Let's get started now with Virgil's epic.
We'll start the way we did with Homer, when we looked at the first opening lines
of his epic, we'll do a similar kind of close attention to the opening lines of
Virgil's story. Here they are printed out in Latin, and
what I'm going to do is go through the Latin text keyed to chunks of the
translation that are taken from the Fitzgerald translation, which is the
recommended one for this class. The opening eleven lines give the full
panoply of what's about to happen. The first sentence talks about the whole
thing in a, condensed way, and the opening word,
In Virgil's case words also talk about the whole theme of the epic in a condensed
way. Virgil is going to tell an epic that is
about arma uirumque. He's talking about arms and a man.
Arma is a marshal word talking about arms in a war context.
No question about that. Uirum is the idea of a, of a human male.
So Virgil's giving us now an epic, by these first two words which is going to do
not only the Odyssey, as he tells us with uirum but also.
What's going to do the Iliad. We made mention in the class about how the
Iliad begins with this war for, word for war rage and it talks about that sets the
tone for this as being an epic about war. Well, Virgil, in his way, is going to
queue up for us that he's going to do both these things.
He's going to create for us, right before our very eyes, an Iliad and an Odyssey.
For this part of our class, we're just going to read books one through six of the
Aeneid. It's recommended that you read the rest as
you like. We have to trim down somewhere.
It's a huge past. We need to focus on what we can focus on.
So we're going to be looking at the Odysseyan part of the story, the first six
books. The more Iliadic part is in the second six
books. It doesn't break down quite so neatly,
though. There's pieces of the Odyssey style oh, or
Odysseyan themes that carry on through the rest of the epic, and there's also Iliadic
things that show up early on. We'll flag these as, as needed.
But mostly we're going to focus on the Odyssey parts of the background.
Now, look at the very beginning of Aeneas or of Virgil's story here.
Yes, Arms and the Man. And then we have this Latin word,
[foreign]. That's very distinctive environment means
I, first person singular, am doing the same.
Virgil then carries forward a Homeric tradition of talking about a song that's
going to be coming out of his mouth, but rather than the way Homer does, saying
muses, use me as a voice, and sing. The story that I want to have sung, using
me as a mouthpiece Virgil tosses that aside.
He now, as a first person singular human being, is going to sing a tale for us, as
the audience. We're no longer in a mystified, mythic
realm, where we can talk about muses using us as mouthpieces.
Instead, Virgil's coming to us, saying I am a human being, and I am gonig to be
doing the singing about this past. We'll see that the muse comes up in a bit,
but Virgil wants to say in the very first line, he is the one doing the singing.
From the sea coast of Troy in early days, he came to Italy by destiny.
To our Livinian western shore, a fugitive. That term, [foreign], in Latin, by
destiny, is an important one for us. The idea of fate such as we've seen it up
until now in the Greek materials, typically is very much backward looking.
There is something that happened in the past that's anchoring you to that past.
And from which you're not going to be able to escape, no matter how hard you try.
Think about how it worked in Oedipus. Fate is constantly trapping us in some,
awfulness of the past. Instead, in Virgil, we're going to see a
different idea of fate that gets pulled out.
It's much more closely linked to the idea of destiny, in the English term.
It's a forward looking concept that talks about no matter what you do, the future is
laid out and by destiny. You're going to get to that future point.
Virgil's story, through Aeneas, is very much a story drawn along by large, arc
tectonic forces of the universe, that are pushing it forward, forward, forward.
The destiny that's going to bring Virgil to his home base, and bring Aeneas along
to his home base is what's going to propel us.
He's going to move from the sea coast of Troy in early days, so we're talking about
some very early time, this Trojan war. He's moving from the sea coast of Troy,
over to Italy to the Lavinian western shore, and we Romans know he's talking
about us. Vergil is, has our character on his way to
found a city. That we know.
He's buffeted cruelly on land as on the sea by blows from powers of the air,
behind them baleful Juno, in her sleepless rage.
