1 00:00:04,780 --> 00:00:08,994 In Book VI, we see one of the most well-known parts of Virgil's Aeneid, the 2 00:00:08,994 --> 00:00:12,924 trip to the underworld. We have of course seen such a thing in the 3 00:00:12,924 --> 00:00:15,942 Odyssey before but Virgil's is quite a bit different. 4 00:00:16,113 --> 00:00:20,669 One thing we can observe to start off with, is that Virgil's underworld has a 5 00:00:20,669 --> 00:00:23,801 different kind of function than it did in Homer's epic. 6 00:00:23,972 --> 00:00:28,585 Recall in Homer's time, that when Homer talks about Odysseus go the, going down to 7 00:00:28,585 --> 00:00:31,718 the underworld. Odysseus goes down there, he's trying to 8 00:00:31,718 --> 00:00:36,274 find some knowledge about what he did wrong and how he might right the wrong 9 00:00:36,274 --> 00:00:41,176 that is causing him all this suffering. He's trying to find Tiresias and get some 10 00:00:41,176 --> 00:00:45,128 information from him about what's what needs to get fixed. 11 00:00:45,322 --> 00:00:50,569 In, in going down there, it's pretty clear that this underworld is a giant sort of 12 00:00:50,569 --> 00:00:53,290 holding cell. It's just a place where dead. 13 00:00:53,603 --> 00:00:56,162 Spirits go, and all of them would rather be alive. 14 00:00:56,319 --> 00:01:00,079 Not that much happens down there. There's a few famous sinners that are being 15 00:01:00,079 --> 00:01:03,317 punished for eternity. But mostly, everyone is in the same boat, 16 00:01:03,317 --> 00:01:06,242 they're all just gray and they all wish they were alive. 17 00:01:06,242 --> 00:01:10,472 It's not as though there are good ones over there getting treated well, and there 18 00:01:10,472 --> 00:01:13,658 are ones that aren't so good over there are getting punished. 19 00:01:13,815 --> 00:01:16,531 That doesn't really happen in Homer's underworld. 20 00:01:16,531 --> 00:01:20,604 Again, except for those few very famous sinners who'd done awful things to the 21 00:01:20,604 --> 00:01:23,529 gods, they have punishments, but they're, they're outliers. 22 00:01:23,529 --> 00:01:26,976 Now when we get to Virgil's underworld, things are quite different. 23 00:01:26,976 --> 00:01:32,420 It is very carefully constructed by Virgil as a place where ethical scores are 24 00:01:32,420 --> 00:01:35,653 settled. Those that have done well in life get 25 00:01:35,653 --> 00:01:41,314 beautiful afterlives, and they have nice long periods of joyful and happy things 26 00:01:41,314 --> 00:01:44,737 that surround their eternity. For those that have had evil. 27 00:01:44,737 --> 00:01:49,394 That have been evil in their lives they have awful afterlifes and they're actually 28 00:01:49,394 --> 00:01:52,928 physically punished. Now this is a very different kind of world 29 00:01:53,097 --> 00:01:56,295 that we see happening in Virgil, And quite a different, 30 00:01:56,295 --> 00:01:58,763 Quite a contrast from what happens in Homer. 31 00:01:58,932 --> 00:02:03,532 There are intervening traditions that Virgil's working off of that are helping 32 00:02:03,532 --> 00:02:07,628 him build this notion of what the afterlife is about based on precedents 33 00:02:07,628 --> 00:02:11,611 that exist in Roman theological ideas, Roman ideas about the gods. 34 00:02:11,780 --> 00:02:16,631 And also going back to some current Greek materials, especially in Pythagorean 35 00:02:16,631 --> 00:02:21,688 philosophy and an example of this, approached the underworld, actually shows 36 00:02:21,688 --> 00:02:26,004 up in Plato's republic in book ten, way back in classical Athens. 37 00:02:26,004 --> 00:02:31,398 It's not at all a normal belief at the time Plato is talking about it, but after 38 00:02:31,398 --> 00:02:36,657 Virgil makes the underworld look like this, it becomes very normal in the west, 39 00:02:36,657 --> 00:02:41,849 and as it's adopted into Christian theology, this idea of the after life as a 40 00:02:41,849 --> 00:02:47,137 place where ethical scores are settled, is very much a, a regnant idea. but we're 41 00:02:47,137 --> 00:02:53,577 getting to see it here, really in, in it's most powerful mythical form in Virgil's 42 00:02:53,577 --> 00:02:57,575 Aeneid in book six. Virgil gets, very specific about what 43 00:02:57,575 --> 00:03:01,067 happens. The details here are spelled out in a way 44 00:03:01,067 --> 00:03:05,812 that, you know, Virgil's bringing his rationalizing brain to bear, on this 45 00:03:05,812 --> 00:03:09,370 question of the underworld. And Homer was, pretty foggy. 