All the texts in this semester so far, dealt with philosophers who mostly described virtue as a form of knowledge that a man should gain through self-examination and that virtue will enable him to lead a good life. These philosophers mostly ended up defining what this good life would be like. These philosophers have a general authoritative tone. They are addressing students and colleagues and so a little knowledge of the subject matter is assumed by them. While Aristotle had a flow that was properly sequenced according to the progression of argument and propagation of ideas, Confucius and Lao Tzu had texts that were compiled by their followers and so those texts did not seem to have a distinct chain of events.
Virgil’s Aeneid, resembles Homer’s
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The first lines of the book are “I sing of warfare and a man at war.” While the Odyssey starts with “Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy”, which is a person asking Muse to tell him a story, Virgil starts with a tone that says “I will tell you a story.” Just like The Odyssey had a character named Odysseus, Aeneid had a character named Aeneas. So all these subtle resemblances to
Aeneas is the son of Venus, the goddess of beauty and erotic love. While Odysseus in The Odyssey was sometimes lucky to have some subtle divine interference in his favor, Aeneas enjoys a substantial amount of uncloaked divine help. Aeneas is both positively and negatively affected by the Gods. His mother goes to great lengths to keep him safe. In the end of Book I, we see Venus sending Amor (Cupid) to connect Aeneas and Dido, the Queen of Carthage, with a bond of love and lust in order to keep Aeneas from leaving the safety of Carthage and ensuring that Juno does not get the Phoenicians to harm Aeneas. In Book I lines 912-915 Venus says “You how Brother Aeneas has been tossed From one coast to another on the high seas By bitter Juno’s hatred; you know this And in my grieving for him grieve as