Cruesa, his first wife, is lost at Troy Essay

To analyse the character of Aeneas in comparison to the character of Odysseus we must first recognise that they have both been sent away from home, Aeneas by force after the sack of Troy and Odysseus to fight from the Greek side. To analyse them as leaders and â€Å"good men† we must look at their feats and their strengths as well as recognising their flaws as people and warriors. Both characters are extremely respected as heroes. Virgil presents us with the man that founded the greatest empire of all, the Roman Empire. Odysseus had the idea of the Trojan horse, without which the Greeks would not have won the war. Both are primarily good men who serve their countries well. I found though, that they do this in two very different ways. Odysseus’ nostos and Aeneas search for a new home. Scholars continue to disagree on whether or not Aeneas is presented as a good soldier, although the question itself is certainly far from black and white, complicated by the culturally relative nature of terms such as â€Å"conflict†and â€Å"courage†, as well as by the rather oblique definition that â€Å"good† itself holds. Odysseus respectively. I will argue that Aeneas meets the criteria set by neither model and that, ultimately, he is an emotionally unstable, morally dubious and even an incompetent military leader. However, the very fact that he is the protagonist needs to be stressed: his character is necessarily sympathetic, dynamic and intricate. My intention is not to assert that Aeneas is a villain or a coward; he is quite obviously neither of these things and such an interpretation of the Aeneid, a text rich and ambiguous in meaning, would be nothing short of reductive. And in this way he must, and does, have some positive, somewhat redeeming features. Virgil created in Aeneas a new type of Stoic hero, a point that is perhaps most evident in Book Four when Aeneas leaves Carthage. His speech to Dido is indicative of his determination to suffer both silently, Aeneas did not move his eyes and struggled to fight down the anguish in his heart. â€Å", (Book 4) and willing, â€Å"Do not go on causing distress to yourself and to me by these complaints. It is not by my own will that I still search for Italy. † (Book 4) Emotional restraint and acquiescence in regard to one’s own fortunes and torment is intrinsic to a Roman conception of a role model and leader. Equally, the presentation of Aeneas in Book Four can be seen to parallel that of Odysseus in Book Nineteen of the Odyssey, where the reader is told that, in spite of his wife’s tears, the hero’s â€Å"eyes were steady†. Aeneas, then, does conform to both the Roman and Homeric paradigms in his ability to endure the sufferings that Fate has allotted him. And yet his chief characteristic is not his endurance, as is the case with Odysseus, but rather his pietas, a quality essential for a Roman warrior. Time and time again in the Aeneid he is referred to as pious Aeneas, â€Å"famous for his devotion†(Book 6), so the Sibyl states. This devotion is threefold in that it is not only religious and extends to both his family and to his duty as â€Å"Father† of Rome. The latter of these has already been demonstrated by his separation from Dido, in which he subordinates his personal wishes in order to fulfil his destiny, while one can see the first two aspects of this pietas at work quite clearly in Book Five, in which the funeral games, â€Å"held in honour of the divine father of Aeneas†(Book 5), combine a celebration of the familial and of the holy. Like the â€Å"Father† figure that Aeneas, by fate takes on, Odysseus has great affection for his men. When he loses some of his men at Ismarus he tells us how they sailed on â€Å"with heavy hearts, grieving for the loss of our companions†. As well as this, when all the other ships are lost to the Laestragonians, he states, â€Å"We lay on the beach for two days and nights, utterly exhausted and eating our hearts out with grief†. Odysseus risks his life for them. In book 10 when the first half of his men are transformed into pigs by Circe, he goes alone to rescue them. He goes blind into this plan without any forward planning until Hermes helps him. He is so determined to help that he tells an interfering Eurylochus, â€Å"I shall go. I have absolutely no choice. â€Å". He never abandons his men. In Book 9 when his men eat the fruit of the Locus they lose all hope and want for home. Odysseus literally drags them and ties them to benches on the ship so that they cannot escape. In the cave of the Cyclops, after they have blinded the monster, Odysseus ties all of his men to the bellies of rams and they escape leaving him, he is alone and has nobody to tie him on. He does not care because he thinks about his men before he acts as does Aeneas. In this respect they are very similar except Aeneas makes more mistakes than Odysseus does and loses his wife. As a father figure, like Aeneas, Odysseus is very well respected by his men. Near the Cyclops the men divide the goats between the ships. They give nine to all of the ships and ten to Odysseus’ alone as a sign of their respect for him as their leader. Yet this pietas, as much as it appears to pervade Virgil’s characterisation of the leader, might be called into question. Aeneas, on frequent occasions, seems reluctant to implement himself and also uncertain as to the rewards it offers. In Book Five the poet externalises Aeneas’ thoughts as he wonders â€Å"whether he should forget about his destiny and settle in the fields of Sicily† (Book 5), and throughout the first half of the poem he needs to be constantly prompted to continue in his search for his homeland: by his wife’s shade in Book Two, his father’s shade in Book Five, and twice by Mercury in Book Four. Mercury wasted no time, â€Å"So now you are laying foundations for the high towers of Carthage and building a splendid city to please your wife? Have you entirely forgotten your own kingdom and your own destiny? † (Book 4). These temptations are presented to Odysseus throughout â€Å"The Odyssey† but he does not give into temptation whereas Aeneas marries Dido, falls in love with her. Odysseus has a very strict work ethic, which clearly shows his devotion to Ithaca. He is offered immortality by Nymph Calypso if he just stayed with her, but instead the first image that the reader is given of him is knelt on a beach crying for his homeland. He is tempted again by the witch Circe. Odysseus has the weakness of enjoying women. He stayed with Circe for one year before his men reminded him of home. He also stayed with Calypso for seven years. Although we must take into though that there were reasons why he had to stay with her. Even through these periods of extreme temptation and immensely beautiful women, Odysseus wants to return home. He is driven by the goddess Athene but she is not the true reason for his passionate longing for Ithaca. Aeneas is different. He no longing to go home, he has no home. He does long for his promised citadel but is also a cell for the gods to create a new Empire. Venus’ intervention is what points Aeneas towards leaving Dido who he tells, â€Å"I left you against my will† (Book 6). Aeneas seems rather less than devoted to his duty at this moment. He is shown to be quite contented in Carthage and it seems unlikely that he would have left its â€Å"sweet† shores under his own volition. Dido is Aeneas first serious test, and he seems to give way without a struggle (Book 4), and one may see the character here as close to the antithesis of Odysseus who, in his pig-headed determination to return to Ithaca, even rejects Calypso’s offer of immortality. Indeed, Aeneas, â€Å"whose sword was studded with yellow stars of jaspers† (Book 4) is a picture of decadence. Nor is devotion to duty the only aspect of his pietas that can be found wanting, and as much as Aeneas appears to be a truly devoted son it should be noted that he repeatedly fails to protect his family. When one considers those personages in the poem that could be seen as intimate with Aeneas it must be realised that virtually none survive. Cruesa, his first wife, is lost at Troy; Dido, debatably his second, commits suicide and Anchises, his father, dies in the port at Drepanum.