Virgil - Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is an epic poem written by Virgil, a poet of the Roman Empire, in the 1^st 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

Constructed Language

Constructed Languages

I already said that i like a lot playing video games, that's why i chose this language, because it was created for a videogame of my favorite platform: Xbox. 

Tho Fan:

Videogame: Jade Empire

Year: 2005

This is a constructed language created by Wolf Wikeley a Canadian linguist graduated in 1996 with a BA in Chinese and Japanese language and literature. He also has a MSc in 1999 in Linguistics in Discourse and Syntax and working on a PhD of sound structure of the Japanese language.

Wikeley created this language with Bioware (a Canadian company of video games) he developed the grammar and dictionaries for the game “Jade Empire”. The Tho Fan was designed to sound like an ancient and distinctly Asian. This language works without the verb “to be”, it uses the “a” and “the” to mark the tense. Tho Fan phrases don’t match with their translations, they are set of pre-rendered phrases. The game usually uses the audio track to say successive sentences.

Spot the Classics

Spot the Classics

Soccer is known all over the world and my favorite team is FC Barcelona, the point is that its stadium (The Camp Nou) because of the structure it has, seems like a classic amphitheater, and also have a similarity to the Coliseum in Rome due to the oval shape design.

Nelson’s column is a monument in central London to commemorate Heratio Nelson, a British admiral. This column has a height of 46 meters and a 5.5 meters height statue, with a Corinthian capital based in the Augusuto’s Forum in Rome. The Corinthian style was used in the ancient Greece in so many monuments.

A lot of movies in the actuality are based in the ancient Greece culture, specially in the Greek mythology. One example is the movie: “Immortals”, which is based in the Greek myths of Theseus, it also has appearances of other gods like Zeus, Poseidos and Ares.

I like a lot to play video games, specially the action ones (war), some videogames are inspired in the ancient cultures and I have one that is inspired in a war in Rome, where you are playing as a soldier that fights against the barbarian,in order to take revenge of his father's death. .  I liked it a lot because of the style of gaming but principally the plot of the story. The name of this videogame is: Ryse Son of Rome.

The Rotunda is building in the University of Virginia constructed in the years between 1822 and 1826. This building reminds me of the typical building in the ancient Greece constructed with columns and also with a Pediment at the top of it. The front of The Rotunda looks like the Parthenon in Athens. There is also a replica in the US of this building.