StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Greek and Roman Mythology - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
The paper "Greek and Roman Mythology" describes that beneath all the propaganda for the ascendant Roman Empire and the story of Rome’s celebrating its establishment, Aneid is a poem that talks about inner realm of emptiness filled with tormented remorse and memories. …
Download free paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER97% of users find it useful
Greek and Roman Mythology
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Greek and Roman Mythology"

Question Beneath all the propaganda for the ascendant Roman Empire and the story of Rome’s celebrating its establishment, Aneid is a poem that talks about inner realm of emptiness filled with tormented remorse and memories. The poem is presented in a state of lament. It is a sorrowful tale of the Aeneas trying to re echo his past woes. Aeneas himself cringes back in fear as he recounts his past misery. Aeneas is sentimental about his past experience and is expressing his personal regret about the events of his destiny. This is portrayed in the whole narrative of his sea wanderings and of the Fall of Troy both Books II and III. This narrative is an empty space of lament and memory, where loss of glory and love in Troy is mourned. The significance of historic allegoric events and their emotional redecoration brings the meaning they have in the present of epic narrative. Aeneas flashback in his own voice full of lament over all that has ensued upon Troy’s end can be seen in Books II and III. His voice is not the same as that of the public voice of the epic devoted to recounting the earliest heroic facts building up to Rome’s glorious founding. It tells a story of suffering, difficulty and personal loss and not a celebration of Roman glory. The entire narrative of the origin of Rome, beginning from Book II, describes Aeneas’s personal tale of hardship and their experience is explained in emotional positions. According to Aeneas’s account, Troy was conquered by skillful deceit of Greeks like Sinon and Ulysses and not by bravery means. Aeneas’s story of Troy’s fall shows that the Greeks triumph was not heroic but by fraud as indicated by Sinon’s fake tears and tall tale. The motive of narrative teasingly downgrades celebration of Rome’s greatness. The narrative is betrayed by a voice of regret is heard through Aeneas’s experience of grief and nostalgia. In Virgil’s poem the Aeneid, Aenas is a Roman hero and an ideal Roman citizen. A Roman citizen should have two important virtues; he must be pious, and loyal to the Roman race. In the poem, Aeneas hold both of these virtues has to deal with both the costs and rewards of them. In Roman, a pious man must follow his destiny and must fulfill what he is called to do. Aeneas is pious and he must follow the will of the gods, even when they make him suffer. His destiny is to lead the people of Trojan to conquer Rome. This proves to be difficult task for him to overcome and he faces many challenges along the way, but he keeps on struggling towards his final goal. His loyalty to the Roman race is as seen throughout the entire poem. Although there are times that he is tempted to go against the Romans, he decides to remain loyal and continue fighting until they conquer the empire. Aeneas represents an ideal roman citizen and the ultimate Roman hero, but these attributes do not last until the end of the poem. The character of Dido in the Aeneid exceeds all of her predecessors in humanity and humanity. She is a widow and her past continues to affect her in the present. Her husband Sychaeus has been murdered, has had to flee from her home ( Tyre) to North Africa, where she now in charge of building Carthage, the new city. Her kingdom is surrounded by enemies from all sides, but she is determined to go against all odds to protect the new city. She also faces a different kind of threat in form of marriage offers but she has refused all and has made a firm decision to remain loyal to her husband’s memories. However, the god of love, Amor destroys her memory of her deceased husband so that she can fall in love with Aeneas. By the time Amor has finished doing his work, Dido becomes very passionate lady as Virgil describes her feelings for Aeneas of desire as like a fire burning in her marrow. The gods make Dido believe that she is legitimately married to Aneas,the Trojan warrior and is now committed to him completely. But when she finds out that Aeneas is leaving the memory of her old husband Sychaeus comes back, making her regretful. It is in this situation that she utters her bitter curses at the Trojans and decides to commits suicide. The gods are not hostile towards the Trojan immigrants. In fact the local river god (Tiberinus) appears in a dream to encourage Aeneas and foretells about Aeneas destiny and the Trojans. It is by his prophetic guidance that the god helps the Trojans most in their sea wanderings. Question #2 Medea is a passionate character who is driven by her irrational forces to do actions that end up hurting the people she loves. Just like the male heroes, Medea can do anything in her power in