46 00:03:09,370 --> 00:03:13,455 Odysseus went far away. He landed, and, and, and the, spirits came 47 00:03:13,455 --> 00:03:18,331 out of a cave to come talk to him. Virgil we see a full architecture, of 48 00:03:18,331 --> 00:03:21,164 things and a, a, a way that everything works. 49 00:03:21,164 --> 00:03:25,777 Now the afterlife is a, the underworld is a tricky place as we know. 50 00:03:25,777 --> 00:03:28,940 It's, easy to go down, but very hard to come back. 51 00:03:29,134 --> 00:03:34,388 We hear this in lines 185 to 90 and our translation, that we're using for this 52 00:03:34,388 --> 00:03:38,216 class. it's, of course, easy to find your way to the underworld. 53 00:03:38,216 --> 00:03:42,018 Death is too close to any of us and sadly, close to all of us. 54 00:03:42,194 --> 00:03:45,646 We are fragile creatures. So, it's easy to get down there. 55 00:03:45,646 --> 00:03:49,977 But coming back, that's the tricky part. So Aeneas is going to have to try and 56 00:03:49,977 --> 00:03:54,600 figure out a way to disrupt the regular order of things, make his way there but 57 00:03:54,600 --> 00:03:58,579 then somehow also come back. The Sibyl tells him that there is going to 58 00:03:58,579 --> 00:04:02,090 be a way for him to do this. He is going to have to find a, very 59 00:04:02,090 --> 00:04:06,128 special piece of foliage. There is a thing called the Golden Bough, 60 00:04:06,304 --> 00:04:10,108 made famous in mythology. Wonderfully resonant poetic image in 61 00:04:10,108 --> 00:04:12,800 Virgil, Made famous in contemporary circles. 62 00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:18,409 When James Joyd, George Frazier decided to name a seminal work in the study of 63 00:04:18,409 --> 00:04:23,350 mythology, in the early 1900's, he decided to name it Golden Bough, after this, 64 00:04:23,350 --> 00:04:28,626 And from then it became I think really firmly established in at least 65 00:04:28,626 --> 00:04:31,497 contemporary study of mythology, this image. 66 00:04:31,497 --> 00:04:37,040 So let's take a look at what happens. Recall that when the Sibyl announces it to 67 00:04:37,040 --> 00:04:42,486 Virgil, she tells him that he'll have to go and find this bough. 68 00:04:42,718 --> 00:04:46,976 The bough is there, And Sibyl tells him that it will come 69 00:04:46,976 --> 00:04:50,615 willingly and easily if you are called by fate. 70 00:04:50,847 --> 00:04:53,634 Page 215. Sorry, line 215, she says. 71 00:04:53,634 --> 00:05:00,446 But the and, and she further says that if you're not called by fate, there's no way 72 00:05:00,446 --> 00:05:04,550 you could rip it off, no matter how strongly you pull. 73 00:05:04,550 --> 00:05:09,156 So it's either going to come off willingly and easily or there's no way you would be 74 00:05:09,156 --> 00:05:12,503 able to pull it off. Okay so if you're fated to go it will 75 00:05:12,503 --> 00:05:16,834 basically fall off in your hands. And if you're not fated to go there's no 76 00:05:16,834 --> 00:05:21,749 way you'll be able to get that thing off. Take a look at what happens though looking 77 00:05:21,749 --> 00:05:25,436 on page 167 in our translation. It's lines 295 and following. 78 00:05:25,436 --> 00:05:27,952 What really happens when Aeneas goes there. 79 00:05:28,128 --> 00:05:30,878 The lines are as written up here on our screen. 