The Myth Of Aeschylus The Eumenides

Euripides’s plays often featured uncanny insight into the human condition and the struggle that his characters bore due to their expected roles within society.

At the beginning of Book 2 of The Aeneid, Aeneas tells his story about the fall of Troy. The Greeks constructed a massive wooden horse to which the Trojans believed was an offering goddess Minerva. They then sent one of their youths, Sinon, to give the offering to the Trojans. The Trojans brought the wooden horse into to please the goddess but, the wooden horse was actually a structure to house some Greek soldiers to infiltrate Troy as well as execute a sneak attack when the city was asleep. Similar to guerrilla soldiers, the Greeks exit the wooden horse to begin their attack on the Trojan city. When Aeneas sees the city in flames, he gathers his men to attempt to save Troy. Aeneas attempts to kill as many Greeks as he can, but forced to retreat.

While the ending of The Aeneid might be seen to have multiple significances, I believe that Virgil ended the poem the way he did to make a statement about the use of power to achieve dominance and rulership: namely, that a lust for nothing but power will ultimately consume. The poem ends with Turnus and Aeneas facing each other one-on-one on the battlefield. However, it should be noted that there are fundamental differences between the philosophies of the two combatants which should first be grasped to fully understand the significance of Aeneas’s actions in ending the war. Before the battle between Aeneas and Turnus begins, the reader gets a glimpse of Turnus’s philosophy regarding the stakes of the battle. “Either I’ll send, with my hand, this deserter of Asia, this Dardan, / Down to the Pit of the Damned—and the Latins can sit down and watch while / My lone sword is refuting the charge of dishonor we all share; / Or you [Latinus] must share my defeat. And Lavinia must go as this man’s wife.” (12.14-17) Turnus believes that in war, there is no possible outcome but for one leader and his entire army to be wiped out in the other side’s pursuit of honor and glory. Aeneas’s views on the battle are displayed earlier in the poem, when he journeys down into the underworld and is instructed in Trojan battle philosophy by his deceased father Anchises. “You, who are Roman, recall how to govern mankind with your power. / That will be your special ‘Arts’: the enforcement of peace as

The Aeneid, the famous epic poem written by Virgil, depicts the struggle of establishing an empire. The beginning of The Aeneid introduces Aeneas, son of the goddess Venus, whose fate is to find a new home in Italy after the fall of Troy. Throughout the perilous journey, Aeneas faces great obstacles as he strives to fulfill his prophecy and gradually transform into the ideal Virgilian hero. To emphasize his growth, I will discuss three themes in this essay: the extent of free will as it relates to fate, the influence of divine beings on mortals, and the principles of morality. All of these ideas serve as an understanding as to why Aeneas is unable to act on his own accord. This leads me to defend the view that humans require the positive guidance of a mentor figure to resist their self-indulgence.

During the time of Euripides, approximately the second half of the fifth century B.C., it was a period of immense cultural crisis and political convulsion (Arrowsmith 350). Euripides, like many other of his contemporaries, used the whole machinery of the theater as a way of thinking about their world (Arrowsmith 349). His interest in particular was the analysis of culture and relationship between culture and the individual. Euripides used his characters as a function to shape the ideas of the play (Arrowsmith 359).

In Phaedo and the The Odyssey, the main characters, Socrates and Odysseus, provide examples of different lifestyles. When conversing with his followers for the last time, Socrates’s thoughts demonstrate his views on the life of a philosopher. Comparatively, Odysseus lives the life of an epic hero aiming to return home. In their respective stories, both characters confront death, either their own or another character’s. Due to the developments in Phaedo and The Odyssey, I will argue that people's views of the afterlife stand as the main determination for how they believe they should live their lives.

Many protagonists in ancient Roman and Medieval works face some sort of dilemma that makes achieving their goal much more challenging. Works such as Virgil’s Roman epic poem, The Aeneid, and Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy: Inferno of the medieval period in Europe demonstrates prime examples of the central characters’ difficulties. Both problems themselves differ greatly in the sense of the types of trials the character’s face and what their confrontations say about the priorities and values of each protagonist’s culture. Nevertheless, the characters still have valuable lessons to learn as they try to overcome their dilemmas.

Eumaios speaks to Odysseus in the form of a beggar about the kingdom. Everything is still the same, his wife and son are still loyal and await him, and the suitors are still present. Odysseus tells a fabricated story about how he actually just heard of Odysseus, and that he is planning to come back home very soon. Eumaios does not believe this. However, he still treats the beggar with hospitality.

