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When in Rome, I guess... // Abbie Hedden

I know I should have remembered this from when we read Paradise Lost, but I keep forgetting that every epic has a call to or invocation of the Muse. It's how The Iliad, Paradise Lost, The Aeneid, and even O Brother Where Art Thou all begin. As someone who dabbles in writing, it's very interesting to me that these writers all began the same way to tell vastly different stories. It's even more interesting that this call to the Muse vastly differs across these stories. My theory is that this invocation shows more than one would at first expect. In The Iliad, the invocation begins at the very first two words:  "Rage - Goddess." Homer is invoking the indignance of the immortals, asking them to rage over injustice and turmoil. It sounds personal, as one would ask something of their mother. However, in the Aeneid, the call to the Muse feels more like a formality than a humble request. Virgil writes, "Wars and a man I sing..." While Homer was asking the Muse to tell the story, Virgil right away is writing in first person. He only asks for the Muse a paragraph later, saying "Tell me, Muse, how it all began." This is a parsed command rather than an invocation. I think this disparity speaks to the difference between the Greeks and Romans. The Greeks' lives seemingly revolved more around appeasing the gods than the Romans, whose religion was more a formality than anything else. This pattern continues later in the books, but it's interesting to me that you don't have to go more than a few lines to see just how different their priorities really were.


Commented on Haylee Lynd's and Caroline Tucker's 

Comments

  1. kaitlyn terryNovember 11, 2020 at 11:38 PM

    I never put that together, but that's so fascinating. I love how that speaks to the different cultures and how they viewed religion.

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  2. Rachael GregsonNovember 11, 2020 at 11:54 PM

    I agree with Kaitlyn Terry, Abbie. I never noticed this either, but it's so cool that you pointed this difference between the Romans and Greeks out in your blog post. I think all cultures in a sense have their own style of writing. Personally, I prefer the muse instantly starting off the story, rather than the writer stepping aside for the muse to begin. Humorously, it reminds me a lot of the movie Hercules.

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