The School/Uni Thread
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Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
Einherjar86
Active Member
I seriously believe that high school teaches kids to hate literature because they insist on teaching stuff like Dickens and Shakespeare. Dickens was a great writer, but there's much better stuff (in my opinion). Beowulf is a great poem to read. I studied it in one of my classes, and I have a friend who actually read it in high school. Needless to say he enjoyed high school English a lot more. It doesn't match the genius of Vergil, Homer and Dante; but it is a fun read.
It's too bad about Shakespeare as well. I could hardly stand him in high school. It wasn't until college and someone recommended that I take a class on him that I truly came to love him. There's so much more to him than high school teachers reveal.
Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
OK here's my Honors paper, all polished up and ready for submission. Since some of you expressed interest in reading it, I'll once again be pleased to hear your input.
This may be the most metal paper I've ever written, though my Roman History paper comes close.
All the citations you see are about half of what I put it. The rest are footnotes that didn't get copied onto here by Word.
Enjoy
Vergil’s Underworld in Dante’s Divine Comedy
To a reader unfamiliar with classical literature, Dante’s Inferno is an inventive illustration of the Christian Hell. He or she may wonder why Vergil, a pre-Christian poet, is leading the author through God’s manifested wrath. This question will hopefully drive the inquisitor into the pages of Vergil’s magnum opus, the Aeneid. Partway through Book VI, things start to become rather familiar, and then there is an epiphany. Dante was not so original after all. His design of Hell is a clever rearrangement of the classical underworld, where Satan reigns in Pluto’s stead. Vergil’s influences extend even beyond the depths of Cocytus to the summit of Purgatory. The Divine Comedy is a testament to Dante’s admiration of antiquity, a trend that exploded into the Italian Renaissance.
Dante expanded greatly upon Vergil’s Hadean concept. Therefore it will be less confusing to journey through the original underworld of the Aeneid’s sixth book. We will trace the descent by dissecting the literal, mythological and thematic elements that Dante employed 1300 years later.
Book VI of the Aeneid begins with the Trojan fugitive Aeneas arriving at Cumae in Italy, where he meets the Sibyl prophetess, Deiphobë. A vision of his father Anchises had visited him earlier on to request a meeting in the Underworld, into which the Sibyl shall guide him. At this point the basic parallel is clear of Aeneas to Dante and Deiphobë to Vergil. Moreover, just as Aeneas is beckoned toward his quest by the ghost of Anchises, so is Dante entreated by the vision of Beatrice Portinari, whom he admired even after her premature death. Anchises symbolizes the love of blood ties through his bond with Aeneas; Beatrice is the manifestation of divine love and beauty, as Dante saw her. These two types of love were the most highly valued in their respective times. The Romans, through ancestor worship, prized familial love. The medieval Christians cherished love of God over all else. So before either the hero Aeneas or the pilgrim Dante enter the threshold of the netherworld, some fundamental thematic analogies are already established.
Before their respective descents, a major distinction between Aeneas and Dante becomes evident:
“If Orpheus could call his wife’s shade up…if Pollux redeemed his brother, taking his turn at death, so often passing back and forth; why name the heroes, Theseus and Hercules? By birth I too descend from Jove on high.” (Aeneid VI.175-181)
“Poet [Vergil], you who must guide me, before you trust me to that arduous passage, look to me and look through me—can I be worthy? You sang how [Aeneas] the father of Sylvius, while still in corruptible flesh won to that other world, crossing with mortal sense the immortal sill.” (Inferno II.10-15)
Aeneas is the noble hero, prince of Troy, arguing his merit by divine lineage. He compares himself to mythological heroes. Dante, on the other hand, is the humble pilgrim. He uses the same argument as Aeneas, but to contrast himself from the demigods of lore. Dante doubts his worth; Aeneas confides in it. The above passage from Canto II is immediate proof that not only is Dante’s concept far from original; Vergil himself references legends that predated even the age of Aeneas.
