You will see many similarities to Livy's account here so let's try to concentrate on differences. Pick out a few key differences and be ready to explain why you think Livy or the later author of the _Origo_ would have told the story the way they did.
Jordann Markowitz
ReplyDeleteAmulius feigns a dream in order to make his brother's daughter (Rhea Silvia) a vestal virgin. It says that he did this in order to prevent a threat in the future. Is it possible that other rulers we read about had done the same thing or is it more likely that Amulius knew that people had used dream justification in the past so that it would be easy to fake?
Sara Welish
ReplyDeleteAeneas is carried off by a storm and then said to have been immortal just like Romulus. Does this happen to any other Romans? In Romulus' case another theory is that the senate killed him; is there another theory about what could have happened to Aeneas?
Maeve Tischbein
ReplyDeleteThere are several mentions of household gods carried around by Aeneas and his descendants. What are these exactly (I don't believe we have come across them before), and why are they so important that they keep reoccurring throughout the text?
Katie Burke
ReplyDeleteWhy did people believe that Aeneas was taken up to heaven after he fell into a river? And that after people saw him in his battle attire, which reaffirmed that he was immortal? Did they not want to believe that their leader drowned? It seems like they just created a way for him to honorably 'go out'.
Shannon Potts
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how throughout the Origo Gentis, and the Romulus and Remus story especially, the author gives us several often conflicting stories. Why might he give multiple versions in the way he does? This seems very different from others like Herodotus.
Erin Bradley
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot more detail in the story of how Aeneas arrived in Italy. There are more characters and deaths that result in the naming of cities and places. Where these people just added in to explain why a city had it's name? Or is there more evidence for them?
Also, when the story of Heracles is being told sometimes he is referred to as Recaranus. What is the origin of this name? Is it from a specific culture?
Rich Rodd
ReplyDeleteWine seems to play a big role in several different cultures and religions. What is the significant relationship of wine and vineyards to being pious and divine? When they say it is a drink that offers great pleasure are they solely referring to feelings of drunkedness or is there something else that makes it so special?
Zander Fodor,
ReplyDeleteDo we know for sure if Aeneas is based on a real historical figure? Or do people think that he was invented for a story for the ancestors of Romulus and Remus?
Krysta Brown
ReplyDeleteOn Monday we talked a lot about Romulus and Remus, as well as Cyrus rising to royalty despite harsh circumstances. Saturnus, finds himself in a similar sitution being the illegitimate child of the "princess" of Athens. Do we think that the lore of Saturnus came first, worked well, and so then the same literary device was used for Romulus and Remus? Or did these myths arise concurrently?
Doug Ritchey
ReplyDeleteOrigo's "Origin of the Roman Race" follows a lot of the same patters that we have seen in other histories that we read. For example we see a lot of genealogy being established to let you know who the Romans trace their descent from (as seen in the Bible), and we also can see examples of where multiple accounts are given for certain events (e.g. with Anchise's oracle from Venus pg.10). This is common among ancient histories because it helped the author show credibility within his history.
The idea of immortality is once again present in an ancient story. What is its particular significance for this story and why is it important that Aeneas is immortal?
ReplyDeletePete d
Steve Fusco
ReplyDeleteWas the term Aborginese meant to be insulting to those it referred to?
Andrew Gordon
ReplyDeleteIs there any significance in portraying Hercules as a shepherd? Does this have to do with his connection to his flock, or was he always seen as a shepherd?
Jordann,
ReplyDeleteRemember this is almost certainly complete fiction so that we are not talking about a real justification. Still, certainly he could do this because in the mythical world (and to some extent in the ancient world) people did make such claims and were often believed.
Sara,
Good point, as we mentioned before there are biblical parallels too, Jesus and Enoch. I think the Origo hints that he could have been washed away in the river.
Maeve,
Household gods are called Lares and Penates in Latin. Each house would have a small shrine with little statues of these family gods. They are important in the traditions showing Aeneas as pious (because of his attention to them) and as the founder of the Roman people (because it shows that the Roman state was descended from Troy and Troy's gods).
Katie,
Remember it is all fiction. Some people wanted to believe him divine, others not. It would not be very heroic to die drowned in water, as Vergil suggests in Book 1 of the Aeneid were Aeneas wishes he had died in Troy because he thinks his ship will sink in the sea. Remember Aeneas may not even be a real person, but yet the story of the cloud glorifies him.
Shannon,
Certainly he gives lots of different versions. It seems that he has the attitude of an antiquarianist rather than a historian. He is not trying to reconstruct the truth as much as tell all the different stories in the most thoroughly inclusive way.
Erin,
I think that in almost all these cases the people were invented later to explain the origin of the place names. Recaranus is a name of an early Latin deity who was later connected with Hercules whom the Romans adopted from Etruscan Hercle who was from the Greek Herakles. So myths about a different Roman hero-god were combined with Greek myths about Heracles. I should say that some think the name should be Trecaranus like a Celtic figure Trigaranus, but that idea is somewhat out of favor today.
Rich,
Generally speaking wine (and other fermented products such as beer and mead) were ways of storing food sources over longer periods of time. Thus they were ways that one could have nutrition during periods of time when there were less or no crops to harvest. Furthermore, almost all human societies have found some way to intoxicate themselves; it has been theorized to satisfy some natural human desire for mental and emotional release. Bacchus/Dionysus was known as "Lyaeus" (Loosener) or in Latin "Liber" (Free) because wine liberated people from constraints.
Zander,
I think most scholars believe there is some truth to the Trojan War, but the heroes' names (and people in general) are probably not historical. For example, Aeneas is a Greek name meaning praiseworthy, but Aeneas was not Greek.
AR
ReplyDeleteKrysta,
I think you must have meant Ion/Janus, not Saturnus. We don't know for sure how early the Romulus and Remus story is, but it is no doubt earlier than the Janus myth here. The story of Ion is known from Euripides play from the 5th cent. BC but a much later source has connected it with Janus. Both stories have many earlier precedents.
Doug,
Origo means Origin in Latin. The author is unknown. You are certainly right that by showing multiple traditions an author of this sort is presenting himself as reliable--not that he is telling the truth so much as that he is telling you all the known evidence and leaving you to make the decision. Other historians stick to one main tradition and suppress what doesn't fit--perhaps sounding more authoritative but in some ways less trustworthy.
Pete,
Good question. Why are we humans interested in immortality? Because, as soon as we grow up, we begin to realize that we will die and yet we want to continue existing. Therefore, people often strive to find some sort of way to live on. Heroes of the ancient world (and those we call heroes today) have done great things and sometimes specifically done things that helped their people or mankind in general. Aeneas was supposed to have founded the Roman race so Roman's looked back to him as a sort of founding father, as we might to George Washington or as Christians do to Christ. Thus he had a kind of literary and traditional immortality at least for them. He was also often believed to have been deified or made into a god at his death. However, in the ancient world there were two main views of how that happened. 1) He actually became an immortal spiritual being. 2) He was worshipped as a god because of the good that he had done. The second version was a view of divinity held by those in the ancient world who did not believe in life after death.
Steve,
No, it just meant "native" or "indigenous", although the native people in question (as often in such cases) were less civilized than the newcomers. Aborigines is from the Latin "Ab" meaning "from" and "origo" meaning "origin"--basically aborigines would mean "people (at a place) from the beginning". The Greeks had a similar kind of word "autochthonoi" meaning "self/same earth (people)". The Athenians were supposed to be such a native people.
Andrew,
I think he is more of a cowherd here. Some heroes such as David, Paris, and Anchises (Aeneas' father) are shepherds which tends to show their separation from society--shepherds are often solitary figures. In contrast, most heroes connected with cattle, at least in Greek myth, are like Hercules cattle rustlers who steal cattle or try to steal cattle from others. In early societies, cattle were a form of wealth--the Latin word for money (pecunia) is actually from the same root as pecora, Latin for cattle.