Leaving behind Book four of the Aeneid,
and all that nasty business with Dido we take quite a turn in the, in the events of
our story in Book five. We have our hero, Aeneas, moving from the
northern coast of Africa, and Carthage, And this background that he sees in Dido,
and her civilization. And the, the, the dangers of maybe getting
implicated in there, and his escape from there.
We now. Are going to move on to the future,
literally. We're moving on to Rome and what's going
to happen next. Sicily provides a kind of perfect medial
space in between those two locations, Northern Africa and Italy.
It's in the middle in terms of geography. It's right there.
It's also an island, so it's somewhat separate from the rest of the world.
It also recalls, interestingly, the, another island that we know from our
mythic background of Scheria where Odysseus had a engagement in a similar
kind ofactivity that we see most characteristic in Book five, That is the
games in honor of in the case, in honor of Anchises.
These athletic games that Virgil positions in his epic right at this point, have
really interesting connections with the athletic games that show up, especially in
Book eight in the Odyssey, and allow us to make some interesting kinds of
connections. The differences are as profound and
interesting as the similarities, but, there are ways in which these things are
have bear some comparison. Remember, in Odysseus's case, he is
finding a way to reintegrate himself back into society.
He has been isolated and alone for a long time in the story.
He has been far away on the island of, Ogygia, and trying to find his way back to
his own home, the island of Scheria gives him a, a medial position in which he can
rest, rejuvenate, recover his strength, and move forward.
It also give him a way to, in a, in a final sense, recover the fullness of his
identity and recall in Book five through, through seven, he's starting to recover
that sense of who he is. He gets back some of his strength and it,
it starts to show wits about him and then he recovers that and, and displays that
physical strength through these funeral games.
This is a, another piece in him piecing himself back together such that in Books
nine through twelve, he can take over as, as captain of the, of the poem and carry
forward in the narrative and move things forward for us there.
Now, for Aeneas, the medial position is very much similar.
He's moving from a state of having been in, in a state of wandering and not quite
sure where he's going into a state of much strong surety.
As he moves to the coast of, of Italy via Sicily, he's going to enter in, into a new
part of the epic. We're going to close a look at Book six,
which is him going into the underworld of further detour.
But this spot in Boom five is a transition time as he's moving to Italy.
And in Book seven and four, Over the part that we're not reading for this for this
part of the course Aeneas' action takes place as it's a militaristic conquest of
territory, very definite, definite task that takes courage and strength but it is
have more definitive perimeters around it. Up till now, it's been a lot of wandering
and moving around, and unclarity, incertainty, uncertainty as Aeneas tries
to find his way. So, the games are a transitionws into a
time when Aeneas is now going to become a, a more powerful figure in his own right.
Now, there are structural ties in this book to the rest of the story, they're
quite interesting to note. There are ominous fires that bookend both
sides of the games. Remember, Dido's funeral pyre?
Just before we get on to the games, we can see that far off the coast.
And then, after the games, we have the fires of the ships that are being burned.
That, the Trojan women set them under Juno's encouragement, and, and we see
those fires. They closed the games.
Both of these have ominous, portentious kinds of meanings to them.
There's a storm that we see at the beginning that drives the fleet to Sicily.
And another storm at the end puts out the flames on the burning ships.
We have this figure Palinurus. He shows up at the beginning of the book
as the ship gets through the storm to Sicily.
He's the steersman that gets it carefully through that treacherous path.
And then, Palinurus appears at the end of the story as he falls off the ship.
We're going to meet him. Who knew that there was a dead colleague
that fell off of our ship. We're going to find out in the underworld
interestingly another harkening back into interesting theme in Odyssey.
We're going to meet up with Palinurus again, at least, we'll hear about them
again. Now, the games that get worked out in Book
five show us lots of pieces of Aeneas' character coming to the form.
There are in the games a boat race, a foot race, boxing, archery, and the equestrian
maneuver of the Lusus Troiae. These are different than what we see in
the Greek games. There's some similarities but also some
distinctive Romanesque that's built into these.
We see people in the games who are constantly cutting corners.
They're making mistakes, they're being greedy they're not living up to their to
their potential, They're whining.
Those who are engaged in the games are doing all kinds of things that require
correcting. Well, as these events show themselves,
who's the correcter and chief who shows up?
It's Aeneas. He starts to step into his role now, as a strong commander with, a,
a, strong hand on the tiller of his ship guiding his people through, difficult
conflicts. As was the case when we look back at the
Odyssey we see important pieces of Odysseus' character being put on display
there well, here, we see Aeneas growing into important pieces of his character,
that are going to be central for him as he moves forward.
He gives a chance to display a, a, a new kind of prowess that he has.
In that sense, there's a parallelism with Telemachus, as much as there is with
Odysseus as well. His father is now gone, sadly but with
that figure out of the way, And he is now, is, is his own, steps into
his own as being a prominent and powerful person at the height of his of his of his
own capabilities in Book five. We see him settle disputes, he's very good
at this as people engage in the games, there are conflicts that arise.
Aeneas finds ways to settle disputes. He has judgement and fairness that he
brings to bear. He has good offices that he's earned
through surviving these awful toils and bringing his people through all this nasty
stuff that they've been through. And now, he puts them to use in finding
ways for people to move forward, even through conflict and to settle disputes.
He's, he's steps right into the center of that and takes over in order to help make
things work out right for society. One of the markers I think of taking
responsibility is another way of saying solving other people's problems and Aeneas
is stepping right up and doing that kind of thing in through, throughout this book.
There's after he intervenes and solves things, we see lots of goodwill that shows
up, there are prizes all around and Aeneas is very generous, he puts them all, all
over, he makes people feel good about themselves and in each of these situations
the epithet that gets put out more and more frequently with Aeneas.
In this book, and then forward from here in the epic, is Father Aeneas.
He starts to be referred to in these games as Father Aeneas,
More so than any other book in the, in the epic.
In fact Book five is where he shows this epithet of himself and shows himself
having earned it. Aeneas is now making a transition from
this time of wandering and difficulty such as we see in the, the, the journeys and
all the turmoil, turmoil that came with those from Carthage and forward,
And now making a turn to Italy. That he does this via Sicily, on a final
historical note, is important. We have talked already about the
Carthaginians and the important role that they played in Roman history.
Sicily was a critical piece of the whole Carthaginian struggle.
The struggle against the role of Carthage. So, the connection there would have been
deeply engraved in Roman minds of Sicily as a pathway between Carthage and Rome.
And now, being backtracked by Aeneas himself, as he is bringing from Carthage
this, determination to found a new city that will eventually make Dido's funeral
pyre go far away and distant and eventually flicker out as Rome comes to
dominate the Mediterranean.