The above passages expose a common theme between the two works: that of a mortal intruding an immortal realm. This anomaly is most vivid as Aeneas and Dante cross the river Styx:
[Charon] made the gangway wide, letting the massive man [Aeneas] step in the bilge. The leaky coracle groaned at the weight and took a flood of swampy water in. (Aeneid VI.556-560)
And not till I stepped aboard did it seem to settle into the water. At once we left the shore, the ancient hull riding more heavily than it had ridden in all of time before. (Inferno VIII.27-30)
Both poets believed souls to be weightless. The image of the mortal man weighing down the Stygian ferry is a powerful reminder of how atypical this scenario is. To cross the Styx, Aeneas requires a token in the form of the golden bough. Dante uses a waist-cord in a similar fashion to summon Geryon to convey him to the eighth circle.
Geryon is one of several legendary beings encountered in both poems, but Aeneas meets him early on in his downward climb. Having entered a cave in a “gloomy forest” (Aeneid VI.333) similar to Dante’s Wood of Error, Aeneas sees the mythical manifestations of pain and strife, many of which correspond with the punishments of Dante’s Upper Hell. For Hunger there are the Gluttons, who are slavered over by Cerberus (also appearing in both poems). For Want there are the Hoarders and Wasters; for Sleep, the Sullen; for War and Discord, the Wrathful. Dante converted Vergil’s demons into the conditions characteristic of sinners, sorted into their respective circle of Upper Hell.
On reading the two epics, it is clear that Dante’s design is much more organized, but nothing is quite arbitrary. The Aeneid describes “the Styx that winds nine times around.” (Aeneid VI.592-593) There are nine circles in Dante’s Hell. His abysmal schematic reconfigures the sequence of Aeneas’ journey. After Aeneas faces the demonic apparitions, he comes to cross the river Styx, ferried by Charon. Dante, however, crosses two rivers: first, the Acheron by Charon; second, the Styx by Phlegyas. The former boatman conveys Aeneas across the Styx, while the latter dwells in Tartarus.
After his ferry ride Aeneas enters Fields of Mourning, “so called since here are those whom pitiless love consumed with cruel wasting, hidden on paths apart by myrtle woodland growing overhead.” (Aeneid VI.595-598) Here he meets the shade of Dido, whose love for him led to suicide. Dante took this scene and partitioned its elements between the second and seventh circle of Hell. The former he designated for the Carnal, “those who sinned in the flesh…who betrayed their reason to appetite.” (Inferno V.38-39) In the latter he placed the Wood of the Suicides, analogous to the “shadowy grove” into which Dido retreats to dwell with her late husband Sychaeus. (Aeneid VI.635-637) However, Dante assigned Dido to the realm of the Carnal, perhaps because the love for which she dies is itself contrary to Jupiter’s plan for Aeneas. Her place in the Christian Hell is appropriate, as the new Jupiter, God, damns those who oppose His course.
After Dido’s recession, Aeneas next encounters the fatalities of the Trojan War. Both the Greek and Trojan dead share the same dwelling. Dante kept it this way, for all the Violent Against Their Neighbors occupy part of the Seventh Circle.
This region of the Underworld is where Aeneas meets Minos, the mythical king of Crete whom both Vergil and Dante appointed as judge of souls. Just as Dante transplanted Dido from the Suicides to the Carnal, he also relocated Minos to this vicinity. Here he sentences every damned soul: a promotion from his supervision of the falsely accused.
Aeneas departs this realm of unhappy souls and approaches the most Dantean corner of the classical netherworld:
Here is the place where the road forks…the leftward road will punish malefactors, taking them to Tartarus…under a cliff, wide buildings girt by a triple wall round which a torrent rushed…the abyss’s Fiery River. A massive gate with adamantine pillars faces the stream. (Aeneid VI.724-742)
“The City called Dis lies just ahead…Hell’s metropolis.” And I then: Master, I already see the glow of its red mosques”…its walls seemed made of iron and towered above us in our little boat. (Inferno VIII.64-75)
Vergil’s Tartarus is the citadel of wicked souls, condemned to suffer eternal torment for the mortal sins. In the Inferno, the entirety of Lower Hell lies within its fortifications. Dante calls this city Dis, a name for Pluto that was often used to represent the whole Underworld. Naturally, the gravity of sin within these walls exceeds whats precedes them. Outside Tartarus are souls who committed no grave sin. Inside are tortured the evildoers, including the Titans, whom Dante imprisoned at the ledge to the Ninth Circle. Within Tartarus are tortured murderers, stealers, liars, blasphemers and traitors. (Aeneid VI.762-838). These same sinners are classed within the many subdivisions of Dante’s final three circles. A river surrounds both fortresses: Dis by the Styx; Tartarus by the Phlegethon, which Dante made flow through Lower Hell. Both possess a lofty tower, upon which the Fury Tisiphonë stands as a sentinel over the entranceway. The tower described in the Aeneid could also be analogous to the Inferno’s “Great Tower,” which signals for the ferryman to cross. (Inferno VIII.1-6) Dante must enter Dis to continue his odyssey; but Aeneas’ destination is elsewhere.
