A Peace Offering

Dear fellow classmates,

Unfortunately, what I would like to talk to about cannot be summed up neatly in one coherent quote. However, it is confined to pages 194-196. In this area of Book 8, we see the first instance of camaraderie between the Trojans and the Greeks. Aeneas addresses the king with "Noblest of Greeks, it is my good fortune / To make my prayer to you and offer boughs / Hung with sacral wreaths.../...Our bloodlines branch from a common source. / Relying on this, I did not approach you / Through ambassadors or artful overtures." As we can see, there has been a clear attempt to look past history and join together in order to defeat their common enemy, the Latins. King Evander replies with equal friendliness and even goes as far to mention and complement King Priam. Though their alliance serves to advance and make the story interesting, I think there is an underlying reason for it that ties back to the fact that the Aeneid is a creation tale. The Greek and Roman cultures undeniably have many similarities--as we know, most of Roman civilization and culture was adopted from the Greeks. I think that by including this alliance Virgil is attempting to mend the broken relationship by the Greek and Roman ancestors during the Trojan War. The purpose of creation stories is to shed light on why things are the way that they are and how they came to be. It would not make sense for Rome to have thousands of Greek customs while holding a--for lack of a better term--historical grudge against the Greeks. Virgil is effectively trying to justify the similarity Roman culture has to Greek culture.