Second Quarter Book Summaries

Metamorphoses Book IV (Salmacis and Hermaphroditus) Summary

Alcithoe, the third daughter, tells the final love story. The sexually adventurous Salmacis desires Hermaphroditus, but he spurns her. She grabs him when he jumps into her pool, and she prays to the gods to make them one. The gods answer her prayer by making Hermaphroditus become soft and feminine. Salmacis's nature becomes part of him. At the end of these stories, the devotees of Bacchus draw near, and Bacchus turns the three sisters into bats for their impiety.

Aeneid Book II Summary

Fulfilling Dido's request, Aeneas begins his sorrowful story, adding that retelling it entails reexperiencing the pain. He takes us back to ten years into the Trojan War: at the moment the tale begins, the Danaans (Greeks) have constructed a giant wooden horse with a hollow belly. They secretly hide their best soldiers, fully armed, within the horse, while the rest of the Greek army lies low some distance from Troy. The sight of a massive horse standing before their gates on an apparently deserted battlefield baffles the Trojans. Near the horse, the Trojans find a Greek youth named Sinon. He explains that the Greeks have wished to flee Troy for some time but were prevented by fierce storms. A prophet told them to sacrifice one of their own, and Sinon was chosen. But Sinon managed to escape during the preparations, and the Greeks left him behind. The Trojans show him pity and ask the meaning of the great horse. Sinon says that it was an offering to the goddess Minerva, who turned against the Greeks after the desecration of one of her temples by Ulysses. Sinon claims that if any harm comes to the wooden statue, Troy will be destroyed by Minerva's wrath, but if the Trojans install the horse within their city walls, they will rise victorious in war against southern Greece, like a tidal wave, with Minerva on their side. Aeneas continues his story: after Sinon finishes speaking, two giant serpents rise up from the sea and devour the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons as punishment for hurling a spear at the horse. The snakes then slither up to the shrine of Minerva. The Trojans interpret the snakes' attack as an omen that they must appease Minerva, so they wheel the horse into the city of Troy. Night falls, and while the city sleeps, Sinon opens the horse's belly, releasing the Greek warriors. The warriors kill the Trojan guards and open the gates of the city to the rest of their forces. Meanwhile, Hector, the fallen leader of the Trojan army, appears to Aeneas in a dream and informs him that the city has been infiltrated. Climbing to his roof, Aeneas sees fighting everywhere and Troy in flames. He runs for arms and then heads for the heart of the city, joined by a few of his men. Aeneas and his men surprise and kill many Greeks, but are too badly outnumbered to make a difference. Eventually they go to King Priam's palace, where a battle is brewing. The Greeks, led by Pyrrhus, break into the palace. Pyrrhus kills Polites, the young son of Priam and Hecuba, and then slaughters Priam on his own altar. Aeneas continues relating his story: nearly overcome with grief over this slaughter, he sees Helen, the cause of the war, hiding. He determines to kill her, but Venus appears and explains that blame for the war belongs with the gods, not Helen. Venus advises Aeneas to flee Troy at once, since his fate is elsewhere. Aeneas then proceeds to the house of his father, Anchises, but Anchises refuses to leave. But after omens appear—first a harmless tongue of flame on Ascanius's forehead, then a bright falling star in the sky—Anchises is persuaded to flee the city. Aeneas takes his father on his back and flees with his wife, Creusa, his son, Ascanius, and many other followers. Unfortunately, in the commotion Creusa is lost from the group. After everyone exits the city, Aeneas returns to search for her, but instead he meets her shade, or spirit. She tells him not to be sorrowful because a new home and wife await him in Hesperia. Somewhat comforted, Aeneas leaves Troy burning and leads the survivors into the mountains. Analysis With Aeneas's claim that his tale of Troy's fall is so sorrowful that it would bring tears even to the eyes of a soldier as harsh as Ulysses, Virgil calls attention to his own act of retelling the Trojan horse episode from a new angle, that of the vanquished Trojans. In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, we learn the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of Ulysses and the Greeks. Virgil's claim is that even the Greeks, the victors, would be able to feel the sorrow of the event if it were told properly from the point of view of the victims. Virgil writes a characteristically evenhanded account, so that both losers and winners earn our sympathy and respect. Virgil tries to minimize the humiliation of the Trojans and of his hero, Aeneas. He makes sure that Aeneas does not appear to be less of a warrior than the Greeks, even though they defeated him. When Aeneas admits that the Trojans were duped by the wooden horse trick, Virgil tempers the failure by emphasizing that not all Trojans were fooled. Aeneas's mention that some Trojans counseled the others to destroy the horse demonstrates that there was in fact a degree of wisdom and perhaps even foresight among the Trojan people. He also carefully recounts all the details by which they were persuaded and frightened—the lies of the young Greek and the sign of the serpents, which gobbled up Laocoön, the man who had most vocally protested bringing the horse inside the city—in order to show that the Trojan fear of offending the gods was valid. In the end, the Trojans bring the horse into their city not out of foolishness but out of a legitimate and even honorable respect for the gods. Against Aeneas's description of the Trojans' earnest reverence, the Greeks begin to look guilty of bad sportsmanship. At points during his story, Aeneas emphasizes the irrelevance of mortal concerns in the face of divine will. Venus's persuasion of Aeneas to not kill Helen, for instance, relies on the ultimate inability of mortals to influence their destinies. Venus tells him to hold neither Helen nor Paris responsible for Troy's downfall: he must realize that "the harsh will of the gods" (II.792) caused Troy's destruction. Venus's words reveal that although Aeneas and the Trojans lose a battle with the Greeks that they might have won, in the end they have no choice but to submit to the unfavorable will of the gods. But the gods' will is also what enables some of the Trojans to escape from Troy. Again, fate must always be fulfilled: Aeneas is destined to survive. His sufferings in Troy are to be redeemed, eventually, by his glory in Italy. The shade of his wife, Creusa, comforts him with this message, and following his encounter with Creusa's shade, Aeneas keeps his foretold destiny always in mind, distant though this destiny may seem.

Metamorphoses Book III (Achtaeon) Summary

Cadmus's household (Thebes) is plagued. While hunting, his grandson, Actaeon, stumbles upon Diana bathing in her sacred grove. Diana is so offended that she transforms Actaeon into a deer, and Actaeon's own hunting dogs kill him.

General Gilgamesh Overview

The epic's prelude offers a general introduction to Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, who was two-thirds god and one-third man. He built magnificent ziggurats, or temple towers, surrounded his city with high walls, and laid out its orchards and fields. He was physically beautiful, immensely strong, and very wise. Although Gilgamesh was godlike in body and mind, he began his kingship as a cruel despot. He lorded over his subjects, raping any woman who struck his fancy, whether she was the wife of one of his warriors or the daughter of a nobleman. He accomplished his building projects with forced labor, and his exhausted subjects groaned under his oppression. The gods heard his subjects' pleas and decided to keep Gilgamesh in check by creating a wild man named Enkidu, who was as magnificent as Gilgamesh. Enkidu became Gilgamesh's great friend, and Gilgamesh's heart was shattered when Enkidu died of an illness inflicted by the gods. Gilgamesh then traveled to the edge of the world and learned about the days before the deluge and other secrets of the gods, and he recorded them on stone tablets. The epic begins with Enkidu. He lives with the animals, suckling at their breasts, grazing in the meadows, and drinking at their watering places. A hunter discovers him and sends a temple prostitute into the wilderness to tame him. In that time, people considered women and sex calming forces that could domesticate wild men like Enkidu and bring them into the civilized world. When Enkidu sleeps with the woman, the animals reject him since he is no longer one of them. Now, he is part of the human world. Then the harlot teaches him everything he needs to know to be a man. Enkidu is outraged by what he hears about Gilgamesh's excesses, so he travels to Uruk to challenge him. When he arrives, Gilgamesh is about to force his way into a bride's wedding chamber. Enkidu steps into the doorway and blocks his passage. The two men wrestle fiercely for a long time, and Gilgamesh finally prevails. After that, they become friends and set about looking for an adventure to share. Gilgamesh and Enkidu decide to steal trees from a distant cedar forest forbidden to mortals. A terrifying demon named Humbaba, the devoted servant of Enlil, the god of earth, wind, and air, guards it. The two heroes make the perilous journey to the forest, and, standing side by side, fight with the monster. With assistance from Shamash the sun god, they kill him. Then they cut down the forbidden trees, fashion the tallest into an enormous gate, make the rest into a raft, and float on it back to Uruk. Upon their return, Ishtar, the goddess of love, is overcome with lust for Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh spurns her. Enraged, the goddess asks her father, Anu, the god of the sky, to send the Bull of Heaven to punish him. The bull comes down from the sky, bringing with him seven years of famine. Gilgamesh and Enkidu wrestle with the bull and kill it. The gods meet in council and agree that one of the two friends must be punished for their transgression, and they decide Enkidu is going to die. He takes ill, suffers immensely, and shares his visions of the underworld with Gilgamesh. When he finally dies, Gilgamesh is heartbroken. Gilgamesh can't stop grieving for Enkidu, and he can't stop brooding about the prospect of his own death. Exchanging his kingly garments for animal skins as a way of mourning Enkidu, he sets off into the wilderness, determined to find Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian Noah. After the flood, the gods had granted Utnapishtim eternal life, and Gilgamesh hopes that Utnapishtim can tell him how he might avoid death too. Gilgamesh's journey takes him to the twin-peaked mountain called Mashu, where the sun sets into one side of the mountain at night and rises out of the other side in the morning. Utnapishtim lives beyond the mountain, but the two scorpion monsters that guard its entrance refuse to allow Gilgamesh into the tunnel that passes through it. Gilgamesh pleads with them, and they relent. After a harrowing passage through total darkness, Gilgamesh emerges into a beautiful garden by the sea. There he meets Siduri, a veiled tavern keeper, and tells her about his quest. She warns him that seeking immortality is futile and that he should be satisfied with the pleasures of this world. However, when she can't turn him away from his purpose, she directs him to Urshanabi, the ferryman. Urshanabi takes Gilgamesh on the boat journey across the sea and through the Waters of Death to Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh the story of the flood—how the gods met in council and decided to destroy humankind. Ea, the god of wisdom, warned Utnapishtim about the gods' plans and told him how to fashion a gigantic boat in which his family and the seed of every living creature might escape. When the waters finally receded, the gods regretted what they'd done and agreed that they would never try to destroy humankind again. Utnapishtim was rewarded with eternal life. Men would die, but humankind would continue. When Gilgamesh insists that he be allowed to live forever, Utnapishtim gives him a test. If you think you can stay alive for eternity, he says, surely you can stay awake for a week. Gilgamesh tries and immediately fails. So Utnapishtim orders him to clean himself up, put on his royal garments again, and return to Uruk where he belongs. Just as Gilgamesh is departing, however, Utnapishtim's wife convinces him to tell Gilgamesh about a miraculous plant that restores youth. Gilgamesh finds the plant and takes it with him, planning to share it with the elders of Uruk. But a snake steals the plant one night while they are camping. As the serpent slithers away, it sheds its skin and becomes young again. When Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, he is empty-handed but reconciled at last to his mortality. He knows that he can't live forever but that humankind will. Now he sees that the city he had repudiated in his grief and terror is a magnificent, enduring achievement—the closest thing to immortality to which a mortal can aspire.

Gilgamesh Tablet VII Overview

Enkidu awakens from a chilling nightmare. In the dream, the gods were angry with him and Gilgamesh and met to decide their fate. Great Anu, Ishtar's father and the god of the firmament, decreed that they must punish someone for killing Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven and for felling the tallest cedar tree. Only one of the companions, however, must die. Enlil, Humbaba's master and the god of earth, wind, and air, said that Enkidu should be the one to die. Shamash, the sun god, defended Enkidu. He said that Enkidu and Gilgamesh were only doing what he told them to do when they went to the Cedar Forest. Enlil became angry that Shamash took their side and accused Shamash of being their comrade, not a god. The dream proves true when Enkidu falls ill. Overcome with self-pity, he curses the cedar gate that he and Gilgamesh brought back from the forbidden forest. He says he would have chopped the gate to pieces if he'd known his fate, and that he'd rather be forgotten forever than doomed to die like this. Gilgamesh is distraught. He tells Enkidu that he has gone before the gods himself to plead his case, but that Enlil was adamant. Gilgamesh promises his friend that he will build him an even greater monument than the cedar gate. He will erect an enormous statue of Enkidu, made entirely of gold. Enkidu cries out to Shamash. He curses the hunter who first spotted him at the watering hole and says he hopes his hunting pits are filled in and his traps are unset. Weeping, he curses the temple prostitute too, who seduced him away from the animals. Shamash answers him from afar. He asks why Enkidu curses the harlot, since if it hadn't been for her, Enkidu would have never tasted the rich foods of the palace, never worn beautiful clothes, and never known Gilgamesh's friendship. Shamash tells Enkidu that when he dies, Gilgamesh will wander the earth, undone by grief. Enkidu finds comfort in Shamash's words. He retracts his curse and supersedes it with a blessing for the prostitute: May her patrons be generous and rich. The next morning, lying in his sickbed, Enkidu tells Gilgamesh about another terrible dream. In the dream, he was all alone on a dark plain, and a man with a lion's head and an eagle's talons seized him. They fought furiously, but the man overpowered him and changed him into a birdlike creature. Then he dragged him down to the underworld. There he saw kings, gods, and priests, all of them dressed in feathers. He saw King Etana, whom Ishtar had once chosen to be King of Kish, and Samuqan, the god of cattle. All of them were living in darkness. Dirt was their food and drink. Queen Ereshkigal, the ruler of the underworld, sat on her throne, and Belit-Seri, the scribe of the gods, whose tablet tells everyone's fate, knelt before her. Enkidu says the queen looked at them and asked who led them there. Enkidu tells the appalled Gilgamesh that he would have been blessed if he'd died in battle, because those who die in battle are "glorious." He suffers for twelve more days then dies. Analysis The first half of Sin-Leqi-Unninni's version of The Epic of Gilgamesh revels in the friends' raw physicality as they sate themselves with pleasure and test themselves with heroic tasks. In this pivotal tablet, the exact halfway point of the epic, they must struggle against that same physicality. No matter how strong, bold, or beautiful they are, a place awaits them in the underworld. The adolescent exuberance and celebration of Tablet VI comes to an abrupt halt as the two heroes face the stark horror of an agonizing, wasting death, unredeemed by battlefield heroics. The gods have spoken, and their verdict seems arbitrary: Enkidu must die. In a later tablet, Gilgamesh learns that the gods once set out to eliminate all life on Earth for no discernable reason at all. Enkidu curses the hunter and the prostitute, who connived together to lure him from the wilderness. He believes that if he had stayed with the animals and continued to live like an animal, he wouldn't have brought doom upon himself. Without self-knowledge, he wouldn't be able to feel the exquisite anguish that the prospect of dying is causing him. Enlil accused Shamash of acting more like a human being than a deity, and the comfort the sun god offers Enkidu is indeed humanistic. The god tells him that love, glory, and the pleasures of a cultivated life are important, as are being loved while alive and mourned when dead. This consolation offers a strange kind of comfort, since he is essentially saying that the recompense for losing the life he cherished is the life he cherished. Enkidu's curses are more than mere figures of speech. In ancient Mesopotamia, the culture considered curses an especially potent sort of magic that could alter fate. For this reason, Enkidu offers an alternative blessing for the prostitute, instead of simply withdrawing his curse. The curse and the blessing alike must stand. Enkidu's dream about the underworld anticipates the journey upon which the heartbroken Gilgamesh will soon embark. Enkidu's observation of King Etana among the dead is significant, as recovered fragments of the ancient Sumerian "Myth of Etana" describe that king's futile quest to find a magical plant to cure his wife's barrenness. At one point in the story, an eagle carries him up to heaven, but he falls back to earth. This of course anticipates Gilgamesh's later misadventure with another magical plant.