Tartarus lies beyond the leftward fork in the road, as the above passage indicates. A careful trace of the pilgrim Dante’s tour through Hell consists mostly of left turns. This reinforces the concept of the left-hand path. Christ sits at the right hand of God; so to prefer the left is to refuse salvation. In fact, the Latin word for left is sinister. Dante must follow the left-hand path to go deeper into the abyss of sin, until he beholds Satan, the focus of all sin. Aeneas bypasses Pluto’s throne to seek Anchises, who lived a virtuous life in accordance with the right-hand path:
They came to places of delight, to green park land, where souls take ease amid the Blessed Groves…this was the company of those who suffered wounds in battle for their country; those who in their lives were holy men and chaste or worthy of Phoebus in prophetic song; or those who bettered life, by finding out new truths and skills; or those who to some folk by benefactions made themselves remembered. (Aeneid VI.853-889)
“O ornament of wisdom and of art, what souls are these whose merit lights their way even in Hell. What joy sets them apart?” And [Vergil] to me: “The signature of honor they left on earth is recognized in Heaven and wins them ease in Hell out of God’s favor.” (Inferno VI.73-78)
Both netherworlds contain a region free from pain and grief. Vergil called it Elysium, where righteous souls live blissfully in verdant pastures. They are rewarded this afterlife because they lived in accordance with classical virtues, erring not from nature and reason. Dante relegated Elysium to the First Circle of Hell, called Limbo. Like Elysium, the souls dwelling here are spared punishment on account of their virtue. However, the fact that they lived before Christ’s redemption eliminates their hope for heavenly ascension. These Virtuous Pagans are victims of Adam and Eve’s sin, which denied Paradise, both earthly and heavenly, to all subsequent generations before Christ. Vergil describes Elysium as a haven for heroes, poets, philosophers and philanthropists. Advanced two millennia in history, Dante filled these positions with figures like Homer, Aristotle, Livy and Aeneas himself.
For Aeneas, Elysium functions as the springboard from which he fulfills his destiny of planting the roots of Rome. Limbo does not do likewise for pilgrim Dante, for the author divided the Elysian concept into two places as he did the Fields of Mourning. Unlike Limbo, Elysium is only a temporary dwelling. Souls spend a millennium therein before drinking from Lethe and ascending towards a new life in the flesh. (Aeneid VI.999-1008) Dante took this aspect of Elysium and applied it to Purgatory as preparation for eternal life in Paradise. Atop the Mount of Purgatory is the Earthly Paradise, from which Lethe springs downward toward Cocytus. The time souls spend in Purgatory is comparable in length to the millennium a noble Elysian soul must pass before drinking from Lethe’s waters. This river of forgetfulness removes all memory of past lives, according to the Aeneid; of all sins, according to the Purgatorio. Dante includes the river Eunoë to strengthen the memory of mortal virtues. Vergil wrote of no such river, for his Lethe removes all memory. Both the Vergilian and Dantean soul must drink from Lethe to ascend.
The soul of classical mythology has eternal life in that it eternally cycles between the upper and lower worlds. The soul of Christianity is also immortal, but its path is linear, from mortal life to an eternal life in either Heaven or Hell. These different paradigms define Aeneas and Dante’s journeys respectively. Aeneas, like the noble soul, descends from the mortal world into the Underworld, and then ascends reborn to pursue a new life. Evidenced by his prophesied progeny, Aeneas is to be reborn in subsequent generations as Roman heroes, such as Romulus and Augustus. Dante, on the other hand, makes his pilgrimage to explore the consequences of his only life. The Paradiso ends in Paradise. There is no account of his return to Earth, for the Christian paradigm defines an ultimate endpoint of the soul’s journey. Therefore it makes sense that Vergil departs before Dante ascends into Heaven. (Purgatorio XXX.43-51) Eternity in Paradise is a foreign concept to the Aeneid, where there is no final destination.
Dante’s Divine Comedy is proof that not even the most venerated poets and artists lacked heavy influences. The Inferno was by no means an original fabrication. It was a Christianized Vergilian netherworld, cleverly rearranged but not bereft of its key elements and themes. Divine judgment embodied itself the same way to both the ancient Roman and the medieval Florentine. Both poems concurred with Platonic immortality and transcendence and Aristotelian virtue. The major distinction was Dante’s injection of the Christian mysteries, which is why even to his fundamental influence, Vergil, is Paradise lost. The Divine Comedy represents a revival of classical thought, synthesized with Christianity to till the soil from which the Renaissance flourished. Dante has shown that originality is not always required to transform a major part of the world. Through a marriage of antiquity and Christendom, Dante revolutionized literature, as did Aquinas with philosophy, Michelangelo with art and Machiavelli with politics. Yet not even these figures’ idols were completely original. Vergil could go nowhere without Homer, Plato without Socrates and Jesus without Moses. Just as the Aeneid shaped the Inferno, the past will always shape the future.
Works cited:
Alighieri, Dante (trans. John Ciardi). The Inferno. New York: Signet Classic, 2001.
Alighieri, Dante (trans. John Ciardi). The Paradiso. New York: Signet Classic, 2001.
Alighieri, Dante (trans. John Ciardi). The Purgatorio. New York: Signet Classic, 2001.
"Divine Comedy." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 30 Apr 2008, 11:41 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Apr 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Divine_Comedy&oldid=209208465>.
Vergil (trans. Robert Fitzgerald), The Aeneid. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
This may be the most metal paper I've ever written, though my Roman History paper comes close.
All the citations you see are about half of what I put it. The rest are footnotes that didn't get copied onto here by Word.
Enjoy
Vergil’s Underworld in Dante’s Divine Comedy
To a reader unfamiliar with classical literature, Dante’s Inferno is an inventive illustration of the Christian Hell. He or she may wonder why Vergil, a pre-Christian poet, is leading the author through God’s manifested wrath. This question will hopefully drive the inquisitor into the pages of Vergil’s magnum opus, the Aeneid. Partway through Book VI, things start to become rather familiar, and then there is an epiphany. Dante was not so original after all. His design of Hell is a clever rearrangement of the classical underworld, where Satan reigns in Pluto’s stead. Vergil’s influences extend even beyond the depths of Cocytus to the summit of Purgatory. The Divine Comedy is a testament to Dante’s admiration of antiquity, a trend that exploded into the Italian Renaissance.
Dante expanded greatly upon Vergil’s Hadean concept. Therefore it will be less confusing to journey through the original underworld of the Aeneid’s sixth book. We will trace the descent by dissecting the literal, mythological and thematic elements that Dante employed 1300 years later.
Book VI of the Aeneid begins with the Trojan fugitive Aeneas arriving at Cumae in Italy, where he meets the Sibyl prophetess, Deiphobë. A vision of his father Anchises had visited him earlier on to request a meeting in the Underworld, into which the Sibyl shall guide him. At this point the basic parallel is clear of Aeneas to Dante and Deiphobë to Vergil. Moreover, just as Aeneas is beckoned toward his quest by the ghost of Anchises, so is Dante entreated by the vision of Beatrice Portinari, whom he admired even after her premature death. Anchises symbolizes the love of blood ties through his bond with Aeneas; Beatrice is the manifestation of divine love and beauty, as Dante saw her. These two types of love were the most highly valued in their respective times. The Romans, through ancestor worship, prized familial love. The medieval Christians cherished love of God over all else. So before either the hero Aeneas or the pilgrim Dante enter the threshold of the netherworld, some fundamental thematic analogies are already established.
