Virgil

Transcript (PDF)

Alexandria and Rome
Presentation 7 of 14

Virgil
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, August 12, 1982

Transcript:

This is what it looks like in Latin and you [inaudible] a book of Virgil in Latin and that's what it says. You can either write it v-e-r-g-i-l or v-i-r. As I mentioned a minute ago the v-e-r always seems to me that it would be like vermicelli. Sort of the rice version of Virgil. And the v-i-r is like a the [inaudible] core root which is the same in Sanskrit and Greek and all the Indo-European languages, it means manly. [inaudible]

So, Virgil he's a, it's curious because Virgil is so misunderstood the last 200 years or so because he was reduced and, and ground down and geared down and, and made into a textbook for school children. And so, everyone who would take Latin three or Latin four would end up translating Virgil. So, he became a kid’s book, a schoolbook. And I guess that's where the rice [inaudible] version of Virgil came into [inaudible]. So, it will strike some of you as a little odd to realize that Virgil is a very great Eagle. Very great visionary. Was accounted for some 1500 years as being the greatest seer of the ancient world. As being a magician, Hermetic magician, par excellence. As being the most unbelievable soul in the whole ancient world. And it's an oddity because we are used to thinking of him in these palatine type terms.

He was born in 70 B.C. So just to give you sense of, he's born in 70 and he died in 19 B.C. So, when he was seven in 63 B.C. Cicero was a council [inaudible] here and stopped the Catilinarian conspiracy. Caesar was assassinated in 44 and in 30 Augustus Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar won the ancient world. So, you can see that in the lifetime of Virgil the last two or three lectures and the next couple of lectures will also fit in.

This is the formative crucible in which Western civilization was formed. We often study the Greeks. Many of us prefer the Greeks but our civilization was not made in Athens, and it wasn't made by the ingenuity of the Periclean age. And we are not descendants of Plato, as much as we would like to think. But our skeleton and our psyches and our history were fashioned in Rome in this period of time.

And it's in the sixth book of The Aeneid by Virgil that we have our psychic impressions of the shape of Hell, which have carried on for the last 2,000 years. And our images of good and evil are largely due to Virgil's styling in his language. So that we still live in a world psychologically and emotionally structured by the genius of Virgil. That is the broad outlines, the broad shapes, can be found in his work.

Now his early life was spent in Northern Italy. A small a farm outside of Mantua. His father was a farmer. But we have to consider that for the Roman Patrician country people, the agrarian pursuit was one of great honor. I think our phrase would be the gentleman farmer who indeed earned his keep and made his living through farming. But that this was an honorable pursuit and all of the famous Romans that we have looked to, Cicero and so forth, all felt comfortable in their country villas and felt themselves more at home in that kind of a setting than in the metropolitan environment of Rome. And as, if you recall, as early as 185-190 B.C. when Scipio Africanus the great General tore up the records of certain campaigns in front of the Senate of Rome and walked away from a public career. He retired to Campania to a farm.

And so, Virgil being born on a farm doesn't mean that he was a country bumpkin at all but rather he came from an honorable old traditional Roman family. And by the time he was 12 his father could understand that he had a very talented son and wished to pursue his education. And at this time the educational system in the Roman world, and ours today mirrors it very much the same way. The problems that we have with our minds are problems that were familiar to Virgil's time. Their defects and lacunae are due to the educational system rather than anything inherent in human nature. They can be corrected and it just it takes a firm hand to restructure education. The main point being is that one was educated in that time in terms of rhetoric rather than reality. You were taught to be able to speak and think on your feet because you were going into a career in law. And through law you would go through the various hierarchies of sitting as a judge, as a [inaudible] and move on up the line and then move into the Senate of Rome if you were lucky. So, it was a career through manipulating your speaking ability, your rhetoric. Forming your mind to have this capacity to speak razor sharp with witty phrases. And to carry a line of argument through using whatever techniques were necessary to gain your point. And so, the education of that day was all geared to this. To producing the kind of mentality that could function in this rhetorical environment. And very little attention was paid to what we would call everyday life, much less what we would call natural life and death. And I suppose they didn't even think of the fact that there might be a spiritual life hidden in the vast throws of the universe.

But Virgil fortunately was not schooled in Rome. He was up in Northern Italy and his father took him personally to the next little town called Cremona. And for a year or so he took instruction there and he was being prepared to be what we would call a lawyer today, pre-law. Reading certain texts and so forth. He was taken from Cremona after a year or so to Milan. Milano still a very small town at this time. And then at the young age of about 17 or so he was taken to Rome.

And when he arrived in Rome Virgil already had made several attempts at writing poetry. Had already had in himself the kinds of visions which we would associate with a religious personality rather than a literary personality. And certainly, he had already stepped way beyond the bounds of what a rhetorical frame of reference would offer him in terms of enticements of position and finance and fame and social position and personal power. And all these other inducements that lead the human spirit astray from its career and destiny. Virgil already had stepped outside of that frame of reference.

So that when he came to Rome, he very quickly drew attention to himself as a writer and as a visionary of some promise. And because he came from an area of old Italy which still had circulating in the ethnic makeup of the background up there the old Etruscan roots, he was befriended by a literate Etruscan circle in Rome. The leader of which was a certain man named Maecenas. Maecenas.

And if you recall last week Maecenas was sort of the Secretary of State to the Roman Empire under Augustus. A man of very great power. But a man of very great personal integrity. Never seen drunk. Never caught in licentious escapades. Always the devoted, quiet, wealthy intellectual man interested in the affairs of the Republic, now a world class power. But also interested in the fact that Roman society must produce a civilization. And at the core of a civilization is always in every case it's art. And further the fulcrum of that art is the use of language because it's in styling language that the mind receives its formal shaping. And it is the prismatic projecting of the inner spirit through the shaped forms of language upon the world that produce the conditions known as life. And if they are of a synthesized integrated cast having an overall shaping [inaudible] to them and a spiritual aspiration then we have a civilization.

And so it was the point of people like Maecenas and Augustus to look around and draw together under their egis, under their cloak of authority and money and acquaintance and power, a group of artists in particular writers who would make a Roman civilization. And they did just that. And they were lucky because they found a crop of young minds and young spirits just coming into Rome mostly from the provinces. And all of the great Classics of Roman literature of that time were there in that group. Along with Virgil, they had Horus who we will take next week. The great critic Quintilian. Varius. A number of individuals. The top three or four Roman writers were all the same age all at the same time in the same group. And foremost among them Virgil and Horus. And as time wore on Virgil became the great eagle of the group.

