literature

Mythic Rome

I am currently making my way through Edith Hamilton’s seminal collection of Greek, Roman and Norse myths titled simply Mythology. I started re-reading it last year on my honeymoon which coincided with the Athens Olympics (a perfect time to be reading Greek mythos) and am still at it after many stops and starts. In finishing the section on Virgil’s Aeneid I came across this quote about “the Roman race” by Virgil (whose Wikipedia entry calls him “Vergil”):

“They were destined to bring under their empire the peoples of earth, to impose the rule of submissive nonresistance, to spare the humbled and to crush the proud.”

Interesting to think about, especially as a citizen of the world’s only “empire” today.

One thought on “Mythic Rome

  1. More on the Aeneid: many phrases from this poem entered the Latin language, much as passages from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope have entered the English language. One example is from Aeneas’ reaction to the painting of the Sack of Troy: sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt – “There tears for the mortal way of the world brush our minds.” (Aeneid I, 462)

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