Theme: Suffering

Question 1

What are some examples of suffering in the underworld?

Answer 1

Bk.6 description of the underworld is full of personifications of abstract concepts of suffering like “Grief”,
“Disease”, and “Old Age”

Bk.6 Description of tartarus, the home of those who commitied acts against the Roman social code, is deliberately pessimistic:
Tartarus: those who are promiscous, adultery, not sharing wealth

Question 2

What are some examples of the suffering of women?

Answer 2

Women’s fate directly in war

• Bk.2 Cassandra is dragged out of the temple of Minerva- likely to be taken as a female slave by the Greeks
• Bk.2 Cruesa reveals herself to Aeneas to explain to him that she has been killed during the siege of Troy

Women mourn the loss of sisters:

• Bk.4 Anna mourns the loss of Dido her dear sister in poignaint passage- clutches her dying sister and laments she too should have died with her “could have called me to share your fate” (intensity of grief- genuine affection and love)

Women suffer the loss of brothers, husbands and fathers

Bk.11 The women of the Latins are described in their mourning “mothers and heart broken wives of the dead.. loving sisters beating their breasts.. children who had lost their fathers”

Question 3

How is the action of fighting in war described to bring suffering and death?

Answer 3

Widespread suffering

Bk.10 the description of war control by Mars “grief and death to both sides… victors and vanquished killed and were killed”- scale and unavoidability of death as an element of war

Brutal deaths

Bk.2 Death of Priam who is dragged to an altar then stabbed before being beheaded in front of Hecabe

Death at points of vulnerability

Bk.10 Magus is stabbed through the throat by Aeneas as he supplicates him for mercy- increases the brutality of his death

Question 4

What are some examples of mourning and loss?

Answer 4

Bk.9 The grief of Euryalus mother, unknown that her son had died, long draw realization running to the ramparts and sees the disembodied head of her son “did not walk before you at your family”- mourns the tragedy of youth and the grief for his body

Bk.10 Following his killing of Lausus, Aeneas mourns for his own father in response to the devotion of the recently murdered Lausus (died protecting his father)

Bk.10 Mezentius grieves the loss of his son “fouling his grey hair with the dust”

Bk. 11 Description of those mourning Pallas “All the Trojans and the women of Troy”

Bk. 11 Aeneas’ goodbye to Pallas’ body “After he had had his fill of weeping”

Bk. 11 “No power on earth could restrain Evander […] he threw himself on the body of Pallas and clung to it weeping and moaning” + mourns the tragedy of war

Question 5

What are some examples of the death of the young?

Answer 5

Bk.6 In the description of the underworld, Virgil “young men laid on the pyre before the faces of their parents”- tragic inversion of funerary convetions (ei parents should be mourned by children- passing before their time)

Bk.6 The death of Marcellus the younger described in the speech of Anchises “No son of Troy will ever so raise the hopes of his Latin ancestors”

Bk.9 The nature of Euryalus death as a young man who has barely reached manhood
“a boy with the first signs of manhood on cheeks as yet unshaven”
emphasis on his physical beauty even in death (killed as his closest friend supplicates his release)
“scarlet flow…cut by the plough or like poppies bowing theri heads”- emphasises beauty, youth and draws attention to nature of death (beheaded- similie evokes an image of once beautiful hero now defiled)

Bk.11 the beauty of Pallas’ youth is emphasised in the description of his dead body “like a flower cut by the thumbnail of a young girl, a soft violent or droopy lily”
Emphasises defencelessness and his beauty of his youth (just coming of age)

Question 6

What are some examples of suffering in love?

Answer 6

Dido can be seen to be a victim of the intensity of love

Bk.1 as Cupid works his magic “doomed to be the victim of a plague that was yet to come” “marking her to suffer”

Bk.4 Dido is described as being consumed by “loves deadly wound”- metaphor for the destructive nature of her complete obsession for Aeneas

ultimately leads to her suicide as she cannot stay with Aeneas who refuses to remain in Carthage

Aeneas grieves his wife who he loves deeply

Bk.2 Recounts that he rushed through the streets of Troy screaming her name and when her phantom appeared “three times i tried to put my arms around her neck. three times her phantom melted in my arms”- physical contact and lack of final embrace

Question 7

What are examples of overcoming suffering?

Answer 7

Bk. 1 – Dido’s description of suffering
“I, too, have known ill fortune like yours”
“Through my own suffering, I am learning to help those who suffer”