Gilgamesh Tablet X Overview

Siduri, the veiled barmaid, keeps a tavern by the edge of the sea. Gazing along the shore, she sees a man coming toward her. He is wearing animal skins, and his face is wind-bitten and battered. He looks like he has been traveling for a long time. Concerned that he might be dangerous, Siduri closes and bars her door against him. The traveler pounds on the door and threatens to smash it down. He says he is Gilgamesh, and Siduri asks him why he looks like a tramp and a criminal. Gilgamesh says that he is grieving for his companion who helped to fight the lions and the wolves and slay the demon Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. He says that Enkidu has been overtaken by the fate that awaits all humankind—he's turned to clay. Gilgamesh asks Siduri if that is what will happen to him. Siduri unlocks her door and tells Gilgamesh that only the gods live forever. She invites him into her tavern to clean himself up, change his clothes, and eat and drink his fill. But Gilgamesh no longer cares for earthly pleasures and refuses to be distracted from his mission. He asks her how to find Utnapishtim. Siduri tells Gilgamesh that Shamash the sun god crosses the sea every day, but from the beginning of time, no mortal has ever been able to follow him, because the sea is too stormy and treacherous. Siduri says that even if he miraculously survived the crossing, he would then face the poisonous Waters of Death, which only Urshanabi, Utnapishtim's boatman, knows how to navigate. She tells him that Urshanabi lives deep in the forest, where he guards the Urnu-snakes and the Stone Things. When Siduri sees that she cannot sway Gilgamesh from his purpose, she gives him directions to Urshanabi's house and tells him to ask Urshanabi to take him to Utnapishtim. She instructs Gilgamesh to return to her if Urshanabi refuses. Gilgamesh sets off to find Urshanabi. When he arrives near the place where the Urnu-snakes and the Stone Things reside, he attacks them with his axe and dagger. Then he introduces himself to Urshanabi. Urshanabi studies Gilgamesh's face and asks him why he looks like a tramp. He observes that Gilgamesh's face is worn and weathered and that sorrow rests in his belly. Gilgamesh tells him about Enkidu, his grief, his fear, and his implacable determination to go to Utnapishtim. Urshanabi says he will take Gilgamesh to Utnapishtim, but that Gilgamesh has made the journey immeasurably more difficult because he smashed the Stone Things and the Urnu-snakes, which propelled and protected his boat. Urshanabi orders Gilgamesh to go back into the forest and cut sixty poles, and then another sixty poles. (In some versions of the story, Gilgamesh must cut as many as 300 poles.) Each pole must be exactly sixty cubits in length (approximately ninety feet). Urshanabi instructs him to fit the poles with rings and cover them with pitch, and then they will attempt the voyage. Gilgamesh cuts the poles, and they sail off together across the perilous sea. In three days they sail as far as an ordinary boat would have sailed in two months. When they arrive at the Waters of Death, the boatman tells Gilgamesh to use the punting poles but to be sure his hands don't touch the water. Gilgamesh poles the boat through the Waters of Death. His great strength causes him to break all one hundred and twenty poles. When the last pole is ruined, he takes off the skin he wears and holds it up as a sail. An old man stands on the shore, watching the boat approach. The old man wonders what happened to the Stone Things and who the stranger is standing next to Urshanabi. When they get out of the boat, the old man asks Gilgamesh to identify himself. Gilgamesh tells him what he told Siduri and Urshanabi—about his grief for Enkidu, his fear that the same fate awaits him, and his desperation to avoid it if possible. The old man asks Gilgamesh why he grieves about mortality—nothing lives forever. The old man says the gods established that men would suffer death, and that when the gods give life, they also decide the day of death. He says that death is our certain destiny, even if we don't know when it will happen. Analysis Siduri the veiled barmaid is a traditional figure in Mesopotamian mythology and poetry, and in the Hurrian language her name means "young woman." The goddess of wine-making and beer brewing, she is usually considered a manifestation of Ishtar. Her warmth and kindness to Gilgamesh throughout this episode are notable, since he treated Ishtar with such contempt in Uruk. Scholars have failed to explain what the Stone Things or the Urnu-snakes are or why Gilgamesh destroys them. A fragmentary verse suggests that Gilgamesh also attacked a winged creature, who might have been Urshanabi himself. A later fragment of verse suggests that those Stone Things were magical images of some sort, and some scholars have speculated that they were lodestones, a type of mineral that possesses polarity. The tablets are frustratingly incomplete on this matter, and no other versions to flesh them out have been found yet. Thousands of clay tablets recovered from Mesopotamian digs over the years are still awaiting translation, and thousands more remain beneath the ground. The Italian Assyriologist Giovanni Pettinato recently discovered and translated a never-before-seen account of Gilgamesh's death. Perhaps someone will discover a solution to the mystery of the Urnu-snakes and the Stone Things too. None of the three characters Gilgamesh meets in this tablet recognize him when they see him, and they all give him the same advice, which emphasizes that he should stop his quest for immortality. Each of them takes note of Gilgamesh's unkempt appearance, listens patiently as he describes his terror of death, and reminds him that death is certain and life is all we have. Even Utnapishtim, who is himself immortal, advises Gilgamesh against pursuing his search for immortality, which suggests that Utnapishtim, in all his knowledge, has an idea about the value of life that Gilgamesh has not yet discovered. Utnapishtim has foiled death, but he will not help Gilgamesh to do the same. Utnapishtim says that Gilgamesh inherited his father's mortality and, like everything else in the mortal world, he is subject to death. Gilgamesh must continue to live as a mortal and accept death as part of life's natural and inevitable cycle.

Odyssey General Summary

Ten years have passed since the fall of Troy, and the Greek hero Odysseus still has not returned to his kingdom in Ithaca. A large and rowdy mob of suitors who have overrun Odysseus's palace and pillaged his land continue to court his wife, Penelope. She has remained faithful to Odysseus. Prince Telemachus, Odysseus's son, wants desperately to throw them out but does not have the confidence or experience to fight them. One of the suitors, Antinous, plans to assassinate the young prince, eliminating the only opposition to their dominion over the palace. Unknown to the suitors, Odysseus is still alive. The beautiful nymph Calypso, possessed by love for him, has imprisoned him on her island, Ogygia. He longs to return to his wife and son, but he has no ship or crew to help him escape. While the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus debate Odysseus's future, Athena, Odysseus's strongest supporter among the gods, resolves to help Telemachus. Disguised as a friend of the prince's grandfather, Laertes, she convinces the prince to call a meeting of the assembly at which he reproaches the suitors. Athena also prepares him for a great journey to Pylos and Sparta, where the kings Nestor and Menelaus, Odysseus's companions during the war, inform him that Odysseus is alive and trapped on Calypso's island. Telemachus makes plans to return home, while, back in Ithaca, Antinous and the other suitors prepare an ambush to kill him when he reaches port. On Mount Olympus, Zeus sends Hermes to rescue Odysseus from Calypso. Hermes persuades Calypso to let Odysseus build a ship and leave. The homesick hero sets sail, but when Poseidon, god of the sea, finds him sailing home, he sends a storm to wreck Odysseus's ship. Poseidon has harbored a bitter grudge against Odysseus since the hero blinded his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, earlier in his travels. Athena intervenes to save Odysseus from Poseidon's wrath, and the beleaguered king lands at Scheria, home of the Phaeacians. Nausicaa, the Phaeacian princess, shows him to the royal palace, and Odysseus receives a warm welcome from the king and queen. When he identifies himself as Odysseus, his hosts, who have heard of his exploits at Troy, are stunned. They promise to give him safe passage to Ithaca, but first they beg to hear the story of his adventures. Odysseus spends the night describing the fantastic chain of events leading up to his arrival on Calypso's island. He recounts his trip to the Land of the Lotus Eaters, his battle with Polyphemus the Cyclops, his love affair with the witch-goddess Circe, his temptation by the deadly Sirens, his journey into Hades to consult the prophet Tiresias, and his fight with the sea monster Scylla. When he finishes his story, the Phaeacians return Odysseus to Ithaca, where he seeks out the hut of his faithful swineherd, Eumaeus. Though Athena has disguised Odysseus as a beggar, Eumaeus warmly receives and nourishes him in the hut. He soon encounters Telemachus, who has returned from Pylos and Sparta despite the suitors' ambush, and reveals to him his true identity. Odysseus and Telemachus devise a plan to massacre the suitors and regain control of Ithaca. When Odysseus arrives at the palace the next day, still disguised as a beggar, he endures abuse and insults from the suitors. The only person who recognizes him is his old nurse, Eurycleia, but she swears not to disclose his secret. Penelope takes an interest in this strange beggar, suspecting that he might be her long-lost husband. Quite crafty herself, Penelope organizes an archery contest the following day and promises to marry any man who can string Odysseus's great bow and fire an arrow through a row of twelve axes—a feat that only Odysseus has ever been able to accomplish. At the contest, each suitor tries to string the bow and fails. Odysseus steps up to the bow and, with little effort, fires an arrow through all twelve axes. He then turns the bow on the suitors. He and Telemachus, assisted by a few faithful servants, kill every last suitor. Odysseus reveals himself to the entire palace and reunites with his loving Penelope. He travels to the outskirts of Ithaca to see his aging father, Laertes. They come under attack from the vengeful family members of the dead suitors, but Laertes, reinvigorated by his son's return, successfully kills Antinous's father and puts a stop to the attack. Zeus dispatches Athena to restore peace. With his power secure and his family reunited, Odysseus's long ordeal comes to an end.

Aeneid Book I Summary

Virgil opens his epic poem by declaring its subject, "warfare and a man at war," and asking a muse, or goddess of inspiration, to explain the anger of Juno, queen of the gods (I.1). The man in question is Aeneas, who is fleeing the ruins of his native city, Troy, which has been ravaged in a war with Achilles and the Greeks. The surviving Trojans accompany Aeneas on a perilous journey to establish a new home in Italy, but they must contend with the vindictive Juno. Juno harbors anger toward Aeneas because Carthage is her favorite city, and a prophecy holds that the race descended from the Trojans will someday destroy Carthage. Juno holds a permanent grudge against Troy because another Trojan, Paris, judged Juno's rival Venus fairest in a divine beauty contest. Juno calls on Aeolus, the god of the winds, directing him to bring a great storm down upon Aeneas as he sails south of Sicily in search of a friendly harbor. Aeolus obeys, unleashing a fierce storm upon the battle-weary Trojans. Aeneas watches with horror as the storm approaches. Winds and waves buffet the ships, knocking them off course and scattering them. As the tempest intensifies, Neptune, the god of the sea, senses the presence of the storm in his dominion. He tells the winds that Aeolus has overstepped his bounds and calms the waters just as Aeneas's fleet seems doomed. Seven ships remain, and they head for the nearest land in sight: the coast of Libya. When they reach the shore, before setting out to hunt for food, a weary and worried Aeneas reminds his companions of previous, more deadly adversities they have overcome and the fated end toward which they strive. Meanwhile, on Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, Aeneas's mother, Venus, observes the Trojans' plight and begs Jupiter, king of the gods, to end their suffering. Jupiter assures her that Aeneas will eventually find his promised home in Italy and that two of Aeneas's descendants, Romulus and Remus, will found the mightiest empire in the world. Jupiter then sends a god down to the people of Carthage to make sure they behave hospitably to the Trojans. Aeneas remains unaware of the divine machinations that steer his course. While he is in the woods, Venus appears to him in disguise and relates how Dido came to be queen of Carthage. Dido's wealthy husband, Sychaeus, who lived with her in Tyre (a city in Phoenicia, now Lebanon), was murdered for his gold by Pygmalion, her brother. Sychaeus appeared to Dido as a ghost and advised her to leave Tyre with those who were opposed to the tyrant Pygmalion. She fled, and the emigrant Phoenicians settled across the sea in Libya. They founded Carthage, which has become a powerful city. Venus advises Aeneas to go into the city and talk to the queen, who will welcome him. Aeneas and his friend Achates approach Carthage, shrouded in a cloud that Venus conjures to prevent them from being seen. On the outskirts of the city, they encounter a shrine to Juno and are amazed to behold a grand mural depicting the events of the Trojan War. Their astonishment increases when they arrive in Dido's court to find many of their comrades who were lost and scattered in the storm asking Dido for aid in rebuilding their fleet. Dido gladly grants their request and says that she wishes she could meet their leader. Achates remarks that he and Aeneas were clearly told the truth regarding their warm welcome, and Aeneas steps forward out of the cloud. Dido is awestruck and delighted to see the famous hero. She invites the Trojan leaders to dine with her in her palace. Venus worries that Juno will incite the Phoenicians against her son. She sends down another of her sons, Cupid, the god of love, who takes the form of Aeneas's son, Ascanius. In this disguise, Cupid inflames the queen's heart with passion for Aeneas. With love in her eyes, Dido begs Aeneas to tell the story of his adventures during the war and the seven years since he left Troy. Analysis Virgil adheres to the epic style that the ancient Greek poet Homer established by invoking the muse at the opening of his poem. A similar invocation begins both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Homeric epics that are the models for Virgil's epic, and the Aeneid picks up its subject matter where Homer left off. The events described in the Aeneid form a sequel to the Iliad and are contemporaneous with the wanderings of Ulysses in the Odyssey. Although Virgil alludes to Homer's epics and self-consciously emulates them, he also attempts to surpass and revise Homer, and the differences between the two authors' epics are important markers of literary evolution. Whereas the Iliad and the Odyssey call the muse in the first line, Virgil begins the Aeneid with the words "I sing," and waits a number of lines before making his invocation. It is as though Virgil is invoking the muse out of obligation rather than out of a genuine belief in divine inspiration. He emphasizes his presence as a narrator and becomes more than a medium through which the epic poem is channeled. The hero at sea, buffeted by weather and impeded by unexpected encounters, is another recurring motif in epic poetry. According to the Roman worldview, which was derived from the Greeks, men's actions and fortunes are compelled by a unitary fate, and the specific events of their lives are dictated by a host of competing supernatural forces. Aeneas, sailing from the ruins of Troy toward Italy, is not completely in control of his direction and progress. Fate has ordained, we learn, that Aeneas and his people will found a new race in Italy that will eventually become the Roman Empire. Jupiter ensures this outcome, and none of the gods can prevent it from happening. They can, however, affect the way in which it happens, and the rivalries and private loyalties of the meddling gods fuel the conflict in the poem. The reasons for Juno's hatred of the Trojans and her enduring antagonism would have been well known to Virgil's Roman audience, which was familiar with the Greek tradition. Homer details the background of Juno's resentment against Troy in the Iliad. The goddess of strife, Eris, threw a golden apple before the goddesses on Olympus and said it was a prize for the most beautiful among them. Three goddesses claimed it: Juno, Venus, and Minerva. They decided to have Paris, a Trojan and the most handsome of mortal men, settle the dispute. In secret, each goddess tried to bribe him, and in the end, he gave the apple to Venus because she offered the most tempting bribe: the fairest woman on Earth, Helen. That Helen was already married to a Greek king named Menelaus only engendered further conflict. When Paris took her away to Troy, her husband assembled the bravest warriors of the Argives (Greeks)—including his brother Agamemnon, Ulysses, and Achilles—and they set sail for Troy, initiating the Trojan War. They laid siege to the city for ten years, and, naturally, the goddesses took sides. Juno and Minerva aided the Greeks, and Venus helped the Trojans, to whom she had an added loyalty since the Trojan warrior Aeneas is her son. This rivalry between the gods looms over the narrative of the Aeneid so heavily that at times the story seems to be less about the deeds of the mortal characters than about the bickering of the gods, who continually disrupt and manipulate events on Earth. One of the Aeneid's main themes, though, is that for both gods and mortals, fate always wins in the end. Aeneas is destined to settle in Italy, and not even the unbridled wrath of Juno, queen of the gods, can prevent this outcome. Jupiter, whose inexorable will is closely identified with fate because he is the highest of the gods, sees to it that his overall plan comes to pass. When Juno has Aeolus torment Aeneas, it is necessary for Jupiter to take sides, so he assists Venus. In fact, Jupiter's occasional intervention on Venus's behalf, to Juno's great frustration, sets the general pattern for the Aeneid. Whereas Juno attempts to defy fate to satisfy her own anger, Aeneas reveals in his first speech in the epic, delivered to his crew upon their landing in Libya, his ability to suppress his own emotions and will in pursuit of his fated duty. Virgil tells us that Aeneas has "contained his anguish" and "feigned hope" in order to rally the morale of his crew by reminding them of past hardships and future glory (I.285-286). He is incapable of emotional self-indulgence. For Aeneas, fate, although promised, demands certain actions and sacrifices. It requires the virtue known as piety, which entails placing his service to fate—his divine mission to found a new city in Italy—above all else in his life.

