Underworld In The Odyssey

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Recommended: Odysseus compared to aeneas

Before this quarter begins, I spent about a week in reading The Aeneid as the preparation for this class because it was mentioned in the course description. Even though we are not going to read it this quarter, but I think it is a great supplement for the story after the Trojan War and an excellent parallelism to Odyssey. In my opinion, the story before Aeneas reaches Latium in The Aeneid borrows a similar structure in narrating the story from The Odyssey. There are numerous scenes show up in both epics: long period of sailing, discovering and exploring new lands, meeting new creatures, the assist and punishment from gods etc. However, the underworld chapter at each epic is the part with most similarities: Both Aeneas and Odysseus are introduced
They want to meet their parent, Anchises and Anticleia and they do talk with their parents and realize what happen in the real world. They see the ghost (or spirit) of numerous significant people including Odysseus’s fellow like Agamemnon, Achilles and Ajax, also the famous Romulus, the founder of Rome and Augustus. Most importantly, they enter and leave the underworld without any damage. Underworld is not a simple place like a convenient store that we can enter anytime we want; it is a sacred place that only the dead may enter, and no flesh may get away from underworld. Since both of them succeed in having a journey in the underworld, we can consider the narration of underworld in both epics as the praise for both of them. Besides that, the journey to underworld acts as a transition in both epics that the heroes changes their antagonists from anything in
In Odyssey, Odysseus shows abundant characteristics such as cunningness in countering cyclops, arrogance to Ajax in the underworld, cleverness in passing sirens’ voice, and most importantly, he is sentimental. He misses his wife in Calypso’s island; he is heart-broken when his crews are killed or captured by the creatures or other people; he is deeply touched by the story of Eumaeus; he is furious and tries to kill Cerci as the punishment to turn his crew to pigs etc. Odysseus is a hero, but he is also a human. His emotions in Odyssey actually reflects the truth that even a hero also has his difficulties. With such amount of addressing on emotion, Homer succeeds in illustrating a real mortal figure. However, in Aeneid, there is a great reduction on illustrating Aeneas’s personal feeling, which sometimes the story confuses the readers. The creepiest part should be Aeneas falls in love with Dido in Carthage. We surely know that Dido is deeply attracted by Aeneas because Vigil spends many lines on Dido’s reaction when she is driven mad by Cupid. Nevertheless, we barely sees how Aeneas feels to Dido’s love. More ridiculously, when Aeneas is warned by Jupiter, he just flees like a rat, not even leaving a message to Dido for explaining. Then there is the tragedy of Dido. Absolutely I was confused when I read this chapter, how can

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