Rationality affects the way we behave, but emotions changes our behaviors and drives us to behave the way we do. People are driven by emotions yet we can’t allow it to be the only thing that controls our actions and behaviors. Rationality helps control our emotions and prevents it from getting too out of hand. For example, in a situation where a waiter accidentally bumps into you and causes you to drop the delicious piece of dessert you were just about to eat, there are two ways you can react, emotionally and rationally. Emotionally, you could burst out in anger at the waiter. Scream and yell, completely acting in an irrational way all because of a piece of dessert. On the other hand, rationally, you could stay calm or and remain kind to the …show more content…
Juno, the queen of the gods, is fueled by her rage and fear to harm and change the wheels of fate however she can so that her beloved Argos would not be taken by the Trojans, “This was Juno’s fear...They festered deep within her, galled her still...the Trojan stock she loathed...Her fury inflamed by all this” (Virgil, 48, 28-36). While Juno’s emotional actions affect the other characters, Dido’s emotional actions resulted in her death. After being abandoned by her beloved, Aeneas, Dido was furious and wounded, “So, driven by madness, beaten down by anguish, Dido was fixed on dying, working out in her mind the means, the moment” (Virgil, 144, 594-596). Rational, only in appearance, Dido tells her sister, Anna, to go build her a “pyre in secret, deep inside our courtyard under the open sky” to “obliterate every trace of the man” (Virgil 144). Anna does as her sister tells her to and is deceived by what the pyre was really meant for. Attempting to rid of her emotions by burning every trace of Aeneas, her emotions eventually take over. With her heart torn apart, Dido commits suicide. Dido’s sister on the other hand is hurt but still emotionally stable. Anna is stunned, grieving, and hurt by the actions of her sister, “how very cruel… You have destroyed your life, my sister, mine too” (Virgil 145). Despite playing a part in her sister’s death, Anna remains levelheaded and requests for help to “bathe [Dido’s] …show more content…
Clytemnestra, the Queen of Argos, is lacking the power to prevent her daughter being used as a sacrificial lamb to the gods. The misery she felt when her husband, Agamemnon, sacrificed their daughter was immense. So immense that it led her to murder, for she thought that Agamemnon “thought no more of it than killing a beast” in order to conquer a city and “sacrificed his own child, our daughter, the agony I laboured into love” (Aeschylus, 162, 1440-1443). The intense emotions of agony and hatred that Clytemnestra feels for her deceased daughter, in a way, gives her the motive to cause her to do the things she did. However, in Cassandra’s case, she accepts the situation that she is given. Cassandra knows she’s going to soon die, but doesn’t fight against it because she knows that her “time has come” and that there’s “little to gain from flight” (Aeschylus 156). Rather than acting out in anger or unwisely, Cassandra merely says a few words more, a mournful funeral rite for her. Aegisthus, the usurper of Agamemnon's throne, is fueled by his rage towards Agamemnon and his father, Atreus, to obtain revenge for his family. The fury he feels towards Atrus for driving his father, Thyestes, out of the house and luring him back only to give him a “feast of his children’s flesh” and make him eat it unknowingly, “serves it to Thyestes throned on high. He picks at the flesh he cannot recognize,
We are able to sympathise with Dido because of the dramatic irony caused by the fact that all the readers know that Aeneas doesn’t stay in Carthage, and so as Dido becomes more and more attached to Aeneas, we feel sorry for her. Her last ditch attempt to send Anna to negotiate is another futile gesture.
Deep into the first story of “The Oresteia,'; better known as “Agamemnon,'; Cassandra, who has been cursed by Apollo to be a seer who will never be believed, envisions the death of Agamemnon and herself. It is in this vision that she sees an avenger who will come about and bring justice to the murdered victims, “ We will die, but not without some honor from the gods. There will come another to avenge us, born to kill his mother, born his father’s champion. The gods have sworn a monumental oath: as his father lies upon the ground he draws him home with power like a prayer.'; ( Aeschylus. The Oresteia U.S.A.: Penguin, 1975.) This vision proves to be very important when speaking about the innocence of Orestes and his heroism as well. Before the incident even takes place, we know that the gods have destined Orestes to avenge his father’s death. During this period of time, when the gods were on your side, you were doing the right thing! Another way to prove Orestes innocence is through the god of sun, song, and prophecy, better known as Apollo.
