Prince Memnon ofĮthiopia, the son of the Goddess of the Dawn, came to the assistance ofTroy with a largeĪrmy and for a time, even though Hector was gone, the Greeks were hard-pressed and lost One more great feat of arms he did before his fighting ended forever. With Hector dead, Achilles knew, as his mother had told him, that his own death was near. Just this, a ruined town, a dead baby, a few wretched women. What was the end of that far-famed war? Euripides seems to ask. Four hundred years be- fore Virgil a Greek poet looked at it differently. To Virgil As to all Roman poets, war was the noblest and most glorious of human activities. It is a curious Contrast to themartialspirit of the Aeneid. The end, the tale of what happened to the Trojan women when Troy fell, comes from a play by Sophocles ' fellow playwright, Euripides. Taken the story of Philctetes and the death of Ajax from two plays of the fifth-century tragic poet The beginning and the end of my account are not Virgil. The capture of Troy is the subject of the second book of the Aeneid and it isone of the best, if not the best, story Virgil ever told - concise, pointed, vivid. The greaterpart of this story comes from Virgil.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |