Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid

Homer wrote The Odyssey before Virgil wrote his Aeneid. In fact, Vergil copied Homer’s story, but he just personalized it. “It shows similarities of plot, theme, and style in both these epic poems.” (source) For example: In the Odyssey, Poseidon sends Odysseus bad weather and keeps him from returning home. Athena saves his life and he washes up on the shore. In the Aeneid, “Juno stirs up a storm to keep Aeneas and the Trojans from their fated home of Italy. Neptune stops the storm and they wash up” (source) on the shore, also. (source)

Here are some comparisons of these two epic poems:
"Like the great Homerian work, The Odyssey, Aeneas' story begins in medias res, or ‘in the middle of things.’ The story does not open on the original action of the book. The Odyssey opens in this similar fashion.”(source)
Both stories invoke the Muse.
Both include the story of the fall of Troy.
The main character in each finds a lover in the land where they wash up, and then they tell of their adventures.
Both travel to the underworld to get advice.
Both get into trouble when one of their men kill a precious animal to eat.
When Aeneas was away, the Latins attack his camp. This is like when Odysseus was away, and the suitors came to invade his house. (Copley 3 & 6, Lattimore 27 & 31, source, source)

Some differences are:
The characters and the gods have different names.
Odysseus marries his lover, but Aeneas does not.
Dido kills herself when Aeneas leaves, but Penelope waits for years for Odysseus to come back. (source, source)

As one can see, there are more similarities than differences between the two. Vergil obviously loved Homer’s work and read it thoroughly. After all these years, we still read both Homer’s and Vergil’s works today!

Works Cited

Copley, Frank O. The Aeneid, Second Edition. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. 1975.

Lattimore, Richmond. The Odyssey of Homer. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. 1965.

The 2 Main Foundational Myths of Ancient Rome

Though the founding of ancient Rome was thousands of years ago, there are still arguments as to how and by whom it was founded. There are many myths on this, but the two main myths are those of Aeneas and of Romulus & Remus.

Aeneas

Aeneas’s wish when he was fighting in the Trojan War was to die for Troy. However, he survived the war because the gods wanted something more from him. (source)

Legend has it that Jupiter sent Aeneas to go start a new city. He would know where to place the city when the men started eating their plates. So Aeneas, carrying his father (Anchises) on his back and holding his son’s (Iulius) hand, walked out of the city, not really knowing where he was going.

However, he got distracted when he stopped by Carthage. He fell in love with Queen Dido, and Jupiter had to send Mercury to kick him on his way. He unwillingly left her, and hopped back into his boat. (source)

Then he crashed into Italy. The crew stopped to eat, and one man put his food on a leaf and rolled it up into a burrito. Aeneas then realized that the man was eating his plate and the city must be there. There were already people living there, but Aeneas took over and started to build. They named their little village “Abalonga,” meaning “big, white city.” Later, Rome grew and really did turn into a big city. (source)

Romulus & Remus

In this legend, Numitor was the king of Alba Longa, but his brother Amulius disposed of him. Then, to make sure that no one was a threat to his power, he made Numitor’s daughter a vestal virgin. However, she (Rhea Silvia) was visited by the god Mars and became pregnant with twins. (source)

When Numitor found out, he was furious and had Rhea Silvia thrown into a prison cell. Then her twin boys, Romulus and Remus, were set in a basket and put in the river. The idea was that since the gods disapproved of killing their children, they would let the gods decide the fate of the children. They put the children in a basket on the water and if the gods decided to rescue the children, they would. If not, they would let the babies die. (source)

Well, "the basket drifted ashore instead of going out to sea or upsetting, and a mother wolf found the twins and nursed them as if they were her own babies. A woodpecker also helped and fed them berries." (Hillyer 103) (Later the woodpecker became sacred to Rome.) Later on, a shepherd named Faustulus found and rescued them. Under his care, they grew to be strong, brave young men. When Faustulus told them their history, they went back and rescued their mother. Then they restored Numitor to the throne. (source)

Romulus and Remus then went out to build their own city. They argued about the location, the name, and even how high the walls would be. “After Romulus began building the city, Remus jumped over the sacred ditch that surrounded the city. Such an act was considered very disrespectful, and for it Remus was killed. Romulus, then ruler of the new city, named it ‘Roma’ for himself.” (Hicks 236) The location of Romulus’s city was where the she-wolf raised the twins.


Works Cited

Hicks, Laurel Elizabeth. Old World History & Geography in Christian Perspective. U.S.A., A Beka Book. 1999.

Hillyer, Virgil M. A Child’s History of the World. Hunt Valley, Maryland: Calvert Education Services. 1997.