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What race is this? What land’s so barbaric that it 540 sanctions this behavior? We’re kept away from shore by threats of war. We can’t set foot on land. If you scorn humans and their weapons, at least assume the gods know justice and injustice!
This speech by Ilioneus is pure fire. An epic plea for asylum and justice.
“Barbaric” is a nice allusion to Rome’s barbaric tribes.
Dryden has:
"What men, what monsters, what inhuman race,
What laws, what barb’rous customs of the place,
Shut up a desert shore to drowning men,
And drive us to the cruel seas again?
If our hard fortune no compassion draws,
Nor hospitable rights, nor human laws,
The gods are just, and will revenge our cause."
Dido answered briefly, her eyes downcast: “Trojans, let go your fear and your worries. Harsh necessity and my new kingdom force me to be careful and to post guards on the borders.
JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings":
"At length the Lady Galadriel released them from her eyes, and she smiled. ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled,’ she said. ‘Tonight you shall sleep in peace.’"
while sky pastures the stars,
goated line
Lighted lamps hung from gold chains; the tapers’ flames routed the night.
goated line
He sang of lunar cycles, eclipses of the sun, the origins of man and beast and rain and fire, the star Arcturus, the wet Hyades and twin Bears, why winter suns are quick to dip into the Ocean, what makes cold nights linger.
Reads like a modern science course
Hardly was the statue set in camp when flames shot blazing from its staring eyes, its wood poured sweat, and incredibly, Pallas herself sprang up three times, brandishing her sword and quivering spear.
This story by Sinon depicts the Greeks as if they'd brought a trojan horse into their own camp.
Does the statue itself come to life?
Now die.’
‘Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!’
- JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings"
At the old man’s words, a sudden thunder rumbled on our left, and a shooting star fell from the sky and flew across the dark, trailing flame and blinding light. We watched it glide over the rooftops and then bury its bright path in Ida’s forests. Just a glowing wake remained. Sulfur smoked from all the land. Now my father was defeated. He rose, prayed to 700 the gods, and hailed the sacred star. ‘No more delay! Gods of Troy, I follow you. I’ll go where you lead us. Save my household and my grandson. This sign is yours, Troy is in your power. I give in, my son. I won’t refuse to leave.’ Already
...more
From JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings":
"‘I said I’d carry him, if it broke my back,’ he muttered, ‘and I will!’
‘Come, Mr. Frodo!’ he cried. ‘I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go, and he’ll go.’
As Frodo clung upon his back, arms loosely about his neck, legs clasped firmly under his arms, Sam staggered to his feet; and then to his amazement he felt the burden light."
John Dryden's translation of this passage:
Scarce had he said, when, on our left, we hear
A peal of rattling thunder roll in air:
There shot a streaming lamp along the sky,
Which on the winged lightning seem’d to fly;
From o’er the roof the blaze began to move,
And, trailing, vanish’d in th’ Idaean grove.
It swept a path in heav’n, and shone a guide,
Then in a steaming stench of sulphur died.
“The good old man with suppliant hands implor’d
The gods’ protection, and their star ador’d.
‘Now, now,’ said he, ‘my son, no more delay!
I yield, I follow where Heav’n shews the way.
Keep, O my country gods, our dwelling place,
And guard this relic of the Trojan race,
This tender child! These omens are your own,
And you can yet restore the ruin’d town.
At least accomplish what your signs foreshow:
I stand resign’d, and am prepar’d to go.’
As thanks for our butchered cows and bulls, you drive the faultless Harpies from their homeland? 250 Then hear my words and fix them deep inside your heart. The mighty Father told Apollo this, and he told me, and I, the greatest Fury, now tell you. You sail for Italy, summoning the winds: you’ll reach her and her ports will open to you. But you won’t set walls around your fated city until wrenching hunger and your harm to us will have your jaws gnawing your very tables.’*
speaking threat to power
They say these lands were once a single mass. Later, convulsed by violence, they leapt apart. The lengthy course of time can cause such massive change. The sea flooded in and severed Italy from Sicily. It rushed between the fields and cities parted by new shores and narrow foaming straits.
