever as a is a deceiver so if he wants them to not think the Trojan Horse is a deception he has to distinguish the horse he has to separate the horse in their minds and the minds of the Trojans from Odysseus Ulysses but of course that itself is a lie but the way Aeneas tells the story and of course the way Virgil narrates it establishes that the reason this lie worked wasn't so much because the Trojans and the Greeks were competing to see who's more crafty it's because the Trojans weren't crafty at all they themselves were honest they they sympathized with this man and because they were honest they tend to be easy to dupe they tend to presume other people are honest as well and that was their vice and despite being deceived by Sinon and having their whole city destroyed because of this lie from this Greek who pretended to be in distress but wasn't actually in distress notice that when they get to Polyphemus they again meet a stranded Greek who admits that he is Greek admits he is Ithacan he's one of Odysseus's men and yet they still trust him they still give him the benefit of the doubt because over and over again no matter how many times they're deceived they're the honorable ones they're the upright the trustworthy ones they have Piatas as a virtue not Matus and Matus is one sort of vice that Virgil contrasts with Piatas but there's another vice that becomes a central theme as well and that is the vice of Fiora now obviously this is where we get our word fury we have a Fiora's in this emotional overwhelming usually rage wrath but Fiora isn't just anger in Latin it's also love it's any emotion that overwhelms your better judgment that overwhelms logic reason and especially commitment or duty or Piatas so Fiora is always threatening to overwhelm Piatas to cause you to forget your Piatas to forget your duties shortly after in the very first book when Virgil gives the invocation of the muse he describes PS Nias you know duty bound Nias and then contrasts that description with the second character he describes which is Juno he asked you know how could such a divine wrath be so implacable as soon as on the very first page this is page 47 in the Fagals translation the very opening of book one Virgil asked the muse tell me how it all began why was Juno outraged what could wound the queen of the gods with all her power why did she force a man so famous for his devotion his Piatas to brave such rounds of hardship bear such trials can such rage Fiora inflamed the immortal's hearts it's Juno's rage it's Juno's wrath as Fiora that is consistently persecuting Nias and Virgil wants to ask why would someone who shows nothing but Piatas be the object of such Fiora and of course it's not only Juno it's also Daito it's going to be Daito's rage that is anger which is not the rage in itself that's the problem but the fact that the rage comes from love spurned love what she believes is spurned love so the love and the rage are both examples of Fiora and that's back and forth that competition between Piatas and Fiora is something Nias himself has to deal with he has to choose between his desire to stay with Daito and his Piatas his duty to go on to Italy and in Daito we have a very interesting character she is not a sort of a flat static character the way she might have been representative someone like Hesiod had described her as I mentioned before there is a story about Daito that was around in Virgil's time so he is adapting a character from the oral tradition that has been described in at least one other written source but in those sources she was a queen of Tyre of the Phoenician city of Tyre on the eastern Mediterranean coast in the modern areas of Syria and Lebanon and she has to flee her brother and settles a new city at Carthage now this is probably an etiology of the city of Carthage because the city of Carthage had been founded as one of these many many colonies of the Phoenicians around the southern Mediterranean so it was most likely just a trading post that became more profitable but her story if it's an etiology recalls the fact that the Carthaginians were Phoenician and she like Aeneas was a founder of a new city who fled an old city for different reasons so there's a lot of parallels between Daito and Aeneas she is she has her own sort of heroic character there already but of course that story by itself wouldn't suit uh Virgil's entire purpose recall that Virgil's purpose is to explain Rome not just mention oh here's a story about Aeneas who you know at some point probably becomes a founder of the Roman people he wants to use these stories adapted from the the epic cycle to explain things that happen much later so in particular Daito is not just any queen that gives assistance to Aeneas she is the queen of Carthage and for the entire time of the Punic wars the wars that involved Hannibal and the invasion of Italy these wars that last nearly a century in Daito Virgil wants to give another etiology not just of Rome in general but specifically of the Punic wars so we see these characters are interacting with each other we can understand why Aeneas needs help Daito is willing to help him Aeneas tells his story and of course Venus sends Cupid to sit on Daito's lap to make her fall in love with Aeneas so we we can see all these reasons why Daito would fall in love with Aeneas and we understand why Aeneas has to leave to go on to found this new people and we see why Daito is confused by that and believes that she's being spurned and her rage against him but all of these things are being arranged by the writer's goal and the writer's goal is to