Teaching Aeneid I for the first time in a while... the thing I love most about the opening of the Aeneid is that Virgil sets you up for an epic hero, and if you have read the Greek epics you are naturally expecting like... Achilles? Odysseus? some RAGE, some CUNNING, some STYLE.
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enter AENEAS, the world's SADDEST, WETTEST CAT
Aeneas: fuck my life, this sucks, I wish I was dead
*wonders if there's a course syllabus, that could function as a kind of guided commentary... *
*whistles innocently, looking at no one in particular...*
'O terque quaterque beati,
quis ante ora patrum Troiae sub moenibus altis
contigit oppetere!'
O three times and four times blessed,
you who before the faces of your fathers, under the high walls of Troy,
had the good luck to die early!
That ENJAMBEMENT, man. The delay of 'contigit oppetere' so you don't get hit with the full depth of Aeneas' suicidal envy until the third line. The idea of dying young while your parents watch (like Hector does! in the Iliad!) being the GOOD outcome.
But with the benefit of distance (and no more grades) - it really is glorious 😁
Both the books you mentioned apply but I was more thinking about book 10, where he captured enemy warriors for human sacrifice and killed Magus.
I don't think I'm capable of scrolling past an Aeneid post without mentioning this