This would be modern if it weren't ancient
She’s fast of foot and fleet of wing, a huge horrific monster. Under all her feathers lurk (amazingly) as many watching eyes and tongues, as many talking mouths and pricked-up ears. She flies by night, between the sky and earth, screeching through the dark.
Rumor is a Harpy
A woman wandered to my land. She paid to build a paltry town. I gave her shores to till and local laws. She scorned my marriage offer and took Aeneas in her kingdom as her lord. And now! That Paris, with his retinue of half-men,* a Lydian scarf tied on his oily hair, enjoys what he stole,
Dido is no less a migrant, wanderer and refugee than Aeneas.
In a way they truly belong together.
Interesting how Virgil characterizes both Rome and Carthage as having distant roots -- and both in the Near East.
Because of you, the Libyan tribes and Nomad kings detest me, and my Tyrians are hostile. Because you’re leaving me, my honor’s ruined, and my one path to the stars—my reputation. My guest (this word’s the sad remnant of ‘husband’), to whom do you abandon me—to what sort of death? Should I await Pygmalion, my brother, who’ll raze my city? Iärbas, who’ll enslave me?
She has other fears, besides losing Aeneas.
Dido could join Helen, Briseis, Andromache and Penelope as a spoil and engine of epic war. (Lavinia will join this group).
Instead, Dido will die having engineered an interlude of peace, not war.
the god stops up his kindly ears.
The gods are hardening Aeneas' heart, after having inflamed Dido's
She claims her spells can ease the cares of those she chooses, and cause deep pain in others. She stops the flow of streams, turns back the orbit 490 of the stars, and wakes the dead at night. You’ll see the earth quake underfoot and ash trees walk down mountains. Dear sister, I call the gods and your sweet self to witness: I’m forced to arm myself with magic.
This description of the priestess is fire
I should’ve torched his camp and fleet, snuffed out father, son, and all their race, then thrown myself onto the pyre!
This would make her Hector and Hitler
Let there be no love or treaties between us.
Dido and Aeneas are probably meant to symbolize Carthage and Rome here, but the words remind me of Achilles' almost-last words to Hector:
Hector, do not speak to me
of contracts. Fool, forget about agreements.
(Emily Wilson)
I’d have shared your fate: one pain, one sword, one instant should have taken us.
A goated line that recalls Aeneas' words in Troy to his father:
"Come what may, we’ll share one danger,
or one escape."
And Andromache after the death of Hector:
“Hector, my life is over. You and I
were both born for this self-same destiny."
(Homer's "Iliad", Book 22, Emily Wilson translation)
So dewy Iris flew down on her saffron wings, trailing a thousand colors through the sunlight. She stopped over her head: “I take this offering down to Dis, as told, and free you from your body.” She cut a strand of hair. At once all warmth slipped away; Dido’s life ebbed to the winds.
May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest
Entellus, solid and unmoving, stayed in place, dodging blows by watching carefully and twisting. Dares looked like he was laying siege and placing 440 catapults around a mountain fort or town. He tried this route and that, probing everywhere with skill, pressing him with varied jabs—no luck.
Nearly spit my coffee, this is so good. GOAT humor.
Iris rose up through the sky on level wings, and as she left, she drew a massive rainbow in the clouds.
Iris will not be outdone by all the shooting stars and arcing arrows we've been watching.
She had made a similar trail of colors when swooping down to Dido.
Time’s passage doesn’t soften her, nor piety.
Do Greek gods evolve, Venus?
Misenus, most skilled of men to fire up hearts for battle with his bugle’s blare. Marked out by his spear and trumpet, he used to fight next to his friend, great Hector. When victorious Achilles robbed Hector of life, this bravest of heroes joined Aeneas 170 as companion, following no lesser leader. But when he seized his hollow horn to make the seas resound, challenging the gods in song (the fool!), jealous Triton grabbed him up, if the tale is true, and drowned him in the rocky surf.
Iluvatar was more patient with Melkor's challenge-in-song, in JRR Tolkien's "Silmarillion":
Some of these thoughts he now wove into his music, and straightway discord arose about him, and many that sang nigh him grew despondent, and their thought was disturbed and their music faltered; but some began to attune their music to his rather than to the thought which they had at first. Then the discord of Melkor spread ever wider, and the melodies which had been heard before foundered in a sea of turbulent sound. But Ilúvatar sat and hearkened until it seemed that about his throne there was a raging storm, as of dark waters that made war one upon another in an endless wrath that would not be assuaged.
Then Ilúvatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that he smiled; and he lifted up his left hand, and a new theme began amid the storm, like and yet unlike to the former theme, and it gathered power and had new beauty. But the discord of Melkor rose in uproar and contended with it, and again there was a war of sound more violent than before, until many of the Ainur were dismayed and sang no longer, and Melkor had the mastery. Then again Ilúvatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that his countenance was stern; and he lifted up his right hand, and behold! a third theme grew amid the confusion, and it was unlike the others. For it seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity. And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Ilúvatar, and they were utterly at variance.
they heaped logs on the pyre and strove to raise it to the sky. They entered ancient woods and wild lairs. 180 Pine trees fell, holm-oaks rang to axes’ strikes, oaks and ash trees fissured as the axmen drove in wedges. They rolled huge rowans down the hills.
taunting Ents by tearing at trees,
tempting gods by building Babels
save me from this hell, since you’ve overcome it,
almost Christian
Living bodies may not ride my Stygian boat.
From JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings":
‘But, Aragorn,’ she said at last, ‘is it then your errand to seek death? For that is all that you will find on that road. They do not suffer the living to pass.’
‘They may suffer me to pass,’ said Aragorn; ‘but at the least I will adventure it. No other road will serve.’
Next were the despondent suicides. Though innocent, they threw their lives away, sick of the light of day. How gladly now they’d welcome pain and poverty, just to breathe the air! But divine law forbids it. The gloomy waves and hateful swamp confine them, and the nine coils of 440 the Styx.
Here now we have a group that is described as doing wrong, or going against "divine law," unlike the babies and the wrongly executed.
a massive fortress ringed with 550 triple walls and a raging moat of fire: Phlegethon, hurling thunderous rocks. In front, a giant gate and adamantine pillars. No human force, not even warring gods, could rip them out. An iron tower reached the sky.
Virgil's Hades is backed by military might
All those who loathed their brothers during life, who beat their parents or caught clients in a web 610 of fraud, or sat on gold they’d just acquired, putting no part aside for family (the biggest group), or were murdered in adultery, or fought in civil wars, or broke faith with their masters— locked up, they wait for punishment.
This is like reading the Ten Commandments.
Virgil's Hades is possibly worse than Homer's, but it indirectly points to a growing sense of morality.
Though there's no hint of forgiveness. It sounds like, if you break one of these commandments, you're coming here.
Aeneas would have sent Helen here, presumably, if he hadn't spared her (in some sources Menelaus also comes close to killing her in Troy).
I'd like to see gold-hoarding dragons put here. But they'd probably just end up getting work as guards / tormenters / demons.
Doomed Theseus will sit forever in a chair,
This hurts!
Then we’re sent to wide Elysium. A few of us stay in this happy place until long years have purged the final taint of matter and time’s great wheel has come full circle:
a purgatory
You, Roman, remember your own arts:* to rule the world with law, impose your ways on peace, grant the conquered clemency, and crush the proud in war.”
Between war and peace his advice lurches
huge howling shapes of wolves—human once, but altered from their form by the cruel goddess’s 20 magic herbs. They wore the face and fur of beasts.
were men
A laurel tree with holy leaves stood in the royal 60 home’s inner court, revered for many years. They say father Latinus found this tree when he built the citadel. He made it sacred to Apollo, and named his folk Laurentians.