achieve what she wants, as it seen when she kills her children in order to revenge against Jason. She plays the heroine role; she rescues Jason from many threats. Jason depends on her for survival and success. She gives up everything in order to be with Jason. She is also dishonest and extremely devious character particularly when she tells the Chorus that she intentionally lied to Jason so as to make him to trust her. Euripides at first tries to capture the audience support for Medea when Jason is taking advantage of her. Through the chorus expression, the audience feels pity for Medea. This is one of the tradition Greek drama in which the chorus is used in order to establish the mood for the audience as well as communicate the author’s themes and feelings. As the play begins, the chorus says that they have heard the cry of Medea and they are sorry for her sorrows. This is an instance where the author tries to get the audience to be pitiful towards Medea. Also the use of very intense words in the chorus such as “wretched” is another way to make the audience pity Medea and turn them against Jason. The attitude of the chorus towards Medea and her plans differ throughout the play of. In the beginning, the chorus pity Medea as they have heard her cries. They express sympathy for Medea in their conversation with the nurse and they say that their purpose in coming is to console Medea. In the next stasimon, the chorus begins with criticism of Medea’s excessive love for Jason and they pray that they never have to leave their homeland, but end it with sympathy for Medea's troubles and a condemnation of Jason. The chorus support of Medea changes when she announces her plan to kill her children: they express horror and urge her to reconsider. In the third stasimon, the chorus dwells on the impiety and cruelty of such a deed. However, they remain virtually silent during a subsequent scene in which Jason professes love for the boys. The behavior of the chorus in Medea is surprising to the audience because he had the opportunity to prevent the children's murder by alerting Jason, but they decided to stay quiet. Euripides had provided a rationale for this in the beginning of the play, Medea requests the chorus not to inform Jason of her plot against him. The chorus of Medea is a vivid and integral component of the play. It has a role to play just like other characters in the play. It fluctuates between kindness and cruelty, mixing well with evil. The chorus shows that Medea’s world is wrong and profane. As the plot in Medea advances, she decides to kill her children and Jason’s wife in order to take revenge upon him. The audience and chorus attitude now shifts in favor of Jason. After Medea commits the murder of Jason’s wife and children the audience has less sympathy for her. Medea is a play that expresses feminist concerns and issues. Medea herself is portrayed as a contrast to many Athenian beliefs. She is not only a woman, but is also a foreigner in Greek, as Jason reminds her that she is an outsider. She is very intelligent but also ruled by her passions. Euripides allows Medea demonstrate her case. This is a reminder of how Greek tragedy often shows concern to those who are excluded by political power. Women and foreigners were treated like slaves. Although Athens was considered to be a city of equality and justice, women were oppressed just like Jason did to Medea. . In the beginning Jason is seen as very powerful and is able to take full control over Medea. However, Jason is does not portray a masculine character, he uses Medea to succeed, he is therefore a coward. He dies unheroically when he is hit on the head by a beam while sleeping on his ship. King Creon is also a coward; he commits suicide after he saw his daughter burn to death. Even after Medea plans went through successfully, and her children were killed, she cries that she is lost. This shows how her revenge against Jason drove her to insanity and caused her to murder her children. Although she managed to ruin Jason’s life she ended up sacrificing her own children and also caused more destruction to other people such as King Creon who killed himself after he saw her daughter set ablaze in flames. At the end of the play Medea is left with nothing to live for and decides to escape to a new city to begin a new life. Luckily, she finds refuge with Aegeus of Athens Work cited Lawall, Sarah and Maynard, Mack. The Norton anthology of world masterpieces, the Western tradition Literature of western culture through the Renaissance. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 1999. Print. Read More

 

Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“ENG 201-Questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words”, n.d.)
ENG 201-Questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/literature/1495321-eng
(ENG 201-Questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 Words)
ENG 201-Questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 Words. https://studentshare.org/literature/1495321-eng.
“ENG 201-Questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/literature/1495321-eng.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Greek and Roman Mythology

