Ovid’s Metamorphoses #089/111: “Aeneas”

What this project is about.  

This one is from Book 13.

Pompeo Batoni (1708–1787), Aeneas Fleeing from Troy (1753), oil on canvas, 76.7 × 97 cm, Galleria Sabauda, Turin, Italy. Wikimedia Commons. 

How long it took to read this (aloud): 8 mins 41s

What it’s “about”: Aeneas – the Roman knock-off of Ulysses (as per Virgil). “Cowardly” sons etc

Words I didn’t know: xx

Quotable quotes: 

Fear shook my son; he was less brotherly 

Than eager to appease; he gave his sisters 

To dubious mercy of the enemy. 

Yet I almost forgive his timid gesture, 

He had no brave Aeneas there to help him, 

Nor Hector to hold siege for ten long years. 

“As soldiers came with chains to weight their arms, 

The girls raised white hands up to silent heavens: 

‘O father Bacchus, save us if you can!’ 

And so he did, but in an odd, wild fashion; 

They lost their girlish looks — how, I don’t know, 

But suddenly their bodies grew white feathers, 

And they were snow-white birds, like doves of Venus.”

AND

…. And in the streets 

Of Thebes itself Orion’s daughters: 

One tries to tear her throat with her own fingers, 

The other wounds herself with a blunt shuttle, 

Both fall to death as civic sacrifice, 

Then, carried to their pyres, are changed to ashes 

From which, white flames of virginal desire, 

Came two boys who were known as the Coroni, 

Who kept the Theban house from dying out, 

And were the priests who blessed their mother’s ashes.

AND

but there the soil, 

The air above it, and uncertain weather 

Forced them to leave; all seemed to smell of death.

AND

Then past Dodona where the talking oaks 

Took on the voice of Jove to those who listened, 

And past Chaonia’s harbour where the sons 

Of King Molossus grew, quick as Jove’s lightning, 

Swift wings that saved them from unholy fires.

How it lands to my eco-sensibility: talking oaks!  Would probably say “kill the hairless murder apes.”

Obvious allusions, ways it was used (that I am aware of already) : xx

What I know I didn’t ‘get’: xx

To my knowledge, who’s used it why/how (RACC): xx

Further research questions: xx

Anything else: xx