His early works are quite unusual. I'll just give you some of the names and some of the material because you normally don't, don't find it around. First little work is called the [inaudible]. Actually, before that there was a work called the [inaudible] with several parts to it. And in this he is careful to give us some of his background. And he shows that he had been in battles. That he had had the kind of experience in battles I think that most young men under fire have. They have a moment of self-doubt and then give themselves over to the fated circumstance whatever it will be. And are glad when they are alive at the end of the day. In this and in the [inaudible] and in another work called [inaudible] Virgil uses as his models for writing the Alexandrian writers from about a hundred years before himself.

He'll use a theme for instance in the [inaudible] is an odd piece. The main portion of the poem is told as a fantasy about a nat who comes to sting someone and bother someone. And this nat is swatted and is sent down to hell and comes back and describes what he has seen. Very strange. [inaudible] one would apply almost as an adjective.

He seemed to have the sense of, of, of humor. I think occasionally Virgil comes through with a sense of humor that's really quite startling. In the [inaudible] he used as a model one of his older contemporaries, Catullus, who was at the time of Virgil just coming into Rome publishing many of his greatest works. Catullus a very, very fine poet who preferred the North of Italy. In fact, his Villa was on a little Peninsula that jetted out I think it's Lake Como. Little Peninsula. There's little town up there now on the end of it called Serio. And Catullus has a famous poem about Serio, my Serio. His only retreat in the whole world that he can get to.

In the [inaudible] used Catullus. And he used a kind of a geometric pattern in the poem. Where it built up into a pyramid, sort of a pyramid with unequal steps so that the verses accrued into a shape literally on the page as well as in meaning. It was a great mind playing and toying with form. Playing and toying as he had done in the [inaudible] with fantasy. Retrospectives. Odd views. Odd perspectives.

And all of these early works were suddenly overshadowed by a series of 10 poems that he finished in 41 B.C. And they're called variously the [inaudible] but actually they should be called The Eclogues. The Eclogues. And the ten Eclogues sometimes they're called in translation The Pastorals also. They take as their model an Alexandrian writer named Theocritus. And if you've been attending these lectures especially the one on Ptolemaic Alexandria Saturday last, you remember that Theocritus wrote in a form that he calls idols. And there are 15 of these idols of Theocritus.

And Virgil used Theocritus idols, the pastoral mode and genre, as his pattern. But as he was writing The Eclogues his sense of form and his sense of incredible perspective seemed to mature to a point to where he was able to write in The Fourth Eclogue what became one of the most prophetic works in world history. And The Fourth Eclogue of Virgil was accounted legitimate by the Christian church for many, many centuries, more than 1400 years, as being a legitimate vision of the coming of Christ before the event happened.

And so, because of this vision in The Fourth Eclogue Virgil was accorded an unusual place. Yes, he was a pagan. He lived before Jesus. He died in 19 B.C. But because of his incredible religious candor. I think we should use the Latin term here [inaudible] use candor.

Candor and [inaudible], these characterize the tone of Virgil. And in this tone because he had had this tremendous vision of the coming of a world savior as a little child. That it was in his lifetime somewhere very soon to [inaudible]. And he writes here for instance. And this is kind of a prosaic translation but it's the best that I could find to carry the, the tone of what 14 centuries of Western thought felt about Virgil's Fourth Eclogue. It's called The Messianic Eclogue.

He writes. And this is in translation, “Muses to whom Sicilian shepherds sang, teach me a loftier string. The hazel grove and lowly tamaris will not always please. If still the wild free Woodland note be heard our woodland song must suit a council's ear.” In other words, yes he's still writing pastorals but he has in his spirit now the melody in the theme of something very vast and very important. And if it's a pastoral it must be a pastoral of vast woodland spaces now. Not a simple grove.

And then the wonderful, startling line,
Lo the last age of Cumae seer has come. [inaudible]. Lo the last age of Cumae seer has come. again, the great millennial Aon dawns. Once more the hallowed maid appears. Once more kind Saturn reins. And from high heaven descends the first-born child of promise.

And in this Virgil is alluding to the fact as I mentioned last week with Augustus that there were all sorts of ways of keeping track of time and history and events that had all come to a crunch in the focus in this time. And Virgil being one of the brightest stars if not the brightest star in that whole horizon of intelligence and sensibility already in The Fourth Eclogue at the age of 28 or 29 years old is saying that in terms of this great wheel of history we have come round full circle to an ending and a beginning. And that this ending and this beginning have their prophetic record all the way through back through history and time. And that in terms of his acquaintance in his world the central seer vision of all this is the civil at Cumae. Cumae a little town on the coast down around Naples, on the Bay of Naples. But specifically, Cumae is a cave at the foot of a cliff. And we'll come back to Cumae because we'll see it

And I found a book on divination which has a couple of photographs of the cave at Cumae. This is the great rock cliff. Cumae is at the bottom of it. You can look at this at your leisure. It's in the P.R.S. Library. This tremendous cliff and cave below. And photographs of the interior. And this was not found until the 1920’s, the late 1920’s. These photographs taken in the 1930’s I believe because no one had remembered exactly where it was after the fall of the classical age.

The Sibyl. S-i-b-y-l. Sibyl was the single most powerful prophetic voice in ancient Italy. Occupying a position which was the same as the Delphi Oracle in the Greek world. So that the Sibyl at Cumae gave out prophetic utterances that were kept on record. And the way they were kept on record is that they were inscribed on leaves, leaves off trees. And the utterances were inscribed as they came out so that they had the kind of ordering that we would expect from the deepest recesses of the spiritual mind. From the deepest archetypal dream world up through the Sibyl and given in that order. But were then just stacked in the open so that the slightest breeze or whisper from the outside world that came in would scatter these and leave this litter of tangle prophecy on the floor. So that there was this incredible delicacy of the expectation that here was a fount, a source, of all universal knowledge that was absolutely true. But that the order in which it was given was scattered by the merest vicissitudes of this world. And so, one had this incredible image that if one could somehow get to this source intact without having the external world confuse it, one would have the truth.

And Virgil when he got a little sick of the deceit at Rome and the rhetorical world left Rome and made a b-line for the Bay of Naples and lived there the rest of his life. Right next to Cumae. Right next to the Oracle. Because like some great honing in beacon of his spirit he knew that his place was next to one of those sacred tripods on one of those rents that went down to the very basis of all revealed reality. That was where he should be.
In The Fourth Eclogue then we have the first indication. And later on, in in that Eclogue, and I'll quickly move off it. He writes,
New wars shall rise, and Troy renewed shall see another great Achilles leap to land. At last, when stronger years have made thee man the voyager will cease to vex the sea. Nor ships as pinewood longer serve in traffic for every fruit shall grow in every land. So off and on to this fulfillment speed the world's fortune. Draw the living thread.