Summary on movie Secrets Of The Silk Road and how the movie related to anthropology

Some of the artifacts reflect the influence of Han Chinese culture, while some of the clothing on these artifacts had images from Greek and Roman Mythology.... Secrets of the Silk Road Order No.... 511869 ‘The Secrets of the Silk Road' is a movie showcasing an array of artifacts that date back to the Bronze Age and exhibited at the Penn Museum which was previously called the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology....
1 Pages (250 words) Movie Review

Extent to Which Rape Is Central to Heroic Mythical Narratives of the Greeks

In Greek and Roman Mythology, rape has been used as an instrument for transformation as well as a 'motor of change'; this is exemplified in the narratives of the rape of the Sabine women and the rape of Lucretia (Smith 117).... The liberal use of rape in Greek and Roman Mythology raises questions regarding the intention behind it.... This research paper "Extent to Which Rape Is Central to Heroic Mythical Narratives of the Greeks " discusses Greek mythology that is the rape of Persephone....
7 Pages (1750 words) Research Paper

The Inferno Dante

Professor Name Date The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri The Inferno (Hell) is the first part of The Divine Comedy, followed by the Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Heaven).... It is a classic Christian theological text that uses strong poetic imagination and allegorical allusion.... ... ... ...
3 Pages (750 words) Essay

Mythology in Contemporary Culture

roman mythology is not far from the Greek one since they derived their stories from them.... In roman mythology, Mercury (Hermes in Greek) is one of the twelve primary gods (Dodekatheon) that reside in Olympus.... These baffling questions, unanswerable by his own knowledge and understanding at that time led him to create what would eventually be mythology.... Wikipedia defines mythology as "stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Evaluation of Classical tradition in Dante's journey through Hell to salvation

These were all adopted from the main contributors of the Greek and Roman Mythology.... The values portrayed by the elements and creatures mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy as he journeys through hell (inferno), purgatory (purgatorio) and paradise (paradise) are decidedly Christian, or roman Catholic to be specific.... Paradise for example, can be read from Luke 23:43 of the King James version, “And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” while hell, from Matthew 5:22, An Analysis of Dante's The Divine Comedy The values portrayed by the elements and creatures mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy as he journeys through hell (inferno), purgatory (purgatorio) and paradise (paradise) are decidedly Christian, or roman Catholic to be specific....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

Thesis statement

There are many other instances where the Greeks used their mythology to impart some important life lesson and also as a way to entertain the full Greek and Roman Mythology (Ancient history) 07 November – estimated word count: 600 There is a substantialdifference between Greek mythology and Roman mythology.... This is because roman mythology does not contain the distinguishing feature of Greek mythology which was to impart a life-long lesson to audiences; rather, this Roman version of the Greek mythology contains a lot of embellishments designed to conform to the more war-like nature of the ancient Roman culture....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

Myth in the Ancient World: Greek Mythology

"Myth in the Ancient World: Greek mythology" paper identifies who are Zeus' brothers, sisters, and children according to Hesiod, to what extent are Zeus and his offspring anthropomorphic, the attributes of Zeus, and compares the attributes of the older Olympian generation with the younger ones.... It is a usual and seemingly basic occurrence for the children of Zeus to be related to animals or non-living things as possessing human traits, one which others recommend gives a channel into the manner in which the greek gods view themselves (Evslin, 1984)....
8 Pages (2000 words) Assignment

Roman Statue of the Three Graces

(University of Chicago) Hadrian was, among other things, a great patron of art, particularly greek and received many praises from historians.... For the purpose of this paper, the author has chosen to discuss roman statue of the three Graces.... Historically, the statue belongs to ancient roman culture and is dated back to 2nd century A.... The term Pax Romana was first coined and used by Edward Gibbon in his excellent book 'The Decline and Fall of the roman Empire' and according to Gibbon, the period spanned over two hundred years from the first emperor, Augustus, to Marcus Aurelius, who died in 180 AD....
5 Pages (1250 words) Term Paper
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us