Aeneas and His Family Fleeing Troy – by Peter Paul Rubens
The Trojan Exodus: The Initiation of a Nation
Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides
Iris: Volume 19, 1-49 (2006)
Abstract
The second book of the Aeneid , a familiar and favourite reading of a number of Latin students, focuses on the drama that unfolded during the last night of Troy. Aeneas, grateful to the Carthaginian Queen for her hospitality and flattered by her admiration, cannot but agree to her request to hear, detail by detail, the events of the fatal day that saw the utter destruction of his city. Aeneas’ narration has almost cinematographic qualities; however, despite his majestic descriptions of palaces and private buildings yielding to the flames and annihilation (real and metaphorical), the dramatic emphasis falls on the misfortunes of the people, relived in short episodes throughout the night, so terrible and so numerous that the audience is almost exhausted by the relentless repetition of deaths and devastation. Troy, in common with the tragic fates of renowned ancient capitals, resembles a paradise utterly lost and reduced to a flaming hell in the hands of its irreverent conquerors. The cause of all this is a gigantic wooden horse (instar montis, Aen. 2.15), a crafted ‘trap’ (insidias, 36), set in action by the ‘deceptions’ (doli, 152) of treacherous Sinon.
This paper is divided in two parts. The first part focuses on the role of the wooden horse in the destruction of Troy. I shall demonstrate that the currently suggested interpretations which by and large associate the wooden horse with sympathetic magic are not fully satisfactory. I shall also revise the argument that Troy was consumed by a magical fire and that the city was a symbol of a magical maze. In the second part, I shall suggest that the elements of Aeneas’ narration that have been interpreted as magical could be more appropriately read as initiatory. A close reading of the second book of the Aeneid could reveal that Vergil describes the destruction of Troy in terms that recall initiation into ancient mystery cults, including the Eleus- inian and the Bacchic/Orphic mysteries. This interpretation is in line with the longstanding recognition that Vergil employs mystery motifs in his epic, although book two was not previously suspected of bearing initiatory elements.
The Trojan Exodus: The Initiation of a Nation
Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides
Iris: Volume 19, 1-49 (2006)
Abstract
The second book of the Aeneid
, a familiar and favourite reading of a number of Latin students, focuses on the drama that unfolded during the last night of Troy. Aeneas, grateful to the Carthaginian Queen for her hospitality and flattered by her admiration, cannot but agree to her request to hear, detail by detail, the events of the fatal day that saw the utter destruction of his city. Aeneas’ narration has almost cinematographic qualities; however, despite his majestic descriptions of palaces and private buildings yielding to the flames and annihilation (real and metaphorical), the dramatic emphasis falls on the misfortunes of the people, relived in short episodes throughout the night, so terrible and so numerous that the audience is almost exhausted by the relentless repetition of deaths and devastation. Troy, in common with the tragic fates of renowned ancient capitals, resembles a paradise utterly lost and reduced to a flaming hell in the hands of its irreverent conquerors. The cause of all this is a gigantic wooden horse (instar montis, Aen. 2.15), a crafted ‘trap’ (insidias, 36), set in action by the ‘deceptions’ (doli, 152) of treacherous Sinon.
This paper is divided in two parts. The first part focuses on the role of the wooden horse in the destruction of Troy. I shall demonstrate that the currently suggested interpretations which by and large associate the wooden horse with sympathetic magic are not fully satisfactory. I shall also revise the argument that Troy was consumed by a magical fire and that the city was a symbol of a magical maze. In the second part, I shall suggest that the elements of Aeneas’ narration that have been interpreted as magical could be more appropriately read as initiatory. A close reading of the second book of the Aeneid could reveal that Vergil describes the destruction of Troy in terms that recall initiation into ancient mystery cults, including the Eleus- inian and the Bacchic/Orphic mysteries. This interpretation is in line with the longstanding recognition that Vergil employs mystery motifs in his epic, although book two was not previously suspected of bearing initiatory elements.
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