Gilgamesh Tablet VIII and IX Overview

Enkidu's death shatters Gilgamesh. He rips his clothes and tears his hair. He circles Enkidu's body like an eagle. He paces restlessly like a lioness whose cubs have been killed. In the presence of the city elders, Gilgamesh proclaims his grief. Gilgamesh's lamentation overflows with images of animals and nature. Everyone mourns, including the creatures of the field and plain, the elders of the city, and the prostitute who domesticated Enkidu. The pathways to the Cedar Forest, the rivers Ulaja and Euphrates, and the farmers and shepherds in their fields all mourn Enkidu's death. Gilgamesh summons the craftsmen of Uruk, including the metalworkers, stone carvers, goldsmiths, and engravers. As he had promised his dying friend, he commands them to make a statue of Enkidu to honor his deeds and celebrate his fame. Gilgamesh stays by his friend's body until a worm crawls out of its nose. Then he casts aside his royal garments with disgust, as if they were filthy, and dons unscraped, hair-covered animal skins. He pours honey into a carnelian bowl, places some butter in a bowl of lapis lazuli, and makes an offering to Shamash. Then Gilgamesh sets off into the wilderness, just as Shamash had told the dying Enkidu he would. He wanders alone, desolate with sorrow, wondering if he must die too. At last he decides to seek out Utnapishtim, who survived the flood that had almost ended life on Earth and subsequently became the only mortal granted everlasting life by the gods. He hopes Utnapishtim can tell him how he too might escape death. Utnapishtim lives in the far-off place where the sun rises, a place where no mortal has ever ventured. One night in the mountains before going to sleep, Gilgamesh prays to the moon god, Sin, to grant him a vision. In the middle of the night he awakens, surrounded by lions. Drawing his axe from his belt, he attacks them, reveling in the slaughter. After more journeying, he arrives at Mashu, the twin-headed mountain. One peak looks west, toward the setting of the sun, and the other looks east toward its rising. The summits of Mashu brush against heaven itself, and its udders reach down into the underworld. Two monsters, a Scorpion-man and his wife, guard its gates. The male monster tells his wife that the person who dares to come here must be a god. The wife says that two-thirds of him is god, but the rest of him is human. The male monster asks Gilgamesh who he is and why he's journeyed through fearful wilderness and braved terrible dangers to come to the mountain that no mortal has ever before visited. When Gilgamesh tells the monsters about his quest, the Scorpion-man informs him that Utnapishtim lives on the other side of the mountain. To get there, Gilgamesh can use a tunnel that runs through the mountain. Shamash uses it every night when he travels back to the place where he rises in the morning. It would take Gilgamesh twelve double hours to journey through the passage, and the way is completely dark. (The Babylonian hour was sixty minutes, and the day was divided into twelve "double hours.") No mortal could survive such darkness, and the monsters cannot permit him to try. After they listen to Gilgamesh's pleas, they relent and tell him to be careful. Gilgamesh walks through the mountain. He can't see in front of him or behind him in the total darkness. He walks the first, second, and third double hour in total blackness and struggles for breath in the hot darkness. He walks four, five, and six double hours with the north wind blowing in his face. As the eleventh double hour approaches, the darkness begins to fade. At the end of the twelfth double hour, Gilgamesh emerges from the tunnel into the sweet morning air and the sunlight. He steps into a beautiful garden filled with fruit and foliage the colors of carnelian, rubies, and other jewels. Beyond the garden glitters the sea. Analysis Gilgamesh's lament for Enkidu beautifully evokes his dead companion's wild origins as he personifies the meadows and landscape and projects his grief upon them. The form and imagery of these passages are similar to those in much later poems in the modes of pastoral and pastoral elegy, which were important modes of literature from ancient Rome through Shakespeare's time and beyond. Pastoral literature usually invokes the simple, natural life of shepherds in an idealized way, and pastoral elegies follow this tradition, providing extended descriptions of the deceased's life, the mourners, the injustice of death itself, and the possibility of life after death. Milton's "Lycidas," in which a man drowns during a sea voyage, is an example of a pastoral elegy. The passages also suggest the biblical "Song of Songs." Ahead of its time, Gilgamesh's passage through Mashu unfolds in a deliberately archaic style, a self-conscious imitation of ancient Sumerian poetry that is very repetitive. The scene with the lions is fragmentary, and different translators have treated it in different ways. In some versions, the lions are a dream vision. In others, Gilgamesh attacks them because he is so frustrated that the gods have not sent him a vision. The scene is bizarre and lacks context, but the explosion of nocturnal violence is still deeply suggestive of Gilgamesh's black mood. Although the poet/editor Sin-Leqi-Unninni's name means "Moon god, accept my plea," Gilgamesh mentions the moon god only here in the main body of the epic. Gilgamesh appeals to him again in Tablet XII, where he also refuses to answer. After Enkidu anointed himself with oil and covered his hairy body with clothes, the shepherds had marveled at his resemblance to Gilgamesh. Now the process is reversed, as Gilgamesh exchanges his royal garments for hairy skins, as though he wants to become his dead friend. Gilgamesh is undone by grief and overwhelmed by dread. Civilization and culture no longer mean anything to him, even though he had once epitomized them. He looks like Enkidu did when he was still a wild man. This second departure from Uruk is much different from the first, when Gilgamesh and Enkidu strode through the seven-bolt gate to confront the demon Humbaba in the forbidden Cedar Forest. They were conquerors then, avid for glory, heavily laden with weapons. When one of them faltered, the other was there to support him. Now Gilgamesh is a humble, solitary seeker. This second, darker quest is a familiar motif in romantic quest tales. Gilgamesh undertook his first quest to earn fame, and now he seeks his soul. His journey to the double-peaked mountain and his long passage through its caverns recapitulate the movement of the entire epic so far. First the hero successfully passes through great perils, then he plunges into a terrible darkness. When Gilgamesh reemerges into the light, into a magical garden, he is experiencing a symbolic rebirth.

Gilgamesh Tablet I Overview

A prelude introduces us to the hero. Gilgamesh's mother was the Lady Wildcow Ninsun, a minor goddess noted for her wisdom, and Lugulbanda was his father. Gilgamesh built the great city of Uruk and surrounded it with magnificent, intricately constructed outer and inner walls. He erected beautiful temples for Anu, the god of the heavens, and for Anu's daughter Ishtar, the goddess of war and love. He laid out orchards and ponds and irrigated fields. A dauntless explorer, Gilgamesh opened passes through the mountains and dug wells in the wilderness. He traveled to the ends of the Earth and beyond, where he met Utnapishtim, the sole survivor of the great flood that almost ended the world. When he returned from his travels he wrote everything down on a tablet of lapis lazuli and locked it in a copper chest. As the story begins, Gilgamesh is terrifying and all-powerful. He sacrifices warriors whenever he feels like fighting, rapes his nobles' wives, takes whatever he wants from his people, and tramples anyone who gets in his way. The old men of Uruk complain, saying that a king is supposed to protect his subjects like a shepherd, not harass them like a wild ox. The gods listen. They tell Aruru, the goddess of creation, that since she made Gilgamesh, she must now make someone strong enough to stand up to him. Aruru takes some clay, moistens it with her spit, and forms another man, named Enkidu. Shunning the cultivated lands and the cities, he lives in the wilderness with the animals. His most prominent physical feature is his hairiness. One day a hunter sees him at a watering hole. Terrified, the hunter rushes back to his house to tell his father he has seen a giant man, the most powerful in the land. The hunter says the man has unset his traps and filled in his pits, and that now he cannot be a hunter. The hunter's father tells him he should go to Uruk and ask Gilgamesh to lend him a temple prostitute, whose greater power will suffice to conquer Enkidu. The hunter follows his father's advice and soon travels back to the wilderness with the prostitute. They wait by the watering hole for three days. When Enkidu finally appears, the hunter tells the prostitute to lie down on a blanket and show Enkidu her breasts. Enkidu comes to her and they copulate for six days and seven nights. When Enkidu's lust is finally sated, he returns to the animals, but they no longer regard him as their kin. They run away from him. Enkidu tries to pursue the animals, but he has become weaker and can no longer gallop as he did before. His mind has awakened. Troubled and confused, he goes back to the prostitute, who consoles him by telling him about the pleasures and wonders he will find in the city of Uruk. She tells him about music, food, festivals, and the strong, terrible king, Gilgamesh. As soon as Enkidu hears about Gilgamesh, he realizes how lonely he is. He longs to meet him and challenge him to a contest of strength. The prostitute tells Enkidu that Gilgamesh is stronger than he is and that he could not hope to prevail over him, but also that Gilgamesh longs for a friend. In fact, Gilgamesh has already had two dreams about Enkidu. In the first dream, a meteor lands in a field outside Uruk. Gilgamesh is drawn to the rock as if it were a woman. After lifting it with great effort, he carries it to his mother, Ninsun. In the second dream, Gilgamesh finds an axe lying in the street. Throngs of people surround it, overcome with admiration. Gilgamesh too loves the axe, as much as if it were his wife. He carries it to his mother and lays it at her feet. Ninsun tells him that both the rock and the axe represent the man he will soon contend with—the man who will become his most trusted companion and counselor, the friend who has the power to save him. Analysis The narrator introduces Gilgamesh in the past tense—the high walls of the city he built are already ancient. At the same time he suggests that the story is in Gilgamesh's own words, and that the legendary king himself wrote it down. Gilgamesh's story commemorates historical people and deeds, and at the same time, Gilgamesh's passage through heroism, grief, and wisdom is a perpetual, universal process. The story of Gilgamesh is both timeless and immediate. Though Gilgamesh's mother Ninsun plays a fairly significant role in the early parts of the story, we learn very little about his father. The Sin-Leqi-Unninni version of Gilgamesh says his father is Ninsun's husband, Lugulbanda, but it's not clear if Lugulbanda is actually Gilgamesh's biological father. Some versions of the poem declare that Gilgamesh's father is a priest, while others call him a "fool." Like Gilgamesh, Lugulbanda was a genuine historical figure. He precedes Gilgamesh on Uruk's king list by two, and he would have more likely been his grandfather, considering the lengths of the recorded reigns. Like Gilgamesh, people worshipped him as a god after his death. Though Gilgamesh is legendary, the poet hastens to inform us that he was not always exemplary. An equal was required to counter and control his awesome power. Gilgamesh was more god than mortal, and the narrator suggests that his equal, Enkidu, is a singular force of nature. He is hairy, he grazes with the animals, and he lacks the power of speech. Enkidu anticipates the hairy Esau of the Bible and possibly Ishmael, "the wild ass" of a man. He enables the animals to escape human dominance, which threatens the balance of the world. When Enkidu must depart from his life in nature and come into civilization, his redemption is through a woman. He confronts the strong power of a woman's sexuality, which tames him. Ishtar is Uruk's resident god, and the prostitutes in her service epitomize the values of that highly sophisticated urban culture. Enkidu's story repeats the story of humankind, the passage from mere animal existence to self-awareness and culture. His fall from nature foreshadows another biblical motif: Adam and Eve's fall from innocence in Eden when they become aware of their sexuality. Female sexuality is the force that makes domesticity and civilized life possible, and Ishtar, the goddess of love, fertility, and war, plays a huge role in Gilgamesh and Enkidu's stories. As the epic continues, however, sexual love does not necessarily figure in to the ultimate human relationship. In Gilgamesh, the love that exists between evenly matched comrades is even more important. Equilibrium, balance, and moderation are essential virtues. Gilgamesh is part god and part mortal, and these different aspects are in constant contention. The very qualities that make him so awesome—his strength and beauty—also make him monstrous, until they achieve balance. Enkidu's wildness, likewise, must come into harmony with his humanity. He requires an equally developed spirit to control his powerful body. Enkidu's domestication is a prerequisite for Gilgamesh's moral education.

