CLASS NOTES: Aeneas, Laocoon, and the Trojan Horse (Greek and Roman Mythology)

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Notes on video lecture:

Aeneas, Laocoon, and the Trojan Horse

Greek and Roman Mythology

Dr. Peter Struck, University of Pennsylvania

Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on February 19, 2014 (go to class or lectures)

Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:

sinister, father, hero, Sinon, Trojan, serpents, Greek, lies, Palladium, redouble, abandonment, shifting, menace, Carthaginian, destiny, abandon, annihilate

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in book 2, Aeneas begins to narrate for his hosts, his own past

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War has ended

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he experienced the fall of his beloved city

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in a customary twist, modifies and extends Homer's story, tells of

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Sinon was a warrior during the Trojan War

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near end of war, Aeneas is leaving the city, sees this Sinon who says he had been abandoned

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standing next to him is a giant wooden horse

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said they built the horse because Athena was angry with them for stealing the

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said that they built it so big so it could not be brought into Troy since if it was, Troy would never be able to be conquered

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Laocoon [lay-AHK-oh-wahn]

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a Trojan who warns that this is a lie, but come up out of the sea and bite and kill him

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Trojans see this and now their urgency of bringing this horse into the city

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Odysseus quite a bit in the Odysseus and Homer admires him for doing it, Athena egging him on to lie, humans like it when he does, everyone is entertained

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Virgil plays on this and has the Greeks, here Sinon, lie again

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so this is the definitive account of what happened after the Trojan war

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Greeks come out of the horse, the city

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Virgil describes in great detail

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with great concern of what is happening to his city

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Aeneas is figure, but ironically the first thing that he has to do is " his ship", i.e. leave Troy

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so Virgil has to start a story of of his home city

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but plenty of good reasons:

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humans, gods and ghosts come and tell him to leave

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even his wife begs for him to leave

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e.g. the way Venus tells Aeneas to go is very Virgilian

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*** Venus peels back what is happening so he can see the gods dismantling the walls of Troy, deeply

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*** for Homer there is an anger and rage, but for Virgil there is a kind of existential operating behind the scenes

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Virgil's world has depths of sinister forces operating compared to Homer's more two dimensional world

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we thus see Tory engulfed in flames not only literally but in this broad, existential sense

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Aeneas is carrying his out of the city, a symbol of his past and tradition

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he's also guiding his son by the hand, his future

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Virgil's world is characterized by surfaces, whereas Homer is often brightly lit most of the time, we can see the obvious connections between people and events

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with Virgil it's hard to get at what is basically happening

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this is also happening to Aeneas, he is not going to be in command of all the things happening around him

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he is being pulled along to meet this grand but there will be lots of pain, troubles, and suffering along the way

Vocabulary:

palladium, n. [pah-LAY-dee-um] in Greek and Roman mythology, the palladium was a cult image of great antiquity on which the safety of Troy and later Rome was said to depend, the wooden statue of Pallas (Greek Athena or Roman Minerva) that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to the future site of Rome by Aeneas, in English, since around 1600, the word palladium has been used figuratively to mean anything believed to provide protection or safety, and in particular in Christian contexts a sacred relic or icon believed to have a protective role in military contexts for a whole city, people or nation ⇒ "The Greeks built the horse because they understood from Athena that she was very angry with them for stealing the Palladium."