With Aeneas having got himself out of Troy
he now starts on his wandering adventures. We obviously know this well from Odysseus'
tales of Book nine through, in Books nine through twelve of the Odyssey.
Oh, Homer sorry, Virgil's are quite different.
And for us to focus on those differences is really pays off great dividends.
First of all, as we said when we were talking about the rationalizing impulse
that Virgil brings to his myths these stories are all mappable.
These are specifically located on real geographical places that we can point to.
Let's start off with this place, Troy. We know exactly where that is.
The legendary place of it helped guide where we should have looked.
So there was a location on a map back then about what Troy was all about.
The first place they go and stop after their escape from the burning of Troy is
this place called Thrace. Thrace up in northern part of the area of
the, the great extent of Greece it's well known for being a little bit wild and
strange in Greek custom and the first adventure that they have leads them to
rather spooky scene at Thrace which is right near Troy.
Aeneas locates the body of Polydorus. You'll recall, or you'll recall from
reading, that the suggestion is talked about, about where Polydorus comes from.
He was Priam's son who was entrusted to the King of Thrace during the Trojan War
with a hefty ransom. Well, after Troy fell the king just
decided go ahead and take the ransom and kill the kid.
So poor Polydorus is there under awful circumstances buried in the ground.
And he starts spouting up oracles. Oracles that come from the dead, so called
necromancy are things that are well known, but very, understood to be very spooky in
Ancient Rome. It's not a normal way of getting oracles.
When they hear this, that it's time for them to move on, this is not a good place
to get their city started Aeneas and the boys hop on the ship and off they go.
The next place they go is Delos. Now Delos is well known as a famous place
for Apollo's oracle. It's not, though, quite as Greek invented
in Greekness as Delphi is. Let me just clarify that.
Delphi has a very rich tradition. Delos has one too.
Both of them are anchored in the Greek past.
Delphi's, though, is more central. Delos is by no means peripheral but I
don't think that Virgil could have quite had his hero go find out the truth of what
he needed to find at Delphi. That would have been too Greek too
connected with what we know the Greeks to have expected.
So instead we go to Delos. Again, a very well famous, a very famous
and well-respected Greek place and, an oracular shrine.
But not the main one of Apollo which in long tradition turns out to be Delphi.
We know Delos of course from our Homeric hymn to.
Apollo, so the oracle there tells them they should seek where the Trojans first
came from. The idea is that there is some early
ancestral land out there where Troy needs to be reestablished.
Now the story that Delos tells, makes this new home that Aeneas is seeking actually.
And earlier home, a primer home. It just so happen in the story such as
Virgil tells it. Actually, it's not just that the Romans
come from the Trojans, actually, yeah the Romans come from the Trojans.
But the Trojans originally came from the Romans.
Virgil's giving us a story in which the ancestral home of Troy is actually Rome.
So it has the, the, the roll of being, originary the actual, originary spot of
this whole race. So when Dylos says, go find your,
background, he saying to, Virgil's saying. Through that message then what happening
here is a refounding of an originary kingdom Rome is.
From Delos they head off to thinking that they're looking for an ancient place that
could have been the background of Troy. They head off to Crete.
Makes sense. Crete was well known, as we've mentioned,
mythologically as a very ancient place and if we're looking for some ancestral home,
it may well have been there. So they go and they start and they get
started their building. They're building their walls.
Notice how many times we're going to see, during this book of fits and starts in
book three we're going to see Aeneas and his.
Mates, getting started building a city. They'll build walls, they'll lay out
plans. And then something bad happens.
So at Crete, they're getting started on the building of the city and there's a
pestilence that appears. A awful plague that visits the men.
They fall down sick. And then the household gods appear to him
in a dream, as we mentioned earlier on, talking about the rationalizing spirit in
Virgil. These gods tell him it's time for you not
to be here, but somewhere else. You've got to move on.
It's actually in Italy. Go there.
So at this point now, Virgil and his mates know what to do and off they head.
They have a stop at the island of the harpies, in the Strophades showing up here
on the western edge of, of Greece. These harpies are nasty well-known beasts.
They show up in some famous freezes and other artistic representations.
They're things with wings that come down and just spoil your food.
Those who have try to have a picnic near flocks of pigeons might have some people
to relate. A little bit to what this kind of
experience was like. So it was, they were unable to get any
nourishment. They also hear a nasty oracle there from
the mean Harpy Celaeno that they won't found Rome until they eat their tables.
They're going to be apparently so hungry that they eat their tables.
This prophecy is fulfilled in book seven when they realize that their bread
platters that they're using to hold their food up is actually what the Harpy was
referring to. They then go right past Ithaca.
This shows up on page 75 in your translation.