So already around 40 B.C.-41 B.C. Virgil had the vision, the central unifying vision, that the whole program of disclosure of world events that was coming to a focus in his time had been foretold for centuries if not millennium. That he was living in the crowning ultimate time. And that somehow the key, the thread, the golden thread through all this was the fact that language styled into shapes that would allow the interior energies to come out and be broadcast to the world in an order could come from a Sibyl, but they were just tenuous then to the vicissitudes of life. Or they could come to some crowning intelligence and sensibility who could keep them into a shape some great tree of a spirit whose leaves had not fallen and were still intact and could receive the entirety of the, of the envisioning whole in himself. And record it intact in shape complete. And so give to the world something which hadn't been seen for a thousand years, a comprehensive shape for man's true nature and purpose in an epic. And the last man to have ever done that was Homer. Who had done it so long before that there were great arguments as to whether it was 800 years, 900 years, a thousand years before.

This of course hits directly upon the sore problem that was inherited by Rome from the Alexandrian Hellenistic world. And if you recall the Hellenistic argument some 300 years before between [inaudible] the great librarian of the library at Alexandria and Apollonius of Rhodes who had been a librarian there, was just over this very question, could there be epics again? And the conclusion was, is that epics belong to a primitive primordial world that had nothing to do with the ultimate sophistication of metropolitan life. And that there should be no more epics. There should just be these wonderful lyrics and elegies and satires and play. Forms like this. Forms small enough that one could enjoy as a cultured human being in an afternoon. But an epic something that might take weeks to recite in a concentration, why there were not people much less artists capable of doing this. Yes, there had been various writers who had attempted large works. And had attempted to write for various wealthy individuals pseudo-Homeric long poems but they were not really epics. Sort of the large thousand-page novels of our time. That sort of thing. But not anywhere near the quality of realization that seemed so early here in his life to have possessed Virgil. This impossible possible dream. And as once Wallace Stevens one of the Americans great poets wrote, “there still exists the impossible possible philosopher’s man. The man who in a million diamonds sums this up.”

And so, Virgil had this tremendous desired them to hone himself and prepare himself. So having finished The Eclogues he began a series of poems called The Georgics. Georgics. And ostensibly on the surface they have to do with farming. The Fourth Georgics has to do with bee raising. Virgil's dad was raising bees and knew a lot about bees. These are the ostensible exterior purposes. But in The Georgics, one finds again and again the kinds of hints that he was perhaps toying with some areas of, of life that hadn't been thought of seriously for quite some time.

This is the old John Dryden translation of Virgil's Georgics. Let's try, let's try a little bit of this and see what happens here. It's interesting to see of what about The Georgics. When Augustus Caesar, when Octavian become Augustus Caesar returned from Alexandria having cemented the world Empire of Rome together, at least tentatively, under his grasp and egis. And began enforcing the Pax Romano and he came back to Italy. He stayed for a month on the Bay of Naples at a resort and who else, but our dear friend and poet Virgil stayed with him the whole month reciting The Georgics to him patiently. Day after day they talking together. Eating together. The man who had made the Empire out there and the man who had started to feel the world vision coming up inside of him sitting there together for a month in the Bay of Naples around the year 29 B.C. Between the two of them seemed an hourglass of fated destiny to put the world back together in a shape which it hadn't had. Especially for the last 100 years. The Romans had torn the world apart. They'd had seven or eight Civil Wars. They'd had a dozen major battles. And if you recall when Augustus closed the Janus Gates it was only the third time in 750 years of Roman history that they were at peace.

So that the world which had seemed to them as Virgil says in one line, “a ravenous bloodthirsty pack of phantoms sitting on their haunches on the tips of the spears of war}, were finally caged finally put in and the doors shut, and 100 bolts of bronze put into seal them and keep them there. So that with the [inaudible] and the candor of Augustus and Virgil together. The one had enforced a peace in a moment of calm and resolution. And out of that stillness, out of that clarity of the surface of the world, came this visionary plume of the spirit of Virgil. And having recited The Georgics to Augustus was then in the conversation brought out to express to Augustus his vision of Rome, in particular the root core going back before Romulus. Going back before the traditional history of Rome. Going back to the Trojan War itself, back to Aeneas.

And so, it was having delivered his proof of artistic authenticity in The Georgics to Augustus personally. Recited it in person. Augustus then commissioned him as a royal commission to write the great epic of the Roman Republic Empire. And left him there in the Bay of Naples for the rest of his life to work on this and compose this. So that from 29 B.C. to 19 B.C. the last 10 years of his life Virgil worked day and night patiently at writing The Aeneid. To bring it into some sort of a shape. And I guess I've got so much to do with The Aeneid I better leave The Georgics.

As he wrote as he expanded, he brought into his realm all of the background that he had had. And in fact, when he had gotten to Rome one of his teachers there a man named Philodemus. Philodemus. Philodemus was a native of a little community on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in Judea. And this Philodemus had brought with him a knowledge of the Jewish prophetic writing tradition. And many times, as one reads through Virgil one is astounded at some of the reoccurring images that come to the fore in the prophetic writers of the Old Testament. For instance, there's a passage where Aeneas is driven to this great desperation and he rends the cloak from his chest and bears his hands up and, and makes a lament a classic Old Testament lament. Again and again in The Aeneid one finds lines or whole passages that Echo this cosmopolitan background which he had received. And of course, having been a complete scholar of the Alexandrian Hellenistic synthesis. And remember that the Old Testament had been translated into Greek under Philadelphus the second Ptolemy some 250 years before Virgil was born. So that he received in fact a world class education. And that his background and his vision simply span the entire known world at the time. Including India. Including the yogis. Including the Persians. Including the Egyptians. All of it.

And one finds then in The Aeneid this tremendous bringing together of an epic which reflects an entire world view. An ecumenical ecumene view. And not just the Homeric Mycenean world view redone in Roman dress. So that Virgil is qualitatively a transformation of the old Homeric epic into something which we had not ever seen before. And have hardly seen since.

We find Virgil is in fact the creator of a genre which we can only call a civilized epic. That is to say that his work does not come out of folk tradition. His are not the refined refrains of folk songs and Aesopic type tales knit together beautifully into an epic tapestry. But his is a cosmopolitan learning and his form The Aeneid is a fount of world civilization all of it integrated and brought to one whole. So exacting was his concern that this be done right. His sense of [inaudible] distinguished Virgil among his contemporaries. He was always singled out as the most trustworthy person that anyone could ever have met. Even as a young man in in Northern Italy. As a man in Rome. As a man in Naples. All the classical sources that refer to him always emphasize the fact that Virgil was one of these dedicated workers. He was like a priest for whom his work was the liturgy, and everything had to be polished to the nth degree.

He finished The Aeneid and decided that in order to polish it, to give it this final integrative touch that he would need three years. And because of the tremendous psychological and spiritual vibration that had accrued to him through this long life and through this 10 years of intense activity, he felt the only place that he could go to polish The Aeneid, to bring it to a sheen, was Athens. And so, he left Naples and journeyed to Athens Greece. And when he was there Augustus met him, and they had another meeting. And he recited books two, four and six of The Aeneid to Augustus. And Augustus assured him that in order to have the right situation, the right vibes on the total work, he should return back to Rome. And so, Virgil agreed that instead of polishing it in Athens, he would polish it in Rome.

