It turns him into a beast of sorts, leads to his performance of human sacrifice during the funeral of his fallen charge, and motivates the final scene of the epic: Aeneas kills Turnus in a fit of rage upon seeing Pallas’sword-belt on his prostrate enemy, which instantly wipes away any thought of mercy.
The death of Pallas is by far the worst catastrophe that Aeneas suffers in the course of the poem. Another moment of similar emotive power comes in Aeneid 11, when Aeneas covers the dead body of Pallas, the only son of his guest friend Euander, who got killed by Turnus, with magnificent pieces of garment made by Dido (11.72–5) - not unlike the one, perhaps even the same, he is wearing at Aeneid 4.262–64 (which is part of the set passage and discussed in detail below). Just as the shadow of Ajax at Odyssey 11.541–67, who sulks speechless when his mortal enemy, still alive, appears in the world of the dead and tries to engage him in conversation, Dido refuses to respond to our hero and moves away in fraught and dignified silence, joining the shade of her former husband Sychaeus. A particular poignant instance is the meeting of Dido and Aeneas in the Underworld at Aeneid 6.440–76. uideatque indigna suorum/ funera (‘let him see the wretched deaths of (.)ģ Likewise, the ghost of Dido and her tragic suicide haunt subsequent books. 22 The outcome is in each case the same: Troy and Carthage end up in flames, and Aeneas leaves a conflagration behind him at the end of both Aeneid 2 and Aeneid 4. For instance, Aeneas, in his account of the fall of Troy in Aeneid 2, makes much of the figure of Sinon, a treacherous Greek who persuades the gullible Trojans to breach their city walls to pull in the Wooden Horse and in a sense, unbeknownst to him, Aeneas does something very similar in Carthage, employing his persuasive skills to gain entry into the heart of his hostess. But you may also wish to ponder what the flashback in Aeneid 2 and 3, as well as explicit and implicit resonances of the Dido-episode in subsequent books of the epic, may have to contribute to our understanding of the set portion of text. 21 One of the interpretative challenges involved in reading an excerpt from Aeneid 4 is to see it in the context of what came before, especially in Book 1, and what follows after, especially in the remainder of Book 4. He recounts the fall of Troy and his flight from the burning city ( Aeneid 2) and tells of his subsequent travels and travails until his arrival at Carthage ( Aeneid 3). In between, Aeneas takes on the role of ‘internal narrator’ at the welcome banquet laid on by Dido. 22 For Aeneas as spin doctor in Aeneid 2 see Powell (2011).Ģ The tragedy of Dido unfolds over the course of the rest of Book 1 as well as Book 4.21 Compare Odysseus’ account of his travels at the court of Phaeacia at Odyssey 9–12 before his onward (.).(In terms of geopolitics, the drift in the Aeneid tends to be from East to West.) There is irony to savour in the fact that Juno, who, in the proem, is presented as deeply worried about the future of her city Carthage (destined to be destroyed by Aeneas’ people, the Romans), sets up the enmity between the two cities by causing Aeneas’ tragic sojourn in Africa: thus are the inscrutable twists and turns of fate! 20 When Neptune finally calms the cosmic commotion at 1.142, Aeneas and his men find themselves not in Italy, but near the recently founded city of Carthage in Northern Africa, ruled by Queen Dido, herself a recent exile from her native Tyre in Phoenicia. But the Trojan fleet is blown well off course.
The violent storm she unleashes with the help of the wind-god Aeolus does not end in the desired outcome (wrecking of the ships and mass drowning). Yet the sight of the Trojan refugees about to reach their final destination stirs the hero’s divine arch-enemy Juno, who already figured prominently in the extended proem, into action. After the extended proem (1.1–33), Virgil begins his narrative proper medias in res with Aeneas and his crew on their way from Sicily to the Italian mainland. In the larger scheme of things, this detour via Africa appears to be an accident.
#Iliad scansion series
Rowling’s Harry Potter series may wish to compare the irony that the evil wizard Vold (.)ġ For the most part, Aeneid 1–4, a third part of the epic overall, is set in Carthage.
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