Aeneid
The Aeneid is an epic poem written by Virgil, a poet of the Roman
Empire, in the 1st Century B.C. The emperor Augustus ordered
him to create a masterpiece with the purpose of glorifying the empire,
attributing it a mythic origin. His whole epic poem is divided into twelve
books and is considered a rewriting of the Homeric poems.
The part I read tells that Juno, the queen of gods, is mad at the
Trojans and with Aeneas. She wants to prevent the Trojans to arrive in Italy,
where they will find the Roman Empire. Juno told Eolo that if he helped her she
would make one of her 14 nymphs marry him, Eolo decided to help Juno making
them sink in the sea, but is not clear if he accepted the nymph. (here I leave
the fragment of the poem of this scene)
“Your task, O queen, is to decide
what you wish: my duty is to
fulfil your orders.
You brought about all this
kingdom of mine, the sceptre,
Jove’s favour, you gave me a
seat at the feasts of the gods,
and you made me lord of the
storms and the tempests.”
Eolo shook the seas and destroyed the Aeneas’ fleet. Neptune, god of the
seas and oceans, saw the catastrophic situation where Aeneas and the Trojans
were involved and helped the, to arrive in Libya.
The epic poetry genre is presented in all of the poem I read, epic wars and battles, long travels, gods involved in acts of the man and all the things that make the poems more interesting, also the
length of the poem is great for the genre and the focus in the culture, which
in this case was of the Roman’s culture. In my opinion, Virgil did a really
good work making this poem with that genre. Literature is not something where I’m
good at nor at reading or making poetry, I found it difficult to understand all
the part of the poem I read, I also read some summaries of this book to guess
some of the situations in the poem I didn’t get when I read it.
Here i leave the links where i looked for the poem:
http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Eneida:_Libro_I
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/VirgilAeneidI.htm
And here where i looked for summaries and explanations:
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/aeneid/
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eneida