And on his way back under a very hot sun in [inaudible] he took ill and with a tremendous sun stroke and fever he made it to Brundisium on the coast where he died in 50 in, 19 B.C. was 51 years old. He died at Brundisium, and his body was brought over land to Naples and his tomb is in Naples. And was a major religious Monument for 1500 years or more. It was a place of pilgrimage. If they could have, they would have made Virgil a saint of the early church. He was born a little a generation too soon. But he was nevertheless singled out as the most saintly man of the ancient world for obvious reasons. The Fourth Eclogue. The character and the quality of The Aeneid. His personal life. His relationship with Augustus Caesar.

And it was discovered that in his will and testament, he prepared very carefully because of his great strategic sense of mind. He prepared for the event that he was able to finish The Aeneid to his capacity. And in his will, he left a note to his literary executives a man named Tuka, and another man named Varius, Rufus Varius. That they were to burn The Aeneid manuscript. So, the cases of the manuscript were to be consigned to flames because they were not complete. But it was under a direct intervention of Augustus himself that The Aeneid was saved. And that he overruled the executive and the point of Roman law and the estate of Virgil and gave Varius and Tuka the opportunity to publish The Aeneid. And within four years The Aeneid was brought out on the great occasion of course of one of the great state events of Augustus Caesar. And from the day that it was published and brought out it was without any doubt the most major work of the ancient world.

This capacity of Virgil’s Aeneid to hold the attention of the Romans. And later on, of the Christian successors. And later on, of the humanist successors in the Renaissance. Owes itself to the ingenuity of Virgil structure in The Aeneid.

And just to give you briefly some mental way of comporting to this enormous work. The Aeneid has 12 books in it the first six books or the first half of The Aeneid are a transformation of Homer's Odyssey. And the second half of The Aeneid, the next six books, are his transformation of Homer's Iliad. So that he took both the major works of the Greek civilization that had dominated the intellectual thought of the Western world from Homer's time through [inaudible] and Percales and Plato's day and the Hellenistic era and right on to his day and transformed it. Redid. Just didn't imitate it. Just didn't do a Roman version of it but cast it into a whole new ecumenical work of massive proportions.
In the first part where The Odyssey is transformed the way in which Virgil restructures Homer is that Virgil uses prophetic moments, encounters between man and God in a prophetic revelation in a string of these revelations. So that it's almost like in the mosaic idea that if one wishes to trace the steps between man's growth with God one must go by the covenants made between man and God and those are the steps. With Virgil it's the prophetic encounters with the universal world of the spirit. And if one traces the prophetic encounters through the first six books of The Aeneid you have the basic golden thread that brings the shape of the first half The Aeneid into order. And there's another order that can be found for the second half. And I only have time and this short lecture to give you [inaudible] what the first half of The Aeneid does.

The Aeneid begins, and we'll just begin on this and then we'll have a break. Just get into this. The Aeneid begins with this peon to the ages,
My song is arms and a man. The first of Troy to come to Italy and Livonian shores. A faded fugitive harried on land and sea by Heaven's huge might and Juno's endless hate. Pummeled by wars till he could found the city and bring his Gods to Latium whence the race of Latins and our [inaudible] sires and towering Rome.

So that the purpose was not just to be a wandering soldier looking for a place to light. His purpose was to bring his Gods to Latium. What were his Gods? Aeneas was the son of a man and [inaudible] but his mother Venus, Goddess. So that Aeneas had in his capacity the blending in his own self the divine nature and the wonderful humanitos of the best of human nature.

And further the son of Aeneas was named Ascanius. And his name also became [inaudible] which became Julius. and Ilus, i-l-u-s is very close to Iliad a man who was an ancestor of the founders of Ilam and Ilam was Troy. So that by this one individual this one formative individual whose son became the ancestor of the whole Julian family, Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, trace their lineage all the way back not only to Troy but to the very Olympian Gods and especially to Venus. So that when Julius Caesar made a temple to Venus Generatrix in Rome it was his way of asserting his Godhood and venerating his divine connection. You can see how these people worked. You don't need lawyers with contacts. Just amazing series of events.

And Virgil picked Aeneas and the image of Aeneas for all time is in direct contrast to the image of Odysseus. Odysseus referred to all during the Middle Ages as cruel Ulysses. Cruel Ulysses. His craftiness, his Homeric man of many minds, was seen as a devious con man. A trickster. Someone who had cruelty at his essential nature. Whereas Aeneas was always pictured the man fleeing from his betrayed city in flames carrying his aged father on his back. Aeneas is always shown with his battle helmet on leading his little son the future progenitor of the Julian family house and his of band of Trojans. And with his father and [inaudible] on his back. His father instead of being a burden to him was the legitimate contact with divinity which he had in himself. And so, it's an image of ultimate [inaudible]. One is carrying one's own ancestry proudly from the flames to take it to a new land.

So, when Aeneas is said, “till he could found the city [inaudible] and bring his Gods to his Gods were personified in the figure of his father on his back.” So that we have this tremendous image of the dutiful son. And the son who in fact is inheriting his Godhead through this continuous recognizing in himself that if he survives all the harrowing adventures that are destined for him, he will in fact found an eternal city and the eternal line of kings and rulers. His only question is how to thread his way through this enormous ocean of vicissitudes of life which he knows starts from pure chaos, the burning of the previous city of Troy. Before he can found the new Troy, the second Troy. And so, the only line of truth that he has is through the prophetic voices that come to him stillness of the night. And they come to him because he has this God capacity in himself and it's alive and alert. And as long as he keeps it intact, he will be able to trace his way by prophetic context and utterances through an endless, as Virgil says, “distant shore beyond distant shore trackless waste almost without end.”

So, we have the image of this great hero who is a hero not because of his valor of arms but because he has the prophetic voice alive inside of him. And he can hear truthfully what it says and follow its ways. And all along the ways of course he has met with adventures like Ulysses is met with of demons and monsters and various guise. He has also met with a beautiful woman Dido, the queen of Carthage. He also is like Ulysses able to go down to Hell itself to the land of the dead. There to find one last contact which he needs. Because his father has died, he goes to Hell to find his father's shade to hear the last prophecy so that there's no mistake. And he will even brave Hell itself to keep the inner contact alive within himself.

And so, the first half The Aeneid shows us this tremendous drive of this heroic individual to come through all the vicissitudes, not only of this life but the afterlife, to get eternity straight. And to found the point exactly where it should be. And then the second half of The Aeneid a retransformation of The Iliad are the battles with the native peoples there under the leadership of a King named Turnus. To be able to have the right physically to found it there. So, the first half is the psychological or religious underpinnings and the second half of it is the physical military statecraft exposition of it.

