The Aeneid Books 1 to 6

Content Response #2: Compose about 500 words on one of the following passages from The Aeneid Books 1 – 6. Comment on whatever interests you (e.g. importance of the passage for plot, characterization, historical allusion, stylistic elements, Roman attitudes/beliefs, connections to material of other Modules). The content of your answer is quite open; in form, the answer should be logically organized. Be clear and concise. “No goddess was your mother! No Dardanus sired your line, you traitor, liar, no. Mount Caucasus fathered you on its flinty, rugged flanks and the tigers of Hyrcania gave you their dugs to suck!” (4.456 – 459) “Making offerings to my mother, Dione’s daughter, and to the gods who bless new ventures, I was poised, there on the beach, to slaughter a pure white bull to Jove above all who rules the Powers on high. Nearby I chanced on a rise of ground topped off by thickets bristling dogwood and myrtle spears. I tried to tear some green shoots from the brush to make a canopy for the altar with leafy boughs, when a dreadful, ghastly sight, too strange for words, strikes my eyes. Soon as I tear the first stalk from its roots and rip it up from the earth … dark blood oozes out and fouls the soil with filth. (3.24 – 35) “So Calchas read the omens. At his command they raised this horse, this effigy, all to atone for the violated image of Pallas, her wounded pride, her power – and expiate the outrage they had done. But he made them do the work on a grand scale, a tremendous mass of interlocking timbers towering toward the sky” … (2.234 – 240)