Text of the Week--The Aeneid

Well, readers, for those of you who know me in real life (right now, I think that's all of you), you know that my past weekend sort of sucked monkey balls. Well, that's okay, right?! Because I'm going to review some text, I love, some text like--

"I sing of arms, and a man..."

...

Really? I'm reviewing that?! [sighs] This is all sorts of suck, isn't it?! Truthfully, when I read the Aeneid, I hated it. For those of you who have gone through the daunting task of translating ANY of the Aeneid, you know that it's a pain in the pa-tootey!

Don't quote me on that.

Anyway... oh dear. It's time we go down to...

SPOILERS AHOY!!!

Positives... positives... positives... uh...

+The Laocoon story: Okay, you've got to admit, being killed by GIANT SNAKES COMING UP FROM THE SEA AFTER WARNING THE TROJANS ABOUT GIFT-BEARING GREEKS is kinda epic. Then again, the Aeneid IS an epic...

Yep, that's all I got.

Cons:

-It's a bitch to translate: Did I mention that I hated translating this fucker?

-Treatment of women: You know, I don't normally complain how the ancient people treated women in their texts. I understand that it was simply a different culture (even if it IS wrong...). Yet, I cannot ignore the treatment of Dido in this text. I seem to recall that even the (supposedly) sexist Ovid treats Dido better in the Heroides. Vergil treats her like shit. He's basically like, "Haha, lookit stupid Dido, she fell in love with Aeneas even though she shouldn't have, and then she killed herself! What a bitch!" ARGH!!! Personally, I've always pitied Dido, in the same sort of way that I've always pitied Ophelia. They both committed suicide because of the shitty men in their lives.

This, my friends, is why Rome always hated Carthage; because that damned Roman walked out on his poor Carthaginian sweetheart.

-Flag Waving: AUGH!!! THAT'S ALL THIS TEXT CAN DO!!! "I love Rome! Rome hasn't been created yet... but did I mention that Rome is AWESOME?!" Nngh.

-Copycating the Odyssey: The Aeneid is often called the Roman Odyssey for a reason. Our story starts off around the fall of Troy, when the Trojans are finally being hacked-and-slashed by the Greeks after ten long years of fighting. As Laocoon is getting eaten by snakies, Aeneas is throwing his daddy dearest over his shoulder and high-tailing it out of Troy. After that, he gets a boat full of Trojans and goes on a bunch of rip-roaring adventures through the Mediterranian Sea. I suppose you could compare Dido to either Circe or Calypso, though I would be more comfortable comparing her to Calypso. Hell, there's even a scene were Aeneas has to go into the Underworld... just like in the Odyssey! Boy, we can't keep these ancient warriors out of the Underworld, can we? Unlike the Odyssey, however, the Aeneid has all that flag waving to take out some of the fun of the story. The Odyssey is just a great adventure, if a little boring at times. The Aeneid is just the preachy, Roman version of the Odyssey.

~~~

Yeah, so I sort of got on my pedestal for the Aeneid. Truthfully, it's been a long time since I've read it, and I don't want to read it again. I'm sort of picking at what I remember, since I haven't read it as many times as I've read Homer.

[sighs]

At any rate, so that I don't say that Vergil is a completely hopeless poet, I'll show you the most GENIUS thing the man ever wrote. Oh man... THIS is genius... I couldn't have done better myself.

"Wool shall no more learn to counterfeit varied hues, but of himself the ram in the meadows shall change his fleece, now to sweetly blushing purple, now to saffron yellow; of his own will shall scarlet clothe the grazing lamb." (from the fourth Eclogue. I wish I could find more about this)

... YES. Those are some motherfucking color changing sheep on my motherfucking plane. Or, in this case, utopia. When I first encountered this bit, I had to read it several times over just to make sure that I had read THAT AMOUNT OF AWESOMENESS. Holy shit. Color changing sheep. Mind=blown.

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST!