B) After the destruction of Troy, the Trojan prince Aeneas leads a small
band of survivors in search of a new home in Italy. Unfortunately, as they sail
on their way, the goddess Juno spots them. Juno hates the Trojans because of an
old grudge, and because they are destined to become the Romans, who will destroy
Carthage, her favorite city. Conspiring with the god of the winds, Juno whips up
a storm, forcing the Trojans to take refuge in – you guessed it – Carthage.
Luckily, Aeneas has connections. In fact, his mom, Venus, is the goddess of
connections. She introduces him to Dido, the beautiful queen of Carthage, who is
recently widowed. Venus gets Amor, the personification of love, to make Dido
fall madly in love with Aeneas. That night, at a banquet in his honor, Aeneas
tells Dido the story of how Troy was captured, and how he escaped, carrying his
father, Anchises, on his back, and leading his son, Ascanius, by the hand. (His
wife, Creusa, died in the chaos – making Aeneas single, too.) Next, Aeneas
recounts he and his fellow refugees' wanderings over the sea, including their
close encounters with various weird mythological creatures. Aeneas's story ends
with the death of his father, Anchises.
Aeneas and the Trojans end up
wintering in Carthage, and he and Dido become an item. Then Jupiter gets worried
that Aeneas is abandoning his destiny of founding a new city. He sends the god
Mercury down to tell him to get moving. Aeneas does as he's told, and Dido kills
herself.
A storm forces the Trojans to land in Sicily – at the exact
place where they buried Anchises a year before. While the Trojans hold athletic
contests in the old man's honor, Juno convinces the Trojan women to set fire to
the ships. Realizing that not everyone is as jazzed about going to Italy as he
is, Aeneas leaves some people in Sicily and sails on to Italy with his A-team.
Their first stop is Cumae, in the Bay of Naples, where they visit the Sibyl, a
prophetess. She leads Aeneas down to the underworld, where he sees a lot of
spooky stuff, talks with his father Anchises, and sees the spirits of future
Roman heroes, waiting to be born. He also encounters Dido. He tries to talk to
her but she rejects him.
Fired up by what he has seen in the underworld,
Aeneas sails to Latium. As it happens, Latinus, the local king, has received an
oracle saying his only child, Lavinia, must marry a foreign husband; he offers
her to Aeneas in marriage. The problem is that Amata, Latinus's wife, wants
their daughter to marry the local prince Turnus. Seeing her opportunity, Juno
sends a Fury down to make both Amata and Turnus crazed with rage. Then she
tricks Ascanius to shoot a stag kept as a pet by Latinus's gamekeeper. This
provokes a war between the Italians and the Trojans.
While the Italians
are gathering allies, the god of the River Tiber appears to Aeneas in a dream
and tells him to make an alliance with the Arcadian King Evander who lives
upriver. Aeneas does as he's told and Evander lends him some troops, including
his own son, Pallas. He also tells Aeneas to join forces with the Etruscans.
After Aeneas sets out to speak to them, Venus comes down and gives him some
armor made by the god Vulcan. It is decorated with scenes from the glorious
future of Rome.
Meanwhile, in Aeneas's absence, Turnus and his men attack
the Trojan fort, but are unable to capture it. That night, two Trojan warriors,
Nisus and Euryalus, try to break through the Italian lines to reach Aeneas, but
end up being killed by an Italian patrol. Two days later, Aeneas arrives with
his Arcadian and Etruscan allies. In the battle that day, Turnus kills Pallas.
The next day, Aeneas and the Italians agree on a twelve-day truce to bury their
dead, but it is broken three days later. The ensuing battle leads to the death
of Camilla, a warrior queen allied with Turnus.
That evening, Turnus
decides to fight Aeneas one-on-one for Lavinia and the kingdom. Unfortunately,
the next day, when they are about to fight their duel, the nymph Juturna
(Turnus's sister) provokes one of the Italians to throw a spear at the Trojans,
starting a new battle. After much fighting, Aeneas finally comes head-to-head
with Turnus and wounds him with his spear. As Turnus begs for mercy, Aeneas
considers sparing him – until he sees that Turnus is wearing a belt he stole
from Pallas. Enraged, Aeneas kills Turnus with his sword.
