Western literature week 7

rdepar- arrival/approval

"define

"deficiency

"deficient

"decline

"decrease

´ An Interactive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Journey in Homer’s Odyssey

The Odyssey, one of Homer’s two great epics, narrates Odysseus’ long, strange trip home after the Trojan war. During their ten-year journey, Odysseus and his men had to overcome divine and natural forces, from battering storms and winds to difficult encounters with the Cyclops Polyphemus, the cannibalistic Laestrygones, the witch-goddess Circe and the rest. And they took a most circuitous route, bouncing all over the Mediterranean, moving first down to Crete and Tunisia. Next over to Sicily, then off toward Spain, and back to Greece again.

À Trojan War

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably through Homer's Iliad. The Iliad relates four days in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid.

The war originated from a quarrel between the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, after Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, gave them a golden apple, sometimes known as the Apple of Discord, marked "for the fairest". Zeus sent the goddesses to Paris, who judged that Aphrodite, as the "fairest", should receive the apple. In exchange, Aphrodite made Helen, the most beautiful of all women and wife of Menelaus, fall in love with Paris, who took her to Troy. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the brother of Helen's husband Menelaus, led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris' insult. After the deaths of many heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax, and the Trojans Hector and Paris, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse. The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans (except for some of the women and children whom they kept or sold as slaves) and desecrated the temples, thus earning the gods' wrath. Few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, one of the Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to modern-day Italy.

ÀVirgil

Virgil (70 B.C-19 B.C), regarded as the greatest Roman poet, known for his epic, the Aeneid (written about 29 B.C.E), which had taken its literary model from Homer's epic poems Iliad and Odyssey.

Virgil was born on October 15, 70 B.C.E., in a small village near Mantua in Northern Italy. Publius Vergilius Maro, or Virgil has influenced Western literature for two millennia, but little is known about the man himself. His father was a prosperous landowner, described variously as a "potter" and a "courier", who could afford thorough education for the future poet. Virgil attended school at Cremona and Milan, and then went to Rome, where he studied mathematics, medicine and rhetoric, and completed his studies in Naples. He entered literary circles as an "Alexandrian," the name given to a group of poets who sought inspiration in the sophisticated work of third-century Greek poets also known as Alexandrians.

À Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC,that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas's wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.

The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the Iliad. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas's wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome and a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous pietas, and fashioned this into a compelling founding myth or national epic that at once tied Rome to the legends of Troy, explained the Punic Wars, glorified traditional Roman virtues, and legitimized the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of Rome and Troy.

The Aeneid is widely regarded as Virgil's masterpiece and one of the greatest works of Latin literature.

                 Aeneas Flees Burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598 Galleria Borghese, Rome

Quiz The Aeneid,                                      

1. Which god saves Aeneas from the storm in Book I of the poem?4

1. Juno
2. Aeolus
3. Neptune
4. Jupiter

2. What story does Aeneas recount in Book II of the Aeneid?

1. the fall of Troy
2. the founding of Troy
3. the fall of Rome
4. the founding of Rome

3. What race is Aeneas said to have founded?

1. the Greeks
2. the Aryans
3. the Romans
4. the Persians

4. Who is responsible for Aeneas and Dido being attracted to each other?

1. Zeus
2. Neptune?
3. Jove
4. Cupid

5. Where do Aeneas and Dido get “married”—at least as far as Dido is concerned?

1. on board a ship
2. in Dido’s bedroom
3. in a cave
4. in an open field

6. Early in the Aenied, whom does the speaker invoke to inspire his story?

1. the Muse
2. God
3. Aenes
4. Homer

7. Who rules Carthage when Aeneas arrives there?

1. Pygmalion
2. Romulus
3. Carthagus
4. Dido

8. How does Dido commit suicide after Aeneas decides to leave her and continue on his quest?

1. She burns herself on a pyre.
2. She stabs herself.
3. She poisons herself.
4. She drowns herself in the sea.

9. With whom does Aeneas ultimately engage in single combat?

1. Pallas
2. Evander
3. Latinus
4. Turnus

1. Juno convinces Aeolus to stir the winds and seas in order to wreck Aeneas and his ships. However, Neptune intervenes to calm the seas (see Book I, lines 145 and following).

2. Book II recounts the banquet given to welcome Aeneas and his men to Carthage, during which he recounts the fall of Troy and the subsequent events that have led to his arrival in North Africa.

3. The Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas’ founding of what would become Rome and the Roman people.

4. It is Cupid (encouraged by his mother, Venus) who causes Aeneas and Dido to fall in love (or at least lust). However, Juno also gets involved once she discovers the plan, hoping that Aeneas will be sidetracked from his quest to found a new city.

5. Once again, the gods have arranged for a rainstorm to come up during the hunt that Aeneas and Dido are on together. They take shelter in a cave where it is implied that they have sex, at which point we are told that Dido "no longer thinks to keep the affair a secret, / no, she calls it a marriage" (Book II, lines 216–17)

6. Consistent with epic tradition, the poem’s speaker invokes the Muse to inspire his story "Tell me, Muse, / how it all began" (Book I, lines 8–9).

7. Carthage is ruled by Queen Dido (whose brother is Pygmalion).

8. Using one of Aeneas’ swords, Dido stabs herself to death – “All at once, in the midst of her last words, / her women see her doubled over the sword, the blood / foaming over the blade, her hands splattered red” (Book IV, lines 823–25).

9. The war that Aeneas wages in Italy turns more and more violent and bloody. Towards its end (and the end of the epic) Aeneas and Turnus engage in single combat. Aeneas, enraged when he sees that Turnus has been wearing the belt of Pallas (Aeneas’ friend and ally) as a war trophy, eventually slays Turnus.