Before their respective descents, a major distinction between Aeneas and Dante becomes evident:
“If Orpheus could call his wife’s shade up…if Pollux redeemed his brother, taking his turn at death, so often passing back and forth; why name the heroes, Theseus and Hercules? By birth I too descend from Jove on high.” (Aeneid VI.175-181)
“Poet [Vergil], you who must guide me, before you trust me to that arduous passage, look to me and look through me—can I be worthy? You sang how [Aeneas] the father of Sylvius, while still in corruptible flesh won to that other world, crossing with mortal sense the immortal sill.” (Inferno II.10-15)
Aeneas is the noble hero, prince of Troy, arguing his merit by divine lineage. He compares himself to mythological heroes. Dante, on the other hand, is the humble pilgrim. He uses the same argument as Aeneas, but to contrast himself from the demigods of lore. Dante doubts his worth; Aeneas confides in it. The above passage from Canto II is immediate proof that not only is Dante’s concept far from original; Vergil himself references legends that predated even the age of Aeneas.
The above passages expose a common theme between the two works: that of a mortal intruding an immortal realm. This anomaly is most vivid as Aeneas and Dante cross the river Styx:
[Charon] made the gangway wide, letting the massive man [Aeneas] step in the bilge. The leaky coracle groaned at the weight and took a flood of swampy water in. (Aeneid VI.556-560)
And not till I stepped aboard did it seem to settle into the water. At once we left the shore, the ancient hull riding more heavily than it had ridden in all of time before. (Inferno VIII.27-30)
Both poets believed souls to be weightless. The image of the mortal man weighing down the Stygian ferry is a powerful reminder of how atypical this scenario is. To cross the Styx, Aeneas requires a token in the form of the golden bough. Dante uses a waist-cord in a similar fashion to summon Geryon to convey him to the eighth circle.
Geryon is one of several legendary beings encountered in both poems, but Aeneas meets him early on in his downward climb. Having entered a cave in a “gloomy forest” (Aeneid VI.333) similar to Dante’s Wood of Error, Aeneas sees the mythical manifestations of pain and strife, many of which correspond with the punishments of Dante’s Upper Hell. For Hunger there are the Gluttons, who are slavered over by Cerberus (also appearing in both poems). For Want there are the Hoarders and Wasters; for Sleep, the Sullen; for War and Discord, the Wrathful. Dante converted Vergil’s demons into the conditions characteristic of sinners, sorted into their respective circle of Upper Hell.
On reading the two epics, it is clear that Dante’s design is much more organized, but nothing is quite arbitrary. The Aeneid describes “the Styx that winds nine times around.” (Aeneid VI.592-593) There are nine circles in Dante’s Hell. His abysmal schematic reconfigures the sequence of Aeneas’ journey. After Aeneas faces the demonic apparitions, he comes to cross the river Styx, ferried by Charon. Dante, however, crosses two rivers: first, the Acheron by Charon; second, the Styx by Phlegyas. The former boatman conveys Aeneas across the Styx, while the latter dwells in Tartarus.
After his ferry ride Aeneas enters Fields of Mourning, “so called since here are those whom pitiless love consumed with cruel wasting, hidden on paths apart by myrtle woodland growing overhead.” (Aeneid VI.595-598) Here he meets the shade of Dido, whose love for him led to suicide. Dante took this scene and partitioned its elements between the second and seventh circle of Hell. The former he designated for the Carnal, “those who sinned in the flesh…who betrayed their reason to appetite.” (Inferno V.38-39) In the latter he placed the Wood of the Suicides, analogous to the “shadowy grove” into which Dido retreats to dwell with her late husband Sychaeus. (Aeneid VI.635-637) However, Dante assigned Dido to the realm of the Carnal, perhaps because the love for which she dies is itself contrary to Jupiter’s plan for Aeneas. Her place in the Christian Hell is appropriate, as the new Jupiter, God, damns those who oppose His course.
After Dido’s recession, Aeneas next encounters the fatalities of the Trojan War. Both the Greek and Trojan dead share the same dwelling. Dante kept it this way, for all the Violent Against Their Neighbors occupy part of the Seventh Circle.
