Friday, February 25, 2011

Aeneas -- Archangel?


Oh Aeneas... You have such an impressive number of vowels in your name. :)

The above image shows the final scene in today's reading: Aeneas, looking especially glorious and well-lit, places his foot upon the soon-to-be dead body of his enemy Turnus. I couldn't but help to make the connection here to another, similar scene from the christian tradition.


The is St. Michael the Archangel in all of equally radiant and triumphant glory. I would say that all Aeneas is missing is the set of wings, but then Aeneas is the son of Venus. He's half-god. I feel as though metaphorical wings come into that somehow...


Anyhow, the point is that Joseph Campbell really must've been onto something. His classic Hero archetype is not difficult to pick out of most epic myths (just so long as the reader perhaps tactfully fudges a few of the individual stages of the journey), and there are some striking hero myth similarities to be found which cross the boundaries of both time and culture. Pretty awesome, huh? :)


1 comment:

  1. i like these pictures there pretty interesting and have a lot of explanation and detail in them

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