Both Virgil and Milton portray femininity and women as a threat to the divine higher order of things by showing women as unable to appreciate the larger picture outside their own domestic or personal concerns. For example, in the Aeneid, it is Dido, the Queen of Carthage, who out of all the battles and conflicts faced by Aeneas, posed to the biggest threat to his divinely-assigned objective of founding a new Troy. Like Calypso detains Odysseus in Homer's epic, Dido detains Aeneas from his nostos to his "ancient mother" (II, 433) of Italy, but unlike Calypso, after Dido is abandoned by Aeneas she becomes distraught; she denounces Aeneas in violent rhetoric and curses his descendents before finally committing suicide. Therefore, Virgil demonstrates how women have a potent and dangerous resource of emotions, which can ambush even the most pious of men. Indeed, Dido's emotional penetrate the "duty-bound" (III, 545) Aeneas who "sighed his heart ou...
Dido’s emotions have caused her to act like a wounded animal, not thinking about the consequences of her own actions. By being reduced to an animal, Dido has lost all rational thought. Consequently, Dido’s lack of rational thought causes her to begin to ignore other duties she has to fulfill. After she falls in love with Aeneas, Dido disregards the vow that she made to her suitors.
Orestes pretends to join Aegisthus in an animal sacrifice but murders the usurper and wins over the king's guards to his side. He parades the severed head to Electra, who is elated but not sated. Orestes balks at the idea of killing Clytemnestra, their mother. Electra sends word that she has given birth. Clytemnestra visits and does a rather convincing job of explaining her side to all the famous events, particularly her wrath at Agamemnon for tricking their daughter Iphigenia to her sacrificial death before the Trojan War. She was also less than pleased that Agamemnon brought back Cassandra as his new slave toy. The Chorus is characteristically idiotic: "Your words are just; yet in your 'justice' there remains / Something repellent. A wife ought in all things to accept / Her husband's judgement, if she is wise. Those who will not / Admit this, fall outside my scope of argument" (141). Electra aligns Clytemnestra with her sister Helen. She accuses her mother of primping before the mirror long before Agamemnon's crimes, obviously for someone else. And Electra claims Clytemnestra's rationalizations do not address the persecution of Orestes and herself. Clytemnestra accepts that Electra favors her father, but as to this business of the new baby?
The Achaeans are more concerned with personal glory and achievement rather than the well-being of the city. Two Characters who definitely display this characteristic are Agamemnon and Achilles. Agamemnon is selfish and is only concerned with his own honor. This is seen almost immediately in the poem. In book one, during the tenth year of battle, Chryses visits Agamemnon and offers ransom for his daughter, Chryseis who was taken as plunder early in the war. Although the ransom is attractive, Agamemnon refuses the money because the girl represents power and glory and that is far more important than wealth. Plunder represents victory; therefore, the more women Agamemnon possesses, the more glorified and powerful he feels. Eventually, Agamemnon returns the girl to her father; however, he insists that someone give him a female to compensate for his loss and restore his honor. He views the situation as a challenge to his authority and complains, "I alone of the Argives go without my honor. That would be a disgrace" (1.139-40). Agamemnon demands, the "Argives will give me a prize, a match for my desires, equal to what I have lost, well and good. But if they give me nothing I will take a p...
His mother is more concerned with his destiny than with his happiness. She makes Dido fall in love with Aeneas and then he falls in love with the Carthaginian queen in return. Despite the fact that he is happy, his mother is one of the gods working to make him fulfill his destiny. This "destiny" is truly revealed to Aeneas in the underworld when he encounters a few fellow Trojan comrades. One such comrade Aeneas encounters in the underworld is Palinurus who was also duty bound, a helmsman on Aeneas' ship and a faithful servant who falls overboard and drowns, failing to finish his duties.