C
) Aeneas - The protagonist of
the Aeneid. Aeneas is a survivor of the siege of Troy, a city on the
coast of Asia Minor. His defining characteristic is piety, a respect for the
will of the gods. He is a fearsome warrior and a leader able to motivate his men
in the face of adversity, but also a man capable of great compassion and sorrow.
His destiny is to found the Roman race in Italy and he subordinates all other
concerns to this mission. The Aeneid is about his journey from Troy to
Italy, which enables him to fulfill his fate.
Dido
- The queen of Carthage, a city in northern
Africa, in what is now Tunisia, and lover of Aeneas. Dido left the land of Tyre
when her husband was murdered by Pygmalion, her brother. She and her city are
strong, but she becomes an unfortunate pawn of the gods in their struggle for
Aeneas’s destiny. Her love for Aeneas proves to be her downfall. After he
abandons her, she constructs a funeral pyre and stabs herself upon it with
Aeneas’s sword.
Turnus
- The ruler of the Rutulians in Italy. Turnus is Aeneas’s major antagonist
among mortals. He is Lavinia’s leading suitor until Aeneas arrives. This rivalry
incites him to wage war against the Trojans, despite Latinus’s willingness to
allow the Trojans to settle in Latium and Turnus’s understanding that he cannot
successfully defy fate. He is brash and fearless, a capable soldier who values
his honor over his life
.
D)
After setting out from Troy, in modern Turkey, Aeneas's fleet
ricochets like a pinball off the major landmarks of the Ancient Mediterranean:
Thrace, the Greek islands, Crete, Epirus, Sicily, North Africa, and finally
Italy. (Who's operating the paddles of this pinball machine? The gods, of
course.) It's important to remember, though, that the time in which Aeneas's
adventures takes place isn't just ancient from our perspective – it was also
way, way, way lost in the mists of time for Virgil. This gave him the freedom to
mix things up a bit, and include mythological elements in his geography. For
example, in Virgil's day, Eastern Sicily was not inhabited by a race of
Cyclopes. Similarly, the straits of Messina (between the toe of Italy and
Sicily) were not guarded by the horrible creatures, Scylla and
Charybdis.
E)
major
conflict · Aeneas is
fated to travel from the ruins of Troy to Italy, where he will establish a race
that will lead to the founding of Rome. Juno, harboring feelings of vengeance
against the Trojans, impedes Aeneas’s mission by inciting a romance between
Aeneas and Dido and then a war between the Trojans and the Latins, causing
suffering for the hero, his fleet, and many whom they encounter on the
way.
Aeneas has to decide between love and duty; human desire and destiny. He is
forced to pick between his own desires and the fate of the people he leads,
indeed the nation that depends on him to perpetuate. That being I think the type
of conflict
F)
The
Primacy of Fate
The direction and destination of Aeneas’s course are preordained, and his
various sufferings and glories in battle and at sea over the course of the epic
merely postpone this unchangeable destiny. The power of fate stands above the
power of the gods in the hierarchy of supernatural forces. Often it is
associated with the will of Jupiter, the most powerful of the Olympians. Because
Jupiter’s will trumps the wills of all others, the interference in Aeneas’s life
by the lesser gods, who strive to advance their personal interests as much as
they can within the contours of the larger destiny, do not really affect the
overall outcome of events.
