Emp & Lit Lecture (Aeneid 10)

AC: Emp & Lit (Aeneid 10)

Transcript

Feedback forms. So these are not just for this part of the module, they're for both parts.

My bit. And also Edwards. So if you could be thinking during the class, things you thought worked well, things you thought didn't work as well, or any comments you can have or feedback, we always read those and we do take them into consideration when we update the course next year as well.

But not just my part, but also Edwards, if you can think about both of those.

So last time we were looking at book 11 and we said book 11, major things.

It really is a book that shows us the heavy cost of war.

So one of the major themes of that book is suffering and sorrow to show us what is lost during war.

And in the context of that cost of war. It also is a book that sets up the question of whether this entire war was even necessary.

Was this cost even necessary? Why wasn't this ever just answered by human enemies, Turnus and Aeneas fighting in handcuffs?

Why didn't they just sort it themselves? Why do we all have. Because these men have a problem. And these. And what we found is that even as the war continued, it becomes more and more apparent throughout the book that the Latins are on the losing side.

They're the ones who are going to lose. They haven't been able to find any new allies to help them find that out.

In book 11, then there's a council where even like their leader sits there and goes, what are we doing that we're going to lose anyway?

And you can feel by the end of the book their morale is really decreasing.

And so we see that in the character of Camilla. Camilla, who's fighting on their side, is a key ally for the Latins and the text.

She's been dominating on the battlefield. She's done an amazing job. And what we find is she gets distracted for a moment, she gets distracted by the clothes and in that distraction she gets killed.

And so here the key I'm like, not only can they not get new allies, but they're really good allies who've been revolted.

And so there's nobody that they return to now to get the help that they need.

And today we're going to turn on, on and move on to the last book in the entire text.

Book 12, the longest book of the Aeneid. The action of this book takes like one 24 hour period and all of it builds up to that moment where we're going to see hand to hand combat between Aeneas and Turnus.

That's the very end of the text. And of course, this combat is essential because it's going to determine the outcome of the war.

Really settle the question can the Trojans settle and do now.

And one important repeating theme throughout this book, or something you might have noticed as you're reading, or something to look out for when you read it, is this idea of delay.

Specifically, all throughout the book, a million things happen to delay that final moment.

When you see Turnus and Aeneas coming against each other at the start of the text, Turnus decides to go Aeneas alone.

He finally takes that decision that this combat, this duel, has to occur.

We actually see King Latinus try to talk him out of that.

Just trying to convince him you should just surrender.

You don't need to go out and die, you can surrender instead that he values his honor over his life.

And because of this, Latinus draws up a peace treaty between a truce between the Trojans and the Latin.

And that should all go well. And what we find is the arter to look at this jewel that's going to be fought to keep this peace between them.

And then things happen that prevent this duel from taking place.

And it actually takes nearly 700 lines into the text until we get to the final duel.

It's not until line 697. And of course, there are poetic reasons for why Virgil keeps delaying.

The main event that we hear at the start of the text is good.

And of course the climax of a text can bring an audience more satisfaction when scene finally happens.

So this is a strategic way for him to delay. We can get to see what we want to. But for a poet to be given time in the end of their text, all the ideas that they've introduced throughout the text, so he delays so he can kind of re explore some of the beings he's already given us in the text.

Now, before we look at some of these themes and finally get to the jewel, I just want to point out to you some of the images that Virgil used in this text are extremely striking.

You get the feeling that this working on this particular book and one of the things to look out for when you're looking at the character of Turnus in particular is look for his temperature as you're reading through the text for the very.

Here's the very start, actually his name is the first name in the text.

He is the protagonist for the final book. What we read at the very start is Turnus observes setbacks in battle have broken the Laughens.

He sees their morale has given out. Eyes show that they expect him to honor. Now what he had promised before, he promised that he would move towards a duel.

He will put responsibility towards his people first.

He's going to wage this duel instead of continuing the work.

And he burns with unquenchable ardor. Notice here, with passion. And as you read through book 12 again, he is somebody who's burning or bleeding or inflamed.

And what we're getting here is this idea that he is being driven by passion.