set up an antipathy a hatred between Carthage and Rome and say that that will eventually be the origins of the the Punic wars centuries later and we recognize of an easy to understand story of love gone bad and it's not just Daito and Aeneas that are interacting here that are part of the story it's also the goddess of romantic love that is Venus versus the goddess of marriage and state power this goddess Juno is the one who should be the protector of marriage and should be the protector of state power and she is the patroness of Daito and of Carthage the Carthaginians are said to have a particular fondness and a particular altar reserved for Juno and so this is one of Juno's favorite cities and of course Aeneas is protected by Venus because you know he is her son and we may say that we have this familiar parable about a guy who wants a short-term romantic relationship and a woman who wants a marriage and believes that you know there is a marriage that the man doesn't see as valid and so we see a lot of stories and a lot of themes converging in this representation this representation this mosaic is from the United Kingdom from Britain and was constructed you know after Britain had become a Roman province which it was not in Virgil's time it had not yet been conquered but in it we see a clear representation of the arrival of the Trojans followed by the meeting between Aeneas and Daito with Anna and Aescanias there as well there's the the hunting trip where Aeneas and the Trojans as well as Daito go off on this hunting trip and they're trapped in a cave during a storm of course all this was arranged by the the goddesses both Hera or Juno and Venus were complicit in bringing them together but both goddesses had very different plans for what that would lead to and we see of course that Venus has been using Daito this entire time just to provide help to Aeneas just so that her son has a safe harbor to to rest in and restock before he goes on to Rome or to Italy so Venus the goddess of love is clearly willing to exploit Daito Juno recognizes this and she catches Venus in the act she sees her using Cupid to seduce Daito on behalf of Aeneas just so that she will be cooperative and help the Trojans and after Juno catches her she's understandably indignant and she wants to make a sort of a truce it seems with Venus by saying well let's keep Aeneas here in Carthage in that way we both win I don't have to Juno get something that is her city Carthage now has like a new army that's going to protect it her favorite queen Daito now has a husband that will help secure her position there in this new settlement and Venus gets to see her son prosper in this new role as a king of this foreign city but notice how the mind games start at that point even between the goddesses so in book four around line 112 that's page 130 and 131 in the Phegel translation we see the goddesses confronting each other and agreeing to you know Juno says I'll bind them in lasting marriage make them one their wedding it will be and while she does this we're told that Venus did not oppose her she nodded in a scent and smiled at the guile that she saw through but we notice we haven't actually seen guile we can't tell that Juno is actually lying here it seems that this would actually be to her benefit but clearly Venus is not is going to pretend to go along with it but she's going to deceive her while Aeneas and Daito are on this hunting expedition together Juno sends a storm Daito and this is page 133 around line 205 Daito and Troy's commander make their way to the same cave for shelter during the storm primordial earth and Juno queen of marriage give the signal and lightning torches flare and the high sky bears witness to the wedding nymphs on the mountaintops wail out the wedding hymn this was the first day ever her death the first of grief the cause of it all from now on Daito cares no more for appearances nor for her reputation either she no longer thinks to keep the affair a secret no she calls it marriage using a word to cloak her sense of guilt so this reference to torches this reference to wedding hymns this is a sort of supernatural wedding that Juno puts on that Daito sees but Aeneas does not and so later when she calls this a marriage to Aeneas Aeneas will say I never held the wedding torch because he doesn't understand this as a wedding though Daito does and the confusion certainly grows exponentially from there and in order to understand what's happening with Daito we have to really get inside her head and use theory of mind not only to understand what she's thinking but what she thinks other people think because that's going to be the key that sort of pushes her over the edge not just the way she thinks things have happened but what she thinks Aeneas thinks and also what she thinks the others think because she has to contend with the local king Irobus who courted her wanted to marry her and she'd been putting him off and putting off other African kings that had proposed to her because up until now she has said that she swore a vow of chastity after her husband Sikius was killed in Tyre she's never going to marry again but now she is telling people that she is married to Aeneas and so that puts her in a very precarious situation that she can only defend herself now against the potential attacks from Irobus if Aeneas is in his trojans are actually going to be the military defense of Carthage but she quickly finds out that that's not going to happen and she finds out because Aeneas is preparing the boats to leave Carthage and we know why he's preparing the boats because