The Aeneid: Part 2

I think that I already enjoy The Aeneid more than I did reading for last week. I really like how descriptive everything is. Now, we can kind of tend to think of descriptive as excessively full of adjectives, but that is not quite what I mean. What I mean is that it is very easy to tell what Virgil is talking about, and it is very easy to picture it.

I feel like Virgil gets a little bit too excited about Aeneas and his friends being from Troy. It reminds me of that whole scene in The Emperor’s New Groove. The poison. The poison for Kuzco. The poison chosen specifically to kill Kuzco, Kuzco’s poison. That poison? Virgil more or less says the same thing. The Trojans. The Trojans from Troy. The Trojans from Troy that were attacked repeatedly by Juno attempting to kill them because they were Trojans, Troy’s Trojans. That Troy?

I do think that it’s interesting, that when talking about funeral pyres, Virgil mentions boys, unwed girls, and sons. Why is it only important that the girls are unwed?

I do not know why, but I find The Aeneid a lot more difficult to write about than everything else we have read so far. I think that might be mainly because of the fact that there are so many more names to try to keep track of, and many of these names are thrown out once in conversation and then they are not mentioned again. It seems like Game of Thrones in the way that there are so many names, it is almost impossible to keep track of them all, because half of them will be in only one scene, and the other half of them will probably die some tragic and terrible death, anyway. It also might be because a lot of my writing has been quite sassy this year, and it is a lot easier to be sassy when talking about Ovid, because Ovid is sassy, whereas Virgil does not seem to be the sassy type. There is not as much to make fun of in The Aeneid.

I do think that it is really cool that Aeneas got to see Dido again; however, it is quite sad that she is not at rest. They seem to have quite a tragic story. Maybe that is Virgil’s thing. Instead of being sassy, he is all about how tragic a story can be.

Also, it is super interesting that Aeneas asked for his mother’s help, and she sent some doves, her name is not even mentioned, and Aeneas is just like, oh, that is so cool; thanks for the help, ma.

Man, everything Bacchus does seems to be entirely full of useless debauchery. I wonder if the word came from Bacchus’s name, too. Anyway, Dionysus never seemed quite as prolific as Bacchus. Ovid did make fun of him a lot, though.

I like that after Aeneas sees his father, Virgil’s writing is dramatic again. It kind of does one of those “it was only just a dream” type of things. I mean, that is not the exact phrasing, but again, that is more or less what Aeneas realizes.

Out of all the furies, and I think I have heard all their names at one point, I wonder why it  is that Alecto is the one that specifically gets asked for help. She is the one that does most of the dirty deeds required of her, and she is the one mentioned the most. I wonder why she is so much more special than her sister. It is not like between the three of them they only have one eye; that is the Fates. So why is she so special?

The Aeneid

I really like how The Aeneid begins by just throwing you into the fire. This is where the book starts, this is how it starts, here’s a storm, Juno did it, wha-pow. Then, everything leads in to ‘why.’

The Aeneid seems to be a lot denser than Metamorphosis. It reminds me less of a story (or of stories) and more like history, at least in the way it’s written.

I am very curious as to whether or not the Pygmalion that Venus is referring to is the same Pygmalion we read about in Metamorphosis.

It is interesting how much effort Venus is putting in to try to convince her son that she is trying to help him. It is also interesting how Venus does not actually want to listen to his tales of “endless hardship.” Are these tales actually endless, or is Aeneas just being dramatic?

I am really surprised how chill the queen of Libya is at all of these Trojans just showing up. She seems to be incredibly generous, but there has to be strings attached somewhere, right? Unless Jupiter is actually trying to stave off his wife’s anger, and is really trying to help.

Juno really holds grudges well. She permanently hates all these Trojans because of the past. Let it go, Juno.

I am kind of amazed how much Cupid seems to jump at his mother’s requests. I feel like this happens a lot in mythology, which is weird, because often the gods and goddesses do not like to listen to their parents. Maybe it just depends on the parents.

So, we finally have the story of the downfall of Troy. It seems so much less exciting than it has always been made to seem after all these years. The movie Troy actually did a much better job.

It seems interesting to me that (in Aeneas’s story) Venus defends Helen. I have always thought that Helen of Troy was supposedly descended from Venus, and this would add credibility to that theory. However, I believe we might have talked about it before in class, that no one really knows who she is descended from, and that it is possible she is descended from Jupiter. Both seem probable, but I always thought Venus made a lot more sense. Venus is the goddess of love, after all, and while many of the goddesses are known for their beauty, it was always a specialty of Venus: that she could change her form to be whatever pleased people the most. The whole Trojan War started because of the beauty of Helen of Troy.

It is really interesting that the city of Troy is Neptune’s city. It is also really interesting that Juno does not ever really seem to have anything against Neptune. She has no problem with him; she just has a problem with the Trojans.

Oh, look. A dude that is a tree. How surprising. That does not remind me of Metamorphosis at all. I do not think I have ever read a story before about someone getting turned into a tree. Let me guess, he tried to sleep with someone and a god or goddess took revenge. No? Oh, darn. I guess murder and then growing into a tree is not quite as exciting.

I am so excited. Scylla has been mentioned so many times in both Metamorphosis and so far in The Aeneid, and finally we get to interact with that six-headed dragon thing. Yay.

I kind of feel bad for Mercury and Cupid. Mercury more so, but it has to suck being the two gods that get sent to try to clean up messes or take care of everyone else’s problems.