This region of the Underworld is where Aeneas meets Minos, the mythical king of Crete whom both Vergil and Dante appointed as judge of souls. Just as Dante transplanted Dido from the Suicides to the Carnal, he also relocated Minos to this vicinity. Here he sentences every damned soul: a promotion from his supervision of the falsely accused.
Aeneas departs this realm of unhappy souls and approaches the most Dantean corner of the classical netherworld:
Here is the place where the road forks…the leftward road will punish malefactors, taking them to Tartarus…under a cliff, wide buildings girt by a triple wall round which a torrent rushed…the abyss’s Fiery River. A massive gate with adamantine pillars faces the stream. (Aeneid VI.724-742)
“The City called Dis lies just ahead…Hell’s metropolis.” And I then: Master, I already see the glow of its red mosques”…its walls seemed made of iron and towered above us in our little boat. (Inferno VIII.64-75)
Vergil’s Tartarus is the citadel of wicked souls, condemned to suffer eternal torment for the mortal sins. In the Inferno, the entirety of Lower Hell lies within its fortifications. Dante calls this city Dis, a name for Pluto that was often used to represent the whole Underworld. Naturally, the gravity of sin within these walls exceeds whats precedes them. Outside Tartarus are souls who committed no grave sin. Inside are tortured the evildoers, including the Titans, whom Dante imprisoned at the ledge to the Ninth Circle. Within Tartarus are tortured murderers, stealers, liars, blasphemers and traitors. (Aeneid VI.762-838). These same sinners are classed within the many subdivisions of Dante’s final three circles. A river surrounds both fortresses: Dis by the Styx; Tartarus by the Phlegethon, which Dante made flow through Lower Hell. Both possess a lofty tower, upon which the Fury Tisiphonë stands as a sentinel over the entranceway. The tower described in the Aeneid could also be analogous to the Inferno’s “Great Tower,” which signals for the ferryman to cross. (Inferno VIII.1-6) Dante must enter Dis to continue his odyssey; but Aeneas’ destination is elsewhere.
Tartarus lies beyond the leftward fork in the road, as the above passage indicates. A careful trace of the pilgrim Dante’s tour through Hell consists mostly of left turns. This reinforces the concept of the left-hand path. Christ sits at the right hand of God; so to prefer the left is to refuse salvation. In fact, the Latin word for left is sinister. Dante must follow the left-hand path to go deeper into the abyss of sin, until he beholds Satan, the focus of all sin. Aeneas bypasses Pluto’s throne to seek Anchises, who lived a virtuous life in accordance with the right-hand path:
They came to places of delight, to green park land, where souls take ease amid the Blessed Groves…this was the company of those who suffered wounds in battle for their country; those who in their lives were holy men and chaste or worthy of Phoebus in prophetic song; or those who bettered life, by finding out new truths and skills; or those who to some folk by benefactions made themselves remembered. (Aeneid VI.853-889)
“O ornament of wisdom and of art, what souls are these whose merit lights their way even in Hell. What joy sets them apart?” And [Vergil] to me: “The signature of honor they left on earth is recognized in Heaven and wins them ease in Hell out of God’s favor.” (Inferno VI.73-78)
Both netherworlds contain a region free from pain and grief. Vergil called it Elysium, where righteous souls live blissfully in verdant pastures. They are rewarded this afterlife because they lived in accordance with classical virtues, erring not from nature and reason. Dante relegated Elysium to the First Circle of Hell, called Limbo. Like Elysium, the souls dwelling here are spared punishment on account of their virtue. However, the fact that they lived before Christ’s redemption eliminates their hope for heavenly ascension. These Virtuous Pagans are victims of Adam and Eve’s sin, which denied Paradise, both earthly and heavenly, to all subsequent generations before Christ. Vergil describes Elysium as a haven for heroes, poets, philosophers and philanthropists. Advanced two millennia in history, Dante filled these positions with figures like Homer, Aristotle, Livy and Aeneas himself.