Well, I think we're to some point that's a natural break. Are we close enough? Let's have a little break then.

The thread that you could follow through the first half of The Aeneid and bring it together, bring it into a shape, I've laid out here on the board if you care to follow it all through yourself. This would take the entire first half of The Aeneid and show you the steps, the joints, by which the spiritual unity of the first half of The Aeneid moves. It has its dynamic and has its meaningful form.

In the last passage at the end is where the father of Aeneas and [inaudible] in Hell in a shady grove next to the river of Lethe, forgetfulness, tells of the final coming of Augustus and the, of the world soul recycling that will happen at that time. So that the very center of The Aeneid is the core in the pith of its meaning. And the pith of the meaning is delivered to Aeneas by his father. So that in a very real way where [inaudible] is his physical father at the beginning it's also his relationship to the divinity at the end of the first half The Aeneid right at the fulcrum of its whole shape balance on that point. The father as a deceased spirit from the other world gives to Aeneas the final view of history which he will not live to see but which his own son Ascanius or [inaudible] will found. And how it will finally through all the vicissitudes of time and the universe.

Because Aeneas under the great envisioning of Virgil is privy to the order of things. That is, he understands, finally at the river of Lethe before he crosses over and has forgetfulness, universal forgetfulness, before he comes back into the world as a newborn spirit having forgotten everything, he learns from his father the entire order of things. And this of course is a worldview which held at the time. It is styled in terms of philosophic history as the Epicurean world view. That is the science of their day was due to the philosopher Epicurious. And in the form of the great writing by Lucretius. Lucretius wrote De rerum Natura. And there's a wonderful translation of that from the University of Indiana Press, The Way Things Are, De rerum Natura. The way things are. The ways of nature. The ordering of nature. In other words, the universal scientific view of the world of its time complete and exacting.

And Aeneas is given the whole of future history and the whole of the view of the universe as of its essential structure. So that he can understand that what is happening in his own time is not only the summation of past time, all of it, or the seeding of future time, all of it. But that this great wheel of history is an eternal wheel and has its place in a universe that can be understood. And so, Aeneas is given a very primordial moment at the fulcrum of the epic he is shown the fulcrum of the universe as it works in all of its complications. And as it spins its way out in terms of human history the first of this prophetic golden thread happens around line 254.

And the very first words tell you what quality of meaning Virgil is aiming at. He says, “the universal father turned on her the smile of peace that brings a clear calm day.” The universal father. “He bent and kissed his daughter then he spoke.” And of course this is Venus called Cythera here. One of her names.
He bent and kissed his daughter then he spoke. No fear Cytherea. Your people's fate remains unchanged. You'll see the city and promised walls of Lavinia. You shall carry to Heaven's high stars. Aeneas the great and good, my hearts not turned. But now since care consumes you, I shall speak more fully and reveal fate's hidden page. Fate's hidden page. These Sibylline Oracle leaves. These leaves of the Old Testament scripture. These oracular writings.
And so forth.
You know they had collected in the time of Sulla when he became the first great dictator around 82 B.C. He collected all the writings of the oracles. There were many, besides just the Cumaean Oracle, and had them placed in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Jupiter Maximus. And they were burnt by vandals when the Sullanian dictatorship fell. And as soon as the tragedy was discovered they reinstituted the temple and sent out to all the various oracular sites throughout the Roman world to bring more of these sacred writings and oracles. And of course there weren't too many left. And in Virgil's time these oracular writings were held to be on the level of what we would call scripture. They were sacred writings. They were even sacred writings to the early church.

At the end of this course the last lecture if you get through to it you will see how Constantine brought this world view, this Roman Empire as it had become, and the spiritual understanding of what it had meant and had come to be and turned it into the Christian church. And the Secretary of Constantine at the Council of Nicaea was [inaudible] who wrote several times of the wonderful Sibylline oracles that had been guiding stars for men before the Christ had come and were to be admitted as canonical level envisioning. And so, Virgil is dealing here with the root core of the tradition which became largely the West Western tradition.

So, and he has in the words of the universal father counseling his daughter Venus whose child Aeneas is now moving on the page of history to set the seed which will grow to that Empire which Augustus will found and inherit. And Virgil will be there to record it. He says, “But now since care consumes you, I shall speak more fully and reveal fate's hidden page.” And then he tells about the wonderful background. “He'll wage hard war in Italy. Savage tribes he must defeat and give them towns and laws. But once the Luteolins are pacified the [inaudible] shall know him King. Three seasons full.” Aeneas will be king for three years before he dies.

“Then young Ascanius whom we name Julius [inaudible] he was in [inaudible] royal day.” That is that's who he was then. “Shall hold the throne while the long months roll round through 30 years.” And then the kings of Alba Longa will be descended from him. And who will his ancestor be? “Of noble Trojan line shall spring a Caesar. Ocean shall be his. Shall bound his power. The stars his fame. Julius a name come down from the great [inaudible].”

So Virgil is writing this in about 25 B.C. about an event that had happened 1200 B.C. which was going to come to pass in his own time which he had seen around 50 B.C. And so, his transposition of meaning so that the fulcrum of the momentum of unfoldment is taken out of temporal time and is put into the poet's vision. And from the poet's vision into the structure of his work. So that we have here a timeless creation which reflects the actual order of reality which will always obtain at any time whatsoever. And these leaves won't blow in the wind. They will be there as long as comprehension holds it firm in the hand of intelligence and reads it right, straight through. So that's where it begins. Book one line 254.

Then in book two line 318, the next link the second step in the prophetic series is Apollo. We move from [inaudible], from Jupiter to Apollo. And Apollo was the guardian spirit of Augustus Caesar. He built a special temple to Apollo just as Julius Caesar had built a special temple to Venus, Venus [inaudible]. Augustus believed that what had saved him and helped him transform from a rather precocious young man to his age of being rather vicious General to being a heartless Commander to becoming the real transformed man for whom the empire of the world had formed his saving grace had been the guardian spirit of Apollo who had come to him.

So, Virgil puts in The Aeneid that the second step from the universal father in the prophetic line was Apollo through a priest named Panthus. Panthus. And if you recall one of the great words in Latin is Pantheon. And one of the greatest buildings in ancient Rome, one of the largest buildings of all time, was the pantheon whose only light came from a circle that was open to the Heavens up above. The light of the sun Phoebus Apollo whose chariot is the sun. so that Panthus in The Aeneid is that original and he's the second step from the universal father. Book two.

