Antigone is a saint, whereas Medea is a devil incarnate" do you agree?
Many have described Sophcles' Antigone as a saint, and Euripides Medea as being a devil incarnate. I do agree in part that Antigone is saintly in her actions, yet I think her personality is hardly saintly. I also partly agree that Medea is like a devil in the way she behaves, but she not without motive for all her crimes. Antigone is a very strong woman she is willing to go against the law of the king, by burying her brother, she favors the law of the Gods (Q), this not unlike many well known christian saints such St (Q). One cannot deny that her actions were good, in Greek society leaving a body unburied was an extreme dishonor, as well as this her subsequent martyrdom is both heroic and saintly (Q). She is able to stand up against a tyrant in favor what was right. However her personality and her total disregard of all those who are near and dear to her, makes it hard to respect or even like Antigone. In Antigone, Creon, King of Thebes, the one that opposes Antigone, he values the law of the state over the law of the Gods (Q). It was Creon who made the law forbidding anyone from burying the body of Polynices, Antigone's brother, and when he finds out that she has gone against his word he puts her to death, yet while it is clear that Creon is in the wrong, he is not particularly the evil tyrant that Antigone makes him out to be. When he is interrogating Antigone he does give
Aeneas can be considered an excellent hero. Discuss.
Aeneas can be considered an excellent hero. Discuss. (40 marks) The Aeneid, an epic poem written by Virgil is often cited as Augustan propaganda which is true to an extent and can be seen through Augustus' associations with Aeneas and other founders of Rome such as Romulus. Augustus thus sees himself as a modern founder of Rome, entering her into a new age which makes the portrayal of Aeneas as a good leader extremely important, namely piety, so that he could be paralleled with Augustus whom claimed to be a descendent of Aeneas himself. Aeneas qualities as a leader are evident in times of despair and when in the face of great adversity, it is in these instances that Aeneas often lends his men encouragement and instils courage and motivation in them. This is most evident in Book I in which Aeneas, caught in the middle of a storm, is in a vulnerable position and deeply unhappy. This is portrayed as Virgil states that 'a sudden chill went through Aeneas and his limbs grew weak' which emphasises Aeneas personal sorrows. It is for this reason that Aeneas' actions for his men upon their arrival at Carthage become significant and show him to be a tremendous leader. Self-sacrifice is a quality that Virgil builds into Aeneas' character which qualifies him as a good leader as despite Aeneas' own personal suffering "he shows them the face of home and kept his misery deep in his heart"
To what extent are the characters in Ovid metamorphes real and not stereotypical
From the selected chapters, Ovid depicts the event of Scylla falling madly in love with King Minos of Crete and the attempted escape by Daedalus together with son Icarus resulting in the death of the young boy. When Cephalus and the troops from Aegina returned to Athens, Minos had been waging war against King Nisus for six months. During that time, King Nisus' daughter, Scylla, became obsessed with Minos, his enemy. After trying to squelch her love, she gave in to it and killed her father. She took his purple lock of hair to Minos and presented herself as his bride and her country that he'd been fighting to conquer as her gift. Minos was horrified by her treachery, and he took his fleet and left. Scylla realized that she would be shunned from her own country and all others for her betrayal, and so she swam after Minos' ships. She was clinging to the bow of one ship when her father, who had been transformed to an osprey, attacked her and made her fall from the ship. She, too, was transformed into a bird. Daedalus was an inventor, and he despised being in exile, so he decided to create wings for himself and his son, Icarus to escape. As they made their flight across the sky, he warned the boy however the naïve boy carried away with the freedom of his wings flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted. He was engulfed by the sea and drowned. In his memory, the sea where