She has her messenger, Iris deviously manipulate the Trojan women while on Sicily to set fire upon the Trojan ships. This course of action can be classify as evil as a trait of Juno. Her multiple attempts in trying to delay Aeneas have failed and yet she wickedly tries her luck again. Ineffectively, the women do set fire to the ships, but with Aeneas ' prayer to Jupiter, he sends down a rainstorm to put out the flame. Her failed attempt to use a lesser deity to try to bring down Aeneas ' ships (1.77-83), her failed attempt to artificially produce love (4.112-129), and now her failed attempt to bring together women has fairly tarnished her success as a goddess
Only the timely intervention of Neptune saves Aeneas, and he and his men land in Carthage. Juno’s next plan involves taking advantage of Cupid’s love spell on Dido; she tries to get Venus to agree to a marriage between the two, hoping to take advantage of Dido’s affection and keep Aeneas in Carthage. “Where will you stop, how far will you go in your wild competition? Why not, instead, work together, for endless peace and a marriage / Sealing it?” (4.98-99) Ultimately, after Jupiter forbids her and Venus from interfering in mortal affairs any longer, Juno entreats Juturna, the sister of Aeneas’s enemy Turnus, to act on Juno’s behalf and save her brother. “You, if you’re daring enough to bring critical help to your brother, / Go on. You should. Something better, perhaps, will ensue from your anguish.” (12.152-153) This attempt fails as well, and Juno is only placated when Jupiter promises that the Latins will subsume the Trojans in the
The Queen proceeds to compare herself to Minerva, who was able to sink and drown an entire greek fleet on account of one man’s madness “Pallasne...acuto”(lines 6-12). Juno uses this example because Minerva, a goddess of lower stature and rank than herself was able to punish those that disrespected her priestess, once again questioning the power of the goddess. Yet Juno herself was not able to stop one man who will bring about the destruction of Carthage, making her question if people will come and honor her at her altars, or even respect her place among the divinities. In the second passage, Aeneas returns to find his family, with an inflamed mind “exarsere ignes animo”(line 1) and falls into a state of dismay when he lays eyes upon Helen. Realizing that Helen is the cause of all his misfortunes, Aeneas contemplates the action of ending her life.
In the beginning of Book IV Dido tells her sister Anna that she lusts for the Aeneas, and that he is the only man that she would break a vow she made to her dead husband to be faithful. "And my bridal bed, here is the only man, Who has moved my spi...
From a different perspective, Vergil implies assimilating Dido as the sacrificial victim and suggests that she must inspect herself instead. The next passages describes Dido as insane by her passion for Aeneas. “Meanwhile her tender marrow is aflame, and a silent wound is alive in her breast. Wretched Dido burns, and wanders frenzied through the city” (Aeneid 4.66-68). This passage places a foot forward directed towards the funeral pyre at the end of Book 4. From the metaphorical fire of love at the beginning to the funeral pyre at the end, the narrator gives hints of Dido’s tragic end. Dido’s silent wound refers to her metaphorical wound and the physical wound inflicted at her suicide. In Book 6.440-51, Dido’s love death is confirmed by the area in the Underworld that she inhabits. Along with other females who died as a consequence of love, Dido dwells in the Fields of Mourning (Lugentes Campi). Fire of love in Ancient Roman literature can also be seen in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 4 with the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Although no union was involved in Ovid’s story, it is nevertheless a story that ends on a tragic
Virgil depicts the Gods as innocent. When in fact, they were manipulators. Juno and Venus came together to play match maker with Dido and Aeneas. By sending the two to go hunting. Dido and Aeneas find a cave and in that cave, they have sex. Dido thinks she is married to Aeneas now. Dido characteristics is showing vulnerability. She is so confused as to what she is doing. Dido also shows that it doesn’t take much to distract her. Unfortunately, she learns the hard way of how the Gods are. When Dido learns of Aeneas promise to Jupiter to continue his quest to find Rome; and she finds out that he is leaving. She confronts him. She confronts him out of embarrassment. Dido characteristics show she is very angry and that she let her guard down. Aeneas doesn’t care about Dido’s emotions and this makes matters much worse. Dido curses Aeneas and his voyage out to sea. Dido is heart broken by Aeneas’s actions. In her mind she truly thought he loved
After Agamemnon’s death, Aegisthus is next in line to become king and Clytemnestra is his queen. Her desire for power is hidden by her claims of justification. She challenges anyone to take her power. “[H]e who conquers me in fair fight shall rule me” (45). She threatens the Chorus to a fight for power. She knows she has all the power now the king was dead and she is his queen. Clytemnestra is aware she killed him for his power, but her arrogance makes her put the deed on the curse of the House of Atreus and vengeance for
Agamemnon is the first part of the trilogy known as the Oresteia. Agamemnon is a story where the main character sacrifices his own daughter to a God, Artemis to win a battle and then his wife revenge him for the sacrifice. The concept of fate plays an important role in the tilogy Agamemnon which led to the tragic endings of the play. According to the meaning of fate it means the development of events outside a person’s control, regarded as predetermined by a super natural power. Fate is what send Agamemnon to the war with Menelaus to fight against Paris, fate is what predetermined Agamemnon to sacrifice his own blood for the sake of his ship and companions and fate is what determined Cassandra his wife to plot to kill him and to revenge him for her daughter.