The Sufferings of Wanderers
The first half of the
Aeneid tells the story of the Trojans’ wanderings as they make
their way from Troy to Italy. Ancient culture was oriented toward familial
loyalty and geographic origin, and stressed the idea that a homeland is one’s
source of identity. Because homelessness implies instability of both situation
and identity, it is a form of suffering in and of itself. But Virgil adds to the
sufferings of the wandering Trojans by putting them at the mercy of forces
larger than themselves. On the sea, their fleet buffeted by frequent storms, the
Trojans must repeatedly decide on a course of action in an uncertain world. The
Trojans also feel disoriented each time they land on an unknown shore or learn
where they are without knowing whether it is the place where they belong. As an
experience that, from the point of view of the Trojans, is uncertain in every
way, the long wanderings at sea serve as a metaphor for the kind of wandering
that is characteristic of life in general. We and Virgil’s Roman audience know
what fate has in store for the Trojans, but the wandering characters themselves
do not. Because these individual human beings are not always privy to the larger
picture of destiny, they are still vulnerable to fears, surprises, desires, and
unforeseen triumphs.
The Glory of Rome
Virgil wrote the
Aeneid during what is known as the Golden Age of the Roman
Empire, under the auspices of Rome’s first emperor, Caesar Augustus. Virgil’s
purpose was to write a myth of Rome’s origins that would emphasize the grandeur
and legitimize the success of an empire that had conquered most of the known
world. The Aeneid steadily points toward
this already realized cultural pinnacle; Aeneas even justifies his settlement in
Latium in the same manner that the empire justified its settlement in numerous
other foreign territories. Virgil works backward, connecting the political and
social situation of his own day with the inherited tradition of the Greek gods
and heroes, to show the former as historically derived from the latter. Order
and good government triumph emphatically over the Italian peoples, whose world
prior to the Trojans’ arrival is characterized as a primitive existence of war,
chaos, and emotional irrationality. By contrast, the empire under Augustus was
generally a world of peace, order, and emotional
stability.
G)
Fire- symbolizes unbridled
energy, for good or bad.
Gold -symbolizes what is special, hidden, and rare. This can be seen in the
golden bough stashed away in the deepest, darkest corner of the forest, which
only the designated person can take to guide him in the underworld.
Weather- the gods use the weather as a force to express their will the storm
that juno sends at the beginning of the epic symbolizes her rage. Ect ect
band of survivors in search of a new home in Italy. Unfortunately, as they sail
on their way, the goddess Juno spots them. Juno hates the Trojans because of an
old grudge, and because they are destined to become the Romans, who will destroy
Carthage, her favorite city. Conspiring with the god of the winds, Juno whips up
a storm, forcing the Trojans to take refuge in – you guessed it – Carthage.
Luckily, Aeneas has connections. In fact, his mom, Venus, is the goddess of
connections. She introduces him to Dido, the beautiful queen of Carthage, who is
recently widowed. Venus gets Amor, the personification of love, to make Dido
fall madly in love with Aeneas. That night, at a banquet in his honor, Aeneas
tells Dido the story of how Troy was captured, and how he escaped, carrying his
father, Anchises, on his back, and leading his son, Ascanius, by the hand. (His
wife, Creusa, died in the chaos – making Aeneas single, too.) Next, Aeneas
recounts he and his fellow refugees' wanderings over the sea, including their
close encounters with various weird mythological creatures. Aeneas's story ends
with the death of his father, Anchises.
Aeneas and the Trojans end up
wintering in Carthage, and he and Dido become an item. Then Jupiter gets worried
that Aeneas is abandoning his destiny of founding a new city. He sends the god
Mercury down to tell him to get moving. Aeneas does as he's told, and Dido kills
herself.
A storm forces the Trojans to land in Sicily – at the exact
place where they buried Anchises a year before. While the Trojans hold athletic
contests in the old man's honor, Juno convinces the Trojan women to set fire to
the ships. Realizing that not everyone is as jazzed about going to Italy as he
is, Aeneas leaves some people in Sicily and sails on to Italy with his A-team.
Their first stop is Cumae, in the Bay of Naples, where they visit the Sibyl, a
prophetess. She leads Aeneas down to the underworld, where he sees a lot of
spooky stuff, talks with his father Anchises, and sees the spirits of future
Roman heroes, waiting to be born. He also encounters Dido. He tries to talk to
her but she rejects him.