Mercury has come to him it's been sent by Zeus to remind him that this is not the place you're supposed to settle this is not the kingdom you're supposed to found all of this is made very explicit to us between lines 300 and 350 which is on page 136 to 137 when Mercury goes to him and tells him to at least remember Ascanius rising into his prime the hopes you lodge in Eulis who is Ascanius your only heir you owe him Italy's realm the land of Rome and so reminding him that you owe your son you owe your descendants this new kingdom that is not here is not Carthage that you're giving up by staying here in Carthage and so at that point we're told that Aeneas yearns to be gone to desert this land he loves thunder struck by the warnings Jupiter's command probing his options turning to this plan in that in other words he's doing what Odysseus did as made us I'm thinking about this plan and that plan in this plan but ultimately it's not the planning that he's supposed to give into it's his Piatas his duty but he has to make a decision at this point between love that is your and Piatas that is duty the duty to go on and found this new place and so he thinks that the best course of action is to go ahead and start reading the ships but then he will approach Daito and tell her but of course as the ships are being prepared she finds out and she thinks he was trying to sneak away so on page 138 this is line book four line 378 she calls him you traitor you really believe you keep this secret this outrage can nothing hold you back not our love not the pledge once sealed with our right hands in other words this marriage not even the thought of Daito doomed to a cruel death presumably at this point it's not her suicide that she's making reference to but the fact that she has angered these other local kings by not marrying them and yet marrying an Eos oh I pray by these tears by the faith in your right hand what else have I left myself in all my pain by our wedding vows the marriage we began thanks to you my sense of honor is gone my one and only pathway to the stars the renown I once hold dear in whose hands my guest did you leave me here to meet my death guest that's all that remains of husband now so again remember our marriage now that you're just a guest and no longer my husband you know this is the position you put me in by this false marriage but Anias is clearly caught off guard by this he says even though he's we're told he's fighting to master the torment in his heart in other words the furor in his art at last he ventured a few words I you have done me so many kindnesses and you can count them all I shall never deny what you deserve my queen never regret my memories of Daito not while I can recall myself and draw breath of life and he says that he I never did I dreamed I'd keep my flight a secret don't imagine that but then he counters nor did I once extend a bridegroom's torch or enter into a marriage pact with you I so he's saying okay you don't deserve this and I wasn't going to keep it a secret but we are not married I don't know what you're talking about because the supernatural arrangement that Juno had established is something that Daito saw but Anias did not see when they were in the cave and then his next line is rather unfortunate and this is not a very good theory of mind action he says if the fates had left me free to live my life to arrange my own affairs of my own free will Troy is the city first of all that I'd safeguard in other words I'd still be home with Krausa and I'd never would have met you now we can understand this from his point of view he's lost a lot and whatever he loses at Carthage is nothing compared to what he's lost when he lost his wife and in his city but clearly this is not the right time to confront Daito with that and after this although we see that it's clearly difficult for Anias to break himself away from this relationship and from this place he is Anias duty bound Pias Anias that's line 495 reminds us of that but Anias is driven by duty now strongly he long longs to ease and allay her sorrow speak to her turn away her anguish with reassurance still moaning deeply heart shattered by his great love in spite of all he obeys the God's commands and back he goes to his ships and we get the implication that for all his praise of Piatos Virgil does sympathize with Daito around line 518 he says love talking to Cupid love you tyrant to what extremes won't you compel our hearts but it's how the characters respond to that love that distinguishes the furor of Daito that ultimately wins versus the Piatos of Anias we get this great Homeric simile around line 555 as firm as a sturdy oak grown tough with age when the north winds blasting off the Alps compete fighting left and right to wrench it from the earth and the winds scream the trunk shutters its leafy crest showers across the ground but it clings firm to its rock its roots stretching as deep into dark world below as it as its crowns go towering toward the gales of the heaven so firm the hero stands buffeted left and right by storms of appeals he takes the full force of love and suffering deep into his great heart his will stands unmoved the falling tears are futile in other words Anias is just as has just as much furor inside him but his will overwhelms the furor and his will is committed to Piatos rather than emotion and so it seems that Virgil is rather ambiguous on where he falls in this judgment of Daito is this does she just lack the Piatos that she needs and we had seen before that when she falls in love with Anias while he's explaining the the story while