Now, Juno is going to appear in this epic as a very strong force that is pushing
against fate. Fate is going to be drawing us forward
into the future that is Rome and the glory that's coming, Juno is going to be a force
that pulls backward. At Virgil's epic, is one, sure it's very
much driven by this forward-looking destiny, but it's anything but some
simple. Rosy, we're on rails to a bright future
kind of destiny. It's a destiny that's going to be
achieved, but it's going to be achieved with great pain and suffering.
Virgil does not whitewash this at all. The founding of Rome is a complex thing.
It involves, the, the overrunning of lots of people.
Individuals are going to get steam torn up in the, in the machinaries of history.
And all of it is going to lead towards something, but in the, on the way there
we're going to look at lots of vectors that are pushing it backward.
Juno is the, M is the emblem of these backward pushing vectors.
She is constantly retarding the progress that Aneas might like to make.
Aneas will have friends pushing him forward, and he will also Juno constantly
pushing back. And cool losses were his lot in war till
he could found a city and bring home his gods to Latium, land of the Latin race,
the Alban lords and the high walls of Rome.
Now, the future toward which Aeneas is being pulled, is one that will lead him to
build something. He's going to build a city, found it, get
it started, build walls, he's going to make order out of something chaotic there
will be lots of confusion along the way. There'll be things that get mixed up.
But the end state here as a nicely ordered, well drawn city, that's put
together with a careful plan. That orders that has laws that organize
people. The, the, the enemy here is disorder and,
confusion. And the friend, to our victory here is
going to be, clarity and conciseness. We're going to show forth the clear
straight lines of what it is to be. Roman the walls of Rome.
We're going to see Aeneas consistently trying to build those things.
Building of walls is something he has anchored to in his own heroic expression.
Now our muse shows up. Tell me the causes now, o muse.
Here Aeneas, Virgil is building in a reference to this mythic, epic past of
Homer. He's not just overtaking and saying, I'm
the one singing the song. He's talking about being inspired by a
muse surely and the muse is a part of it. But not the first line, interestingly,
Right? It gets moved down a little bit in the
order of events. How galled in her pride, and how sore at
heart, and from her old wound the queen of gods compelled him, a man apart, devoted
to his mission, to undergo so many perilous days, and enter on so many
trials. Now Aeneas is a character that we're going
to get to know quite well. He's being pushed around by this old wound
that the queen of the gods has, as she's as she's pushing him around.
But he himself is a man apart and devoted to his mission.
The Latin here that the Fitzgerald is using to translate, insignum pie, pietae,
pietaerium a man marked by his pietas. We're going to spend a lot of time talking
about what pietas is. There is a English equivalent in the term
piety, that's. Important.
But this idea of devotion, utterly devoted to his mission is what is being brought
out rightfully in Fitzgerald's translation.
We've got a hero whose now motivated by something closer to duty.
Then we have with, very different kinds of heroes, in our Greek past.
A Roman hero is going to be motivated, especially and anchored by duty.
He's going to in pursuing this great good of, of Romanness he's going to suffer.
Terrible things he's going to go through, that same kind of a way that Odysseus did,
well, Aeneas kind of suffered as well. Then query at the end of this opening
lines. As Virgil is wondering to himself.
My gosh. Juno.
And just how awfully, outraged, she is. And how much outrage she brings to bear on
Aeneas. Can anger black as this prey on the minds
of heaven? How is it that the divinities become so,
warped in their anger, and visit such nasty things on our hero?
Yes, indeed, Juno is going to have some awful things that come Aeneas' way.
He'll stand up to them, he's got some time left He's just going to take him some
time, though to find his feet and work his way through the challenges that are coming
his way. We're going to look at them in the coming
six books, as we read it very carefully starting off with some discussion about
Book one and then moving quickly into the count, account of the Trojan War that
Virgil gives us in book two.