These are words tending to be associated with past passion.

And they're words that tend to be used not for male characters, but for female characters.

People like inflamed, people like Camila, who are associated with physically burn in their desire.

And here this passion leads Turnus to ignore the king's advice.

King's advising him, just surrender, you don't have to die.

He ignores it. He's not fully rationally thinking he's been driven by his passion.

Instead, go on. Look at instances where he's burning, blazing, raging, but also instances he gets really, really cold.

He's icy. The blood is cold in his body. And we can see that this shows us his mental state.

His rage is shown to us through his heat and his, his lack of confidence in himself are shown to us in these.

And there's no stability in temperature here. He's not a stable character. He's either burning or he's icy. Now, turning back to the themes that we look at, one of the questions that we thought about even from the first lecture on relationship between the gods and mankind, and in particular throughout the text, we've seen the impact that Juno's anger in particular has had on the Trojans.

And this is one of the key driving forces of the plot.

And it comes up again in this book. And at this point of the text, as we said, a truce has been set up with that.

There is going to be a peace deal. Can see the handwriting on the wall. She can see what's happening. But she knows herself that if Aeneas and Turnus go to single handed combat, this is doomed.

He's going to die. He's not going to be able to defeat Aeneas, particularly when he's so mentally unstable at this time.

He's, he's raging. And so Juno takes one last opportunity to delay this event from happening.

She might be able to stop Turnus's death, but again she can do things to prolong his life a little bit, make it difficult for the Trojans.

And the way Juno does this as well is she gets somebody called Jua to fight on and J becomes a Key figure in book 12.

Now, Juturna is a native Italian deity of springs and she was really well established in the Roman tradition before Virgil writes this text at all.

I don't know for sure because, for example, there is a Roman forum that dates the second century BCE, so more than a hundred years before.

100 years or so before Virgil's writing. And it's dedicated to her, it has her name on it. So what we see here is that in Virgil's story, Juturna is.

He also says that she is a sister of Turner. Some sort of personal connection with this guy called Turnus seems to be totally invented by Virgil.

It's not in. So this is something he's added to the story. So in the text we find that Juno comes to Daterna and she said, the Day of doom is here.

Here the enemy's hand is upon Turnus. I cannot endure to look on at this jewel or the preliminaries of it.

If you dare do anything more effective to aid your brother, do it.

You may. You and he may yet have a chance for souls. She turned and violently struck her beautiful breast three times.

Here, of course, as gods often do, Juno misrepresents the truth.

She tells her that she can do something to help. She says the Day of Doom is here. Like she admits it's the Day of Doom, but she suggests something can be done for Turnus here.

And so the question we have to ask is, why has. Why has Virgil inserted this character? You know, he's trying to delay out his text a little bit.

We've seen Juno before, get characters to act on her behalf, to intervene, to cause problems to the point of making Juturna Turnus sister.

And it's a really interesting scene because the only one of Jupiter of Juno's helpers in the story actually have personal connection with the character that's actually invested in the story.

This might give us a clue as to why he has picked her.

And one of the roles that Juturna plays at this point in the text is to start to slowly increase our sympathies for Turnus as we're reading through the text.

At this point in the text, we're not very sympathetic towards him.

We've seen him on the battlefield, we've seen him killing young people, we've seen him be horrible.

But now we're going to start to look at him at a new way, which is through the eyes of his sister.

And this tied to the theme of suffering that we've seen.

What they find is that instead of Selling this as an enemy that's about to be killed.

Instead Virgil, a different version of him. He's somebody who's somebody's brother. He's somebody who has personal connections. There are people who are going to be sad when he dies.

She's crying already and nothing has happened to him.

And it was reminding me, you know, when you watch a TV show and you have a factor.

It's like, will they, won't they? For so many episodes and finally enough together, they have this glorious moment.

You're like, yes, they finally found each other.

So one of them goes to confined to milk and they're knocked down.

But it's all the play of the filmmakers, the craftsmen.

They're trying to increase sympathy for our character right before they kill it all.

And this is what it feels like to give us point in the story.