80 00:05:30,878 --> 00:05:35,853 So bright amid the dark leaves green ilex shown the golden leafage rustling in light 81 00:05:35,853 --> 00:05:38,662 wind. Aeneas at once briskly took hold of it and 82 00:05:38,662 --> 00:05:42,992 though it clung greedily broke it off, Then carried it to the Sibyl's cave. 83 00:05:42,992 --> 00:05:45,643 Now it's not entirely clear here what happens, 84 00:05:45,643 --> 00:05:50,244 But Virgil spells out what seems to be a pretty clear middle way between the two 85 00:05:50,244 --> 00:05:54,334 distinctive and mutually exclusive possibilities that the Sibyl gave us. 86 00:05:54,334 --> 00:05:57,345 Either it will fall off in your hand if you're fated, 87 00:05:57,345 --> 00:06:01,094 Or no matter how hard you pull, you'll never be able to get it off. 88 00:06:01,094 --> 00:06:03,480 Well, it doesn't fall off in Aeneas's hand. 89 00:06:03,480 --> 00:06:07,136 And he's not foiled in his attempt to yank the thing off. 90 00:06:07,136 --> 00:06:11,879 He briskly takes hold of it, and though it clung, he greedily broke it off and 91 00:06:11,879 --> 00:06:16,499 carried it back to the Sibyl's cave. So, we're given here a possibility that 92 00:06:16,499 --> 00:06:20,995 the Sibyl seems to rule out, and it's a classic moment of Virgil, taking a 93 00:06:20,995 --> 00:06:25,984 circumstance that he's already set up and giving us very clear possibilities, and 94 00:06:25,984 --> 00:06:31,097 then he finds a middle way through to say, actually, something else kind of happened. 95 00:06:31,097 --> 00:06:36,086 He doesn't then come back and explain it to us and say, oh, by this I meant to say, 96 00:06:36,086 --> 00:06:40,272 but he leaves it in there as a point of incongruity in the story. 97 00:06:40,479 --> 00:06:46,611 This way of leaving shadows in his text, blank spaces, spots that don't seem like 98 00:06:46,611 --> 00:06:51,228 they make sense according to the parameters that he himself set up. 99 00:06:51,228 --> 00:06:54,260 We saw this in the case of the marriage and. 100 00:06:54,260 --> 00:06:59,324 Dido and Aeneas in the cave, it's tricky to figure out what happened there, and in 101 00:06:59,324 --> 00:07:02,158 the case of the golden bow, it's tricky as well. 102 00:07:02,158 --> 00:07:05,007 Was. Virgil, was Aeneas supposed to pull that 103 00:07:05,007 --> 00:07:07,289 bough off? Was he fated to be there? 104 00:07:07,289 --> 00:07:12,373 Well, we don't really hear, that he was, because it doesn't fall off in his hand. 105 00:07:12,373 --> 00:07:17,458 But, we also don't hear that he wasn't fated to be there because, he is able to 106 00:07:17,458 --> 00:07:20,718 yank it off. And Virgil says that, if, he weren't, 107 00:07:20,718 --> 00:07:24,760 fated to be there, he would never have been able to get it off. 108 00:07:24,760 --> 00:07:30,010 So from that, with that detail not resolved we head off, and head down to the 109 00:07:30,010 --> 00:07:33,467 underworld. There are invocation of underworld gods 110 00:07:33,467 --> 00:07:38,717 that Virgil gives us as we move down, descending into the into the cave, we hear 111 00:07:38,717 --> 00:07:43,455 about Hecate, and Night, and Earth, and Proserpina, who is our Roman name for 112 00:07:43,455 --> 00:07:46,066 Persephone. This world is definitely down below. 113 00:07:46,066 --> 00:07:48,396 We're moving down with Aeneas and the Sibyl. 114 00:07:48,396 --> 00:07:52,686 Virgil shows us an architecture that is very elaborate and detailed and has a 115 00:07:52,686 --> 00:07:56,287 strong downward trajectory. Sadness and death are personified around 116 00:07:56,287 --> 00:07:58,300 us. We see these scary things that are 117 00:07:58,300 --> 00:08:01,107 happening. But Virgil reassures us in line 400 in our 118 00:08:01,107 --> 00:08:05,502 translation that these are empty monsters, so we shouldn't really be scared of them. 119 00:08:05,661 --> 00:08:09,209 We're down in the underworld where there is no substance of things. 120 00:08:09,209 --> 00:08:13,605 So there can't be substance that could physically harm you in the form of these 121 00:08:13,605 --> 00:08:16,200 nasty things floating around. They're just shades. 122 00:08:16,359 --> 00:08:20,794 This is Virgil as a rationalizing, Scientific kind of mind. looking at his 123 00:08:20,794 --> 00:08:23,554 fantasy of what the underworld is all about. 124 00:08:23,743 --> 00:08:28,448 We then, on our way to the point where we're going to cross over the River Styx 125 00:08:28,448 --> 00:08:31,898 and move into limbo and other stages of the underworld. 126 00:08:31,898 --> 00:08:36,540 On our way there, we run into a figure, don't we? This man Palinurus. We saw him 127 00:08:36,540 --> 00:08:41,433 mentioned at the end of our last book. He is, remember hand on the tiller, guiding 128 00:08:41,433 --> 00:08:44,875 the ship away. And, he turns out to die but we don't know 129 00:08:44,875 --> 00:08:49,574 it. so we run into him in that way, very much parallel to how the role that Elpenor 130 00:08:49,574 --> 00:08:51,509 played in the Odyssey. Remember him? 131 00:08:51,675 --> 00:08:55,489 We had in Homer's telling of the tale, Elpenor died unbeknownst to us. 132 00:08:55,489 --> 00:08:57,977 We go down to the underworld, we meet Elpenor. 133 00:08:57,977 --> 00:09:01,571 Hey, what are you doing here? Elpenor tells us, hey, come on, bury me. 134 00:09:01,571 --> 00:09:05,053 The dead want to be buried. And then, after the underworld, we come 135 00:09:05,053 --> 00:09:09,145 out and we meet and bury Elpenor. Well, it works a little bit like this, but 136 00:09:09,145 --> 00:09:11,798 Palinurus is not fulfilling the full story here. 137 00:09:11,798 --> 00:09:14,231 We also have Palinurus and Misenus together. 138 00:09:14,231 --> 00:09:18,834 Palinurus comes up and tells us, I'm dead, You didn't know it, and I want to be 139 00:09:18,834 --> 00:09:25,279 buried we learn from, from the Sibyl that he's going to buried by the locals where 140 00:09:25,279 --> 00:09:28,916 he died, so we're not going to bury him at the end of our stage. 141 00:09:29,089 --> 00:09:33,303 But we do need to, to carry on. So we're just going to move forward and in 142 00:09:33,303 --> 00:09:38,093 the mean time, we made up with Misenus, who is someone that is already dead, who's 143 00:09:38,093 --> 00:09:41,210 been buried and we're going to see him on the other side. 144 00:09:41,210 --> 00:09:46,001 So in a typical Virgilian spin he takes one character of Elpenor and splits him 145 00:09:46,001 --> 00:09:50,735 into two, both Misenus and Palinurus play different parts of Elpenor's role for us. 146 00:09:50,908 --> 00:09:53,710 We then, Through the Sibyl's encouragement and 147 00:09:53,710 --> 00:09:58,447 nudging and showing off the golden bough, we get ourselves across the River Styx on 148 00:09:58,447 --> 00:10:01,472 Charon's boat. But notice what happens when Virgil, an 149 00:10:01,472 --> 00:10:05,296 embodied human being, hops onto a boat that's meant to carry shades, 150 00:10:05,296 --> 00:10:09,574 The boat is creaking under the weight. Again, this is Virgil as a rationalizer, 151 00:10:09,574 --> 00:10:14,080 trying to figure out what would it be like if some embodied human being went down to 152 00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:17,208 the underworld. It reminds me a little bit of what great 153 00:10:17,208 --> 00:10:20,178 science fiction writers in contemporary genres do today. 154 00:10:20,337 --> 00:10:24,366 They take the laws of physics, such as they know them, and then try to insert 155 00:10:24,366 --> 00:10:29,297 them into worlds of extreme, bending of those laws, but they hold on to the ones 156 00:10:29,297 --> 00:10:33,432 they can in this world of bent laws. Well, that's happening here, with Virgil, 157 00:10:33,432 --> 00:10:37,250 too, as the Charons' boat is creaky. They then get across the river, 158 00:10:37,250 --> 00:10:42,806 Lines 516 following in our translation. We meet this dog Cerberus, who guards the 159 00:10:42,806 --> 00:10:46,753 underworld, toss him a cake, that keeps him quiet and lets us get across. 160 00:10:46,920 --> 00:10:51,584 At that point we enter into the realm of Limbo. We see in limbo the untimely dead. 161 00:10:51,763 --> 00:10:56,473 These are figures like infants, those who have been unjustly condemned, suicides, 162 00:10:56,473 --> 00:11:01,124 those who died for love, and wouldn't you know it, we meet up with Dido there. 