The Aeneid

Author: Virgil (70 BC – 19 BC)
Translator: Robert Fagles
Publisher: Penguin Books (2008)
Bought from: Book Depository


Introduction

The Aeneid is an epic poem composed by Virgil in Latin and is his most famous work.

Virgil, full name Publius Vergilius Maro, is considered one of Rome’s greatest poet. Centuries later, another great Roman poet, Dante, would make Virgil his guide through Inferno and part of Purgatory in The Divine Comedy.

Virgil linked the well known tradition that Rome was founded by Romulus (c 753 BC) with the mythology of Troy. He described how Aeneas and a band of Trojan survivors of the Trojan War landed in Italy (c 12th century BC). According to Virgil, Aeneas’ son Ascanius also known as Iulus founded a line of kings who ruled from Alba Longa until its last king Romulus founded Rome. Virgil also wrote that this line of kings became the progenitors of Julius Caesar’s family, the Julii.

Virgil wrote the poem during the tumultuous period when the Roman Republic gave way to the Roman Empire under the reign of Emperor of Augustus, Julius Caesar’s heir. Virgil’s ‘legitimatization’ of Julius Caesar, and by extension Augustus, must be a political statement.

It is believed that Virgil wrote the poem between 29 BC to 19 BC. Some scholars believe that he died before completing the poem.


What is it about?

Aeneas is the son of Anchises and Venus (Aphrodite). Anchises is a second cousin of Priam, the last king of Troy. Aeneas escaped the fall of Troy with a band of followers. The first part of The Aeneid (Books 1 to 6) is an account of the group’s journey. The second part (Books 7 to 12) chronicles Aeneas’ wars in Italy.

The poem begins in media res with Aeneas’s fleet harassed by Juno in the waters off Sicily. Juno has been an implacable enemy of the Trojans because the Trojan prince Paris snubbed her in favour of Venus and Minerva (Athena) in the Judgment of Paris and another Trojan prince Ganymede became Jupiter’s cup-bearer. She has also learned of a prophecy that Aeneas’ descendants will destroy one of her favourite cities, Carthage.

Aeneas lands in Africa where he meets Dido, queen of Carthage. He narrates Troy’s last hours, including the wooden horse ruse, Priam’s death and his own desperate dash to safety carrying his father on his back. He lost his wife but came across her ghost who left him with these parting words:

“A long exile is your fate ...
the vast plains of the seas are yours to plow
until you reach Hesperian land, where Lydian Tiber
flows with its smooth march through rich and loamy fields,
a land of hardy people. There great joy and a kingdom
are yours to claim, and a queen to make your wife.”
(2.967 – 972)

Aeneas continues his story and recounts his encounter with two other survivors of Troy, Hector’s widow Andromache and Priam’s son Helenus. Helenus, a prophet, revealed to Aeneas what lay ahead and told Aeneas to seek out the Sibyl Deiphobe.

Aeneas and Dido fall in love but Jupiter (Zeus) reminds him of his destiny. Aeneas leaves and Dido kills herself after cursing Aeneas to an early death and prophesising the Punic Wars and the coming of Hannibal:

“If that curse
of the earth must reach his haven, labor on to landfall –
if Jove and the Fates command and the boundary stone is fixed,
still, let him be plagued in war by a nation proud in arms,
torn from his borders, wrenched from Iulus’ embrace,
let him grovel for help and watch his people die
a shameful death! And then, once he has bowed down
to an unjust peace, may he never enjoy his realm
and the light he yearns for, never, let him die
before his day, unburied on some desolate beach!
That is my prayer, my final cry – I pour it out
with my own lifeblood. And you, my Tyrians,
harry with hatred all his line, his race to come:
make that offering to my ashes, send it down below.
No love between our peoples, ever, no pacts of peace!
Come rising up from my bones, you avenger still unknown,
to stalk those Trojan settlers, hunt with fire and iron,
now or in time to come, whenever the power is yours.
Shore clash with shore, sea against sea and sword
against sword – this is my curse – war between all
our peoples, all their children, endless war!”
(4.764 – 784)

Aeneas continues on his journey and lands in Cumae, on the island of Euboea. There, Deiphobe guides Aeneas into the Kingdom of the Dead, echoing Odysseus and anticipating Dante. Aeneas sees the ghost of his father. Anchises narrates the future (in reality, history relative to Virgil). Anchises also describes (6.823 – 8.69) something that is remarkably like the idea of reincarnation in Hinduism and Buddhism.

Fortified by what he learns in the Kingdom of the Dead, Aeneas heads towards Italy and the rest of the poem describes his alliances and battles against the local tribes. The poem ends, somewhat abruptly, when Aeneas kills Turnus, the leader of the tribes opposing Aeneas.


Finally

The first half (which recalls The Odyssey), with its flashbacks and flashforwards, is more interesting than the second half (which recalls The Iliad).


Et cetera

Many years ago, I saw the statue known as Laocoön and His Sons in the Vatican Museum. The marble statute was unbelievably detailed and the image stuck with me. I remember wondering what could have caused the serpents to assault the man and the children. Book 2 of The Aeneid tells the story of Laocoön who warned the Trojans not to bring the wooden horse into the city. Minerva sends two sea serpents to silence him and pave the way for the Trojans to bring the wooden horse into the city with disastrous consequences.

Another character who play a major role in the wooden horse episode in Sinon. He is a Greek soldier whose lies help persuade the Trojans to bring the wooden horse into the city. In Dante’s The Inferno, he is punished in Circle Eight: Bolgia Ten, where along with other False Witnesses (Falsifiers of Words), he is condemned to suffer a burning fever which make them “seem to smoke / as a washed hand smokes in winter” (Dante, The Inferno XXX.92 – 93).

Antony and Cleopatra

Author: William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Written: c 1606 – 1607
Editors: Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen
Publisher: Modern Library (2009 Edition)
Bought from: Book Depository


Introduction

Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies based on Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.

For centuries, Egypt has been ruled by the Ptolemiac Dynasty, a family that traced its origins to Ptolemy, the Greek general who was appointed satrap of Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. In 51 BC, Cleopatra (69 BC – 30 BC) and her 10 years old younger brother Ptolemy VIII were made joint rulers of Egypt. As was Egyptian custom then, they married each other. Relationship between them broke down before long and Cleopatra was exiled in 48 BC.

In the same year, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) arrived in Alexandria, fleeing the forces of Julius Caesar during the first Roman Civil War. Ptolemy had Pompey beheaded and presented Pompey’s head to Caesar, hoping to ingratiate himself with Caesar. This backfired in a big way. Caesar may have been horrified at the boy king’s treatment of a fellow Roman. He seized Alexandria. At this time, Cleopatra played her hand. Plutarch wrote of the famous episode of Cleopatra smuggling herself past her brother’s guards to Caesar rolled up in a carpet. Caesar ousted Ptolemy and named Cleopatra queen of Egypt in 47 BC, with another younger brother Ptolemy XIV as co-ruler.

Caesar had an illegitimate son with Cleopatra, Caesarion. There is evidence that Cleopatra, Caesarion and her entourage were visiting Rome when Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.

After Caesar’s death, Mark Antony (83 BC – 30 BC) formed an alliance in Rome with Caesar’s adopted son and great-nephew, Gaius Octavius (63 BC – 14 AD) and Marcus Lepidus in 43 BC. This alliance, known as the Second Triumvirate, was a formal institution (unlike the First Triumvirate) and held practically unlimited political power (nearly identical to the powers that Caesar had held). As such, the Senate and assemblies remained powerless even after Caesar had been assassinated.

The Triumvirs launched the second Roman civil war against Caesar’s murderers Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. In 42 BC, Octavius and Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius in two battles fought at Philippi. The Triumvirs divided Rome’s provinces into spheres of influence. Octavius took control of the West, Antony the East, and Lepidus Hispania and Africa.

In 41 BC, Antony (who controlled Egypt as Triumvir) summoned Cleopatra to Tarsus, in modern-day Turkey. Plutarch wrote that Cleopatra made such a first impression on Antony that he spent the winter of 41 – 40 BC with her in Alexandria before returning to Rome. In 36 BC, Antony returned to Alexandria and married Cleopatra (although he was already married to Octavia, sister of Octavian). Antony and Cleopatra would have 3 children.