At a first glance, the journeys of Aeneas from Virgil’s Aeneid and Saint Augustine in his autobiography The Confessions, do not seem to have much in common. In Confessions, Augustine embarks on a spiritual journey, while Aeneas endures a physical one. After closely reading both texts, readers can see the powerful, striking connection between Saint Augustine’s journey and Aeneas’. The Confessions serves as a personal inspiration to readers by showcasing Augustine’s journey towards God, and His presence throughout that journey. Aeneas’ ability to overcome hardships because of his belief in the gods and divine grace, is closely related to Augustine’s ability to be exposed to God’s mercy and companionship, even when he did not have faith in Him, because of the notion instilled in him by God. Divine Providence is evident in both The Aeneid and The Confessions through examples such as, characters enduring storms as a result of the gods, or dreams confirming that God is in complete control of the world. Although Augustine has strayed from God, God remains with him. Throughout The Aeneid, Aeneas showcases divine grace, divine Providence, and self-sacrifice, which makes him relate more closely with Augustine’s journey of life than the one written by Virgil.

     A comparison between Virgil's hero, Aeneas, and the Homeric heroes, Achilles and Odysseus, brings up the question concerning the relevance of the difference between the Homeric heroes and Aeneas. The differences in the poets' concerns are explained by the fact that Virgil lived many years after Homer, giving Virgil the advantage of a more developed literary and philosophical society than Homer had at his disposal. But the question remains: how are the differences between the Homeric heroes and Aeneas relevant to the epic at large? This question will be answered by first pointing out the differences between Greek and Roman society, then explaining

Many people believe that we live in a parallel with someone else, a person that we will inevitably never meet. But of course, there’s no so such thing as ‘never’, so there’s a chance the stories will meet. They might intertwine themselves together, such as in The Odyssey. This whole concept is so perfectly stated by Bruce Catton, “And there is a headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going”. This quote is powerful, the lines will never meet, until they do. The two lines can be on the same track, going the same speed, to the same place and not know about the other until they meet. The story of Odysseus and Agamemnon has striking similarities, not meeting until one point, where the stories barely brush up against each other. But that small window of meeting shows an entire other story which has already been told, with a different set of names, places and problems. Homer created these character parallels as a way to explain things, to say things twice, to really help us understand.

In the Poetics, Aristotle provides an outline of how the artist is to portray or represent the perfect Tragedy. A Tragedy, of course, was nothing more than a drama, in which the characters appeared "better" than in real life (in a comedy, they appeared "worse," according to Aristotle). Aristotle's Poetics makes several references to other dramatic works to illustrate his points, but he most commonly calls upon The Odyssey to support his argument for how a dramatic structure should be designed. However, along with the Odyssey, Aristotle extensively references Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Both poetic works were enormously popular in their time (the former had been passed down orally for generations, and the latter won the top prizes at the dramatic festivals). Therefore, Aristotle is comfortable using both to support his viewpoint concerning Tragedy and the Tragic Hero. This paper will analyze the standards that Aristotle sets out concerning the definition of the Tragic Hero and show how Sophocles' Oedipus exemplifies Aristotle's definition of a Tragic Hero.

“The story that the dreamer remembers combines the two classical versions even though they are, or seem to be, irreconcilable. This reconciliation is, we must remember, an act of memory protected by the fiction of the dream; it can be most easily seen in the composite character of Aeneas. He is Virgil’s epic hero and Ovid’s false lover, admirable and treacherous. As such, he and his story are an appropriate visual summary of the value of fame which is inherently ambiguous. From his memory of two old things, the dreamer has created a “new thing” an eccentric retelling that recognizes the validity of conflicting truths in history – “fals and soth compouned” (Buchmaster 284).

The tale of the Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas and how he founds the Roman people. The most well known version of this story is Virgil’s Aeneid. The traditional interpretation of Virgil’s depiction of the hero and the myth is that it was used as propaganda for the new imperial system that the emperor Augustus had introduced. In contrast with this is the Harvard School interpretation, which states that Virgil’s Aeneid is actually undermining the Imperial system. Despite there being some evidence for this, Virgil’s illustration best fits under the traditional interpretation. In contrast with this is Ovid’s Little Aeneid found in his Metamorphoses. This essay will analyse these illustrations

The horrendous death of the trojan priest Laocoön and his sons is a classical event associated with the final days of Troy, inspiring works in literature as well as visual arts. Book 2 of The Aeneid, by the Latin poet Virgil, and the 1st Century CE marble sculpture ‘Laocoön and Sons’ are two famed works that are inspired by the Laocoön Episode. Though both the sculpture and the text are canonical works of their own genre, the latter is more superior in terms of delivering a comprehensive narrative on the Laocoön episode. The Aeneid amplifies movements of Laocoön and the serpents using literary devices and adopts a time frame spanning from the arrival of serpents to the death of Laocoön to deliver a complete narrative, whereas the sculpture, though using dynamic movements and utilizes a single moment within the time frame of the text, fails to contain a general, uninformed viewer within the episode’s context.