But here came Panthus escaping from Greek spears. Panthus priest of Apollo on Castle Hill. Arms full of holy things and beaten Gods trailed by his grandson panicking toward the gates. Panthus how do we stand? what have we gained? He cut me off and answered with a groan, Dardanias end. Her scapeless hour has come. Trojan and Troy, we've had our day. Our power. Our Glory. A heartless job has handled all to the Greeks. Our city is ashes. Greece is Lord.
And so on. “The words of Panthus and God's holy will sent me towards flames and fighting. Where Mars roared his Challenge and battle cries rose up to Heaven.” And so other companions joined Aeneas.

And then lines following 679, “When all is crashing down, and the chaos becomes almost unbearable.” And of course this is also what had happened to the Roman world. The preceding 100 years the entire world was shredded and torn apart. All was chaos. No one was able to count on anything until Augustus brought the Pax Romano and had caged ruthless war.

So, the third,
While thus she pled and fled the house with sobs wonder to tell a miracle occurred. There in our arms before his parents' eyes Julius’s little cap right at its peak seemed to shed light. A harmless flame licked down to touch his hair and play about his brow. In panicked terror we slapped at the burning hair and tried to quench the holy flame with water. But father and [inaudible] smile and raising eyes toward Heaven spread out his hands and spoke in prayer. Almighty God if any prayer can bend you look down and for our merit grant just this, a sign father confirm this Omen for us. Scarce had he spoken when with sudden crash came thunder on the left down the dark sky a meteor fell in a burst of sparks and flame. And we watched it glide high over roof and hall so bright then bury itself in [inaudible] woods. Its path marked clear. Behind it furrow and [inaudible] shed light and left a smoking reek of sulfur. My father and [inaudible] now was certain he turned toward Heaven hailed Godhead and adored the Holy Star. No hesitation now. Lead on I'll follow God of my fathers,
Just like the Old Testament. God of my fathers.

“Oh, save my house in line. Yours was that sign. Yours will embrace Troy. I yield my son I'll gladly share your way.” And of course, the clue is to get out of the burning city. Get out of the chaos. To gather together what forces they can, what treasures of religious significance they can and flee to those woods. To take that meteor's path out of the city which they do. And of course go out and they go far enough away from Troy so they're beyond the Greek lines of reconnaissance. And there they build the ships. And there they leave to seek this promised land which is promised to them. It is a promised land.

So, in book three and all this incidentally is being related in retrospect by Aeneas before Dido's court. So that there are worlds within worlds in The Aeneid.

And in book three in line 18 we have Venus,
I offered prayer to Venus and to all Gods who bless new ventures and for Heaven's High King. I thought to slaughter a white bull by the shore. Nearby was a mound so happened. A dogwood tree grew on its top and myrtle thick with thorns. As I stepped over to pull the greening shrubs from the soil to deck my altar with leafy boughs, I saw a fearsome portent strange to tell. The first bush that I broke loose from its root and pulled from the ground oozed blood in dead black drops and spotted the Earth with gore. My hair stood up in a chill. I shivered my blood congealed with fear.
So, the dead blood from the bush falls to the ground and his blood freezes in him. The bush and the blood. These are sacramental links also in the Old Testament.

Trying again I tug the plant stock next on seeking the cause I could not see. From its bark too the dark black blood ran down. Puzzled I muttered prayers to the rural nymphs and to Mars the father who rules [inaudible]. Oh, bless this sign may it grasp light upon us. I attacked a third stalk then. Down on my knees I pulled and worked and battled with the sand. When dare I tell it deep in the mound I heard a moan, sorrow and words came to my ears from the Earth. Aeneas why tear at the torture? Spare my tomb. Spare to pollute clean hands. I am of Troy no stranger to you. No plant has shed that blood run from this heartless land. Run from this greedy shore. I'm [inaudible] transfixed by steel. I grow a crop of spears and a cover of pointed shafts.

And then in his in his terror realizes that the land that they have come to is not for them. It was not the land in the vision. And they're sent off again. And he wonders where can we go? Where is my guide? Where is my key? And then Apollo comes back.

I prayed the God in a temple of moldered stone. Apollo grant us a home. Great walls to the weary. A city to last. A bloodline. Save this second Troy. These few that Achilles and Greece have spared. Who will guide us? And where? Where shall we settle? Grant father a sign. Come and possess our hearts.
And of course, this kind of mantic plaintive note the opening up of oneself to the influx of the Godhead, well-known priest like function which Aeneas now begins to take upon himself in seriousness. He is no longer just the warrior. He is the religious sear of the inner spirit and he's ready to listen.

And Apollo comes to him.
One day and then a second passed then breezes called to our canvas a southerly swelled our sails. I went to our prophet and Prince and thus inquired Scion of Troy, God's Prophet who sensed the will of [inaudible] tripod and laurel. Who know the stars and the speech of birds. And the word of winged flight. Who know the stars, the universal pattern. Who can read augury in the flight of birds. And who knows winged word, words of the spirit.
How to shape them and how to give the meaning tone and the shape of language so that universal intelligence has its play.

“God's Prophet who sensed the will of Phoebus,” Apollo, “in tripod and laurel.” Tripods of the sacrificial burners. The Laurel of course the wreath and also that which decorates and incenses. “In tripod and laurel. Who know the stars and the speech of birds and the word of winged fligh.t Tell me for all sound prophecy foretells travel. And Heaven's universal will bids me seek Italy and her far off lands.” And so, he goes into this tremendous vision where Apollo tells him that it is Italy that he must go to. And there are many vicissitudes. And in this he is to be undaunted.

I'm going to have to skip some of this. So, I'll skip over here. The fact that the one of the major episodes that tries to stop Aeneas is the Trojans go to Carthage. They find themselves in Carthage which is ruled by Queen Dido. Who has listened to this tale of Aeneas. Who falls in love with him and wants him to stay with her. But who is surprised when Aeneas says no, I have no place here. And she says I am this beautiful queen. I have an Empire. How can you turn me down? And Aeneas of course has by this time learned the religious law of wandering in this world with the guiding star of the spirit. And not to be tempted by any of the tangential ways that would be offered but to follow the guiding star inside.

And so of course the great rancor from Dido when she realizes she's being spurned for a mere vision. The man's simply has an idea, she thinks. He simply has an idea that doesn't include me. This sort of thing. And oh, she wants to kill him. She wants to rail against him.

And let's see how, how does a Virgil give it here. This will be interesting. I don't know if I can, I can read all this. She goes into such a rage and a tantrum that she wants to practice witchcraft against him. And she begins collecting sacrificial animals because she senses that he has a religious vision, so she'll break his religious vision. So, she begins to make the accouterments for this. And as she's doing this, and Aeneas is on board his ships he thinks he's going to be able to just sail off in the morning. Dido is preparing this tremendous vengeant witchcraft for him.

