Key to All Mythologies

We start by trying to establish the terms of the moral universe Ovid depicts. Are the gods meant to be figures of ridicule? Does Ovid take them seriously at all? Are the linked vignettes which comprise the Metamorphoses, for the most part, meant to have the qualities of fables? Lessons? Horror movies? Jokes? Jove brought change and decay into the world by the introduction of seasons. Does this poem, which is after all a poem of change, transformation, and decay, praise him for this or vilify him? Or does Ovid simply report on a world he finds ludicrous, laughable, and sad, without any moral judgements implied one way or another? Is Ovid trying to take the piss out of Vergil? For these questions and many more (but no answers) one must listen to this episode of the Key.

We wrap up our discussion of the Georgics with a lot of talk about the meaning of bees, bee-keeping, and the fact that bees sleep very peacefully at night because they do not have sex. How does this relate to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice? If all your bees die at once, say of the plague, will slaughtering a bull bring them back? Are horse-flies a punishment for excessive human acquisitiveness? Do your humble pod-casters, who are not farmers, in addition to all the other things they are not, illuminate any of this fabulous poem’s mysteries, or do they only darken the already obscure? You will have to listen to find out.

Here we begin our two part digression into the Georgics of Vergil. We consider the meaning of the implicit contrast Vergil draws between the solitary life of the farmer and the hectic life of the citizen in Rome. We ask ourselves, “Who is the audience for this poem?” Is Vergil attempting to teach farmers anything? Or is he only attempting to remind Roman soldiers, politicians, and social climbers of things about Nature they may have forgotten? What is the relationship between this poem and the Roman schools of Epicureanism and Stoicism? Finally, we consider the differences between Vergil’s relationship to Nature and our own.

We arrive at the final book of Vergil’s epic. We consider the meaning of conquest and Roman identity, considering that it is the Trojans, not the Latins, whom Jove decrees will lose their language and identity, despite being the victors in battle. What is it about the synthesis of two losers – the Trojans, defeated by the Greeks, and the the Latins, defeated by the Trojans – which gives rise to the Romans? We continue to consider questions of synthesis. Vergil is attempting to synthesize so many strands of history, myth, tradition, politics, nature, and poetry, can it be any surprise that the final results do not manage to tie everything into a neat bow? Is this fractiousness an artistic failing on Vergil’s part, or is it intentional? Is it this very failing which saves his poem from descending to the status of Imperial propaganda? We end with some fascinating general reflections about the epics we have read so far on our quest for the Key. As always, the frustrated listener is encouraged to stick around. The end is the best part.

We spend a lot of our time in this episode discussing the beguiling character of Camilla, a fearsome warrior and virginal acolyte of the goddess Diana. Camilla is represented in Book XI as being a kind of Amazonian princess: primitive, noble, powerful, uncorrupted (shades of Rousseau and the “noble savage” to be sure). However, whatever her qualities, she is ultimately defeated by Aeneas and the Trojans, just like everything else in this poem that has opposed Roman destiny. The odd manner of her death – felled by an ignoble minor character who meets his own end soon after – provides us with many questions. And how can we put Camilla in conversation with Dido, or Lavinia (or Helen of Troy, or Cleopatra), the other female centers of gravity of the Aeneid? We finally return to the larger and more vexing questions about the meaning and role of women in this poem.

Book X is the first book of the Aeneid where battle scenes dominate the narrative. As such, we consider the battlefield conduct of Aeneas in light of the questions we have been discussing throughout our reading of the whole poem. Does Aeneas display piety as he slaughters his enemies? Or, since his piety is always with him, perhaps it is better to ask, How does Aeneas display piety as he slaughters his enemies? How does Vergil adapt and alter the battlefield scenes from the Iliad, and what are these various adaptations meant to tell us? What to make of the strange moment that ends Aeneas’ slaughter? Is this a moment of self-doubt, or merely a moment of general pity for all those he must kill? Finally, we take up the larger question, and central interpretive puzzle of the Aeneid, of how Vergil himself and his epic poem regard warfare and empire-building.

At the center of Book IX is the night raid of Nisus and Euryalus. Modeled closely on the night raid of Odysseus and Diomedes in the Iliad, the raid here has less military justification and is less successful; yet upon their violent, predictable, and seemingly pointless deaths, Vergil praises Nisus and Euryalus in the highest terms. The meaning of this praise is the central question we discuss in this episode. Why is so much space devoted to the story of these two young, impetuous soldiers and lovers?

The first words we hear Nisus speak are “Do the gods inspire this warmth, or make we gods of our desires?” A strikingly modern, introspective question for a Trojan soldier to be asking. Does this unusual question suggest that the tale of these two, beginning here and ending with their bloody, melodramatic slaughter, as Nisus attempts to sacrifice himself to save Euryalus, is meant to be something of a stand-alone tale? Furthermore, how are we to understand that their story sits within two episodes where prudence and calm reason are shown to be superior to raging passions? Finally, while it is easy to see that the night raid in the Iliad is the model for this one, saying just what the relationship between the two raids is supposed to mean turns out to be much trickier. What is Vergil attempting to do with the allusion? As usual, expect more questions than answers on another exciting episode of the Key to All Mythologies.

We spend much of our time on this episode comparing and contrasting the shield that the maker god Vulcan (called Hephaestus in the Greek pantheon) forges for Aeneas with the one he previously forged for Achilles. The latter depicts general human scenes of sailing, fighting, dancing, and ritual, while the former depicts specific moments of Roman history and Roman triumph. What can these differences tell us about the differences between these cultures, and the differences between Roman culture and our own?

This leads us to ask a series of larger questions about the nature of Vergil’s art. Over and over again in this poem we read prophecies and portents of Rome’s future greatness and the ascension of Augustus Caesar to quasi-divine status. Is Vergil, then, essentially a propagandist for the State? Is he beholden to an idea of history which overwhelms him and damages the honesty of his poetic vision? What is history anyway? And what is propaganda? Can you really have one without the other? To learn the absolute, definitive, and final answers to these questions you will have to listen to week’s episode of the Key to All Mythologies.

Now that Aeneas and the Trojans have successfully landed in Italy, the narrative switches from one a journey to one of founding and colonizing. As such, Vergil switches from using the Odyssey as the text on which his own epic is structured to using the other great Homeric poet, the Iliad. This switch causes a new set of questions to take center stage. We begin by considering the use of the goddess Juno in Book VII. She has long been the Trojans’ antagonist, and here she again intervenes to try and bring them to ruin. She does so, however, while acknowledging that she is ultimately powerless to prevent Aeneas from founding Rome, since this is Jove’s will, and in accordance with fate. All she can do is make this founding as difficult and bloody as possible. What is the meaning of Juno’s action here? Is she meant to symbolize something about nature or society that resists change, or fate, or imperial power?

This leads us to ask a series of larger questions about the meaning of Rome’s self-conception as the divinely ordained, glorious, and just rulers of the world. How does the founding myth Vergil is creating for Rome work with – and possibly work against – this grandiose self-conception? And what is the meaning of Love in this book? There is a lot of talk about Love, and home, and hearth, but how those words are being used, and how Vergil understood them, is far from clear.

On this week’s episode we discuss Aeneas’ trip to the Dis, the underworld of Roman mythology. There seems to be something a bit obligatory about this trip. Like hosting funeral games, burying fallen warriors, and battling enemy champions, traveling to the underworld is just something epic heroes do in their poems. We consider again in what ways Aeneas is and is not like other epic heroes. Like his trip to the underworld, his position at the center of Vergil’s epic feels a bit obligatory. He does not stand apart from the crowd in the manner of Achilles. Aeneas is imitable, in ways that Odysseus and Achilles are not. Is this of the nature of his heroism?

While in Dis, Aeneas and his father Anchises discuss the future, which leads Anchises to offer another long prophecy of Roman greatness and Roman triumph, culminating in world-dominion under Augustus. However, some strange details cause us to consider to just what degree Vergil intends this prophecy to be taken as an absolute and final pronouncement. For instance, it is possible to construe Apollo’s prophecy that all Aeneas’ soldiers will reach Italy safely as false (Palinurus, seduced by the god Sleep, falls overboard). Even more strangely, when Aeneas returns to the Earth, he exits the underworld not by the gate of true dreams, but through the gate of false dreams. Very odd indeed. What might these textual mysteries say about Vergil’s relationship to the glory of Rome and Augustus, a glory which his poem is meant to celebrate?