Perhaps in an age of starting from scratch again and rebuilding, that grim mindset was best. The very dearth of Hellenic playfulness gave our ancestors their dour mindset. The Greeks - so sybaritic in their literature and such a springboard in their stories for the imagination - had little or no influence on our serious Medieval European ancestors. and how much Latin magic is in the Holy Grail?

(But what about the loss of higher mathematics - and calculus - to the Ottoman Empire, against whom Europe Crusaded? Enemies don’t share secrets, alas.)īut how about the late medieval romances. It is hard to imagine such inspired living as the Knights of the Round Table, or early books of such high-mindedness as Piers Plowman or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight existing without the nobility of the Aeneid. So, now, books like this one were suddenly a prime source for imaginative myth-making. The domino effect was about to play its hand.Įarly Christian apologists, looking for grist for their mills, would soon see in Virgil’s groundbreaking ideas about a blissful afterlife in the Elysian Fields - for ordinary good people, as well as Homer’s heroes - an announcement of the Lord’s freely-offered - and freely-withheld - salvation.Ī salvation for which Aeneas must forsake the fleshpot of Carthage.Īnd did I say Homer? That’s another thing.Īpproximately concurrent with all of this was the disastrous destruction by fire of Alexandria’s priceless library - the last detailed link with the pre-Roman Greek world. Sure, it was political propaganda commissioned by Augustus, through Virgil’s noble mentor Maecenas.īut don’t forget that many of the same Roman readers of this runaway bestseller were fathers of the first Italian Christian converts. With not much respect due to Troy’s ancient conquerors - the Greeks. It inspired them to believe that a semi-divine Trojan named Aeneas had given them ideals worth dying for! Virgil left off writing this masterpiece a mere twenty years before the Star appeared over ancient Bethlehem.Īnd, of course, the Aeneid gave the worldly Romans hope for a brighter future at the same time, when their history was beginning its long, slow decline into moral chaos. YOU can Conquer - now, isn’t that a nifty quick analysis of how faith works? That’s Virgil talking!įaith in oneself. TO CARTHAGE THEN I CAME, WHERE A CAULDRON OF UNHOLY LOVES

The aeneid