Also in 36 BC, Octavius’ general Marcus Agrippa defeated the pirate commander Sextus Pompeius (son of Pompey) thereby ending serious opposition to the Second Trimvirate.

However, like the First Triumvirate, the Second Triumvirate was ultimately unstable and wracked with internal jealousies and ambitions. In 33 BC, Octavius convinced the Senate to declare war against Cleopatra, as opposed to Antony, an important distinction because Octavius did not want the Roman people to consider it a civil war.

Octavius’s forces decisively defeated those of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in Greece in September 31 BC. Octavius invaded Egypt the following year. Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide in Alexandria in 30 BC. Caesarion was killed on Octavius’s order. Cleopatra’s children with Antony were spared and taken to Rome where they were brought up by Antony’s widow Octavia. Egypt became a Roman province. The rule of the pharaohs ended forever.

With the complete defeat of Antony and the marginalisation of Lepidus, Octavius became the most powerful man in the Roman world and the Senate bestowed upon him the name of Augustus in 27 BC. This marked the transformation of the oligarchic/democratic Roman Republic into the autocratic Roman Empire. Augustus brought peace to the Roman state that had been plagued by a century of civil wars and ushered in the Pax Romana, which remains the longest period of peace and stability that Europe has seen in recorded history (27 BC ­– 180 AD).


What is the book about?

The play is about the famous love affair between Antony and Cleopatra as it played out against the combustible political situation in the Roman world. It covers events from c 40 BC to 30 BC.

Antony, whom Shakespeare first wrote about in Julius Caesar, is a lover and a fighter. He is torn between his passion for Cleopatra and his sense of duty to Rome.

Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s most famous female characters. Indeed, most people ‘know’ her purely through Shakespeare’s pen. In the play, she is bewitching, cunning, capricious, insecure, cruel, angsty, passionate, proud. The Romans do not what to make of her. Agrippa’s oxymoron “Royal wench!” (2.2.265) sums up the typical Roman’s ambivalence about her.

One Roman who is familiar with Cleopatra is Enorbabus, Antony’s friend and soldier. Shakespeare has him deliver some of the most wonderful description of Cleopatra. Here, he describes the first meeting between Antony and Cleopatra:

I will tell you
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that
The winds were lovesick with them: the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion; cloth-of-gold, of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy out-work nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colored fans whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did ...
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i’th’eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her, and Antony,
Enthroned i’th’marketplace, did sit alone,
Whistling to th’air, which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
And made a gap in nature.
(2.2.226 – 255)

This is my personal favourite:

I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
That she did make defect perfection,
And, breathless, pour breathe forth.
(2.2.268 – 272)

And finally:

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies. For vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
(2.2.275 – 280)

So how is the book?

Each of the books in the RSC Shakespeare series published by The Modern Library comes with very informative footnotes, helpful scene-by-scene analysis and, best of all, commentary on past and current productions that comes with interviews with leading directors and actor. The books are also very reasonably priced. Best of all, the introductions are not overly long and focus on a few talking points for each play. The paper quality is not particularly good though.

Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s later works and written in what the publishers call “his most soaring poetic idiom”. The language is indeed impenetrable on many occasions even with the footnotes.

The editors appear to have fumbled in the play’s last scene when Ocatavius’ Roman soldiers captured Cleopatra inside her monument. The character Gallus entered and left without any dialogue. In on-line editions of the play, Gallus spoke lines 39 and 40.

Antony and Cleopatra does not have as many memorable lines as Julius Caesar but it is the origin of the term “salad days”, uttered by Cleopatra: “My salad days / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood” (1.5.86-87).


Finally

Good read.

The Nibelungenlied

Author: Anon
Written: c 1200 AD
Translator: A. T. Hatto
Publisher: Penguin Books (2004 Reissue)
Bought from: Borders Singapore


Introduction

The Nibelungenlied, or Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem written in Middle High German by an anonymous poet in modern day Austria.

It is based on Germanic oral traditions about historical events and persons from the 5th and 6 century AD.

The poem shares common elements with ancient Northern European mythology. For example, the story of Brunhild appears in Old Norse literature and the heroic deeds of Siegfried (briefly recounted by Hagen) are recounted in several ancient stories, many of which are preserved in the Scandinavian Poetic Edda, Vǫlsunga Saga and Thidriks saga, in which Siegfried is called Sigurd. The entire second part of the story, the fall of the Burgundians, appears in an older Eddaic poem, Atlakvida (“Lay of Atli”).

 The poem survives in more than 30 manuscripts, the oldest dating from the 13th century.


What is it about?

The story can be divided into 2 parts.

In the first part, Siegfried, crown prince of Xanten, the Netherlands, arrives in Worms, Burgundy to woo Kriemhild, sister to Gunther, king of Burgundy. He succeeds after (somewhat underhandedly) winning the hands of Brunhild, a queen of Iceland, for Gunther. Kriemhild and Brunhild soon get into a dispute over Siegfried’s social rank compared to Gunther. Gunther’s liege Hagen kills Siegried and seizes his Nibelung treasure.

The second part deals with Kriemhild’s revenge against the Burgundians. She marries Etzel (Attila), king of the Huns. She invites Gunther and the Burgundians to attend the wedding in Hungary. Kriemhild’s plot culminates in a bloody climax in which all the Burgundians (including her brothers) are slaughtered. She herself is killed by an old warrior from Etzel’s own court.


How is the book?

This is an English prose translation. There is a 2-page foreword. There is a wealth of materials that follow the story, including An Introduction to a Second Reading. It takes a critical look at the poem and identifies some ‘Inconsistencies, Obscurities and Prevarications’ in the story. Appendix 4, ‘The Genesis of the Poem’ identifies similarities and commonalities to a number of possible sources and is worth reading.


Finally ...

Probably no Germanic literary work has influenced later works and been adapted more often (not only in Germany itself) than The Nibelungenlied. The most significant modern adaptation is Richard Wagner’s famous opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (1853–74). J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, written in the 1920s and published posthumously in 2009, is inspired by the story of Sigurd. Everyone should read this once.

Richard III

Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Written: c 1592-1594
Editor: John Jowett
Publisher: Oxford University Press (2008 Reissue)
Bought from: Book Depository


Introduction

Shakespeare wrote his most important English history plays in two tetralogies (sequences of four plays). The first series, written near the start of his career (roughly 1589–1594), consists of 1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI and Richard III, and covers the period between about 1422 and 1485. The second series, written at the height of Shakespeare’s career (roughly 1595–1599), covers the period from around 1398 to 1420 and consists of Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV and Henry V.

The eight works form a linked series and deal with the rise and fall of the House of Lancaster, established by Henry IV in 1399. They chronicle the War of the Roses (455 – 1485) between the Lancaster (whose heraldic symbol was a red rose) and the York, a rival branch of the Plantagenet family (whose symbol was a white rose).

There are two other, less-celebrated history plays: King John, whose title figure ruled from 1199 to 1216, and All Is Well, about the reign of Henry VIII (1509–1547) as its subject.

Before the events depicted in Richard III, the House of York had overthrown the House of Lancaster. The Lancaster king, Henry IV, was captured and later killed in the Tower of London. Henry IV’s widow Margaret of Anjou survived. His son, Edward, Prince of Wales, was killed in the Battle of Tewkesbury. Edward’s widow Lady Anne Neville also survived and would later marry Richard III.

Power switched to the House of York, specifically the sons of the late Richard, Duke of York. His wife Cecily Neville, Duchess of York survived him.

Richard and Cecily’s oldest surviving son became King Edward IV. His queen consort was Elizabeth, born Elizabeth Woodville. Edward IV and Elizabeth had at least three children, viz. Edward, Prince of Wales and later King Edward V, Richard, Duke of York and Elizabeth of York.

(Elizabeth Woodville had two sons from her first marriage to Sir John Grey, viz. Thomas Grey, 1st Marquis of Dorset, and Richard Grey, Earl or Lord Grey. She had a brother Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers.)

Edward IV had two surviving brothers, George, Duke of Clarence; and the eponymous Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Richard would be Protector during the short reign of his young nephew Edward V and later monarch himself. King Richard III ruled from 1483 to 1485 when he was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field, marking the end of the War of the Roses and the House of York.

Richard’s main supporters were William Hastings, Lord Chamberlain; Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham; Sir Richard Ratcliffe; and Sir William Catesby.

Last but not least, there was Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. He was descended on his mother’s side from the Lancaster king, Edward III. He would later marry Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, uniting the Houses of Lancaster and York and establishing the Tudor dynasty (1485 – 1603). Queen Elizabeth, who ruled England during Shakespeare’s life, was a granddaughter of Henry Tudor and the last monarch of the House of Tudor.


What is it about?

The play begins after Edward has seized the throne. Richard his brother vows to depose him. He appears to be driven by jealousy, bitterly describing his deformity and declaring:

… since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days
(1.1.28-31)

He then proceeds to have relatives (brother Clarence and nephews Edward and Richard) and former allies (Anthony Woodville, Richard Grey, William Hastings and Henry Stafford) killed. He seduces, marries and possibly murders Lady Anne Neville, whose husband Prince Edward he had killed. He also plans to marry his own niece Elizabeth of York to strengthen his claim on the throne. Richard III is truly one of the greatest villains in literature.

He is so evil his own mother curses him in her last lines:

Either thou wilt die by God’s just ordinance
Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror,
Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish,
And never look upon thy face again.
Therefore take with thee my most heavy curse,
Which in the day of battle tire thee more
Than all the complete armour that thou wear’st.
My prayers on the adverse party fight,
And there the little souls of Edward’s children
Whisper the spirits of thine enemies,
And promise them success and victory.
Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end.
Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.
(4.4.173-185)

Richard’s first and last lines in this play are well-known and often quoted (sometimes wrongly):

Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York (1.1.1-2)
A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse! (5.6.13)

How is the book?

This is a volume in The Oxford Shakespeare line of the larger Oxford World’s Classics series. Each book in this series comes with a detailed introduction and on-page commentary and notes. There is also an appendix, which compares certain passages in the play against Shakespeare’s sources. I feel the introduction is too long and some of the footnotes too detailed for the general reader.


Finally ...

Good read.

Julius Caesar

Author: William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Written: c 1599
Editors: Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen
Publisher: Modern Library (2011 Edition)
Bought from: Book Depository


Introduction

Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies based on Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.

Ancient Rome was a republic from c 508 BC (when Tarquinius, the last king was overthrown by Lucius Junius Brutus) to c 27 BC (when the Senate gave Octavius the title Augustus). The main political institutions during this period were the Senate, the Legislative Assembly and the Executive Magistrates. The Senate controlled the treasury and foreign policy. The Legislative Assembly passed laws and elected magistrates. The Executive Magistrates were officials elected by Roman citizens. There were several classes of Magistrates, each with different powers. Each office was held concurrently by at least 2 people and lasted for only one year. The highest ranking Magistrates were the consuls. They were effectively the heads of state. When a consul was abroad, he commanded an army and his powers were effectively unlimited. When he was in Rome, his military powers were suspended.

Demographically, the Roman Republic period was characterised by conflict between the plebeians, common citizens, and the patricians, land-owning aristocracy.

Gaius Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BC) lived in this period. In 60 BC, he, Pompey and Crassus formed an informal political alliance that became known as the First Triumvirate. He was elected consul for the year 59 BC. At the end of his one year term, Caesar outmaneuvered the Senate and secured a position of governor (proconsul) of several provinces but more importantly command of a large army. He then embarked on his greatest military triumphs. First, he conquered Gaul (present day France) after the Gallic War (58 to 50 BC). He fought as far as what is now Germany and he even crossed the English Channel to Britannia (Britain) twice.

In the meantime, the First Triumvirate has broken down. Pompey sided with the Senate and ordered Caesar to disband his army and return to Rome. Caesar disobeyed the order and, in 49 BC, crossed the Rubicon River (which marked the border of Italy proper) with one legion of his army. This sparked the Roman Civil War. Pompey and his supporters fled Rome. Caesar spent the next 4 years pursuing and battling Pompey’s forces in Hispania (present day Iberian Peninsula), Greece, Egypt and Africa. Pompey was murdered in Egypt. In March 45 BC, Caesar finally defeated the forces then led by Pompey’s sons Gnaeus and Sextus.

Caesar returned in triumph to Rome in September 45 BC. He began to introduce wide-ranging reforms of everything from the political institutions to the calendar. Most importantly, he began to consolidate his power at the expense of the Senate. At some point between January and February 44 BCE he was appointed dictator perpetuo (dictator in perpetuity). There was unease amongst many Romans that Caesar will soon assume absolute power and rule as tyrant, effectively as king.


What is it about?

The play begins in Rome on February 15, 44 BC. Julius Caesar parades through the streets near the Palatine Hill in a triumphal procession celebrating his victory over Pompey in the Roman Civil War.

A group of Senators, led by Cassius, seek to persuade Brutus to join their conspiracy to kill Caesar. Cassius invokes the name of the earlier Brutus who overthrew the last king of Rome. In a soliloquy, Brutus voices his fear that only death will prevent Caesar’s rise to absolute power:

It must be by his death, and for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him
But for the general. He would be crowned:
How that might change his nature, there’s the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,
And that craves wary walking: crown him that,
And then I grant we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
Th’abuse of greatness is when it disjoins
Remorse from power: and to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections swayed
More than his reason. But ’tis a common proof
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face.
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend: so Caesar may;
Then, lest he may, prevent. And since the quarrel
Will bear no color for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities.
And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg—
Which, hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous—
And kill him in the shell.
(2.1.10-34)

Brutus lead the conspirators and stab Caesar to death on the Ides of March, 14 March 44 BC. Then comes the centerpiece of the play. In prose, Brutus addresses the citizens and wins over the crowd by telling them that the reason he rose against Caesar was “not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more” (3.2.21-22). Then, he makes a fatal mistake in allowing Antony, Caesar’s second-in-command, to address the crowd after he leaves (“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”). Antony uses a wonderful array of literary devices (and the promise of a substantial financial incentive) to completely undermine Brutus and manipulate the citizens to turn on the conspirators:

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel. -
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him. -
This was the most unkindest cut of all.
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart,
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey’s statue -
Which all the while ran blood - great Caesar fell.
(3.2.185-193)

Antony then forms an alliance, the so-called Second Triumvirate, with Octavius (Caesar’s heir) and Lepidus. The play ends in Philippi, Greece, in 42 BC, when Cassius and Brutus commit suicide after defeat to the forces of Mark Antony and Octavius.

Brutus is arguably the protagonist of the play. Even his mortal enemy Antony praises him in the final scene of the play:

This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, “This was a man!”
(5.5.73-80)

Themes

Shakespeare’s contemporaries, who were well versed in ancient Greek and Roman history, would very likely have detected parallels between the play’s portrayal of the shift from republican to imperial Rome and the Elizabethan era’s trend toward consolidated monarchal power. In 1599, when the play was first performed, Queen Elizabeth I had sat on the throne for nearly forty years, enlarging her power at the expense of the aristocracy and the House of Commons. As she was then sixty-six years old, her reign seemed likely to end soon, yet she did not have any heirs (the same as Julius Caesar). Many feared that her death would plunge England into the kind of chaos that had plagued England during the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses. In an age when censorship would have limited direct commentary on these worries, Shakespeare could nevertheless use the story of Caesar to comment on the political situation of his day.

Shakespeare is fond of symmetries and often repeats scenes, conversations, or even characters. In Julius Caesar, the two female characters Portia, Brutus’s wife, and Calpurnia, Caesar’s wife, tried but failed to persuade their husbands from the events on the Ides of March.

The play also offers a primer to two major schools of Greek philosophy. The first is Epicureanism, founded by Epicurus (342 - 270 BC). He believed in gods who did not control nature; they lived a life of infinite bliss which would be spoilt if they worried about human affairs (source: The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, Urmson & Ree, 1991). As the gods were indifferent to human affairs, omens did not influence the course of events. The second is Stoicism, founded by Zeno (c 333 - 262 BC). The Stoics believe that unhappiness was the result of pursuing what was not wholly under the control of the individual and the only thing completely in our power is the correct moral attitude of mind which is virtue (source: The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, Urmson & Ree, 1991). The Stoics came up with was a strategy of emotional disengagement from life, apathia (apathy) and they acted only from reason, never from passion (source: Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, Cathcart & Klein, 2007).

In the beginning of the play, Cassius declared himself an Epicurean. He dismissed various omens appearing all over Rome and said, “Men at some time are master of their fates. / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings” (1.2.145-147). By the end of the play, he has changed his mind (at least a little). He now said that he “... partly credit things that do presage” (5.185) and believed that he has seen omens that predicted the defeat of his army. Brutus on the other hand was initially a Stoic. Even when faced with defeat, he felt it was cowardly and vile (ie. not Stoic) to contemplate suicide (5.1.109-116). In the end, however, his forces and his spirit broken, he admitted:

Our enemies have beat us to the pit;
It is more worthy to leap in ourselves
Than tarry till they push us in ...
(5.5.27-29)

So how is the book?

Each of the books in the RSC Shakespeare series published by The Modern Library comes with very informative footnotes, helpful scene-by-scene analysis and, best of all, commentary on past and current productions that comes with interviews with leading directors and actor. The books are also very reasonably priced. Best of all, the introductions are not overly long and focus on a few talking points for each play. The paper quality is not particularly good though. Unlike the other titles in this series, I actually like the cover for this title (a bloodied knife).

The proof-readers made an unforgivable error in Scene 2. On the eve of the assassination of Caesar, Brutus asks his young servant: “Is not tomorrow, boy, the first of March?” (2.1.40). It should of course have been the “fifteenth” of March.


Et cetera

In Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Brutus and Cassius are punished in the lowest level of Purgatory (together with Judas Iscariot).

In Hamlet (written one to two years after Julius Caesar), there is a sly reference to Julius Caesar. Polonius say: “I did enact Julius Caesar / I was killed in the Capitol; Brutus killed me.” To which Hamlet replies, “It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there” (3.2).

As You Like It

Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Written: c 1599

Editors: Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

Publisher: Modern Library (2010 Edition)

Bought from: Book Depository

Introduction

This is one of Shakespeare’s “pastoral comedies”. It features Rosalind, one of his most famous female characters and the only one who delivers the epilogue.

What is it about?

The main characters Rosalind and Orlando are forced into exile in the Forest of Arden and find love. There is the inevitable cross dressing and mistaken identities. The play ends with four weddings (and happily no funerals).  

What about the book?

Each of the books in the RSC Shakespeare series published by The Modern Library comes with very informative footnotes, helpful scene-by-scene analysis and, best of all, commentary on past and current productions that comes with interviews with leading directors and actor. The books are also very reasonably priced. Best of all, the introductions are not overly long and focus on a few talking points for each play. The paper quality is not particularly good though. Also, the covers are not very attractive.

Finally ...

This play is the source for the famous quotation “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players” (2.7.142-143).

I don’t much like this!

Prometheus Bound and Other Plays

Author: Aeschylus (c 525 - 456 BC)

Translator: Philip Vellacott

Publisher: Penguin Books (1961)

Bought from: Book Depository

Introduction

Aeschylus is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays are extant. In terms of career, his started earlier than both Sophocles and Euripides. He is sometimes known as the Father of Greek Tragedy. Aeschylus wrote more than 70 plays. He is said to have won 14 - 15 dramatic competitions in Athens. In comparison, Sophocles won between 20 - 25 competitions (sometimes beating Aeschylus to second place) while Euripides may have won only 4 or 5.

Only seven of Aeschylus’ plays have survived intact. The Oresteia - consisting of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides - is his most famous work.

What is it about?

This volume contains Aeschylus’ other 4 surviving works.

The first play in the volume, Prometheus Bound (written about 463 BC), is probably the best known. The titular character is the Titan who stole the secret of fire from the Olympian gods and gave it to humankind. This play tells of the punishment for his crime and a visit from Io (another victim of the Olympian gods). Prometheus Bound is the first play of a trilogy which includes the now lost Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire Bringer.

The last play in the volume is The Persians (written c 472 BC). It depicts the reaction of the Persian royal court to news that the Persian forces have been routed at the Battle of Salami (480 BC), a key battle in the Greco-Persian Wars. That is pretty much it. Nonetheless, the play is notable because it references an event that took place a mere 8 years earlier. Aeschylus himself took part in the Greco-Persian Wars. His epitaph reads:

Beneath this stone lies Aeschlyus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian,
who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela;
of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak,
and the long-haired Persian knows it well.

The two plays bookend The Suppliants and Seven Against Thebes.


What about the book?

This book, part of the Penguin Classics series, is a verse translation. It is a very slim volume. The introduction is useful but the notes are very skimpy.

Finally …

Not as good as The Oresteia.

The Histories

Author: Herodotus (c 484 BC – 425 BC)
Written: c 450 – 420 BC
Translator: Aubrey De Sélincourt, revised by John Marincola
Publisher: Penguin Books (2003 Edition)
Bought: NoQ Store


Introduction

Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus, a Greek settlement in Asia Minor, modern day Bodrum, Turkey. Little is known of his personal history. It is believed that at some stage he moved to Athens. The Histories is his masterpiece and the only work he is known to have produced. It is written for Athenian readers.

The title of the work Historia (in Greek) actually means “inquiry” or “investigation” before the word was transformed by Latin and took on its modern meaning of history. The work is therefore not simply a straightforward historical account of the period Herodotus was writing about but also a record of the geography, culture, mythology, custom and even biology of the various people and places mentioned in his work. Herodotus has been called the “Father of History”.

Halicarnassus was a Dorian colony. But Herodotus wrote The Histories in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, the same dialect Homer wrote his epic poems in. The Ionic alphabet was later adopted in Athens and eventually became the standard Greek alphabet still in use today.


What is it about?

The work is mainly about the Greco-Persian Wars, a true clash of civilizations between East and West that took place between 499 BC - 449 BC and so very recent history for Herodotus.

The story kicks off with Croesus, king of Lydia. According to Herodotus, Croesus is “the first man to injure the Greeks” when he conquer the Greek colonies in Asia Minor. He tries to take on but is ultimately defeated by the Persians led by Cyrus.

Cyrus is the first of 4 kings of the Achaemenid Empire who appear in The Histories:
Cyrus 557-530 BC
Cambyses 530-522 BC
Darius 521-486 BC
Xerxes 486-479 BC

These are names that are familiar to anyone with an interest in history.

When Darius learned that the Athenians and their allies have sacked the major Persian city of Sardis during the Ionian Revolt, he memorably called for his bow. Then, he “took it, set an arrow on the string, shot it up into the air and cried: ‘Grant, O God, that I may punish the Athenians.’ Then he commanded one of his servants to repeat to him the words, ‘Master, remember the Athenians’, three times, wherever he sat down to dinner” (Book 5 chap 105).

Darius also participates in an astonishing episode known as the Constitutional Debate. Seven Persian nobles meet to discuss what type of government Persia should adopt after ousting a usurper. Three, including the future King Darius, deliver speeches highlighting the benefits and weaknesses of democracy, oligarchy and monarchy, respectively. As relevant now as it was 2,500 years ago (Book 3 chaps 80 - 82).

At the start of his campaign, Xerxes ordered the building of bridges across the Hellespont that divides Asia from Europe. The bridges were damaged by a storm. He “was so angry when he learned of the disaster, and gave orders that the Hellespont should receive three hundred lashes and have a pair of fetters thrown into it. I have heard before now that he also sent people to brand it with hot irons” (Book 7 chaps 35).

The work also features famous episodes from Xerxes’s campaign:
* Miltiades’ famous victory at Marathon in 490 BC (but no mention of anyone running 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to deliver the good news – supposedly the origin of the modern marathon)
* The last stand of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae in 480 BC and
* The destruction of the Persian naval forces by Themistocles at Salamis also in 480 BC.

Postscript: In the aftermath of the battle at Salamis and mop up operations in the next couple of years, Xerxes returned to Persia never to attack Greek soil again. The Achaemenid Empire however would last until about 330 BC when Alexander the Great captured Persepolis, the Empire’s capital. Meanwhile, Sparta and Athens, reluctant allies at best during the Greco-Persian Wars, would jostle for influence until, a mere 50 years after Salamis, the Peloponnesian War (431 BC - 404 BC) broke out.


Themes

See the Introduction to the book.


How is the book?

The Introduction written by John Marincola is accessible and extremely helpful. It is not too long and covers exactly what a general reader wants or needs to know before plunging into the story proper – Herodotus’ life and work, the subject matter of The Histories, Herodotus’ sources and method, structure and themes in The Histories and Herodotus’ later reputation. Why can’t all introductions be written this way?