Fired up by what he has seen in the underworld,
Aeneas sails to Latium. As it happens, Latinus, the local king, has received an
oracle saying his only child, Lavinia, must marry a foreign husband; he offers
her to Aeneas in marriage. The problem is that Amata, Latinus's wife, wants
their daughter to marry the local prince Turnus. Seeing her opportunity, Juno
sends a Fury down to make both Amata and Turnus crazed with rage. Then she
tricks Ascanius to shoot a stag kept as a pet by Latinus's gamekeeper. This
provokes a war between the Italians and the Trojans.
While the Italians
are gathering allies, the god of the River Tiber appears to Aeneas in a dream
and tells him to make an alliance with the Arcadian King Evander who lives
upriver. Aeneas does as he's told and Evander lends him some troops, including
his own son, Pallas. He also tells Aeneas to join forces with the Etruscans.
After Aeneas sets out to speak to them, Venus comes down and gives him some
armor made by the god Vulcan. It is decorated with scenes from the glorious
future of Rome.
Meanwhile, in Aeneas's absence, Turnus and his men attack
the Trojan fort, but are unable to capture it. That night, two Trojan warriors,
Nisus and Euryalus, try to break through the Italian lines to reach Aeneas, but
end up being killed by an Italian patrol. Two days later, Aeneas arrives with
his Arcadian and Etruscan allies. In the battle that day, Turnus kills Pallas.
The next day, Aeneas and the Italians agree on a twelve-day truce to bury their
dead, but it is broken three days later. The ensuing battle leads to the death
of Camilla, a warrior queen allied with Turnus.
That evening, Turnus
decides to fight Aeneas one-on-one for Lavinia and the kingdom. Unfortunately,
the next day, when they are about to fight their duel, the nymph Juturna
(Turnus's sister) provokes one of the Italians to throw a spear at the Trojans,
starting a new battle. After much fighting, Aeneas finally comes head-to-head
with Turnus and wounds him with his spear. As Turnus begs for mercy, Aeneas
considers sparing him – until he sees that Turnus is wearing a belt he stole
from Pallas. Enraged, Aeneas kills Turnus with his sword.
C
) Aeneas - The protagonist of
the Aeneid. Aeneas is a survivor of the siege of Troy, a city on the
coast of Asia Minor. His defining characteristic is piety, a respect for the
will of the gods. He is a fearsome warrior and a leader able to motivate his men
in the face of adversity, but also a man capable of great compassion and sorrow.
His destiny is to found the Roman race in Italy and he subordinates all other
concerns to this mission. The Aeneid is about his journey from Troy to
Italy, which enables him to fulfill his fate.
Dido
- The queen of Carthage, a city in northern
Africa, in what is now Tunisia, and lover of Aeneas. Dido left the land of Tyre
when her husband was murdered by Pygmalion, her brother. She and her city are
strong, but she becomes an unfortunate pawn of the gods in their struggle for
Aeneas’s destiny. Her love for Aeneas proves to be her downfall. After he
abandons her, she constructs a funeral pyre and stabs herself upon it with
Aeneas’s sword.
Turnus
- The ruler of the Rutulians in Italy. Turnus is Aeneas’s major antagonist
among mortals. He is Lavinia’s leading suitor until Aeneas arrives. This rivalry
incites him to wage war against the Trojans, despite Latinus’s willingness to
allow the Trojans to settle in Latium and Turnus’s understanding that he cannot
successfully defy fate. He is brash and fearless, a capable soldier who values
his honor over his life
.
D)
After setting out from Troy, in modern Turkey, Aeneas's fleet
ricochets like a pinball off the major landmarks of the Ancient Mediterranean:
Thrace, the Greek islands, Crete, Epirus, Sicily, North Africa, and finally
Italy. (Who's operating the paddles of this pinball machine? The gods, of
course.) It's important to remember, though, that the time in which Aeneas's
adventures takes place isn't just ancient from our perspective – it was also
way, way, way lost in the mists of time for Virgil. This gave him the freedom to
mix things up a bit, and include mythological elements in his geography. For
example, in Virgil's day, Eastern Sicily was not inhabited by a race of
Cyclopes. Similarly, the straits of Messina (between the toe of Italy and
Sicily) were not guarded by the horrible creatures, Scylla and
Charybdis.
