Tag: the Aeneid

I am reading The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles. Today I set off for Italy as a ghost to find the faults of the man who was irresistible to women and to examine his fate: everything seems to exist to fulfill his destiny—to found a city that would one day lead to Rome, whose influence would last for thousands of years. But then I see the image of him carrying his old father on his back, with his young son Ascanius at his side and his wife Creusa behind him as they flee burning Troy. That is why I have always wanted to know more about him. Is he really an egoist or a victim of fate?

But first, I needed to know about the whys and wherefores of the man, Troy, and Italy. Reading the introduction was necessary. This was unusual for me because I usually skip introductions and read the book with a tabula rasa in order to form my own understanding of its content. Not the Aeneid. Not Virgil. Not Robert Fagles. For me, The Aeneid, Virgil, and Robert Fagles form a trinity. The epic has survived for two millennia. A second trinity shaped Aeneas’s identity—pietas (duty), gravitas (seriousness and moral weight), and auctoritas (authority earned through public service). It is even tattooed into his very identity as pius Aeneas—“pious Aeneas.” This is not solely religious but also conveys a sense of duty toward values deemed admirable and essential to being an admirable Roman man and soldier.

Knox told readers his own story about why the Sortes Virgilianae and Virgil’s work entranced him. He was also destined to become a reader and a soldier of Virgil, both literally and figuratively. As a U.S. Army captain during the Second World War, he and the Italian partisans marched through regions of Italy once crossed by the armies of Octavian and Mark Antony. King Charles I was no exception to the Virgilian way: during the civil war, he read Virgil and tried to discover his destiny by playing the Virgilian lottery. This involved picking a passage from The Aeneid at random and interpreting it in light of his own situation—a literary equivalent of bibliomancy. It was regarded not merely as superstition but as a guide to what might happen and what one should do. Of course Knox did it too.

Now that I am finally aboard the ship with Aeneas as I begin Book I, I want to decide whether to try the Virgilian lottery and join the king and the captain. But first, I want to see whether Aeneas deserves my accusation that he is a heartless man who, under the aegis of his sacred pietas, makes the women who loved him—his wife Creusa and Dido—face their fates.