Compare Characters Aeneas and Turnus from the Aeneid by Virgil - Book Report/Review Example

and Number The Justification of Self Is ‘The Aeneid’ more a poem about love, ‘Love conquers all’, omnia vincit amor (1) or more about the ends justifying the means? After all, like Vergil and Aeneas are we not always struggling with these questions? And in the final analysis are we not always deciding between these two issues? As most poets often do in their work, Vergil struggles in ‘The Aeneid’, which was written in the 1st century BC, to reconcile his world with his inner being. This takes place through his methodological approach to the poem; his presentation of Rome as the ruling country of the world and the likeness of himself with the characters in the poem. Aeneas is the character with whom Vergil most identifies. He is the primary character in the legend and like Vergil; he approaches the world, even its hostilities, in an idealistic and prophetic manner. Aeneas is the son of Venus, a goddess of love and beauty and again like Vergil he is closely identified with his mother: Aeneas is also Vergil’s self, facing the devils of a peremptory, wicked, outer world that commanded him to act and to face hard things; and he is Vergil’s self, guarded and guided by a voice of God in tones of an ultimate authority, his own mother’s. Vergil was brave with the courage that poets need, and he used the excitement of heroic tradition to sustain his courage to face the horrors of the world. (2) Aeneas, in addition to being influenced by his mother, unlike Vergil, was strongly identified with his father, Anchises, who saw him as becoming the ‘ancestor of Rome.’ Yet, Vergil’s greatness is no less foretold than Vergil’s in his works of literature. It is in the past, not only in Rome’s past, but that of his own that Vergil finds good and evil. There he also finds…powerful friends to help him… and to be worshiped as heroes…as well as feelings like his own and lines already drawn, which could discipline and classify and organize, and so justify, these feelings. These include both feelings belonging to his present, which his own experience arouses, and also feelings that were more instinctive, as well as tendencies such as we all inherit from a past, those in which the experience has been wider than our own.(3) It is feelings like these that predestine Vergil to produce great works. It is also these feelings that, in addition to being a soldier and Roman leader, predestine Aeneas to be a romancer of women. While Vergil, no doubt jaded by his experiences in the world, finds romance in words, Aeneas finds romance through the waging of wars and the lives of the many women whom he comes in contact with while these wars are waged. The motherly love that continues to inspire both Vergil and Aeneas sometimes uplifts their spirits and sometimes sends them on roads that lead to danger. In the stoic society in which Aeneas lives he has full reign to express all of the feelings such a life calls forth. Vergil’s stoic world is more tempered. However, through the stronger character of Aeneas, Vergil can live vicariously as a fuller expressed personality, including one filled with good and evil. Vergil was introverted and shy, and retreated from self-assertion…He was happy among books and animals, his people at home, and his friends at Rome and Naples. He had a very ‘feminine’ temperament. Like others with such temperaments, he conceived strong attachments for people, and they for him. His affections spread and he was led to individual women…and to his comrades and colloquies in work, at home, or at his schools and universities. He is said to have had one liaison only, with a certain Plotia Hieria…His introverted feminine side led to tensions and impulses to violent friendships for equals and juniors, and vigorous reverence for important men, both poets and statesmen. (4) While Aeneas has more leadership qualities than Vergil, he displays tendencies toward brutality that appears to be repressed in Vergil. Never is this aspect of Aeneas’ character more apparent than it is in his relationship with Turnus, his chief antagonist. Aeneas’ relationship with Turnus represents the harder side of his personality: Aeneas first comes to know Turnus when he seeks assistance for himself and his fleet from Latinus, king of the Latins. Latinus gives Aeneas permission for his fleet to occupy a strip of land that is in his possession. In addition to allowing this occupancy, Latinus, believing Aeneas to be the priest of destiny and being aware of an oracle which requires him to marry his daughter, Lavinia, to a foreign prince, engages her to Aeneas. A rebellion arises as this comes to the attention of Turnus, chief of the Rutulians, who was already engaged to Lavinia. Turnus becomes so enraged that he incites a war. Although King Latinus is displeased, he allows the war to take place. It is not the war but rather the slaying of Aeneas’ friend, Pallas, by Turnus that ultimately causes Aeneas to seek vengeance. It is at the end of the epic that Aeneas kills Turnus, thereby justifying the insults he has inflicted upon Turnus in the taking of Lavinia. (5) Prior to this, the legend has it that there is to be the seed of a new race of people-one that is nobler of stature than any before. This was revealed to Aeneas through Helenus, who has the gift of prophecy as well as through the words of his father. It was through these men that Aeneas learned that he was to seek out the land of Italy, where his descendants would not only prosper, but in time rule the entire known world.(6) On the way to Italy, Aeneas is presented with a conflict much like the conflicts that continue to plague, not only his life, but Vergil’s as well: Juno, a Greek goddess, who is angry with Aeneas’ mother; goes to Aeolus, King of the Winds and asks that he release the winds and so stir up a storm in return for a bribe. He agrees, and the storm devastates the fleet. Neptune takes notice…he is infuriated by Juno’s intrusion into his domain, and stills the winds and calms the waters. The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa. There, Aeneas’s mother encourages him and tells him the history of the city. (7) The storms in Vergil’s life take on a deeper meaning as he writes these words. Not only is what happens to Aeneas in the control of the Gods but Vergil’s own destiny is beyond his control. Throughout his work Vergil is conquering areas of experience to be a home for the spirit, instead of being remote and unfriendly to it. There is always his own friendly world, to which he is trying to annex another world, still strange. Sometimes part of the friendly world is lost, and has to be won again. At the cost of some over-simplification, it could be said that, for Vergil, there are four great tracts in particular; the internal mental world, firstly, of personal experience, and, second, of general human experience, which survives in the unconscious mind of every individual, and especially of every poet; and next the outer world, firstly, of the present, of which news is heard in talk or other communication; secondly, in the past, known mainly from books. (8) Over and over Aeneas recovers from his conflicts to continue his advancement toward reaching the goals his father has given him. As in the life of Vergil and many times in our own lives, Aeneas never attains these goals and ‘The Aeneid’ is never finished. Much like Vergil and Aeneas, we are thwarted in our desires to achieve what our lives are meant to accomplish, and at the end of our lives we are left with the question as to whether or not love conquers all. Like Vergil we are also left to….reconcile the beginnings of our lives, our homes, and the threats against them from the outside world to conquer what is ours to conquer. (9) In the final analysis, as did Aeneas, do we not all seek justification for our actions? Works Cited Knight, W.F., Vergil, London, Faber and Faber, 1944. Page Numbers: 113, 115, 111, 112, 102, 69, 114, 111, 111. Read More