Aeneid Book III Summary

Aeneas continues his story, recounting the aftermath of the fall of Troy. After escaping from Troy, he leads the survivors to the coast of Antander, where they build a new fleet of ships. They sail first to Thrace, where Aeneas prepares to offer sacrifices. When he tears at the roots and branches of a tree, dark blood soaks the ground and the bark. The tree speaks to him, revealing itself to be the spirit of Polydorus, son of Priam. Priam had sent Polydorus to the king of Thrace to be safe from the war, but when Troy fell, the Thracian king sided with the Greeks and killed Polydorus. After holding a funeral for Polydorus, Aeneas and the Trojans embark from Thrace with a sense of dread at the Thracian violation of the ethics of hospitality. They sail southward to the holy island of Delos. At Delos, Apollo speaks to Aeneas, instructing him to go to the land of his ancestors. Anchises interprets Apollo's remark as a reference to the island of Crete, where one of the great Trojan forefathers—Teucrus, after whom the Trojans are sometimes called Teucrians—had long ago ruled. Aeneas and his group sail to Crete and began to build a new city, but a terrible plague soon strikes. The gods of Troy appear to Aeneas in a dream and explain that his father is mistaken: the ancestral land to which Apollo referred is not Crete but Italy, the original home of Dardanus, from whom the Trojans take the name Dardanians. These hearth gods also reassert the prophecy of Roman supremacy, declaring, "You must prepare great walls for a great race" (III.223). The Trojan refugees take to the sea again. A cover of black storm clouds hinders them. They land at the Strophades, islands of the Harpies, fierce bird-creatures with feminine faces. The Trojans slaughter many cows and goats that are roaming free and hold a feast, provoking an attack from the Harpies. To no avail, the Trojans attempt to fight the Harpies off, and one of the horrible creatures places a curse upon them. Confirming that they are destined for Italy, she prophesies that the Trojans will not establish their city until hunger forces them to try to eat their very tables. Disturbed by the episode, the Trojans depart for the island of Leucata, where they make offerings at a shrine to Apollo. Next, they set sail in the direction of Italy until they reach Buthrotum, in Chaonia. There, Aeneas is astonished to discover that Helenus, one of Priam's sons, has become king of a Greek city. Helenus and Andromachë had been taken by Pyrrhus as war prizes, but seized power over part of their captor's kingdom after he was killed. Aeneas meets Andromachë and she relates the story of her and Helenus's captivity. Helenus then arrives and advises Aeneas on the path ahead. Andromachë adds that to reach the western coast of Italy it is necessary to take the long way around Sicily, to the south. The short path, a narrow gap of water between Sicily and Italy, is rendered practically impossible to navigate by two potentially lethal hazards: Charybdis, a whirlpool, and Scylla, a six-headed monster. Following Andromachë's instructions, Aeneas pilots his fleet along the southern coast of Italy to Sicily, where Mount Etna is erupting in the distance. Resting on a beach, the Trojans are startled by a ragged stranger who begs to be taken aboard. He was in the Greek army under Ulysses, and his crew was captured by a giant Cyclops on Sicily and barely escaped alive. He reports that Ulysses stabbed the monster in his one eye to allow their escape. As the stranger finishes telling the Trojans his tale, the blinded Cyclops nearly stumbles upon the group. The Trojans make a quick escape with the Greek straggler, just as the other Cyclopes come down to the shore. Sailing around Sicily, they pass several recognizable landmarks before landing at Drepanum, where Aeneas endures yet another unexpected loss: his father's death. Aeneas turns to Dido and concludes his story by saying that divine will has driven him to her shores. Analysis Although we know from Book I that the Trojans have been wandering for seven years, Aeneas, in telling his story, gives little explicit indication of the passage of time. Instead, the time frame is revealed in an indirect way by the situations the Trojan refugees encounter on their journey. In Book I, we see that there is already a mural in Carthage picturing the events of the Trojan War by the time Aeneas's crew arrives there. Historically, the Trojan War and the founding of Carthage were separated by centuries, not years, though the epic tradition has compressed this time span. We also see Helenus and Andromachë, in a moment that comes even before Aeneas's arrival in Carthage, and we learn that Pyrrhus, whom we last saw killing Priam, is now dead himself. Such details give us a sense that greater lengths of time have passed than the seafaring hero's description of his various arrivals and departures can convey. Aeneas's path across the Mediterranean is not straight, and his fleet is frequently thrown off course or sent backtracking by the gods. He has to wait for summer before he can even set off from the coast of Antander, outside of Troy, and he must wait for auspicious weather each time he takes to the sea. Aeneas indicates the length of time he spends on Crete, where the Trojans actually begin to establish a new city, when he describes the period as "a year of death" (III.195). Such lengthy stops account for the passage of so many years between the departure of the refugees from Troy, on the coast of Asia Minor, and their landfall in Libya, near Carthage. By the end of Book III, we have heard the prophecy that Aeneas is destined to found the race that will become the Roman people reiterated several times, each time with some additional—and often ambiguous—information. Aeneas's fate is set, but Virgil makes the role of fate complex, so that his hero's success in each adventure does not always seem a foregone conclusion. The dangers that Aeneas and his crew encounter are real threats, even if we know that he will survive them. The Trojan destiny is more flexible and alterable than it might seem, at least in a limited sense. There is no set time span that binds the workings of fate regarding Aeneas or prevents considerable delays on the way to Italy. The gods, who know what fate ultimately holds for Aeneas, still try to alter his path, knowing that they can assist him or cause him suffering along the way. It becomes obvious, in the case of the Harpy's curse, that the actions of the Trojans themselves, and not only those of the gods, can affect what they will have to endure. The fleeing Trojans, in a sense, try to take the easy way out—they keep looking for the nearest place to settle and make a new life. This urgent craving for stability is probably what causes Anchises to misinterpret Apollo's message, when he steers the group south from Delos to nearby Crete instead of Italy. In the end, though, Virgil's message is that fate is inevitable and demands obedience. The more one tries to delay or avoid fate, the more one suffers. At every wrong turn Aeneas and his men take, they endure another hardship that eventually puts them back on the path to Italy. A general overview of what happens to some of the major figures of the Trojan War after the fall of Troy is helpful in understanding some of the references in Book III. Pyrrhus the Greek, son of Achilles, took back two Trojans to be his slaves: Helenus, son of Priam, and Andromachë, widow of Hector. Helenus and Andromachë were soon married, though the latter continued to mourn Hector, her lost husband. Pyrrhus married Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen, born before Helen was taken to Troy. Unfortunately for Pyrrhus, Hermione had already been betrothed to Orestes, the son of Agamemnon. Orestes came and killed Pyrrhus, whose kingdom fell to Helenus. Thus, Helenus and Andromachë came to be rulers of a Greek city. This whole series of events is described in the Oresteia, a famous trilogy of plays by Aeschylus. As for the other Greek generals, Menelaus and Ulysses were both forced to delay their homecomings as punishment for wrongs committed in the sacking of Troy. Menelaus took eight years to return to Sparta, while Ulysses did not reach Ithaca for ten long years, as recounted by Homer in the Odyssey. Virgil solidifies the link between these stories by having Aeneas stop on the shore of Sicily, right where the Greeks had stopped, and actually encounter a member of Ulysses' crew who was left behind.

Aeneid Book VI Summary

At last, the Trojan fleet arrives on the shores of Italy. The ships drop anchor off the coast of Cumae, near modern-day Naples. Following his father's instructions, Aeneas makes for the Temple of Apollo, where the Sibyl, a priestess, meets him. She commands him to make his request. Aeneas prays to Apollo to allow the Trojans to settle in Latium. The priestess warns him that more trials await in Italy: fighting on the scale of the Trojan War, a foe of the caliber of the Greek warrior Achilles, and further interference from Juno. Aeneas inquires whether the Sibyl can gain him entrance to Dis, so that he might visit his father's spirit as directed. The Sibyl informs him that to enter Dis with any hope of returning, he must first have a sign. He must find a golden branch in the nearby forest. She instructs him that if the bough breaks off the tree easily, it means fate calls Aeneas to the underworld. If Aeneas is not meant to travel there, the bough will not come off the tree. Aeneas looks in dismay at the size of the forest, but after he says a prayer, a pair of doves descends and guides him to the desired tree, from which he manages to tear the golden branch. The hero returns to the priestess with the token, and she leads him to the gate of Dis. Just inside the gate runs the river Acheron. The ferryman Charon delivers the spirits of the dead across the river; however, Aeneas notices that some souls are refused passage and must remain on the near bank. The Sibyl explains that these are the souls of dead people whose corpses have not received proper burial. With great sadness, Aeneas spots Palinurus among the undelivered. Charon explains to the visitors that no living bodies may cross the river, but the Sibyl shows him the golden branch. Appeased, Charon ferries them across. On the other side, Aeneas stands aghast, hearing the wailing of thousands of suffering souls. The spirits of the recently deceased line up before Minos for judgment. Nearby are the Fields of Mourning, where those who died for love wander. There, Aeneas sees Dido. Surprised and saddened, he speaks to her, with some regret, claiming that he left her not of his own will. The shade of the dead queen turns away from him toward the shade of her husband, Sychaeus, and Aeneas sheds tears of pity. Aeneas continues to the field of war heroes, where he sees many casualties of the Trojan War. The Greeks flee at first sight of him. The Sibyl urges Aeneas onward, and they pass an enormous fortress. Inside the fortress, Rhadamanthus doles out judgments upon the most evil of sinners, and terrible tortures are carried out. Finally, Aeneas and the Sibyl come to the Blessed Groves, where the good wander about in peace and comfort. At last, Aeneas sees his father. Anchises greets him warmly and congratulates him on having made the difficult journey. He gladly answers some of Aeneas's many questions, regarding such issues as how the dead are dispersed in Dis and how good souls can eventually reach the Fields of Gladness. But with little time at hand, Anchises presses on to the reason for Aeneas's journey to the underworld—the explication of his lineage in Italy. Anchises describes what will become of the Trojan descendants: Romulus will found Rome, a Caesar will eventually come from the line of Ascanius, and Rome will reach a Golden Age of rule over the world. Finally, Aeneas grasps the profound significance of his long journey to Italy. Anchises accompanies Aeneas out of Dis, and Aeneas returns to his comrades on the beach. At once, they pull up anchor and move out along the coast. Analysis Aeneas's journey to the underworld in Book VI is another of the Aeneid's most famous passages. In fact, this passage helped raise Virgil to the status of a Christian prophet in the Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century, the Italian poet Dante used it as the foundation for his journey through hell in the Inferno, even though Virgil's version of the afterlife was obviously not a Christian one. Like Virgil, for example, Dante designed a hell with many sections and in which more severe punishments are handed down to those with greater sins. Also like Virgil, Dante exercised his formidable imagination in inventing penalties for sinners. While Virgil's Dis is pre-Christian, it represents an advanced version of classical theology, which was not codified in the way that modern religions are. In a world of temperamental gods who demand sacrifice and seem to dispense punishments and rewards almost arbitrarily, Virgil portrays an afterlife in which people are judged according to the virtue of their lives on Earth. This scheme of the afterlife is an idea that Christianity fused with the Judaic tradition into the Western consciousness centuries later, but that has its sources in the Orphic mysteries of classical antiquity. The presence of Orpheus, "priest of Thrace," in the Blessed Groves confirms the influence of Orphism, which was also a source for Plato's views of the afterlife, on Virgil's vision of the land of shades. Rhadamanthus's practice of listening to sinners and then sentencing them is remarkably similar to the Christian conception of judgment after death: souls who fail to repent for their sins on Earth pay more dearly for them in hell. Of course, one major difference is that Virgil does not have a separate equivalent of Christian heaven. All souls migrate to Dis, and the good ones occupy a better place, the Fields of Gladness, within the grand dungeon. However, in a way this scheme still fits with Christian theology, which postulates that before Christ's death and resurrection, all souls—good or bad—went to purgatory. To a Christian mindset, then, it was theologically accurate for Virgil, who died nineteen years before Christ's birth, to place even the good souls in Dis. Though this connection may seem tenuous to us, Virgil's influence among Christian poets and scholars increased because of these affinities. Aeneas's trip to the underworld is also Virgil's opportunity to indulge in an extensive account of Rome's future glory, particularly in his glorification of the Caesars. Virgil renders Augustus—his own ruler and benefactor—the epitome of the Roman Empire, the promised ruler who presides over the Golden Age. That Augustus was a patron of Virgil should not necessarily cause us to dismiss these passages as pure propaganda, however. Virgil had good reason to think he was living at the high point of history—after all, Rome ruled most of the known world and seemed invincible. In this context, Augustus emerges as the natural counterpart to Aeneas, bringing to perfect fruition the city whose history the Trojan hero initiated.

Gilgamesh Tablet XI and XII Overview

Gilgamesh realizes that the old man is Utnapishtim, the very person he has been seeking. So he poses the question that he has traveled so far and suffered so much to ask: How did Utnapishtim, a mortal man, become a god? How had he eluded death? And can Gilgamesh ever hope to do the same? Utnapishtim, the survivor of the flood that almost wiped out humankind, tells his story. Once upon a time, he says, he was king of Shuruppak, a beautiful, prosperous city on the banks of the Euphrates. Then the gods met in secret council—Anu, the god of the firmament; Ninurta, the god of war and wells; Enlil, the god of earth, wind, and air; Ennugi, the god of irrigation; and Ea, the cleverest of the gods, the god of wisdom and crafts. Enlil ordered a flood to destroy humankind. Ea had been sworn to secrecy, but he cleverly betrayed the gods' plans to Utnapishtim. Speaking to the walls of his house, he described the plans, while Utnapishtim heard everything on the other side of the walls. Ea warned him that the gods would be sending a terrible flood. He told him to build a boat of immense dimensions, ten dozen cubits in height (approximately 180 feet) with six decks and one acre of floor space, and load it up with the seed of each living thing and with his family and possessions. When Utnapishtim asked what he would tell the people of Shuruppak, who would have to help him build it, Ea suggested an artful lie. Tell them, he said, that you are leaving the city because Enlil hates you. Tell them that when you leave, the city will be showered with good fortune, that all manner of bread and wheat will rain down upon it, and that they will have more fish to eat than they can imagine. So Utnapishtim butchered bulls and sheep for the workers and gave them rivers of beer and wine to drink. It was like a festival. In seven days the boat was ready. With great difficulty, they launched it in the Euphrates. After Puzuramurri the caulker had sealed them inside, Utnapishtim gave him his house and everything in it. When the storm came, the gods clambered up as high as they could go and cringed in terror. Ishtar wept to see her children being destroyed. Eventually, the boat ran aground on a mountain peak. After seven days, Utnapishtim released a dove. When it couldn't find a dry place to alight, it returned to the boat. Utnapishtim released a swallow. It too returned. Then he released a raven, and it never came back. Upon reaching shore, Utnapishtim prepared a sacrifice. The gods of heaven were famished and gathered around the altar. Ishtar came down wearing a necklace of lapis lazuli made of beads shaped like flies. She said she would forget neither her necklace nor this calamity—nor would she forgive Enlil, since the flood was his idea and he never discussed it with the other gods. When Enlil arrived to partake of the sacrifice, he saw the boat and lost his temper. He demanded to know how anyone escaped the flood, since he intended it to destroy everyone. After Ninurta named the culprit, Ea himself spoke up. He chastised Enlil for creating the flood and said that if he wanted to punish someone, he should have made the punishment fit the crime. Not everyone deserved to die. He said that plagues, wolves, and famine could be used to kill some people instead of all people at once. Enlil listened and understood. He took Utnapishtim and his wife by the hands and made them kneel. Then he touched their foreheads and blessed them, turning them into gods. For saving humanity, he granted them eternal life. But they alone deserved that gift. When Utnapishtim finishes his story, he looks at Gilgamesh with scorn and asks if he really thinks he is worthy of becoming a god and living forever too. He tells Gilgamesh that, as a test, he should try to go a week without sleeping. Gilgamesh accepts the challenge, but when he sits down to begin his test he falls into a deep sleep. Utnapishtim shows his wife how Gilgamesh sleeps. His wife tells him to wake Gilgamesh and let him return home. Utnapishtim tells her that if Gilgamesh wakes now, he'll deny that he fell asleep. Utnapishtim tells his wife to bake a piece of bread each day, leave it next to him, and make a mark on the wall. These things will prove to Gilgamesh that he slept. After seven days, Utnapishtim touches Gilgamesh on the forehead and wakes him. Gilgamesh says he'd been close to falling asleep but denies actually sleeping. Then Utnapishtim shows him the seven pieces of bread and the seven marks on the wall. The first piece is dry as dust, the second only a little moister. The third is soggy and rotten, the fourth moldy, the fifth spotty, and the sixth only a little stale. The seventh is fresh from the oven. Gilgamesh is full of despair that he has not managed to escape the possibility of death. Utnapishtim tells Urshanabi, his boatman, that Urshanabi can never return here. He orders Urshanabi to take Gilgamesh to the washing place so Gilgamesh can clean himself and reveal the beauty he has been hiding. He tells Urshanabi to have Gilgamesh bind up his hair, throw the skin he wears into the sea, and put on a spotless robe so he can return to his city in honor. Gilgamesh washes himself and changes into royal garments. Then he and the boatman board their boat and pole themselves away from shore. Then Utnapishtim's wife asks her husband if there is anything he can give Gilgamesh to take back to his land. Gilgamesh poles the little boat back to shore. Utnapishtim says he will tell Gilgamesh one of the gods' secrets. He tells Gilgamesh about the thorny plant that grows beneath the waves called How-the-Old-Man-Once-Again-Becomes-a-Young-Man. Gilgamesh ties stone weights to his feet and dives into the sea. When he finds the plant he cuts the stones from his feet, and the waters cast him onto shore. He tells the boatman that he will share this plant with the elders of Uruk and then take some himself and be young again too. But one night, when they stop to camp, Gilgamesh takes a swim in a pool of cool water. A snake smells the plant and steals it. As it slithers away, it sheds its skin. Now the serpent is young again, but Gilgamesh will never be. Heartbroken, Gilgamesh sits beside the pool and weeps. Urshanabi and Gilgamesh travel on until they reach Uruk. When they arrive, Gilgamesh shows the boatman the city walls. He shows him its brickwork, fields, clay pits, and orchards. He shows him the temple of Ishtar. The main body of the poem ends here. Tablet XII is a mystical poem, from a much older tradition, that Sin-Leqi-Unninni, for unknown reasons, appended to the epic. It begins when Gilgamesh drops a drum and drumstick through the floor of "the carpenter's house" into the nether world. Enkidu volunteers to retrieve it. Gilgamesh warns his friend that he must do nothing to call attention to himself in the underworld or the "Cry of the Dead" will seize him. Enkidu disobeys him, doing exactly the opposite of what Gilgamesh advised, and is seized. Ereshkigal, the fearsome Queen of the Underworld, a ghastly mother and lover, exposes her breasts to him and pulls him on top of her. Gilgamesh goes before the gods and begs for their intercession. None of them will help him except Ea, the god of wisdom. Ea arranges to have Enkidu's spirit rise up into the world again so he and Gilgamesh can visit. Gilgamesh asks Enkidu what life is like in the underworld, and Enkidu gives a bleak account. He says that vermin devour his body. Gilgamesh asks him how it is for the other dead. Enkidu says that the more sons you have in this world, the better it goes in the other world. The man who has seven sons lives like a god. The dead who are the worst off are those who left no mourners behind. Analysis Tablet XI recounts the gods' secrets and the story of the deluge, and though the story often parallels the biblical story of Noah, the two are not identical. In the biblical tale, humankind's wickedness provokes God to send the flood, and God chooses Noah to survive because of his righteousness. In Gilgamesh the gods never give a reason for the flood. In fact, all of them but Enlil claim afterward that they opposed the idea. In one older version of the story, Enlil decides to exterminate humanity because their noise disturbs his sleep. His arbitrary nature appears earlier in the epic as well—he was the god who chose Enkidu to die. Unlike Noah, Utnapishtim owes his survival to Ea's cleverness, not to any special virtue. When Utnapishtim tells the people they will have a great harvest of bread and wheat, he is making a cruel pun. In Akkadian, the word for "bread" is almost identical to that for "darkness," and the word for "wheat" is very similar to "misfortune." The gods regret the flood immediately, since they rely on peoples' sacrifices for their sustenance. Utnapishtim's offerings are the first things they have eaten since the flood began. Arbitrary as the gods' actions seem, the story presents a clear philosophy: even if the gods are capricious and men must die, humankind, nonetheless, is meant to live. Gilgamesh finally finds the answer to his question about how he can elude death: he can't. When Ea says that some people should die but not all of them, he means that death is important, but that it should apply only to individuals. People die, but humankind will always endure. The parable of Utnapishtim's sleeping test illustrates this point. Sleep is a foretaste of death, but it is also a bodily need as fundamental as food. Gilgamesh has a body, so passing the test is impossible, but his humanness means he has much to do in the world. The parable of the magical plant and the serpent foreshadows the biblical tale of Adam, Eve, and the serpent. Just as with the flood story, however, the biblical version has a different moral dimension. After the serpent steals the plant, Gilgamesh knows that death cannot be avoided, a lesson he has perhaps already learned unconsciously, since he thought to share the plant with his community. Since Enkidu died, he has been mired in grief, and his wanting to share the plant shows that he is starting to think about his responsibilities to other people again. Though the serpent doomed Adam and Eve to a life marked by sin, Gilgamesh's serpent actually frees him in a way. Now he is starting to think like a king. Gilgamesh's quest for eternal life poisons the life that he should be living in the here and now. His place is in Uruk, which, if he rules it well, will live on after him and continue to grow in power and beauty. This is what Utnapishtim was implying when he ordered his boatman to take Gilgamesh to the washing place and return him to his city. The baptism acknowledges and honors his mortal body. This hero's final quest is his journey back home. Some critics read the ending of Gilgamesh as profoundly pessimistic. From a Christian standpoint, it is—there is no heaven, no promise of eternal life, and no divine redemption or grace, all of which make life worth living according to Christianity. Taken on its own terms, the ending is deeply affirmative. Gilgamesh can now see Uruk for the marvel of human ingenuity and labor that it is, a worthy monument to the mortals who built it. The temple of Ishtar appears again in the poem's very last verse, which suggests that feminine power resumes its importance as Gilgamesh's journey comes to an end. Gilgamesh and Enkidu's troubles began in earnest after they spurned the goddess. Yet after experiencing Siduri's and Utnapishtim's wife's kindness, and after learning about Ishtar's grief for humanity after the flood, Gilgamesh's attitude changes. Now that he accepts the fact that earthly life is all there is, the female force, which brings babies into the world and keeps the fire lit in the hearth, once again becomes central. Gilgamesh, one of the world's great homoerotic love stories, ends with the hero's return to the "house of Ishtar," where a woman rules. Tablet XII parallels the main poem. It contains many obscurities, such as the carpenter's house, the ownership of which scholars cannot determine, and the drum and drumstick, which possibly have shamanistic significance. In this tablet, Enkidu brings his undoing upon himself by deliberately provoking the denizens of the underworld, much as he provoked Ishtar after wrestling with the Bull of Heaven. Ea is the only god who agrees to intercede for Gilgamesh, and we know from Utnapishtim's story that Ea is a steadfast friend of humanity. Though Enkidu doesn't have any good news to report from the underworld, he does say that the richer life is in this world, and the more man leaves behind in the way of children, reputation, and friends, the easier death will be.