The book also contains a section called “Structural Outline”. This is incredibly useful – it is a road map of the work. Herodotus has a habit of digressing from the central narrative. In Book Four chap 30 for example, he made one of this disgressions and actually wrote, “I need not apologise for the digression – it has been my habit throughout this work”. So, if one were minded to read or reread only the historical narrative, or any thread, say on Sparta, one could use the Structural Outline to identify the passages that relate to this and skip those passages that do not.


Finally …

Great read. Timeless.

Ten Plays

Author: Euripides (c 485 BC – 406 BC)
Translator: Moses Hadas and John McLean
Publisher: Bantam Book (2006 reissue)
Bought from: Borders


Introduction

Euripides is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays are extant. In terms of career, his came later than both Sophocles and Aeschylus. Euripides is said to have written more than 90 plays but only 18 or 19 survive (there is much debate over the authorship of one play). Apparently, Euripides does not write connected trilogies like Sophocles or Aeschylus. Euripides won 4 or 5 dramatic competitions in Athens. Aeschylus is said to have won 14-15 while Sophocles won between 20-25.


What is it about?

This, as the name suggests, is a collection of 10 of Euripides’ extant plays.

Medea

“Woman in most respects is a timid creature, with no heart for strife and aghast at the sight of steel; but wronged in love, there is no heart more murderous than hers.”

First performed in the Dionysia festival 431 BC, won 3rd prize. Medea, a barbarian (non-Greek) princess betrays her own family and even kills her own brother to help Jason steal the Golden Fleece from her homeland Colchis. Jason abandons her and their young sons for another woman. Medea kills her rival in love and her father and then, most shockingly, her own children. This is an unremittingly tragic play.

Hippolytus

“Neither the flash of fire nor the bolt of the stars is more deadly than the shafts of Aphrodite which Eros, Zeus’ boy hurl from his hands.”

First performed in the Dionysia festival 428 BC, won 1st prize. The gods play key roles in this play. Aphrodite is angry that Hippolytus, son of Theseus, worships Artemis and ignores her. In reprisal, she causes Hippolytus’ stepmother Phaedra to fall in love with him. When her secret is revealed, Phaedra kills herself. She leaves a suicide note accusing Hippolytus of raping her. Theseus asks his father Poseidon to punish Hippolytus. Poseidon causes the death of his own grandson. Artemis, who does not intervene to save Hippolytus, appears at the end of the play to reveal the truth to Theseus. Theseus, king of Athens and one of the leading heroes of Greek mythology, is not portrayed in a good light here. He is deceived by his wife and condemns his son “untried, without examination of oath or pledge or prophet’s oracle.”

The Trojan Women

“Sorrow outsorrows sorrow.”

First performed in the Dionysia festival 415 BC, won 2nd prize. In the aftermath of the Trojan War, the surviving women of the Troy are divided as spoils. Hecuba, wife of Priam, will be Odysseus’ slave (note: she does not feature in Homer’s The Odyssey). Cassandra, Hecuba’s daughter, will be Agamemnon’s concubine (but at least she has the comfort of foreseeing Agamemnon’s murder in the hands of his wife). Most pathetic of all is Andromache, widow of Hector. She will be taken by Achilles’ son Neoptolemus as “a special gift”. She learns the fates of her children with Hector: their daughter Polyxena has already been sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles and (at Odysseus’ instigation) their baby son Astyanax will be killed by being hurled off the battlements of Troy. What about Helen, the casus belli? Menelaus threatens his wanton wife with a death sentence but the audience and reader know she will win a reprieve. At the climax of the play, the Greeks burn down the city of Troy. This is a heartbreaking account of the effects of war.

Electra

“Women are their husbands’ friends … not their children.”

Performed c 413 BC. Electra and Orestes kill their mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus to avenge the murder of their father Agamemnon. The events in this play are largely similar to that in Sophocles’ play of the same name and Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers.

The Bacchants

“Talk wisdom to the stupid and they will think you foolish.”

 First performed posthumously in the Dionysia festival 405 BC as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigenia at Aulis, won 1st prize. Pentheus, the king of Thebes, is alarmed by news of the approach of Dionysus and the maenads, his female followers. He forbids the worship of this self-professed new god. Dionysus, who is actually his cousin, has come to his home city Thebes to spread his religion. This clash of ‘old’ and ‘new’ religions ends in Pentheus’ gruesome death in the hands of his own mother (now a maenad).

Iphigenia at Aulis

“One’s own child is a fine price to pay for a harlot. We buy what we loathe with what we love.”

First performed posthumously in the Dionysia festival 405 BC as part of a tetralogy that also included The Bacchants, won 1st prize. The Greek naval forces mustered for the Trojan War are stuck in Aulis because Artemis has stayed the winds. Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to appease Artemis. Clytemnestra is distraught her daughter has to die just so Menelaus can reclaim his runaway wife Helen. The scene is set for the events told in Aeschylus’ The Oresteia.

The other plays are Alcestis, Andromache, Ion and Iphigenia among the Taurians. I do not know if the plays in this volume are Euripides’ best plays. They probably are. For comparison purposes, there is another compilation of 10 Euripides plays, translated by Paul Roche, which contains the same plays except The Cylops replaces Andromache.


How is the book?

The translation is in modern English prose. There is a general introduction and a very brief introduction to each play. There is a glossary at the end of the book. But my biggest complain is that there are no notes. For example, in The Trojan Woman, Hecuba describes Helen as “that affront to Castor, that scandal of the Eurotas.” What is that all about?

This is a no-frill compilation. But it is a cost efficient way of getting 10 Euripides plays in one go. In complete collections, these plays are spread out over 3-5 books with the better plays found (as expected) in different volumes. Given the variable qualities of some of Euripides’ works, it would be a luxury to splurge on any of the complete collections available in the market.


Finally …

No bad. A better set of notes would have make the reading more enjoyable.

The Decameron

Author: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)
Written: c. 1350-53
Translator: G. H. McWilliam
Publisher: Penguin Books (1995 Second Edition)
Bought from: NoQ Store


Introduction

Giovanni Boccaccio is an Italian author and poet. The Decameron is his most famous work.

What is it about?

The Decameron is a collection of 100 stories told by 7 young ladies and 3 young men against the backdrop of a plague-ravaged Florence in 1348. Every member of the party tells a story each day for ten days to amuse themselves and while the afternoon away.

Many of the stories contain bawdy or erotic elements. The Roman Catholic Church and its clergy and beliefs are often subject to mockery and ridicule.

Stories in The Decameron have influenced later writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare.


What about the book?

There is an extensive introduction which covers Boccaccio’s life and the Italian world he lived in and useful end notes. McWilliam writes in accessible English.


Finally

In the back cover, Penguin Books describes The Decameron as a towering monument of European literature and a masterpice of imaginative narrative. To me, however, it is more like one of the films in the Carry On series. The bawdy stories are the most memorable ones. And the bawdy lines, such as “put the Devil back in Hell”, are the most memorable ones. But I find the book tiring to read and I have not finished reading it. I do not think I ever will. So, overall, a major disappointment.

The Mahabharata

Attributed to: Vyasa
Written: unknown
Retold by: Ramesh Menon
Publisher: iUniverse, Inc (2006)
Bought from: Book Depository


Introduction

This is one of the two major Sanskrit epics from ancient India, the other being The Ramayana. The events in The Mahabharata take place after the events in The Ramayana.

Mahabharata is made up of two words, maha which means great and Bharata which is the Sanskrit name of India. Traditionally, The Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa, who flits in and out of the story itself as the grandfather of the warring Pandava and Kaurava families. There is no clear evidence who actually compiled the story from its likely oral origins or when. The story may have originated around 900 BC or 800 BC and evolved to more or less its current form around 400 BC. The historicity of the Kurukshetra War fought at the climax of the story is unclear. The traditional date for the war is 1300 BC but most historians date it between the 1000-900 BC.

The poem is made up of almost 100,000 couplets—about seven times the length of The Iliad and The Odyssey combined—divided into 18 parvas, or sections plus a supplement on the genealogy of the god Vishnu. According to The Encyclopedia Britannica, the core story makes up only about one fifth of the work. Around the core story runs a rich vein of materials on Hindu mythology and religious beliefs that expands and informs the core story itself. These include the famous Bhagavad Gita.

The Mahabharata itself declares that “What is found in this story may be found elsewhere; what is not in this story is nowhere else.”


What is it about?

The Mahabharata chronicles the struggle for the throne at Hastinapura between two branches of the House of Kuru, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. This struggle culminates in the epic Kurukshetra War. Seven armies join the Pandavas. Eleven support the Kauravas. The war lasts for 18 days. At the end of the war, more than 10 million kshatriyas lie dead. Most of the noble houses are extinguished. The race of kings has been destroyed forever.

The central character is arguably not any of the Kuru princes but Krishna, the avatara (incarnation) of the Hindu god Vishnu. He is born on the same night as Arjuna. That night, the Hindu god Indra announces to Arjuna’s father Pandu (1.20): “Tonight, Vishnu’s twin incarnations, Nara and Narayana, have been born into the world to cleanse it of evil. Arjuna is Nara, come again as a man. In Mathura tonight, Narayana has also been born. Hearken to the earth, Pandu, she sings the birth of dark Krishna.” Krishna is born to close out the dwapara yuga and usher in the kali yuga (the third and fourth ages respectively of Hindu time). The Kurukshetra War is Krishna’s means to effect the change. The characters in The Mahabharata appear to be mere puppets manipulated by Krishna to achieve his purpose in life.

The main protagonists are the Pandava princes Yudhishtira, Bheema, Arjuna and the twins Nakula and Sahadeva. Arjuna is the lead character in terms of heroics. Krishna is the main ally of the Pandavas.

The primary antagonist is Duryodhana, the oldest of the 100 Kauravas. His main allies are his brother Dusasana and his uncle Shakuni. One character who may also be considered an antagonist is Bheeshma, the last of the royal Kuru bloodline. He is affectionately known to the Kuru princes as pitama (grandfather). He believes the Pandavas are on the side of dharma but duty binds him to be the first senapati (general) of the Kaurava army during the Kurukshetra War. His death, on the “bed of arrows” is one of the most famous episodes of the epic (6.21 ff). Another antagonist is Drona, acharya (brahmana master) to the Kuru princes. His favourite sishya (disciple) is Arjuna. He loves so Arjuna so much that he cold heartedly maims Ekalavya, an upstart who threatens to be a better archer than Arjuna (1.31). But like Bheeshma, duty binds him to fight for the Kaurava army and he serves as senapati after Bheeshma falls.

Then there is Karna, probably the most tragic character in the story. He is actually the oldest Pandava prince and therefore the rightful heir to the throne. But his twisted destiny dictates that he be abandoned by his mother right after he was born (1.16). He finds himself adopted by parents from a caste below his birthright warrior caste. He is rejected by Drona but deceives Drona’s own acharya Bhargava into accepting him as a sishya. He ends up becoming Duryodhana’s closest ally and his brother Arjuna’s mortal enemy. During the Kurukshetra War, Karna bests but spares the lives of all the Pandavas except Arjuna. In the end, he dies in the hands of his brother Arjuna because of a curse laid on him by his old teacher Bhargava.

The main female character is Draupadi. When she is born, an asariri (disembodied voice) says (1.46): “The dark one will be the most beautiful woman in the world. She is born to fulfill a divine purpose, she will be the nemesis of kshatriya kind.” She is the wife to all five Pandava princes. She plays the central role in the episode known as the disrobing of Draupadi (2.19), which triggers the Pandavas’ undying hatred of Duryodhana and his brothers. This antipathy leads to the Kurukshetra War in which the kshatriya kind is decimated.


Themes

The battle between the cousins is one between good v evil, darkness v light, dharma and adharma.

The Pandavas are generally portrayed as the good guys. But even they (often at Krishna’s prompting) are capable of resorting to ignoble actions. During the course of the war, Arjuna kills an unarmed Karna, Yudhishtira (until this moment, a paragon of dharma) tells a white lie to trick Drona into laying down his arms and Bheema disables Duryodhana by striking him literally below the belt. In an earlier episode, the Pandavas committed an even more egregious crime – they left an intoxicated nishada (untouchable) family to die in a fire to mask their own escape (1.40).

The episode with the nishada family is one example of the attitude of the people at that time to the caste system. No one suffers more as a result of the caste system than Karna. Although he is of a kshatriya bloodline, he is adopted by a suta (charioteer). Drona refuses to accept him as a sishya because he thinks Karna is not a kshatriya. Bhargava accepts Karna only after he pretends to be a brahmana. When Bhargava discovers Karna is in fact not a brahmana, he curses Karna, stating that when he requires an astra (supernatural weapon) the most, he will be unable to recall its incantation.

The book also contain major passages dealing with what (in the absence of footnotes) I assume are major teachings of Hinduism. For example, Yudhishtira, who is in exile with his family in exile, asks a muni (sage) why a man who treads the path of dharma suffers while those that are steeped in evil come to no harm. The muni answers:

“It is a time question that many a good man before you has asked in the wilderness and countless more will ask it, in despair, along the deep trails of time. The answer is simple: the evil ones do not prosper but only appear to, at that, very briefly. No man prospers by sin. His own conscience gives him no rest and his crime consumes him from within. Some day, those he has sinned against will recover from the harm he did to them. But the sinner’s guilt remains with him, tormenting him until the hour of retribution comes. There is no escape for the demonic man. Justice overtakes him, inexorably, despite all his efforts to keep it away; then, he is destroyed. But remember, Yudhishtira, life is not simple, neither is it as short as we think. All this began long ago. You have lived many lives before this one, so have your brothers and all of us. What you suffer today might well be punishment for some forgotten crime of your own. Of course, that does not justify what has been done to you, but it might explain it.”
(3.16)

The idea of a cycle, of an individual’s death and rebirth, is a key element of Hindu beliefs. Hindu beliefs also embrace the idea of another cycle, on a grander scale, of the creation and destruction of the cosmos over time. There is a discussion of the four yugas in every great cycle of time according to Hindu belief (3.27). The yuga that ended with the Mahabharata war is the dwapara yuga - the age of kshatriyas and heroes, during which noble values still prevail and men remain faithful to dharma. The age that follows the war is the kali yuga, the last age of every cycle. In this yuga, all values are reduced, law becomes fragmented and powerless, and evil gains sway.

For some readers, the highlight of the book is the Bhagavad Gita, The Song of God. On the eve of the great war, Arjuna is wracked by doubt. He looks across the plains and sees not enemies but sires and grandsire, masters, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons and childhood friends (6.3). He turns to Krishna, his charioteer. Krishna explains to Arjuna concepts such as samkhya (renunciation), yoga (spiritual discipline) and karma (action). In the original work, the Bhagavad Gita consists of 18 chapters and 700 or 745 verses. In Ramesh Menon’s rendering, the Bhagavad Gita is told in Book 3 Chapters Three to Nine.


What about the book?

This is a modern prose rendering of the ancient epic. Ramesh Menon has used English translations by Kamala Subramaniam and Kisari Mohan Ganguli respectively as his source. It is not clear if he is faithful to the original or not. It is clear that his retelling is an abridged version. The original tale is said to be about 1.8 million words long. So, it would probably have been impractical for a casual reader to read a complete translation. Ramesh Menon, who also retold The Ramayana, has done a decent job. The prose flows smoothly peppered with the occasional flowery language.

The story comes in 2 volumes. In size, they are more like textbooks than anything else. They are bulky and heavy. There are no notes or maps or family trees. There is a skimpy 2-page introduction. There is no table of contents and no index; chapter names or number are not marked on the pages. All these make cross-referencing very difficult. Some notes on the religious passages would have been helpful.


Finally …

The story is recommended. It is truly one of the classics. But the publisher has done a monumentally lousy job.

The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides

Author: Aeschylus (c 525 - 456 BC)
Written: unknown
Translator: Robert Fagles
Publisher: Penguin Books (1979 Reprint)
Bought from: Book Depository


Introduction

Aeschylus is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays are extant. In terms of career, his started earlier than both Sophocles and Euripides. He is sometimes known as the Father of Greek Tragedy. Aeschylus wrote more than 70 plays. He is said to have won 14-15 dramatic competitions in Athens. In comparison, Sophocles won between 20-25 competitions (sometimes beating Aeschylus to second place) while Euripides may have won only 4 or 5.

Only seven of Aeschylus’ plays have survived intact. The Oresteia is made up of three plays - Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides - that form a proper trilogy (unlike the three plays that make up Sophocles’ The Theban Plays). This is the only known surviving trilogy of Greek tragedy plays.

