Virgil’s Aeneid follows the lineage of the Homeric epics in continuation of some particular values of antiquity. Virgil, however, makes Aeneas the central focus inverting the perspective of the Homeric epics from the Greeks onto a minor Trojan character of Homer’s
I recall being in Rome with my Greek wife and coming upon a Roman plinth marked "Pontifex Maximus". I was floored. It's the title of the Pope today, but I'd not realised it was carried over from Imperial Rome as so much in Western Christendom was. Somehow in popular culture the 'dark ages' separate Roman Europe from Christendom. In fact one morphed into the other. And as my wife's Greek Orthodox religion places into such sharp relief, Western Christendom is a fusion of St Paul's interpretation of Christianity and Ancient Roman megalomania.
There's a direct line from Aeneas's "And to the land and ocean give the law" and Francis Bacon's idea of modern science as conquering nature and putting her to our purposes.
I recall being in Rome with my Greek wife and coming upon a Roman plinth marked "Pontifex Maximus". I was floored. It's the title of the Pope today, but I'd not realised it was carried over from Imperial Rome as so much in Western Christendom was. Somehow in popular culture the 'dark ages' separate Roman Europe from Christendom. In fact one morphed into the other. And as my wife's Greek Orthodox religion places into such sharp relief, Western Christendom is a fusion of St Paul's interpretation of Christianity and Ancient Roman megalomania.
There's a direct line from Aeneas's "And to the land and ocean give the law" and Francis Bacon's idea of modern science as conquering nature and putting her to our purposes.