Gilgamesh Tablet III and IV Overview

Gilgamesh stands before the gates of Uruk and tells its people that he is determined to invade Humbaba's forbidden forest to cut down the cedar trees that Humbaba protects. He asks for their blessings and promises to return on time for the new year's feasts, predicting that all of Uruk will shout his praise. The elders of the city are appalled. They warn their king that he is going too far and that he underestimates Humbaba's power. The demon has the power to hear a deer stir in the forest from sixty leagues away, so no mortal trespasser could ever hope to escape his notice. He is a great warrior, a veritable battering ram. They caution Gilgamesh not to rely solely on his own strength and remind him that Enkidu knows the wilderness best. He knows how to find water in parched land, and he can find his way to the forest. If Gilgamesh must undertake this rash errand, then he will need all the help and protection his friend can give him. The old men remind Gilgamesh to appease the sun god Shamash with offerings of water and to be mindful of his father, Lugulbanda, who has the power to protect him too. Then Gilgamesh and Enkidu make their way to the great temple Egalmah, where they ask Gilgamesh's mother, the goddess Ninsun, for her blessing. Gilgamesh tells her that he doesn't intend to just steal the greatest of the trees Humbaba protects, but to kill the demon himself. Ninsun is distraught. She retreats to her bedroom, where she bathes and changes into priestly garments. Then she climbs to the roof of the temple and burns sacred herbs, summoning a superior deity, Shamash the sun god. She asks Shamash why Gilgamesh must embark on such a dangerous quest and why Shamash inspired him to do so. She commends her son to Shamash's protection and then formally adopts Enkidu as her son, placing a sacred pendant around his neck. Now Gilgamesh and Enkidu are truly brothers. An erotic ritual involving prostitutes, possibly of both genders, begins. At last, after prayers, invocations, sacrifices, speeches, and practical preparations, and after listening to more warnings from the elders and declaring their intention to prevail, the two heavily armed heroes step outside the seven-bolt gate of Uruk and set off on their adventure. They do not stop to eat until they have walked twenty leagues. In three days, they cover 150 leagues (450 miles); it would take an ordinary man three weeks to walk so far. They dig a well and make an offering to the god Shamash, then continue on their journey. As they walk, they bolster each other's spirits. Enkidu urges Gilgamesh on whenever his courage flags, assuring him that they can defeat Humbaba. When Enkidu falters, Gilgamesh reassures him that he is a good warrior, that when the time for battle comes he will not lose heart, and that they will stand and fight together. When they finally reach the forest, they pause for a moment and think about what they are going to do. Analysis Tablet III is even more fragmentary than Tablet II in the Sin-Leqi-Unninni version and Tablet IV is almost nonexistent—only about thirty lines have survived. Again, the various English translations stitch together older variants of the tale. Nonetheless, some important themes emerge. The extent of Shamash's importance becomes clear in this tablet. Shamash is the sun god, associated with light and wisdom. Humbaba, whom Shamash detests, is associated with darkness and evil. Gilgamesh and Enkidu do not seek only to glorify their own names. In seeking to kill Humbaba, Gilgamesh and Enkidu are doing a god's work, even if it is directly opposed to another god's desires. Shamash remains a strong presence in the poem until the last few tablets, when Ea, the god of wisdom and crafts, seems to assume his role. The temple Egalmah, where Gilgamesh's mother, Ninsun, resides and where she invokes Shamash from the roof, would have been a vast complex with an inner court and sanctuary and a ziggurat rising up behind it. The ziggurat was a holy mountain in miniature, an antechamber between worlds where the gods and men conversed. Although Ninsun herself is a god, she does not live in heaven. Rather, she is physically present in Uruk. Her invocation of Shamash and the lengths Gilgamesh and Enkidu will go to please him demonstrate the reach of Shamash's influence and power. The city elders urge Gilgamesh to pray to his father Lugulbanda for protection. In an ancient Sumerian poem called "Lugulbanda and Mount Hurrum," one of two about Gilgamesh's predecessor on Uruk's throne, Lugulbanda's companions leave him for dead on a journey to Aratta, a neighboring city-state. With Shamash's help, he finds his way back to civilization and sustains himself along the way by eating uncultivated plants and the flesh of wild animals. Gilgamesh and Enkidu's adventure in some ways recapitulates Lugulbanda's. Being left for dead and surviving—death and rebirth—are major themes in Gilgamesh. When Gilgamesh fortifies Enkidu's courage before the battle, telling him to "touch my heart," he foreshadows the terrible moment after Enkidu dies in Tablet VIII when Gilgamesh touches his companion's heart and feels nothing at all.

Metamorphoses Book III (Echo and Narcissus) Summary

In her anger, Juno strikes Tiresias blind. Jupiter compensates Tiresias by giving him supernatural foresight. Ovid records Tiresias's first prediction: that Narcissus will live a long life as long as he does not know himself. These cryptic words were born out when Narcissus, who had rejected all would-be lovers, fell in love with his own reflection.

Aeneid Book V Summary

Massive storm clouds greet the Trojan fleet as it embarks from Carthage, hindering the approach to Italy. Aeneas redirects the ships to the Sicilian port of Eryx, where his friend and fellow Trojan Acestes rules. After landing and being welcomed by Acestes, Aeneas realizes that it is the one-year anniversary of his father's death. He proposes eight days of sacrificial offerings and a ninth day of competitive games, including rowing, running, javelin, and boxing, in honor of his father. When the ninth day arrives, the festivities begin with a rowing race. Four galleys participate, each piloted by one of Aeneas's captains and manned by many eager youths. A suitable distance is marked off along the coastline and the race starts, with many spectators cheering from the beaches. Gyas, piloting the ship Chimaera, leads during the first half of the race. But at the turnaround point, his helmsman takes the turn too wide, and his boat falls behind. Down the final stretch, Sergestus takes the lead, but plows into the rocks. Cloanthus and Mnestheus race together to the finish, but Cloanthus prays to Neptune, who causes him to win. Lavish prizes are bestowed upon the competitors—even upon Sergestus, after he dislodges his ship from the rocks. Next comes the footrace. Nisus leads for most of the way, but slips on sacrificial blood near the finish. Euryalus wins the race, but Aeneas, as generous as before, hands out prizes to all the competitors. Next, the mighty Trojan Dares puts on his gauntlets (heavy fighting gloves) and challenges anyone to box with him. No one rises to the challenge at first, but Acestes finally persuades his fellow Sicilian Entellus—a great boxer now past his prime—to step into the ring. They begin the match, pounding each other with fierce blows. Younger and more agile, Dares darts quicker than Entellus. When he dodges a punch from Entellus, Entellus tumbles to the ground. Entellus gets up, though, and attacks Dares with such fierceness that Aeneas decides to call an end to the match. Entellus backs off, but to show what he could have done to Dares, he kills a bull—the prize—with a single devastating punch that spills the beast's brains. Next, the archery contest commences. Eurytion wins by shooting a dove out of the sky, but Acestes causes a spectacular stir when his arrow miraculously catches fire in midair. Finally, the youths of Troy and Sicily ride out on horseback to demonstrate their technique. They charge at each other in a mock battle exercise, impressing their fathers with their skill and audacity. Meanwhile, Juno's anger against the Trojans has not subsided. She dispatches Iris, her messenger, down to the Trojan women, who are further along the beach from where the men enjoy their sport. Iris stirs them to riot, playing on their fear of further journey and more battles. She distributes flaming torches among them, inciting them to burn the Trojan ships so that the men will be forced to build their new city here, in Sicily. Persuaded, the angry women set fire to the fleet. The Trojan men see the smoke and rush up the beach. They douse the ships with water but fail to extinguish the flames. Finally, Aeneas prays to Jupiter to preserve the fleet, and immediately a rainstorm hits, ending the conflagration. The incident shakes Aeneas, and he ponders whether he should be satisfied with settling in peace on the Sicilian coast. His friend Nautes, a seer, offers better advice: they should leave some Trojans—the old, the frail, the injured, and the women weary of sailing—in the care of Acestes. Aeneas considers this plan, and that night the ghost of his father appears to him, advising him to listen to Nautes. The spirit also tells him that Aeneus is going to have to fight a difficult foe in Latium, but must first visit the underworld to speak more with Anchises. Aeneas does not know the meaning of his father's mysterious prediction, but the next day he describes it to Acestes, who consents to host those who do not wish to continue to Italy after the Trojan fleet departs. Venus, fearing more tricks from Juno, worries about the group's safety at sea. She pleads with Neptune to let Aeneas reach Italy without harm. Neptune agrees to allow them safe passage across the waters, demanding, however, that one of the crew perish on the voyage, as a sort of sacrifice for the others. On the voyage, Palinurus, the lead captain of Aeneas's fleet, falls asleep at the helm and falls into the sea. Analysis Neptune's last strike at Palinurus seems a ridiculous impulse of divine vanity: Neptune harbors no explicit anger against the Trojans and has no interest in delaying their destiny, yet he requires the death of Palinurus as a price for safe passage. It is unclear why Neptune needs to be pacified at all—he is calm and gentle in his talk with Venus. They conduct their dealings with the tone of a friendly business transaction, and the bloodshed incurred seems gratuitous and irrational, demonstrating yet again how the whims of the gods have grave consequences for mortal affairs. The games on the shores of Eryx serve as a diversion both for us and for Aeneas and his crew. After four books of foul weather, destruction, suffering, and suicide, sport provides a lighthearted interlude. The games provide comic moments, as when Gyas gets stuck in the shoals and tosses his helmsman overboard, or when Nisus, in order to throw the race for his friend, Euryalus, slips on blood during the footrace, putting himself in the path of Salius. Such moments of lightness are rare in the Aeneid; Virgil fairly consistently maintains a solemn tone. In addition to providing comic relief, these sequences allow Virgil to display his poetic skill in creating excitement and suspense. He uses interjections and imperatives to draw us into the races: But close upon him, look, Diores in his flight matched stride for stride, Nearing his shoulder. (V.412-414) Virgil does not often break from the formal, epic style associated with the genre of tragedy, but this style does not always encompass the range of emotions that he wishes to portray. Above all, Virgil excels at representing universal passions, and here he portrays the passion for sport and physical competition. Any athlete can relate to the comic frustration of the losers, the triumphant gloating of the winners, the fervent displays of masculinity, and the irreverent enthusiasm of the spectators. The games matter little to the plot as a whole, but they show a more lighthearted facet of Virgil's artistry—one that is welcome after Dido's suicide, one of the epic's darkest passages. The goddesses Juno and Venus continue their quarrel by meddling further in the journey of the weary Trojans. The gods, not the hero, drive the plot—Aeneas has been reduced to a responsive role. A low point in terms of morale occurs when, to stop the burning of his fleet, Aeneas begs Jupiter to help him or end his life. Virgil's hero has reached the limit of psychological suffering in the face of divine mistreatment that he perceives to be arbitrary. That Aeneas goes so far as to consider ignoring the fates and settling in Sicily simply to end this weary journey indicates how tired and perhaps powerless he feels. But the importance of stoic persistence is one of the Aeneid's messages, and Aeneas decides to go on, his strength renewed by the visit of Anchises's spirit.