It is believe The Oresteia was first performed at the Dionysia, a major festival in Athens, in 458 BC, where it won first prize. The trilogy is considered Aeschylus’ finest work and one of the greatest works of world literature.

The Oresteia deals with the final days of the House of Atreus. The mythology surrounding this cursed family is an old one and would have been familiar to Aeschylus’ audience. Some familiarity with the mythology is useful to read The Oresteia meaningfully. There is no definitive version of the mythology.

The following is a synthesized version of the story.

The founder of the House of Atreus is Tantalus. He was a favourite of the Olympian gods and was even invited to dine at Zeus’ table on Mount Olympus. One day, he inexplicably cooked his own son Pelops and offered him to the gods. The gods realized what he was doing and threw Tantalus into Tartarus, an abyss in the underworld for eternal punishment and suffering. There, Tantalus spends eternity standing in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any. This is the origin of the word “tantalize”.

The gods brought Pelops back to life. But cannibalism, human sacrifice and infanticide were considered by the ancient Greeks as among the darkest crimes imaginable, rivaled only by incest. So, Tantalus’ descendants, the House of Atreus were doomed from that moment on.

Pelops wished to marry Hippodamia, daughter of king Oenomaus. Oenomaus set up a chariot race against himself for his daughter’ suitors. If the suitor lost, he was killed. Thirteen had died in such a race before Pelops made his attempt. Pelops bribed the king's charioteer (Myrtilus) to disable the king’s chariot. In the race, the wheels of Oenomaus’ chariot came off. The king was killed but Myrtilus survived. Pelops then carried off Hippodamia as his bride. He killed his co-conspirator Myrtilus because (in one version) Myrtilus had claimed Hippodamia for himself. Before he died, Myrtilus (in some versions Oenomaus) cursed Pelops and his family. This is the origin of the famous curse on the House of Atreus.

Pelops had a number of children with Hippodamia, including Atreus and Thyestes. Atreus married Aerope and they had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus. Thyestes had two sons and a daughter Pelopia.

Pelops had a bastard son, Chrysippus. (Digression: when Chrysippus was still a boy, he was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by his own tutor, Laius (later King of Thebes). This was a crime that the gods punished with another multi-generational curse – Laius you see is the grandfather of Oedipus.)

Hippodamia incited Atreus and Thyestes to murder their stepbrother Chrysippus to cement their claim on Pelop’s throne. Pelops banished Hippodamia, Atreus, and Thyestes to Mycenae, where Hippodamia is said to have hanged herself. The people of Mycenae had been told by an oracle that they should choose their king from Pelop’s descendants. Atreus vowed to sacrifice his best lamb to Artemis. Upon searching his flock, however, Atreus discovered a golden lamb which he gave to Aerope to hide from the goddess. She gave it to Thyestes, by then her lover, who convinced Atreus to agree that whoever had the lamb should be king. Thyestes produced the lamb and claimed the throne. Atreus retook the throne after consulting Hermes. Thyestes agreed to give the kingdom back when the sun moved backwards in the sky, a feat that Zeus accomplished. Atreus retook the throne and banished Thyestes.

Thyestes petitioned to be allowed to return and Atreus agreed. At a huge banquet to welcome Thyestes back, Atreus served Thyestes the cooked flesh of Thyestes’ own sons. Thyestes ate the food and was then informed of what he had done. This horrific event is the origin of the term “Thyestean Banquet” meaning a banquet at which human flesh is eaten. Overcome with horror, Thyestes cursed the family of Atreus and left with his one remaining child, his daughter Pelopia.

Thyestes followed an oracle’s prophecy after the Thyestean Feast and fathered a son with his own daughter Pelopia so that the son, Aegisthus, could avenge the notorious banquet. When Aegisthus was born, he was abandoned by Pelopia who was ashamed of her incestuous act. A shepherd found the infant Aegisthus and gave him to Atreus, who raised him as his own son. Atreus sent Aegistheus to kill Thyestes. Thyestes discovered the identity of his son in the nick of time and revealed the truth to him, that he was both father and grandfather to the boy. Aegisthus then killed Atreus and restored his father to the throne, although not before Atreus had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus.

Agamemnon and Menelaus, took refuge with Tyndareus, King of Sparta. There they married Tyndareus’ daughters Clytaemnestra and Helen, respectively. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had four children: one son, Orestes, and three daughters, Iphigeneia, Electra and Chrysothemis. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had three children, Iphigeneia, Orestes, and Electra.

Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus in Sparta while Agamemnon, with his brother’s assistance, drove out Aegisthus and Thyestes to recover his father’s kingdom. He extended his dominion by conquest and became the most powerful prince in Greece.

Helen was so famous for her beauty that a number of men wished to marry her. The suitors all agreed that they would act to support the man she eventually married in the event of any need for mutual assistance. When Helen ran off to Troy with Paris, Agamemnon and Menelaus organized and led the Greek forces against the Trojans. The army assembled at Aulis, but the fleet could not sail because of contrary winds sent by Artemis. Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia in order to placate Artemis.

With Agamemnon and Menelaus off in Troy, Aegisthus returned to Argos, where he became the lover of Clytaemnestra. They sent Orestes into exile, to live with an ally in Phocis, and humiliated Electra, Agamemnon’s surviving daughter (either treating her as a servant (as suggested in The Libation Bearers) or marrying her off to a common farmer (as suggested in Euripides’ Electra).

The Oresteia picks up the action at this point.


What is it about?

Clytaemnestra kills Agamemnon when he returns from the Trojan War. Orestes returns from exile and, in collaboration with his sister Electra, avenges his father by killing Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus. The Furies arrive to torment him. Orestes flees and ultimately seeks refuge in the temple of Athena in Athens. There he is tried and acquitted. This ends the curse on the House of Atreus.

Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers are set in Argos. In most sources, eg Homer, Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae. In The Oresteia, however, Agamemnon’s court is said to be in Argos. These are two different cities. Fagles speculates as follows: About four years before the production of The Oresteia in 458 BC, Argos had destroyed Mycenae and made an alliance with Athens against Sparta. Possibly Aeschylus transferred Agamemnon’s capital from Mycenae to Argos to please Athens’ new allies (A introductory note; E n. 289).

The Eumenides is set in the temple of Apollo in Delphi and Athens. The trial scene is set in the Areopagus, the court on the Crag of Ares opposite the entrance to the Acropolis.

Themes

Underlying The Oresteia is the curse on the House of Atreus. The curse is an example of the idea in ancient Greece that for every action there is a reaction, for every crime there is a punishment in accordance with ancient laws: “The one who acts must suffer” (LB 320). Sometimes, the sinner is not only the one who suffers. His descendants will also pay for his sin: “A curse burns bright on crime / full-blown, the father’s crime will blossom / burst into the son’s.” (A 378-380).

This mirrors the Bible “For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20:5-6) and William Shakespeare - “the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children” (The Merchant of Venice 3.5.1-2).

The Oresteia has been described as an allegory of society’s (and in particular, the Athenians’) evolution from ignorance to enlightenment, from tribal rituals to civilized institutions, from ‘an-eye-for-an-eye’ to court adjudicated-justice systems. The narrative is driven by the principle of lex talionis, the law of retaliation. If a person was injured, then the injured person (or his relative) would take vengeful retribution on the person who caused the injury, leading inevitably to an unending cycle of blood. In The Libation Bearers, Orestes describes what would happen if he does not avenge his father:

“I can still hear the god –
a high voice ringing with winters of disaster,
piercing the heart within me, warm and strong,
unless I hunt my father’s murderers, cut them down
in their own style – they destroyed my birthright.
‘Gore them like a bull!’ he called, ‘or pay their debt
with your own life, one long career of grief.’
He revealed so much about us,
told how the dead take root beneath the soil,
they grow with hate and plague the lives of men.
He told of the leprous boils that ride the flesh,
their wild teeth gnawing the mother tissue, aye,
and a white scurf spreads like cancer over these,
and worse, he told how assaults of Furies spring
to life on the father’s blood … You can see them –
their eyes burning, grim brows working over you in the dark –
the dark sword of the dead! – your murdered kinsmen
pleading for revenge. And the madness haunts
the midnight watch, the empty terror shakes you,
harries, drives you on – an exile from your city –
a brazen whip will mutilate your back.”
(LB 275-295)

In The Eumenides, the Furies corner Orestes and prepare to exact their revenge. Athena intervenes and convenes a tribunal consisting of 10 Athenians and herself to try Orestes. Orestes admits killing his mother with a knife. When asked for his motive, he replies Apollo commanded him (E 690). He also claim the defence of lex talionis, ie his action is justifiable because his mother had killed her husband and his father (E 608).

Apollo defends Orestes by claiming that his command to Orestes comes directly from Zeus (E 622-625). Then drawing a difference between Orestes’ matricide and Clytaemnestra’s mariticide, Apollo says:

“The woman you call the mother of the child
is not the parent, just a nurse to the seed,
the new born seed that grows and swells inside her.
The man is the source of life – the one who mounts.”
(E 666-679)

In the end, Athena casts the decisive vote and acquits Orestes because she “cannot set more store by the woman’s death / she killed her husband, guardian of the house” (E 754-755). With this decision, the Athenians turn their backs on the primitive personal vengeance and embrace the civilized legal system with trial by jury.


What about the book?

This book, part of the Penguin Classics series, is a verse translation by Robert Fagles. Like his translation of Homer’s epic poems, Fagles’ translation of The Oresteia is very easy to read. However, the introductory essay by Fagles and W. B. Standford is very dense and difficult to digest. There are useful notes at the end of the book.


Finally …

Recommended.


Et cetera

Tantalus had 2 other children. Of Broteas we know little other than that he was very ugly. The second, Niobe, is a poster girl for hubris. She had fourteen children and one fine day she decided to declare that she was a more blessed mother than Leto, who had only two. Unfortunately for Niobe, Leto’s two children were Artemis and Apollo, and they punished her by exterminating every one of her children. The story is told in Ovid’s Metamophorses (VI.146-317).

The Furies (or Erinyes) are not the same as Gorgons or Harpies. Interestingly, all three appear in Dante’s Inferno. Three Erinyes appear in Canto IX and threaten Dante with the head of Medusa, a Gorgon. The Harpies appear in Canto XIII.

The Divine Comedy

Author: Durante degli Alighieri (c 1265–1321)
Written: c 1306-1321
Translator: John Ciardi
Publisher: New American Library (2003 Edition)
Bought from: Book Depository


Introduction

Durante degli Alighieri (Dante), is an Italian author best known for his epic poem La commedia (The Comedy), later renamed La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy).

Dante was born in Florence, Italy during a period marked by conflict in northern Italy. Dante’s family belonged to the Guelphs which supported the Papacy. The Guelphs was involved in a long and bitter struggle with the Ghibelline faction which supported the Holy Roman Emperor. For much of Dante’s childhood, the Guelphs were in power in Florence. Around 1300, the Guelphs splintered into White Guelphs and Black Guelphs. Dante’s family belonged to the White Guelph faction. The Black Guelphs began agitating for Pope Boniface VIII to intervene. In 1301, Dante was part of a White Guelph delegation that traveled to Rome for an audience with the Pope to determine his intention. While Dante was in Rome, the Pope’s agents and the Black Guelphs overran Florence. Many White Guelphs were killed. In 1302, the papal-appointed Lord Mayor of Florence, Cante de’ Gabrielli da Gubbio condemned Dante to exile for 2 years and a large fine. All his properties in Florence were expropriated. When he refused to pay the fine, he was sentenced to perpetual exile.

Dante wrote The Divine Comedy during his exile. The politics of the period greatly informs the work. Dante lost faith in White and Black, Guelph and Ghibelline, and even the Papacy. He resolved to “make a party by himself.”

Dante never returned to his beloved Florence. He died and was buried in Ravenna.

Today, Dante, together with Petrach and Boccaccio, are known as the “Three Fountains” of Italian literature. Before Dante, most literary works were written in Latin, eg. Virgil’s Aeneid. Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in his Tuscan dialect. This had the effect of unifying the Italian language and paving the way for literature to be written in vernacular languages.

The Divine Comedy is considered the greatest work ever written in the Italian language. It is made up of three separate but connected canticles – Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.


What is it about?

The epic poem is told by Dante in first person narrative. On Good Friday in 1300, Dante finds himself in a dark wood. The shade of Virgil appears and offers to guide Dante on his journey. As they enter Hell proper, Dante sees the following words cut into a stone gate:

“I am the way into the city of woe.
I am the way to a forsaken people.
I am the way into eternal sorrow.

Sacred justice moved my architect.
I was raised here by divine omnipotence,
Primordial love and ultimate intellect.

Only those elements time cannot wear
Were made before me, and beyond time I stand.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

          (III.1-9) 

Dante meets the shades of numberous historical and mythological figures in Hell. He finds the punishment inflicted on each person is a perverse reflection of the sin he or she committed while alive. It is a kind of poetic justice and it is called “contrapasso” in Italian.

The sins that are punished in hell are classified as the sin of Incontinence (self-indulgence), the sin of Violence and Bestiality and finally the sin of Fraud. The more familiar Christian categorization of seven deadly sins appear in Purgatorio.

Finally, in Circle Nine, right in the center of the earth, Dante sees Satan and three sinners who were treacherous against their masters. In Dante’s typology, this is the gravest sin of all. The three are Judas Iscariot (who betrayed Jesus Christ) and Brutus and Cassius (who betrayed Julius Caesar).

Dante emerges from Hell on Easter Sunday and starts on the next stages of his journey, through Purgatory to reach Heaven.


Themes

Dante employs many allegories and symbolisms in The Divine Comedy. The journey through the three sections of afterlife itself is an overarching allegory of the soul’s journey towards God, in other words towards perfection. It is a journey into and through darkness and out into light. The descent through Hell is described as the recognition of sin. The ascent through Purgatory is described as the renunciation of sin. Only then can the final leg, the flight to Heaven, happens.

The imaginative punishments dreamt up by Dante provide colourful symbolism. It would be all too easy to miss many of them without the aid of good notes. Take the punishment suffered by fortune-tellers and seers. Dante describes what he saw in Circle Eight: Bolgia Four: 

“And when I looked down from the faces, I saw
that each of them was hideously distorted
between the top of the chest and the lines of the jaw;

for the face was reversed on the neck, and they came on
backwards, staring backwards at their loins.
for to look before them was forbidden. Someone,

sometime, in the grip of a palsy may have been
distorted so, but never to my knowledge;
nor do I believe the like was ever seen.”
          (XX.10-18)

Now read Ciardi’s explanation of the symbolism:

“Characteristically, the sin of these wretches is reversed upon them: their punishment is to have their heads turned backwards on their bodies and to be compelled to walk backwards through all eternity, their eyes blinded with tears. Thus, those who have sought to penetrate the future cannot even see in front of themselves; they attempted to move themselves forward in time, so must they go backwards through all eternity; and as the arts of sorcery are a distortion of God’s law, so are their bodies distorted in hell.”

Dante mentioned a number of persons from his own time who he may have blamed for his exile. In Circle Eight: Bolgia Five, Dante meets a gargoyle named Crazyred (XXI.122). According to some writers (but not Ciardi), this gargoyle, named Rubicante in Italian, may refer to Cante de’ Gabrielli da Gubbio who exiled Dante from Florence. Dante could not include Pope Boniface VIII in Hell because the events in Inferno take place in 1300, two years before the Pope’s death. But Dante was not going to allow the Pope to escape unscathed. So, he meets Pope Nicholas III in Circle Eight: Bolgia Five who says he is waiting for the arrival of Pope Boniface III (XIX.49-54).

What about the book?

This is one of the rare publications where all three canticles Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso are included in one volume. There are various reading aids.

The preface includes a note on How to Read Dante and Translator’s Note. Both are worth reading.

Then there are a separate introductions for each canticle. The introduction for Inferno, written by Archibald T. Macallister, is a useful stop before getting into the canticle itself.

Next, Ciardi has written brief introductions before each canto that describes the geographical layout of where Dante and Virgil are, the characters encountered there and their punishment. Detailed notes followed at the end of each canto.

And last but not least, there are also 10 illustrations that are very handy in helping the reader navigate Dante’s afterworld.

Finally …

I have only managed to finish Inferno. Ciardi’s verse translation is accessible but the introductions to each canto and the notes that follow are indispensable. I started on Purgatorio but found it very dense and gave up. I will try to finish the entire poem at some stage!