Aeneas and Odysseus: Seeing Eye-to-Eye
By Kyle Knight
It's no mystery as to why the Greeks and Trojans hated one another. If you steal a man's girl, he's going to come wreck your city. More to the point, things got pretty heated in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey when the Greeks sacked Troy for all that it was worth.
Virgil's Aeneid picks up where the story of the "heroic" Greeks left off, and features a character that our good-ole-pal Odysseus stabbed in the eye. Despite their disagreements, the Greeks and Trojans can both agree that this guy is up to no good. Enter the Cyclops. He's big. He's scary. He has a thing for wine and smashing the brains out of any human he comes across. Worst of all, he enjoys eating people. Put all that together, and you get something a thousand times more terrifying than the flying purple people eater. In lines 622-681 of Book III, we see an Ithacan from Odysseus' crew running to the feet of the Trojans and pleading for them to help him get away. He provides a pretty horrific account of the Cyclops' eating habits, which is still pretty chilling - even by modern standards of horror - despite how old this book is. "The innards and the dark blood of poor fellows Are what he feeds on: I myself looked on When he scooped up two crewmen in his hand Mid-cave, and as he lay back smashed them down Against the rockface, making the whole floor Swim with spattered blood and excrement, The warm flesh still a-quiver in his teeth." "Holy cow, did Virgil really just write that?" That was my reaction upon reading this passage for the first time. I've read over this passage several times, and it still makes the hairs on my back stand upright. Ugh. So what's the take-away from this gruesome depiction of a mythological monster's meddling and meal (say that five times fast)? Well, it gives us an insight into what type of behavior was not socially acceptable to most Greco-Roman fans of Virgil and Homer; eating people is NOT OK. It's not cool to smash them to bits and slurp up their innards. It just isn't cool. Thinking about this in a food communication perspective, I can honestly say that the eating habits of the Cyclops are almost entirely dependent on identity and convenience. Could the Cyclops easily grab some sheep or tree limbs to snack on? Of course. Does he? Nope. He's completely irresponsible. He grabs people and tosses them like rag dolls, and not just for the sake of the meal; he does it to utterly terrify even the most powerful of the Greek heroes, Odysseus. You know you're a baddy when you even make one of Ithaca's most powerful demigods stop in his tracks and plan out an intricate escape. The same goes for Aeneas, who barely makes it out in time before the Cyclops and his buddies come stomping around on the beach. Note to anyone: Don't actually eat anything while reading through passages like this in Virgil's Aeneid or Odyssey. It's pretty gruesome stuff and it might make you think twice about eating lunch. Bon appétit. |