Story. Okay. Now, even though she can't ultimately save JJ. Save Turnus, JNA does do her best to protect him. And we read that Anas and Turnis are make preparations for their duel.

They're there together. They have an audience. In the audience is Jna. And she looks at Turnus, she studies and she notice he doesn't look well at all.

In fact, he's extremely pale at this point. And you get the feeling that he has been so enraged despite this fight that he's actually exhausted himself.

Even before he got to pull out his shield and his sword, he is exhausted.

And she's really concerned that once. Once the gong goes, once the battle starts, he's dead.

And so she decides to act. And she wants to try to prevent him from fighting.

And so she disguises herself as a man and she starts a whispering campaign to shame all the into fighting again.

To turn it says. Aren't you ashamed? She's whispering to them in the crowd. Aren't you ashamed, you Italians, at risking one hero's life turn the entire army like ourselves more and more did these work inflame the mood of resentment among the rutilian soldiers.

Men who'd been dreaming of arrest from this war of going about their in peace now wanted to fight again now praise that the treaty, the treaty be null and void.

And felt pity for Turnus in his unfair prediction.

And of course here and image of our stereotype about women were known to cause war to start creating violence to stir up conflict.

And it's all that in order to create this conquer to cause it to inflame once again.

She despises herself as a man so that she can make arguments that men will listen to we've seen a few times in the text where women argue with men.

They try to convince them through their voice. Think of Queen Amasha trying to convince her husband initially as well.

When elected, she tries to speak to him first. And here, here those two women are not able to convince the men because they're women.

But here, as soon as she disguised herself as a man, she is able to convince the other men.

Here is that women are not generally able to persuade men because they do not have the same capacity to argue.

Although in this case all it took is a disguise of Chuma they will take so and what we find is that pretty soon after Juturnus starts making the Rutilians feel ashamed one man is fighting.

Whether they should all join in the fight does break out again between the larger armies.

And when you're working again on a text like this, I said to you a few times before, if you look when you're reading, look out for any patterns you can see coming up again.

And can be really useful in shedding light on the meaning of the text pattern.

I have two instances in two books in a row where Turnus has really heavily relied on help of women.

In the previous book he had no problem with letting Camilla go out to meet the enemies let her on his behalf.

And now Juturna ends up taking important role in the fight between the Latins and the Trojans.

This is really striking because Turnus actually tells us slightly later in this that when should Turner was in the crowd when she was saying these things to them and he recognized his sister, she was disguised but not he knew her too well and he recognized who she was and he had problem letting her enter and and kind of manipulate the fight on his behalf.

He has no problem letting her stir up the men's fight again, even though he has made a promise that he is going to settle this with hand to hand combat.

And so it seems like one of the faults that we find in Turnus is his reliance on women.

An interesting thing is that as we see him in text, we've seen him now rely twice on women and he begins to behave through for example, being driven by passions.

And you can't help but ask is Virgil saying that his reliance on women has affected him personally?

Virgil has also shown us the image several times before of women whose emotions spill and affect people around them.

And he is somebody with close connections to these women.

Okay, so if we say Turnus has been feminized his association with women, can we not say that?

Didn't you Rely on Queen Dido, didn't he let her take him in, take his men in, show them care?

Why? Why is he not feminized through that process? And there is an important difference between them.

When, when did Aido starts becoming overcome by her emotions?

Aeneas steps in and he takes on the leadership role in Carthage, begins building the city himself.

He runs day to day tasks. He takes on a leadership role in the moment when the feminine, when she becomes more feminized, whereas Turnus doesn't relies on women no matter what state they are in.

And I can't but help think of the immediate context in which Virgil is writing where Augustus's own Mark Anthony is so well known for his reliance on a woman and in particular his personal reliance on Cleopatra, who we turn to for military aid, etc.

And so we know the image of Mark Antony as a man who was swayed by women, who himself became feminized by them, is an image that's being circulate, circulated by Mark Anthony's political opponents during this time.

And this probably feeds why. So thanks to the help of Juan, the war breaks out again.

The decides one of the most famous moments from this part of the war.

He's wounded and has to be treated off the battlefield.

And we have this actually a beautiful painting from Pompeii in the second house, half of the first century ce.

