The most important lesson to learn from Book IV of Virgil’s The Aeneid, it is that one’s emotions are not to be tampered with. Emotions are far more than just simple feelings. For example, an emotional high may send one skipping throughout the halls of a school thinking about that special someone, while a depressing low could result in the contemplation of ending one’s life. To put it simply, emotions are able to dictate the choices we make - for better and for worse. Book IV of The Aeneid illustrates this idea of emotions overpowering morals in numerous ways. The book tells the tale of a crazed queen who lets her feelings for a man lead her spiraling down a dark path - a story that does not stray far from the reality of many. More often than …show more content…
According to the article, “Decisions Are Emotional, Not Logical: The Neuroscience Behind Decision Making,” Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist, once conducted research on people who damaged the part of the brain where emotions were generated. Damasio found that the test subjects could not make decisions, no matter how simple. While they were able to think logically on the subject, they were not able to make a final decision without emotions guiding them. Given these points, it is easier to understand why queen Dido cannot make sound decisions following her realization that Aeneas is truly leaving her. When she eventually finds Aeneas, she verbally attacks him, and even informs him that she wishes he would die at sea (Virgil 4.506-508). It is certainly wrong to wish death upon someone, yet her deep, burning emotions lead her to believe it was the right thing to do. With emotions and decisions so intertwined in the brain, her actions throughout that moment and the rest of the book are understandable, though, a bit …show more content…
Many would say because of that, emotions cannot justify ignoring morals, which are more static - but, they are wrong. Unlike morals, emotions build and intensify, like a festering wound. Take a look at Dido, for example. She goes from pleading in tears (Virgil 4.580-583), to praying for death (Virgil 4.598-599), to killing herself (Virgil 4. 882-884) in a span of about a day. These events show that strong feelings can lead to hasty, impulsive decisions - and getting into a stable state of mind is nearly impossible in these moments of powerful emotions. The article, “Jumpers,” by Tad Friend, discusses the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of people who attempted suicide by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge. In the article, one survivor said that after jumping, “[He] instantly realized that everything in [his] life that [he’d] thought was unfixable was totally fixable - except for having just jumped.” Unfortunately, it takes an event like a near death experience to bring some people out of emotional slumps or highs. Sometimes emotions are just too deep to expect people to think logically, or without
We are able to sympathise with Dido because of the dramatic irony caused by the fact that all the readers know that Aeneas doesn’t stay in Carthage, and so as Dido becomes more and more attached to Aeneas, we feel sorry for her. Her last ditch attempt to send Anna to negotiate is another futile gesture.
This gives the readers a clue that what is to happen in the upcoming text is a
As a child, I was fascinated by Greek mythology and history, and I made it my business in elementary school to read as much as possible about the subject, including the outstanding stories and the pantheon of gods presented. I thought of them as fantastic, supernatural tales with fitful gods and brave heroes, and I never stopped to consider that the mythologies could be representative of the cultural views and habits of the Greeks, specifically regarding gender roles. One such representaton is Virgil's epic Aeneid, which contains depictions of women in positions of power, and also characterizes these women as irrational, emotional to the point of hysteria, and consequently, unfit rulers.
Human emotions and beliefs can be some of the most powerful and forceful factors in the world. They can often time cause humans to overlook their moral and civil duties and instead confront the demands of a private passion. Two people that have contrasting views about passion and responsibility can cause a major conflict which could cause a “classic war” in literature. In the play Antigone, the differences in Antigone and Creon’s passions and responsibilities helps Sophocles illustrate their central flaws. By doing so, the playwright implies that one needs to achieve a balance of passion and responsibility in order to maintain a sense if inner peace and political stability.
Dido is portrayed as a strong and independent character through her successful founding and ruling of Carthage. However, Venus commands Cupid to “breathe [his] flame of poison” (I. 688) on Dido. Dido develops a passion that is “an unseen flame gnaw[ing]” (IV.2) at her. The flame illustrates the intense emotions Dido feels for Aeneas. Aeneas and Dido consummate their love in a cave, causing Dido to assume they are married. Unfortunately for Dido, Aeneas must follow his fate to Italy and leave Dido in Carthage. “Now [Dido] must called [Aeneas] guest instead of husband” (IV. 324). However, Aeneas declares he “never made a pack of marriage” (IV.339) with Dido. This fuels her hatred of him even more. Dido does not have the emotional stability to live without Aeneas. During his confession, Dido admits “hot madness” (IV.376) consumes her and the connections between fire and fury is
For example, in the Aeneid, it is Dido, the Queen of Carthage, who out of all the battles and conflicts faced by Aeneas, posed the biggest threat to his divinely-assigned objective of founding a new Troy. Like Calypso detains Odysseus in Homer's epic, Dido detains Aeneas from his nostos to his "ancient mother" (II, 433) of Italy, but unlike Calypso, after Dido is abandoned by Aeneas she becomes distraught; she denounces Aeneas in violent rhetoric and curses his descendents before finally committing suicide. Therefore, Virgil demonstrates how women have a potent and dangerous resource of emotions, which can ambush even the most pious of men. Indeed, Dido's emotions penetrate the "duty-bound" (III, 545) Aeneas who "sighed his heart out, shaken still with love of her" (III, 549-50).... ...
