Before we turn to book four and Dido and
her story, I thought we'd take a step back from books one through three and look at
two specific themes that have emerged here that are interesting contrasts with the
material that we've seen before and a nice window into what happens, with the Roman,
version of ancient myth. We've already talked about both of these,
but I wanted to take some time to focus in on them.
I'm going to talk about Pietas as a central hero for, central value for what a
hero ought to be, and I wanna talk about the concept of teleology as a driving
force behind, a historical thrust. The, idea of pietas shows up as a
definitive marker of what Aeneas is all about.
We've translated this as dutiful, I think that's as good a single English word as
we're going to find, but it's much more than just being simply dutiful.
Pietas has an etymological with an English word piety, and yes, indeed, it means
showing due reverence to the gods, pietas does.
But it means, in addition to this sense of dutifulness and showing piety, it means
all the things that a Roman would want to see in a Roman man.
It is. A sense of follow through, commitment to
getting something done a sense of appeal to the broader responsibilities of a
person who takes on a leadership role, who needs to make sure everybody is brought
along, no one is over looked. Pietas talks about doing the difficult
correct thing as opposed to the easy quick out thing, carrying through with your
promises, being honorable, all of these things are built into the idea of pietas.
It's impossible to be a great Roman without exhibiting this and aspiring to
it. Now, this is a very different central
virtue than what we saw with Odysseus. Remember, for him it was polytropos.
Odysseus is able to get out of any jam that he gets, he finds himself getting
into. Through whatever strength, whatever guile
he has to use, he'll get himself out of trouble.
A Roman might look at that. Kind of cultural valuation, say, well what
did he do getting into trouble in the first place?
He shouldn't have been so swashbuckling and telling lies and being all sneaky like
that. The Romans, in fact, don't hold up an idea
of being polytropos, any Roman equivalent, as some of centerpiece of what they want
their hero to be. Instead, the new centerpiece of what a
hero's going to be all about is this notion of being dutiful.
So or, sorry, Aeneas shows this in his, relationship with the divinities.
He's got a relationship with his own god, the Penates, that allows him to exhibit
his pietas. He shows it in his relationship with his
subordinates. He shows duty to them.
And honor, he's honorable to them. He tries to bring them along.
He also shows it when he is constantly subordinating his own individual desires
to the larger needs of the society. This is also built in to the idea of
pietas, which says that your own individual interest is only one small
piece of the world where a larger corporate social interest is much more
important. The similies of bees and ants things that
we've already seen in Homeric times become flavored with a new a newly admirable
quality in Virgil's text. They are, markers of this sense of group
dynamic and an ability to work together in groups, to get great things done.
Romans are wonderful at that and they're rightly proud of their ability to do such
things. When Aeneas is engaged in his making of
boundaries, and building of walls, this is further an act of pietas. It is a
dutifulness he's carrying through, building things out in his marking out of
a city by. Using his plow he is engaging in this
following through of what is expected of him.
Now, a contrast with Odysseus could not be greater on this score.
If Aneas is the great maker of boundaries, Odysseus is the great crosser of them.
He is constantly trying to find a way to skip over whatever boundary or wall is in
his way whereas, Aneas probably would find such a thing child's play.
Much more interesting for him is a sense of duty of building a wall, of making some
order out of an otherwise utterly chaotic world.
It's, it's. Tempting, although it might just be a
suggestion. But it's tempting to map these two central
cultural values onto political and social dynamics of the times and cultures out of
which they emerge. The thing about the Greeks, well, they
were in a stage of exploration. There was lots of settlement happening
during the time that Homer was writing his epic, all the way through into the
Athenian classical period that we focused on in the tragedies.
Greeks were sending out colonies all over the place.
And this idea of exploration and expansion moving into new uncharted territories and
running into strange things there would've.
Spoken in a, in a profound way at a cultural moment when built on exploration,
and finding new spots. Many of them, either uninhabited or only
partially, very partially inhabited. And, and then, by contrast a person might
be tempted to map the idea of pietas and dutifulness in subordinating your own
individual desires to larger group needs to a culture that was now all of a sudden
in control of and worried about maintaining a vast empire.
The Romans are at a time, a cultural time, when Virgil writes his epic and.
Puts pietas at the very center of what it is to be Roman.
A time of preservation. The expansion of the Roman empire had
reached its peak, and the idea now was to enforce, put up boundaries that could be
enforceable and talk about laws that would not be crossed.
It's not a time of fleeing to far flung places.
It's instead a time to shore up things that have been made and to enforce
boundaries. Now, I wouldn't want those to become
stereotypes of what it is to be Greek and what it is to become Roman.
But, as I say, there's a temptation, I think, to read those cultural values onto
particular social and political climate of the time.
Now another, theme that I wanted to make sure that we got to, in addition to PA
tosses is the idea of teleology, teleology.
Now we've mentioned this in the past in the sense of a destiny.
The history that's moving towards some predetermined end.
