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<\/p>\nBoatloads of refugees put ashore in Italy after a wearying journey at sea; the city they adored, Troy, now a smoking ruin after 10 years of a desperate war; many loved ones dead from the conflict, with others lost along the way, victims of violence, storms or age. <\/p>\n
Put this way, the story of the \u201cAeneid,\u201d Virgil\u2019s epic masterpiece, has an inescapably contemporary ring. Today, in the wake of Middle Eastern wars, millions have fled the region, desperate for a new place to call home. Meanwhile, anti-immigrant politicians \u2013 Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Donald Trump, to name a few \u2013 have jumped on the confusion and chaos, only to see their own fortunes rise. <\/p>\n
In some ways, it\u2019s not possible to read the same great poem twice. Time and circumstance will always reconfigure its meaning. As the United States bars its gates to newcomers, the \u201cAeneid\u201d \u2013 usually thought of as a tale of epic heroism \u2013 reads now as a parable of exile, immigration and the self-defeating disaster of irrational prejudice. <\/p>\n
Virgil\u2019s epic poem, written between 29 and 19 B.C., is the story of a band of men, women and children who survived the Greek siege of Troy (in modern-day Turkey) \u2013 when \u201cFate compelled the worlds of Europe and Asia to clash in war.\u201d Aeneas, a man \u201cmade a refugee by fate,\u201d leads them on their journey to Italy, where they\u2019ve been promised a home. <\/p>\n
The first half of the poem describes the group\u2019s wanderings across the Mediterranean, the losses they suffered along the way and the weariness that, at times, leads some of them \u2013 Aeneas included \u2013 to think of abandoning the journey.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many reefs, how many sea-miles more must we cross! Heart-weary as we are,\u201d cry the Trojan women in a moment of despair. But Aeneas and the Trojans do eventually reach Italy: They land at the mouth of the Tiber River, immigrants looking to join the people of this foreign land.<\/p>\n
Latinus, the king of this country, has been given a sign by the gods to welcome the newcomers:<\/p>\n
Strangers will come, and come to be your sons \r\n and their lifeblood will lift our name to the stars.\r\n<\/code><\/pre>\nIn other words, the gods proclaim that the arrival of new blood will be a good thing for society \u2013 a view held by many today<\/a>.<\/p>\nAfter the Trojans arrive, they appeal to Latinus, describing their harrowing journey: <\/p>\n
Escaping that flood\r\n and sailing here over many barren seas, \r\n now all we ask is a modest resting place \r\n for our fathers\u2019 gods, safe haven on your shores, \r\n water and fresh air that\u2019s free for all to breathe \r\n<\/code><\/pre>\nLatinus recognizes that these are the newcomers foretold by the god and welcomes Aeneas \u201cas ours.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Latinus\u2019 open-door immigration policy soon meets resistance \u2013 a resistance that Virgil portrays as madness. Latinus pays a political price when his people, the Latins, turn against the immigrants, a development seen in many nations today, perhaps most notably in Angela Merkel\u2019s Germany<\/a>. <\/p>\nThe thrall of racial hatred<\/h2>\n
How does an ancient poet depict the onset of madness? <\/p>\n
In the \u201cAeneid,\u201d the agent is Juno, queen of the Olympian gods. She has always hated the Trojans as much as she cherishes the Latins. Juno means to stir up war between them, so she sends one of the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance, to fill the mind of Latinus\u2019 wife with thoughts of ethnic purity and sexual propriety.<\/p>\n
These thoughts have consequences, because Latinus is now planning to marry their daughter to Aeneas \u2013 \u201ca lying pirate,\u201d as the queen starts to call him. Furthermore, she was supposed to marry a local prince named Turnus \u2013 his \u201cblood kin,\u201d as the queen reminds Latinus. <\/p>\n
Turnus, too, succumbs to racial hatred. At first he\u2019s entirely nonchalant about the arrival of Aeneas and the Trojans. But driven mad by Juno\u2019s accomplice, he turns to violence to drive them out and keep the king\u2019s daughter out of the hands of \u201cthat Phrygian eunuch\u201d (a castrated man). <\/p>\n
A pointless war ensues between the Trojan refugees and the Latins who had initially welcomed them into their land. <\/p>\n
In one scene, Aeneas\u2019 son accidentally kills a pet deer, and the locals, assuming malicious intent, form a vigilante group to exact revenge. What motivates this assumption is the more deeply rooted fear of the Latin population: Acceptance of these immigrants will result in the loss of their native Latin identity. <\/p>\n
The tensions at play \u2013 sexual fears, fear of violence, hateful rhetoric \u2013 are unfortunately being repeated today, whether it\u2019s fear of immigrants\u2019 rapes in Sweden<\/a> or the growth of anti-Muslim organizations<\/a> in the United States. <\/p>\nIn Virgil\u2019s telling, this fear can only be resolved by the act of a god. In the end, it is Jupiter, the king of the gods, who gives his divine guarantee that the Trojans will be assimilated: <\/p>\n
Mingling in stock alone, the Trojans will subside. \r\n And I will add the rites and the forms of worship, \r\n And make them Latins all, who speak one Latin tongue. \r\n<\/code><\/pre>\nBut it\u2019s easier for a god to imagine resolution than it is for mortals, and for Aeneas, resolution comes at a price. He kills Turnus at the end of the poem. But he loses something of his humanity in the process.<\/p>\n
Peter E. Knox<\/a>, Eric and Jane Nord Family Professor, Case Western Reserve University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\nThis article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boatloads of refugees put ashore in Italy after a wearying journey at sea; the city they adored, Troy, now a smoking ruin after 10 years of a desperate war; many loved ones dead from the conflict, with others lost along the way, victims of violence, storms or age. Put this way, the story of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":8822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[1672,2036,1696,2035,226,2034,373,1851,2037,2033,1949],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8821"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8823,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8821\/revisions\/8823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}