Traveling hero meets a beautiful female November 4, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: ancient, ceremony, complex, conflict, dangerous, dealing, epic, hate, hero, literature, love, magic, magical, myths, poet, powers, pyre, ritual, roman, sacrifice, underworlds, wishes
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Much of ancient Roman literature dealing with magic are, basically, retellings of Greek myths. Roman poet Virgils’s Aeneid for example describes an interestng magical ceremony. The hero of the epic, Aeneas, who has landed on the coast of North Africa after fleeing from Troy, meets Queen Dido. She has just begun to build the city of Carthage. Dido falls in love with Aeneas, and wishes him to stay as her prince consort. The rest of what happens is easy to imagine. As usual, a traveling hero meets a beautiful female who is potentially dangerous, although kind and hospitable as long as her love for the hero lasts.
Thus the future conflict is set when goddess Fate decrees that Aeneas leave Dido to found a city of his own. Inevitably Dido’s love turns to hate. Enraged queen seeks to use a complex magical ritual to bring her former lover back to her. She builds a gigantic pyre in the main courtyard of her palace and prepares an elaborate sacrifice to the powers of the underworld.
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Beyond Your Imagination 