Teleology is another way of talking about this.
Telos in Greek is a completion an end point, an end or fulfillment telos.
The teleology is the idea that history is moving towards some specific end point.
This idea seemed to be entirely absent in Homer.
The idea that all of history was moving toward some grand end point, not really
there. Definitely present in Virgil's Aeneid.
A, a strong. Long sense of teleology that presses this
through. I wanted to bring up in this, moment
another universal law in the course. Remember, these are suggested universal
laws, for discussion. Universal law number eight.
People at the top of the power structure and people at the bottom of the power
structure tend to embrace the idea that history is moving toward some
predetermined end point. People at the top of the power structure
and at the bottom of the power structure tend to embrace the idea of teleology.
Now, why is that? Well, people who have already won, the,
all the games that the society, puts out to measure value, in a society, like to
think, well. Of course I won.
I, history is bringing me to being on top of the, the, the heap, and on top of the
world. Everything works for a purpose.
I one time saw a interview with one of our great contemporary deities.
The pop singer, Madonna, and she was asked, oh great Madonna, is, is there, is
there a point? Does everything happen for a purpose or is
everything random? Well, guess what, Madonna thinks
everything happens for a purpose. All of history is made to bring her, to
the point of grand influence and power and wealth that she has.
Those at the top of the power structure like to hear this theme.
It endorses their own position in society, with giant wheels of machinery of the
universal mechanisms that have brought them there.
Those at the bottom of the power structure actually embrace this idea, but for quite
a different reason. If you are getting ground up by the
machineries that seem to be operating around you, you are likely.
To think that it wasn't your fault, and that instead there's some, all of these
larger purposes that are acting in the historical times, but they just don't
happen to include you. So it exonerates you from the sense of
having to feel like whatever position you're in is one that you somehow deserve.
It gives a larger meaningful structure in the world and you just happen to be on the
outs of it, but it's, it's operating. So the, the temptation I think, for folks
on both ends of a power structure is there to embrace the ideal of teleology.
Those in the middle. Who have aspirational goals of moving up
social and cultural ladders, don't like this idea, that history moves toward a
predetermined end. It's more interesting to those at either
end of the spectrum of political and social influence on power.
Now whatever the worth of that universal law.
Let's dig into teleology and Virgil's context a little bit more.
Look at all the ways in which destiny pulls Aeneas forward.
We've already taken a look when we went over the events in books two and three,
especially in three, at the. Mums of false starts where Aenaes thinks,
okay here's a place I can build my city. You see that in Thrace, Dylos, Crete, the
land of Caeonia, Dydos' Carthage in Sicily, all of these places, there's an
aspiration, oh good, here, find one, we can get started.
But no, driving on, we're pressed on, some divine sign, some message, some prophecy,
comes along and says, no, it's not here, it's later.
Put off your impulse to try to build a settlement here.
So we've been pulled toward an end point that is not something that is just under
the control of Aeneas' troops or Aeneas himself let alone Aeneas himself but it is
in the larger building in of the cosmos he is going to bring them toward this end
point in Italy almost despite themselves. I mean, at a certain point Aeneas has just
had enough. He seems to be almost fed up.
Now he keeps pressing on but it's at great personal suffering and great personal
cost. So these tales center on this.
Forward pulling fate expressed by these oracular pronouncements.
Now we also get fate read out to us. We get a destiny laid out for us at
specifically important moments of oracular pronouncement by figures in the epic.
Jupiter in Book One famously, has his speech where he talks about, no.
This is what's going to happen. All of these things will unfold for Aeneas
that are going to lead to the founding of Rome.
Creusa, the ghost of Creusa, in book two shows up when she says, Aeneas you must go
ahead and found Rome. Don't worry, I'm dead.
Abandon me. And here is what's going to happen?
She lays out for Aeneas all the things that he's going to have to do.
It's the beginnings of, or the, the, the marker of that this point in history is
only a point leading toward others. The teleology here comes through.
The Delian Oracle, we hear on Dylos so book three. It's time for you to move
forward and here's the place you're going to go.
We hear a little indication of this from the harpy Celaeno, you're going to found
your city after you eat your tables. It turns out to be the bread platters in
Book seven, which we're not going to read. Then from Helenus we have more of a marker
of. Teleological statement coming out in a
prophetic way. We're going to see also that each of these
currents of fate that's pulling us forward through events is pushes through, and
sometimes runs over people that happen to be in the way.
The best example of that is something we're going to turn to next where we see
Dido. Her story is emblematic of a lot of
smaller stories we've seen, of people who as the machinaries of fate and destiny are
pressing themselves forward are going to get ground up in the gears.
And if Virgil was writing some simple propagandistic epic where all of Rome was,
you know, a peachy happy place to be, he would not have included all of these
details, that talk about how. Awful the suffering is of the people that
have to sacrifice in order to make. Rome actually work in order to reach this
predetermined endpoint, and Dido gives us a really interesting way to focus on what
that's going to be.