For Aeneas, Elysium functions as the springboard from which he fulfills his destiny of planting the roots of Rome. Limbo does not do likewise for pilgrim Dante, for the author divided the Elysian concept into two places as he did the Fields of Mourning. Unlike Limbo, Elysium is only a temporary dwelling. Souls spend a millennium therein before drinking from Lethe and ascending towards a new life in the flesh. (Aeneid VI.999-1008) Dante took this aspect of Elysium and applied it to Purgatory as preparation for eternal life in Paradise. Atop the Mount of Purgatory is the Earthly Paradise, from which Lethe springs downward toward Cocytus. The time souls spend in Purgatory is comparable in length to the millennium a noble Elysian soul must pass before drinking from Lethe’s waters. This river of forgetfulness removes all memory of past lives, according to the Aeneid; of all sins, according to the Purgatorio. Dante includes the river Eunoë to strengthen the memory of mortal virtues. Vergil wrote of no such river, for his Lethe removes all memory. Both the Vergilian and Dantean soul must drink from Lethe to ascend.
The soul of classical mythology has eternal life in that it eternally cycles between the upper and lower worlds. The soul of Christianity is also immortal, but its path is linear, from mortal life to an eternal life in either Heaven or Hell. These different paradigms define Aeneas and Dante’s journeys respectively. Aeneas, like the noble soul, descends from the mortal world into the Underworld, and then ascends reborn to pursue a new life. Evidenced by his prophesied progeny, Aeneas is to be reborn in subsequent generations as Roman heroes, such as Romulus and Augustus. Dante, on the other hand, makes his pilgrimage to explore the consequences of his only life. The Paradiso ends in Paradise. There is no account of his return to Earth, for the Christian paradigm defines an ultimate endpoint of the soul’s journey. Therefore it makes sense that Vergil departs before Dante ascends into Heaven. (Purgatorio XXX.43-51) Eternity in Paradise is a foreign concept to the Aeneid, where there is no final destination.
Dante’s Divine Comedy is proof that not even the most venerated poets and artists lacked heavy influences. The Inferno was by no means an original fabrication. It was a Christianized Vergilian netherworld, cleverly rearranged but not bereft of its key elements and themes. Divine judgment embodied itself the same way to both the ancient Roman and the medieval Florentine. Both poems concurred with Platonic immortality and transcendence and Aristotelian virtue. The major distinction was Dante’s injection of the Christian mysteries, which is why even to his fundamental influence, Vergil, is Paradise lost. The Divine Comedy represents a revival of classical thought, synthesized with Christianity to till the soil from which the Renaissance flourished. Dante has shown that originality is not always required to transform a major part of the world. Through a marriage of antiquity and Christendom, Dante revolutionized literature, as did Aquinas with philosophy, Michelangelo with art and Machiavelli with politics. Yet not even these figures’ idols were completely original. Vergil could go nowhere without Homer, Plato without Socrates and Jesus without Moses. Just as the Aeneid shaped the Inferno, the past will always shape the future.
Works cited:
Alighieri, Dante (trans. John Ciardi). The Inferno. New York: Signet Classic, 2001.
Alighieri, Dante (trans. John Ciardi). The Paradiso. New York: Signet Classic, 2001.
Alighieri, Dante (trans. John Ciardi). The Purgatorio. New York: Signet Classic, 2001.
"Divine Comedy." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 30 Apr 2008, 11:41 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Apr 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Divine_Comedy&oldid=209208465>.
Vergil (trans. Robert Fitzgerald), The Aeneid. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
panzerfaust666
German Asshole
mutantllama
Active Member
V.V.V.V.V.
Houses Ov Mercury
Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
Thanks! I have until midnight to submit it. So I'll wait until tonight if anyone else wants to give their thoughts.
skeptik
Member
- Feb 7, 2003
- 24,413
- 71
- 48
I'm seriously slacking now that I feel confident about how I've performed thus far, which I seriously can't do with exams starting Friday. For example, for one class, our final is a take home, so I've essentially not read anything from the second half of the semester, waiting to see what I have to read when I get the final. I need to cut this shit out tbh or I'll wind up not getting the grades I want.
V.V.V.V.V.
Houses Ov Mercury
I went in tonight to work on a semi-final drawing project with some friends, played some metal and pissed people off 
Einherjar86
Active Member
They let you quote Wikipedia for a school paper?