Two passages from JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings":
"‘For myself,’ said Faramir, ‘I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace'"
"Upon the black surcoats were embroidered in white a tree blossoming like snow beneath a silver crown and many-pointed stars. This was the livery of the heirs of Elendil, and none wore it now in all Gondor, save the Guards of the Citadel before the Court of the Fountain where the White Tree once had grown."
how Fortune made the worlds of Asia and Europe clash in war—this everyone has heard,
a world war
I’ll spread the war to nearby towns with rumors, 550 and fire their souls with insane lust for war so they’ll run to help from all around. I’ll sow the fields with swords.”
Ploughshares into swords
They throw boomerangs, like German tribes,
For Virgil this is a harmless reference
Your men are unkempt Aequiculans, who feed themselves by hunting in the forests. Their soil is hard. They work the earth while armed, and love to seize new spoils, and to live off what they steal.
the men hunt and gather
the mighty Father, outraged that a human should rise from Hell’s shades to the light of life, plunged the finder of this healing art into Styx’s waters with his lightning bolt.
High time to reveal that the ruler of the universe has no problem with resurrection
he tossed on a great tide of worry. 20 His mind flew quickly here and there, shifting sides, weighing all the options—as quick as water shimmers back a trembling light when rays of sunshine or the radiant moon land on the bronze bowl, the beam flutters far and wide, then angles up and roams the ceiling.
goat metaphor of the mind, Eastern
Goddess-born, you restore our city, Troy, and save her heights from enemies forever.
This new Troy -- Rome -- will fall, but in a sense, Rome's fall has never been forgotten
Varied trees cast shade upon the ships that wove their way through living woods on silent waters.
goat line
Saturn was first to come from high Olympus, 320 fleeing war with Jupiter, an exile with no kingdom.
Saturn presented as the first refugee, and the first Roman
He united the unruly race that was scattered on the mountains, gave them laws, and called it Latium—he’d safely hidden here.* He was king during the age called Golden and he ruled the people in unbroken peace until a duller and degraded age came in, mad for war, greedy for gain. Then came Ausonian mobs and Sicanian tribes.
Virgil being a prophet when he's trying only to be a historian
I was an exile sailing to the ends of Ocean.
Evander is yet another refugee. Aeneas keeps finding such people and making allies of them.
King Mezentius’ cruel and brutal rule. I won’t dwell on this tyrant’s godless murders or barbarity. May the gods store it all up for him and his! He used to yoke the living to the dead, hand to hand and face to face, a form of torture, so they died a lingering death,
Virgil accurately prophesies Rome's future again
righteous anger at Mezentius drives you to war. But no Italian may guide your great people. You must await a foreign leader.’
In this land (royal) daughters can only marry foreigners, and sons can only fight under foreign commanders.
All basic rights are to be handed over to a colonizer.
Tartarus and Dis’ high gates (the wages of wickedness)
Almost St. Paul's phrase, "the wages of sin"
Cybele (so they say), mother of the gods, addressed great Jupiter: “My son, since you’ve tamed Olympus, grant this favor that your loving mother asks. On a mountain summit was a grove I loved for many years, where people brought me offerings. Pitch-pine trees and maples lent it murky shade. I gave it to Aeneas when he needed ships, and gladly so, but fear makes me anxious now. 90 Comfort me and grant your mother’s prayer: don’t let the boats be swamped at sea by waves or whirlwinds. Let it help them that my mountain was their home.”
Rhea/Cybele is the first Ent, or Lorax. She is, after all, the daughter of the earth goddess Gaia.
The cutting down of the sacred pines is first alluded to by Aeneas at the opening of Book III, though this translation only mentions the ships and not the pines they were made from.
I’ll take away the earthly form 100 of the boats who brought Trojan Aeneas to Laurentian fields, and make them ocean goddesses,
It is so like Zeus to create more nymphs