he's telling the story of the escape from Troy and his adventures on the sea we were told at the beginning of before that the construction of Carthage had stopped in other words now that she was so fixated on Anias on her love for Anias on her furor her passion she had neglected her civic duties and this was a failure Piatos but it's also Virgil consistently refers to her as in Felix Daito that means unfortunate in the word Felix sometimes translated as happy and so sometimes in Felix would be translated as unhappy but it's not just happy and it's not just fortunate it is faded in Felix is also ill-fated in fact our word happy comes from happen the same root word is the word happen like what's going to happen what is faded we don't know and if it turns out to be good then you are happy but if you were unfaded or badly faded you are unhappy slightly different than the way we use the term now but we have the same ambiguity in Felix Daito is she faded to be unhappy is she faded is her life tragic because of something that is beyond her control or is this the result of her inability to restrain her furor could she have shown more Piatos to Carthage and come up with some way to go on as its leader it's definitely it made explicit that she was not faded to die this is why when she commits suicide Juno has to cut off a lock of her hair or Juno has to send Iris the goddess the messenger goddess to cut off a lock of her hair in order to give to Persephone so that she can enter the underworld because Daito was not faded to die yet Daito took her own life in this moment of furor of overwhelming passion but all of this again we remember serves a purpose for Virgil in book four as she's committing suicide she's created this pyre where instead of making sacrifices to the gods is in the older story she's burning all of Anias's weapons and clothes and things that he's left behind in their bedroom and she's pretending that that's all she's burning but she plans to fall on her sword and die there on the the pyre as well but as she does she makes it a ritual she makes it an invocation of this curse so she's not just sacrificing an animal and saying I hope you gods that to whom I make the sacrifice will cause this thing to happen that I want to happen but she's making herself the sacrifice and using that to consecrate a curse and that curse is against the descendants of Anias she says around line 775 that is my prayer my final cry I pour it out with my own lifeblood and you Miterians in other words people from Tyre because even though they're no longer in Tyre they're from the city of Tyre in Phoenicia you Miterians hairy with hatred all his line his race to come make that offering to my ashes send it down below no love between our peoples ever no packs of peace come rising up from my bones you avengers still unknown to stalk these Trojan settlers hunt with fire and iron now or in time to come whenever the power is yours shore clash with shore sea against sea and sword against sword this is my curse war between all our peoples all our children endless war so clearly this is this connection between Daito and Anias even though each character had their own story before Virgil Virgil is putting them together and he's not just putting them together to make an interesting story he is directly telling us this is why Hannibal Barker existed this is why the Punic Wars happened and it's clear that he's not really coming up with an explanation he might believe but this is a founding myth of the republic not just the republic as it is at the moment that Virgil is alive but as it has come to be through all of these events including the Punic Wars but we don't want to fall too much into that historicizing we we should also be able to let Daito be Daito and let Anias be Anias now so we keep in mind the author's goal and the author's decisions and how they affect the narration but we as readers still have this option to follow the story and sort of construct that story in our own minds disconnected from the narrative so we can find a lot going on we can find a lot of really interesting character analysis and commentary on how emotion and duty fight each other differently and different types of personalities we can see a lot of this happening in these characters we don't necessarily have to let Virgil rush to this historical etiology after leaving Carthage of course Anias and the Trojans go first to Eryx and this is where they have the funeral games for Ankaises it's been one year since they buried Ankaises they're adrepping them both on the western end of Sicily there's quite a bit that happens there more with the author's goal remember that the Trojan women because they're inflamed by Iris who's in the skies who tells them let's stop wandering the seas let's just settle down here Eryx has the Trojan king Akestes there to give them a place to stay and the women are inflamed to burn the ships or the the women are driven in a furor to burn the Trojan ships so that they can stay there so that they don't have to keep sailing from one place to the to the next and we can kind of identify with them at this point we can sympathize with them because it seems like every time they get to a new place they settle down for a little bit but then they have to pick up and leave again but of course the author's goal at this point is he needs to get rid of the the female Trojans because all the other Trojan men once they arrive in Italy they're going to have to take Latin wives so something has to happen and this sort of serves nicely to reinforce the theme that Piatas means consistently having to give up this comfort and that is reconciled it is easily sort of fits in with the author's goal of creating this etiology of Rome in which these Latin or these Trojan men arrive in Italy and take local wives and give birth to the Roman people and then on from there of course they go to the underworld just like Odysseus and Heracles or Hercules and Orpheus and Thesius. Aeneas to be an epic hero has to go to the underworld this is a it's a very interesting book because it's not entirely necessary in the plot he can find out the same information if he if his father's ghost visited him again or if Venus revealed in a supernatural vision the future of Rome the way she revealed the fact that the gods were destroying Troy but if Odysseus did it then Aeneas is going to have to do it and do it better in Virgil. The interest to the underworld is one of those places that Virgil did scout out himself it's this is a new twist whereas instead of having to go beyond the pillars of Hercules which is beyond the Straits of Gibraltar the narrowest point between Spain and North Africa and out into the Atlantic Ocean where which is where frequently the realm of the dead is it's on an island out in the Atlantic somewhere. In this case it's an actual cave a cave that it existed in Virgil's time and you can still visit it today a cave that goes to this underground lake called the Lake of Avernus and Virgil is drawing the interest of the underworld a little bit closer to the path that is laid out in front of Aeneas and another new development that Virgil adds to underworld mythology is the the punishment of crimes in the afterlife. The Greeks portrayed certain people as being punished in the underworld and in Tartarus but these were usually only the people who incurred particular wrath of particular gods so like Prometheus incurs the wrath of Zeus and so he is singled out for torture. But in Virgil we have our first glimpse of the use of the underworld as a place of judgment that's modeled on like civic law courts and the Christian idea of hell had not been developed yet at least hell as a place of eternal torment for specific sins or specific crimes. A century later when the New Testament was written the word that is translated as hell in English translations was actually Gehenna and that was the name of a trash dump on the southern end of Jerusalem which is still a valley there you can go see hell you can see Gehenna but this is just where people threw their trash away and there was always a fire burning there because there was always trash that was being burned and this becomes used in the gospel of Matthew and Mark where it's Gehenna is used as sort of a metaphor for the total destruction of the body in the soul rather than just being killed and still sort of like having a body to be buried you're completely obliterated where you no longer exist as if you were thrown into these giant fires on the south end of town at Gehenna. It's that rather than an otherworldly location where souls are punished for all eternity and the idea we now tend to have of hell is a place where particular crimes done in life are punished with particular otherworldly punishments comes from the first part of Dante Alegari's medieval poem The Comedia which we translate as a divine comedy specifically the first part is the inferno and in this Dante directly models his depiction of hell on book six of Virgil's Aeneid and he wasn't vague about this he actually has Virgil as a character in the the story and Virgil is Dante's tour guide through hell and he takes him through the nine levels of hell and he points out here these people who did this in life and that's why they've been punished with this particular punishment in hell and incidentally Ulysses and Odysseus and Diomedes are both being tormented in hell for eternity because of the sack of Troy that contempt for Ulysses especially Ulysses as a liar as a deceiver is something that Dante will later pick up from Virgil but the real writer's goal for book six and the journey to hell seems to be the introduction of Rome some way to take two things that happen a thousand year more than a thousand years apart that is the aftermath of the Trojan War which you know even by the the standards that the ancients configured even by the the classical chronology started with 5th century Athens they figured that somewhere around 1170 1180 is when the Trojan War would have been so Virgil has to connect that with his own time and how's he going to do that well this is why he has to go see his father in the underworld he has to go there not just to see his father he has to go there in order so that Virgil can say this is Aeneas as the founder of Rome even though Rome won't be founded for another several centuries after Aeneas' lifetime and we've already seen in book one sort of a prophecy of what Rome will eventually be the reference specifically to Augustus Caesar when Venus asks Jupiter what's going to happen to the Trojans and Jupiter goes on a long description of you know there he's going to give birth to this line and they're going to find Rome so right from the beginning Virgil is very explicit that this is not just about Aeneas this is about Rome but it becomes all the more about Rome in toward the end of book six so line 823 of book six is on page 206 in the Fagals translation and Caesis points to these spirits in the underworld and says they're the spirits owed a second body by the fates they drink deep of river leafies currents there remember that leafy is the river forgetfulness palaneros when the god of sleep put him to sleep he