Anyhow, I love Dante's Inferno. I'm a literature major, and I write a lot of poetry in my spare time. The following is a poem I've started that is loosely based off of Dante's Divine Comedy (at least, I draw some inspiration from him). It's called The Insidious Gospel.
The Insidious Gospel
I. The Caravan of the Damned
"So long a train of people,
That I should never have believed
That death had outdone so many."
~Dante Alighieri
Thus spoke the ancient bard who once was led;
But now he stands before us, set to lead
Us through this narrow vale of iron and lead,
And out into the Wasteland. Each mans seed
He has cast headlong into stormy pastures
Long bereft of rain, but pray for rain
To satiate their thirst before the rapture
Of this, our lives. To save our souls from pain
We march into the gulf of sorrow, weep
For all that once did stand outside the keep.
Thus spoke the ancient bard who once was led:
My feet are blistered, but my wounds have healed.
My eyes have seen the horrors of the dead
And seen the fate of mankind thrice resealed!
Witness I did the Fall of Man Impure
From out his paradise. The serpents tongue
Spit jealous lies and vows-all insecure!-
And saw the mortal weakning of the lung.
First Fate of Man! First sin original
Brought on by cunning words subliminal.
Thus spoke the ancient bard who once was led:
My feet are blistered, but my wounds have healed.
My eyes have seen the horrors of the dead
And seen the fate of mankind thrice resealed!
Witness I did the rising of the cross
Atop Golgotha. Blood and rain did flow
To mourn the tragedy of human loss:
Forgive them! What they do, they do not know.
The Second Fate of Man! The sacrifice,
A show of Gods most subtle artifice.
Thus spoke the ancient bard who once was led:
My feet are blistered, but my wounds have healed.
My eyes have seen the horrors of the dead
And seen the fate of mankind thrice resealed!
Witness I did the wicked and the foul
Be dealt their punishments. Witness I did
The errant find repentance for the soul
Upon the Purging Mount. Witness I did,
In the Empyrean, the angels bright,
Who saw the saved into the Halls of Light.
Then pass we did a lonely village. Men
Were hung upon the trees in clans of five
Or so. And we did find within a den
A huddled mass of children still alive.
They had been left by those who came before
Us; righteous armies sent to cleanse the race
Of men, and purge the land of thief and whore,
And leave of all their poison not a trace.
We are that damned caravan of souls,
Beneath which coughs of stifled thunder rolls.
The children sought to follow us. They kept
Upon our heels, and cried and reached their hands
In begging to be held. They pled and wept
For us to take them from these scorched lands.
I watched in horror as a child was torn
From out its mothers arms; I closed my eyes.
Within this world its best to be unborn,
Else hear the infants anguished, tortured cries.
The eyes are blessed with lids to keep from pain;
The ears have not the means to so refrain.
We left that lonely village in the dust
That rose behind our solemn slavish train;
And still we heard the screams, and knew we must
Turn back but oh, not one of us again
Did see that lonely village, or the child,
Or see those blackened trees on which did hang
The Dead; but still the echoes of the wild
And dreadful shrieks around our column rang.
We marched on, and we march still to this day,
Without a thought for those without a say.
V.V.V.V.V.
Houses Ov Mercury
My english teacher is awesome and comprehends the internet...thusly she thinks that Wikipedia is a fine source if you're not going for something related to politics, religion, etc...stuff that is very hotly debated. Like she said, no one really gets pleasure out of messing with the entry for something obscure and mathematical, or, in this case, a literary work of high merit which is probably watched over by some extremely hawk-eyed monarch of classicist writing 
Einherjar86
Active Member
Interesting. I've never had a professor who approved of Wikipedia. I've had some who condone using it as a starting point; but when it comes to citing sources, they say to follow the links at the bottom of the page and cite those instead. If there are no sources, then find other information.
The Ozzman
Melted by feels
Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
I use Wikipedia as an ancillary source. For the papers I've been writing, my main sources have been the actual texts like the Aeneid and the Inferno. I never use Wikipedia as my main source of research.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
V.V.V.V.V.
Houses Ov Mercury
They just don't understand how the internet works and probably have never used Wikipedia for themselves. A lot of the info on Wikipedia is mined from the very places they are telling you to cite. That's kind of the point of footnotes and references on Wiki pages
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