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The Aeneid 8308 Views
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Description:
Pious Aeneas goes from minor character in the Trojan War to founder of Rome, the city that conquered the world, meetin' ladies and experiencing major duty-induced guilt trips along the way. We wonder what Virgil could have done for Robin, Batman's perpetual sidekick...
Transcript
- 00:01
The Aeneid <<uh-nee-id>>, a la Shmoop. Without TV, the Internet, printed books, or
- 00:07
handheld video games, there was a whole lot of verbal storytelling going on in ancient
- 00:14
Rome.
- 00:14
[1]You could even say these recitations were epic…
- 00:16
…especially when talking about Virgil’s Aeneid.
Full Transcript
- 00:16
Here’s the opening line of the Aeneid:
- 00:18
I sing of arms and of a man.
- 00:22
So which is it? What exactly is the Aeneid about? Arms, or a man?
- 00:25
First, let's make one thing clear. We're not talking about arms… we're talking about
- 00:29
arms.
- 00:29
Like… more weapons than we can count.
- 00:32
So you could definitely argue that the Aeneid is about arms.
- 00:39
After all, this is a bloody story of war. In that way, it takes after Homer's Iliad.
- 00:50
For comparison, the opening line of Homer's Iliad is:
- 00:53
Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' <<peel-ee-us>>[2] son Achilles.
- 00:56
The anger in this case being, you guessed it… war.
- 00:59
Blood. Guts. Dismemberment. All the juiciest details of conflict.
- 01:01
But Virgil wasn’t inspired by the Iliad alone.
- 01:04
Ever heard of the Odyssey?
- 01:07
Just as the Odyssey was about Odysseus… The Aeneid is about Aeneas <<uh-NEE-iss>>.
- 01:14
A man.
- 01:14
In case you’ve misplaced your copy of the Odyssey, we’ll remind you of its first line,
- 01:22
too:
- 01:23
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven.
- 01:26
That’s right… the man.
- 01:27
The Aeneid follows in these footsteps and tells the story of a dude on a quest who ends
- 01:35
up in some seriously sticky situations. But maybe the first line is deceiving. Is
- 01:41
it possible that the Aeneid is about neither arms nor a particular man?
- 01:47
It might just be about the whims of the gods and the founding of Rome.
- 01:55
And those gods are fickle. [3]
- 01:57
They’re just as likely to turn you into a sheep as they are to bless you with a bountiful
- 02:02
harvest.
- 02:03
You don’t ever want to be on their bad side.
- 02:09
Is the Aeneid about arms?
- 02:11
Is it about a man?
- 02:12
Is it just an origin story about the chosen city of the gods?[4]
- 02:18
Or is it all of the above? Shmoop amongst yourselves.
- 02:24
[1]This is utterly and completely not true. The epic was not sung. It was recited.
- 02:27
The only reason that the epic starts with "I sing" is because he was copying Homer.
- 02:32
There was really no singing in Rome. [2]This is wrong. It's PEEL-ee-us
- 02:35
[3]I mean…it really is about all of them…so, the question posed at the end doesn't really
- 02:38
have a lot of substance. [4]This is really only part of the story.
- 02:42
Because Aeneas is the son of a goddess, and Augustus, the first emperor, is supposedly
- 02:47
descended from the goddess and is therefore divine. So, although you could say that the
- 02:52
gods are fickle, the gods are actually pretty authoritative. And the whole point is that
- 03:00
the founding of Rome was divinely determined—it was fate—and so the city is basically the
- 03:08
chosen city of the gods.
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