Two Visits to the Underworld 750 Years Apart: The Odyssey and the Aeneid.

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Rachel Doyle

Dr. M. Reichert

Cultural Foundations

Two Visits to the Underworld 750 Years Apart:  The Odyssey and the Aeneid

Virgil wrote the Aeneid for a variety of social and personal reasons.  Besides wanting to eat and support his family, Virgil also wrote to please rulers of Rome as well as other patrons, who looked up to the Greeks as great scholars (they employed Greek tutors) but very much wanted to honor the founders of Rome.  Besides wanting to elevate Aeneas’s stature as a hero, Virgil was also competing with Homer to see if he could produce a greater work of literature.  Both the Aeneid and the Odyssey are stories about heroes and their ordeals.

In order to fully appreciate the motivations behind the creation of Virgil’s Aeneid, it is necessary to read Homer’s Odyssey beforehand.  Undoubtedly Virgil read and studied Homer’s Odyssey, as did any educated Roman of his time.  Virgil revered Homer but desired to write a story that would be about Roman heroes rather than Greek heroes.

The visit to the underworld was one of the most dramatic, riveting parts of Odyssey.  Comparing the different visits to the Underworld in the Aeneid and the Odyssey helps to expose the strengths and weaknesses of both narratives. Now I have a greater appreciation of Virgil’s achievement as a great poet, perhaps greater than Homer.  I also have a greater appreciation of Homer as a dramatist and master storyteller.

Before Odysseus’ visit to the underworld, Circe tells Odysseus that the only way he can return home is if he “takes a strange way round and come to the cold home of Death and pale Persephone (p.182).” Odysseus weeps and becomes severely depressed “with no desire to see daylight more” at this suggestion.  In comparison, Aeneas shows stoic resignation and sheds no tears when his father’s mystical appearance informs him he must visit the underworld.  After speaking with his father, Aeneas immediately “called his captains, told Acestes first Of Jove’s command as taught by his dear father (p.152),” and began to prepare for the voyage to the underworld. Virgil shows that the Roman hero is the stronger.

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Odysseus visits the underworld for more selfish reasons than Aeneas.  He desperately wants to go back to Ithaca, and he needs to talk to the prophet Teiresias to find out how.  Odysseus’ adventure in the underworld is told in the first person while he is entertaining a host and hostess.  He is trying to get sympathy and help from them.  Aeneas is a loftier hero who is going for the sake of his people.  Aeneas visits the underworld because Jupiter has commanded him to find a new home for the Trojan refugees. This seems to be a nobler quest ...

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