Metamorphoses Book VI (Arachne) Summary

Minerva approaches Arachne, her rival in the art of weaving. Disguised as an old woman, Minerva advises Arachne to ask Minerva for forgiveness. When Arachne will not comply, Minerva drops the disguise and upbraids Arachne. They compete. Minerva fashions a portrait that glorifies the gods in general and herself in particular. Her tapestry depicts the Olympian gods, her victory over Neptune, and four scenes of the gods conquering humans and turning them into animals. Arachne creates a flawless portrait of gods raping and deceiving humans. Minerva is so enraged by Arachne's skill that she begins to beat her. Unable to endure such treatment, Arachne hangs herself, and Minerva transforms her into a spider.

Metamorphoses Book IV (Pyramus and Thisbe) Summary

Rather than worship Bacchus, the three daughters of Minyas weave, telling stories to pass the time. The first (unnamed) daughter tells a tale of forbidden love. Pyramus and Thisbe fall in love. Their fathers oppose the match, so they decide to run away together. Thisbe arrives first at their meeting place, but she flees when she sees a lioness approaching. Pyramus finds the tracks of a lioness and Thisbe's shawl. Believing that Thisbe is dead, Pyramus thrusts his sword into his belly, killing himself. Thisbe returns, sees what has happened, and kills herself.

Odyssey Book 9 Summary

Reluctantly, Odysseus tells the Phaeacians the sorry tale of his wanderings. From Troy, the winds sweep him and his men to Ismarus, city of the Cicones. The men plunder the land and, carried away by greed, stay until the reinforced ranks of the Cicones turn on them and attack. Odysseus and his crew finally escape, having lost six men per ship. A storm sent by Zeus sweeps them along for nine days before bringing them to the land of the Lotus-eaters, where the natives give some of Odysseus's men the intoxicating fruit of the lotus. As soon as they eat this fruit, they lose all thoughts of home and long for nothing more than to stay there eating more fruit. Only by dragging his men back to the ship and locking them up can Odysseus get them off the island. Odysseus and his men then sail through the murky night to the land of the Cyclopes, a rough and uncivilized race of one-eyed giants. After making a meal of wild goats captured on an island offshore, they cross to the mainland. There they immediately come upon a cave full of sheep and crates of milk and cheese. The men advise Odysseus to snatch some of the food and hurry off, but, to his and his crew's detriment, he decides to linger. The cave's inhabitant soon returns—it is the Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon. Polyphemus makes a show of hospitality at first, but he soon turns hostile. He devours two of Odysseus's men on the spot and imprisons Odysseus and the rest in his cave for future meals. Odysseus wants to take his sword to Polyphemus right then, but he knows that only Polyphemus is strong enough to move the rock that he has placed across the door of his cave. Odysseus thus devises and executes a plan. The next day, while Polyphemus is outside pasturing his sheep, Odysseus finds a wooden staff in the cave and hardens it in the fire. When Polyphemus returns, Odysseus gets him drunk on wine that he brought along from the ship. Feeling jovial, Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name. Odysseus replies that his name is "Nobody" (9.410). As soon as Polyphemus collapses with intoxication, Odysseus and a select group of his men drive the red-hot staff into his eye. Polyphemus wakes with a shriek, and his neighbors come to see what is wrong, but they leave as soon as he calls out, "Nobody's killing me" (9.455). When morning comes, Odysseus and his men escape from the cave, unseen by the blind Polyphemus, by clinging to the bellies of the monster's sheep as they go out to graze. Safe on board their ships and with Polyphemus's flock on board as well, Odysseus calls to land and reveals his true identity. With his former prisoners now out of reach, the blind giant lifts up a prayer to his father, Poseidon, calling for vengeance on Odysseus. Analysis Books 9 through 12 are told as flashbacks, as Odysseus sits in the palace of the Phaeacians telling the story of his wanderings. These books thus give background not only to Odysseus's audience but to Homer's as well. Providing some of the richest and most celebrated examples of Odyssean cunning, they speak as much to the resourcefulness of the poet, who uses Odysseus's voice to render a more complete picture of his hero's wanderings, as to that of the hero himself. The foreboding that Odysseus feels as he heads toward the cave, which seems to prompt him to take the wine along, foreshadows his upcoming encounter with Polyphemus and the need for trickery to prevail. Once Homer establishes the conflict between Odysseus and Polyphemus, he unveils Odysseus's escape plan slowly and subtly: the significance of Odysseus's blinding of Polyphemus becomes clear when Polyphemus lets his sheep out to graze the next morning; similarly, Odysseus's curious lie about his name seems nonsense at first but adds a clever and humorous twist to the necessity of keeping the other Cyclopes from rescuing Polyphemus. Odysseus's eventual revelation of his identity to Polyphemus ultimately proves foolish, and, because it embodies a lack of foresight, stands in stark contrast to the cunning prudence that Odysseus displays in his plan to escape from the cave. Though his anger at Polyphemus for devouring his shipmates is certainly understandable, and though Polyphemus's blind rock-throwing fury eggs him on, Odysseus's taunts are unnecessary. By telling Polyphemus his name, Odysseus pits his mortal indignation against Poseidon's divine vengeance. This act of hubris, or excessive pride, ensures almost automatically that Odysseus will suffer grave consequences. Indeed, his eventual punishment costs him dearly: Poseidon's anger wipes away the very thing that he gains by cleverly obscuring his name—the safety of his men. The form that Odysseus's revelation of his identity takes is interesting, as it represents the cultural values of ancient Greece. Odysseus doesn't simply utter his name; rather, he attaches to it an epithet, or short, descriptive title ("raider of cities"), his immediate paternal ancestry ("Laertes's son"), and a reference to his homeland ("who makes his home in Ithaca") (9.561-562). This manner of introduction was very formalized and formulaic in Homeric Greece and should seem familiar to readers of the Iliad. Odysseus is here going through the motions of confirming his kleos (the glory or renown that one earns in the eyes of others by performing great deeds). He wants to make sure that people know that he was the one who blinded Polyphemus, explicitly instructing Polyphemus to make others aware of his act. Like the heroes of the Iliad, Odysseus believes that the height of glory is achieved by spreading his name abroad through great deeds. For all of his stupidity and brutishness, Polyphemus strikes some commentators as vaguely sympathetic at the end of Book 9. They point to the pitiful prayer that he offers to his father, Poseidon, and his warm treatment of his beloved sheep, who are soon to be devoured by Odysseus and his men. He caresses each wooly back as it passes out of his cave, and it is difficult not to pity him when he gives special attention to his faithful lead ram. Homer notes that, "[s]troking him gently, powerful Polyphemus murmured, / 'Dear old ram, why last of the flock to quit the cave?'" (9.497-498). The juxtaposition of "gently" and "powerful" and the poetically stated question illustrate that, despite his monstrousness, Polyphemus is somewhat tenderhearted. Additionally, in pondering why the ram is the last to leave the cave, Polyphemus attributes a human capacity for sympathy to him ("Sick at heart for your master's eye" [9.505]). His tenderness is all the more endearing for his ignorance—he is wholly unaware of Odysseus's cunning. Though Homeric culture praised Odysseus for his characteristic cunning, others have criticized him for this quality, perceiving his tactics as conniving, underhanded, dishonest, and even cowardly. Dante, for example, in the Inferno, relegates Odysseus to the Eighth Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell—the realm reserved for those guilty of Spiritual Theft—because of his treachery in the Trojan horse episode that enabled him to slaughter the unwitting Trojans.

Odyssey Book 19 and 11 Summary

Summary: Book 10 The Achaeans sail from the land of the Cyclopes to the home of Aeolus, ruler of the winds. Aeolus presents Odysseus with a bag containing all of the winds, and he stirs up a westerly wind to guide Odysseus and his crew home. Within ten days, they are in sight of Ithaca, but Odysseus's shipmates, who think that Aeolus has secretly given Odysseus a fortune in gold and silver, tear the bag open. The winds escape and stir up a storm that brings Odysseus and his men back to Aeolia. This time, however, Aeolus refuses to help them, certain that the gods hate Odysseus and wish to do him harm. Lacking wind, the Achaeans row to the land of the Laestrygonians, a race of powerful giants whose king, Antiphates, and unnamed queen turn Odysseus's scouts into dinner. Odysseus and his remaining men flee toward their ships, but the Laestrygonians pelt the ships with boulders and sink them as they sit in the harbor. Only Odysseus's ship escapes. From there, Odysseus and his men travel to Aeaea, home of the beautiful witch-goddess Circe. Circe drugs a band of Odysseus's men and turns them into pigs. When Odysseus goes to rescue them, Hermes approaches him in the form of a young man. He tells Odysseus to eat an herb called moly to protect himself from Circe's drug and then lunge at her when she tries to strike him with her sword. Odysseus follows Hermes' instructions, overpowering Circe and forcing her to change his men back to their human forms. Odysseus soon becomes Circe's lover, and he and his men live with her in luxury for a year. When his men finally persuade him to continue the voyage homeward, Odysseus asks Circe for the way back to Ithaca. She replies he must sail to Hades, the realm of the dead, to speak with the spirit of Tiresias, a blind prophet who will tell him how to get home. The next morning, Odysseus rouses his men for the imminent departure. He discovers, however, that the youngest man in his crew, Elpenor, had gotten drunk the previous night, slept on the roof, and, when he heard the men shouting and marching in the morning, fell from the roof and broke his neck. Odysseus explains to his men the course that they must take, which they are displeased to learn is rather meandering. Summary: Book 11 By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man . . . than rule down here over all the breathless dead. (See Important Quotations Explained) Odysseus travels to the River of Ocean in the land of the Cimmerians. There he pours libations and performs sacrifices as Circe earlier instructs him to do to attract the souls of the dead. The first to appear is that of Elpenor, the crewman who broke his neck falling from Circe's roof. He begs Odysseus to return to Circe's island and give his body a proper burial. Odysseus then speaks with the Theban prophet Tiresias, who reveals that Poseidon is punishing the Achaeans for blinding his son Polyphemus. He foretells Odysseus's fate—that he will return home, reclaim his wife and palace from the wretched suitors, and then make another trip to a distant land to appease Poseidon. He warns Odysseus not to touch the flocks of the Sun when he reaches the land of Thrinacia; otherwise, he won't return home without suffering much more hardship and losing all of his crew. When Tiresias departs, Odysseus calls other spirits toward him. He speaks with his mother, Anticleia, who updates him on the affairs of Ithaca and relates how she died of grief waiting for his return. He then meets the spirits of various famous men and heroes and hears the stories of their lives and deaths. Odysseus now cuts short the tale and asks his Phaeacian hosts to allow him to sleep, but the king and queen urge him to continue, asking if he met any of the Greeks who fell at Troy in Hades. He relates his encounters there: he meets Agamemnon, who tells him of his murder at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra. Next he meets Achilles, who asks about his son, Neoptolemus. Odysseus then tries to speak with Ajax, an Achaean who killed himself after he lost a contest with Odysseus over the arms of Achilles, but Ajax refuses to speak and slips away. He sees Heracles, King Minos, the hunter Orion, and others. He witnesses the punishment of Sisyphus, struggling eternally to push a boulder over a hill only to have it roll back down whenever it reaches the top. He then sees Tantalus, agonized by hunger and thirst. Tantalus sits in a pool of water overhung by bunches of grapes, but whenever he reaches for the grapes, they rise out of grasp, and whenever he bends down to drink, the water sinks out of reach. Odysseus soon finds himself mobbed by souls wishing to ask about their relatives in the world above. He becomes frightened, runs back to his ship, and immediately sails away. Analysis: Books 10-11 The mortal tendency to succumb to temptation manifests itself throughout Book 10. Just as Odysseus taunts the blinded Polyphemus in book 9 by boasting about his defeat of the Cyclops, the members of his crew prove unable to resist looking into Aeolus's bag, and their greed ends up complicating their nostos, or homeward voyage. As important and illustrative of weak-mindedness, however, is that Odysseus lets a year waste away in the arms of the goddess Circe. While his crew certainly seems not to mind the respite, Odysseus particularly enjoys it, even though his wife is waiting for him. The drunk Elpenor's death as the men are about to depart from home constitutes another instance of overindulgence in personal appetite. Only when his crew "prod[s]" him and calls his delays "madness" is Odysseus persuaded to leave Circe's realm (10.519-520). The crew members' lukewarm feelings for the place are understandable—after all, they have to suffer the humiliation of being transformed, initially, into pigs and receive no recompense comparable to the love of a goddess. Indeed, in Book 10, for the first time we hear the crew criticize its leader. Refusing repeatedly to return to Circe's halls after the other scouts are transformed into pigs, the crew member Eurylochus issues an especially stinging reproach of Odysseus for foolishly leading his crew to its destruction. He presents the death of their comrades at the hands of Polyphemus as evidence of Odysseus's imprudence: "thanks to [Odysseus's] rashness they died too!" (10.482). Though Odysseus checks his anger and restores calm, the unrest illustrates the holes in his authority. With the appearance of the various heroes and lesser divinities, Book 11 gives the modern reader an extraordinary anthology of mythological lives. Homer's audience would already have been familiar with the stories of such figures as Heracles, Minos, Achilles, Agamemnon, Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and people turned to them for authoritative versions of the Greek myths even in the later ancient period. For the modern reader, they provide invaluable insight into early Greek mythology. Again, by juxtaposing Odysseus's wanderings to the woes of these legendary figures, Homer both broadens the scope of his poem and further entrenches his hero in his culture's mythology. In even being allowed to enter Hades, Odysseus attains a privileged, transcendent status. Odysseus's conversation with Achilles reveals a nuanced view of warfare and kleos, or glory, which is harder to find in the Iliad. Achilles' declaration, "I'd rather slave on earth for another man / . . . / than rule down here over all the breathless dead," alludes to his dilemma, depicted in the Iliad, of choosing between earning glory on the battlefield but dying young and living out a long, uneventful life (11.556-558). Whereas the Iliad, which celebrates the glory of warfare, wholeheartedly endorses Achilles' choice of glory over long life, Achilles' lament in Book 11 of the Odyssey issues a strong caveat to this ethic of kleos. This change in Achilles' sentiment from one poem to the next is understandable, given that, as we have seen with Odysseus, the Odyssey tends to focus on characters' inner lives. Yet Achilles doesn't wholly shun the idea of kleos. Though he turns away somewhat from his warrior ethos, he still rejoices to hear that his son has become a great warrior. Kleos has thus evolved from an accepted cultural value into a more complex and somewhat problematic principle. Positioned near the very heart of the epic, the underworld segment ties together the poem's various settings. Anticleia recalls those pining away for Odysseus in Ithaca. Agamemnon and Achilles shift our thoughts back to Troy. Elpenor ties in the near past on Circe's island and the present responsibilities that Odysseus has to his crew. Finally, the interruption in Odysseus's account reminds us of where he is now—in the palace of the Phaeacians. The interruption seems to have no other function, and it doesn't make much sense within the context of the plot. It is hard to believe, for instance, that Odysseus would want to go to sleep before describing the most important conversations he had in Hades, and, in fact, he doesn't go to sleep—the history of his wanderings goes on for another book and a half. The interruption is transparently used to break the long first-person narrative into smaller, more manageable chunks.

