I read everything and the pleasure is renewed or returns to the heat of the uniqueness of each work. I chose this path because of work Aeneid, the top Latin poet Virgil. The consequences are astounding. It is one of those works which is studied at the beginning of a literary career, or when you are lucky enough to learn Latin, very rarely if you like to read. It could suppress its venerable antiquity – the 1st century BC. C.–, its character of storytelling in verse or the extremely mythological atmosphere of the story.

Virgil was a famous village poet when Octavio Augusto approached him and asked him to write a solemn poem about the divine origin of Rome. The poet was terrified: he knew nature, shepherd’s love, agricultural passion, but he accepted the job, which took him 11 years. Always demanding of himself – he had the Homeric poems before him as models – he considered that he had not reached the level and, already dying, ordered that his manuscript be destroyed. Fortunately, they didn’t listen to him.

There is no way to avoid the relationship between Roman song and the great Greek epics. Although the Aeneid itself is tasked with making a bridge with what happened in Troy in its beautiful second chapter, from the invocation of the muse in the first verses, Virgil respects his teacher, that, with a much more visible narrator, whom he presents next to Aeneas and accompanies him to suffer the destruction of his misfortune. He wanders the seas for seven years, a storm destroys seven ships, and the survivors are thrown onto an unknown beach. He seeks hospitality from the Queen of Carthage and finds her in Dido’s fortress. He tells her, wet with tears, the misfortunes he suffered when he lost his city to the Greeks.

“Only one salvation remains for the vanquished: do not expect them,” exclaims the warrior…

The legacy of the inspired Homer is the conflict between gods and men. Aeneas has the protection of his mother Venus, but he is also haunted by Juno’s hatred: both go indistinctly before Jupiter to plead for their own. It is not for nothing that Aeneas’ nickname is pious: he never ceases to pay tribute to the gods or to offer the sacrifices that devotion demands, and when he knows that he is called to a fundamental task, which will restore the honor of Ilion and multiply it into a new and invaluable city, he will not disobey.

The New Middle Ages

He leaves his love for Dido – how beautiful are the feelings of the queen, how strong is the pain of the hero -, descends to the world of the dead, is thoroughly used in the battles of the Latin world that he finds in the Lazio region, that is, we are against a character who has the best of Achilles and Odysseus. But the words he utters are warmer, more honest and more charged with humanity; they express the notions of fatherhood, loyalty and patriotism. It is not for nothing that there are several centuries between the two great epics, and whether because of our Latin cultural heritage or because the author is closer to us, we admire more the demigod who never loses sight of his human condition.

I have not been able to find out the translation that Father Espinoza Pólit made of the work in question, but with two different ones, one in verse and the other in prose, I defend myself. “There is only one salvation left for the defeated: don’t expect it,” exclaims one of those warriors who know what heroism is. There is a lot of that in the song. (OR)