a dose of gravitas
Of the three major Greek and Roman epics--The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid--most modern readers prefer Homer's The Odyssey. No doubt it's the fantastic adventure, humor, and romance of the piece; it may remind readers of a full-blown action film. The Iliad may be more to the liking of those people who like to recreate historical battles on hex-grid boards.
For sheer poetry, I'm told, The Aeneid is the superior work, but, really, most contemporary readers aren't riveted to the poetry. Besides, of the three heroes, most modern readers think Aeneas the wimpiest. He fights well enough; he visits the underworld without swooning (wait until you see Dante's trip to the underworld); he communicates with gods and goddesses; he leads his people through sea adventures and on to war to found a new city--Rome. Still, he seems easily pushed around, and when he leaves Dido, he sneaks out in the middle of the night so he doesn't have to hear her moan about it. Later, when she catches him, he acts like a cad when he says that although sleeping with her in that cave might be considered marriage in Carthage, Trojans have different customs--it was just a good time.
Of course the original audiences were different. Virgil's epic is written in praise of what was then the greatest and most extensive empire the Western world had ever seen. Larger than either of the great Greek empires or the vast Persian empire the Roman empire by the 1st century B.C. streteched from the straits of Gibralter to Palestine, from northern Africa to northern England. The introduction to Virgil in our text states the epic pays homage to "the consolidation of the Roman peace under Augustus.... Summarized like this, the Aeneid sounds like propaganda, which, in one sense of the word, it is" (471). Rome had moved beyond the idea of a city/state and created a vision of the world/state. Ingenious advances in technology helped create an incredible infrastructure--roads and aquaducts still in existence 2000 years later.
Aeneas's character reflects Roman ideals. He has some of the fighting will, strength, ingenuity of Achilles and Odysseus, but he most notably embodies the quality of gravitas (seriousness of purpose). The Romans prized gravitas, which was characterized by manliness (not just martial prowess but also a sense of responsibility, duty), industry (working for the greater glory and the advancement of the empire), and discipline (putting the will of superiors, particularly the emperor, ahead of personal desire).
As a work of literature, Virgil's epic has many of the same characteristics as the two Greek epics and earlier works such as The Epic of Gilgamesh: there are stock situations, stock epithets; there is cataloguing and repetition, a hero quest, supernatural intervention, pitched battles.
The Aeneid is, though, more human than the earlier epics. There is a psychological depth in Virgil that is new to the genre. We sense the pathos of Aeneas's inability to actually touch the land he as fought for, given up so much for. He is like Moses who leads his people to a promised land and will never see it.
But the real psychological sophistication appears in the love of Dido and Aeneas. Both are pawns of the gods and goddesses; both are subject to fate. But the intensity of their love and the pain of the separation is pitiably human.
Aeneas is a coward for trying to leave in the middle of the night, but as he explains later, it was his duty and his destiny to take his people to their new land (the Roman audience would have appreciated that). He realized that if he'd let her plead; if she clung and kissed, begged and screamed, he'd most likely give in.
Dido's eventual descent into madness presages four of the five stages of grief described by Elizabeth Kublar-Ross:
Denial
Preparing for her own death she still imagines he may return, though that hope shifts to anger and despair very quickly.
Anger
Dido, correctly, attacks Aeneas for his cowardice
"You even hoped to keep me in the dark
As to this outrage, did you, two-faced man,
And slip away in silence?" (515)Her outrage grows until she eventually prays that Carthage and Rome will be at war for generations. Dido's curse is prophetic of the Punic wars that would devestate Italy and Libya for generations.
"...hear my prayer!
If by necessity that impious wretch
Must find his haven and come safe to land,
If so Jove's destinies require, and this,
His end in view, must stand, yet all the same
When hard beset in war by a brave people,
Forced to go outside his boundaries
And torn from Iulus, let him beg assistance,
Let him see the unmerited deaths of those
around and with him, and accepting peace
On unjust terms, let him not, even so,
Enjoy his kingdom or the life he longs for,
But fall in battle before his time and lie
Unburied on the sand! This I implore,
This is my last cry, as my last blood flows,
The, O my Tyrians, besiege with hate
His progeny and all his race to come:
Make this your offering to my dust. No love,
No pact must be between our peoples; No,
but rise up from my bones, avenging spirit!
Harry with fire and sword the Darden countrymen
Nor, or hereafter, at whatever time
The strength will be afforded. Coast with coast
In conflict, I implore, and sea with sea,
And arms with arms: may they contend in war,
Themselves and all the children of their children!" (525-6)Bargaining
Dido pleads for Aeneas to stay just a little longer, to give her a child so she has something to remember him by
"Do you abandon me, a dying woman,
...If at least
There were a child by you for me to care for,
A little one to play in my courtyard
And give me back Aeneas, in spite of all,
I should not feel so utterly defeated,
Utterly bereft." (515)And later she declares she'll free him from the marriage and let him find his dear love, Latium (Rome), if he'll just give her "Mere time, a respite and a breathing space / For madness to subside in, while my fortune / Teaches me how to take defeat and grieve" (519).
Depression
Dido, driven mad with grief and anger, descends into despair and commits suicide
And Dido's heart
Beat wildly at the enormous thing afoot.
She rolled her bloodshot eyes, her quivering cheeks
Were flecked with red as her sick pallor grew....
She climbed the pyre and bared the Dardan sword--
A gift desired once, for no such need
Her eyes now on the Trojan clothing there
And the familir bed, she paused a little,
Weeping a little, mindful, then lay down
And spoke her last words:
"Remnants dear to me
While god and fate allowed it, take this breath
And give me respite from these agonies.
I lived my life out to the very end
And passed the stages Fortune had appointed." (527)
She never reaches acceptance; she drives a blade into her heart and is set alight on a funeral pyre.
And it doesn't end there. Dido is unwilling to forgive Aeneas even in death; when he confronts her in the Underworld she blames the man, not the gods.
Every teen who's felt unrequited love, every jilted lover who cannot let go of the bitterness, is mirrored in the pathos of thier failed love.
For its multi-faceted portrayal of human nature mixed with a plot that combines elements of both The Iliad and The Odyssey and its elaborate praise to the history of the Roman empire, The Aeneid is more sophisticated than either of the Greek epics, even if it's not the fan favorite.