So like only a couple decades after Virgil was writing and here he was wounded in the leg, you can see him bleeding here.

And of course now the question is, was it worthwhile for turnout to start this fight?

Now Aeneas has been wounded, has a fight, a chance against him if this guy's bleeding, how well can he do when he's out against her?

And what happens is Aeneas background there on the left and she ends up putting some sort of infusion onto his leg which draws the blade out of his leg and it heals it miraculously.

So even though maybe Juturna, it seems like she had done a good thing because of this, this injury actually the injury doesn't end up mattering too much because Venus is there to help him.

And another interesting point part in this battle is that once Aeneas is healed, his leg is back working again.

He begins at the suggestion of Venus. She says to him, why don't you just go ahead and attack their city?

They're out here fighting over there and attack them.

And this is important that Virgil includes this because it allows him to show us the Trojans coming full circle, the start of the Aeneid, the Trojans were vanquished in their own city which was burning down around them.

And now their role is replayed and reversed. They're the ones emerging as victors. They are the ones even though they're ready to take through the war has been.

They're the ones who were losers. Now they're not anymore. They're the ones burning down cities. They are escaping, which was full of defeat, of trauma the first time we meet Neoc literally on the deck of a ship, totally traumatized.

Now they're escaping from that trauma. And despite the fact that they are going to burn down the city, we know that the Trojans are going to be rebuilding there.

It'll be different now than Troy. They will build a new place. And when they won't just be Trojans anymore, they won't be the losers of the Trojan War.

New people, a victorious people whose home is now in Italy.

They're going to be Italians. And our question is again, who have these? Emphasizes the idea that we should start viewing Trojans as the new and true Italians, the ones who really belong in this area.

And we can see this in the way that Aeneas and Turnus are described in book 12, where Virgil begins to blur the lines between foreigner and local.

So for example, Aeneas become more Italian when he is compared through similes that compare him to a well known Italian Platonist.

For example, it's the Apennine Mountains. He's called Father Apennine, he region of Italy here, local nature.

Whereas Curtis starts to be foreign places, he starts to be compared to the Ganges.

He's also compared to a lion, a Punic lion, so from the area of Carthage for northern Africa.

And so Virgil's really breaking down the difference between them and complicating their identity.

And what's interesting about this is this is part of a process where Virgil is giving us different ways to think about the war and who the war is between.

It's a war between and locals. But are they foreigners or are they are there is that distinction.

And he's also given us hints that there's another potential way to think about this war, and that is not as a war between two separate groups, but as a war between one group.

So he says, read it as a civil war. He suggests this, a war Father, son in law. And this suggestion comes up already in book seven where Juno is looking down on the Trojans and decides to create a war.

And she says, son in law Aeneas, father in law, King Latinus, let them consummate the union to result in Those family lines coming together.

And Virgil here is pointing to the idea that we could read this whole war as a civil war.

Because if you think about it over and Nia's marries this guy's daughters, they become anyway so they're moving towards being one.

And he emphasizes this. And I want to suggest that he does this is because this has been such an important aspect in Roman history.

The war between Julius Caesar and Pompey was father in law and the son in law sitting in the background of the text.

And the reality is Virgil, does he care about war as a problem in and of itself?

He's not bothered when Romans go out what is now Germany in North Africa, in Persia.

He doesn't care about Roman expansion. That's not. He cares about civil wars. He cares about wars that happen within Italy between his own people group.

He cares about people at home being affected. He's not bothered about what goes on outside side of Italy.

And so this is really interesting in suggesting that this could be a civil war.

It's a way to get him to his audience to think about this issue.

And it also about who is right and who is wrong and actually losing Italians, since they unite with the Trojans.

They're all going to. For the Trojans to be killing the. The Latins might be their kinsmen shortly. It makes the war very complicated. And civil war is a war that Virgil is particularly interested in thinking about and showing that it's not morally clear cut.

And this would have made total sense to a Roman audience since civil war could never be viewed as fully honorable in the way that Rome going out and conquering people overseas was fine.

It wasn't a problem. It was actually a positive thing of their dominion.

