We're going to turn now to some of the
details in Book one. I want to focus on a couple of scenes
there, to get us used to reading Virgil's poetry.
We're going to see obvious examples, that of parallels between the stories that
Virgil tells, and the story that we see in Homer's Odyssey.
Just to point out a couple of these. There are wanderings, of course.
Aeneas is moving around the Mediterranean, in a way that parallels Odysseus', nostos,
his journey home. Aeneas is on his way to found a home,
though, he's trying to find a place where a home doesn't exist and create one,
whereas Odysseus is trying to get back to a home that already pre-exists.
Odysseus is trying to fight to regain his kingdom.
Aeneas will have to fight mightily in order to gain a kingdom, one he didn't own
before. Odysseus is harried by Poseidon.
Aeneas is going to be harried also but in this case, by Juno.
Odysseus is going to be protected and looked out after by Athena.
In Aeneas' case, he'll be looked out, looked after and protected by his mother,
Venus. There'll be lots of others for you to
find. Keep in mind, though, with every parallel
that you find, there's going to be some Virgilian twist.
The parallels are not ever 100%. One of the great scholars of this whole
material, a man named Niko Knauer who was here at University of Pennsylvania for
many years. Wrote literally the book on looking at
these parallels and talks about how even down to little pieces of sentences and
vocabulary choices Virgil, is making references to Homeric backgrounds and each
time he does he's tweaking it just a little bit.
There's never any lock step repetition that happens; borrowings but always
changes and those changes are always interesting to have a look at.
I thought an example of this would be worth our spending a little time looking
at. Let's go to a famous scene in Book One
where Odysseus has washed up onshore of Carthage and is trying to figure out
what's happening in what he's seeing in front of him.
And over the top of a hill. Well, he a, a beautiful site comes into
his eyes for him and a companion, that are looking down and what hap, what's
happening in Carthage. Meanwhile, the two men pressed on, where
the pathway lead. Soon climbing a long a ridge that gave a
view down over the city and facing towers. And he has found where lately hut's had
been marvelous building, gateways, cabled ways and dinner wagons.
There the Terriens were hard at work lane courses for walls.
Rolling up stones to build the Citadel while others picked up building sites and
ploughed a boundary furrow. Laws were being enacted.
Magic, Straignts of a secret Senate chosen.
Here, men were dredging harbors, there they laid the deep foundation of the
theater and quarried massive pillars to enhance the future stage.
As bees in early summer and sunlight, in the flowering fields hummed at their work
and bring along the young full-grown to bee hood.
As they cram cones with honey bringing all the cells with nectar or take newcomer's
plunder or like troops alerted drive away the lazy drones and labor thrives and
sweet time sends the honey. Aeneas said how fortunate these are whose
city walls are rising here and now. So what we've got in this scene is
something that we've seen in Homer. Multiple times that this idea of the
approach to an unknown. Village.
The, landing on an unknown shore and making an approach to a village.
Aeneas had just done that so on the one hand we can say, sure.
But there also seems to be a parallel here with Odysseus landing on Scyrea.
Right? There's a grand citadel that he's looking
at; it's quite marvelous and amazing to him.
So there's parallels there that are quite obvious.
But look a little bit more closely and we can locate a couple of really important
differences. Remember when Odysseus is standing there
at the threshold in Scyrea how amazed he is by the wealth.
He sees this beautiful of shiny things, gold and silver and lapis, blue things.
The gorgeous stones around him, the materials, the fine craftsmanship and
workmanship. He's amazed by the careful craft, the
extreme wealth that he sees in front of him.
These are the things that he admires. What does Virgil have Aeneas admire?
Aeneas admires the orderliness of this whole thing.
They're, the building of the walls is, to him, amazing.
They're working like bees together in perfect unison and harmony.
They're bringing good things to store, they're organizing things, they have a, a
senate set up and laws set up. Each of these templates, Virgil's looking
at different aspects of the ordering of a society, architecturally, in a civic way,
according to legal structures, according to political structures.
It, Aeneas is having a hug wash of admiration, not just for wealth.
For example a wash of admiration for a carefully constructed society that's going
to work well. This is a classic way that Virgil, yes,
draws on Homeric precedents. But always turns them in some kind of
interesting way, to add to his own story and the story that he tells.
It's helping us to mark the ways in which Aeneas is quite different from Odysseus.
There are some ways in which they are the same.
But this marks for us, early on, one theme that we're going to see repeated over and
over again. Whereas Odysseus is constantly trying to
traverse boundaries and jump over walls. Aeneas is trying to find boundaries and
secure them. And make sure that there is stability and
order in the world. We'll see this difference between the two
of them over and over again in the stories that we see.
Also in book one, I wanted to pay some attention to a scene that happens with us,
a poet called Iopas. You'll remember that in the Odyssey we
looked, paid careful attention to scenes that featured Homer's treatment of
Demoticus. Remember, Demoticus was a bard, and
Homer's treatment of Demoticus gave us a window into what Homer thought poetry was
all about. Well, in that way we can also turn to the
Song of Iopas that shows up toward the end of Book One and it's, look to it, for, as
a way into understanding what Virgil understands poetry to be.
Virgil is of course aware of the Demodocun background that he's drawing from and he's
aware of the tradition that existed even in antiquity, not just in our class, that
looked to Demodocus as a way into Virgil's, Homer's ideas on poetry.
And now Virgil's going to present his own story of a, of a poet as a way as self
consciously into his own idea of what poetry is all about and look what he
presents. And Lord Iopas with flowing hair, whom
giant Atlas taught, made the room echo to his golden lyre.
He sang the strained moon and toiling sun, the origin of mankind and the beasts, of
rain and fire. The rainy Hyades, Arcturus, the great bear
and little bear. The reason winter suns are in such haste
to dip in ocean, or what holds the nights endless in winter.
Tyrians, at this, redoubled their applause.
The Trojans followed. So what's Virgil telling us that poetry is
all about? I-, in Virgil's accounting, it seems to be
pretty much like. The story of the whole universe.
We've got a large cosmological understanding of the importance of poetry.
Poetry talks about things like the shape of the universe.
It talks about the elements of rain and fire.
It talks about the constellations of Arcturus and the Great Bear.
It talks about why winter suns depart early from the daytime.
All of these things are going to be in the background of what poetry is all about.
Virgil, I think here, is giving us an invitation to say, when you look to my
poetry. You should imagine me as a poet, trying to
tell you a story of the entire cosmos. Virgil has larger ambitions, if possible,
I think it is. Larger ambitions for poetry, I think, even
than Homer did. For Virgil, it would be possible to use
poetry to convey structures of the cosmos. It's something, sure, that Homer touched
on, in as we have talked about. Generators of interpreters after Homer,
especially those of the allegorical school, understand that his poetry does
give a window of these large, huge cosmological questions.
But. Virgil here I think is self consciously
telling us, I'm going to. You could purposefully create a poem that
can be read by every a lens you could imagine.
It will be as rich as you possibly can make it out to be.
In a way it reminds me a little bit of what happens in modern poetry, for
example, with figures like James Joyce. James Joyce is constantly giving us a
nudge to say, go ahead and read into this because you're going to find tremendous
amounts of deep meaning here. I think Virgil's doing the same thing with
this opening his of Book one. Read.
Hard. Read carefully and you'll find grand
truths in my story. Homer's leading us down that path.
Or, Virgil's leading us down that path. From here, we'll turn to book two, and
have a look at Virgil's representation. Really, the, most authoritative
representation from all of antiquity, about the Trojan Horse and the events
surrounding the end of the Battle of.