163 00:11:01,124 --> 00:11:06,430 It's a sad place, not a good place to be, and it's a spot that's reserved for people 164 00:11:06,430 --> 00:11:11,021 who have not necessarily done wrong things, it's just that they died in a way 165 00:11:11,021 --> 00:11:13,666 that, Yet the circumstances did not allow them 166 00:11:13,666 --> 00:11:18,535 to experience the full pleasure, that's possible in an afterlife, and we're going 167 00:11:18,535 --> 00:11:21,878 to see what that is. That's waiting for us around the corner. 168 00:11:21,878 --> 00:11:26,454 We see our judges operating down there, Minos is making judgement on souls and 169 00:11:26,454 --> 00:11:31,264 sending them one direction or another. As we make our way down, we see, whole mix 170 00:11:31,264 --> 00:11:35,970 of people who are Mixed up in nasty stuff. And eventually we get down to Tartarus and 171 00:11:35,970 --> 00:11:38,695 there, here's where all the very worst sinners are. 172 00:11:38,695 --> 00:11:40,983 Aeneas is curious. He wants to go see this. 173 00:11:41,147 --> 00:11:44,416 And Sibyl says no. You can't go down there, it's too nasty. 174 00:11:44,580 --> 00:11:49,157 Rhadamanthus acts as judge down there and awful things get dealt with in awful ways. 175 00:11:49,157 --> 00:11:53,715 And she then, instead, describes it. At this point then she says we've gotta 176 00:11:53,715 --> 00:11:59,330 get on our way, and we hear a description from Virgil on page 178 that dawn crosses 177 00:11:59,330 --> 00:12:01,686 the meridian. Dawn is crossing the meridian. 178 00:12:01,686 --> 00:12:03,851 Here we are at the bottom of our underworld. 179 00:12:03,851 --> 00:12:07,049 And if dawn is crossing the meridian, what does that exactly mean? 180 00:12:07,196 --> 00:12:10,739 We're, we're in the underworld. How, how is it that dawn could be crossing 181 00:12:10,739 --> 00:12:13,052 past us? And then she goes on to describe night 182 00:12:13,052 --> 00:12:15,856 arrives Aeneas. Well if dawn is crossing the meridian how 183 00:12:15,856 --> 00:12:19,104 is it that night is arriving? Well it could be that what Virgil is 184 00:12:19,104 --> 00:12:22,302 talking about here is the, is the topsy-turvy world that we're in. 185 00:12:22,302 --> 00:12:26,484 If dawn is crossing the meridian up in the upper spheres than it could be that night 186 00:12:26,484 --> 00:12:30,076 is arriving in the lower spheres. And since we're down below we're seeing 187 00:12:30,076 --> 00:12:32,635 night arrive as dawn is crossing the upper Meridian. 188 00:12:32,635 --> 00:12:36,509 But it's really hard to tell. We're stuck down here, with Broydal in the 189 00:12:36,509 --> 00:12:40,834 underworld, , It's a wonderful representation here, you wouldn't wanted 190 00:12:40,834 --> 00:12:45,488 to live inside of this mans mind, but one of the most famous representations of 191 00:12:45,488 --> 00:12:50,142 Virgils underworld, since we have it from Broydal, you wouldn't want to spend a lot 192 00:12:50,142 --> 00:12:53,591 of time down here, and, Sibyl is anxious and ready to move on. 193 00:12:53,591 --> 00:12:57,478 Saying to Aeneus, come on, let's get going!" The world is topsy turvy, it's 194 00:12:57,478 --> 00:13:02,187 really hard to peg exactly where we are, but I think that, Virgils giving us some 195 00:13:02,187 --> 00:13:05,198 clues with dawn across the meridian, and night arriving. 196 00:13:05,198 --> 00:13:08,210 At, at that point we move away, thank goodness, from this. 197 00:13:08,210 --> 00:13:11,554 Nasty bits that we see. People getting punished all over the 198 00:13:11,554 --> 00:13:14,156 place. And we start to move into a different kind 199 00:13:14,156 --> 00:13:16,280 of world. It's brighter and it's lighter. 200 00:13:16,439 --> 00:13:20,793 The figure that we see first is Aeneas, Anchises, Aeneas's father, and he's going 201 00:13:20,793 --> 00:13:23,076 to introduce us to what's happening over here. 202 00:13:23,076 --> 00:13:27,111 And at the same time give us an explanation, some larger explanation of a 203 00:13:27,111 --> 00:13:31,200 lot of the things that we've been seeing already so far in the underworld.