Which is hard as a post colonial country to kind of come to terms with.

But this is how they thought. But it's a very Roman idea that civil war is really dishonorable.

And the Roman. Here we can see an example where the Roman author Tacitus, the historian thinks about what about Augustus.

If civil war is dishonorable and he's been engaged in civil war, is there an issue with that?

And he says according to some filial duty, the death of Julius Caesar and for some leader to come in and to make a decision about doing things had caused Augustus to the civil war.

But he says weapons that could not be either totally morally clear cannot find an unusual thing for Virgil to prevent a war where the Trojans literally rock up in Italy start fighting local people as a civil work.

And the reason throughout the Aeneid Another one of our main themes has been the question.

Throughout the text we've seen that humans often fight against or refuse to.

For example, last week Turnus was at the Latin Council, fighting against fate.

And now when he sees the city burning, when he looks over and the city is being destroyed, he finally, finally comes to the point where he is going to accept his fate.

He speaks to Juturna and he says, fate has now taken a decisive command.

Sister, stop your delaying. Where God, where cruel fortune is calling us. Let us there follow. Yes, it's settled, it's settled. I suffer whatever anguish accompanies death. You will never again see me, sister, so disgraced.

Let me rage out my rage while there's still time, I beg you.

And here we finally see he's fully accepted his fate.

The jewel is going to take place. It's been delayed. And now we're finally going to get to it. Before we can get to it, we have one more person who has to accept fate, and that is Juno, the very person who's been fighting it since book one.

And what we see here is that she finally fully accepts that things are going to happen with or without her, and even the gods themselves are powerless to prevent fate.

And here she goes. It is because great consort, greet Jupiter, were known to me that I have reluctantly given up Turnus and I put Earth from this blend of Italian and Trojan blood.

So here she's emphasizing that these two groups are coming together, that they are one group shall arise a people, the Roman people, surrounding all men may even the gods in godliness.

And again, why is this theme so important? Why do we have to revisit it a million times? Why does he have to look back on it before we get to our final duel?

And what I think here is happening is Virgil is getting his audience to raise the question, and themselves.

What is faith in our own? Who has faith selected to lead us? How do you know? And the question is, how do you know who fate has chosen?

You look at the results around you, you look at who's in charge, why they're in charge, do the stars seem to be aligning for some person or not?

And what's interesting is that by having both humans and the gods take a stand against faith and then ultimately resign themselves to fate, Virgil demonstrates that fate is certain and fate is something that has to be accepted by his audience.

And if his audience delay in accepting that they are only prolonging pain and misery for their own people, she wouldn't accept it.

She starts. And more People die that didn't need to die. Turn this. And now as we're drawing near to the end of the text, Juno's finally stopped supporting Turnus.

We begin to see Turnus looking more and more weak as the texts go on.

And again we find Virgil's increasing the sympathy we feel as an audience member for.

For him. And what we see is that just as he's coming up to the one to one combat, Turnus begins to feel his own strength slipping away.

And we get this imagery that's really visceral. In one section we're told that Turnus lifts up a massive Boulder that's large, 12 men could lift and hes in their fight.

So we read the hero picks up the rock in his shaking already he races top speed.

He stretches as high as he can to add torque to its light at the foeman.

Yet he has no sense that he's running, no knowledge he's moving or hoisting up in his hand and hurling a boulder of massive proportions.

His knees buckle, blood sets hard in his veins with the cold ice of terror.

As for the stone the man threw, it just tumbled through the void and through empty air.

It fell short of its length, inflicted a blow upon you have his failure here as he's in the middle of the action.

In fact, Turnus himself had previous to this in the same book been himself compared to Joe rolling down his hill.

And now he picks up a stone to throw and he can't even get it to hit his target.

He's shaking under it, his blood is turning cold.

He's losing all confidence in his strength. And this is what brings us to the very final scene in the book, is the moment when Turnus finally falters.

Aeneas has thrown a spear at him. He's cut him in the thigh. Remember, Emetus has recently been also cut in the leg and he got help from Venus.

But Turnus is this. We see this repeated image. He is hurt in the leg and there's nobody there to help him.

He's completely. He's all alone. Aeneas is standing about to give his final death blow to him.

And turn. It says, I deserve this, nor am I begging for my life.

The opportunity here is yours and you can use it. But if the love of a parent can touch you at all, because I know you have this love for your own father, I beg you to pity the age Donnas.

This is his own father. And give me, or if you prefer, my sightless cadaver back to my kin.

You've won. Everyone has witnessed the vanquished reaching his hand out to make this appeal.

He's saying he's appealing him for mercy. Everyone. Now, Lavinia, further. So here Turnus gives appeals to ways, and these tie into several key themes of the book.

Firstly, he appeals to Aeneas's understanding of piety, or pietas towards his family.

Turnus mentions his own father. He says, like, if the love of a parent can touch you, obviously hoping that Aeneas will feel sorry for him and maybe not kill him.

He also appears sense of clementia, which is mercy, since he acknowledges that he now belongs to Aeneas.

And he also gives me a sense of moderation. He says, don't press your hate any further. He suggests that to kill him would actually be pushing hate beyond reasonable grounds.

And even more remarkably, Virgil shows us that this actually works pretty well on Aeneas.

Aeneas actually himself delays from killing him outright.

He hesitates. And this gives us a sense of just how much Turnus's words have resonated with Aeneas.

But it's important to say that even after, Aeneas could still decide to kill Turnus, and that it would be okay in a very morally straightforward way.

For example, Phineas hesitates and he delivers.

And he decides he can't let Turnus live because realistically, Turnus is saying all this to him now and in a year's time he's going to come back and try and kill him again.

You know, he can decide that that would make sense in a Roman context.

In Roman terms, it would be acceptable to kill him.

But Virgil really complicates it by showing us something very different.

This is not Aeneas's motivation for killing Turnus.

He doesn't decide. He thinks it's the most practical and strategic and logical thing to do.

Instead, just as he's hesitating, what does he notice on his body?

He's deciding what to do about Turnus. And he looks at Turnus and he sees here what is Turnus wearing but the belt of Pallas.

It's stretched across him. He sees the belt that Turnus has stolen off the body of Pallas he was so close to and who he looked out for.

And he's wearing it as booty in this bottle. And we read as his eyes drink in these mementos of savage pain, these so bitter spoils.

Aeneas grows fierce anger, burning with the fire of furies.

You of my dearest, think that you could escape me.

Pallas gives you this. Pallas makes you the sacrifice, spills your criminal blood.

And as he Speaks Aeneas buries the steel in the hearth that confronts him boiling with rage.

Cold shivers sends Turnus limbs into spasm. His life flutters off on a groan under protest down among the shadows.

And so here Aeneas makes the case as he's killing him.

He makes the case that he's just for two reasons. He claims he's doing it for religious reasons. This is a sacrifice. He claims he's doing it for legal reasons. He says this is your criminal blood that is being spilled.

But at this giving these very legitimate reasons, we can see that that is not true.

We can see that it's actually the trigger for his decision to kill Turnus was not the reasons he gave that look good on paper.

The reason why is because he noticed the belt and he began to feel absolute rage for what he had done.

In his anger, he's burning with fire, he's boiling with rage.

All those emotions we had seen at Turnus are now being placed onto Aeneas instead.

And does not finally decide to kill Turnus for acceptable reasons based on Roman religion and law.

Instead, he does it for purely emotional reasons.

And in fact you feel like he has lost rational control and his fury has overcome his piety in this moment, which is the exact opposite of what we are supposed to see or what you expect to see.

And in fact the final word in the whole text is your umbra.

It's actually the word we get umbrella from in English, a shadow, shade.

And it's a word in Virgil's text sense of doom or gloom hanging over them.

The sense that we don't know what could happen next, but something terrible could happen after this.

We don't have like a positive ending or wrap to passage.

And the question is, what does this kind of ending mean for Augustus?

We said that a comparison has been set up all throughout the text between Ennius and Augustus.

They're not the same person, but there is serious comparison between them since they've been so strongly connected.

And it's interesting if we go we read that one of his criticisms was that he gave of Augustus was that just like Aeneas, he used pious, he used only avenging the death of Julius Caesar.