E)
major
conflict · Aeneas is
fated to travel from the ruins of Troy to Italy, where he will establish a race
that will lead to the founding of Rome. Juno, harboring feelings of vengeance
against the Trojans, impedes Aeneas’s mission by inciting a romance between
Aeneas and Dido and then a war between the Trojans and the Latins, causing
suffering for the hero, his fleet, and many whom they encounter on the
way.
Aeneas has to decide between love and duty; human desire and destiny. He is
forced to pick between his own desires and the fate of the people he leads,
indeed the nation that depends on him to perpetuate. That being I think the type
of conflict
F)
The
Primacy of Fate
The direction and destination of Aeneas’s course are preordained, and his
various sufferings and glories in battle and at sea over the course of the epic
merely postpone this unchangeable destiny. The power of fate stands above the
power of the gods in the hierarchy of supernatural forces. Often it is
associated with the will of Jupiter, the most powerful of the Olympians. Because
Jupiter’s will trumps the wills of all others, the interference in Aeneas’s life
by the lesser gods, who strive to advance their personal interests as much as
they can within the contours of the larger destiny, do not really affect the
overall outcome of events.
The Sufferings of Wanderers
The first half of the
Aeneid tells the story of the Trojans’ wanderings as they make
their way from Troy to Italy. Ancient culture was oriented toward familial
loyalty and geographic origin, and stressed the idea that a homeland is one’s
source of identity. Because homelessness implies instability of both situation
and identity, it is a form of suffering in and of itself. But Virgil adds to the
sufferings of the wandering Trojans by putting them at the mercy of forces
larger than themselves. On the sea, their fleet buffeted by frequent storms, the
Trojans must repeatedly decide on a course of action in an uncertain world. The
Trojans also feel disoriented each time they land on an unknown shore or learn
where they are without knowing whether it is the place where they belong. As an
experience that, from the point of view of the Trojans, is uncertain in every
way, the long wanderings at sea serve as a metaphor for the kind of wandering
that is characteristic of life in general. We and Virgil’s Roman audience know
what fate has in store for the Trojans, but the wandering characters themselves
do not. Because these individual human beings are not always privy to the larger
picture of destiny, they are still vulnerable to fears, surprises, desires, and
unforeseen triumphs.
The Glory of Rome
Virgil wrote the
Aeneid during what is known as the Golden Age of the Roman
Empire, under the auspices of Rome’s first emperor, Caesar Augustus. Virgil’s
purpose was to write a myth of Rome’s origins that would emphasize the grandeur
and legitimize the success of an empire that had conquered most of the known
world. The Aeneid steadily points toward
this already realized cultural pinnacle; Aeneas even justifies his settlement in
Latium in the same manner that the empire justified its settlement in numerous
other foreign territories. Virgil works backward, connecting the political and
social situation of his own day with the inherited tradition of the Greek gods
and heroes, to show the former as historically derived from the latter. Order
and good government triumph emphatically over the Italian peoples, whose world
prior to the Trojans’ arrival is characterized as a primitive existence of war,
chaos, and emotional irrationality. By contrast, the empire under Augustus was
generally a world of peace, order, and emotional
stability.
G)
Fire- symbolizes unbridled
energy, for good or bad.
Gold -symbolizes what is special, hidden, and rare. This can be seen in the
golden bough stashed away in the deepest, darkest corner of the forest, which
only the designated person can take to guide him in the underworld.
Weather- the gods use the weather as a force to express their will the storm
that juno sends at the beginning of the epic symbolizes her rage. Ect ect
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/aeneid/themes.html
google images
Wikipedia
Youtube
Shmoop.com
www.sparknotes.com/lit/aeneid/sumarry.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNVJNxkNSDs