Humanities Summer Reading

SUMMER 2007

The Aeneid by Virgil (Robert Fitzgerald, translator)
Vintage Classics, ISBN 0679729526
Knopf Publishing Group, ISBN 0-679-72952-6

Reading any extraordinary work of the imagination should not proceed by analysis so much as it should be a deeply felt experience of something whole. The following outline is meant primarily as a guide that reveals the deeper form of this work.  Think of it as a thread that gathers the details into something that is richly organic and knowable.  The details should never supplant or be separated from the larger action.  Reading literature is a task that should engender delight. You might consider writing your reflections down in a separate journal.  Such writing should avoid formal analysis and instead reflect a more immediate, intuitive response to the material.  Bona Fortuna! 

Section I.  You should be able to list the name of the speaker or subject as well as the deeper significance in the following quotes taken from Virgil's Aeneid:  (If you cannot remember the name, identify the speaker, subject, object, place, day, or animal, in some other way):

1.   "Give up what I began? / Am I defeated? / Am I impotent / To keep the king of Teucrians from Italy? / The fates forbid me, am I to suppose?"

2.    "Triply lucky, all you men / To whom death came before your fathers' eyes / Below the wall at Troy! Bravest Danaan, / Diomedes, why could I not go down / When you had wounded me, and lose my life / On Ilium's battlefield? Our Hector lies there, / Torn by Achilles' weapon; there Sarpedon, / Our giant fighter, lies; and there the river / Simois washes down so many shades / And helmets, with strong bodies taken under!"

3.    "Are you so sure your line is privileged? / How could you dare to throw heaven and earth / Into confusion, by no will of mine, / And make such trouble? You will get from me-- / But first to calm the rough sea; after this, / You'll pay a stricter penalty for your sins."

4.   "Friends and companions, / Have we not known hard hours before this? / My men, who have endured sill greater dangers, / God will grant us an end to these as well. / You sailed Scylla's rage, her booming crags, / You saw the Cyclops' boulders.  Now call back / Your courage, and have done with fear and sorrow. / Some day, perhaps, remembering even this / Will be a pleasure.  Through diversities / Of luck, and through so many challenges, / We hold our course for Latium, where the Fates / Hold out a settlement and rest for us. / Troy's kingdom there shall rise again.  Be patient: / Save yourselves for more auspicious days."

5.    "As for ourselves, / Your own children, whom you make heirs of heaven, / Our ships being lost (this is unspeakable!), / We are forsaken through one enemy's rage / And kept remote from Italy.  Is this / The palm for loyalty? / This our power restored?"

6.    "For these I set no limits, world or time, / But make the gift of empire without end. / Juno, indeed, whose bitterness now fills / With fear and torment sea and earth and sky, / Will mend her ways, and favor them as I do, / Lords of the world, the toga-bearing Romans."

7.  "Come, then, soldiers, be our guests.  My life / Was one of hardship and forced wandering / Like your own, till in this land at length / Fortune would have me rest.  Through pain I 've learned / To comfort suffering men."

8.   "Ai!  Give up and go, child of the goddess, / Save yourself, out of these flames.  The enemy / Holds the city walls, and from her height / Troy falls in ruin.  Fatherland and Priam / Have their due; if by one hand our towers / Could be defended, by this hand, my own, / They would have been.  Her holy things, her gods / Of hearth and household Troy commends to you.  / Accept them as companions of your days; / Go find for them the great walls that one day / You'll dedicate, when you have roamed the sea."

9.    "Happiest of us all was Priam's daughter, / The virgin picked to die at the great tomb, / Below Troy wall, of our dead enemy. / She never had to bear the slave's allotment, / Never laid hands on a lord and master's bed. / But when our native city burned, we others / Were shipped out through far seas.  I bore the pride / And insolence of Achilles' warrior son, / Being brought to bed, in slavery, of his child."

10.   "Is it for you / To lay stones for Carthage's high walls, / Tame husband that you are, and build their city? / Oblivious of your own world, your own kingdom! / From bright Olympus he that rules the gods / And turns the earth and heaven by his power-- / He and no other sent me to you, told me / To bring this message on the running winds: / What have you in mind?  What hope, wasting your days / In Libya?  If future history's glories / Do not affect you, if you will not strive / For your own honor, think of Ascanius, / Think of the expectations of your heir, / Iulus, to whom the Italian realm, the land / Of Rome, are due."

11.   "You even hoped to keep me in the dark / As to this outrage, did you, tow-faced man, / And slip away in silence?  Can our love / Not hold you, can the pledge we gave not hold you,  / Can Dido not, now sure to die in pain? / Even in winter weather must you toil / With ships, and fret to launch against high winds / For the open sea?  Oh, heartless!"

12.  "So please, no more / Of these appeals that set us both afire. / I sail for Italy not of my own free will."

13.   "The woman hatches / Plots and drastic actions in her heart, / Resolved on death now, whipping herself on / To heights of anger.  Will you not be gone / In flight, while flight is still within your power? / Soon you will see the offing boil with ships / And glare with torches; soon again / The waterfront will be alive with fires, / If Dawn comes while you linger in this country.  / Ha! Come, break the spell! Woman's a thing / Forever fitful and forever changing."

