Aeneid Analysis

Anger can always incite irrational actions. The sight of Helen seeking shelter at the altar, causes Aeneas to remember the crimes she committed driving him to furious anger. This anger drives him to contemplate an ignoble and uncharacteristic act of revenge by murdering Helen as she sought protection from the gods. Despite being depicted as a virtuous hero, Aeneas’ strong, visceral reaction to seeing Helen shows that he is subject to the same passionate feelings all humans feel, especially when something raises his anger.

During the time the Aeneid was written in the 20s BCE, the first Roman emperor, Augustus, established his new regime after the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra (IBTauris.com). The change in regime influenced the Aeneid, as it both criticized and praised its government. In a time that was ridden with war and bloodshed, Augusts Caesar brought peace and control to the empire, which led Virgil to celebrate his rule by alluding Aeneas to Augustus (cedarcrest.edu). According to IBTauris, The Aeneid influenced future epics, both in Latin and modern European languages, celebrating kings and emperors, or tracing legendary and historical foundations. For example, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, a romantic epic which gives poetic form to the ideology of the British Protestant state under its queen Elizabeth I, is heavily indebted to the Aeneid’s

Have you ever acted out in retribution for something done to you? Some examples could be if you punched someone for intentionally kicking you, or if someone deliberately hurt the feelings of someone you love and you retaliated in kind. You probably thought the punishment you received for your actions was too harsh or lenient. Many factors went into the decision of what discipline you received for this act and some were fair while others probably were not. This is true for the actions of many people in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. In each of the three plays, someone is seeking vengeance for a wrong done unto them, someone they know/love, or both. For this paper, I will be focusing on the vengeance enacted by Clytemnestra, Orestes, and the Fates. The vengeance that each person enacted was deemed just or unjust depending on many factors including the people who were doing the judging. Vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia is viewed through the social lens of the society that it was enacted in. This lens is made up of the popular values, beliefs, and social conventions of the period as well as the judge’s personal views and/or experiences. These factors (such as gender and relation to the victim, as well as the presence or absence of transgressions on the characters part) lead to different opinions about the guilt of the accused individual and the individual themselves. The view of vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia is very subjective.

The epic poem The Aeneid, by Vergil adapts scenes, similes, and characters from the Odyssey written by Homer. The works of both authors include the simile of Artemis/Diana. Other characters do overlap in some of Vergil's scenes for instance, Aeneas and Odysseus encounter Cyclops. Both authors also reference the scene of the underworld. Although, Virgil adapts similarities from Homer's epic, each encounter has noticeable comparisons and/or differences. Vergil presents the epic of the Aeneid with a different purpose. At the beginning of the Aeneid, Aeneas leaves his home with other Romans after the Trojan War. Homer starts his epic with Odysseus wanting to return home form Troy.  The motives that guide each character differ from one another. Homers the Odyssey is more of the journey of a man longing to be home again, after the trojan war has ended. His actions are somewhat selfish at times. Virgil's main character Aeneas is driven by more of a scene of duty to the gods, because he is instructed to help build Rome for future generations.

Aeneas is a person who holds his family and friends close to his heart, but doesn’t show care to people who he feels have done acts that harm his loved ones. Test of character that confront him are losing people that he loved to death, having to enter the Underworld, leaving Dido for his fate to travel to Italy, and facing Turnus in battle after Turnus killed Pallas. Aeneas passes all of test he is given with minor setbacks, like being able to leave the Underworld alive, but he carries the mourning of the deaths of his loved one through the entire myth. The temptations he resists are staying with Dido in Carthage, and letting the death of people he cared for stop him from his journey. Aeneas resist staying with Dido because his fears what the gods would do if he didn’t leave Carthage for Italy. He doesn’t let the death of loved ones stop his journey, because most of them wanted Aeneas to continue his journey and reach his destiny. Aeneas find the task of killing Turnus out of revenge for Pallas’s death irresistible, since Pallas was Aeneas’s friend and seeing Turnus with Pallas’s belt filled Aeneas with rage.

The founding of Rome doesn’t happen as is foretold in the book; and Augustus is not part of the Aeneid blood line. Aeneas cannot become the amazing hero he was told he would become by the prophets because he is dead. At the beginning of the poem he attempts to kill Helen, and he kills Turnus at the very end of the poem is indicative of just how little character development he has made, because he is dead and cannot change from that state which

This week’s question pertains to an epic mythological poem that is named The Aeneid. This is a story about a man named Aeneas (who was a Trojan); he decides to exit his destroyed city of Troy when he is ordered by one of his gods (Mercury) to follow a heroic determined path in life, and discovers the fact that he is destined to settle a new and most influential city in a foreign land. The irony that comes to be, is that this future colony will one day become to be known as, the all-powerful city of Rome in which is the Roman Empire.

He does not do this however, without making Turnus and the reader aware that it is a revenge kill for Pallas. Taking revenge on your enemy is an acceptable concept in both Roman and Greek heroism, it is known as an act of lex talionis (the principle of revenge) towards his friend. This is exactly what happens in book 12 when Aeneas kills Turnus, “Aeneas feasted his eyes on the sight of this spoil, this reminder of his own wild grief, then, burning with mad passion and terrible in his wrath” (Virgil Aeneid 12. 945) meaning he sees the belt of Pallas on Turnus and is suddenly reminded of his loss that was inflicted upon him by Turnus.. Although Aeneas was originally fighting for the kingdom and Lavinia’s hand in marriage, he is reminded of his own loss and his own agenda for fighting with Turnus. Pallas was a friend of Aeneas’ who was killed by Turnus, so he in turn kills Turnus to honour Pallas. It is clear from the ending scene of the poem that Aeneas has been overcome with emotion and passion thus driving him to “plunge the steel full into his enemy’s breast” (Virgil Aeneid 12. 950), meaning his emotions overtook him and its part of his human nature which is seen in his

Another problem that is experienced by the dedicated reader of this book is the fact that the last scene was authored differently from theother parts of the book. As the novel comes to a conclusion Aeneus kills turners because of a number of reasons. Most of these reasons are not honorable. Aeneus had faced a lot of challenges throughout the poems. At the very genesis of this book, the author portrays Aeneus as responsible and dedicated man who knew his fate and duty to his people very well. This is demonstrated throughout the book, and example is when he goes back for his wife during his flight from troy. However the prominence of these themes continuously fade away and become les vivid when and the fact that he starts to understand the impacts of the gods upon his fate comes alive. Aeneus is half divine which is an advantage to him because he can be on both sides. At the beginning the author depicts Aeneus as a very understanding and human individual who understands the needs of humanity but as the

In Virgil's Aeneid, while there is no discussion of works of literature, it mentions several times of the works of art that depicts a story are made. By reading these ekphrases and the ways that characters react to these visual narrative works, describing symbols of the audience’s reception and interpretation of these literary works, it is conceivable to look at Virgil's thoughts and overall view on writing (Robert Fitzgerald, 1983) . This paper will look at these ekphrases to argue that the delineations of art in the Aeneid and especially the issues of how distinctive characters confound, fail to comprehend, or ignore the art altogether largely. This permits Virgil to make description of his anxieties as an author about the potential challenges and obstacles he may face in the publication of

Aeschylus stars out by showing what justice is to one single person. In Oresteia, justice is the motive for the murder of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra. The first instance of justice is when Clytaemnestra declares that she must kill Agamemnon to try and end the curse. She admits to her crime and tells the chorus that what she did was “a masterpiece of Justice./Done is done.” (Agamemnon lines 1430-31). Here the reader might agree with what she has done and with any number of reasons why she has done it. She killed the man who was cursed and killed their daughter. At first glance it seems that Aeschylus may agree that this is how justice is to be done because the Chorus doesn’t killer her, but with two plays left, we can see that there is a lot more to it than just killing the

As he hammers the Titan Prometheus to a rock for all eternity, Hephaestus in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound says “no one, save Prometheus, can justly blame me” (Aeschylus 63). These words draw attention to the question of perspective and how it relates to the play. While Hephaestus may say that no one except Prometheus can “blame” him for following orders to punish Prometheus for his defiance to the Gods, other characters in the play and readers alike may blame him for obeying a decree that they deem unjust. Along the same lines, perspective relates to the play’s central conflict between Prometheus and Jove; entertaining both Jove’s and Prometheus’ perspectives fleshes out the conflict in the play more thoroughly. Perspective, similarly, is essential to think about when discussing Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem “Prometheus,” considering Aeschylus’ play inspired the poem. The perspective of the speaker in this poem is therefore necessary to consider when deciphering meaning from the text. Although, the common reading of “Prometheus” places its title character as the speaker of the poem, I contend that, the speaker is instead a human being.

His death had been predicted every year yet, he hadn’t passed. On the day of his last breath, Mercury vouched for Claudius and questioned why he must be abused. Clotho then decided that his friends will die first so that Claudius isn’t alone. Claudius’ death was a mystery, but when he had died, he did have friends. He was also made a God at the time of his death. However, Augustus took a stance against Claudius. He was against him because he thought that Claudius had executed too many people for no reason. “That man you see in front of you, after all those years of hiding under my name, thanked me by killing my two great-granddaughters, one Julia with cold steel, the other Julia by starving her to death, and by killing one of my great-great-grandsons, Lucius Silanus” (Apoc. Pg. 228). Augustus didn’t think that Claudius deserved to be a God because of all the harm he had done to his family as well as many

Both the Iliad and the Aeneid have different morals. The moral for the Iliad is about the dangers of arrogance. It shows that in a few ways. First, we see the pride of Achilles as he holds out and does not go into the battle. This costs many lives and almost the cost of the Greeks. We also see the self-importance of Agamemnon. He cannot take the fact that Achilles is a better fighter than he is. In addition, we see even the self-importance of Hector. He knows that Achilles will overthrow him, but he has to fight him anyway. In the end, all of this pride leads to death and catastrophe. The moral for the Aeneid is that you must follow your purpose,

Another problem that is experienced by the dedicated reader of this book is the fact that the last scene was authored differently from theother parts of the book. As the novel comes to a conclusion Aeneus kills turners because of a number of reasons. Most of these reasons are not honorable. Aeneus had faced a lot of challenges throughout the poems. At the very genesis of this book, the author portrays Aeneus as responsible and dedicated man who knew his fate and duty to his people very well. This is demonstrated throughout the book, and example is when he goes back for his wife during his flight from troy. However the prominence of these themes continuously fade away and become les vivid when and the fact that he starts to understand the impacts of the gods upon his fate comes alive. Aeneus is half divine which is an advantage to him because he can be on both sides. At the beginning the author depicts Aeneus as a very understanding and human individual who understands the needs of humanity but as the epics progresses this begins to fade away slowly and his divinity becomes more prominent. As the story concludes we see that Aeneus is a completely different person compared to the beginning of the epic also his will for human understanding is gone. This scene changes the readers’ view of Aeneus that had initially been developed throughout the literally work. He becomes enraged: the opposite of the Aeneus we had known in the beginning of the epic. On second though this is not a