Section 3 - Ancient Epic (Homer and Vergil)
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39 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Homer | "The river from which all literature flows." |
| Epic | long, narrative poem in which the central character, usually depicted as a hero of some sort, struggles against great odds—sometimes death literally—to achieve a noble end |
| The Iliad | The epic about the siege of Troy |
| Troy | The walled fortress-city that the Greeks were trying to take over in the Iliad |
| Ilium | Another name for Troy |
| Achilles | Greatest of the Greek warriors at Troy |
| Agamemnon | Leader of the Greek expedition that insults Achilles |
| Hector | The greatest of the Trojan warriors, who kills Patroclus, Achilles best friend |
| Priam | Hector's father, the elderly King of Troy |
| Sack of Troy | Not included in the Iliad |
| Trojan Horse | The horse story not included in the Iliad |
| The Odyssey | Takes place after the Trojan War. Main character is Odysseus |
| Odysseus | A thinking man who doesn't rush home like Agamemnon but ultimately sneaks back into town |
| Ulysses | The Latin name for Odysseus |
| Clytemnestra | Agamemnon's wife. She kills Agamemnon |
| Penelope | Odysseus' wife, whose very name has come to represent marital fidelity |
| Hera | Zeus' wife |
| Seduction of Zeus | When Hera tricks Zeus to get her way because she's really mad at him. |
| Odysseus and Argus | The story about Odysseus' dog, who dies after seeing him finally come home |
| Weak joins | the incoherence of some passages which are widely separated from each other |
| Milman Parry | an American scholar working in the 1920's and 1930's, who studied a type of poet called an oral bard |
| Oral bard | composed poems "orally"—that is, they made up long epic poems on the spur of the moment in front of an audience—and though it's hard to imagine such a thing today, Parry showed that it was, in fact, possible for trained poets to compose complex verse like Homer's seemingly off the cuff |
| Oral formulas | repetitive phrases which fit certain metrical slots in a line of verse. |
| Rhapsodes | (literally, "stitchers of song"), performers who recited Homeric epic before the Greek public centuries after Homer's day, |
| Vergil | Roman poet, the other great master of ancient epic |
| The Aeneid | replete with the sort of detail which only countless revisions and close attention to the niceties of written style provide |
| Augustus | The Roman Emperor who recruited Virgil to compose a grandiose epic about Rome |
| Aeneas | The fictional hero who led the Trojans to Italy after the Greeks destroyed their city |
| Venus | A goddess, who is Aeneas' mother, and rescues him |
| Pius | Latin for loyal or dutiful. Aeneas wasn't strong but he was pius |
| In medias res | "into the middle of things" |
| Juno | Hera's Roman name, sent a storm on Aeneas at the beginning of the Aeneid |
| Jupiter | Zeus's Roman name. He wants the Roman people to someday conquer the world, in the Aeneid |
| Dido | The queen that Aeneas falls in love with |
| Carthage | The settlement where Dido and Aeneas live and fall in love. He gets there by washing up on shore. In real life, early Romans had defeated the Carthaginians and cleared the way for their conquest of the Mediterranean |
| Priam | Aged king of Troy |
| Pyrrhus | Achilles brutal teenage son, who slaughters Priam in The Aeneid |
| Pompey | Caesar's most formidable rival, lost the Battle of Pharsalus and was forced to flee to Egypt. Greeted there by people he took to be allies, he was instead ruthlessly butchered, his beheaded corpse left floating in an Egyptian tidal pool |
| Turnus | Kills Aeneas' best friend Pallas, and steals his armor. Aeneas and Turnus have a final showdown. Also fighting to marry Lavinia. Aeneas ruthlessly murders him, and the book ends. |
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