14.   "Not that love of honor or appetite / For glory have given way, beaten by fear; / I'm slowed by age, my blood runs feebly now / Without heat, and my strength is spent, my body / Musclebound.  Had I that youth again / That I had once, and that this arrogant fellow / Counts on, I would need no setting-on, / No prize, no pretty steer, to make me meet him; / Gifts don't concern me."

15.  "Look, how we've devoured our tables even!"

16.  "These Trojan refugees, / Father, are they to take away Lavinia / In marriage?  Have you no pity for your daughter, / None for yourself?  No pity for her mother, / Who will be left alone by the faithless man, / The rover, going to sea  at the first north wind / With a girl for booty?  Was that not the way / The Phrygian shepherd entered Lacedaemon / And carried Helen off to Troy's far city?"

17.   "See your quarrel brought to the point / Of grievous war.  Now tell them to be friends, / Tell them to make a pact-now that I've splashed / The Trojans with Ausonian blood!  There's more / If I am sure you want it:  I can send out / Rumors to stir the border towns to war, / Fire them with lust for the madness of war, / So they'll be joining in from everywhere.  I'll scatter weapons up and down the land."

18.  "There shall be / No labor for distinction in my life / In wartime or in time of peace without you. / Whether in speech or action , all my trust / Goes now to you."

19.  "Blessed be / Your new-found manhood, child.  By striving so / Men reach the stars, dear son of gods / And sire of gods to come.  All fated wars / Will quiet down, and justly, in the end / Under descendents of Assaracus, / For Troy no longer bounds you."

20.  "Take heed then, and keep fast in memory / These words of mine.  Whereas Ausonians / Are not allowed to league themselves with Trojans, / And it is not acceptable to you / To end your discord, therefore I shall hold all without distinction Rutulians and Trojans, / Whatever fortune each may have today, / Whatever hope may guide him; whether the camp / Lies under siege as fated for Italians / Or through Troy's blunder, and through prophecies / Malign and dark."

21.  "Here is the chance / You've prayed for:  now to hack them up with my swords! / The battle is in your hands, men.  Let each soldier / Think of his wife, his home; let each recall / Heroic actions, great feats of our fathers.  Down to the surf we go, while they're in trouble, Disembarking, losing their footing.  Fortune / Favors men who dare."

22.    "Every man's last day is fixed. / Lifetimes are brief, and not to be regained, / For all mankind.  But by their deeds to make / Their fame last: that is labor for the brave.  Below the walls of Troy so many sons / Of gods went down, among them, yes, my child, / Sarpedon.  Turnus, too, is called by fate.  He stands at the given limit of his years."

23. "Bitter as gall, my enemy, / Why pillory me and hold up death before me? No other expectation, coming to battle. / Lausus, my son, made no compact with you / That you should spare me.  One request I'll make / If conquered enemies may ask a favor: / Let my body be hid in earth. I know / On every hand the hatred of my people. / Fend off their fury and allow me room/ In the same grave with my son."

24.  "Learn fortitude and toil from me, my son, / Ache of true toil.  Good fortune learn from others. / My sword arm now will be your shield in battle / And introduce you to the boons of war. / When, before long, you come to man's estate, / Be sure that you recall this.  Harking back / For models in your family, let your father, / Aeneas, and uncle, Hector, stir your heart."

25.  "Let Latium be. / Let there be Alban kings for generations, / And let Italian valor be the strength / Of Rome in after times.  Once and for all / Troy fell, and with her name let her lie fallen."

Section II.  Briefly explain the significance of the following terms and associate it with some textual reference:

1.      'Hidden away, the judgment Paris gave, / Snubbing her loveliness; the race she hated; / The honors given ravished Ganymede'

2.      'as bees in early summer / In sunlight in the flowering fields / Hum at their work, and bring along the young / Full-grown to beehood; as they cram their combs / With honey, brimming all the cells with nectar, / Or take newcomers' plunder, or like troops / Alerted, drive away the lazy drones, / And labor thrives and sweet thyme scents the honey.'

3.      Creusa

4.      Dardan Sword

5.      Roman Arts

6.      'Their neediness drove them to try their teeth / On Ceres' platters'

7.      A White Sow

8.      Hercules

9.      Euryelus and Nisus

10.  'Graven with pictured crime: that company, / Aegyptus' sons, killed by Danaus' daughters, / Young men murdered on one wedding night, / Their nuptial beds blood-stained.'

11.  'Passion for arms and virginity'

12.  Imperium

Section III.  Discuss the restoration of the equilibrium between the masculine and the feminine in Virgil's Aeneid.  In particular discuss the problem of Juno's wrath and why she must be given her place if the confrontation between beauty and sovereignty is to be resolved. Why is the place of the feminine so central to the myth of the west?  Particular emphasis should be given to the deeper significance of Juno and Venus as archetypes.

List of Characters: 

Ascanius
Aeneas
Allecto
Amata
Amor
Anchises
Andromache
Apollo
Camilla
Creusa
Dido
Diomedes
Drances
Entellus
Hector
Juno
Jupiter
Latinus
Lavinia
Mars
Mercury
Mezentius
Neptune
Pallas
Tiberinus
Turnus
Venus

If you are interested in particular references or the larger Roman world you should begin with the extraordinary resource at www.perseus.tufts.edu/ (Gregory Crane, Editor-in-Chief of the Perseus Project at Tufts University, is an alumnus of Portsmouth Abbey School).