>> Also >>Aeneas trys to put it gently to Dido why he is leaving , Odysseus does >the >>same as well to Kalyso and Kalypso pleads for him to stay just as Dido >does >>to Aneas. > >Ahem, um, no. Aeneas tries to leave without telling Dido! And when she >forces him into confrontation, he can hardly bear to look at her. He is >completely tactless; he tells her that even if he had free will he would >not stay with her but would have prefered to have stayed in Troy and >rebuilt the city. > >All in all, Aeneas is presented as a complete failure with women. He >loses his first wife Creusa through sheer carelessness and lack of >thought, and he doesn't even consider the potential consequences of his >actions for Dido and is a direct cause of her death. We never see him as >being close or intimate with a woman; through the whole of book 4 we see >events from Dido's perspective, indicating that Aeneas is not anywhere >near as emotionally involved as she is. The distance between Aeneas and >Creusa emotionally is reflected in the distance that Aeneas physically >enforces between them in their journey out of Troy. And as for Lavinia, >we never even see her physically close to Aeneas, yet alone emotionally >- in the poem they never even meet!!! >Just my thoughts. >Caro > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com >----------------------------------------------------------------------- >To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. >Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message >"unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You >can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
The Oracle might want to reread Book IV of the Aeneid. Aeneas does not try to leave without telling Dido; he intends to tell her when he can find the best moment of approach, but she senses his intention in advance, omnia tuta timens,and confronts him. The claim that "he can hardly bear to look at her" misrepresents him as well; surely he is trying to avoid temptation (Virgil emphasizes repeatedly the strength of Aeneas' affection for Dido: his quest for Italy is something that must be accomplished despite deep personal feelings). Dido's death is caused ultimately by her own choices and actions, though the role of Venus in that destruction is significant as well. As to Lavinia, surely there was no expectation in the ancient world that a future husband and wife had to meet at some point before they could be wed? And, though we might not "see" Aeneas intimate with a woman, if sex is what you mean, then what do you imagine went on in the cave that led Dido to call their relationship "marriage"? If you simply mean "friendly," their joint tours of the walls of Carthage look pretty chummy to me. JLB James Lawrence Peter Butrica Department of Classics Memorial University St. John's, Newfoundland A1C 5S7 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
