Recent movie news about the latest screen adaptation of The Odyssey happened to make me reflect on the lack of a big screen version of the poet Virgil’s epic The Aeneid. For newbies to the tale, I’m posting this very brief synopsis of the story – the first half a mythic voyage like Jason and the Argonauts and The Odyssey and the second half a tale of warfare as Aeneas leads his fellow survivors of fallen Troy in their mythic conquest of what would become Rome.
Previously, I covered neglected ancient Greek epics about the Trojan War, like Cypria, Aethiopis, Iliad Minor and The Sack of Troy. I mentioned the Trojan named Aeneas and how some Greek sources said he was killed and some said he and a fleet of other Trojans escaped the massacre and sailed away.
Roman legends written hundreds of years B.C. took over from there, linking Aeneas to the founding of Rome after a dangerous journey. Around 19 B.C. to 29 B.C. the poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid to give Rome its very own national epic.
ONE – Aeneas and his fleet search for the place prophesied to be the site of a new nation that the Trojan refugees will found. The goddess Juno (Roman equivalent of the Greek Hera) senses that the great people of this new nation will go on to destroy her beloved Carthage, so she throws assorted obstacles in their way. Continue reading
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