And so, in this dream, Aeneas is asleep on the deck of his ship and the soft winds are blowing at night. And in this dream for the very first time in literature Mercury comes as Hermetic Messenger to a living person to show him the way. And this is the first appearance in literature of the old Hermetic spirit which we now know in in its development as the Hermetic tradition. Mercurius the Divine messenger. The Divine guide. And he comes to Aeneas, and it runs something like this. Let's see we want to get book four and 573.

Aeneas knew he would go on his tall ship. His preparations made he took his rest. In his dreams a Godly form appeared again just as before and seemed to warn once more. In all like Mercury in voice complexion in the flaxen hair and graceful limbs of youth. Goddess born can you sleep at such an hour and fail to see the dangers that surround you? Mad man. Nor hear the favoring west wind blow. Dido devises malice and foul crime. She knows she'll die and royals her anger's waves. Run. Leave in haste while haste's within your power. Soon you will see the ocean churned by ships. The shore ablaze with savage torch and flames. If dawn shall touch you carrying in this land. Hurry, hurry. Now ever a various changeable thing is woman. He spoke and mingled with black knight.

So, the apparition terrifies Aeneas, but he takes it as his guide. And so, the guiding light has moved from Jupiter to Apollo to Mercury. And the spirit Mercurius now has come into play. And of course he is pursued. And Dido is beside herself. And because her love was an egotistical acquisitional thing rather than a spiritual she takes Aeneas’ sword and plunges it into herself on her bed to throw this image of final spite. And Juno who has been against Aeneas all this time sees this death and is infuriated and sends Iris, one of her attendants, down. And in beautiful language Virgil writes it this way,

But Iris flew down dewey and gold golden winged. Trailing against the Sun a thousand colors. She stopped over Dido’s head. the sacred lock I carry to dis and from the flesh I free you. With that she cut the whisp at once all [inaudible] dispersed and life retreated to the winds.
Beautiful language. And in Latin of course it's just flows.

So that we now have Aeneas on the run again. And he realizes that he is very close to being lost because his father dies. He has left this fort of Carthage and of course it's in flames again almost like Troy. And he wonders if he has made a mistake. And in order to check himself he comes in book five line 718
The old man. The old man's counsel seared Aeneas’ heart and left him deeply worried and distraught. Now night rode up and darkness gripped the sky. Just then from Heaven he saw in [inaudible] form float down and all at once burst into speech. Son who once were my life while life remain. Son dearer with each ordeal Troy's death imposed. By Job's command I come. He drove the fire from the ships. His Mercy come at last from Heaven.
And he goes on with this. And tells Aeneas that all of the vicissitudes that he's been suffering, and they seem to be closing in on him more and more. And they have gone to Sicily and even the women have turned against them and have tried to set fire to the ships. And he realizes that there's some errant wild energy loose in the world. And that its whiplash scorpion tale of revenge is struck even home to the people that he is carrying with him. And he wonders am I myself now falling prey to this madness. Where is the sensibility? Where is that presence that I can depend on? And it's the spirit of his father and he says, “You must come and consult me.” And where is he? He is in the afterlife is in Hell. Hades. How can he get there?

So, Aeneas is faced finally with the problem brought down to its fall. The vicissitudes of this labyrinthian life. And what is that gate that would block us from that spiritual understanding? The crux of death itself. No entrance for the fearful. They dissolve. They cannot make it. Only the penetrating spiritual vision can't go through that portal. And where is the guide for that? And [inaudible] is able to tell him just enough to seek.

In Elysium here the holy civil. When many black cows have been bled will bring you through to behold your people and learn what walls are yours. And now goodbye. Cool night turns at midcourse I feel the breath of dawn's wild panting steeds. he spoke and passed like smoke into thin air. Where are you rushing? Where? Aeneas cries. Whom do you flee? Who keeps you from my love? So, speaking he roused the ash and sleeping fires and Vesta's altar. And to the Lars of Troy made humble prayer and offered holy bread.
The Lars of course that the Gods of the dead. The little household Gods of the dead that went with the [inaudible] which were the household hearth Gods. And Vesta of course the virgin who tended the sacred fire because that was the hearth of the Empire of the of the world as a whole. That's why the Vesta virgins were so sacred. So here Aeneas offers to them.

So, in book six he is finally come to that place on the Bay of Naples, Cumae. Where the Sibyl of Cumae holds forth in this cave. And he also comes to the middle of the epic. And in fact, he also comes to the place on Earth where Virgil is composing the epic, all this while. Ten years. So that in the transposition of meanings, which Virgil is a master of, all the various levels have come to one geographic point in one place in timelessness where all the crossroads will come together. And this happens in book six.

In book six the description of the afterlife in the underworld of Hell. In book six of The Aeneid was the imagery and the pictures of the afterlife in Hell that held forth up until our time. If you read book six of The Aeneid, you will find there the root core of all the descriptions of Hell. And especially those which pled and terrified the Middle Ages because Virgil was revered as being a very special seer. Almost admitted to sainthood. And he was the one who wrote in large epic the vision of having coming back from Hell. And it so impressed and terrified the Medieval World view that they thought his images of Hell were true. So much so that when the next great soul down the line came to write an epic to take up the banner where it had been left by Virgil picked Virgil as his guide to carry him through Hell, through The Inferno. And that individual was Dante. And what better guide could you have than some man who had been there before in vision and knew the place inside out. And so, it was no just lucky happenstance. It was an inevitability that Dante should choose Virgil. And if you read book six of The Aeneid you will see all the descriptions of Hell that have been imagined in Western thought for the last 2,000 years are here. They come from here. This is their source. Right here.

So, in book six line 43 Aeneas like Virgil who is writing this has finally come to the foot of the cliff where the Cumaean Sibyl lives. And not only that but the Cumaean Sibyl’s cave is the entrance into the other world. The other world and the underworld. The same. And so both levels and both meaningfulness have coalesced now and in a clear montage as one goes down one also goes out into the world of all meanings beyond the evident illusions that we normally would base our lives on.

He wrote, “From Cumae’s cliff was hone a monstrous cafe with hundred gaping mouths and hundred doors whence poured out hundred words, the Sibyl’s answers. As they entered the Priestess cried now hear your dooms. Tis the hour behold my God.” In other words, she greets everyone with this. And this is like a universal warning. Now hear your doom. Your doom.

Now is the hour, behold my Gods. And as she spoke there at the door her face and color changed. Her hair fell in a tangle. She choked. She gasped. Her heart swelled wild and savage. She seemed to grow and utter in human sounds. As on her breathed the power of God. Trojan, she cried. You lag. You Aeneas. You lag at prayers. No other power can blast a gate these temple doors. She spoke no further word though hardened Trojan hearts ran shock and chill. Aeneas was roused to pray.
Because in fact Aeneas has learned how to pray. He has indeed learned how to keep his prophetic inner self together.