had water from the river leafy it's forgetfulness so they're going to have to forget their past lives in order to begin the lives that they're fated to come back into in the future and he says I count the tally out of all my children's children so these are his descendants and of course Aeneas' descendants and Virgil has and Caesis go through some of the more famous figures from Roman history including Romulus around line 897 and Caesar and it's ambiguous sometimes when Virgil uses the name Caesar if he's talking about Julius Caesar or Caesar Augustus but specifically Caesar Augustus around line 914 the son of a god he will bring back the age of gold so keep in mind Julius Caesar had been deified after his death or declared a god and we don't only get descriptions of these future Romans but also and Caesis kind of breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the audience after recounting who these people are that are passing in front of him all names that the audience will be familiar with he says around line 976 others I have no doubt will forge the bronze to breathe with suppler lines draw from the block of marble features quick with life plead their cases better chart with their rods the stars that climb the sky and foretell the times they rise but you Roman remember rule with all your power the peoples of the earth these will be your arts to put your stamp on the works and ways of peace to spare the defeated and break the proud and war and so he's giving a mission statement that is completely out of anything that has reference to the story that the Aeneid is telling but it's part of the narrative because it's something that the author wants the reader to its connection the author wants the reader to make and it's a justification not only of Rome's power in the world but also of the new hierarchy at which this very first Roman emperor Augustus is not the bad guy is not the tyrant is not the the threat that people were afraid Julius Caesar would be even though he clearly is even though the the senate and the people of Rome are no longer in control of Rome it's now all complete it's all dependent on the arbitrary will of one individual human being uh Virgil has to craft this depiction where all of this auctoritas this authority and the the pietas demanded of each individual member of that social hierarchy all goes toward the greater good of peace but of course as he says to get that peace you should be good to those you defeat but you should break the proud break the arrogant with war so war is a good thing because it will bring peace but you're only supposed to be good to the people that you've already defeated and of course by Virgil's time quite a few proud people had been broken in war from Hispania on the Iberian peninsula on the western end of the Mediterranean all the way to Mesopotamia and of course North Africa and all of Greece and Asia Minor and as well as up into Gaul and in the the decades that would follow Virgil they would move all the way into uh onto the island of Britain but we see Virgil's goal of tying all of this conquest into this much more ancient story uh because otherwise we would have the descendants of Romulus these criminals who uh created their first founded their city based on kidnapping unwilling wives uh you know you could easily create a story about the roman empires being the descendant of that group in which case they're just you know pillaging the entire world they're just these aggressors these they're still the criminals that are attacking other people and taking whatever they want and that would be just as easy to validate with the the historical record but Virgil wants to give Rome a more noble uh background story a more noble etiology as a means to giving it a more noble identity in the present even though they are conquerors they are peacekeepers even though they use military force to take control over other lands they're doing it for the those other lands own good they're these very paternalistic protectors and so with the Aeneid we have a very clear and a very deliberate uh narrativization of history as we've discussed from the very beginning we never just tell all of history all of these natural phenomenon economic phenomena uh we don't uh say well all of this was because these trade routes were very important to this this group we have to simplify that narrative and do it in such a way that meets the needs of the present the present identity group which in Virgil's case would be imperial Rome even though the republic's destroyed even though the republic has been replaced with uh imperial hierarchy uh he still wants to create this version of history that creates a very clear beginning for the roman people that's not the beginning with Romulus it's a a more distant beginning a more cultured beginning because you know the Trojan wars is a story that was the focus of Greek culture which even the romans that in Virgil's time saw as is more uh elevated more more complicated uh more cultured uh than they are themselves but it connects to this older grander and more noble idea because where you start the story has a lot to do with how you uh view the end or view the present and of course obviously with book six Virgil extends the end of the story uh more than a millennium into the future by having Ancaes show Aeneas the soul that will become Augustus Caesar uh he's not only moved the beginning of the roman story back more than a thousand years he's also extended the Trojan war forward in history more than a thousand years to his own present and for the sake of edifying his own present