Virgil and the American Porn Industry -Will Brady
I find it almost laughable how some of the books of The Aeneid are easy to understand while others go straight over my head. Books VI and VIII were great... Don't expect me to talk much about Book VII. They found the white pig with thirty piglets! They ate their tables! They all went to Hell! ...Or something like it, at least.
Honestly, the depiction of the Roman Underworld might have been the most interesting part of the book so far. I've never read Dante's Inferno (next semester, probably), but I understand it enough to see the connection between Dante's Hell and the Roman Underworld. All the different divisions are based on the chance circumstances of one's death in The Aeneid and, inversely, divisions are based on the intentional purity of one's life in Inferno. That makes me wonder how much Dante pulled from Virgil, as well as how much of his work was written with intentional rebuttal of his predecessor's vision... But enough of that, Dido takes the spotlight again here.
The Fields of Mourning! That glorious, wretched place for the wailing of those who died from heartbreak! A hell I shall never have to worry about, because your heart can never be broken if nobody ever even pretends to love you! (Or at least that's what I tell myself to stave off the crushing despair of aloneness, hahahahaha.)
...Guys, it's a joke. Stop staring. I'm fine, as far as you know. But Dido, obviously, wasn't. And she's still pretty mad at Aeneas for the whole running-away-in-secret-and-abandoning-her-after-the-"wedding"-driving-her-to-madness-and-suicide-thing. That takes me back to a discussion topic that we briefly touched on in class. This whole idea of madness from love/lust isn't one we see often in the ancient era; but in the Romantics later on in history, we can't get people to stop doing it. Being driven mad by lust was too common then--and today it's no different, with a billion-dollar porn industry run by depraved sex addicts across America. As far as the ancient era goes, we do see a little bit of it in Gilgamesh, when the harlot seduces Enkidu and causes him to lose his power; then again in the Orestia, when Clytemnestra lashes out against Cassandra just for being Agamemnon's unwilling concubine. But Virgil is the first we see to demonstrate just what depths lust can drag someone down to. We mentioned in class that he probably did this for political reasons--but why was he the first?
My male compadres, let's get real: it's usually us who go off the deep end with lust more often than females. Again going back to the porn industry, there's a reason why it predominantly consists of nude women and not men. And yes, women had almost no voice in ancient history. So with no religious or satirical motivations on the same level as those we see later in history, why would any of the men who produced all the literature write about this?
Now of course Virgil wrote a woman into this role and not a man, but he still exposed a nerve and set an example for Roman men and women alike: don't be like Dido. That is a message which probably nobody else was sending at the time.
P.S. I commented on Breanna and Philip’s posts.
Honestly, the depiction of the Roman Underworld might have been the most interesting part of the book so far. I've never read Dante's Inferno (next semester, probably), but I understand it enough to see the connection between Dante's Hell and the Roman Underworld. All the different divisions are based on the chance circumstances of one's death in The Aeneid and, inversely, divisions are based on the intentional purity of one's life in Inferno. That makes me wonder how much Dante pulled from Virgil, as well as how much of his work was written with intentional rebuttal of his predecessor's vision... But enough of that, Dido takes the spotlight again here.
The Fields of Mourning! That glorious, wretched place for the wailing of those who died from heartbreak! A hell I shall never have to worry about, because your heart can never be broken if nobody ever even pretends to love you! (Or at least that's what I tell myself to stave off the crushing despair of aloneness, hahahahaha.)
...Guys, it's a joke. Stop staring. I'm fine, as far as you know. But Dido, obviously, wasn't. And she's still pretty mad at Aeneas for the whole running-away-in-secret-and-abandoning-her-after-the-"wedding"-driving-her-to-madness-and-suicide-thing. That takes me back to a discussion topic that we briefly touched on in class. This whole idea of madness from love/lust isn't one we see often in the ancient era; but in the Romantics later on in history, we can't get people to stop doing it. Being driven mad by lust was too common then--and today it's no different, with a billion-dollar porn industry run by depraved sex addicts across America. As far as the ancient era goes, we do see a little bit of it in Gilgamesh, when the harlot seduces Enkidu and causes him to lose his power; then again in the Orestia, when Clytemnestra lashes out against Cassandra just for being Agamemnon's unwilling concubine. But Virgil is the first we see to demonstrate just what depths lust can drag someone down to. We mentioned in class that he probably did this for political reasons--but why was he the first?
My male compadres, let's get real: it's usually us who go off the deep end with lust more often than females. Again going back to the porn industry, there's a reason why it predominantly consists of nude women and not men. And yes, women had almost no voice in ancient history. So with no religious or satirical motivations on the same level as those we see later in history, why would any of the men who produced all the literature write about this?
Now of course Virgil wrote a woman into this role and not a man, but he still exposed a nerve and set an example for Roman men and women alike: don't be like Dido. That is a message which probably nobody else was sending at the time.
P.S. I commented on Breanna and Philip’s posts.
You have amazing insight, as always. The first thing I thought of when Aeneas went to the underworld was Dante's Inferno. Interestingly, in Dante's hell, both parties are held responsible for lust. The punishment for those in lust is to be eternally stuck to each other like a warped two-headed monster, that is, if both people commit adultery. I'm not entirely sure that Aeneas was guiltless in the fate of Dido.
ReplyDeleteGreat connection with Dante's Inferno. I really think that he found Virgil as an inspiration in compiling the multiple layers of hell. I was caught off guard to read about the mourning fields and Aeneas' awkward encounter with Dido. The moment Aeneas met Dido I knew that a large cringe-fest was about to kickoff. Virgil did take an interesting approach towards lust, and my speculations are that he was attempting to set a precedent for social conduct. The fewer cases of adultery and hate among the citizens, the more likely everyone is to be united towards a common goal: Rome.
ReplyDeleteDido's reappearance was unexpected to me, especially after Aeneas failed to mentation her in the long speech to Sybil about wanting to go the underworld. Your statement about lust in ancient literature is very interesting, I had never really thought about how that was portrayed later versus then. It's an interesting idea for sure and it's one I would not have caught onto if you hadn't brought it up. I guess it has something to do with the way the world was seen -- nothing was more important in this time than Rome, not even your emotional well-being, so giving into emotions was seen as weak while choosing your people first was the right thing to do. Later this gets flipped -- our emotions are considered more important, so choosing love and heartbreak is a more accepted choice than it would have been for the Romans and other ancient cultures.
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