And so, he meets the Cumaean Sibyl’s challenge to pass these gates and goes into prayer. And with his [inaudible] and his candor she is surprised at his capacity. And her hag like veil before the gates of Hell becomes transparent to him and he is able to pierce through and proceed. And he proceeds. For the first time. And of course, you can imagine that this was a tremendous metaphor to the early church.

“In words like these,” I'm skipping.
In words like these the Sibyl from her shrine sang riddles of terror and bellowed in her cave. Wrapping the truth in darkness. Such the rain and spur Apollo gave her maddened heart. Soon as her lips deranged in wild found rest Aeneas began. Lady no face of peril will strike me strange. Or rise up unforetold. One I seized and pondered all things in advance.

In other words, I know the prophetic thread in mind. So I am not here as a child or as a baffled man I am here with the line of Integrity of the spirit vibrant and intact. And I am here to go through.

One favor men say the infernal King has here his gate. Here Hell's dark swampy rivers rise. Allow me to see my well-loved father's face. Show me the way. Spread wide the holy doors. Through flames and thousand flying spears I saved him on these shoulders with enemies all around. He shared the root through all those seas with me and bore the threats of ocean and of sky. More than the old and ill have strength to bear.
And he goes on.

And his final statement at the end of all this because he is showing her through his [inaudible] and his candor and his inner spirit intact that he's not coming with a sword. He's coming with a religious spiritual piercing view. And ends, “I too am of job's line.” In other words, I have divinity in me too and I know it. And so, with his petition in this way the Sibyl of Cumae cannot bar him anymore. And Aeneas is admitted. And he goes in, he goes into Hell.

And in book six he finally wins his way down through Hell and the descriptions are terrible. They, all of this descriptions of hell which we have inherited through the Middle Ages and Renaissance and so forth all come from Aeneas. All come from Virgil. And they are there. And you can read them. And it’s a, it's a catalog of terrifying visions and levels and realms and who knows.

And finally, he comes, and he says,
Deep in a grassy valley stood the souls mustered for life on Earth with I alert and [inaudible] surveyed them checking off the role of all his cherished life. His sons, their sons, there locked their destinies their works and ways. But when across the fields he saw Aeneas coming. He stretched out both his hands for joy. Tears washed his cheeks. Words tumbled from his lips. You've come at last. Your father waited long for love to conquer hardship. Oh, my son, do I see your face?

And of course he comes in. And [inaudible] is able to give to Aeneas all of the truth that he has wanted. The last link that will carry him to the future sight of Rome. And the future of their lineage through his son Ascanius who will become Julius. Who will found the Julian clan. But even more than that because [inaudible] now an eternal spirit disembodied from the flesh is free and has not yet passed the river of forgetfulness, Lethe. Nor has Aeneas. So, he tells in the whole structure of the universe. To begin the Heavens, the Earth, the watery wastes, the lucid globe of moon, the Sun, the stars exist through inward spirit. That is, they are not out there simply. They exist through inward spirit.

Their total mass by mind is permeated, hence their motion from mind and Spirit comes life of man, of beast, of bird, of monsters under the foam flux seas. Life is from Heaven a seed of fire that glows bright so far as flesh cannot repress it. Or Earthly death bound bodies dull its glow. From flesh come fear desire pain and joy. Its pitch-dark prison blinds us to the light. And even on that last day when life departs not all our Evil all the bodies foul corruption leaves us. Deep ingrained in ways past comprehension. Much has hardened fast. Our souls then suffer pain and pay the price for wrongs done years before. Some like a cloak laid off to hang to the winds. Some lose their stains by flood and swirl. Or cuttery of fire. We suffer each. Our ghostly selves then pass some few to gain Elysium’s fields of joy. The years go by. Time makes his cycle just. Our hardened filth is [inaudible]. Intelligence pure as of Heaven is left. And breath and fire after a thousand circling years God calls these souls to Lethe in a long parade to gain forgetfulness then view the sky once more and wish to put on flesh again.
And so, the sacred eternal working order of the universe is given to Aeneas by his father.

And the final prophecy in book six is when he says,
That finally here comes your family your Roman children Caesar and all the sons of Julius who will come beneath the vault of Heaven. Here is the man you've heard so often promised. The final man in this whole cycle of time. There he is Augustus. Son of Godhead. He'll rebuild a golden age in Latium.

Golden. That is to say the four ages. The gold, silver, the bronze the iron. And at the end of the iron age, iron that when the literal iron spears have filled men so that they are planted in the ground and they're growing steel. Like that poor [inaudible] back at the beginning of The Aeneid moaning to Aeneas under the ground. And now Aeneas is under the very ground of all is seeing it all and he sees that that age of iron is coming to an end. And what comes after it but the whole new cycle of another golden age dawning with Augustus the one who's bringing it into view. And of course, Virgil the poet seer expressing it full.

And here it is,
Augustus son of Godhead. He'll rebuild a golden age in Latium. Land where once Saturn was King. Passed India. Past the philosophies of India. Past the Moore. He'll spread his rule to zones beyond the stars. Beyond the ecliptic where Atlas carries Heaven and bears on his back the spinning star trick wheel. Even against Augustus [inaudible] even now God's oracles have panicked Eastern steps and [inaudible] the outlets of the seven twined Nile. Not even Hercules crossed so much land to shoot the bronze [inaudible]. Or bring back peace to [inaudible] groves. Or frightened [inaudible]. Nor Baccus when he drove his tiger team with vines for reigns and glory down from [inaudible]. And still, we hesitate to fight and win or fear to make our stand in Italy. But who is that who wears the olive crown and carries [inaudible]? White hair and beard I know him. That King whose code gave Rome a base of Law.
And of course, this is King Numa one of the ancient Roman kings who comes in to testify. And so, all of the greats of Roman history are brought in.

And at the culmination of book six Aeneas has not only been down into the other world, the underworld, and seen it but he knows his way back out of it. And the Cumaean Sibyl had told him before it's very easy to get to Hell. Everyone gets to Hell. Getting out is the problem. And so, Aeneas shows his stuff. Shows his fine epic heroic medal. And rising back out of Hell coming back out of the Cumaean Sibyl’s cave looking at the Bay of Naples there much as Virgil had done for 10 years. Stands there dazed by the enormity of the vision. And held in focus by the [inaudible] and candor of his inner self is able to reveal everything that he had seen. Not so much in words but in carrying the seeds intact and getting them planted in the right ways. So that with time and circumstance itself their full meaning would unfold. And that history would play out in actual fact what the visionary epic had foretold all along.

And so, Virgil by a great transposition of temporality shows that the place where they have got to has been foretold from the beginning. And that it played out in just the way in which it did. And who's to say that because he's at both the end and the beginning of that grand cycle that it wasn't all true. And of course, Augustus was very anxious that this not be burned and saved it from the fire.

Well next week we'll look at a few more people from that world. I think that's enough for tonight

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