“Homer Loves Odysseus; Virgil Loves Aeneas - but Aeneas Doesn’t Love Dido”
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date published 11/10/2007
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SummaryInfluence comes in many forms – religion, music, books, and authors. By experiencing different people’s views, we gain a sense of understanding the world through their eyes. We take cues from others, how they think, act and do in the world, and internalize their beliefs. The religious zealot thinks Jesus’ way of life is best – they try to internalize his lessons. The new age musician looks to his contemporaries – he believes certain groups play music more in-tune to the way he thinks of the world. Authors are also influenced by their contemporaries. Where would Roddy Doyle be without James Joyce? Where would Toni Morrison be without Faulkner? Would Virgil’s the Aeneid be the same story if it wasn’t influenced by Homer’s Odyssey? Influence has us accept the influential person’s beliefs, but we may not agree with all of those beliefs. Homer was a great poet in Virgil’s mind, but Odysseus was a bastard Achaean. Homer detailed the hero’s win in battle while Virgil wondered more about the victim. The Aeneid echoes a similar plot line in The Odyssey – a sea-farer wandering from land to land after the Trojan War in hope of going home. Virgil, however, differed in some of his episodes. In Book VI of The Odyssey, Odysseus meets Princess Nausikaa, who, by the gods’ will, falls in love with him so that she may give him aid. Odysseus eventually leaves, and Nausikaa is left alone. Virgil proffered a question to the encounter: what if Odysseus had stayed in Skheria with Nausikaa? The poet answers his own question in Book IV of The Aeneid with the passionate Queen Dido (Nausikaa) and the main character Aeneas (Odysseus). The love of Dido for Aeneas is tragic and a hindrance in The Aeneid, but in The Odyssey love is a helpful tool for Odysseus to finally go home.
Table of Contents
- Influence comes in many forms – religion, music, books, and authors.
- Although both Virgil and Homer believed love to be caused by the god's will, it is the reason of the god's use of love that differs in The Aeneid and The Odyssey.
- Odysseus is a favorite of the goddess Athena. Although Odysseus must wander for ten years, she gets him out of danger countless times, and her presence in Nausikaa's room to press her in the form of a dream to embark on a linen washing expedition.
- Juno wants her plan to take action. She knows that causing Dido and Aeneas to fall in love will in-fact stall Aeneas in his journey to Italy.
- While Dido pines for the love of Aeneas, the city's construction lies 'half-built' and 'projects were broken off?.
- Without influence, Virgil would never have posed the question: What if Odysseus had stayed in Skheria with Nausikaa?
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