Odyssey Book 12 Summary

Summary: Book 12 Odysseus returns to Aeaea, where he buries Elpenor and spends one last night with Circe. She describes the obstacles that he will face on his voyage home and tells him how to negotiate them. As he sets sail, Odysseus passes Circe's counsel on to his men. They approach the island of the lovely Sirens, and Odysseus, as instructed by Circe, plugs his men's ears with beeswax and has them bind him to the mast of the ship. He alone hears their song flowing forth from the island, promising to reveal the future. The Sirens' song is so seductive that Odysseus begs to be released from his fetters, but his faithful men only bind him tighter. Once they have passed the Sirens' island, Odysseus and his men must navigate the straits between Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla is a six-headed monster who, when ships pass, swallows one sailor for each head. Charybdis is an enormous whirlpool that threatens to swallow the entire ship. As instructed by Circe, Odysseus holds his course tight against the cliffs of Scylla's lair. As he and his men stare at Charybdis on the other side of the strait, the heads of Scylla swoop down and gobble up six of the sailors. Odysseus next comes to Thrinacia, the island of the Sun. He wants to avoid it entirely, but the outspoken Eurylochus persuades him to let his beleaguered crew rest there. A storm keeps them beached for a month, and at first the crew is content to survive on its provisions in the ship. When these run out, however, Eurylochus persuades the other crew members to disobey Odysseus and slaughter the cattle of the Sun. They do so one afternoon as Odysseus sleeps; when the Sun finds out, he asks Zeus to punish Odysseus and his men. Shortly after the Achaeans set sail from Thrinacia, Zeus kicks up another storm, which destroys the ship and sends the entire crew to its death beneath the waves. As had been predicted, only Odysseus survives, and he just barely. The storm sweeps him all the way back to Charybdis, which he narrowly escapes for the second time. Afloat on the broken timbers of his ship, he eventually reaches Ogygia, Calypso's island. Odysseus here breaks from his story, stating to the Phaeacians that he sees no reason to repeat to them his account of his experience on Ogygia.

Aeneid Book IV Summary

The flame of love for Aeneas that Cupid has lit in Dido's heart only grows while she listens to his sorrowful tale. She hesitates, though, because after the death of her husband, Sychaeus, she swore that she would never marry again. On the other hand, as her sister Anna counsels her, by marrying Aeneas she would increase the might of Carthage, because many Trojan warriors follow Aeneas. For the moment, consumed by love, Dido allows the work of city building to fall by the wayside. Juno sees Dido's love for Aeneas as a way to keep Aeneas from going to Italy. Pretending to make a peace offering, Juno suggests to Venus that they find a way to get Dido and Aeneas alone together. If they marry, Juno suggests, the Trojans and the Tyrians would be at peace, and she and Venus would end their feud. Venus knows Juno is just trying to keep the Trojans from Italy but allows Juno to go ahead anyway. One day when Dido, her court, and Aeneas are out hunting, Juno brings a storm down upon them to send the group scrambling for shelter and arranges for Aeneas and Dido to wind up in a cave by themselves. They make love in the cave and live openly as lovers when they return to Carthage. Dido considers them to be married though the union has yet to be consecrated in ceremony. Anxious rumors spread that Dido and Aeneas have surrendered themselves entirely to lust and have begun to neglect their responsibilities as rulers. When Jupiter learns of Dido and Aeneas's affair, he dispatches Mercury to Carthage to remind Aeneas that his destiny lies elsewhere and that he must leave for Italy. This message shocks Aeneas—he must obey, but he does not know how to tell Dido of his departure. He tries to prepare his fleet to set sail in secret, but the queen suspects his ploy and confronts him. In a rage, she insults him and accuses him of stealing her honor. While Aeneas pities her, he maintains that he has no choice but to follow the will of the gods: "I sail for Italy not of my own free will" (IV.499). As a last effort, Dido sends Anna to try to persuade the Trojan hero to stay, but to no avail. Dido writhes between fierce love and bitter anger. Suddenly, she appears calm and instructs Anna to build a great fire in the courtyard. There, Dido says, she can rid Aeneas from her mind by burning all the clothes and weapons he has left behind and even the bed they slept on. Anna obeys, not realizing that Dido is in fact planning her own death—by making the fire her own funeral pyre. As night falls, Dido's grief leaves her sleepless. Aeneas does sleep, but in his dreams, Mercury visits him again to tell him that he has delayed too long already and must leave at once. Aeneas awakens and calls his men to the ships, and they set sail. Dido sees the fleet leaving and falls into her final despair. She can no longer bear to live. Running out to the courtyard, she climbs upon the pyre and unsheathes a sword Aeneas has left behind. She throws herself upon the blade and with her last words curses her absent lover. As Anna and the servants run up to the dying queen, Juno takes pity on Dido and ends her suffering and her life. Analysis Although her relationship with Aeneas spans only this one book of the Aeneid, Dido has become a literary icon for the tragic lover, like Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Though at times Aeneas's happiness in his love for Dido seems to equal hers, it is with considerably less grief and anxiety that he is able to leave her in Carthage and go back about the business of bringing the survivors of Troy to Italy and founding Rome. Whereas Dido not only loves Aeneas but hopes he and his warriors will strengthen her city, Aeneas's actions are the result of a momentary abandonment of his true duties and responsibilities. He indulges temporarily in romance and the pleasures of the flesh, but when Jupiter, through Mercury, reminds Aeneas of his destiny, he is dutiful and ready to resume his mission. When Aeneas says good-bye to Dido, we see two sides to the hero as in Book I, when he hides his worries to appear brave before his crew. Aeneas's statement that he is forced to sail to Italy and Virgil's remark that Aeneas "struggle[s] with desire to calm and comfort [Dido] in all her pain" demonstrate Aeneas's conflicted nature (IV.546-547). He piously carries out the duties allotted him by fate; though he feels emotions and experiences desires, he is powerless to act on them. From Virgil's perspective, Aeneas is not heartless, as Dido thinks him, but merely capable of subordinating matters of the heart to the demands of duty. Aeneas's reminder to Dido that they were never officially married suggests, somewhat dubiously, that had they entered into such an ordained commitment he would not leave. But, he argues, without a true marriage, he is sacrificing only his own desires by leaving Dido. Virgil treats love as he treats the gods—as an outside force acting upon mortals, not a function of the individual's free will or innate identity. He does not idealize love; rather, he associates it with imagery linked to madness, fire, or disease, presenting love as a force that acts on Dido with a violence that is made literal by the end of Book IV in her suicide. Virgil's language in the first lines of the book indicates that Dido's emotions corrode her self-control; he describes her love as "inward fire eating her away" (IV.3). Later, Dido's decision to have a funeral pyre erected and then kill herself upon it returns to this imagery, and Virgil compares Dido's suicide to a city taken over by enemies, "As though . . . / . . . / Flames billowed on the roofs of men and gods" (IV.927-929). Cupid's arrow, shot to promote love between Aeneas and Dido, causes hatred, death, and destruction. Love is at odds with law and fate, as it distracts its victims from their responsibilities. While with Aeneas, Dido abandons her construction of Carthage. She even admits to Aeneas that her own subjects have grown to hate her because of her selfish actions. Aeneas, too, must move on because the time he spends with Dido only keeps him from his selfless task of founding an empire. In the Aeneid, civic responsibility resides with the male. An attitude that might be termed misogynistic seeps into Virgil's descriptions of Juno and even Dido. Aeneas's dream-vision of Mercury articulates this sentiment: "woman's a thing / forever fitful and forever changing" (IV.792-793). Virgil clearly enjoys making Juno look foolish, and he also likes to depict Juno's vain efforts in comic terms as a domestic quarrel—a battle of wills between husband and wife played out before an audience that knows Jupiter has the power in the divine family. Dido also shows herself to be less responsible than her partner. Whereas Dido kills herself for love, leaving the city she founded without a leader, Aeneas returns to his course, guiding the refugees of a lost city to the foundation of a new city.

Metamorphoses Book IV (Cadmus and Harmony) Summary

The narrative returns to the house of Cadmus. Juno hates Cadmus's daughter, Ino, for her devotion to Bacchus. Juno enlists the help of the Furies, who make Athamas, Ino's husband, insane. Believing his wife to be a lioness and his children to be cubs, Athamas bashes the head of one of his children against a rock. Ino jumps off a cliff with her other child. At Venus's request, Neptune transforms Ino and her child into sea deities. When Cadmus learns of this new tragedy, he leaves his city and prays to the gods to transform him into a serpent. He gets his wish. His wife is also changed. They slither away.

Odyssey Book 8 Summary

The next day, Alcinous calls an assembly of his Phaeacian counselors. Athena, back from Athens, ensures attendance by spreading word that the topic of discussion will be the godlike visitor who recently appeared on the island. At the assembly, Alcinous proposes providing a ship for his visitor so that the man can return to his homeland. The measure is approved, and Alcinous invites the counselors to his palace for a feast and celebration of games in honor of his guest. There, a blind bard named Demodocus sings of the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles at Troy. Everyone listens with pleasure except Odysseus, who weeps at the painful memories that the story recalls. The king notices Odysseus's grief and ends the feast so that the games can begin. The games include the standard lineup of boxing, wrestling, racing, and throwing of the discus. At one point, Odysseus is asked to participate. Still overcome by his many hardships, he declines. One of the young athletes, Broadsea, then insults him, which goads his pride to action. Odysseus easily wins the discus toss and then challenges the Phaeacian athletes to any other form of competition they choose. The discussion becomes heated, but Alcinous diffuses the situation by insisting that Odysseus join them in another feast, at which the Phaeacian youth entertain him and prove their preeminence in song and dance. Demodocus performs again, this time a light song about a tryst between Ares and Aphrodite. Afterward, Alcinous and each of the young Phaeacian men, including Broadsea, give Odysseus gifts to take with him on his journey home. At dinner that night, Odysseus asks Demodocus to sing of the Trojan horse and the sack of Troy, but as he listens to the accomplished minstrel he again breaks down. King Alcinous again notices and stops the music. He asks Odysseus at last to tell him who he is, where he is from, and where he is going.

Gilgamesh Tablet II Overview

The temple prostitute divides her garments and shares them with Enkidu. These are the first clothes he has ever worn. Then she takes his hand and leads him toward the city of Uruk. One night they stop at a shepherds' camp, where the herdsmen are astonished by Enkidu's size, strength, and beauty. They serve him plates of cooked food, bread, and skins filled with beer. At first, Enkidu doesn't even recognize these items as food. Until now he has eaten only grass and sucked the milk of wild animals. But the harlot urges him to eat, and he does. After he gulps down seven skins of beer, Enkidu bursts into happy song. He washes and anoints himself with oil and dresses himself in new clothes. He takes up a sword and stands guard over the shepherds' flocks, protecting them from the wolves and lions that had been preying upon them. One day a stranger comes into camp carrying an ornate platter. Enkidu asks the harlot to find out who he is and where he is going. The man tells them that he is bringing offerings to a wedding ceremony in Uruk. Though King Gilgamesh is not the groom, the man says, he will lie with the bride before her husband does. Whatever Gilgamesh desires, he takes—no one can withstand his power. Enkidu is outraged and decides to go to Uruk to challenge him, sure that no one, not even Gilgamesh, can defeat him. When Enkidu arrives in Uruk, the people of the city are amazed to see a man who is as splendid as Gilgamesh himself. They crowd around him, hailing him as their champion. Enkidu defiantly plants himself on the threshold of the bride's bedchamber and blocks the king when he tries to force his way in. Locked together in combat, the two gigantic men grapple through the streets. The walls of the city tremble and the doorposts shake as they fight. Gilgamesh, who is stronger, eventually wrestles Enkidu to the ground. They immediately forget their anger. Enkidu concedes that Gilgamesh is the rightful king of Uruk and pledges his fidelity. Gilgamesh declares his undying friendship to his former rival. The two men kiss and embrace. Gilgamesh's mother, Ninsun, gives their friendship her blessing, declaring that Enkidu will be her son's faithful companion. The former rivals look for a worthy adventure to undertake together. Enkidu tells Gilgamesh about the fearsome monster Humbaba, whom Enlil, the god of earth, wind, and air, had appointed guardian of the distant Cedar Forest, a place forbidden to mortals. When Gilgamesh hears about this demon, he is determined to fight him and dismisses Enkidu's warning that the demon monster is invincible. Gilgamesh accepts death as long as he leaves an indelible mark in the land of the living. Killing an enemy like Humbaba, or even dying at his hands, would guarantee Enkidu's fame too. Gilgamesh convinces Enkidu to join him, and the two heroes go to the armor makers and order new weapons, including enormous swords, axes, and bows. Together, they prepare to seek their destiny. Analysis Almost all of Tablet II is missing in the Sin-Leqi-Unninni version, so the translators fill in the blanks with older versions of the story. The harlot assumes a maternal role as she sets out to domesticate and acculturate Enkidu. She covers up Enkidu's nakedness and leads him like a child to a shepherds' camp. In Mesopotamian literature, the shepherds' camp represents a significant way station on the road to civilization. The great city of Uruk itself was sometimes called Uruk of the Sheepfold, because of the centrality of Ishtar's temple, where the king, acting as high priest, would reenact the lovemaking of the goddess and her human lover Tammuz, the shepherd. Enkidu eats cooked food and gets drunk, which are as much a part of the human experience as making love, wearing clothing, listening to and making music, and participating in and devising ceremonies. No longer the champion of the wild animals, Enkidu, now fully human, becomes their adversary as he guards the camp from their attacks. Enkidu is outraged when he hears about Uruk's oppression, especially how its king takes advantage of women in general and new brides in particular, but lust might not be Gilgamesh's only motivation. His ritual deflowering of the brides might be a form of tribute to Ishtar, whose temple and rites play such a central role in the affairs of the city. Conceivably, Gilgamesh was dutifully enacting a sacred ritual, rather than basely enjoying a selfish pleasure. But in one old Babylonian version of the story, the lords of Uruk rejoice at Enkidu's arrival in the city, calling him a hero for "men of decency," which suggests otherwise. The language describing the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is erotic, as is the description of the wrestling match that brought them together. Other erotic descriptions and actions appear throughout Gilgamesh. We are told that Gilgamesh loves Enkidu like a "bride," for example, and they often kiss and embrace. In many ways, they appear to be lovers, and many critics believe this is a reasonable interpretation of their relationship. One writer summarizes the story of Gilgamesh as that of a rampantly heterosexual king who wrestles with a handsome, wild man and loves him like a wife until the gods punish his lover by killing him with a wasting disease. However, other critics oppose this interpretation and claim that any language suggesting a sexual relationship is metaphorical. In any case, the same-sex friendships of Mesopotamian warriors do not fit comfortably into our contemporary categories of friendship, marriage, and sexual partnership, ensuring that the true nature of Gilgamesh's relationship with Enkidu remains a mystery. Humbaba, or Huwawa, in some translations, is a vague and sometimes changeable adversary. The poet describes Humbaba as a personification of an erupting volcano. Geological fault lines run through nearby Turkey and other areas adjacent to Mesopotamia, and Gilgamesh's earliest chroniclers most likely remembered the active volcanoes in the region. The cedar trees that Humbaba guards would have been a precious commodity in the relatively treeless region of southern Mesopotamia where Uruk is located. An actual trade mission or military raid into hostile territory, possibly Syria or Iran, undertaken by the historical King Gilgamesh, may have inspired the story of this quest. However, much of the narrative is clearly allegorical, and later in the poem Humbaba is referred to simply as "Evil." Domesticated by the prostitute, Enkidu in turn tames Gilgamesh. He calms Gilgamesh's destructive urges, making him less wild and more human. Just as Enkidu once identified more with animals than with people, Gilgamesh himself is at first a kind of animal, vicious and violent, before Enkidu comes along. After befriending Enkidu, Gilgamesh turns his restless energies outward, no longer content to live in and for the moment. Now he wants to accomplish great things, both for his own fame and for that of his city. He thinks ahead to his death, of the ultimate purpose and meaning of his life. These themes dominate the second half of the poem.