Not much mention of it, right. Hello to Odysseus but we're not going to
spend a lot. I'm worrying about you, it's almost like a
kinda like a kiss off to, To Ithaca where he's not going to spend a
lot of time talking about it. We then go to Chaonia in Northern Greece
on the Adriatic side to this town that's there and we hear the story of Andromache,
who was Hector's wife, abducted by a Greek man named Pyrrhus, a son of Achilles,
after the Trojan War and taken back to this land of Chanoia.
Then Pyrrhus dies and Helenus, who is a son of Priam and another one of Pyrrhus's
captains, inherits the kingdom. Now we have a kind of new Troy that's been
found here Chanoia by. Great Trojan aristocrats, Helenus together
with Andromache, Hector's wife, and this would seem like it would be a good place
to found Troy. But it turns out no, it isn't.
We can't have a new Troy here. Aeneas, you've got to move onto another
place. A famous prophecy then comes out.
Helenus is well know for his prophetic acumen in the Trojan materials.
He then tells them that they have to go talk to the Sibyl.
He gives them a further clarification of the prophecy. Yes, it's going to be Italy
but in order to find what to do, they have to go find the Sibyl and she will give
them specific directions on where to go. That's going to require, yes, indeed, a
trip to the underworld, something we'll see in book six.
They then make their way aross the, the sea between, Greece and Italy and over to,
the, over to the land of Aetna where they see this belching volcano, and they hear
discussion of the Cyclops. Now on their way there notice what they
don't do is go through the Scylla and Charybdis.
It's possible that they could have gone through this little narrow isthmus between
the tall Italy and the island Sicily but they avoid it.
This is Virgil, I think, telling us that Aeneas is a different kind of captain.
Remember what Scylla and Charybdis forced Odysseus into.
Well, he's going to have to choose one or the other.
If he chooses Charybdis he could lose all his men so he's just going to sacrifice
some of his men and go past Scylla and have them be eaten.
Well, Aeneas finds another way. Rather than try to go through there let's
go round the outside of Sicily. That outside path there around the
southern edge moving his way westward in that way.
So he avoids altogether the tough choice that Odysseus found himself with, and it
is the wisdom here and respect for all of his peers, all of his, all of the men in
his crew that I think Virgil is making a strong point of pointing out to us.
So we get to this land of Aetna, and on that land we meet the Cyclops.
We hear about him and the way we get into the Cyclops's tale is, again,
interestingly from this figure Achemenides.
Achemenides is someone who was abandoned by Odysseus.
On page 87 to 89 we hear his story, and he talks about how my shipmates left me here.
So we're going to get. Odysseus' famous example of him being a
grand hero and defeating the Cyclops we're going to get a window on what that's all
about via one of the men that Odysseus abandoned.
So what we're learning about Odysseus so far from the episode that we saw with
Cynon the abandoned man here, the sort of brush off to Ithaca is that Odysseus is a
conniving liar and he's someone who doesn't get all his men home safe.
So the different values that are emerging in this story are contrasted specifically
with the kind of values were, we were used to seeing Placed front and center in
Homer's story. A different kind of hero here.
We're going to focus on that in a coming lecture but notice what's happening with
the legend of Odysseus. He has been recast now in something that
is fair enough but a different kind of casting.
He's a nasty liar and someone you can't trust.
The, the Romans are not going to embrace that figure at all.
So after we hear the tale of the Cyclops, we make our way around Sicily avoiding
again, so and Charybdis, We've could have gone there right after
our right after our meeting on Aetna with, with Achaemenids But instead, we go around
and we get to Drepanum. From there, we know that, the father and
Kysis passes away. Sad thing for Aeneas, but a kind of
necessary thing. The past now needs to be inhabited and
carried forward by, by Aeneas. It's no longer going to be up to his
father. Other to carry traditional it's now passed
down to the next generation. There are some that have looked at this
set of journey that, that goes one and talk about yes, there is a.
Definitely an Odyssean character to them, and quality to them.
But there's also, not only Odysseus's journey is being.
Captured here but also some of Telemachus' journey is being capture here.
Aeneas is referred to as a young man by the Trojans as he runs into them.
Some of them school him and bring him along, especially Helenus and Andromache.
He's being raised and nurtured in the adventures he has, in some ways parallel
to the way Telemachus is in books one through four of the Odyssey.
Now that's not to say that Telemachus is the only parallel.
Odysseus is there too but it's a way of seeing how Aeneas, or Virgil always takes
elements from Homer and puts a different spin on.
And twist them just a little bit, and, and comes up with something entirely new in
his way of treating them. So after we buried or after we've left the
father of Drepanum. We are on our way now to Carthage we're going to pick back up
with the story where Virgil start had Aeneas take it over at the close of Book
one. We're going to learn about some events
that happen there in Carthage focusing on what happens with.
Dido, especially. Before we do, let's talk a little bit more
about what we've learned about this new Roman hero this figure of Aeneas.