Something/Someone Old

One of my partners is currently listening to a Talking Book about the Roman Empire. So my Something Old today is a two-fer:

First, the Aeneid, an epic poem about the founding of Rome by exiled Trojans fleeing the fall of Troy,

Whose sixth book was translated by Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet who is missed as much for his unpretentious gentleness and generosity as for his poetic gift. This edition was published last year, and I can't wait to read it:

but which was originally written by Publius Vergilius Maro, a poet who lived in the Augustan period of the Roman Empire (70 BC- 19 BC):

The other half of my Something Old is the city of Carthage (I seem to be always talking about Phoenicians on here):

Because I realized again, this morning, how irritating I find the portion of the Aeneid where Aeneas visits Dido of Carthage.

You see, Aeneas was a prince of Troy. After Odysseus' dirty trick, whose only virtue was that it did put an end to the war, Aeneas left the burning ruins of Troy carrying his aged father, Anchises, on his back, and holding his little son by the hand. His wife was with him too, but she got separated from him and died there (we assume; she may have been captured as one of the slaves in Euripides' play The Trojan Women, but I can't remember if she was a character.) He must have gathered some other Trojans to him on the way out, but I don't remember that part well. He ended up with himself, his father, his son, and his men on ships sailing as far away from the Greeks as they could get.

Obviously, he needed help.

He was the son of Venus (Aphrodite) which had saved him from death more than once in the Iliad, but interestingly, how he got the help and supplies he needed to finally found Rome was through the goddess who hated him: Juno (Hera).

Juno hated him first, because he was Trojan, and Juno and Minerva were on the Greek side of the Trojan war, because of all that silliness over the golden apple (the Iliad isn't my topic today, so just search "golden apple discord iliad" to find the story if you want to read about gods indulging in ridiculous behavior).

Juno hated him secondly, and more importantly, because he was Trojan, and a prophecy had said that the descendants of the Trojans would lay waste to her favorite city, the city of which she was a divine patron, Carthage.

Her solution to this is fascinating, and not at all like anything I'd imagine the Greek version of this goddess, Hera, doing; she maneuvered Aeneas, through storms, into landing near Carthage, and caused the queen, Dido, to fall in love with Aeneas.

They had a year-long affair, during which Dido showered Aeneas with gifts, and Hera even arranged a marriage. The idea was that they would rule over Carthage jointly, which would have neatly prevented any overthrow from being necessary. I think that may be the cleverest thing I've ever heard of Hera/Juno doing. But the other gods reminded Aeneas of his destiny (to found Rome), and he took off. When Dido saw his ships' sails retreating into the distance, she killed herself:

For some reason, this has always irked me. I know Virgil put this in to provide a mythological reason for the later actual conflict between the Romans and the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars. But it's really damned annoying that one of the few actual female rulers in those stories ends up becoming a pathetic love-em-and-leave-em story for Aeneas. Aeneas was no Jason, but the story makes me feel positively Medean.

I just found out that it's a little more annoying than I thought. Again, I know Virgil was probably thinking more about political relationships of groups of people than anything else, but here is what the story of Dido was before he started fiddling with it:

Dido, also called Elissa, in Greek legend, the reputed founder of Carthage, daughter of the Tyrian king Mutto (or Belus), and wife of Sychaeus (or Acerbas).

Her husband having been slain by her brother Pygmalion, Dido fled to the coast of Africa where she purchased from a local chieftain, Iarbas, a piece of land on which she founded Carthage. The city soon prospered, and Iarbas sought Dido’s hand in marriage. To escape from him, Dido constructed a funeral pyre, on which she stabbed herself before the people.

Now, doesn't that story make her suicide look different?

Virgil, however, in his Aeneid, reshaped this story to make Dido a contemporary of Aeneas, whose descendants founded Rome. Dido fell in love with Aeneas after his landing in Africa, and Virgil attributes her suicide to her abandonment by him at the command of Jupiter. Her dying curse on the Trojans provides a mythical origin for the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage.

Oh, Virgil. Did you have to?

Something New

My Something New today is an artistic piece. It combines the computer game Just Cause--an ironic game whose title is a pun, and which sends up U.S. colonial militarism every chance it gets--with music from the ska band Sublime. Add in my partner's commentary and you get a divine sundae of sardonic mayhem. Those of you who like to let off your steam sardonically might find it particularly enjoyable. But you should also heed the warning label attached to the video:

Probably my worst effort to date. You really shouldn't watch this one. It is likely to lead to bad moral outcomes for yourself and your immediate family.--Stormtower

Since the Romans are on my mind today--

It turns out the Romans borrowed the Roman alphabet from the Etruscans.

Here's a little on the Etruscans from a Dr. Laurel Taylor, in her essay "The Etruscans, an Introduction": (https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/etrusca...)

Though you may not have heard of them, the Etruscans were the first "superpower" of the Western Mediterranean who, alongside the Greeks, developed the earliest true cities in Europe. They were so successful, in fact, that the most important cities in modern Tuscany (Florence, Pisa, and Siena to name a few) were first established by the Etruscans and have been continuously inhabited since then.

Yet the labels ‘mysterious’ or ‘enigmatic’ are often attached to the Etruscans since none of their own histories or literature survives. This is particularly ironic as it was the Etruscans who were responsible for teaching the Romans the alphabet and for spreading literacy throughout the Italian peninsula.

Now, isn't that a hell of a thing? You teach people to read and write, enabling them to create literary and political texts that arguably form at least half the foundation of their later repute. These people you taught are venerated, partly on account of those texts, for more than fifteen hundred years after the fall of their empire.

And none of your own history or literature survives.

Ain't that a b?

Well, thanks for the alphabet, Etruscans. I'm sorry we don't remember you better.

Most of what we do know comes from their funerary arrangements, which are pretty cool, and may even convey some idea of what they looked like. Archaelogists think this is what the Etruscans believed they'd be doing in the afterlife:

And here's a bit of art from Sestino, Arezzo, in Tuscany--which may derive its name from the Etruscans themselves:

Something Blue

My Something Blue for today is Gonzo the Great.

I hope you all remember Jim Henson's The Muppet Show. If you don't I may have to find you and make you watch a Muppet Show marathon with me:

This is Gonzo. He's a wacky inventor who loves doing stunts and dates chickens. No one is quite sure what he actually is. Here are some pictures of him:

But I'm going to let those of you who don't know him meet him for yourself, so you can get the full effect:

Here he is with Paul Simon, in one of my favorite ever moments: