In looking at Aeneas's killing of Turnus, I have had a few Sunday morning level thoughts:
1. The relationship of Evander to Achises, Aeneas to Evander and Pallas to Aeneas represents a typically Roman pattern of mutual support and generational patronage which must re-inforce Aeneas's natural reaction in seeing in the death of Pallas the fate which must always hang over his own and, at this point, only son. Aeneas is responsible for the boy, and his sence of Evander's loss is the stronger because he facesthe possibility of that loss himself 2. Fate has already decided on Turnus's death - a clean kill would have been better; Vergil accepts that empires, even peace, require someone to get his hands dirty - but how dirty? 3.Tthe poem ends abruptly, or does it? At 952 lines the book was not going to go on much longer - remorse, a funeral and happily ever after seem unlikely. We cannot hide behind Vergil's untimely death. Had Vergil lived, I believe Turnus would still have died as he did and the poem ended with his ghost moaning down the steep path to Hades. If Vergil had meant to introduce remorse it would have been there - he was, if we can believe the lives, beginning his revision not finishing the poem. To give Augustus his due, I suspect he read those last lines more in sorrow than in anger as an honest indictment of the world as it is even more than himself as an individual. 4.The motif of an unwisely worn piece of booty is an interesting one - I'll have to take a look at Haber to see if it has beenflagged, but notice the use of it in Beowul f2047-ff. Helen COB ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