Dido’s emotions have caused her to act like a wounded animal, not thinking about the consequences of her own actions. By being reduced to an animal, Dido has lost all rational thought. Consequently, Dido’s lack of rational thought causes her to begin to ignore other duties she has to fulfill. After she falls in love with Aeneas, Dido disregards the vow that she made to her suitors.
While reading the play Oedipus the King, my response to the work became more and more clear as the play continued. When I finished the play, my reaction to the work and to two particular characters was startling and very different from my response while I was still reading. My initial response was to the text, and it was mostly an intellectual one. I felt cheated by the play because the challenge of solving the mystery of the plot was spoiled for me by the obvious clues laid out in the work. My second response was not as intellectual; instead, it came more from a feeling that the play evoked in me. I felt a strong disappointment in the drastic actions that Oedipus and Jocasta took at the end of the play. My two different responses to Oedipus the King, one intellectual and one not, now seem to feed off and to amplify each other as if they were one collective response.
Most likely, it served as a future lesson for Aeneas (especially after being guilty of neglecting his duty for his true love of Italy while indulging with Dido) which is still believed and practiced today: the kind of life that we lead; the way we die, self - inflicted or not; and how we are buried after death are all of great significance - that all good deeds in life deserve the goodness of heaven, and all bad deeds deserve the pain and the punishment of hell. " Philgyas in extreme of misery cries loud through the gloom appeals warning to all mankind: Be warned, learn righteousness; and learn to scorn no god (pg. 165-66). " "All have dared a monstrous sin and achieved the sin they dared.
Though it is easier to consider The Aeneid as a work which clearly defines the roles of man and woman, with men upholding traits of stability, rationality, and containment of oneself, with the women acting irrational and without jurisdiction, this is not quite the case. Gender is not quite the cookie cutter structure one is accustomed to, instead it acts as a much more complicated force within the interactions of the characters. The masculine and feminine become combined within individuals, blended to the point where perhaps sometimes understanding a character is far more complicated than knowing whether it is a 'he' or'she'. Virgil connects femininity with hysterical passion and masculinity, an accomplished restraint of self. Due to this, women are often the conflict makers and men the solvers.
Passion, emotion, and furor influence almost all action of epic literature heroes—this distinguishes heroes from men. The hero, Aeneas, stands out from all other epic heroes with his gift of pietas. Virgil’s The Aeneid juxtaposes pietas and furor to describe the heroic attributes of Aeneas. The gods give Aeneas the special virtue of pietas. This virtue grants emotional loyalty to men or the gods. Either Aeneas’s pietas could fall to his own personal desires and emotions when Mercury attempts to motivate him with the reputation of his son (4.370-73), or Aeneas’s pietas could steer clear of his own aspirations and instead fight for the will of the gods in respect for his mission. This problem affects not only Aeneas, but the people around him
In his Confessions, Augustine relates that, in his school years, he was required to read Virgil’s Aeneid. The ill-fated romance of Aeneas and Dido produced such an emotional effect on him. Augustine says that Virgil’s epic caused him to forget his own “wanderings” (Augustine 1116). He wept over Dido’s death, but remained “dry-eyed to [his] own pitiful state” (Augustine 1116 – 7). Augustine later rejects literature and theater because he believes that they distract the soul from God. Nonetheless, Augustine shares many of the same experience as the characters in the Aeneid. Augustine discovers that love can be destructive, just as it was for Dido. Both Aeneas and Augustine of them give up love for the sake of duty. Aeneas leaves Dido to fulfill his calling given by the gods. Augustine ends his lustful affairs in order that he may devote himself to his God.
Lawall, Sarah N. “The Aeneid.” The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 612-652. Print.
In many ways, judging and comparing Vigil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses is inevitable because each of the writers lived at roughly the same time in history, both sought to create a historical work that would endure long past their mortal existences, and while each man was ultimately successful in their endeavors, they achieved their desired goals in vastly different ways. That being said, the epic poem by Ovid is superior because unlike Virgil, whose epic poem utilized a character centered narrative steeped in historical inferences and a theme that celebrated the moral virtues of Greek and Roman society, Ovid defied tradition by creating an intricate narrative that looked
When discussing the fate of Aeneas, a thought provoking question is posed that is commonly debated. If Aeneas is commanded by fate, does he have free will? It is important to approach this question with a solid understand of fate. There are two common sides to the debate of whether Aeneas had free will or not. One view believes Aeneas had no choice but to follow his destiny because he was commanded by fate, and prophesied to found the race that will one day build Rome. The other side states Aeneas did indeed have free will, and even though his fate was set, room is available within his fate for events to change. One can argue Aeneas makes some of his own choices, but no particular detail of his life is untouched. Destiny determines that the Trojans will found a city in Italy, but it does not stipulate how that will happen. This is where room is left for free will. After much research and considering the views of many commentators and the proof they showed, the answer can simply be found by going back to the text of The Aeneid.