Similarities Between The Odyssey And The Aeneid

The Odyssey and the Aeneid draw from the same ancient Greek mythos in their visualizations of the underworld, yet they recount tales of heroes who fought on enemy sides in the Trojan War. Aeneas and Odysseus embark upon parallel journeys, their travels sharing commonalities in both the types of encounters they have and their reasons for interacting with the dead. Despite these parallels, the two differ both in how they characterize and shape their depictions of Hell and in the reasons that the heroes seek help from their departed allies. The two interpretations, therefore, evoke different atmospheres, each with its own unique appeal. Through communing with the dead, Odysseus and Aeneas both seek wisdom and closure from their fallen loved

Each obtains guidance from a prophet—Teiresias in the Odyssey and Sibyl in the Aeneid. Sibyl attempts to warn Aeneas of the struggles ahead, telling him, “You, sir, now quit at last of the sea’s dangers, for whom still greater are in store on land, the Dardan race will reach Lavinian country […] but there will wish they had not come. Wars, vicious wars I see ahead, and Tier foaming blood” (Vergil, 162). Aeneas is only interested in hearing from his father, Anchises, who now resides in the underworld; therefore, he disregards her warning, claiming, “No novel kinds of hardship, no surprises, loom ahead, Sister. I foresaw them all, went through them in my mind” (Vergil, 163). Odysseus, on the other hand, eagerly listens to Teiresias’s prophecy about his homecoming, taking to heart his advice against slaying Helios’s cattle and sheep. Odysseus next comes into contact with the recently departed Elpinor, whom he thought to be alive, who entreats him to “remember me, and do not go and leave me behind unwept, unburied, when you leave, for fear I might become the gods’ curse upon you; but burn me there with all my

In both accounts, the hero needs to perform a sacrifice to call forth the spirits, or in the Aeneid’s case, enter the underworld. Both characters entreat the undead “with sacrifices and prayers”, then “[take] the sheep and cut their throats” (Homer, 169). In the Aeneid, however, Vergil takes this concept a step further, forcing Aeneas to find “a bough whose leaves and pliant twigs are all of gold, a thing sacred to Juno of the lower world” to offer to the boatman in Hell (Vergil, 164). In both versions of Hell there resides Tityos, whose “body [is] stretched out over nine whole acres while an enormous vulture with hooked beak forages forever in his liver, his vitals rife with agonies” (Vergil, 180). The Odyssey also includes the tale of Tantalos, whose punishment in Hell is that, as he stands trapped in a lake, “every time the old man, trying to drink, stooped over, the water would drain away and disappear” (Homer, 183). The images presented in the Odyssey’s vision of Hell are far bleaker than those in the Aeneid. Although the Aeneid contains its fair share of gory, unpleasant regions in the underworld, what sets that vision of Hell apart from that of the Odyssey is its happier regions, such as the “Blessed Grove”, where “wider expanses of high air endow each vista with a wealth of light. Souls here possess their own familiar sun and stars.