Epic Manliness

In 2008, I took the “Æneid” class at the University of Texas. It was a great class where we used Clyde Pharr’s student edition of the text for the course. In one of annotations, I found one of the most fascinating descriptions of ancient masculinity I have ever read:

frigiore: chilly fear; the ancient heroes were not ashamed to display their emotions, and often gave way to terror or grief. They weep copiously on occasion, and are no more dainty about the shedding of tears than the shedding of blood

First things, the poetics of that second sentence’s second clause is amazing.

Additionally, when I read this, at the time, it opened my eyes to the reality that men and women of antiquity thought very differently about gender role and their inhabitation of it.

It’s common to think that those “back then” were “like us” and that the me that lives and thrives today would do just as well “back then.” Perhaps, but in many ways we would stick out like sore thumbs on matters of “rights,” “sexuality,” and “loyalty.” Mary Beard, a distinguished classicist who has written exhaustively of the lifestyle of the Romans has noted that it wasn’t a particularly nice way of life and that, to our mind, we would feel constantly beset by psychopaths.

But in this particular passage, the ancients show a willingness to be vulnerable and to handle grief that’s too big for one person to bear by sharing it. That’s not exactly the most popular modality in modern male identity in the West.

Here’s the passage that bears the note:

Extemplo Aeneae solvuntur frigore membra;
ingemit et duplicis tendens ad sidera palmas
talia voce refert: “O terque quaterque beati,
quis ante ore patrum Trojae sub moenibus altis
contigit oppetere!

Translation (mine):

Immediately Aeneas’ arms slacken with chilly fear;
he groans and, reaching his two palms to the heavens
speaks these words: “Oh twelvefold-blessed men,
who were fated to meet death before the faces of their
fathers beneath tall Trojan walls!”

Here Æneas, a refugee (driven by profound fate…), the leader of the last survivors of a sacked Troy loudly speaks out that the men who had faced the wrath of the Greeks were lucky — in fact three-times four-times-fold lucky — because the fate he’s currently facing is worse.

What a passage!

In any case, it’s probably my favorite footnote.