And he used the excuse that he was trying to help the state when he was perhaps doing something different.

He says on the other side, it was argued that filial duty, his duty forced to his Caesar and the critical position of the state, the needs of the state, his duty towards the state had been used just as a cloak.

And this is a cloak. He's hiding the real reason why he was seeking out vengeance on why he chose to go to the Civil Wars.

And the suggestion is, is that it was built to cover up the fact that he was full of lust for this is the reason he paid veterans.

The reason he raised an army was in order to gain something for himself.

And this is the kind of image we're left with with Aeneas.

Aeneas isn't motivated by piety or respect for the law.

Instead, he's using at a smokescreen to cover up his real desire, which is to dominate and to gain power for himself and Victor.

So Virgil really lives a really morally complicated view, not only of Aeneas, but also of Augustus, who has been so frequently.

And these wars are liminal spaces where we can picture.

So how could he write that type of thing and hope to live after it?

Well, you can think through the text. He's given enough pro Augustan propaganda. He's finished this by allowing him to have a couple of excuses that might be accepted, might not be accepted, so he can give himself a slightly more ambiguous ending that he will not become a target himself.

But he also might be setting up Augustus to prove to show him that he did kill people for good reason.

Okay, so that's the end of the text. Next time we will talk about the. We look at the exam. I have feedback forms here if you don't mind completing them.

And if, when you're done, maybe come to this aisle here.

I think I have.

Notes

• Feedback Forms

  • Not just related to one part of the module; feedback is collected for both parts.

  • Students should consider providing feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

• Overview of Book 11

  • Focuses on the heavy cost of war.

  • Major themes:

  • Suffering and sorrow related to losses during war.

  • Questions the necessity of the war between Aeneas and Turnus.

    • Why not resolve their issues directly?

  • The Latins are portrayed as losing side, unable to find allies for support.

  • Morale declines as seen in the character of Capilla.

  • Key ally for Latins, distracted, and ultimately killed in battle.

• Transition to Book 12

  • Longest book in the Aeneid, action takes place over a 24-hour period.

  • Builds up to the final duel between Aeneas and Turnus, which determines the outcome of the war.

  • Repeating theme: Delay.

  • Various events prevent the duel from happening until line 697.

  • Delays enhance audience satisfaction and allow exploration of previously introduced themes.

• Character of Turnus

  • Notable for fluctuating temperature imagery reflecting his emotional state.

  • Driven by passion, often depicted in heated terms (burning, inflamed).

  • His irrationality leads him to ignore the king's advice to surrender.

  • The instability suggests he cannot maintain control over his emotions.

• The Role of Juno and Juturna

  • The nature of divine interference is revisited, with Juno attempting to delay Turnus’s fate.

  • Introduction of Juturna, Turnus’s sister, aims to create sympathy for his character.

  • Juturna disguises herself as a man to sway soldiers back into battle.

  • Highlights gender dynamics and perceptions of authority between men and women in the text.

• Themes of Reliance and Masculinity

  • Turnus relies on female characters (e.g., Juturna, Camilla), contrasting Aeneas’s leadership when confronted with feminine emotions.

  • Discussion of the societal interpretation of Turnus's reliance on women and its effects on his character.

• Civil War Context

  • The war can be interpreted as a civil conflict rather than a traditional battle between enemies.

  • Implications for Roman history, particularly the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey.

• Exploration of Fate

  • Turnus eventually accepts his fate, highlighting the idea that even gods cannot interfere with destiny.

  • Virgil illustrates that recognizing fate is crucial for avoiding unnecessary suffering.

• Final Duel and Its Aftermath

  • Aeneas's victory is fraught with moral complexities, questioning the righteousness of his actions.

  • Turnus's appeal for mercy showcases themes of piety and clemency, resonating with Aeneas’s internal conflict.

  • The narrative leads to ambiguity in Aeneas's motivations preceding the killing of Turnus, challenging perceptions of heroism in warfare.

  • Concludes with an open-ended reflection on power, consequence, and moral ambiguity within the context of the war and leadership.