Gilgamesh Tablet V Overview

The two heroes stand in awe before the vast forest's gates, marveling at the cedar trees' height, breathing in their incense. Humbaba's footsteps have left clear paths through the woods. An enormous mountain looms in the distance, the place where Ishtar and the other gods are enthroned. They begin to walk toward it. That night Gilgamesh pours flour on the ground, an offering to Shamash the sun god. He prays that Shamash will visit him in a dream and grant him a favorable omen. Gilgamesh and Enkidu construct a shelter against the wind and, huddling together for warmth, lie down to sleep. In the middle of the night Gilgamesh has a dream. Gilgamesh wakes up frightened and asks Enkidu if he called out to him. Then he tells Enkidu what he dreamed: They were walking through a deep gorge when a huge mountain fell on top of them. Enkidu promptly interprets the dream and says it is nothing to fear. He says that the mountain is Humbaba, and that he and Gilgamesh will topple Humbaba and his dead body will lie on the plain like a mountain. The two companions continue their journey through the forest. After a few days, Gilgamesh makes another offering of flour to Shamash. Embracing each other for warmth, the two men lie down to sleep. At midnight, Gilgamesh wakes up again, filled with foreboding, and, unsure of what woke him, asks if Enkidu touched him. Then he tells Enkidu about his newest dream. In it, a wild bull attacked him, and he was helpless on the ground. He could hear the bull bellowing and could feel its hot breath on his face. Then someone offered him water. Again, Enkidu interprets the dream as fortunate. He says that the bull is not their enemy Humbaba, but Shamash, who blesses Gilgamesh by fighting with him. The man who brought water, Enkidu says, is Gilgamesh's father, Lugulbanda. The companions walk and walk, and together they cover hundreds of leagues. Then they dig another well and make another offering of flour to Shamash. It rains that night, but after a time, they fall asleep. A third dream comes to Gilgamesh. This time he dreams that the earth is shaking amidst the noise of thunder and lightning, and fire and ashes fall from the sky. Once again, Enkidu interprets the dream favorably. Even so, Gilgamesh is scared. He prays to Shamash, desperately pleading for his protection. Shamash answers and explains that Gilgamesh and Enkidu are experiencing the effects of the aura that rises from Humbaba's garments. Humbaba has seven garments, each of which spreads terror. Shamash tells Gilgamesh that Humbaba is wearing only one of them now, and that if he dons all seven, Gilgamesh will be unable to defeat him. Time is of the essence in carrying out this attack. At last the companions reach the mountain of the gods, the place forbidden to mortals. Gilgamesh and Enkidu take their axes and chop down some trees. Then they hear Humbaba, the guardian of the forest, roaring. A terrible confusion follows. The noise of clashing swords, daggers, and axes surrounds them, and Gilgamesh and Enkidu cry out in terror. They call to each other, reminding each other that they can prevail. In the heat of the battle, Gilgamesh offers up a desperate prayer to Shamash. Shamash hears him and unleashes thirteen storms against Humbaba. Humbaba staggers and reels under this divine onslaught, and at last Gilgamesh overtakes him. But Humbaba pleads for mercy and says he knows Gilgamesh is Ninsun's son. He tells Gilgamesh that if he is spared, he will be Gilgamesh's servant. At first, Gilgamesh considers being compassionate, but Enkidu is pitiless. Enkidu urges Gilgamesh to make a quick end of the monster. Humbaba chides Enkidu for his cruelty. He suggests that Enkidu is jealous and fearful that Humbaba will supplant him in Gilgamesh's affections. Humbaba reminds them that he is the servant of Enlil, the god of earth, wind, and air—a greater divinity by far than Shamash. If Gilgamesh kills him, he will surely bring a curse down upon himself. But Enkidu tells Gilgamesh to hurry up and kill the demon before Enlil finds out what they're up to and tries to stop them. Only by killing Humbaba and stealing his cedars can they guarantee their fame. So Humbaba dies. Gilgamesh fashions a new gate for the city out of the tallest tree in the forest as a monument to their great adventure. The companions cut down more trees and fashion them into a raft, on which they float back to Uruk, carrying upon it the gate and Humbaba's head. Analysis Like Tablets II, III, and IV, very little of Tablet V exists in the Sin-Leqi-Unninni version. Translators have filled in the blanks by drawing on an ancient Sumerian poem called "Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living" and a group of Akkadian and Hittite texts that parallel the story so thinly presented here. Gilgamesh and Enkidu have undertaken much more than a trade mission or an exhibition of physical prowess—their quest is a journey of initiation. The heroes have left their mother behind (Ninsun is Enkidu's mother by adoption now) to make their names in the world. Much later in the story, Enkidu passes through a real death, and Gilgamesh passes through a figurative one, completing his quest with a spiritual transformation and a final journey home. Though this journey of initiation is immensely important to both Gilgamesh and Enkidu, it is not wholly sanctioned by the gods. On the one hand, Gilgamesh and Enkidu are on a sacred quest, supported by a god, Shamash. On the other hand, they undertake their adventure in defiance of the superior deity Enlil. They trespass on territory forbidden to mortals so that they can steal something that belongs to the gods, the cedar trees, and turn them into monuments—idols—that honor themselves. Their journey leads them to explore their innermost selves, certainly, but they also explore the boundaries that make up their spiritual world. Though the descriptions of the heroes and the weapons are explicit, the descriptions of actual combat are muted. The cultures that produced the Gilgamesh poems were very warlike, but we hardly hear about them using the weapons they had forged, even though the weapons receive quite a bit of attention. In one version, their swords, axes, daggers, and bows weigh 600 pounds. In another, an army accompanies Enkidu and Gilgamesh as well as their foe Humbaba. The author exaggerates the heroes' manly attributes—many critics call Enkidu and Gilgamesh the world's first superheroes. However, which of the two warriors actually kills Humbaba remains ambiguous. In some versions Enkidu urges Gilgamesh to do the deed, while in others Enkidu does it himself. The poem may not provide explicit scenes of combat, but it clearly describes the terrors of war. As the companions draw closer to their confrontation with Humbaba, anticipatory nightmares torment Gilgamesh. Enkidu's interpretations are so ludicrously optimistic that they seem to be wishful thinking, and we have to suspect that they are meant to be ironic. Gilgamesh and Enkidu do in fact prevail over the demon and return to Uruk in triumph, so for the moment at least, Enkidu's readings are correct. The dread and terror of death remain, however, and permeate the entire tablet. Death ultimately defeats the heroes, since death, after all, is the fate of all mortals. The full force of this defeat emerges in Tablet VII when Enkidu falls ill. The poem suggests that fear and death are inescapable, but it also shows us how we can function in spite of them by being part of a community. As both Gilgamesh and Enkidu demonstrate, working within a community offers the opportunity to be part of something greater and longer-lasting than is possible individually, and it expands boundaries beyond what the individual flesh encloses. Alone, the prospect of death is overwhelming. Within a community, even one as small as that of Gilgamesh and Enkidu clinging together for warmth on the eve of a battle, fear fades. Gilgamesh and Enkidu distract each other from fear and persuade each other that they have the power to make their names, if not their bodies, immortal. The distinction between the personal and the collective is at the very heart of Gilgamesh. Culture, community, creativity, and camaraderie ultimately help Gilgamesh and Enkidu transcend the finality of death. When characters begin to believe that they really are immortal or that they deserve to be, they are guilty of excessive pride, which rarely goes unpunished. When Enkidu suggests that they can foil the god Enlil by killing his servant Humbaba quickly, before Enlil finds out what they're doing, he deceives himself. The gods may be capricious and silly, but they are also implacable. Even as Enkidu and Gilgamesh triumph over the monster, they are laying the groundwork for their fall.

Metamorphoses Book IV (Perseus and Medusa) Summary

We now meet Perseus. Instead of flying during the night, he stops in Atlas's kingdom. Atlas reacts with hostility, because an ancient prophecy has him worried that Perseus will plunder his riches. Perseus's strength is no match for Atlas's, so he turns Atlas to stone using Medusa's head. Perseus takes to the air again. He sees Andromeda chained to a rock as an offering to a sea monster. Perseus descends, strikes a deal with Andromeda's parents, and uses Medusa's head to petrify the monster. Perseus marries Andromeda.

Gilgamesh Tablet VI Overview

When Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, he washes the filth of battle from his hair and body. He dons a clean robe and cloak, wipes Humbaba's blood off his weapons and polishes them. When he ties his hair back and sets his crown on his head, he looks so splendid that Ishtar, the goddess of love and war, is overcome with lust. She pleads with Gilgamesh to be her husband. She promises him a harvest of riches if he plants his seed in her body. She tells him they will live together in a house made of cedar, and that she will give him a lapis lazuli chariot with golden wheels. She says that kings and princes will offer him all their wealth. But Gilgamesh refuses to be her plaything. He has nothing to offer her in return, since, as a goddess, she has everything she could ever want. He says that her desire for his body is fleeting, and that she'll soon lose interest. He tells her he knows what happened to her other human lovers, and they've all learned how traitorous and cruel her heart and whims are. Her husband, Tammuz, the shepherd, became a captive in the underworld and is mourned in festivals every year. Another shepherd she loved became a broken-winged bird. She loved the lion, then ensured that he was captured in "ambush pits." She loved the stallion but contrived harnesses and whips and spurs to control him. When a goat herder loved her, she turned him into a wolf. When her father's gardener rejected her advances, she turned him into a frog. Gilgamesh asks why he should expect to fare any better. Ishtar is furious. She goes to her father, Anu, the god of the firmament, and to her mother, Antum, and demands that they let her use the Bull of Heaven. She wants to turn the bull loose so she can watch him gore Gilgamesh to death. Her father does not understand her anger, since all that Gilgamesh said was true. Ishtar erupts into a full-blown tantrum. She threatens to let all of the dead people out of the underworld so they can feast on the living, unless her parents give her the bull. Still Anu hesitates. He warns her that the bull will cause seven years of famine. Ishtar assures him that she has made provisions for the people and the flocks of Uruk, and he gives in. Ishtar unleashes the bull. The city of Uruk trembles as, bellowing and snorting, it comes down from the sky. A crack opens up in the earth, and one hundred men fall into it and die. Again the bull bellows and again the ground cracks open. One hundred more men are swallowed up. The third time this happens, Enkidu attacks the bull. The bull spits on him and fouls him with its excrement, but Enkidu grabs it by its horns and wrestles with it. He calls out to Gilgamesh, who joins him, and they fight the bull together. At last Enkidu seizes its filthy tail and holds the monster still so that Gilgamesh can thrust his sword between its shoulders and kill it. Then they cut out its heart and offer it as a sacrifice to Shamash the sun god. Ishtar climbs onto the walls of the city and shouts curses at the two friends. Enkidu picks up one of the bull's bloody haunches and hurls it at her. He shouts that if she comes closer, he'll do the same to her. While Ishtar and her followers, the temple prostitutes, mourn the bull, Gilgamesh gathers his craftsmen together and shows them how beautifully the gods had made the creature, how thickly its horns were coated with lapis lazuli. Gilgamesh cuts them off its head and fills them with oil, which he offers in sacrifice to his father, Lugulbanda. Then he hangs them on the wall of his palace as trophies. Gilgamesh and Enkidu scrub the bull's gore off their bodies in the Euphrates and ride in triumph through the streets of Uruk, basking in the people's admiration. Gilgamesh boastingly asks the crowds who the best hero is and answers his own question: "Gilgamesh is. Enkidu is." That night, Enkidu awakens suddenly from a dream and asks Gilgamesh why the great gods are meeting in council. Analysis This tablet reveals a great deal about the mythological background of Gilgamesh, particularly the importance of Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, and the stories about her mortal lovers. In response to Ishtar's advances, Gilgamesh catalogs the human lovers who, at Ishtar's hands, became animals—a shepherd changed into a broken-winged bird, a goat herder into a wolf, a gardener into a frog. One of these lovers is the god of vegetation and flocks, Tammuz, an extremely important deity in Mesopotamia. Tammuz is born a mortal shepherd and does not become a god until Ishtar becomes his lover. At one point he dies and goes to the underworld. Reasons for his death vary, but Ishtar is at fault in most traditions. Tammuz is resurrected, and annual festivals celebrate this resurrection with the greenery's springtime return. The story about the goddess of fertility and her mortal lover who dies for her and is resurrected is universal, appearing in mythologies and religions of many prehistoric cultures. The goddess and her lover take on different names in different cultures, but the blueprint of the story remains the same. The Greek myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, which Ovid retells in the Metamorphoses and Shakespeare retells in Venus and Adonis, represents a late version of the same story. Some anthropologists would even identify Jesus as an embodiment of the same mythical archetype manifested by Tammuz and Adonis, because Jesus, like Adonis, is a young male god who dies and is resurrected. However, while Gilgamesh draws on and discusses these myths, it is not itself a myth, but a work of literature. In other words, though Gilgamesh describes the stories central to Mesopotamian mythology, such as those of Ishtar and Tammuz, it reflects upon them and changes them in significant ways. The poem handles mythological materials in such a way as to define and portray Gilgamesh's character and his state of mind at this point in the story, as opposed to simply trying to preserve and pass on those myths. Gilgamesh has the chance to follow the pattern set by Tammuz and to be the goddess's lover, but he refuses. In a way, he is refusing his own mythology, standing apart from it. The literary style and tone of this tablet are playfully allusive, witty, vulgar, and blasphemous, reminding readers that this epic is literary rather than sacred. The portrayal of Ishtar in this tablet is so relentlessly negative that some scholars have speculated that it reflects a deeper agenda. Gilgamesh's repudiation of Ishtar, they say, signifies a rejection of goddess worship in favor of patriarchy in the ancient world. From a literary standpoint, however, the most notable aspect of this tablet is Gilgamesh and Enkidu's astonishing presumption. Ishtar is an important goddess in Uruk—her temple is at the center of the city, and her rites secure its safety and prosperity. Uruk's king, in the role of high priest, ritually reenacts Ishtar and Tammuz's lovemaking. When Gilgamesh spurns the goddess, he rejects one of his royal duties. Gilgamesh's love for a companion of his own gender, whether chaste or unchaste, might also have offended the goddess of fertility. Gilgamesh uses clever language in his dismissal of Ishtar, but no matter how witty he is, addressing a goddess in this manner is unimaginably disrespectful. Enkidu's behavior, such as throwing the bull's haunch at the goddess and threatening to slaughter her, is crude and childish. Gilgamesh and Enkidu seem to have forgotten that they are mortals. They have gone too far. When they killed Humbaba and harvested the cedar trees that were under his protection, they defied the god Enlil. Now they are treating the goddess Ishtar like a cast-off mistress. Gilgamesh presents the bull to his craftsmen as though he wants them to fabricate something comparable. Giddy from their victory over Humbaba, exhilarated from their successful combat with the bull, they are drunk with pride. The tone of the poetry reflects their prideful feelings, suggesting that the writer enjoys his wicked subject matter. Though Gilgamesh and Enkidu continue to pay elaborate respects to Lugulbanda and Shamash, their boasting to the citizens of Uruk as they parade through the city threatens to be the last straw for the already angry divinities.